the Pair of Pacifiers

Last week, I was at Shefa 'Mall' with my baby.

 Mall is in parenthesis because I am from New Jersey, after all, which is the mall-capital of the universe, and what Israel calls a 'mall' is sometimes more of a run-down...area...of commerce. I had picked up a Fisher Price mobile on said outing- a bit of a mistake because it's not electric and therefore needs to be wound every 60 seconds (as if I didn't have enough endlessly repetitive menial tasks on my plate right now?)

 Anyway, I needed to replace her clear-colored-and-therefore-totally-invisible-and-easily-misplaced pacifiers, so on the way out, I headed to the pharmacy. FYI babies know the difference between pacifiers and have preferences, so it's a good idea to addict your child to a replaceable model.

 The female employee at checkout was a bit intimidating- she seemed like she had just finished her army service. She scanned the 2-pack of pacifiers, gave me change, looked up at my baby in her stroller, and then kept the pacifiers on her side of the counter. She then began the interrogation: 

"How old is she? Why would you get these for her??"

(was she referring to the objectionable act of giving a baby a pacifier to begin with? I started to shrink. It took me a minute to figure out that she thought my 6-week-old was older than the 0-3 month recommended age for that particular pacifier- she's big. I stuttered that she was only a month and a half.)

"Is this for now? Are you going to give her one now??"

(she had noticed that my baby was agitated. I stuttered that, yes, I was. I wondered what she was getting at.)

"WHICH one are you going to give her now?"

(I stuttered that it didn't matter- they were identical, after all...)

She disappeared with the pacifiers I had already purchased- ten dollars for a 2-pack, by the way. I was just standing there with my agitated baby, a now-agitated mommy. I wondered if she was tattling on me to the Misrad Ha Briut (ministry of health) for some yet-unknown parental offense. 

She then reappeared with both pacifiers out of the box and slightly damp. She explained, 

"I just wanted to sterilize them first. I boiled both of them." Then, she complimented my baby for being so cute. 

There's a famous metaphor for Israelis- they're compared to cactuses ('sabras' in Hebrew) because a cactus is prickly on the outside and soft on the inside. 

interruption

Since becoming a mother, it's been a unique challenge to attempt to string together 3 words befo....

She's up. There goes that!

Nothing is like Living It.

This picture is from my engagement party, 19 months ago. 

I remember thinking, when the picture was being snapped, 'I am going to look back on this picture and think-


I knew NOTHING about my husband back then!'

And it's true- I had no idea who he was.  

Wait- that sounds a little reckless. How could I get engaged to someone I didn't know?

You can't know someone until you're married to them, even though this doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to date with your eyes open. I had prepared myself extensively to date, and when my husband came up as a potential match, I had even more preparation to do. 

When this picture was taken, my now-husband and I had just gone through a very comprehensive process to determine whether we were right for each other. This included background checks of three official references plus many unofficial ones (before our first date),  a DNA compatibility test, a complete lack of physical contact (to keep away those rosy lenses), many hours of dates spent discussing our backgrounds, values, and what we envision for our futures, meetings with family members of the other party, constant guidance from mentors, a go-between to listen to our feedback and set up our earlier dates, permission from my father for my husband to propose, and much more. After every date, I would write pages and pages in my journal of exactly what I had asked this potential spouse that I was meeting, what his responses were, anything I noticed, and any questions I had for the next date (assuming there would be one- both parties had to agree to each subsequent date). I was in touch with my Rebbetzin, my Rabbi, and the matchmaker in between dates, so that they were all aware of what was happening and how I felt about it. My husband, on his side, did the same. 

So why did I think I knew NOTHING about my husband when this picture was taken? After all, I'd just gone through a very exhaustive process to determine that my husband was the right one!

Because preparation only goes so far. As much as I read about marriage, spoke to people about marriage, and imagined my then- fiance in that context, we had to forge our own way in order to know anything about each other. There are no generalizations in our life- it's completely unique. My husband and I are two soul-halves of one whole that has never come into this world before, and never will again*. Our marriage is taking place in a time that will never repeat itself. So as necessary as all my preparation was, it was not like living it.

