Weekend

Friday. I must get out of the house today. I feel like I need an adventure. So I will take a walk around the block. That might be mostly boring, but you never know.
I'm going to go a long way today, but I will take my time. A woman asks me something as she goes by. I know enough Hebrew now to be able to say "I don't know," and I even know what it is that I don't know. This time I catch the words "Sabbath, to buy, and time" and I conclude that she said she wants to know what time Sabbath begins because she needs to go buy something.
Every time I come to a bench or a low stone wall, I sit down. But I don't sit long at the first bench because there are a few small annoying flies. So I move to another bench. I am at a park that I call the "grown-up" park, because I have never seen children here. There is a jungle gym and a little merry-go-round. Occasionally a small group of teenagers returning from an event will crowd onto it and take a few turns around.
Farther down the street I pass a pomegranate tree with pomegranates as large as softballs, with newspaper wrapped around each of the largest ones.
I sit on a bench under a tree that smells rather bad. A man on the other side of the street is smoking a cigarette that smells delicious by comparison.
I head downhill a couple streets. Between each street are several flights of steps and a gradual incline between the steps. Beside the steps is a smooth path. A really fit biker can just manage to slowly bike up the hill without coming to a stop. This time there are three boys pushing their bicycles up the path. The third boy is lagging behind, so a fourth boy decides to help. But does he push the bike up the path? No, he carries it up the steps!
I go on to the next bench, but it's in the sun, and there are flies here, too. So in a minute maybe I'll head for home. But here comes a little boy down the steps. He's wearing a bright orange shirt and has a pacifier in his mouth. I don't see any grown-ups around. I ask him where his mother is, but of course he doesn't answer. He doesn't appear the least bit worried, and climbs onto a little wall and starts walking along it.
An older man comes along with a bag of greens. He hands me a myrtle branch, used in the closing sabbath ceremony. It smells wonderful! He doesn't know who the little boy is, but he takes him over to a nearby building where he knows some people, and they don't know him either, and are going to call the police.
So I go back up the hill and notice some people at the end of the street, who turn out to be the boy's parents. When I told him where the boy was, his father took off at a run to get him. I ran after him because he didn't wait long enough for me to explain exactly where the boy was, but he found him anyway. The little boy looks happy when his father picks him up, but evades his mother when she tries to pick him up. She frowns at him and exclaims "What did you do!?" He walks away from her with a look like "I did something big and I'm pleased with myself." [If you've read "Bored, Nothing to Do" you'll remember "a spank, and kisses."]
On the way home I pass a building with a 4-inch thick vine planted in front and climbing to a trellis over a third-floor balcony.
That was Friday.
Today was Saturday. A little kitten died. Not much else happened. I drank some coffee-flavored soy milk. Too good! and too much sugar. We took a late walk after dark and came across a young man lying on the sidewalk doing crunches with one leg propped up on a light post and a young woman coaching him.
Sabbath is over now , and the Lord's Day begins tomorrow. It will be a good day.