23 March, 2008

A little bit beautiful, for Purim, and a little bit absurd, for Purim

A couple of weeks ago, our neighborhood suddenly overflowed with pale lavender and white flowering trees. I'm really no good at identifying botanical species (remember?), but I might naively guess that they were almond trees. Whatever they were, they were everywhere, and they all decided to jump into bloom at the same second. It was nothing short of breathtaking - quite otherworldly. I first noticed it just outside Efrat, on a late Friday afternoon, when we were in a rush to get to my brother's house for the weekend, and couldn't stop to take a picture. After that, the weather got really dusty and overcast, and it never seemed worthwhile to take one - wouldn't the weather surely improve tomorrow? Here's one that I tried taking during that week, but it really doesn't do justice:

Anyway, the weather finally cleared up. I went back to the original, magical spot, and the scene had entirely disappeared. The blossoms had continued on their path (toward fruit?), without waiting for me. It really was a shame, but that's life, I know.

And then, just a couple of days ago, I found this outside
a window of my office:

A slacker! A little baby flowering thing that couldn't keep up with the grown-ups! What luck! I snapped the photo and felt, for no good reason, much better.

But yesterday was Purim; we can't have a post with no humor at all. Here's something I got a picture of recently in a Chicago supermarket. This one totally took me by surprise:

Don't most people try to avoid calories? I could see, theoretically, someone buying a package of something because it advertised high vitamins, or low fat. But what's attractive about calories? It was all I could do to figure out what was even in the box - the shape or flavor does not seem to be for sale here as much as the calorie count. I just can't see this scenario. Hmm, I've got the Swiss cheese, I didn't forget the milk, yes, got the cucumbers... what's missing? Aha! How could I forget? I really could use 100 more calories.

Sorry, I tried, but I just can't manage to squeeze myself onto that wavelength.

Happy Purim!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

All righty, trhen! You Israelis have so much fun at the expense of us poor US residents. The idea, of course, is that there are ONLY 100 calories...but your blog is really funny! Love, Mom

toby said...

Sorry, Mom, the humor stands. I could see that only 100 calories might make a good advertising campaign, but alas, I don't see the word only... Also, the calories being four times as large as the product name is totally out of control.
Always a pleasure to make fun of the poor US residents :)

Gil Reich said...

I think my favorite part about this was the "anonymous said" followed by the "Love, Mom." Obviously a new definition of anonymous of which I was previously unaware. :-)