Zona comes pretty close to my name

I learned a new Hebrew word today:  shar-mu-tah.

Currently, and by currently I mean now and forever because work gets done very slowly here, there is some kind of road work going on the street where we live.  They are digging a trench and the mountain is mostly rock so they have a jack-hammer going practically all day.  It's very loud and you can barely think.  The noise starts at 7am, stops for about 30 minutes around noon and continues until 4pm.

I can't have any massage clients over until after 4 when the noise stops.  It's just awful.
One of the workers out there called me about a massage, and I set up a time and he came over looked around, said he would call later and left.  He's the guy we thought at the time was looking for the other kind of massage.

Well, someone keeps calling -- I can't tell if it's the same person or not -- and my Hebrew is so bad, I can't understand what the caller is saying.  I catch ee-su-ee which means massage, and then I am learning to take control of the call by asking in Hebrew do you want a massage yes or no?

When?

What time?

I can do that, but if they start talking and asking questions, I really don't know what they're saying.
So some guy with a private number called and we're making an appointment and he asks something about sha-ma???  It sounded to me like shaman and I wondered if that was a borrowed word that has been included in Hebrew like it has been in English.  Well, I want to be a shaman, which would be so cool, but I think I answered in Hebrew, I don't know.  Or, I'm not sure, I might have said yes, but I'm pretty sure I said I don't know.  Because he wanted to come tomorrow at 10 and David has an interview at the same time and strangers -- especially men -- are not coming into this house unless David is around, we could not set a time and he said he would call later.  We were still uncertain if he wanted a real massage or the other kind.

Well, there's a couple of young girls who live upstairs and sometimes they play their music really loud.  If there's no pounding outside, there's the pounding of the bass from the music they're listening to.  It is so loud it vibrates the floor beneath us and the music is coming from upstairs.  Sometimes this goes on for hours even after the Sabbath horn has sounded and sometimes it starts early in the morning.  Maybe it was out of anger, but I truly was kidding around with David and said if that guy calls back, I can tell him in Hebrew the whores live upstairs.

I looked up the word for whore in my Hebrew/English dictionary and immediately realized that guy wasn't asking if I was a shaman, he was asking if I was a shar-mu-tah, i.e. whore.  Oh no!  And I either answered:  Yes or I don't know.  Either way, it is not good that those guys who are doing road/sewer work right in front of our apartment think I'm a whore.

Oy!

I'm sure this guy is going to call back.  I'm going to say: Ah-nee LO shar-mu-tah!  And I'm practicing how to say: Shame on you in Hebrew.  (Heet-bah-yesh-leh-hkah!)  And bad man, very bad man.  (Eesh rah, eesh rah may-ode, rah may-ode!). 

Hopefully that will end it.

Oh, and there's another word for whore and that is "zona," which is pretty close to my name which was on the signs.  Boy oh boy oh boy.