The sweet little things

Last month when I was in the radiology waiting room, I saw an older couple on their way out.  As they went out the door, they clasped hands.  I have no idea what their story is, saw no particular expression on their face;  I just appreciated their connection.  I noticed a different older couple yesterday, coming up from the parking garage at my work (a different hospital), holding hands as they walked to the lobby.  So sweet.  I remember you, HR-S, holding hands with B, as you pushed the baby stroller into the subway.  So sweet.  I cannot reconcile the idea that frum marrieds need to avoid all public physical contact.  Maybe if there is enough verbal- or other nonphysical- support, maybe.

Last Wednesday, I was babysitting for friends, while the husband was at the Siyum Hashas.  I heard him leave a message on the machine, just "Hi H****, I wanted you to know I arrived safely.  I'll try to call you tonight.  Love you."  So sweet.

This is goodness.  If you have it, don't take it for granted.  If you are not doing it - wake up, and don't take it for granted.

This wasn't at all the Rockwell print I was trying to find, but it is good.  Another little thing I remember -when you, NLS, told J he need to dress more warmly, and fixed his collar and put a scarf (or hat or something) on him. Sweet.

So...what happened

Quick update for those of you who want to know details of my life - and a short composition on my point of view of death:

Wasband furious about "stuff acquisition", back to square one vis amicable relations.
One son very angry, his extreme reaction sends me into deep depression.  Since then, some outside intervention, things getting somewhat better, but still very cold.
Working hard to move stuff to great new place lifts my spirits a bit.
Get news that great new place looks to be unavailable.  Back into depression, anger and frustration that G-d teased me with this.
Current place becoming less and less attractive as owners prepare to sell it.
Looking for new apartment in old neighborhood. Everything is more expensive than I can really afford, but I don't think I can do another year of camping in the living room of a 1-bedroom apt.

So yeah, this summer is shaping up as nicely as last.

No, not true, I am still not chronically suicidal as in those years with the wasband, so that must be better.  And I still get some euphoric moments.  But mostly, I'm not so happy about life, don't have a great desire to keep going.

I think about this when I am at a certain class I frequent, on the topic of bitachon and emunah = belief and trust in G-d.  I don't particularly want to get into the subject of the class, just my reaction to the constant inevitable comment that one should be thankful "at least he is still alive", the assertion of other attendees that everyone would agree death is the worst outcome.  For me, that idea is only theoretic - I try to believe that it is advantageous for me to live so that I can have more chance to fulfill more commandments, therefore every single moment of life is precious. And I want to survive so that my children are not hurt.  But not because of any self-focused desire to live.  And it must be this same way for many people, that dieing is far from the worse possible thing.  The teacher from another class I used to attend on "Ethics of the Fathers" used to tell us his Rav would often ask his class, "How long do you want to live?" "'Til one hundred twenty," the students would all chime.  "Then you are foolish," the Rav would respond, "do you know how debilitated you would be, how much pain you would have? Look to live a good long life, but not THAT long."  I also use this line of thinking as a defense mechanism against my own horror when hearing about others being killed, etc:  well they died, and I hope they didn't suffer in the process, but being dead doesn't have to be all that bad.  If it was G-d's will, then how can one even claim it to be a missed opportunity to experience this live on Earth? 

Oh another thing that was going on - mammogram showed "suspicious spot", as has happped past few years.  I go for follow up, but don't really care all that much because 1) this is the third time in several years, fourth time in my life that a lump and/or x-ray spot turned out to be cyst, 2) see above.  But because I am me, what shakes me is the question "Can it be right for the doctors to insist on all the extra x-rays, given how high the radiation dose is per mammogram, and the overwhelming evidence that this is another cyst?  Isn't the risk from all this extra radiation likely to catch up with me before the natural course of my own body?  Who will take this question seriously?"  Now, if I don't care, then why do I care?????

That's all - not too insightful.  Like I said, just an update on what's happening in SW's world.

