Inner Toddler

When life gives you lemons

2012-01-25T01:58:00.000-08:00

When the lemons look like this one, then you best run for the hills because no one should be drinking lemonade from this many-tentacled citrus freakshow. It seems that whatever has turned our zesty friend into the OCTALEMON may be in the water or the vents or somewhere lurking in our quirky home. This has been the winter to beat all and we are down for the count. Uncle. There I said it. We are beat. You win, evil Octalemon.

Since we arrived in November it's been one illness after another. First the boys both had mystery fever with rash and the older one had vomitting. Then the girl had the vomitting. And the older boy had more vomiting. Then the baby had a nasty cough with walrus snot and eye goop. Then I had strep. Now I have a sinus infection and the baby's coughing again. And Mr. Rosen has impetigo. Yes, impetigo, the childhood disease. He's the only adult ever in the history of the world who managed to catch impetigo. Coincidentally last week's Torah portion was about the first seven plagues, one of which was boils. I guess we can feel lucky that it was only boils and not also frogs and lice. So he's in quarantine and the rest of us are trying to stay warm enough to get healthy and survive our first winter in the Jerusalem hills. We were not prepared for this much cold and wet.

And the thing about Israeli houses is that they are mostly built to combat heat. But that appears to be the case in the winter also. Whatever heat we do manage to create just evaporates into the cinder block walls. Bye bye. So the other day Mr. Rosen's dad came and taped plastic sheeting to all of our windows and sliding glass doors to protect us from the cold and, incidentally, chemical warfare. Funny what Israelis have lying around the house. It's not the most attractive option but it was cheap to buy, free to install (thanks Saba) and works great. Hopefully the worst is behind us and we can get ready for a beautiful Spring in another few weeks. With this much rain we have high hopes for a dazzling wildflower season. And a few rounds of hay fever.

Big in Japan

2012-01-19T11:58:00.000-08:00

Photo and art credits: Bella Sinclair

Today's guest is the one and only Bella Sinclair, a favorite illustrator of mine and a generally delightful person, beloved by many. She's an Illustration Friday enthusiast and her work is pure magic. I'm especially enamored by Bella's rendition of Hayao Miyazaki 's large monster bunny, Totoro. I knew that Bella had spent some time living with her family in Japan and since her own blog is focused mostly on her illustrations, I crossed my fingers she'd agree to be in the Strangers in a Strange Land series so that I could learn more about her. And about smart toilets. Who knew?

1. How did you come to land in Japan?
My husband's company transferred him to develop new business in Asia. Manhattan was wearing him down, and I could tell he was itching to fly across oceans. So when an opportunity came up in Tokyo, we took it. I was reluctant at first. Okay, I'll admit it. I cried a little. We had a house I loved in the suburbs that we had just finished renovating. Most of my friends were there, and I felt rooted. But I eventually got over my initial shock and fear and absolutely loved it in the end.

2. Do you speak Japanese or did you take any language courses before you arrived?
I took a year of Japanese in college, but that had been eons ago. Once I got to Japan, I started taking lessons again. Unfortunately, the area where we lived was full of expats, so it was easy to get by without using much Japanese at all.

3. If you are not a native speaker, do you have any funny stories about language errors?
Actually, I learned not to speak Japanese to people because they would assume I was fluent and speak back to me at a million words a minute. So I didn't have any language errors that I can remember, but I do have an amusing story. My Japanese teacher and I would often make small talk during our lessons, and one time she was describing dishes that she likes to cook. She kept saying, "sea chicken."
Huh? "Sea chicken?" I was completely baffled. Yes, sea chicken." And then I realized that she was talking about tuna! Chicken of the Sea!

4. Tell me about one of your lowest moments?
Our time in Tokyo was a fantastic adventure, perhaps being some of the best years of our lives. The only low point was when my husband suddenly passed away. It would be a difficult time for anyone, but having to deal with the hospital and police and funeral parlor in a foreign language made me feel even more isolated. Luckily, I had a friend who was fluent in Japanese who helped me through it all.

5. What was the best part about living in Japan?
The Japanese are a wonderfully refined, polite, and honest people. And they take pride in keeping things clean and orderly. People smiled and nodded hello. I felt very safe and hyper civilized.

6. Did you ever feel totally at home?
Oh, yes! We had our routines and frequent haunts. And between work and the international school, there was no shortage of English speakers.

7. What did you miss most about the United States?
Definitely mobility! We didn't have a car in Tokyo, nor would I have trusted myself on the roads. So every time one of my kids had a playdate at a friend's house, I'd have to carefully map out the subway route to get there and back. And sometimes, their friends lived in places unreachable by subway, which meant we had to jump in a cab. A playdate could easily cost me $40. It almost made me wish my kids had no friends.

8. What are some of the things you didn't know how you lived without before you moved to Japan? (i.e. foods, customs, culture...)
Did I tell you about the smart toilet that stays perpetually warm, automatically opens and closes and auto flushes? Aaaaah, pure heaven! And Japanese pastries, oh my goodness! They make bread that is so incredibly light and fluffy.

9. How did the kids adjust to the move?
Kids are mighty resilient. My girls were in the fourth grade and kindergarten when we first got to Tokyo. Being that we went to an all-girl international school where lots of kids come and go after a year or so, they did not feel singled out or unusual. They made the transition quite easily. There were a lot of British and Aussie teachers at the school, and my little one actually started to pick up a British accent.

10. Was there any chance of "blending in" or did you always feel like "the American"? Did it matter?
Blending in was easy where we lived. We were in an area affectionately (or not) known as gaizin ghetto. The neighborhood was crawling with foreigners and you could practically hop from one embassy rooftop to another without touching ground. We lived next to the French Embassy, and down the street was the German Embassy, and a little further away was Finland and Qatar and China and so on. So many different people, so many different languages. As long as we stayed where the embassies were, we blended in just fine.

11. Can you reflect on any cultural differences that were challenging to navigate or led to a funny situation or misunderstandings?
My Japanese teacher would come to my apartment on Tuesday mornings. I remember one time, my husband was still there because he had decided to go to work late that morning. My husband and I were very informal about comings and goings. "Bye." "Bye." "Hi, I'm back." "Hey." But I guess in Japanese culture, the man is king of his domain. My Japanese teacher was very apologetic and embarrassed to be there, feeling that she had invaded his territory. And she physically made me get up to give him a proper, ceremonial send off. What did she want me to do, fluff up his jacket and lay out his shoes? I had no idea. So my husband and I just stood there, staring awkwardly at each other for a moment. Then he said, "Bye." And I said, "Okay, bye."

12. Did life there have any impact on your illustration style?
Definitely. You cannot live in Japan and not absorb all the kawaii or cuteness.

13. What lessons can you draw from the whole experience?
You know what? I've learned that I'm a lot tougher and more resilient than I thought. Life can change in a blink, and everything you know can be gone tomorrow. But new adventures await, and I will go on.

***************
Thank you Bella! Your mad skills and sense of humor shine in every illustration. Get a taste of the kawaii that I'm talking about over at Bella Sinclair's Doodlespot. Tell Totoro I sent you.

How the universe sent me a babysitter - Part II

2012-01-14T12:50:00.000-08:00

When I walked in to her little house on the prairie I immediately breathed in the smell of spice tea. It was toasty warm inside, clean but not sterile. Yael had the look of a home schooling, bread baking, granola rolling, all-terrain strolling, pioneer mama. I stayed for about forty minutes and we played with the babies. I nursed my boy. She nursed hers. We talked about how he sleeps, what he eats, how he motors across a carpet on elbows. He stared at everything with his giant eyes. When it was time for me to go he made the boo boo face and started to cry. I said goodbye and left him with Yael. And then I went to get a great big coffee from the cafe across main road. After, I went home and straightened up the house, did some laundry and generally felt happy to be alone. Really alone. Not the kind of alone where you still have a baby strapped on to you. We were separate and it was fine.

I picked him up two hours later. He had cried. But he also slept. I gave him the food I had made. He hadn't taken it from Yael. But she wasn't discouraged and neither was I. We wanted to make it work.

The next day we came straight after dropping off the big kids. He was tired and I didn't stay long so that she could put him to bed. Before I left she changed his diaper and sang his favorite song, Itsy Bitsy Spider, but in Hebrew. He calmed down. He was starting to connect to her. He cried again when I left but she texted soon after that he was asleep.

This time when I got home I got out my paints and a drawing, the third in a series, that I had sketched a while ago but never painted. So I painted it. The series is called Day of Rest. One panel is Sabbath Eve with the two candles, the glass of wine and the challah. The second panel is Sabbath day - a tree of life shading a quiet village. The third one, the one I just painted, is called Havdalah, the separation between the Sabbath and a new week, the symbols of which are the braided candle, the glass of wine and the spice box. It seemed the perfect theme to celebrate my own brief separation.

When I went back to Yael's he was awake and cried when he saw me. I nursed him and we snuggled. He relaxed. He had slept a lot and eaten both jars of his food but still no bottle. In due time. While I was nursing him Yael asked me if I knew someone named Galit from the moshav. I asked, does she have a seven month old? Yes. A few weeks before I had been in the cafe with my kids and another family was there with some out of towners so they were speaking English. I guess the husband overheard us speaking English too and when we were leaving he asked where we were from. We had a brief conversation about California because someone from his family was living there but I don't remember the details. Nice guy. They live in the moshav across from the cafe. A week later I was at our health clinic with the baby and I ran into the guy's wife with their seven month old. She asked, didn't I see you at the cafe? Yes. I gave her my card and said she should email me if she ever wanted to get together. I told her I work from home but I don't yet have childcare and I'm with the baby a lot. Hoping to find a sitter sometime soon...

That was Galit. Turns out Galit had given that card to Yael a few days later and mentioned she had met an American looking for some part time childcare. At that point in our conversation Yael went over to her jacket pocket and pulled out my card.

