FYI on the bottom of the 9th

Here's a little FYI about the ninth month of pregnancy:

1) You don't sleep.

Well, not true. I sleep in the day just fine. But attempting to sleep at night is an act of futility. Repeatedly telling my conscious/subconscious/unconscious mind to 'sleep!' while laying down with my eyes shut is about as productive as teaching a deaf dog to roll over on verbal command.

2) You don't concentrate.

I was 10 minutes into a conversation with my music engineer about a particular song on my upcoming album (exciting, huh?) when I actually forgot which song the entire phone meeting was about. This was particularly spacey because this one song is the only one he is familiar with so far on the project. What other song could I possibly have thought we were discussing? There are no answers to these rhetorical what-was-my-pregnancy-logic questions...

I have gotten into the habit of burning things. I served my husband 'chocolate chip cookies' the other day, that had the texture of something out of a quarry. I forgot I was baking them and they stayed in way too long. Note: baking time is 12 minutes. Somehow, over the course of 12 minutes, I completely forgot that I was in the middle of cookies. This and many other incidents are due to the distracting Alien/Predator sensation of having a baby kicking and squirming in my stomach at almost all times. And the sleep deprivation.

3) People are really, really nice to you.

I went to the grocery store today, and it was as if everyone on the bus ride there, and the entire staff of the store, and all customers shopping with me, and the security guard on the way out, and my cab driver home, suddenly understood that when you are at the end of the gestation process, all you want from strangers is that they a) get OUT of your WAY because you need more space than usual just to pass by them without knocking over all the cans or b) assist you in any way possible. I found that everyone I encountered voluntarily chose a or b, either of which worked for me. I am definitely going to miss this preferential treatment when I transition from Very-Pregnant-Lady-You-Want-To-Assist to Lady-With-Screaming-Baby, who is generally not as lovingly received by the public (although, I agree with you, she probably deserves the preferential treatment more).

4) Every passing minute, you think- wait...AM I IN LABOR?!?! 

And the answer, until it's yes, is always 'no.' Maybe that's what I was pondering when I burnt the cookies...

So now you know, whether you are female and not yet there, or male and will never experience such adventures, a little more about the ninth month of pregnancy. And if you've had children, feel free to share with me your own bizarre ninth-month phenomena. 

Watermelon: The Sequel

There's a sequel to the watermelon issue. After I overcame my overly-hormonal (we're in our 8th month, after all) embitterment, I actually researched 'how do you choose a good watermelon?'
I got the answer from some online research, which was verified by my sister-in-law, who is Moroccan and therefore knows every secret tip to everything in life (I'm serious- these Sephardi women know everything).
So here's the scoop...


There are a few traits to look for in a watermelon:
1) either a nice round shape, or a nice oval shape, but not an awkward, in-between, or asymmetrical shape.


2) a nice, dark-green hue


3) a 'ripening spot' somewhere on the melon- although this should be cream or yellow, not stark white or light green, which could indicate a prematurely picked melon


4) the 'tap' test. I had seen this and heard of it, but I, like most people, didn't know what I was testing for, exactly. Basically, when you hit the melon with the flat part of your palm, you should feel it spring back a bit, as if the melon were an air-filled basketball. If you don't have that springy sensation, it may be mushy inside. 


5) one thing I didn't realize is that a melon doesn't continue to ripen after being picked. It may rot, but it won't get any riper- so the buying-green-bananas-for-next-week's-banana-needs strategy doesn't apply. If you get a watermelon that is premature, it will stay that way. 


I found this information fascinating and I was determined to be a melon victor, rather than a melon victim, on my next shopping excursion. And today, I was the successful selector of a healthy, intact watermelon (after 2.5 bad ones in the last couple of weeks). 

Dear Grocery Store Owner,

Dear Grocery Store Owner,


Please refrain from putting spoiled, rotten-in-the-middle, normal-on-the-outside-yes-even-when-you-tap-them watermelons on SALE in your store. As if it's somehow less of an insult to pay 2 and a half shekels per kilo for a rotten watermelon than the usual 3 shekels. Obviously, as the consumer, I feel cheated (if you're in America- don't bother suggesting to ' return it!'- this is the middle east).

