Sure, it was cute, alright. But about five minutes after I posted this last night, the evening took a 180° nosedive in terms of R, and G and I went from beaming at the cuteness to reentering our all-too-familiar state of doubling over and retching in pain. Not literally. But it’s hard to tell the difference.
I’ve become a lot more circumspect with the things I share, especially online, when it comes to the specifics, partly because it’s too hard, partly because there are really no words, partly because it’s happened at least once that I shared too much and regretted it afterwards, but more than any of those things, I’m starting to feel like I might not have the right to share. She’s seven years old, which is of course a baby, but of course it isn’t a baby, and there comes a point when it’s her information more than mine. Especially when it comes to personality and behaviors rather than straightforward physiological matters. But oh dear God. Oh, dear God. Why did you have to do this to my child.
I’m not usually part of the Job (by which I mean, Book of Job, you know, bad things happening to people for no apparent reason) crowd. I don’t tend to look for answers to the why is this happening it’s so unfair question. I’m well aware of much, much worse things God has done, and I don’t expect life to appear just, or for anything to have a reason or for anything to make sense or happen as it “should.” So when I say why did you have to do this to my child, it’s not really a question, because I don’t actually think there’s an answer. It’s just words, I suppose. So I just let the words out while I double over and retch, or take out the pain and anger on other people, or tell my daughter RS, who is on vacation this week (AGAIN!!), that I need her to watch the Boy and the Nephew for a few minutes while I go upstairs to send an email to my client, and then instead of sending an email to my client, which is what I had fully intended to do, suddenly find myself here, writing this, while tears stream down my face and something hard and unmoving that has no name and no face clenches my insides so hard I can’t breathe. So that’s where we are right now, except I’d better stop crying and start breathing so I can get back downstairs and put the boys to bed and continue working with my daughter on sewing a mattress for her Barbie doll. Until next time, then.
Tags: Stroke
As I sit in my room working on my thing for Client #2, having just finished a raucous game of catch with RS and the Boy, I hear shrieks and hysterical laughter coming from downstairs, as R and the Boy run in circles through the house, R chasing and shouting “Aaah! Aaah!! Help! He’s going to get me!! This is the best part of having a baby!” and the Boy running after her and away from her, squealing out her name while laughing so hard he can hardly breathe. Nothing cuter has ever existed in the entire history of the world.
That’s all. You may return to the Super Bowl now.
Tags: Kids
It’s 1:25 AM. What do I think I am, 18 years old? I can’t stay up this late. I must be crazy. And I have to make a big, gigantic, huge Shabbos. Guess whether I’ve started or not? Well you see, I’ve been working nonstop for 3 days and 3 nights, so no, I haven’t started (also, it isn’t Friday morning yet, so no, I haven’t started). But it’s going to be a fantastic Shabbos. It’s the scholar-in-residence Shabbos, which is always one of the best Shabboses (yes, yes, Shabbatot) of the year, and we have a real superstar coming this year (actually, we have a real superstar every year), and of course, he’s staying at MY house. 
That’s one of the many many perks of being married to the rabbi, see. You get the coolest guests. Anyway I’m totally psyched about this Shabbos, so it’s too bad that I’m going to be unconscious, since it’s 1:30 AM and I haven’t gone to sleep yet. But the good news is that I sort of kind of finished the bulk of the work for Client #1. Finishing the work for Client #2 is proving to be slightly more — um — challenging. Heh. And alas, I have essentially had to ditch Client #3, which stinks, because I really, really wanted to do this favor for this person. I’m still hoping to come back to it, but I imagine he’ll have moved on by then. 
But guess what? I have a Client #4.
Ok, enough of that. Time to get my beauty sleep for the s-i-r Shabbos. Such a debt of gratitude I owe to the sponsoring family (talking personally, not for the shul) (I don’t get to talk for the shul anyway, since I’m not the rabbi, G is). This is seriously a highlight of my year, and I owe it all to them. I can’t wait for it to start.
In closing, please enjoy this picture of the Boy and the Nephew, who were playing their new game, “Beeee,” which is when they each sit down on a kiddie rocking chair and shout “Beeee!” as they rock back and forth. I think it’s supposed to be some form of “whee,” which would make a lot more sense, but I’m not going to be the one to correct them. Anyway, here it is. The mess you see in the background is but one example of what happens to my house when I actually spend my time working. Alas.
Good night and Shabbat shalom.
Tags: Nothingness, Shul, The Boy
Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is even worse than the near-debacle described here.
A spelling mistake. Spelling! A horrible spelling mistake. One of the most egregious spelling mistakes ever made in the history of mankind. And I didn’t catch it. I didn’t catch it. I didn’t catch it. I mean, I caught it just now, by accident, because I happened to see it when I was doing something else, but oh my God. I didn’t catch it. I almost let it go back to the client like that. How many others did I miss? What if there’s another one and I don’t find it? What if there are a hundred other ones? What if I don’t catch them? How will I ever know? What am I going to do??
