Spiritual "To Do List"

Last week was pretty crazy and I'm glad it's over. Between stomach pains and a recurring headache for 5 days straight, I wasn't exactly at the top of my game. Then the icing on the cake was a last minute directive at work on Wednesday afternoon that I was going to have to teach a software training class on Thursday, because my colleague who was supposed to do it had to stay home with her sick son. Typically I get 4-6 weeks warning about training, so I was pretty panicked. I told my boss this and he basically told me - in a nice way - that his expectations were pretty low, so don't sweat it. Wow! Gee thanks.

The class actually went fine and now I get to palm off a far less appealing (2 day) training class to my co-worker as payback for having to cover for her. But even so, I was really happy when Shabbat came around this week, and spent a nice day with friends.

This has not been the case for the last several weeks.

Right after Shavuot a spiritual ennui set in and I've had a hard time trying to shake it. Last Shabbat found me seething with resentment for all the creative activities I couldn't pursue until after sundown. Of course I felt guilty for feeling that way, immediately spoiling any shred of joy left in the day.

It got me thinking about my time as a college bookstore manager. I was in charge of everything that wasn't a book (sweatshirts, school and dorm supplies, groceries, etc.) and I couldn't find a decent assistant to save my life. This was mostly due to the fact that I was not allowed to do my own hiring, but instead had a parade of dysfunctional sadsacks foisted on me.

Finally I discovered a very mature student who had a schedule that would work for this position, and lobbied for her to get the job. Everything was great until I had to leave for a trade show for 4 days.

I left her a list of maybe 20 items to work on while I was gone. I thought that she understood that I was not expecting her to finish everything on the list - just to work on as much as she could until I got back. The list was extra long so she wouldn't run out of things to do and would have work to assign to other students during that time.

Apparently that was not clear to her. She found the list completely overwhelming and gave up on the whole thing. When I got back to work I found out she had quit.

I find the list of mitzvot in Judaism and the restrictions for Shabbat completely overwhelming, however I do not want to give up on the whole thing. I don't want to lose what progress I've made over the last 8 months towards being more Shabbat observant, just because of a few setbacks.

So I guess what I'm saying is I'm fully committing to work on my list even though I may never be done.

Shavua Tov!

Summer Saturday

I have a confession to make.

I had a great Saturday this past weekend. And it had nothing to do with Shabbat.

We went to my niece's house in the country to visit with family and it was relaxing and wonderful. KosherCop and his cousin Lucky splashed outside in the kiddie pool and played with a giant sprinkler ball. (The pool toys of choice were a giant soup ladle and a turkey baster - they looked like the main ingredients of a tasty human soup.)

We ate hotdogs and chocolate cake and then the grownups napped in a giant heap in the livingroom.

Just a perfect day. Until it was time to go home...

I have this little shoe ritual I perform throughout the summer that grates on KosherCook's nerves and is more than a little time-consuming for me.

I haven't bought summer shoes in four years - not since a half hour whirlwind trip to Payless that first summer after my son was born. I scooped up an armload of cheap thong sandals and never looked back. Because of this, some of my cheap shoes are in pretty bad shape and there is really only one pair left that I can wear to work.

But more importantly, I can't drive in anything in the flip-flop family. I can still hear my mother's warnings: don't run in flip-flops - you'll break your neck; if you wear them to drive they will clearly fall off your feet and wedge themselves under the brake making stopping impossible. Backless sandals kill.

So every time I get into the car to drive, I take off my sandals of death, and change into an even older pair of sandals I keep in the car, that are truly shabby - but have a strap on the back - the difference between life and death. The key to this system's success is that both pairs of shoes must never be in the same place - both in the car and I'm barefoot; both in the house and I could possibly leave for work in the crappy driving shoes and leave the "good" ones behind. So one pair always stays in the car.

Except on Saturday. We took the other car. No shabby shoes. Instead of getting them, I wore sneakers and upset my finely honed routine. Two pairs went into my niece's house; one pair came back out. At some point I changed. At another point I fell asleep on the floor. I remember opening one eye and seeing my sandals shuffling toward me - attached to the little sweatsocked toes of a grinning Lucky. I gently took them off of him and hid them where he wouldn't be tempted to play with them again.

Apparently it was a really good hiding place. After I had put on my sneakers, drove us home, went out to dinner, made the horrifying discovery that I'd left my "work" shoes behind, and called my niece - neither Lucky or anyone else had found them yet.

So tomorrow when I go to work I can either go barefoot, or wear shoes I'd normally never be caught dead in - because - you know, they have straps on the back.

Eau de Kid

Sometimes kids say the craziest things.