Nothing is like living it.

*reincarnation is a Jewish belief, however, if our souls are to return, they will do so in different physical bodies than our current ones. 

How did I end up living here?

(This photo is not really from my neighborhood, but it could be. You get the idea.)

I live in Unsdorf- one of the most religious neighborhoods in Jerusalem. I never thought I would live here. I viewed myself as 'religious, but...you know...more open' (whatever that means), and as such, assumed I would live in one of the more 'open' or 'mixed' neighborhoods. How did I end up living here?

Our spiritual guide is the sainted and scholarly Biala Rebbe. When my husband and I were engaged, we decided to make our home in Israel, and to start off in Jerusalem. But of course, there are a myriad of neighborhoods to choose from. So my husband asked the Rebbe where we should live, and he responded,


 "You should live close to me."

I was both warmed and discouraged by this response. Warmed- by the feeling of such a great person reaching out to us. It was so personal and paternal, the kind of support we needed to start off our lives together. Discouraged- by the reality that his neighborhood was the most expensive and sought after, and apartment searches in that neighborhood were yielding no viable results. I also feared leaving the community I had lived in for 4 years, where I was surrounded by support and familiarity, not to mention English speakers. 

We searched for a suitable apartment in the areas surrounding the Biala Rebbe's neighborhood, without success. There was one apartment  in Maalot Dafna, that one basically entered through a rabbit hole, and had no windows. There was one in Har Nof, also without windows, where every room seemed to be shaped like a piece of pizza. I had high hopes for one in Kiryat Moshe, trying to ignore its shattered window. But alas, it slipped through our fingers anyway. We even found one that was an 8 minute walk from the Rebbe's home. When we visited, we saw that the couple was drying their laundry (no dryer of course) in the tiny bedroom, due to lack of space. Since it also lacked windows, it smelled of mildew. This apartment was the most expensive of the bunch (not that the others were cheap), and we would have needed to take over the lease much earlier than we wanted to, so we declined, praying that we were making the right decision, in light of the advice to 'live near him'. 

The Rebbe told me, when we were engaged, to stop looking for apartments until after Pesach because I wouldn't find anything. So after so many unsuccessful attempts, I completely stopped.

The morning after Isru Chag (the end of the week-long holiday), I was back on Yisa Bracha (the apartment listing service here), and read an ad for an apartment in Unsdorf. I barely scanned the ad before calling my fiance. I had learned from experience that you must act quickly if the apartment seems remotely viable. We met at the address, had a look inside, and were shocked to discover a cute little place with actual windows. Small, but well-kept. Something about it made me start envisioning our life there. We met the landlord who lived next door and my fiance was thrilled to be able to speak to him in German (since his mother tongue is Swiss German). The rent was actually $50.00 less than the cheapest we'd seen, with no long-term commitment. Everything looked picture perfect. I asked, almost as an afterthought, 
"Where does the Biala Rebbe live exactly?"

My fiance responded, 


"The building next door."

Whoa. And every day we see, more and more, why we were destined to live here.We can't stay forever, but we will leave with heavy hearts when the day comes. With wonderful, exceptional neighbors, my husband's shul and yeshiva a stone's throw away, and close proximity to the Rebbe, who has blessed us every step of the way, we want to stay as long as we can. 

By the way, if you had asked me in the first few months, I would have been whistling a different tune. I started off feeling miserable, isolated from my pre-marriage community, and afraid to even attempt to speak Hebrew with my neighbors. Last Rosh Hashanah,  I spent 2/3 of the holiday in tears because I felt so out of place here (which, if you know anything about the holiday, is not the idea at all). I guess things can change, even my attitude. 

mini letters

Dear Geula,

Maybe you should make a stroller lane on the sidewalk. I pushed a stroller there today and I felt like a contestant on Double Dare. 

Dear My Shadchan,

Thank you for making me the happiest woman on earth. 

