My Jewish New Year

I love this picture. Someone somewhere had it as their avatar and I saved the picture. I think as a child I always expected to see this on Batman and it just never happened. You can't get much more homoerotic than grown men in tight underpants on top of colorful tights, dashing around and pointing laser guns at villains. I also love this picture because it's such a tender looking kiss, no?

So its Friday night again. I've done both senior jobs today. Its finally autumn and I'm loving it. It was in the 30s the other morning, but then turned into the most beautiful sun shiney day of about 70 degrees and no humidity.

With the colder weather comes good meals once again. I just can't seem to cook proper meals when its hot out. We graze all summer and Ijust don't like it. But all the cookbooks are down and open and we've been making different breads and savory pies. Really good food and nice sit down dinners as opposed to everyone grazing on bits of different things and everyone being cranky as a result.

This week has been a nice one (although I can sense my underlying anxiety about not having enough money for bills coming up~ I'm trying to keep a grip on this and not freak out). The weather is lovely, the kids have been great, Greg and I are doing fab. I have been realizing that I am a very lucky girl to still really be in love with him. Even when totally pissed (which hasn't been for a couple months), I still really like and love him. I've not had that awful experience of wanting to recoil from his touch or his words like I have in the past in other relationships (and you realize: Uh-oh, that's not good.) And I realize this seems silly to say because we've been married for 11 years, but I'm feeling very grateful for still having such strong, good feelings this man. The other day I was driving and found myself checking out some guy on the street. I was thinking: I want to lick his shoulders, he's like Greg. Then shook myself out of my daydreaming at the red light and had to laugh. Everyone admires pretty people on the street, I guess its a good sign if you're admiring someone who resembles your partner.

I've had this wonderful sense of counting my blessings this week. I really miss going to church and I'm going to do my best to go there this Sunday. I was planning on coming back once school started again, but the past few Sundays have been busy. I'm looking forward to hearing Thomas play his gorgeous, intricate and difficult classical pieces on the huge church organ. I'm looking forward to Nora's fabulous sermons (the last one convinced me to not renew my Sam's Club membership {corporate sin! one of those things I've known about forever but ignored whenever I needed a large quanity of some bulky Sam's Club item} ).

My mom was over Tuesday and was annoying me with her yearly groans about how sad it is summer is ending and how the shorter days make her blue and how she hates these long winters... this speech has been annoying me since I was a little girl. Even back then I knew that it was all about how she perceived things and went about her life that often made her so depressed. It made me crazy then and it makes me crazy now. (A good example of this is how she says every year: "I hate my birthday. I've never had a good birthday. My mother ruined it for me when I was 7 and I've hated it ever since." She'd say this despite us kids trying madly to entertain her and provide her with the best birthday we could muster. When I was about 22 I totally laid into her about how she has the ability to DECIDE if she wants to be happy about any day she wakes up to. And its up to her to have a good birthday! She celebrates it properly now, like a normal person.) At any rate, back to the season changing.... I've always loved autumn. The weather finally grows mild and there's an equal mix of cool rainy days and lovely sunny ones. You can cook again. The summer garden is pretty much done and you don't have to mow the grass too many more times. All the extra work of summer is done. It's time to hole up in the house and let the ground go to sleep for a while. I love this notion. Its peaceful. And it has the feeling of winter being "break time".

I've always considered this time of year to be when my new year starts. January 1st is a ridiculous time of year for ringing in the new year. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about January 1st. Its the middle of winter. The middle of dormancy. Why January 1st? (I realize its not that way the world over, but mostly it is.) Yesterday I made challah bread. A beautiful braided bread. It always looks so pretty when its done. Today when I was helping my one senior couple, I learned it was Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year. I've always known it was this time of year because it often falls on my birthday. But I never put the two together until today when we were picking up loaves of challah from the bakery so they could celebrate the new year with their friends tonight. While I was there, they received 4 phone calls from people wishing them a happy new year. How cool is that? Here it was a lovely fall day, with bright mums and pumpkins at the market. Yummy challah and honey cake in the bakery for the special day. So much nicer than January 1st in Michigan. January 1st is like post partum depression. You're trying really hard to be happy, you know you should be counting your blessings, but you just want to crawl under a rock and sleep.

Nope, I much prefer celebrating as the Jews do. And on some level, I always have, without knowing it (even as a 7 year old Catholic!). And making the challah was purely coincidental. But very yummy.

I'm very grateful for where I am in life. I'm grateful that despite some things not being how I would like them, I now have the ability to trust the process a lot better than I ever have. I'm trying to respect what comes at me every day, the good and the bad, and trying really hard to not be lazy and to also not be neurotic (those scales seem to shift heavily in one direction or another for me). My 33rd birthday is Sunday. I'm grateful for that. I'm happy to have had another year and to start a new one. It is my New Year. Thank you thank you.

In other news: my poor sister is having her uterus removed in mid-October. She has to have this done abdominally because it is so enlarged and painful. Right now her uterus is the size of a 4 month pregnant uterus. She's scared to death to have this operation. How terrible to have had 3 kids vaginally only to have to receive a c-section of sorts to remove your womb. On top of this, she has yet another suspicious lump in her breast that sent her to the breast clinic today for ultrasound and biopsy. Pray she is healthy and all things will go well for her. Poor thing.

All right. I'm off to bed. Its midnight now. I'm reading this interesting book by Kamran Nazeer called: Send in the Idiots. He's a high-functioning autistic who has written a book about some of the people he went to school with (a special autistic school that was pretty cutting edge for its time, apparently). Each chapter he describes these individuals as they are now as adults with autism. So far, all of them are pretty high-functioning but with very clear boundaries about what they can and cannot deal with. I'm only half way through and I only have time to read 7 or so pages each night before I totally crash out (my days of having the luxury to read hundreds of pages a day are so far gone!). I always wonder if I'm getting the full impact of every book I read since it takes me a while anymore. Its so nice though, to quitely climb into bed where Greg and Eamon are sprawled all over, to lay on my side and read by the dim light of the night light. I get this little quiver of excitement that everyone is home, happy and quiet and I am awake, able to lay and read in peace.