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
The description of that necklace would be enough to cheer me up.
Will the Ice clear before Shabbat?
Well, here’s an idea probably useless to you since it probably costs a lot to implement:
There must be a way to salvage the water in a tank, and use it for grey water in your house (and your neighbors’ houses, too, since there is probably a LOT of water) and for irrigating your garden(s).
Maybe, after talking to a lawyer to make sure you can’t get sued, you could ask your neighbors if they want to make it a street project, not just to prevent ice but also to save water.
Just a thought.
What, nu? The Rabbi can’t turn the water into wine? (Because of the alcohol, it would have a lower freezing point and would flow freely through the neighborhood, who would object?)