I was the first one chosen as Star of the Week in fourth grade, and the first thing on the list of things the other kids said about me was “Miriam is good at spelling.” The first thing. That list was on display on the board for an entire week. The whole class could see it. What if they find out about this?? I’ll have to barricade myself in my room and never come out. So nothing much will change from the way it is now.
It’s all over. I’ve been exposed as a farce. My deepest apologies to all who thought they knew me.
Tags: Freelancing
Have you ever encountered a sentence that’s a bit too long and too full of clauses and descriptive phrases, so that no matter how many times you redo and delete and rearrange and reinsert and otherwise reinvent the punctuation, it still looks terrible and reads like kaka, but you can’t shorten it or delete parts of it or otherwise reconstruct it, because all of the phrases and clauses are too important and too central to what the author is trying to say, and you can’t chop it into two sentences because they’ll be too choppy and they’ll sound stupid, so instead you sit there staring at it and redoing it and redoing it again and then taking breaks from it and then coming back to it, at which point you discover that what you tried to do to it is hilariously bad and sounds awful, so you have no choice but to keep clicking “undo” until it reverts back to its original form, at which point you are reminded of just how bad it was in the first place, so you have to start the whole process all over again?
I have.
Tags: Freelancing
Look. It’s the Boy and the Nephew crawling across the floor today at The Children’s Place, where my baby siSter and I took them.
My son’s posterior looks a bit enlarged, doesn’t it? This is not altogether surprising, seeing as how his diaper was so unbelievably full that he was soaking wet all over by the time I got him home, but I think it’s just the angle of the picture. You know it adds at least 10 pounds. But still, perhaps I’ll consider changing his diaper during our next outing.
Anyway, I don’t know why they were crawling, since they do know how to walk, as well as run, as well as tear up and down the entire length of the store yelling their usual “AAAAAAAAH!!” and screeching in delight, pressing themselves up against the glass in front and being grabbed by their mothers just before entering the stock area in back, but I suppose they thought crawling would be a nice change of pace. Maybe they were tired from all that screeching. Me, I didn’t screech a bit, but I’m dead to the bone. Must be old age.
I didn’t screech, but I did explode violently at YS, but that wasn’t in the store. It was here, and it was much later, when she was refusing to go to bed and had pushed a bit too far in terms of being playfully defiant. Limits, my friends, limits. YS apparently doesn’t grasp them, and I apparently have some that do not enjoy being left behind. Not that I don’t still feel like trash for screaming at her, because I do. Not because I lost patience, but because I lost control; not because I yelled, but because I frightened her, and I frightened myself. “Maybe she’ll calm down,” I heard R whisper when they met outside my door. Yeah, maybe. I did calm down, but I feel like trash. I believe this is only the second time I have done that since I became a parent. Last time I addressed it right away. This time I was too angry and too upset, by her and by what had happened, and I didn’t address it at all. I probably will tomorrow. I hope I will tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is a new day.
Anyone who is so inclined is cordially invited to buy me this, along with any or all of the coordinating items. It might possibly cheer me up, assuming it arrives in the next few hours, which it won’t, so maybe you shouldn’t bother.
What’s wrong? Nothing really, I guess. Just the letdown that follows a big family Shabbos that’s been in the works for months, plus the huge sheet of ice that’s currently covering the end of our block, which is (heheh) emanating from a pipe under our lawn. You know, the pipe we had installed a few years ago, which removes the underground stream from under our basement and sticks it above the ground where it belongs. The only problem, of course, is that when it’s cold outside, this pipe causes gigantic and potentially hazardous frozen lakes to cover half our street, thereby possibly endangering pedestrians and people in cars. Oops. I feel sort of bad, but what am I supposed to do? We’re allowed to have the pipe there, or at least that’s what someone or other told us a long time ago, and the street doesn’t belong to us. Any one of the neighbors could do something about it as easily as we could. I’m still worried, though, not only because I don’t care to have my head sued off, but because I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Maybe I should go out there with my ax, or else rope it off and start charging fees for ice skating.
So my parents are gone, on their way back to St. Louis, and I’m sad. My student got married last night, and I was happy , especially about the part where I was sitting next to two of my most favorite people in the whole wide world. One is the person I mentioned here when he had his tenth child, and the other is one of my very oldest (by which I do not mean he’s the oldest, although he almost is that too) and absolute dearest friends. He’s been my best friend for… um… let’s see… 19½ years. Seriously. The funny thing is that we’ll go years without having any contact whatsoever, but as far as I’m concerned, he’s just as much my best friend now as he was however many years ago, when we spent several hours on the phone several times a week. I even told him so a while back, but I doubt he’d say the same thing about me, because he’s probably too frum to be friends with girls. Here, if you want a blocked-out face to go with the lack of name:
I added a smiley face, because that’s the sort of wild and spontaneous mood I’m in.