The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it expects you to take the last step and close the circle. Which is fine by me since I'm one who thinks we make our own fate. But I learned from a good friend not to dismiss the powers of attraction and our abilities to draw exactly the right people at the right time into our lives.

How the universe sent me a babysitter - Part I

2012-01-13T02:52:00.000-08:00

This was a very big week. I found a babysitter for Bug Eye McChicken Legs. This is big for a number of reasons but mainly because I wasn't totally convinced that I could rationalize spending money for someone else to take care of him when I only earn barely enough to cover it. I always have it in my head that I can still run my business and my household in two hour increments while he's napping and why would I pay for someone else to watch him sleep. Except he doesn't always nap as he should. And I never feel at ease starting the next project because I know that at any moment I will have to stop. And then I secretly start to resent just a teeny bit the McChicken. Plus maybe the reason I am only earning enough to barely cover childcare, is that I'm not actually working much at all.

Since he was born I haven't painted a thing. In the weeks leading up to his birth I had several commissions to finish and it was quite a fruitful period. But then the baby came and the house sold and the RV trip and the move and leaving the country and settling into a new county. Well, it hasn't been super conducive to creating. And unfortunately I'm not the type to just jot down sketches and doodles whenever I can. I know that about myself so I don't even buy journals anymore. I've continued to fill orders and have them printed and shipped through a lovely print shop in North Carolina thanks to the magic of the Internet, so business goes on. But nothing new has hit paper in seven months which had me feeling like I'm not really an artist (I feel this way from time to time. Impostor syndrome. Very destructive).

So when I saw a flyer posted next to the neighborhood grocery (think Israeli bodega) advertising a 29 year old mom of two (baby and toddler) looking to watch another baby three days a week in the morning while her two year old is at preschool, I sort of thought this might be perfect. So I took a tear off with her number.

And I stuck it in my pocket where it sat for a week.

I had those thoughts again that I don't deserve childcare. That my baby is too problematic. (no binky, no lovie, no bottle, lots of nursing). That it's not worth the hassle of getting him ready in the morning and packing up his food and diapers and wipes. That surely she's already taken another baby since half the tear-offs were gone and that was a week ago.

Finally I called and even during the conversation I felt a weight rising in my chest. I don't really want to do this. I can't do this. I don't deserve it. She had one other family interested but she was waiting to hear back from them. She'd call me back. A few days later I got a text that she'd like me to bring the baby over and we could try it out for a week or so. See how it goes. I liked that approach.

So this week on Tuesday I took the kids to school and put the baby down for his nap when we got home. When he woke up we rode over to the village next door where the sitter lives (across from the awesome cafe that I wrote about last month which will prove to be an important part of the second part of this story). As I drove in I already started to feel lighter. She lives in a moshav which is kind of a little farming community. This one happens to be a vineyard. And she lives down a dirt road next to a few abandoned chicken coops which I find endlessly charming. Her personal roost overlooks a beautiful valley. And when she opened the door and welcomed me with a giant smile, I sort of knew this would be right for us.

Part II to come.

The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly in San Sebastian

2012-01-11T08:44:00.000-08:00

all photo credits: Jane Green

It's time for our second installment of Strangers in a Strange Land. I came to find Jane Green and her beautiful blog Spain Daily through another blogging friend when she was hosting a weekly photography prompt called Corner View. I still look to Jane for photography inspiration. She has a way of sneaking in on people's lives and capturing the exact moment that tells their whole story. That goes for her incredible pictures of architecture and scenery too, of which there is no shortage in beautiful Spain. She also has a knack for shots of tight little matador tushies. And who doesn't love a little eye candy now and then, am I right?

But for all of her candid shots and explorations of daily life, she's not one to write at length about herself. So I'm honored that she was willing to participate in this series. As usual, her humor shines through. Enjoy!

1. How did you come to land in Spain?
Love

2. Did you plan to stay as long as you have?
My first trip to Spain was to San Sebastian for just three weeks to see “how I would like living there.” The sun shone every day, I met wonderful people, and the food was amazing! (And there were palm trees!!!) I went back to the states, packed up my life, and moved there two weeks later.

It turned out to be a freakish warm winter where I went to the beach every day. The following year things were back to normal where it rains for 9 months a year. But, by then I was hooked. I still think Jorge had something to do with it ;)

3. How was your language acquisition? Did you learn Spanish when you arrived or did you already speak the language?
When I got to Spain I considered myself almost “fluent” in Spanish. I had taken it at school for 7 years and got straight As. The first day of my visit I ordered a café con leche. The waiter handed me a pack of cigarettes, I paid, walked outside, and cried...

4. If you are not a native speaker, do you have any funny stories about language errors?
One of the funnier ones. (There are many.) I wanted to start working as soon as I got here. One day I saw an add in the newspaper for chicas (girls) wanted for Bar Americano (American bar.) Here I was picturing a “Friends” type bar where everyone knows your name kind of a place. Turns out- “chicas” are prostitutes and Bar Americano is a brothel. I think Jorge laughed for a month!

5. Tell me about one of your lowest moments?
See number 4 ;)

6. What is the best part about living where you do?
I love that my kids get to grow up here. We have beaches, mountains, and cities (plus France, Portugal, Italy) at (or almost at) our front door. Add to that art, history, and inexpensive haute cuisine ... I think it has made them much more open minded. At least that´s what I tell myself when I´m craving a walk up Walnut Street and strawberry pancakes.  

7. When did you realize where you are home? Or are you not there yet?
Nope, still not there. I don´t think I´ll ever be. But what´s strange is that I don´t feel like I´m home when I´m in the States either. I´m away for such long periods of time that I always feel a little out of the loop when I´m there too. I think it´s a really common feeling for people living abroad- and one you get used to.

8. What do you miss most about the United States?
Don´t get me started...Besides the obvious, I miss big bookstores, my favorite coffee shops, breakfasts out, diversity, creativity, even the guy that does the voice overs on TV...

9. What are some of the things you don't know how you lived without before you moved to Spain? (i.e. foods, customs, culture, shoes...)
Tortilla de patatas... soooo good!

10. Did you raise your kids bilingual? How's was that?
Yes, definitely! From day one, Jorge spoke to them in Spanish and I spoke to them in English. And from the day they spoke their first word- it was in Spanish to Jorge and in English to me. We really didn´t give it much thought. And the kids just knew. (It´s my gift to them.)

11. Are you still "the American" or do you blend in at this point?
I´ll always be “the American” If you heard my accent, you´d understand. ;)

12. Can you reflect on any cultural differences that were challenging to navigate or led to a funny situation or misunderstanding?
There are, I just can´t think of any at the moment. The Spaniards eat every part of the pig, cow, fish, shrimp.... I´m sure they have to do with food... :) That, and I´ve had some funny situations trying to figure out how to flush a toilet.

13. How has your experience colored your photography?
I think life is slower here, so it´s easier to live in the moment. Plus the fact that I´m surrounded by beauty.... but then again, beauty is everywhere, if you are looking.

14. What lessons can you draw from the whole experience?
I´m the first to laugh at myself.... and never underestimate the power of diplomacy...

************* 
Gracias Jane! Clearly a sense of humor is a must for any expat. Note to self. Head over to Spain Daily to get a glimpse of daily life in Spain. Jane even has an ETSY shop where she sells a selection of her beautiful prints.

The Cross Sell

2012-01-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

Israelis are masterful at the up sell and the cross sell. It seems like with everything you buy there is the option to get something along with it for really cheap. Or not so cheap. This goes for the regular stuff like health insurance add-ons or services you don't need from the phone company. I even got suckered into buying some fancy conditioner from the guy at the hair salon to help keep the salt and stone that is apparently in the water from wrecking my hair. The supermarket is especially notorious for the up sell. The checkers always offer you one of the specials sitting right there. Would you like some mushrooms for ten shekels? A jar of jam? Gum? Two for three shekels? Or if you spend a certain amount they'll sell you a toaster or a set of glass cups or a towel. I'm usually so flabbergasted by the end of my grocery shopping, what with Screaming Jeepers McSpongey Butt strapped onto me making me sweat like it's the middle of summer, I always pass.

The other day I was at the gas station and saw that for a mere 24 shekels I could get a pastrami sandwich, a bottle of water and a pack of mint Mentos to go! I don't know why but that cracked me up. Maybe because it made me think of those Mentos commercials that are so obviously made in Europe or who knows where and dubbed in English.

In fact the gas station offers a world of cross selling opportunities. Marketers take heed! Mr. Rosen came home a few weeks ago from the gas station with an espresso machine! Here we go... We were on the market for one after having a delicious coffee at our friends house not long ago. But instead of buying the one they had which would have been the smart way to go, Mr. Rosen went with the model at the gas station. Only 500 shekels ($150) which unfortunately is quite cheap here. Except it took Mr Rosen about half an hour to make a cup of coffee and it made so much noise the baby woke up and the coffee tasted like diesel fuel which is what you get when you buy an espresso maker at the gas station. Not true. The coffee tasted fine but did not seem worth the effort. We figured we'd just add that to the account we've set aside for newcomer miscalculations. Sunk cost. But after cleaning it up and repackaging it, and with my encouragement and a very believable story (it was such a good deal my parents bought us the same one in white and my wife prefers the white one), he was actually able to return it a week later.

I'm hoping the cross sell applies to house cleaning services too. I'm actually hoping to hire someone to clean my house twice a month one of these days. And I'm hoping that in addition to the usual kitchen/bathrooms/floors/dusting regimen, s/he'll try to cross sell me on windows, laundry and childcare. It won't be a hard sell.