But let me appeal to your business senses. This is for your own good.


You may succeed in clearing out your spoiled-watermelon inventory with that sale. But think long-term! All of the customers who purchased and lugged home those watermelons will have a bad taste in their mouths, literally and figuratively. Think of the future produce sales that will never come your way again, from all who shopped at this 'watermelon sale' today. 


Trust me, it was not just my watermelon. I've lived here long enough to realize that produce doesn't usually go on sale for no reason. 


The only problem is the timing. I always remember this principal AFTER I buy the watermelon. 

A Beam of Sunshine

It's been hard.

It's really hard. 

I can't quite seem to make the transition. 

There's a transition which, I guess, needs to be made. But it's been two weeks and I can't seem to make it.

It's the transition from thinking, "Lauren is..." to "Lauren was...".

I feel like my heart just can't. 

Lauren WAS? Did I ever think I would be saying Lauren WAS anything? She was (is?) such a constant presence, a constant light, a beam of sunshine. I've known her (I knew her?) for so long that she's part of the scenery of my life- it's like saying orange juice WAS. That's silly. Orange juice IS. 

I guess this is called the 'denial' phase. This phase in which my heart cannot admit that Lauren...'was'. 

ice cream correction

CORRECTION: I said that this ice cream was on the Ground Round menu- my older brother pointed out that no, this one is from Friendly's. My mistake!

Baseball Cap Sundaes with Gummy Bears

Do you remember going to family restaurants as a child?

We always went to the Ground Round.

When you came in, they would weigh you, and then your kid's meal would cost 68 cents if you weighed 68 pounds (I actually remember weighing 68 pounds, and I remember feeling devastated at weighing 'so much'. That's not normal but I guess this post is not about premature self-esteem issues). 

Then, they handed out packs with a red, yellow, blue, and green crayon in each, and ushered you to your table, where the waitress laid down fresh puzzle-and-game papers. My brother would always work out the crosswords, hidden pictures, word scrambles, and connect-the-dots activities on the front of the paper, while I would immediately flip it over and draw on the blank back. 

There were several children's meal options- french fries were across-the-board, and with them you could have a hamburger, hot dog, grilled cheese, or the dreaded, never-ever-ordered fish sticks (which were served almost daily in our school's cafeteria anyway). 

I seem to remember very long stretches of time between seating, ordering, serving, clearing, and dessert. Now I wonder if we were there for hours, or if this was because a child experiences time much slower than an adult. 

We would play pinball and buy gum balls, using all of our quarters, and go to the bar section ("no children allowed") on the other side of the restaurant, and choke on the second-hand smoke, and spin on the bar stools. We marveled at, but never played, the casino-style machines in the bar section. We enjoyed hitting all the buttons on the cigarette machines, and running into the wrong-gender bathrooms, while the baseball game blasted on the big screen in the bar section.

Ice cream sundaes came with your kid's meal, so I always ordered the upside-down ice-cream cone in a dish, that was styled to look something like a wizard. My chosen topping was gummy bears. During baseball season, the children's ice cream sundaes were always served in plastic mini-baseball caps, which I collected by the score (we went weekly to this restaurant, after all).

I was reminded of this memory when I was trying to explain the concept of a restaurant kid's meal to my husband, who is Swiss. In Switzerland, he explained, there is such a thing as a side salad which is smaller than an entree salad, but he'd never seen a 'kid's menu' or crayons, coloring at the table, pinball machines in the restaurant, or any of the other imagery I described.

It's so fun to be married to someone of a different culture, because it helps me to examine my own. I think of that restaurant as 100% common, expected, and typical. But there are nations, probably entire continents, who would feel as if they had entered the twilight zone if you took them to the Ground Round for a plastic mini-baseball cap sundae!

Story of my Hair Part III- Covering My Hair

I cover my hair. Every day. Not when I am by myself, necessarily, but in the presence of others and certainly in public. 