So that’s one of my oldest and dearest, and we were at the same table, and we got to do so much catching up, and it was wonderful, and the wedding was of course also wonderful. In addition to the bride, four of my former students were there, and they were quite surprised to see me, and they seemed almost as excited to see me as I was to see them, and they were shocked when they heard I retired from teaching (”What?! No more Jewish history??”), and they laughed when I said “Well your class was the peak! It was all downhill from there!” (That’s true, by the way.) I made sure to get a picture with the bride and one of my other students, and the picture stinks like nobody’s business, on account of my bad cell phone camera and the fact that my mouth is wide open in a comical manner, but here it is anyway, minus two faces (I didn’t get their permission, see):
So that’s them, with white stuff on their faces, and that’s me, in the middle of yelling something.
So I saw one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I saw some of my earliest and best students, and I spent 5 days with my parents and Shabbos with my sisters etc., and the twins went back to school this morning and I miss them, and RS is about to start yet another week of vacation, and we have finally finally finally been able to schedule the big fat round of testing that R needs (thank God!), and I have about 1000 loads of laundry to do and a deadline for my client tomorrow, and everyone who goes past my house is going to slip and/or skid and fall and kill themselves (God forbid), and all I really feel like doing is making a quilt patch, because that will cheer me up from my post-family visit slump. I printed up a shape and everything. Sigh. Here, I’ll give you that link again.
Tags: Friends, Keeping house (or not), Relatives
Why on earth would this site link to me?? Know what page it linked to? This one. I found this out because when I log in to my dashboard, WordPress shows me websites that have linked to mine, and it showed me that one. Now that’s just weird. Does that site automatically link to stuff that says “guinea pig,” or does anyone actually read the posts before linking to them? Because no actual guinea pig aficionado would choose to link to that post. It says nothing whatsoever about guinea pigs. In fact, it says nothing whatsoever about anything, but certainly not about guinea pigs.
Note to guinea pig aficionados: Seek your information elsewhere.
My family is still here, by which I mean my parents and my elder sister and her super-slick husband and my three gorgeous, explosively delicious nephews. Oh my GOD they are so cute. I’m so tired and so dizzy but Shabbos was wonderful, and my kitchen is clean. Praise the Lord. (My nephews helped with the mopping.) Tomorrow we shall all eat brunch, after my baby siSter’s somewhat less slick husband picks up lots of food and brings it over here along with his wife and my niece and my other nephew, and then Elder Sister etc. will leave and return to the outerboro, and then I shall leave and go to my student’s wedding, and then on Monday morning my parents will leave. Everything flies by so quickly. But at least it’s absurdly fun.
Tags: Nothingness
….are equipped with special hiding places for toddlers:
That’s my phone he’s talking on. You’ll notice he took off one of his shoes. This was after he climbed up on the leather couch and threw a piece of orange into the wrought-iron umbrella stand. (We were refinancing our mortgage, because of various things that only God and my husband understand.)
Have a great Shabbos. I will, because my parents are here, and my sister and her family are coming, and my other sister and her family are coming. Which reminds me, I should start cooking (no, I am not kidding).
Shabbat shalom.
Tags: The Boy
[Ed. note: This post was inspired by an email I just received.]
I am mad. I am mad. I am mad, mad, mad. I am so mad I have steam blowing out my ears and I’m going to punch somebody’s lights out. * BOOM * BANG * POW * See? Somebody just got their lights punched out. It’s a good thing I try not to don’t swear in public (I mean really swear), because some of your browsers might start exploding if I typed what’s in my head right now.
There are two possibilities as to what took place here. Either, a high-ranking departmental official told me, twice, during the last 7 or so years that I was not going to have to take a comprehensive exam in order to get an MA — or, I misunderstood something this person said (no I didn’t). So there is a 50% chance that I’m the one who screwed up, and there is ALSO a 50% chance that this other person screwed up. Both possibilities are equally likely.
So, with a 50% chance that I was told the wrong thing, by a very high-ranking departmental official, and have been working on that assumption for 7+ years, guess whether or not I am going to be forced to take the comp? Yes I am.
Life is not fair.
I am livid. I am so livid I don’t know what to do with myself. Perhaps I’ll cry and break things, and/or go pick up my parents at the airport (their plane lands in half an hour. Heh). One thing I know I won’t do is start reading the 20+ books on the MA reading list. I don’t even have the freaking time to read the freaking newspaper. I have a toddler and three grade schoolers, one of whom has serious academic issues as well as medical complications, and I do not have the money for additional child care. My days begin at 6:45 and end after 9, and that is assuming nobody shows up in my room wanting to discuss death and homework and reading groups and how they feel so bad for Gaston. The only thing I can sometimes read at that point are the program descriptions on my TV screen. You want me to read 20 books, you can show up at my house around 8 PM every night for 10 days, and you’ll hear me read 20 books. Or on Friday nights, when you’ll hear me read a chapter of a Ramona book, but we won’t have finished 20 of those in 10 days.
*^%$#@
Gotta go leave for the airport. Insert copious amounts of vile drunken sailor curses here.