A few things to smile about

2012-01-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

OK. Here is why me and Mr. Pita Face are smiling:

I'm reading this book and it's great. I haven't read a book since Jumbo babypants was born so it's kind of nice.
Aimee just gave up the goods over at Artsyville. Her online workshop Three Little Words is posted and you can use her wordy workouts to get your poet mojo flow-jo.
I just signed up for Liv Lane's e-course Building a Blog You Truly Love because Liv Lane is one of the most authentic, hard-working, creative, savvy and inspiring people I know. I saw this post featuring some of the content and decided it was a must. Her class starts January 9th so there's still time to sign up.
Did you know that my brother has a blog? He lives in Mexico and runs a small hotel, surfs and plays piano. We live very different lives. That was an understatement of epic proportion. Go read his stuff and see what I mean. Tell him I said hi.

A Studio with a View of Munich

2012-01-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

I don't remember where I first discovered Stephanie's artwork - she's been featured all over the blogosphere and published in several books and magazines - but her signature style drew me to her blog where I found a kindred spirit. In fact her responses to my interview questions completely resonated with me down to the tiny details - like missing cranberry juice! (Seriously, Rest of the World, how are we Americans supposed to treat our urinary tract infections without cranberry juice!) She's been living in Germany for the last 15 years and now with her German artist husband and her two beautiful girls she juggles her studio work, her ETSY shop, her 12 countries in 12 months project and her teaching schedule. Her upcoming e-course Creative Courage is a practical guide that will help you clarify your own unique path and give you the tools you need to start making your goals real. It starts January 9 and you can sign up here.

1. How did you come to land in Germany/Munich?

I came and stayed for love :) Way back when, while I was studying Art back in the US, I met a German physics student who was working on his Ph.D. We fell in love, got married, and moved to Germany. We started out in Berlin, then moved to Heidelberg because of his job, then moved back to Berlin so that I could complete my Master's degree. After several years, that relationship ended - although we are still friends - and I met my husband Florian, who is also German and an artist. In 2005, we both completed our studies in Berlin and moved to his hometown of Munich.

2. Did you plan to stay as long as you have?

I had no idea. When I came over, I was 24 years old, fresh out of university, and I had two suitcases full of my belongings. Completely naive, but ready for adventure. I remember thinking that the food tasted more intensely in Europe, everything seemed richer and more exciting.

3. How was your language acquisition? Did you learn German when you arrived or did you already speak the language?

I spoke about 10 words of German when I arrived. After one month of living in former East Berlin (where at that time most people didn't speak any English in the shops), I realized that I HAD to learn German if I was going to be able to communicate with others in any kind of coherent way. Even with friends who spoke some English, at dinners and parties they would tire fairly quickly and start speaking German again. I tend to talk a lot, so I had a strong motivation to learn German quickly.

I went to a private language school where I took daily intensive, immersion classes in German - about 3 hours per day plus homework. We didn't have much money, so I think my language school was one of the cheapest in Berlin. This meant that the classes were really huge - about 25 students - and full of people from literally all over the world. From Russia, Turkey, the Philippines, Iraq, Brazil, Malaysia, Bosnia, Iceland, and so on. I think I was one of the only Americans, but it was good because I was forced to speak German with the other students even in the breaks.

4. If you are not a native speaker, do you have any funny stories about language errors?

I learned German such a long time ago, so I can't remember any really funny stories about specific errors at the moment... But what was difficult for me (and sometimes still is) - was getting used to the extreme German directness. I remember being at a dinner party and one woman said very loudly proclaimed in German, "Well I don't like Americans because they are always fake and you never know what they think about you." This woman knew that I was an American and her comment was somewhat directed at me, but I was so flabbergasted that I had no idea even how to respond, especially in German!

I'm from Tennessee, and with my Southern upbringing, I was completely unprepared for situations like this. In the meantime, I have learned how to be more direct - and to take things people say about the US or American culture less personally. Sometimes I agree with them too! My German is fluent these days, so I can get involved in a discussion, rather than just helplessly sitting there not knowing what to say.

5. Tell me about one of your lowest moments?

When we made the first move from Berlin to Heidelberg, I didn't have any friends, it was the coldest winter in years, and I had to wait a couple of months before any language classes were starting. I spent some hard weeks there when I wondered what on earth I was doing. We still had very little money, no real furniture in the apartment... just an old black and white TV that played German movies in the afternoon. It was kind of depressing. But finally spring arrived, and I enrolled at the University in Heidelberg to take more German classes, I met lots of fellow international students, and life improved dramatically.

6. When did you realize where you are home? Or are you not there yet?

I think being an ex-pat you are always somewhere in between. I still identify myself as an American because I grew up in the American culture for the first 25 years of my life. The way I talk, the way I think is still very American. However, I do like having the perspective of viewing my home culture from abroad. It puts many things in perspective. And the longer I am here, I feel more "Europeanized" at least partly. In 10 years, I will have lived for equal amounts of time in both cultures. We'll see how I feel then!

In the end, it feels to me like things are becoming more and more global and international. I see and hear many, many Americans in Europe, and so many Europeans have visited the States. International travel has become very commonplace, and now with the speed of the Internet and other media to communicate - I feel like we are all very connected these days, more than ever before.

7. What do you miss most about the United States?

Cranberry juice! Well, actually you can get that here now, but it is expensive. I miss going out for huge, decadent American breakfasts at diners for an occasional indulgence. I miss the relaxed way that people communicate and make small talk in an easy manner, even in shops and with strangers. And of course I miss family and friends.

I love New York, San Francisco, the beautiful national parks, and there are still so many gorgeous places I've never visited in the States. I'd love to travel with my husband and kids through the US on a monumental road trip.

8. What are some of the things you don't know how you lived without before you moved to Germany?

I truly love being able to walk everywhere to do my shopping, to bring my kids to school, and so on. The bread and pastries here are amazing (although I know we're all supposed to be eating healthy, low carb, and gluten-free these days...)

9. Are you raising your kids bilingual? How's that going?

Yes, I speak English to my kids - but they usually answer me in German. We try to read lots of English books and have English videos, but it is difficult to offset the German kindergarten and German-speaking environment. So we are working on it, and I hope as they get older, they will understand and value the importance of English. I also hope that they will go on a school or university exchange in an English speaking country one day.

10. Are you still "the American" or do you blend in at this point?

I will probably always be "the American" among my German friends, but I also feel that I blend in pretty well too. We moved around a lot when I was a kid, so maybe I am just used to always making new friends and being a little bit of an outsider. I think it also helps that I have always lived in larger, multi-cultural cities in Germany where most people come from somewhere else too.

11. Can you reflect on any cultural differences that was challenging to navigate or led to a funny situation or misunderstanding?

One thing that drives me crazy in Germany is that you usually have to install your own kitchen and light fixtures when you move into a new apartment. The Germans defend this practice as "everyone has their own taste" and you can be much more individual in your apartment style this way... which is perhaps true, but it is kind of a pain, especially right at the beginning when you are just moving into a new place.

12. How has your experience colored your work?

My travels - especially my travel project this year 12 Countries in 12 Months - are most certainly a big influence on my artwork right now. All of my latest collages are a result of this project, and I have lots of ideas for new collages based on materials and sketches I've gathered so far. I can't wait to get started on these new mixed media collages too.

13. What lessons can you draw from the whole experience?

Adventure is good, mind-expanding, and if you ever have the chance to live abroad for a time, you should go for it! Despite the challenges and a few hard times at the beginning, I wouldn't change a thing and I definitely do not regret my decision to move to Germany. At the moment, I'm happy in Europe and I appreciate all of the different cultures and travel opportunities here!

*********

Thank you Stephanie! Make sure you spend some time on her blog and ETSY site. And for the love of strudel treat yourself to her seven week e-course Creative Courage.

Strangers in a Strange Land

2012-01-04T12:49:00.000-08:00

Well a friend of mine (I'm not naming names but he's a charming Scotsman) said some of my earlier Welcome to Israel posts were a wee bit melancholic. Moi? He's probably right although a little slack from the readers! This move was major upheaval wrapped in crazy and piled high with distress. And we didn't move to New Zealand, you know. Where all you have to contend with is sheep in the road (although from the looks of this picture taken about half a mile from my house it would seem we are contending with goats on top of everything else). This is Israel after all. Maybe you've heard we're experiencing some wee conflicts.

So while I'm working on adjusting my perspective, which feels like an everyday exercise, I thought it would be fun to reach out to other transplants and get their stories of transition for a weekly blog series.

We'll get started tomorrow with the talented and delightful Stephanie Levy - an American artist living in Munich. Hope you'll join us.

Date night in Ein Kerem

2011-12-31T12:40:00.000-08:00

Mr. Rosen and I celebrated New Years last night instead of tonight because last night we had free babysitting. Anyway, tonight is a regular school night. It's not a national holiday. No one has off. They don't even call it New Years here since the Jewish New Year is in September. They call it Sylvester. Or was it Putty Tat...What was I talking about?

Yes, New Years. Well our second shipment finally did arrive on Thursday so our house was once again inundated by boxes and hunkin pieces of furniture. Mr. Rosen's parents came up on Friday morning to help build things and watch the kids and then they actually took the kids with them back to Beer Sheva to spend the night leaving us an unprecedented 24 hours in our house to GET. SHIT. DONE. We still had the baby but he's manageable.

But instead of trudging ahead when they left we decided to take a break and treat ourselves to a date in a beautiful neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem and only about a 15 minute drive from where we live called Ein Kerem which means "Spring of the Vineyard" and yes, it's as charming as its name would imply. It has a long history which is why many of the homes feature Arab style architecture and many of the landmarks are Christian. John the Baptist was born there. But now there's a giant hospital on the next hill over so lots of people can make that claim too. Sorry John. These days it's home to a lot of artisans and funky little restaurants and cafes and galleries. And there's a bunch of stuff open on Shabbat too which is nice.

