Hi There

How's it going? I'm finally back to my regularly scheduled programming, after The Boy's annual bout of Fall Plague. Actually, I should probably call it his Autumn Ague, as the whole thing is mostly a few days' worth of fever with a little coughing thrown in for fun. So, yes! Autumn Ague, it is. I do love me some alliteration.

Anyway, I spent the week up to this point working abbreviated days, spending mornings and late afternoons nursing The Boy, taking his temperature, plying him with juice, and creating tempting little snacks to get His Majesty to nibble his way back to good health. That, and making sure he kept up with all his homework. I'm quite spoiled from working essentially part-time over the last three days. How great would life be if I could have my same salary and benefits but only have to work 10-2 every day? Sigh. That would be the life.

I did take The Boy for a brief outing on Tuesday, so he could get some books from school, and I caved into his pleas to stop at the AT&T store. It was time to renew my contract, you see, which meant that I could upgrade to a new phone. He was dying for a chance to help shop for the new phone, and I figured it wouldn't kill him. I ended up getting a Motorola Karma, and I think I love it.

It slides open to reveal a full keyboard, which I really like, and when it's closed it's all chunky and sturdy and square, JUST LIKE ME. We were meant for each other!

I'm still learning how to work with it, but it's pretty intuitive. Its camera has many more features than my old phone, so I have high hopes for it. Here are two shots of the shawl I'm working on, which I think looks like a stingray.


Can those holes down the middle be considered lace? Lacy? Lace-ish? I like to tell myself they can. My sister wants me to give the shawl to her when it's finished. She has visions of wrapping up in at work to ward off the cold in her office. We'll see. I kind of maybe want to keep it.

I also think I want to keep the library book I'm reading, Rage Against the Meshugenah: Why it Takes Balls to Go Nuts, about a youngish Jewish father who finds himself in the throes of clinical depression. First of all, how can you not want to read a book with a title like that? And second, it's interesting to read about depression from a male's point of view, since it's not often revealed or talked about. I'm pretty sure C dealt with depression in the time leading up to his coming out, and then during the aftermath of our separation and divorce, but that's the only concrete example I know of. (Plus, I have to admit that the Hurt and Bitter Shirty Within reveled in his unhappiness at the time. I mean, he was making me get divorced! He was making our son a Child of Divorce! He deserved it! Ahem.)

Another reason that I like this book so much--aside from the fact that it's honest and funny and very nicely written, I mean--is that I have a Jew Fetish. I have wanted to be Jewish since around third grade, when I first started reading Judy Blume--especially Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself. I wanted to speak Yiddish. I wanted neurotic family members. I wanted an ancestry that was linked to the Holocaust.

I grew up enough to be grateful that my ancestors weren't persecuted, but the appeals of Jewish families never left me. I didn't want to be Orthodox or keep kosher or anything, but I was always drawn to it. C and I went to Israel for his spring break during his law school term in London, and I sat with my toes in the Red Sea and was stunned to think that it was Moses' Red Sea. I fell further in love when a close friend converted and asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I loved everything about that from the the Chupah and breaking the glass to the signing of the ketubah and the chair dance. Oh, that chair dance! And then C and I moved back to Pittsburgh to have The Boy, and eventually sent him to the pre-school we liked best, which just so happened to be at our local Jewish Community Center. Those people were like a family to us, and The Boy made some of his best friends there. Granted, he was the kid at the pre-school who taught all the other kids to sing Up on the Housetop, his favorite Christmas song, but no one minded, and everyone loved him.

We've been through Jewish summer camps, Purims, and sedars, and we've eaten in a suka at Sukot. I know what a shofar is. I'm pretty sure I can still count to ten in Hebrew. I love the traditions and the emphasis on family, I love latkes, bagels, and kugel, and . . . pretty much the whole deal (though I've never been in love with Woody Allen--Annie Hall, sure, but that had more to do with Diane Keaton).

I was buying The Boy new soccer socks at our local non-big-box soccer store last Friday, and when two boys came in and wished me, "Good Shabbos," I was thrilled.

I am a Judeophile. But I can't convert: I'm not religious enough to even know what I believe, and I know many Jews who feel the same way, but the thought of converting just feels wrong. I mean, what's a formerly Catholic girl to do about Jesus, for one thing?

Wow. How did I start writing about books and end up coming out of this particular closet? L'chaim!