Dear Pack n' Play,

I really like the changing table.

Dear Air Conditioner,

You are a lifesaver.

Dear Egged Bus Service,

I really like you much more now that I am no longer pregnant.

Dear Ladies on the Bus,

Maybe I could use a bit less constructive criticism on how I am caring for my baby. 

Dear Mailbox,

You look locked, but you're not. What's with that? And who has the key?


Dear Wedding Ring,


I am still looking for you, and if anyone else finds you first, I don't have yiush* so you're not hefker**. Mmmkay?


Dear Digital Camera,


If only your batteries didn't die so quickly, and if only I enjoyed uploading pictures...we'd get together much more often.


Dear Jerusalem, 


Thank you for hosting my life.

*yiush- a hebrew term for an owner's 'despair' of finding their lost object, rendering it...
**hefker- ownerless according to Jewish law, and not considered stealing if kept by the finder.

Traffic-stopping Attitude

I took a cab today to a doctor's appointment on the other side of Jerusalem, with my infant nestled in her Baby Bjorn Active (even this part of the story would never happen in America).

We'd traveled about 3 blocks when I heard the cab driver calling his friend, a makolet (convenience store) owner, and telling him in Hebrew that he'd be there in half a minute.

And I concluded that since the doctors office was more than half-a-minute away, he must be making a pit-stop (not that he felt the need to inform me). I asked myself, "Why is it that all drivers seem to be best friends with people who sell food?"- based on the many times I'd seen city bus drivers being passed a falafel in the middle of the street, in the middle of their shift.

In this case, my driver needed a bottle of water (yes, the meter was still running on this small detour but I didn't make it an issue because water is important).

To receive the bottle from his friend and pay him, he stopped in the middle of the road, diagonally, across the ONCOMING traffic lane, which was curving around a bend in front of the store. He didn't pull 'over', he pulled 'across'.

After getting the water and thanking his friend, he pulled back onto the lane moving in the proper direction, nanoseconds before the oncoming traffic collided with his diagonal and backwards (in their lane) vehicle.

Now, I had an infant strapped to my chest, and it was objectively dangerous, so I involuntarily let out a scream when this stunt happened.

To which he replied, 'What- you think they wouldn't stop for you? You're ehhhm...a VIP!'

Thanks for the compliment? It's just this invincible Attitude, and if you don't have it, you must not be truly Israeli.

Bagel Shop Attitude

My father went to the bagel store on his recent visit (for the locals, this took place at Holy Bagel in the Tachana Mercazit). He saw that they had various cream cheeses and two varieties of harder cheese- one in yellow slices, one in white blocks.

He pointed to the yellow slices and asked, 'Excuse me, but is that muenster cheese?'

The Israeli bagel employee just looked at him. These sorts of questions don't always warrant a response in this country. 

My father, not knowing this, tried again. 'Do you speak English?'

'Ehhhmm, a little bit. What do you want?'

'I would like to know what kind of cheese that is.'

'This? This is yellow cheese.'

'It looks like a yellow cheese, I was wondering what type of cheese it is.' (by the way, my father is flawlessly polite- he said this in patience, not sarcasm)

'It is yellow cheese!'

'I am asking what kind of cheese it is- is it American cheese?'

'It is ehhhhm, it is like American cheese but it's yellow. We call it Yellow Cheese.'

The Attitude

I wish I could capture Israeli culture on this blog. It would be an accomplishment for 2 reasons:

 1) it's a catharthis for those readers who live here and deal with the constant collision between Israeli culture and our chutznik (immigrant) sensibilities, and
 2) it's entertainment for those of you who haven't experienced it yet.

I wouldn't even call it a culture. There's no specific dress, food, music- most people in Israel are relatively recent immigrants from somewhere else, so the 'culture' is very borrowed and mismatched.

I visited Switzerland this year- now, that's a culture. It's long-established, it's documented, it's basically unchanged in its dominant traits and values over the years. You can easily describe a person or an object as 'very Swiss', and this conjures up an image that is more or less consistent in many peoples' perception of the culture. The cheese, mountains, watches, chocolate, yodeling, knives- it's not a stereotype. These are genuinely prominent elements of the culture.