We parked the car and walked toward the main street to see that a ceramic tile gallery was open so we popped in since the tiles on our coffee table (built by Mr. Rosen) broke in the container. We ogled for a few minutes over the gorgeous tiles and then walked up a side street and noticed this little shop full of beautiful goodies. I plan to go back when it's open and buy one of everything. Finally we decided on a place to eat - a small cafe where we dined on focaccia, warm wild mushroom salad, haloumi cheese sandwich and kabobs. Each dish was better than the one before. It might have only been December 30th, but it was New Years in my mouth.

And then we spent the last day of this unbelievably crazy year finally unpacking all of our things into our new house. We're not there yet, but we're getting close. And it feels good. Look out for a home tour in the coming weeks.

Happy 2012! xoxo

Dress code

2011-12-29T22:56:00.000-08:00

If only this post was about my son's obsession with his school uniform (which is basically a plain t-shirt and the school's logo). It's about what's going on only twenty minutes from where we live in Beit Shemesh, where ultra religious fanatics are terrorizing little girls for their immodesty. Little observant girls who are fully covered, but apparently still too provocative.

This is not a political blog but sometimes shit happens that is so unconscionable that I have to write something about it. Which I was planning to do and then Mr. Rosen sent out this email and I thought high time we had a guest blogger. So here you go.

Yes, we are all aware of this and watching it closely with concern.

The big concern is that if the government allows these idiots to behave this way and does not seriously crack down on them, this kind of behavior will become legitimate within that community. Within the ultra orthodox neighborhoods in Jerusalem and a few other neighborhoods in Israel, similar types of behaviors have become acceptable or legitimate over the past 10 years, like woman sitting separately in the back of buses so as to not cause the men in the front to have a humiliating spontaneous erection. The mistake Israeli governments have made over the years (and this is true for all governments since Ben-Gurion’s) was to let this behavior exist even as a grass roots phenomenon within the religious communities. There are some very scary patterns within the Israeli religious communities (both orthodox and Zionistic) which in any other democracy would be considered religious fanaticism or racism. Traditionally Israeli governments have been reluctant to tackle these issues head on because of the Israeli coalition structure which gives religious parties power that is disproportional to their represented size within Israeli society. It is sad to see the racism that is so pervasive in this country.

Still, having said that, I think there is hope (I ask myself if I can live here long term if hope is lost). Last summer there was a huge peaceful protest that was energized by the secular majority (80%). These protests have had a minor effect, so far, on the way the country is governed, but it showed that this majority can snap out of its apathy. I personally think that the secular majority, which includes the reform and conservative movements, and the leaders of this past summer’s protests have to turn to the streets next summer and get political. If violence is called for, so be it. Human right issues have never been resolved peacefully. Any racist political establishment anywhere in the world does not change wily-nilly due to peaceful protest. One of the ways to make a big change here is to change the elected government structure to inhibit the disproportional power of elected small parties. A constitution has to be written which puts democracy ahead of the state defined as a Jewish one. I pray that the future will bring these changes. Meanwhile I hope we find a way to live happily in our bubble of sanity. We are surrounded by intelligent & open minded people that are passionate and thirsty for change. Unfortunately my generation does not get to build a country from the ground up, but rather is tasked with shifting the sick trajectory this young country is on to one of democracy, human rights and religious pluralism. I hope we do not pass these issues down to our children to tackle since by then it will be too late. I hope the US president and the big American Jewish downers are taking note of this. Tell your leaders we don’t need any more F-16s. We need more schools that teach poetry, music, math and world history. It’s time to stop donating to the construction of Israel and instead pump cash into fixing what was badly engineered.

Light-filled

2011-12-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

Notice the light dancing around in little heart-shapes over my son's head. Like a tiara.

Well we are coming off of our eight day Hanukkah vacation. The kids are back in school tomorrow. Our second, smaller container, the one with all of the bookcases, storage units and hangers, the one that will help contain the piles of books, toys and clothes, is coming tomorrow. We've lit a total of 135 candles over the last eight days and the world seems a little brighter. I was happy to have this time off with the kids to be with family and friends. Trying to see everyone we know with only Saturdays to do it (six day school week here...) meant we might not get to everyone before we moved to some other country, so it was nice to have a little extra time for visiting. There were a lot of reunions. We saw friends who had moved to Israel three years ago who we hadn't seen since. And maybe for even a year before they left. The last time we lit candles together our oldest was two months old and their three girls (now nearly teenagers) took turns smothering him with love. We visited a family who we last saw in London seven years ago when our oldest kids were babies. Their daughter and our son are only two weeks apart and hadn't seen each other since. It didn't seem to matter. And of course we saw our son's betrothed, the little girl he's known since they were both a month old. Our families have grown at the same pace so get-togethers are especially easy and enjoyable.

It's hard to believe it was exactly a year ago that we told our parents about our plans to move back to Israel. Before they were even plans really. Just ideas. And now we're here a year later. We're eating sufganiyot. We're cleaning the floors with a squeegee. We're drinking coffee at 4pm. We're driving through check-points. We're paying bills at the post office. We're texting in Hebrew. We're parking on curbs. We're eating a lot of olives.

We're definitely here and we're starting to feel settled.

Hanukkah at the Jerusalem Mall

2011-12-20T00:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the baby and I went to the Jerusalem Mall. Yes, even Jerusalem has a mall. And a rather nice one too. It's about twenty minutes and two roadblocks from here. I'm still getting used to the whole West Bank proximity thing. In the United States you have all these ideals like that Palestine should be fully sovereign. No more settlements. Dual control of the borders. The list goes on. But then you live here and the easiest way to the mall is through the West Bank. Easy since no one bugs you because you and your pasty white baby and your Mazda 5 don't exactly fit the terrorist profile. There's an even shorter way too, according to my iPhone, which takes you along some unrecommended roads. I realized in time and aborted that mission. It's all very surreal.

As was the experience at the mall. My copilot and I browsed around for a few hours looking at all the shops with beautiful clothes and shoes. We found my favorite art/office supply store and bought some two ring A4 binders to get in step with Euro/Israeli style filing. And we breathed in the smell of freshly fried donuts for Hanukah. I even had a peek at the food court, which, besides offering more middle eastern faire in addition to Sbarros pizza and McDonald's, is pretty much as you would expect from a food court. I also loved the sign that listed a bunch of services down a hallway, including the bathrooms, tailoring, mall management and a synagogue. Once I can get some babysitters lined up, there are several pair of size 39 shoes with my name on them.

Happy Hanukkah!

The empties

2011-12-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

The best thing about this pile of boxes is that they're empty. This week started out great but quickly deteriorated. We were so excited to greet our container on Sunday, the one to which we bid farewell in California exactly two months ago. The one crammed with ten years worth of stuff we obviously don't need since we haven't seen most of it since we put our house on the market last February. The one that was full of plastic toys made in China only to travel back to China, switch boats, and then continue on through the Suez Canal to the Port of Ashdod. And while I should have been deliriously happy to watch the four delivery guys deposit box after box in what I thought was our largish new house, instead I felt an emptiness set in. Why do we have so much crap? Why did we pay money to move it here? How will I ever move back to America if all of my stuff is here? How can we unpack if the shelves and bookcases we need to contain all of our crap are only arriving next Wednesday on a different container? FUUUUUUHHHHH. K! And how the eff am I going to get through all of these boxes with Mr. New Tooth Bronchitis Walrus Snot Face McEye Boogers as my constant companion?*

It was not a great week. And yet somehow I managed to unpack the entire kitchen into a space that has half as many cupboards as our old kitchen.** And we managed to get the kids' room functional. And Mr. Rosen built our bed. The one I thought I didn't like but now I ABSOLUTELY LOVE. And all the bathroom stuff is in the bathrooms where there is incidentally a ridiculous amount of storage space leaving us to ponder whether or not it is inappropriate or even gross to keep our tupperware or ziplocks or wineglasses so close to the toilet. Chime in if you have an opinion about this.

We did have some wins this week. The kids continue to like school. We might have made some friends. The psychotic clown at the Israeli birthday party we attended did not give my daughter nightmares. Our kids have health insurance.

One day at a time.

* I love my baby.

** At one point there was one giant box remaining in the kitchen and I thought there is no way this kitchen can absorb even a single extra teaspoon, let alone a giant box of dishes. Miraculously I opened it to find a hamper inside of bigger hamper inside of a still bigger hamper. And the angels wept. Amen.

The Bar on the Mountain

2011-12-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

It sounds better in Hebrew. Bar BaHar. It's a beautiful little cafe five minutes drive from our house that overlooks the Judean Hills. They serve delicious coffee and a killer shakshouka. If you follow a path just outside of the cafe you get to a charming wooden play structure. The path continues and is perfect for an after-school bike ride. And since our bikes and everything else we own is arriving tomorrow afternoon (!!!) we may be making Bar BaHar a weekly tradition. Did I mention the free wifi?

School Daze

2011-12-09T02:14:00.000-08:00

Israeli kids are really exuberant and they move in swarms which can be completely overwhelming to a couple of sensitive kids from a culture that values personal space and manners above all. My kids didn't have a chance.

My daughter started preschool last Sunday (Sunday is the first day of the week here) and managed pretty well for a few hours. The problem is that prek and kindergarten are managed by a regional council of the Ministry of Education. So you don't actually pick where the kids go, at least when you move to town this late in the year. You get placed. And we got placed in the only place with space which is a kindergarten. Meanwhile my daughter won't be five until February. So she's the youngest by a lot. The idea is that she'll stay there next year too (but her friends will go to first grade). It's not ideal. And I tried to make a stink about it but no one would budge. So on her first day a gaggle of girls with the best intentions attack her wanting to do her hair and dress her up and draw pictures for her. All the while yammering in Hebrew. My poor girl basically curls up fetal-like in a corner and sucks her thumb.