Not Very Original

I started out wanting to write a post about yet another (tiny) epiphany: good potato knishes are reeeeealllly good.  I wanted to link to the Episode of Welcome Back Kotter:  Sweathog Clinic for the Cure of Smoking (for which I unfortunately can find no free link).

Mr. Kotter tells the cigarette addicted Epstein of his own former addiction: junk food, specifically potato knishes. 
If you google "Kotter knish", you will get many hits to sites about the knish which refer to the Welcome Back Kotter episode.  So I am not the only one who remembers this show.  It made me think about a book the wasband liked to quote, something like "The Jewish Comic Steryotype in American Media," which proposed that in American films and TV (in the 1960's and 1970's, when this book was published), a Jewish feature is by default comic.  And he brings very compelling examples, especially Jews on interview shows (Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson type shows) where the interviewee mentions something Jewish, but not obvious or intentionally funny at all, but the audience laughs, assuming a joke is being set up.  The theory, I think, was that this reaction was the result of a media culture in which all scripted reference to Jews = Comic.  Not much to add to this, except to say I agree, the idea of addiction to knishes is funny in a way that would not work with canollis, burritos, or even egg-rolls  (maybe souvlaki, a la Mad About You; not a Jewish food, but a food mention on a Jewish show.  Now that I think about it, what is Khlav Khalsh in the Simpsons - did they have to make up an arabic-sounded food to be funny there?  is this based on a real food?  if so, I couldn't find it.  looks like swarma to me).

Okay, prepare to shift gears as I go into the revised subject: How is it that there seems to be substantial Kotter - knish association, but I'm not seeing the most obvious, hysterical association with the current olympic chocolate milk ads?  Legit chocolate milk ads look like a complete satire of old John Belushi "Little Chocolate Doughnut" skit!  I was in the laundro-mat when I first saw this commercial, and I BUST OUT LAUGHING.  I looked around, and couldn't figure out why everyone else wasn't laughing along as well.  Didn't anyone watch the first cast of SNL!?!

 Please, please compare this chocolate milk ad  
with this classic skit with John Belushi .

And BTW, who else remembers those old TV ads that ended by telling you they were brought to you by "The Mid-Atlantic Milk Marketic Association"?  I barely remember the commercials, one was " Glorious Cheese" to the tune of Glorious Food from Oliver.  But I will never forget that great name, the Mid-Atlantic Milk Marketing Assoc.  I couldn't find who sponsered the chocolate milk ads, not that I looked all that hard.  But I obviously have my suspicions...


Anyway, back to my original blog concept:  My memory of Gabe (Kotter) Kaplan recalling his addiction the the potato knish.  But the thing is, when I saw the show, I didn't think of a knish as junk food.  I didn't find them particularly appealing.  Somehow, all the knishes I have had were either of the frozen-food variety, or really bad pizza-dive-knishes made with pizza dough.  These are always overly chewy and and dry, bland inside and out.
Since moving to the new neighborhood, I have discovered the local bakery's knishes. BANG! what a difference, now I get it.  These are strudel-dough outside with obviously home-made filling.  They are greasy and salty and spicy and DELICIOUS.  They often give me heartburn, and they are obviously so high in calories, and I can't stop eating them, they are so good.  Yum, knish.

Summer Collage

On the way to work, I pass a public pool in a little public park.  It is a very cute place, and very inviting, as public pools go.  I was late out to work today, and I saw a sizable group of teenagers milling about, waiting to get in.  It reminded me of when I was a teenager spending all and every day of summer at the pool.  We lived in a large apartment complex, with a nice pool.  I would wake up, a little later every day, call over to my best friend, pack some lunch, playing cards, a towel, and head out to the pool.  Aahh.  That is summer. 

This is a great memory.  But an even better memory is the annual trip to the beach.  My parents like to go the same place every year, on the Delaware shore.  The years are all blurred together, but I remember riding the waves and playing putt-putt with my cousin, flying kites, glow sticks (before you could get them in every Dollar Store), the smell of newly pressed iron-ons on new T-shirts and jerseys, pizza and cheese subs, playing cards on the hotel room balcony, riding bikes on the boardwalk, book outlets, shell necklaces, fresh peaches from farm stands, the smell of the ocean... That is heaven.