If you are really lucky your kid will wait until you have company - an audience that can truly appreciate your child's moment of insanity.

Yesterday we had our friend and her son - one of E.'s school friends - over for Shabbat lunch. E. had been hocking us from the minute they arrived to go to the park. We told him repeatedly it was too cold and wet.

Sometime around 4pm he burst into the diningroom:

"I'm gonna die in here! I have to get outside and get fresh air! I need to run around outside and be fragrant!"

It took a good five minutes to stop laughing. We figure he gets his unusual command of the English language from his Aunt C. - H.'s sister - who famously used this sentence on a vocabulary test as a child: "The day was so ardent, people fainted in the street."

Shabbat in a Box

Being sick stinks.

I've been sick for 9 days now. 9 DAYS! This is ridiculous.

At least on Friday I finally reached a doctor who could start to help me. He sent me for a lab test and prescribed some medication. So I spent the better part of the day Friday running back and forth to the hospital lab and pharmacy. It didn't leave much time for preparing for Shabbat.

On a related note, in a spectacular bid of solidarity, H. drank a cup of coffee and spent the rest of the day in as much gastrointestinal distress as I was. So he wasn't able to do much in the way of cooking or cleaning either.

This left me with the challenge of somehow coming up with at least dinner. I stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home and picked up the only thing I could think of that wouldn't bother anyone's stomach and would be something E. would eat too: frozen potato latkes.

Feeling like my Mother-of-the-Year award was slipping out of sight, I told the boys that this was "Get in the Mood for Hanukkah Kick-Off Shabbat" and that I was finally going to grant E.'s request for a dinner of "beans, beans, beans" (this is one 4 year old who loves his beans!). So dinner was potato latkes and applesauce with three bean salad - made with 3 different cans of beans, leftover pasta, and Italian dressing - ooh la la - tres gourmet. Maybe not so great, but with a white lace tablecloth and fresh flowers it still felt like Shabbat.

This morning was pretty lame too.

We were all under the weather, so no Synagogue (again). But we rallied in the afternoon and had some fun playing games together. (E. is becoming quite adept at Go Fish.) And I realized that we had the game "Ropes and Ladders" in our basement. (This was Parker Brothers answer to "Chutes and Ladders," but with a Pirate theme! Terrific 1950's graphics.)

E. and I also made up a few new ones that we got a good half-hour of entertainment out of: talk really slow, talk really fast, and I'm hu-u-u-ngry-y... This game is sheer genius. E. sits on my lap and whines "I'm hungry" until I pretend to feed him. Then he whines "I'm full" and it's my turn. You can't buy fun like that. The really hilarious thing was that about 15 minutes after we stopped playing and E. had a big snack, he walks over to me and whines, "I'm hu-u-u-ngry-y..." I start getting annoyed because he just ate and said he was full, when I realize what he is doing.

"Oh, that's funny,. I get it - you're playing the game."

"What game, Mommy?"

[Insert visual of hand slapping forehead here]

Can We Turn the Clocks Back - to Friday Night?

Oy. What a terrible weekend!

From the time I left work Friday things started going downhill. As I was leaving my office parking lot, the oil light blinked on for a split second. This was the fourth time this has happened this week. I've been living in fear of the car breaking down ever since I cancelled the last scheduled tune-up at the last minute and keep forgetting to reschedule.

The oil light didn't stay on continuously so I thought I was okay until I got onto the Beltway and the engine started making that terrible ticking noise. You know the one - where it sounds like the oil is empty and the engine is about to seize up. Okay, so I didn't change the oil for 7000 miles despite driving in stop and go traffic every day.

So for an hour I held my breath, driving as close to a shoulder as possible in case the car died. Miraculously, I made it home. All the way into my driveway and the car didn't die.

I was so happy to be home and not stranded on the side of the road (no AAA either, if anyone is wondering). I was looking forward to a peaceful Shabbat. The house smelled terrific and E. even greeted me with, "Mommy, do you smell something delicious cooking?"

Well, that was the last peaceful moment that Friday night. I'm not sure how it happened, but one minute we were waiting for dinner and the next H. and I were knee-deep in diffusing a category 5 temper tantrum. I believe one of us had the audacity to suggest that E. take his bath while we were waiting for dinner. We eventually got him into the bath, but he was so worn out that he asked to go to bed before I could finish my meal.

Saturday was even worse. The pain I started having under my ribcage on Thursday got worse. So instead of going to services and then to the potluck lunch I'd so been looking forward to, I ended up in the Urgent Care. E., however, went to the lunch so he could play with the other kids and H. could take me to the doctor. Apparently, E. is always a welcome houseguest because of his outstanding behavior. Hmm...I wish that kid had been at our house the night before!