Israeli culture? Um...falafel? Nope. Not unique to Israel. Israeli music?..let's just say that Israel has not made major notable contributions to the music industry.

The only thing I can think of that is very 'Israeli' is the Attitude.

By the way, I don't criticize Israel for having no real culture- it keeps things interesting, and the Attitude is more than enough to remind you of what country you're in.

I can only tell you anecdotes to illustrate the Attitude, but bear in mind that there is one rule:

 you must hear the dialogue of the Israelis in a thick -ehhhhm...Israeli- accent.

I'm a what?

And...we're back from a very extensive commercial break.

Actually, I was becoming a mother.

WHAT?! I know. I'm a mother.

And that's about all I can write right now on the subject. It's too powerful for words. It cannot be contained in them. A writer would have to be much greater than myself to attempt it.

Some things in life are too profound for words. In the future, I may have words for it, but its been almost 5 weeks and nothing of literary structure has formed from the oceanic experience of becoming and being a mother.

Stories from my Apartment Building, part III

Today, my husband rode the elevator with a 10-year-old neighbor from our apartment building. This boy comes from a family steeped in Torah values- the parents are constantly teaching and role-modeling all of the precepts of religious Judaism, in an authentic and sincere manner. 

This is the H. family who, when my husband and I were both recovering from being in the hospital in the same week (for stomach viruses leading to dehydration) brought down their mops and bucket and two upholstered chairs to our apartment, knocked on the door, and insisted that we sit on their two chairs which they placed in our kitchen while they scrubbed the floor of the bedroom and back room of our apartment, and then stripped the sheets off of our bed and replaced them with fresh bedding, and took our sheets away, promising to return them once they were clean (which their 14-year-old daughter did the following week, switching our newly laundered sheets for her family's now-used ones and disappearing without a word). They then came back to deliver warm, freshly made food for us to eat, and disappeared to let us crawl back into bed and continue recuperating, wondering what miracle had just descended into our apartment...

Back to the elevator- two women summoned the elevator, but upon seeing the doors open to reveal two men (my husband and the boy), they stepped back and declined the ride, choosing to wait for the next opportunity. The little boy saw this, and it didn't sit well with him- he felt that the women should be accommodated. He encouraged them to enter the elevator, assuring them that 'there would be enough space', and ending with the plea 'but elevators aren't considered yichud*!' as the doors closed. 

These women obviously had a very high personal standard of modesty, above the letter of the law. To which they were entitled. But what was touching to my husband was that this 10-year old boy has been trained to take care of people, to actively reach out and do acts of kindness in the world. He so badly wanted to spare them the inconvenience of waiting for another elevator, that he gave them multiple reasons to feel welcome to ride it. How many 10-year-old boys do you know that would do the same?


*yichud- the prohibition against Jewish men and women (who are not married or related) being alone together in a confined or secluded place. 

Everything I Have, I Need, and Everything I Need, I Have

      I recently read a story written by a woman I know, about her cancer diagnosis. She asked her Rabbi, "Now that I am diagnosed, how can I work on being happy?" (it's proven that state-of-mind has a HUGE effect on the progression or non-progression of cancer). 
     He answered her with a mantra:


Everything I need, I have, and everything I have, I need.


     Cancer was now counted amongst her 'needed' tools and possessions. 
     When I first read this, I was shocked- how would I be able to accept such a perspective, in her situation? But the more I think about it, the truer the statement sounds to me. 
G-d gives. To all of us. All the time. And if I look around, everything (absolutely everything) present in my existence is something G-d chose to give me. Everything that is not present in my life, by the same token, is something G-d chose to withhold.
     For the woman in this story, G-d was giving cancer- it must be something that she needed. He was withholding health- it must be something she did not need. She repeated this to herself every morning, for years.She writes:


" I decided that the fear and worry  were like smutty lyrics I would not stoop to listen to, and instead I put 'Everything I Need I Have, Everything I Have I Need' on the repeat function of my mind. Then even when lying in my hospital bed hooked up to an IV, in my heart I was dancing to the joyous music."