That same Sunday we went to my son's elementary school to register him. He would only start the next day. While there he starts to complain of a stomach ache which I chalk up to nerves. When we get home he crawls onto the futon (our only piece of furniture currently) and stays there moaning for several hours. Then I discover he has a fever. And then he proceeds to throw up for the next four hours. May be more than nerves. He doesn't make it to school on Monday.

Meanwhile, our girl goes back to preschool on Monday and makes it through another day with the help of some puppets - Shmuli the hedgehog and Morris the Fox. Trooper.

On Tuesday my son is finally ready for school. He doesn't have his books yet but he does have his uniform. He wears his red hoody sweatshirt with the school logo and meets his teacher, the one we'd heard good things about and were hoping for, in the front office. Score. Turns out all the kids are supposed to wear green, yellow or red (was it Rasta Day?)* so he would fit in great. He gives me a kiss and walks to class with his teacher. I pick him up a few hours later and he looks worn out and like he is about to burst into tears. They had swarmed him apparently and pulled him in a million directions and wanted to show him their soccer trading cards and invite him to a birthday party after school and be best friends. And all he wanted was for everyone to stop talking. Which he made clear at some point when he couldn't take it anymore. Poor kid. He was hungry too and thought he missed lunch somehow. There is no lunch at school. It ends at 1:30 and the kids eat lunch at home or aftercare. Only snack at school. Aha. He also can't follow along in class because he doesn't have his books yet.

Mr. Rosen runs out to buy his books later that day and comes home $150 poorer with sixty pound of books. That's when Mr. Rosen and I hit a low. Why did we take our son out of his amazing school in California so he could sit in class and do workbooks all day long? And this was supposed to be one of the country's better schools.

The next morning he cries that he doesn't want to go to school. He hates school. Hates school? I had never heard him say such a thing. He once told me he wished he could sleep at school because he loved it so much. My heart breaks for him. I pull out whatever anecdotes I can think of. I remind him that his friends Ido and Leonard and Itzel all spoke other languages at home and had to work extra hard in the beginning of kindergarten to catch up and now in first grade they are all speaking and reading and writing beautifully in English. It takes time. He humors me and agrees to go to school. We don't realize it is his teacher's free day (or that there is even such a thing as a free day) and he has a bunch of other teachers for PE, music, road safety (this is a big focus in school apparently - probably because of the way people drive here). He has no idea what is going on and we are equally in the dark.

His sister, on the other hand, appears to be doing well and is making friends. We are fooled into thinking that she is fully acclimated.

On Thursday I pick up my son after school and he has another fever and a rash on his face and it is clear that he is not going to school on Friday. He's a mess. I'm a mess too. I just didn't think it would be this hard and I have to remind myself that it's only the first week and he's only seven and he is completely out of sorts. His Savta comes to visit and sits down with him when he's feeling better to do some of his workbook exercises to catch up. Turns out he likes working in the workbooks. He learns four letter in one hour. By the next day he's reading in Hebrew. A switch has been flipped.

By Sunday, he's ready for school and he's feeling himself again. I pick him up and he tells us about a friend, Roi, who he's been hanging out with at recess. Progress. His teacher and school counselor let us know that he is ahead of his classmates in math and following along pretty well in Hebrew. And that he is a clever and wise little boy. He has endeared himself to the authority figures, as is his way. This morning he tells me he loves his school. I feel like I won the lottery.

Meanwhile in preschool, our little girl is becoming more and more clingy at drop off. She understands that this is not just a temporary thing and she wants out. On Wednesday I leave her there sobbing. And I spend the whole day wondering if I should just keep her home. Or demand she be placed with kids her age. Or start my own preschool. Of course when I pick her up she's fine. She even has a new friend who asks for her phone number to invite her over. Progress.

This has been the hardest thing so far. Harder than the whole health insurance debacle. It's made us question all of our decisions. Was this move the right thing? Would they have gotten a better education in the States? It's obviously too early to tell but we are encouraged by their progress and by the willingness of their teachers to welcome them and ease their transition.

* I later realized it was national road safety day so the kids dressed in the colors of the stoplight.

Fat and Fruit Salad

2011-12-07T10:01:00.000-08:00

And on a lighter note, something I concocted to lift my spirits last week. All local goodies. I call it the fat and fruit salad:

avocado
tzfatit cheese (spongy and salty - feta probably works well too)
sun gold tomatoes
pomegranate seeds
olive oil
salt

Beautiful in the bowl and tasty on the tongue. Apparently one cannot live on pita and Nutella alone. So says my colon.

How it hit the fan and then I lost it

2011-12-06T12:25:00.000-08:00

Well it was only a matter of time before what all was on the sidewalk, would rise up and hit the fan. We are on the other side of a horrible week. Things were moving along and we were getting everything done but Mr. Rosen was soon to start work and there were still some bureaucratic items hanging in the balance. One of them was our residency status. As returning citizens of Israel we're entitled to certain benefits, one of which is an exemption on the social security we haven't been paying for the last ten years (since we've been paying into another country's system). The deal is that if you've been away long enough and you come back, you pay a bunch of money and then you get reimbursed by the government, half right away and half after a year. And paying into this system means you have health insurance too. Apparently when Israel went universal with health care many years ago they figured it was easier to run it through social security since that system was already in place. Easy peasy.

Turns out that my status is a little different since I am technically a new immigrant whose status was frozen when I left Israel eleven years ago and now resumes as do some of my new immigrant rights. Some of the rights are useful like financial help setting up my studio. Others are less useful. One thing is for sure: I have a six month waiting period for my residency to kick in and I used up my six months of free health care in 1998 when I moved here originally so we ponied up for private health insurance for me. Mr. Rosen and the kids were supposedly insured the moment they returned, so said everyone with whom we spoke. Not true. It took us two full weeks to get all of our residency paperwork in order, not to mention the strike, so the earliest we could pay this chunk of money was a few days ago. Then the website where you pay was down. FAAAA!!! Meanwhile the insurance we had through Mr. Rosen's former employer was going to expire November 30. And that's exactly when the baby and my older son came down with 103 fever and a horrible rash. Less horrible for the seven year old. Full blown on the baby.

I posed the question of how to get my kids seen by a doctor to a Facebook group I found of English speakers in my town and everyone was sure we could be seen in the clinic. Not true. I went to the clinic and explained our very complicated situation but the receptionist insisted we go somewhere else because we didn't have magnetic health insurance cards. That is when I went all mama bear and started shrieking about how my baby might have measles (it did in fact look like measles and about four other viruses according to Dr. Google). No dice. I walked out hysterical and a nice young woman offered to drive me to another town where she was pretty sure they would take us. We followed her through a checkpost into what is technically the West Bank to a religious town where everyone has twelve kids with rashes so they probably wouldn't even ask for a magnetic card. At this point I am on high alert having forgotten after being away for eleven years that it's totally normal to drive into the West Bank and go to a health clinic in an ultra-orthodox town. Our tour guide sits with us while we wait to be seen except they won't see us either. The kids national identity numbers are not yet in the system. It can take two weeks from the time you established residency. And this is when I ask why on earth would it take two frigin weeks for the country-wide computerized system to be updated? I mean it only took god one week to create all the world! How does it get updated? By hand? Courier pigeon? Maybe a tiny gnome writes the numbers down on a paper and brings the papers by bike to the Ministry of Health? I decide to take pictures of my baby and send them to my brother in law and my pediatrician friend and they both give the same diagnosis which I pretend is the same as being seeing by a doctor in person. Because our only other option is urgent care, which I would only resort to if the rash randomly turned into appendicitis or something.

We're on day five of the rash and it's slowly fading. And my disbelief and disappointment in what I once considered an exemplary national health care system is also fading. Every system has its cracks. We happened to fall into more of a crevasse. And all this during the same week that our kids started ~~hating~~ school. It was a little more than my delicate system could handle. It seems all that time in California made us soft. Got to get me some thicker skin, the kind with long, pokey spines. Stat.

Watch out for poop

2011-11-29T01:59:00.000-08:00

In Israel you have to keep an eye out for poop. Dog poop. Because it's everywhere. Israel is ahead of its short 63 years in terms of technology adoption, universal health care, drip irrigation, solar water heating and pita, but they are sorely behind the times in terms of cleaning up after dogs. Even in a small town like the one in which we live as of four days ago, there is still poop on the side walk. So when I walk with my kids to school, we have our heads to the pavement always scanning for poop.

Don't misunderstand. The dog shit situation has improved in recent years, to be sure. When I lived in Tel Aviv thirteen years ago I had to almost tiptoe to work because the sidewalks were so covered. Do pet owners here just think that dog shit is magical and just disappears at the end of the day? Or maybe special poop fairies come out at daybreak to turn the poop into milk and honey?

In our case watching out for poop is tough because where we live there is astonishing beauty around every corner and it's distracting. The old stone houses. The olive and fig trees. The cobalt blue sky. The bougainvillea. It seems to be the perfect metaphor for our own situation as newcomers. So far our settling in has been a great success. We have a car! We moved into our home! We bought a fridge! We have Internet service! We have a bank account! Our kids are in school! I found the place to buy my son his school uniforms thirty minutes away along a winding road in the middle of the Judean Mountains! Beautiful!

But then you hit a ~~dump~~ bump. Like today, for instance. Mr. Rosen left at 7am to go to the Social Security administration so that he and the kids would be registered as returning residents and therefore be entitled to health coverage. Getting to this stage required a mountain of proof that we are actually residing in Israel in general and in our little town specifically. To help us out Saba Rosen stood in line for us to deliver this paperwork yesterday afternoon only to be told that they don't handle these requests in afternoon hours and anyway they can't do it in that office because now that we've moved, we have to take care of it in the Jerusalem office. Hence, Mr. Rosen's early morning departure leaving me to get all three kids ready and out the door by 7:40 for our oldest son's first day of first grade. Turns out that the Social Security Administration is on strike today. And closed tomorrow. That's some seriously stinky poop on the sidewalk if you ask me.