I hope to get to the beach this summer.  I don't think I'm taking any kind of vacation this summer ("vacation"????? I think I vaguely remember what that word means), mostly I'm moving stuff around.  I'm moving, did I mention that?  I am moving from one house that is on sale to a second house that is on sale.  I feel like that should be a metaphor for something, but I'm not sure what. 

I have gone to a couple "garage sales", saw a lot of thing I might have gotten, except for the thought "I will be on the move again soon.  Do I really want more stuff to shlep?"  I plan to make do for a while longer with minimum.  It will be so nice to have PLENTY of space for everything I have now.

I am at the library tonight, and I want to look around.  This is just a composite of things that were floating around my head.  Maybe I will edit it more tomorrow -- find the obvious Calvin Hobbes that belongs to the paragraph above.

I love snow, babies, my new shoes.  But summer is good too.

This is as soon as possible

I was sick for four days, and that has not happened in a while.  Now I have to deal with a fast, no air-conditioning in 100 degree weather, and back pain from lying in bed so long.  Plus a mound of laundry, and all that backlog at work.  But this all takes a back-seat to the important things on my mind - the terrible reaction to me taking back my stuff 11 days ago.  Could it only have been 11 days ago? 

So here is just a little snippet to keep you amused, a great little quote from a friend the other day, even better because he is quite Republican : "What can you say about this weather?  Either it's global warming, or it's Obama's fault."

But if you are such a person, please daven for me, I am quite desperate.

the former post was retracted, since I got the slap I needed.
will update as soon as possible.

Plays, Probiotics, Cabinets and Cat(burglar)s...

...or Sometimes You Can Do It Alone,  Sometimes You Need Help 
...or The Religious Post

Wow, yesterday was an incredibly stressful day.  I am amazed it went as easily as it did.  I had two completely different stressors pulling at me in one horribly long day.

I woke up early and stayed up late to move my stuff out of the old apartment while the wasband is out of town.  He doesn't know.  But I just found out he suspected - he told one person with a key explicitly "don't let her into the house."  Fortunately I haven't played all my cards before this, still a couple up my sleeve.

Just to be clear, I'm fairly certain that I have every legal and ethical right to go into that apartment to get my stuff.  But still, he will be terribly angry, and all the need for stealth felt really freaky.  Plus asking so many people for favor after favor, just to get stuff boxed and moved and stored quickly was very hard for me.  (My friends have been great. Thank you, friends.)  I chose, collected, and moved the stuff in just a few hours.

Meanwhile, *Irene* reminded me that I had planned to go to see her perform in a play last night.  Irene is a very close older relative.  So I took off early from work (after starting late) to drive an hour and a half, straight to the play.  The play was delayed for almost an hour, because it is a little play at a senior center, put on mostly for the benefit of the players, so they don't worry too much about the time.  So Irene is introducing me around to her friends, and their questions show all the lies she has told about me.

Irene is a pathological liar.  Perhaps you think that is just a hyberbolic expression.  It is not.  I know because I have a touch of the condition myself.  It is a desire to lie for no particular gain or purpose.  I guess when I do it, it is just to make a story sound slightly more interesting, almost never to get out of a bad situation or for material gain or to make myself look better.  Really.  I don't think I do it often, but occasionally lies slip out, I can't figure out why I did it, but I can't take it back. I easily recognize some lies from Irene, for example, warped stories of happenings that I experienced first hand.  Other lies are just guessed from her mannerisms.  I tell you this not to shame her, but to explain that yesterday was not an isolated incident.  Also, she likes to point out my faults, usually jokingly, but quite clearly, right in front of me.  Multiple faults, multiple times per evening.  Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are not, and it really doesn't make a difference.

Irene's friends, who clearly have great affection for her, try to chat with me.
"Oh, you're just in research now?  Your not a practicing doctor anymore?"
"How is your garden doing?  I hear it's really growing this year."
"I loved that cannoli you made for Irene last week." (I have never made cannoli in my life, and I haven't brought Irene any baked goods in the past year.)
Irene will give me a quick, strain look, as if to say, "Please don't tell, it's just a little lie."

