I think I put a kenahoreh on my health by bragging about how much better I was doing.  I didn't say m-sha'allah (being an ecumenical sort) or even knock wood either.  And yesterday turned out to be a fairly miserable day.  My usual one-hour morning nap turned into more than two hours, and after a misconceived lunch, I crashed again.  For the rest of the day, any activity that involved an upright position seemed just too difficult to negotiate.  Meanwhile, I had cramps all afternoon.  We decided that at 8, we'd go out for dinner, though where was a mystery since nothing sounded good.  But we thought getting out would be a good change.  Unfortunately, by 7:45, my head was in the sink (making it up the stairs to the bathroom was out of the question) and the remains of lunch were being washed down the drain.   I hope it was a one-day exception to the recent pattern, and I'm feeling peppy so far this morning.

'Kenahoreh' (really kein ain horeh) is an expression which is used exactly contrary to its real meaning, which is 'no evil eye.'  Now it's used as the equivalent of putting a jinx on something, but literally to invoke 'no evil eye' ought to be a good thing.  The curse out to be to put 'ain horeh,' an evil eye on something, but somehow over time and the diaspora, the meaning has been turned on its head.

There are just two more weeks before school resumes for Mohamed--six more classes over two more semesters and then his degree.  The three required texts that the bookstore is selling for $800 arrived from Amazon in a few days each for "only" $250.  We've been collecting e-mails, cards, and letters of congratulations on our marriage as support for the green card application, since absolutely everything needs support and documentation.  When I think about gathering all the financial information and actually filling out the applications, though, it all seems so cumbersome that I put it off for another day.  I've had a lot of experience with the INS (its old name) over the last twenty years, and it seems that the only certainty is how arbitrary it is.  At each step, a bureaucrat gets to make a decision, and most of those aren't subject to justification or review.  Mohamed was turned down twice for a student visa ("I don't think you're serious" and "Why would you want to go to Washburn?") and approved the third time when he changed his university acceptance from Washburn to KU and got an immigration officer who was a basketball fan and thought KU was a fine choice.  (Once you have a student visa, you can switch universities; Mohamed took three hours of summer school at KU before moving to Washburn.) 

It is raining comme une vache qui pisse, as the French so elegantly say.  Kimber has no desire to go out, so is sleeping at my feet.  We've had a lot of rain lately, which is good, though once it stops, the afternoons and evenings are uncomfortably humid.  It's been an hour since my chemo and 16 hours since I ate anything, so it's time for a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats (I think I should get some compensation for product placement; Imodium would owe me a lot) and a cinnamon roll.