Such is life here these last two weeks. All things moving along pretty well. And just when you've spotted an alarmingly beautiful patch of bougainvillea and you can't believe your luck, you look down to see you've stepped in the poop.

Thankfully there is more bougainvillea around the corner. In our case, Mr. Rosen was able to get to the customs office instead since they're not striking and now all systems are go to receive our container in a little more than a week, barring any unforeseen acts of piracy or god. The sidewalk is clear again.

Welcome to Israel

2011-11-17T04:58:00.000-08:00

Shalom! We arrived yesterday evening with all family members in tact and only missing one piece of luggage - the baby's car seat (he rode commando from the airport), which arrived to my in-laws this morning via London. When we got to passport control and the woman in the next line over cut in front of us when our window became available, I knew we'd arrived in the right country. The older kids went to sleep last night around 11pm and woke up at noon. Not bad. The baby was up pretty much from midnight until 4am. Not great.

Mr. Rosen and I ducked out at 10 this morning to start our administrative journey. We dragged the baby along in an effort to reset his internal clock. First stop, the Ministry of the Interior where we had to change our National ID cards to reflect our marriage and three kids. As we got out of the car I started to put the baby's little fleece slippers on and Mr. Rosen said, I don't think he needs those today (it's about 65 out). I knew that if we didn't put them on I would get reamed by at least eleven older women for exposing my child to the elements. We stopped for a latte at the mall under the ministry and a fifty year old man mentioned to us that it was windy outside and that our baby should have a sweater. Didn't see that one coming. While we were sitting there we also saw a young woman come in with her friends to get coffee wearing the clothes she was trying on from the store next door still with tags and a security device attached. Maybe she got thirsty all of a sudden? Only in Israel.

We headed upstairs to get passport pictures taken and we saw a a religious woman (head covering and modest flowy garb) and her teenage son (side curls and giant knit kippah) in line, both wearing Vibram five-finger frog feet "shoes". I guess the quest for good arch support is universal.

With our photos and baby in hand we headed upstairs to the Ministry. The Bedouin man ahead of us was there to register his newest child too. I overheard the clerk ~~doing triage~~ handing out the numbers at the front desk say to him, first wife or second? Nice. The Bedouin are still keeping it real I guess.

After waiting for about forty minutes, which was not a long wait considering the last time I was here fifteen years ago I actually learned how to knit and completed a six foot long scarf in the time it took before I spoke to anyone official, it's our turn. We are both in the system as citizens but it apparently takes the same system 72 hours from the time we go through passport control to recognize we are in country. We have to come back on Sunday. Minor setback. Fortunately Mr. Rosen can come by himself and complete the task for both of us.

Next up, finalizing the bank account that my in-laws already opened for us. On Thursdays the banks are closed from 12-4 and reopen from 4-7. Until then, the kids are at the park and the baby is asleep and mama needs to take a shower. In queue after the bank, shopping for a refrigerator, Ministry of Absorption, elementary school registration and dealing with our iPhones that don't work here. Good times. So far I have not yelled at anyone or cried or used any vulgar hand gestures.

Dear California

2011-11-15T06:04:00.000-08:00

Hi there. How are you? 72 degrees and sunny as always? Just checking in before we fly out tonight. I've been thinking about you a lot and how much we've been through together. I know I haven't always been your most loyal resident. Remember how I used to wear long sleeves and turtlenecks year round in elementary school and tell people I was originally from New Hampshire? Sorry about that. But in my defense I was never exactly your type, at least as far as appearances go. I never tanned. I was a freckle puss from day one practically. I hated the beach and no one was watching out for my skin. It was the seventies and eighties after all. So I figured we might as well go our separate ways.

But I was so wrong! There is so much more to you than your constant sunshine. I love your fruits and vegetables. I love your ocean cliffs. I love your elephant seals. I love your national parks. I love Disneyland. I love your beach boardwalks, your Hollywood hoopla and your spring skiing. I love your taquerias, your dim sum, your In-N-Out, your pho, your pad thai, your chicken tikka masala, your sushi, your grass fed beef and your tofu. I even love your neon strip malls. How's that for devotion?

So for the record I'm sorry I once wished I was from the east coast. It was immature. Now I realize just how much you have given me and how much you have to offer yet. I'll be back one day.

love always,
Susie

Where it all began

2011-11-14T18:58:00.000-08:00

On Sunday we met up with an old and dear friend of mine and his amazing wife and two delicious daughters. They live on the Lower East Side of Manhattan about two blocks from the corner where my grandmother grew up and about eight blocks from where Mr. Rosen's grandmother was born and raised. In fact we told this to Grandma Rosen and she asked if we had seen all the pushcarts. She remembers it very differently from the funky, eclectic, bistro'plenty place it has become. But even though the vibe is very different now, it was easy to imagine what it looked like a hundred years ago when these women were born. The streets are still lined with five story walk ups (read: three million dollar tenements) and their ubiquitous fire escapes.The pickle guy is still there and plenty of kosher delis. Although now the neighborhood is peppered with Chinese grocers and organic juice bars.

It got me thinking about all of the Jews who came over from Europe at the turn of the century. My dad's parents arrived as kids from Poland and what is now Romania. Back then the country designation made no difference if you were Jewish. Your nationality was Jew and the authorities made it clear you were living on borrowed time.

All of this seems especially poignant right now as we prepare to cross the ocean and start our lives anew. While we like to complain that the process and the packing and the goodbyes and the schlepping seems never ending, we are most certainly doing it on our terms. No one is chasing us out of America. We are not refugees. We are not saying goodbye to loved ones forever only to land in a country full of hardship. On the contrary. We feel loved on both sides of this journey; we are dual citizens; we're making this move because we want to, not because we have to. That feels incredibly fortunate to me. And we owe it all to our grandparents whose generation made terrible sacrifices so that we could enjoy the liberties they or their parents never had in Europe.

Same old story

2011-11-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

Back in the day.

It turns out that having a lot to write about makes me not want to write anything. The stories pile up in my brain and then there's like a bottleneck in there. I have storytelling constipation. I happen to have the regular kind of constipation too but that's from all the moving around. So where are we these days? We're with family in New York. And we fly to Israel on Tuesday.

Our last week in the Bay Area was ridiculous. Even after sending all of our stuff on the container we still had a house full of odds and ends. We decided to have a goodbye/u-pick party as in, come say goodbye and take a can of tuna for the road. Or a toaster to remember us by. Lots of teary goodbyes. My sister-in-law and I had a sob fest that I think caught us both by surprise.

And then, without much ado, we got in our rental minivan and left Northern California. Eleven years earlier, to the day in fact, Mr. Rosen and I left Israel to embark on a new adventure together. We were only two of us back then. Now we're five. Back then we each had a backpack. Now we have eight suitcases and a twenty foot container. Back then we had palm pilots. Now we have iPhones. The cast has grown and a few of the props have changed but it's basically our same old story unfolding again. Can't wait to see how things turn out this time around.

Pssst...

2011-10-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

The kids on a photo shoot inside our container.

I'm still here. Surprise. I did not intend to take a month off the blog. In fact I think I only took a week off after the baby was born. That will give you some idea as to just how hideously busy we have been in the last month. Let me explain.

No, too much. Let me sum up.

Mr. Rosen flies to Israel to interview for a job in Jerusalem.
Mr. Rosen takes the job.
I find a house outside Jerusalem on the Israeli version of Craigslist and Mr. Rosen goes to see it
Mr. Rosen loves the house and rents it for November 20.
Mr. Rosen starts work December 1.
We are moving to Israel for real.
We need to pack everything and ship it to Israel.
We need a to do a lot of shit.
We panic.
We make a spreadsheet. Color coded.
We get the baby an American passport.
Our son turns seven. We skip the birthday party and camp out in his cousins backyard instead.
We hire a shipper.
Mr. Rosen gives notice.
I spend two weeks running around between IKEA, Cost Plus, Target, West Elm, Crate and Barrel, TJ Max, Bed Bath and Beyond, REI, Best Buy and Costco to fill up our container with America.
I lose my wallet (in one of the above places).
We starting sorting, shifting, purging, packing.
We start seeing friends to say goodbyes.
The shipper drops a 20 foot container in front of our house.
I cancel all my credit cards.
We think all of our stuff will fit in it.
Movers come to fill the container.
After it's half full we fear we have too much stuff.
We realize the movers packed all the kids toys and a bunch of crap we don't need while our furniture is mostly still on the driveway.
We buy more space in someone else's container to avoid getting a divorce.
Our stuff is gone.
Feeling guilty I organize a bowling party for my son on his Hebrew date birthday.
More goodbye gatherings.
Someone emails to tell me he found my drivers license on Highway 85 north while he was taking pictures of garbage and mangled car plastic for an art installation he's working on.
I sleep train the baby.
I develop mastitis - the kind with vomiting, fever and a giant red boob.
Mr. Rosen runs out at 2am to get me antibiotics and narcotics.
I cancel our magazines and forward our mail.
What's left of our stuff goes on Craigslist.
Mr. Rosen transfers half our money to Israel.
I pick up our medical and dental records.
We get the baby an Israeli passport.

That brings us to today. We are leaving the Bay Area on November 1st with our kids and whatever fits in two suitcases each. Before then we have to sell our car, get rid of remaining items and go trick or treating. And say goodbye to everyone we love. We'll be at Grandma's house for a week which may involve a trip to Disneyland and then we fly to New York where we'll be for another week. And then on November 15 we fly one way to the holy land. God help us.