So you see she takes the facts and twists them to me me look bigger and better.  Perhaps I should say "She is old, she is a pathological liar.  Maybe she just made a slip of the tongue.  Maybe her friends just misheard, or didn't remember clearly."  But I couldn't get through the evening, and as I drove her home, I told her that I don't appreciate that she lies about me; that she is so embarrassed by my mediocrity that she makes up all these embellishments.  I felt bad right away.  But it is the same thing every time I see her.  I can't stop from exploding.  Before I drove off to finish moving stuff, I went back up to her house to apologize, try to smooth things over, keep this night a happy memory for her.

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A couple weeks ago, I caught the end of an interesting article on Radiolab .  The piece was about a recent study I have heard somewhere before, about feeding yogurt to mice.  Well, not literally yogurt, more like a pill of the probiotics that make milk into yogurt.  One upshot of the probiotic diet was a significant decrease in the panic reaction to stressors.  Basically: mice were fed a standard diet, or a high probiotic diet.  The mice were dropped into a tank of water.  Standard diet : mouse swims a couple minutes, is overcome by panic, goes into dead float; Probiotic diet: mouse keeps swimming and swimming and swimming, blood chemistry shows much lower levels of panic enzymes.

I would usually make fun of someone who tried to mimic the results of such a study by trying to change her diet.  But this time I figure "what the heck", bought several quarts of kefir and yogurt, and started flooding my system with probiotics, maybe an average of 30oz per day.  And....I do feel more relaxed, although somewhat queezy. Apparently, even good bacteria can play havoc with your stomach when you overdo it, no surprise.  It is hard to say, but perhaps this induced calm help me do what I needed to do yesterday, and still make it to work for a productive day today.  I don't even remember crying.

    **************************************************************************

We learn that the Jewish calendar is not merely linear.  Time does not progress as a straight line, but cyclically.  One could imagine a spiral or helix, so that each year we travel forward on one axis, while concurrently returning to the same spot on the other axis.

Last year this was a terrible time of change and turmoil, choices and loss.  I am now terribly nervous as I watch events unfold in the shadow of the last year.  I am making the choices, I am preparing for the changes.  I worry that all the choices and preparations will be overturned and fly away like ashes in the wind, just like a year ago.  Above all, I need to remember that if it happens again, it is because the Master Above took control, to do what was right for me.  And I want to try again to be grateful that He would hold my hand and pull me onto the right path by force.

I am afraid this sounds off-putting, as if I am so righteous that I can be happy when I don't get my way.  I'm not that righteous.  But somehow, it really just seemed clear before.  And I so desperately want someone, and Someone, to hold my hand and just tell me what to do, I'm so tired.  I was listening to Dune on audio CD this morning - the characters ask each other, when do people outgrow the ability to sleep in complete comfort, without the burden of worry.  Does everyone really feel this way?

I went to a lecture years ago which I probably remember because the speaker had a lovely S. African accent.  He taught "The rabbis tell us we are always being chased by something.  If we are lucky, it is by good things, like preparing for holiday guests, or a wedding.  So we can hope and pray to be chased by good, but not to avoid being chased."  That is heavy, and the thought of it makes me more tired.  I feel like there is never enough time.  Certainly this week (this month, this year) I didn't get done so many of the chores that are chasing me.  I can't find time (and here I sit blogging), and I can't figure out how to get more.  So ironically I dedicated more time to an area where I have been sorely lacking - prayer.  I had fallen into a rut of only saying morning blessings and Sh'mah, with little other set prayer.  This year I started attending synagogue every week again, after years of almost never dragging myself out on shabbos.  I regularly pray all four services now on Saturdays. I love it.  So I have gone back (just recently, can't promise if it will stick) to saying the Amida every morning.  Maybe I can try for afternoon also.

Is it the probiotics settling my nerves, or the prayer?  I believe He wants us to try ourselves, while asking for help, so I'm gonna stick with both.