This is an actual law in Judaism, like keeping kosher or eating matzah on Passover. I grew up unaware of it. There were always certain things in Judaism that I was pretty sure Orthodox people did, but I didn't do. Like keeping Shabbos, for example. Or the observance of many other holidays, or that the women always seemed to be wearing skirts, or that the men attended frequent prayer services. 

Then, from about age 18, I started to realize that those Orthodox Jews were actually keeping Judaism, not 'Orthodoxy', in the form that it was originally established and had been observed for thousands of years. And that the laws they were living by were amply supported by generations of scholarship and extensive documentation of sources. 

Then, at age 20, I said to myself,  "Enough is enough. I can't live in contradiction anymore, I can't ignore that I was born Jewish, I can't find sufficient answers in Reform or Conservative Judaism like I can in Orthodoxy, and if this religion is true, I have to change for it, even though I didn't grow up with knowledge of these things, and even though I am more comfortable living the way I do at present, than changing."

So I began to gradually live, eat, sleep, pray, dress, and behave like a religiously observant Jewish person. I educated myself on what I would need to fill this role, and to one day raise my children this way, and to prepare to have a marriage that reflected the beautiful moral values I had discovered in the Torah. 
One law that I became aware of, but didn't observe because it didn't apply to me as a single person, was the law of hair covering. Then, last June, I got married.


My hair is now covered. It's a statement of modesty that was actually observed in more cultures up until pretty recently in human history when it went out of fashion. The difference with the Jewish religion is that because the laws are divine in origin, they didn't change just because women don't cover their hair in other cultures (especially Western culture). Jewish women were covering their hair 3,300 years ago, preceding the cultures that have risen and fallen since, in which women covered their hair. And trust me, they will continue to cover their hair, regardless of the trend to do so or not to do so. That's what it means to keep a law that is divine in origin. The source is way,way above public opinion or popular science, and it's older and much more substantiated. 


It's interesting, because before I followed Torah, my hair WAS subject to Allure Magazine's advice that 'blunt bangs are in' (regardless of the face shape of the reader, of course), or that I needed to have the perfect layers, or that auburn lowlights were a must for the fall season. If I think back on the significance of my hair at the time, it was an object to me. I used it as a tool to try and define myself, albeit in an unsatisfying manner (true self-definition can never come from something as fleeting as hair). 


Now my hair is subject to a few considerations- 
What will keep it at its healthiest? 
What style does my husband like the best?
When its covered, how do I want to cover it? Which choice of covering best reflects my values?


These questions are so much more empowered than 'how can I please everyone else in society?' which is basically the question that magazines like Allure are answering with every article and headline. 


When I cover it, I am reconnecting to G-d, and to the Torah which I believe in and strive to fulfill. In high school and college, I used to search fervently through works of poetry and philosophy to find some meaningful statement about life that I could hold on to and follow. I was baffled by the possibility that there was nothing out there. School, traffic, work, retirement, dead. It just didn't make sense, but I didn't yet have a better or clearer answer for why I was on the planet. 

Now I savor the moments in my day, which occur every day and will for the rest of my life, where I perform actions that reconnect me to my source, and to the source of everyone and everything. Covering my hair is one of those moments. 

I Only Want To Get Married Once

I posted a long, long time ago about an amazing book, 

        

I Only Want To Get Married Once, by Chana Levitan,

but it deserves another mention. It's really worth the read. It's simple, direct, honest, and clear about a subject (dating/relationships) that looks anything but clear.The whole concept of infatuation masquerading as love is hard to admit but rings hauntingly true. As you read it, every movie/love song/failed relationship/irrational crush will come flooding into your memory afresh. This book just dissects the subject of love (or what appears to be love) in real terms. Reading this will spare any reader from potential heartbreak and self-delusion. Even if you're happily dating or happily married, it's a refresher of the basics that we all need to hear and review to make the most of our relationships. 

The author happens to be a teacher of mine (but believe me- I am not trying to promote someone just because I know them). I've observed her for years now, and she really lives and breathes every value she writes in her book- this is the biggest testimonial to the book's greatness. She wrote it out of her wholehearted dedication to helping people find, and hold on to, true love.