Nuts

2011-09-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

plenty of nuts around here

Don't you hate it when you post something on Craigslist, for instance the bunk bed that you just bought on Craigslist but that you no longer want because your kids cried when they saw it and want to keep their old one that you don't like, and then arrange for someone to come look at it late at night when you're home alone with your three kids because your husband is in Israel and then tell your friend to call every five minutes in case the buyer is really a psychopath and then answer the doorbell anyway even though you're terrified and sweating a lot having just locked all the doors and windows even though it's like 85 degrees in the house and it turns out to be a six foot three adorably doughy young man from Singapore who magically fits the entire thing into his Mazda 5 and by the time he leaves you're wired from all the adrenalin and the glass of coke you had from the two liter bottle in the fridge leftover from your dance party (don't you just love the way cold coke claws down your throat in the best possible way) so you watch the first five episodes of 30 Rock since you remembered that your friend loaded like seven seasons on your computer when you visited him in August and then you go to bed after midnight knowing full well your baby will be waking you in one hour and then two more hours?

You and me both.

Sold

2011-09-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

We say goodbye to 607 Leksich Ave. The baby thinks parting is such sweet sorrow.
He may also be taking a dump in this shot.

Did I ever mention how it came to be that we sold our house?

Remember in April, how we took it off the market after an offer was rescinded because of some confusion over the status of the house - whether it was technically a condo or a single family home? And remember how we were secretly relieved and planned on putting it back on the market in the fall. Plans are funny like that.

It turns out that right before the baby was born we got an offer on the house from a former colleague of mine and his wife. They came over when I was 39 weeks pregnant and said they loved it. They brought their agent the next day. They sent us an offer two days later with the exact price we wanted, a long escrow and two months or rent-back. We signed that offer the same day we signed our baby's birth certificate. Big day. In my birth story I made mention of downloading some forms between contractions. Those were for the house and needed to be signed by Wednesday and it was Monday and I was about to leave for the hospital and somehow I had the wherewithal, barely, to bring them with us, so that in a moment of post partum ~~agony~~ bliss, we could sign. So instead of signing as originally planned on the eve of Passover, the liberation from slavery, we signed on the eve of Shavuot, the day we received the ten commandments. I love when my life lines up with the Torah.

And while we were thrilled to have this lovely couple (half Israeli, half American - sound familiar?) buy our home, the next forty-five days were filled with untold stress as we tried to manage a mountain of paperwork and tend to a newborn. Oh and the other two kids. And there were major stumbling blocks. Like the one where it turns out because of a recording snafu in the seventies we actually owned our property but our neighbor's garage and vice versa. Nice. All that stuff had to be untangled and we didn't have an agent. We drove our agent to leave real estate altogether after the previous deal fell through so we were left high and dry. We ended up hiring a friend of ours who is real estate attorney saving us much money but causing us to run around scheduling inspections and unearthing old contracts. Many sleepless nights. But we were up anyway with our infant so who cared.

So all's well that ends well. And this epic tale ended beautifully on Saturday evening. After we closed on the house we were able to rent it back from the new owners for two months which meant that we could actually spend some time relaxing in what still felt like our home for the entire summer. Last week we moved into a three month sublet not too far away (the home of a professor who is teaching abroad this quarter) and Mr. Rosen moved all of our stuff over the course of the week. On Friday we lit Shabbat candles one last time in our empty little house and sang songs and shared some of our best memories from that special place. And on Saturday night we had a dance party in our empty house complete with glow bands and much alcohol while a sitter watched all three kids in our new place. Genius.

And now we have three months to figure out how we are moving ourselves and our stuff to Israel. The saga continues. Turns out moving to Israel is not as straight forward as it was when my two suitcases and I did it fifteen years ago.

I work full time

2011-09-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

I used to work full time in an office. I liked work. But I didn't love it. And I was having a hard time rationalizing spending 8-10 hours a day away from my kids for something that I didn't love. There was the money, which we needed. We still need the money. But we realized eventually that while money comes and goes, time only goes. And time with these kids was precious and fleeting and I better start spending more of it with them. So I stopped working in an office and I started working at home a few hours a day painting and selling my work. And my kids spent less time at preschool and a lot more time with me.

And then I realized that what I had really wanted was a way to paint and sell my work and explore what other untapped creative potential lay buried inside me and spend some time with my kids but not a lot of time. And not time in the car or on the way to anywhere. Like gymnastics or Hebrew school. And what I mostly wanted was to spend time with my kids while they were happy and charming and then magically disappear when they started getting annoying or taking so much time to put on their shoes that they eventually needed the next shoe size or insisting to sit on the booster seat next to the window instead of the one in the middle next to the shrieking baby.

The promise of part time work and part time child-rearing was misguided at best. Foolish, more likely. There's nothing part time about what I do. I work around the clock these days. I'm up two to three times a night nursing. Then we're all up getting ready to get out of the house in the morning. I'm driving to school, I'm driving home, I'm driving to the supermarket, I'm making food, I'm picking up, I'm emailing proofs, I'm nursing, I'm straightening the house, I'm printing some orders, I'm playing with the baby, I'm helping with homework, I'm brushing out tangles, I'm weeding out the 4Ts to make room for the 5Ts, I'm reading stories, I'm nursing, I'm calling UPS to track a shipment that went awol, I'm brushing someone's teeth, I'm writing this blog, I'm going to bed and then I'm repeating the whole exercise again. Everyday. Forever. With a smile.

Lumpy birthday to me

2011-09-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, today is my birthday. And my adorable southpaw baby boy gave me mastitis in my right boob. He prefers the left. Good times.

For my birthday I also reopened my shop and restocked it with all of your favorite prints and cards and for TODAY ONLY (possibly tomorrow if I can unplug these milk ducts) I'm offering 38% off (maybe you can guess why). Go here and use this code: BIRTHDAY38 and get those new baby and wedding gifts off your back, get all of your Jewish New Year cards and gifts out of the way and then reward yourself for being so on top of your gift giving obligations. Go crazy!

If you need me, I'll be alternating warm and cold compresses between pumping, massaging and nursing.

Homecoming

2011-09-05T22:12:00.000-07:00

Even though he won't remember a thing, we have proof the baby enjoyed his first road trip.
Especially the view.

We're back home. I think we were all happy to be home for about a day and then we started missing our trip. Everyone asked me how it was possible to travel with three kids including an infant in a van for four weeks. I can hardly understand it myself, but it was wonderful. It was a lot of work. Especially on nights when we camped. But most of the work, the loading and unloading of our gear, the setting up, the breaking down, the cooking, the cleaning was handled by Mr. Rosen. I was on baby watch. And baby feed. The breastaurant was open 24 hours. So while I wasn't on duty for any of the heavy lifting, I did put three pounds on our baby and that counts for a lot. By the end of the trip none of his clothes fit for which I take personal pride. These aren't lowfat knockers.

After Utah we met some friends in Salida, Colorado, friends who are also moving to Israel albeit three months before us. Their eldest daughter is the one that my son has been friends with since birth. They played beautifully as did their middle daughter and our middle daughter and as it happens they have a three months old. We are perfectly paired.

And then it was the final haul to New Mexico where we returned the Bear Proof Vehicle to its rightful owners and enjoyed some quality times with the Rosens. We realized early on in the trip, after the first exhausting night of camping, that this trip was not about us. It was about the kids - creating some family lore for them. Filling their summer with idyllic childhood experiences. Letting them explore. Making them watch hour after hour of classic Loony Tunes in the van.

Some of the highlights:

Cooling off in the creek at Lithia Park in Ashland
Kayaking on the Oregon Coast
The Wolf and the Bear food cart
Seeing my 5th grade teacher Mr. Marshall at the Saturday Market in Portland
Eating wild strawberries
Mt Hood
The hour that Mr. Rosen and I had in the morning on our anniversary after three kids inexplicably went back to sleep
White water rafting in Bend
Deserted hot springs in Eastern Oregon (deserted everything in Eastern Oregon)
My daughter's knock knock jokes (this merits its own post)
Monsoon rains in Utah
Two terrified kids snuggled into the same sleeping bag during a lightening storm overhead
Double rainbows
The river walk in Escalante National Monument
Picking apples in Capitol Reef National Park
Denny's
Rooftop margaritas with my brother in law and sister in law
My niece's fifth birthday at the alien themed roller rink in Santa Fe (where the baby had a blowout so big it almost dripped into my skates).
Friends and family we saw along the way - Danny and Tara, Danny and Rachel, Sue, John and Jessie, Jenn and David, Holly and Rob, Sim and Jen, Shirley and Ran, Yitz and Patricia, Saba and Savta. You guys made this trip unbelievable.

abedi abedi abedi, that's all folks.

Home Tour

2011-08-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Driveway

Bedroom

Bathroom

Kitchen

Laundry Room

Front Porch

Balcony

Kiva Koffeehouse

This strikingly beautiful two bedroom / one bath sits above Calf Creek and boasts 360 degree views of Utah's dramatic Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. The property features an open floor plan, chef's kitchen with all of the latest amenities and a separate open air laundry area. While the master bedroom is extremely roomy with a lot of natural light, the second "loft - style" bedroom offer a cozy respite from the elements. Best of all, the large bathroom offers panoramic vistas for a relaxing, often exhilarating, experience. The neighborhood rates very high on the walkability scale and is only a short ride to your morning coffee. Move quickly! This property may only last another 65 million years.

Bending

2011-08-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

A little stumptown coffee froth to show our love for Bend, Oregon - home to 80,000 ridiculously fit people who run, bike, kayak, raft, ski and swim 365 days a year. A little intimidating for this postpartum mama. We stayed with friends whom we hadn't seen in six years and, in fact, getting together required a little bending from both sides - a story for another time. Our three and their three were six peas in a pod. They played outside with the neighborhood kids (something that never happens in our neighborhood), they biked, the made up games, they splashed, they even went rafting. One of our friends in a rafting guide and took our son down the Dechutes river through Big Eddy rapids. The pictures are hilarious - a lot of terror. And jubilation at the end. We were sad to leave them.