    And what's the end of the story? She doesn't seem sick now, and the diagnosis was 8 years ago. And even if it had turned out differently (G-d forbid), she would have experienced the illness with complete mental freedom and celebration. That's what I love about living with a Torah perspective. You become an internal warrior. 

How to Become Humble

I love my older brother, who called me yesterday to express his excitement over his newly-acquired treasury of poems. He knew I was one of the few people who could fully appreciate this.

In other news, I just knocked over a tupperware full of cut watermelon, WITH MY STOMACH. I remember in middle school being a size two and not at all satisfied with my appearance. And now I knock things over with my stomach. G-d really wanted to teach me humility, I suppose.

don't make chicken from the internet!!

I know that all I have been writing about is cooking but that's basically all I do lately. 
Cook, freeze, elevate my feet, repeat.
So without further ado...


Welcome to this week's episode of Making Chicken. 

Last week, I made the 2 flops (scroll down to 'I Don't Get It')- pineapple chicken and 'shwarma' style chicken. 


Every week I have 2 opportunities to make chicken, because we buy a whole chicken weekly, which I then defrost and prepare into one on-the-bone dish for the dark meat, and one chicken breast dish of some sort. The wings and neck sometimes end up in the dark meat dish as well. These are then divided into meals and frozen- I end up with 2 dark-meat dinners and 1 and a 1/2 white meat dinners. This is done in a whirlwind because once a chicken is defrosted, you have to move fast or it goes bad- so I make the 2 chicken dishes side-by-side to be frozen for later in the week. 


This week was the week I've decided (after the fact) never to use a recipe I find on the internet ever again.


I made 'Southwest Spice' chicken, found somewhere on the internet, with my white meat. I chose the recipe because it called, intriguingly, for unsweetened cocoa, along with chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. I measured out the spices and threw the strips of chicken breast together with them in a plastic bag, shook, and prepared the contents in a bit of oil on the frying pan. 

Um. My husband and I started coughing uncontrollably, not from smoke, but from the sheer SPICINESS of the Southwest Spice as it cooked! It actually made the air unbreathable! The chicken is too hot to be edible. I tasted it and the only thing I could think of (besides AAAAAH!) was that I guess I am supposed to be eating spicy to induce labor anyway...hope this works...

If anyone has any ideas for making this now-prepared chicken dish LESS spicy and therefore edible, let me know. 

My other internet recipe was for Chicken with Peas, adapted, said the website, from a chef in the Czech army. I had asked my husband to pick up a can of peas (he's taken over the grocery shopping, G-d bless him) in anticipation of making our weekly chicken into this dish. Halfway through the steps required in this dish, when it said 'pour can of peas into pan with sauteeing chicken', I looked for the can of peas and couldn't find it anywhere. So I asked him, and he said, the peas? You mean, the peaches?? And I finally understood why this giant can of Peach Halves in Syrup was in my cabinet. 


I happened to be on the phone with my father during this exchange with my husband. It was really funny to all 3 of us. Then I returned to the kitchen and asked my father what I should do with my sauteeing chicken. He asked if I had any other canned vegetables (no) and then suggested I use the peaches and make chicken-with-peaches! I did just that, blending them into a chunky sauce and pouring them onto the chicken. I haven't tried it yet, but based on my track record lately, it may flop like the last 3 chicken dishes. Sigh. 


If you have any fool-proof chicken recipes, please, please share. I won't consider them internet recipes- it's only a proper internet recipe when there's a photo, a star-rating, and comments (and when it flops, of course).

Tap Practice

For those of you who tap dance, 

I think my baby just did a f-lap
 in my stomach. 

For a moment I thought it was the 'pop' feeling
 that people experience

 in the moment their water breaks...

Wishful thinking.

It was just tap practice. 

