Oh My God the 12 hour days begin

And its so fucking good. Started editing on Monday at Ruthie's place in Jaffa. At Namal Yafo to be exact which means "Jaffa Port." Which means everytime I tell a cabbie where to go, "Namal Yafo 32, b'vakasha" they say "Ech? Ezze Namal Yafo, Ein Namal Yafo" as in "what? there is no address-- "jaffa port"? there is no 32 jaffa port" mind you -- I go everyday and there is a row of apartments, right there, on Namal Yafo and we fight, or laugh, or point, or whatever, but they never, never eat their words. They claim I said it wrong, or they knew all along, or some other such banter. Its like clock work, every morning. Except for the foxy cab driver this a.m. who told me I looked "conservative" and not like a New York girl (it was 9am) I thought he was flirting? But he didn't ask for the digits...

My first day of editing was a nightmare. The voice over I had prepared was too low -- and I was so fearful about being on camera and looking bad, the stuff I shot Saturday night (for 7 hours until dawn with an adorable film student) was WAY TOO DARK as if I was hiding. I was. So Ruthie insisted I re-record VO which made sense, except that in my haste to pack up my whole life in Jerusalem (on no sleep) and book it to Tel Aviv at 9pm the night before to meet my cousin for the key to his place... I left my camera/mic. at home. So I got into a bus and went back to Jerusalem, picked up the camera, and headed right back to Jaffa. No big deal -- only a four hour chunk of time -- in good spirits I prepared to rerecord my 20 page voice over narration -- something like 40 minutes of work.

I poured myself a nip of whiskey and got going. I totally screwed up the sound and it was too quiet. I did it again, and it was so loud it was distorting. By this time it was 8pm, I ripped through a third version and got ready to digitize. Half drunk from whiskey and exhaustion, my day ended at 10pm. A horrendous way to start, but the only way is up.

And up we go-- things have been great. Anat Zuria connected me to Ruthie and really made a great fit (if only she could find me a man...), we are comfortable, working hard, laughing, discussing, she has scolded me a few times for not getting shots I needed a few years ago--
but as it stands-- all of my problems can be FIXED!

Woo hoo -- the beauty and strength of the story is in the script, and not in the precious moments of verite that I never got. Things are good -- we have a lot to shoot in New York - so its great that she'll be here in April. So our goal is a 26 minute chunk of a film to bring home and fundraise, and then do more shooting/editing with a lot clearer sense of what is needed in NYC.

Finally, I have a partner -- an incredibly skilled and dedicated partner in crime. And her baby boy, Yul, is the freaking cutest monster you've ever seen. Photo to come -- I promise.

I dream at night of the following:
A really warm, cozy bed not on the floor of someone's computer room in Tel Aviv
A room that is mine, all mine, that is not radiating cold from its stone walls
(the rest of my dreams are too dirty to mention, not really, I'm too tired for those)