Treasure Hunt

I forget sometimes how easy it is to make time special for E.

This past Shabbat was kind of a wash as far as going to Saturday morning services - H. has had a cold and pretty much slept all of Saturday and I was strapped into a portable heart monitoring device (I didn't really think it through when I agreed to go to the cardiologist on Friday morning to get strapped into a Holter monitor - for some reason I thought it would be less intrusive to do it over the weekend. Although the longest time I spent in the thing was on Friday at work with my coat on all day, trying to make sure no one could see it. Once again, how it would affect Shabbat did not occur to me until it was too late.)

So I spent the whole day alone with E., sticking to my rule that we could only go out to do Shabbosdik things.

And we found plenty to do. But the hit of the day was a treasure hunt. I forget how the idea came up, but it once it was out there it really seemed to capture E.'s imagination. He had gotten a giant foam world map puzzle for his birthday, so he started taking pieces of that as his treasure map to find "X marks the spot." Meanwhile, I managed to put together a pretty convincing treasure.

A while ago, I had taken an empty candy tin and lined it with pretty paper, with the idea that I would keep something special in it. I added some stray faux gems and sequins, 2 plastic skeleton keys that I had inexplicably discovered in my closet shoe bag the other day, and other bibs and bobs I had laying around. I had a satin drawstring bag from a cosmetic sample I was never going to use, so I put the treasure inside it, hid it, and we spent the afternoon playing hotter/colder.

It was great fun.

By the way, as you can see in the photo, there was a bag of chocolate Hanukkah gelt involved in the game. E. has had his eye on this since last week when I started pulling out Hanukkah decorations and surprisingly did NOT eat any of it despite finding it as "treasure."

But that does bring up the point that Hanukkah is less than a month away! So stop back soon for some fun Chanukah ideas coming in the next week or so.

Shopping-Free Shabbos

About 8 years ago, when I was first living in this area and single, I spent a Shabbat with an Orthodox family in Northern Virginia. I had met them at a YPK break fast they were hosting at their home and they invited me to come for the Shabbat dinner during Sukkot the following week.

I didn't stay over night despite being invited, so I didn't get the full shomer shabbos experience of not driving, but I did join them for dinner in the Sukkah and returned the following morning for services and Sukkah-hopping among their neighbors.

It was a truly miraculous Shabbat. I had only recently learned of the concept of Shabbat as an island of time, but I completely got it by the time we did Havdalah that Saturday night. I remember being shocked that I still had another day left to my weekend - not because the day had dragged and felt long, but because time seemed to have slowed down to a relaxing pace I had never experienced before.

I never forgot that Shabbat and have always felt I would like to be Shomer Shabbos. We belong to a Conservative Shul that is technically within walking distance of our home, but our friends are spread out, so to give up driving would mean giving up most socializing on Shabbat. Besides which, I had never been able to organize my life enough to be prepared by Friday afternoon to have the correct lights on and off, have all shopping done, etc.

My husband's minhag has always been to not write or do anything creative, but had no problem spending money. I always found that too confusing to commit to, so what tended to happen was we'd go shopping on Saturday afternoon and I'd have to sign the credit card slip because he wasn't writing.

For years it has gone on like this. Some Shabbats made me feel sad I'm not more observant, while others just felt like an intrusion - I had things to get done. We always have Friday night dinner together but Saturday afternoon is all over the place. The one thing we can count on is that our son will spend the whole day asking when he can watch TV.

Recently, however, I've taken a different attitude. After spending a couple of lovely leisurely Shabbat lunches with friends I decided that instead of fretting over our level of observance I would start taking some small steps toward cultivating that island of time I once experienced.

So for that last 2 Shabbats we have not driven anywhere except to Shul (I actually didn't go to services because I've been sick for several weeks, so H. has been letting me sleep in) and we did not do any shopping. We spent the day playing games with E., and both weeks we have taken him outside to check if there are three stars in the sky and then done Havdalah.

I can't say I'm there yet, but it has been really nice. The day still drags because of constantly needed to figure out what we will do next with our son and of course my best creative ideas come when I can't work on them. But I end Shabbat now feeling good about how we spent it and adding Havdalah has definitely helped with feeling the separation between Shabbat and the rest of the weekend (just like it's supposed to!).

The next step will be to make sure we have guests (and playmates for E.) for Saturday lunch or an invitation to someone else's home. Of course that requires more organization, which I can guarantee will be a topic of many future posts.

Shavuah Tov!