The Cupcake Instinct

Can't figure out why I am so obsessed with cupcakes lately...

Actually, I know why. When babies are born, in religious Jewish circles, there are always community celebrations- a circumcision with an accompanying festive meal for a boy, and a Kiddush (basically a big, commemorative 'toast') for a girl. What that means for me is that I have been dreaming about baking and freezing appropriately-colored cupcakes for said upcoming celebrations ever since we found out our baby's gender (sorry, not telling). 

I mentioned (okay. squealed.) to my husband, months ago, that I couldn't wait to make ___-colored cupcakes for the _____ celebration. He burst my bubble by explaining that in our Shul (synagogue), those ceremonies are always hosted on-premises and the rule is that they are all catered by the exact same super-boring 'catering' which includes plastic-wrapped rugelach and yerushalmi kugel, and does NOT include personal additions, like colored, frosted, baby-themed delicacies. 

This information was a crushing blow to my domestic dreams, made 10x stronger and more irrational by my strongest new drive, the Nesting Instinct. This instinct, for those of you who have not experienced it, makes planning ahead seem, not practical, but LIFE-AND-DEATH-CRUCIAL. The world will NOT CONTINUE TO ORBIT if I can't bake and freeze ahead of time in the appropriate baby color! 

In truth, it's a nice rule that they have in our Shul. It eliminates the keeping-up-with-the-insert-name-that-sounds-more-Jewish-than-Joneses syndrome. No one's celebration has to top anyone else's. And it is plain ridiculous for any woman after birth to have to worry about details for celebrations like these. 

Not to mention that my husband is slightly disturbed by colorful, sprinkly desserts. Swiss cakes are usually shaped like tube cakes and rarely, rarely frosted. They're what we Americans would call muffins. Just in a different shape. 

So if the shul won't serve them...

 and my husband won't consider them food....

and I don't want to get anywhere near cakes and frosting for the next few months...

and the baby won't be able to ingest them...

and we don't have a dog...

or a garbage disposal...

I guess there are bigger priorities on my to-do list than these cupcakes. So I've settled for posting professional versions of them on my blog, as a practical alternative to making, freezing, and serving them at our post-birth celebration.*

*back to that counting-chickens thing- the baby has not actually arrived yet, so please continue to keep me in your prayers for a safe birth and healthy baby. 

Bread Recipe

I feel that I need to share this recipe because it is the easiest, most ingenious and ego-satisfying recipe to bake with. Your bread comes out looking like the pride of a french bistro. And it's easier than cutting up a salad and takes less preparation time, believe it or not. 

The Easiest Bread Ever (makes Challah look like hard labor)

From the book, 'Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day"

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/- watch their youtube demonstrations as well

Makes about four 1-pound loaves. The recipe is easily doubled or halved.



short version: 
dough...
mix (don't knead, just mix) 3 cups warm water, 1.5 T dry yeast, 1.5 salt, and 6.5 cups flour,
leave on counter for 2 hours in covered tupperware slightly open, then 
 fridge the tupperware of dough, and make bread with it any time in the next 2 weeks.


when you want to make a loaf...
pull off and shape a ball, 
dust it with flour,
 and let it sit out for 20 minutes, ,
slash the top,
then bake at 230 degree c. for 30 minutes. 

I don't get it.

I don't get it. I took a whole chicken yesterday, defrosted, and spent quite some time cleaning it, taking off the skin, cutting it into parts, removing the fat, and preparing 2 dishes- one with the dark meat pieces and one with the white.
The dark meat was browned on both sides and then submerged in a blended pineapple-garlic sauce with curry. It was cooked for about an hour in the sauce. The white meat was cubed into small pieces and prepared in a frying pan with chopped onions and a generous application of curry, cumin, paprika, garlic, and salt. I even followed the recipe (for once) and used the measuring spoons for the spices (for once). These both seemed completely fool-proof. Where's the  risk? Of course they'll be a hit.

They both flopped. I mean, flopped. The pineapple dish was so bland that it tasted raw even though that was impossible. The white meat cubes (the recipe is called Shwarma, though its a modified Shwarma of course) were just not as good as usual, and the flavor seemed purely paprika, nothing else. Imagine. It was gross. 

So, mistakes happen and I know that I can't get a perfect 10 with cooking every time, but what I don't get is this: it seems like the more effort I put into cooking, the worse it comes out. 

The opposite is also true: I always serve homemade bread for breakfast, and last night, after my husband went to sleep early, I realized I didn't have any bread for his breakfast the next morning (even commercial bread would have been fine, but we had nothing). And because our apartment is small, I can't work in the kitchen with the light on while he's asleep. So I made bread almost in the dark (with the refrigerator door open for light), let it rise, and popped it into the toaster oven in the dark, hoping that the dials were pointing to the correct numbers. And went to sleep. And, irony of ironies, this bread came out, by far, the best and most beautiful I have ever made. 

I don't get it. 


p.s. I was engrossed in phone conversation with my friend Maya during the chicken efforts. I wonder if this led to a lack of  focus on the part of the chef...

The good is always there.

I've been discovering lately that happiness is not something that will come and tap me on the shoulder while I am busy stressing or beating myself up.

Happiness is a decision. The good is always, always there. Waiting to be acknowledged and celebrated. And if I don't see it or feel it, there are so many avenues of access. But it takes initiative.

I was so sad today about something that I had every right to be sad about. Something that is objectively painful and difficult. I spoke it out with my husband, he gave the issue its requisite acknowledgement, and then he did something brilliant. He turned on music and started singing to me. He, by the way, is not a singer and wasn't trying to be one in that moment, which made it all the more hysterical.

 I was laughing and crying for a good 10 minutes. It just moved me so much. It was like saying, okay, some things in life are far from perfect. But who says I can't be silly and happy and smile in the face of anything that comes my way? 

I want to remember this at all times. Happiness is an active choice. The music didn't turn itself on. He turned it on. He decided. And it wasn't escape from the reality. It was acknowledgement of the difficulties, and simultaneous celebration of the rest of what life has to offer. 

Conflicting Messages

Do you ever feel, as a woman, that you're receiving conflicting messages? Because I sure do. I read a book over the weekend that is intended to offer advice on how to be a better woman, wife, and mother, written by a well-respected woman in the Orthodox world. I felt completely bombarded by the 'advice' in this book. Some of the suggestions were:

-always get up on time and before the rest of your household, even when you were kept up at night with one of your children.

-always dress fully before leaving your bedroom in the morning, to start the day off right.

-a woman can successfully raise 12 children in a 2-and-a-half room apartment, and have them be clean and well dressed children, and have the apartment be spotless, and herself be in a constant state of serenity, if she is organized. 

-a woman should always look her best, no excuses. It has a big effect on her family.

-a woman should take the time to pamper herself, always applying lotion after a shower, for example.

Okay, I'll stop. You get the picture. 

As a former subscriber to the infamous 'Allure' magazine, and 'Cosmogirl', I am no stranger to the mixed message. Your hair should be auburn, but it should be blonde. The Look To Have is 'strong'...but....'feminine'. Spoil yourself! But read all these statistics about how we're more spoiled than ever, plus an interview with the lady who heroically chose to live in a tree for a year! 

I am not holding Allure accountable. I didn't read it expecting them to offer me wisdom and guidance. But books like the one I read this weekend this are often penned and recommended by credible people in the religious community. I am very turned off at this author's approach- what if it doesn't work for everyone? What if you fall short of her very-specific picture of what the perfect woman is or should be? Was the mother-of-12 diligently applying lotion after every shower? I somehow doubt it. 

There are many blessings to being a woman. And feminine nature possesses some wonderful strengths. But a major weakness that many of us women walk around with is a feeling of being not-good-enough. It's so easy to compare oneself to others. I don't think books like this are part of the solution- I think they are part of the problem. 

ice water

Ice water is divine. Every time I drink ice water I feel so privileged!