After a night camping in Eastern Oregon at a beautiful hotsprings we drove straight through southern Idaho and found ourselves latenight at Denny's and the Western Inn. Yehaw! We're off to some National Parks for the next few days. Be back ~~sunburned~~ soon.

Bear Proof Vehicle

2011-08-12T23:51:00.000-07:00

Mr. Rosen and I have found ourselves in some hairy situations over the years in our various adventures. While camping in Spain we woke up surrounded by giant cows who tried to steal our breakfast. We once took a ride from a trucker in Turkey who wouldn't let us out where we wanted and started driving east to the Syrian border. In India Mr. Rosen almost got in a fist fight with a bus driver who claimed we didn't have valid bus tickets and threatened to kick us off. Good times. But our near encounter with a family of bears on Thursday night trumps all.

I was in the tent trying to nurse the baby to sleep and our daughter was already out. Mr. Rosen was in the van singing good-night songs to our son who was sleeping in the pop up roof. I'm half listening to him sing and half dozing off myself when I hear some moaning off in the distance. In fact it's the same moaning I'd heard the night before but this time I am hearing it at pretty regular intervals and I'm hearing it in a lot of different directions. I know instinctively that it's a bear. Probably a whole family of bears. It's a friggin bear country jamboree by the sounds coming out of the forest. Mr. Rosen continues to sing and I'm strategizing about how to haul ass out of this tent with my infant and sleeping four-year-old in the event of a bear attack. Plus I can never remember if it's with bears that you're supposed to make a lot of noise and look big or if that's with lions and with bears you're supposed to play dead. I'm also thinking that this chubby baby would seem like a nice scooby snack to a black bear. I'm thinking a lot things. Like maybe we shouldn't have camped so close to that wild strawberry patch. Like why the hell I am in the tent and Mr. Rosen is in the bear proof vehicle.

Finally Mr. Rosen emerges from the van and I call him over.

Me: Can you hear that noise?
Him: It's probably a coyote. don't worry about it.
Me. No. Stop and listen for a second.
Pause
Him: Huh. I think that's a bear.
Me: No shit it's a fucking bear.
Pause
Him: Maybe more than one bear.
Me: Like Yogi and Boo Boo?
Him: Plus the Berenstein Bears.
Me: What should we do?
Him: I'll start by putting our food away.
Me: Good plan.

So for the next ten minutes I watch from the tent as Mr. Rosen runs back and forth to the van about thirty times putting away all of our food and garbage. Then he comes back to the tent and says he thinks we should all sleep in the van. The big kids will be in the back (the back seats fold down to a full bed), me and the baby in the pop-up and he'll find a spot in the hull somewhere. He then moves our sleeping son in his sleeping bag to the back of the van. Then my daughter from the tent to the van. Then he takes mine and the baby's sleeping bags and positions them in the pop-up. Next he places the baby up there and I climb in along side him. Finally he sets up his own little space and we all huddle together in our armored fortress.

The next morning, our ninth wedding anniversary, there are no signs of a bear visitation but a guy from the forest service confirms that the place is teeming with black bears. So we packed up and moved on to Bend, a beautiful city further south with no bears but teeming with exercise fanatics, which makes me and my postpartum body wish we were still in bear country.

Conversation

2011-08-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

Mt Hood from Trillium Lake

Him: Do people die from the lava on Mt Hood?
Me: No sweetie. Mt Hood isn't an active volcano anymore. It stopped spitting out lava a long time ago.
Him: Then why do people die there every year?
Me: Nobody dies there. Who told you that?
Him: Danny told me that people die on Mt Hood every year.
Me: thanks Danny... Yes, people try to climb Mt Hood every year and sometime a few of them die up on the mountain.
Him: Why?
Me: Sometimes there are storms and people slip on ice or they fall a really long way and hit their heads or it's too cold.
Him: Why do people climb it if you can die?
Me: Some people really like to climb mountains. They like to climb all the way to the top and then say they climbed to the top.
Him: Why?
Me: Because they're stupid.

The end.

Food Carts in Portland

2011-08-06T23:27:00.000-07:00

We are loving Portland. It is gorgeous and all over the city there are little carts selling food. All kinds of food. And all kinds of carts! It's all kinds of awesome!

Yachats

2011-08-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

A few pics from our four days with old friends on the Oregon coast. And even though our beach house had seen better days, like maybe in the fifties, we were right near the water and had a giant lawn to ourselves where we did yoga every morning and let the kids run free. We even got together with a family from Corvalis whom we had met ten years ago in New Zealand. Besides sleeping in their garage a few nights when we couldn't find a place to stay in Christchurch, we spent an incredible day together kayaking with dolphins in Akarora. And now, ten years and three kids later, another memorable day on the other side of the Pacific.

Sign

2011-08-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

I saw this in front of a super cute store in Ashland and decided it was written for us.

Ashland, Oregon

2011-08-01T23:07:00.000-07:00

There's a creek that runs through the middle of this awesome park in this beautiful town so these fantastic kids went for a swim on a hot, hot afternoon after a long morning in the van.

Mt Shasta

2011-08-01T22:57:00.000-07:00

Where'd everyone go?

2011-07-31T22:47:00.000-07:00

Camping at Mt Shasta.

Cazadero

2011-07-31T10:43:00.000-07:00

The best part of Cazadero, besides the company and the food and the view and the weather and the vibe, is the quad.

Road Trip

2011-07-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

Northbound over the Golden Gate Bridge

We are on the road! Our baby turned eight weeks and we thought, shoot. Maybe we should take a roadtrip! Isn't that what most folks do with their infants? In July my brother-in-law and his family drove out to California to meet the baby in their crazy giant Sportsmobile van and now we're spending all of August driving it back to them in a very roundabout manner (via Oregon). I had hoped to post at least a picture everyday but finding wifi along the way is proving to be difficult. So I will just back date posts in batches whenever there's time.

Our first stop is Cazadero, a mountaintop hamlet near the Russian River in Sonoma county and home to our friends Danny and Tara. We met them five years ago at a cafe nearby and all fell in love. They said we were welcome to come back and visit anytime, which we have. Let this be a lesson to those of you who casually make this type of offer to us. We will likely come so the offer best be sincere.

I'm actually writing this on my phone as I sit in a little town on the Oregon coast. We're all smiles over here. Even Mr. Crampy Pants.

Dear Dad

2011-07-20T16:04:00.001-07:00

Stanley Lee Lubell 1939-1992

I had another baby boy. His name is Idan and he's almost seven weeks old. He looks like me! Well, me and mom. That's what everyone says anyway. Sometimes I pull out the pictures I have of you as a little boy and I'm astounded by how much Shalev looks like you. It's your face on my son! We're trying to convince him to take ukulele lessons in the fall with your old ukulele. If there's You Tube where you are, you most certainly will not want to miss out on that.

But more about Idan. He is your typical infant. His intestines are bunched up too tight or something so he's crampy and grumpy for many of his waking hours. Which are few, thank god. He's starting to flirt with the idea of smiling but so far he mostly just stares at the world in complete panic. You can hardly blame him. The world is kind of a scary place, and scarier since you left. He does have the softest angora hair on his head though, so I've decided to keep him. Because he's soft. He's my new wubby. wink wink.

The other big news is that we're moving to Israel. I wonder if you'd be supportive if you were still alive. The truth is it's probably a moot point since my life would have likely taken an entirely different trajectory if you hadn't died. I hate to say this, but I'm probably better for it. More resilient. More pragmatic. More resourceful. Which is not to say that a day doesn't goes by - really, not a single friggin day - that I don't wish you could know your grand kids (you have five now, not sure if you're keeping tabs) and your son-in-law and me for that matter and that we could all know you. I'm sure you'd be nuts for these kids. Especially Aviv. She is a pisser. Hard headed. Spunky. Charming. Sweet. Kind. Generous. Devilish. With a head of thick, dark brown curls. She's phenomenal. And she could probably use some extra attention now that we have the baby. She's kind of a pain in the ass lately. Poor girl. Last year when we were in New York visiting your family, she started calling Uncle Peter Grandpa. It was sweet. But made me sad.

Yes, Israel. Packing it up and moving there in the winter. Who knows for how long but we're trying it out. Your mom is a little worried about it but she's not as dramatic as she used to be. She is ninety after all. And mom seems to be okay about it too, although I know she'd rather we stayed put. She lives for these kids as you can imagine.

What else...I had a career switch and I've been selling my artwork the last two years while I wing it as a reluctant stay at home mom. That's also not easy and sometimes I wish I'd become a doctor like you. Because at the end of the day it's pretty high paying shift work for a mom. But I lacked guidance in my twenties and sort of flitted about. Good years, to be sure. But somewhat aimless. Anyway, the art and the business surrounding the art keeps my mind from atrophying too much and allows me to run around dropping off and picking up my kids from a million different places. My big dream these days is to write a book - a collection of essays about navigating mid-life with spirit, creativity and a sense of humor. And a GPS.

That's about it Dad. Nineteen years goes by pretty fast, huh. You can rest knowing your baby girl is doing fine. The kids and I talk about you a lot and what it means to die and how everyone dies and how we miss people. All healthy discussions, thanks to you. Give my love to Pop too.

I love you.
Susie

The case for maternity leave

2011-07-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

Above: picture of what nursing does to my son
Below: transcript of what nursing does to my brain

This is my first time being self employed after having a baby so it's been somewhat challenging staying away from work. Mainly because no one is currently paying me. And even though I've let it be known that I'm mostly on maternity leave, I'm still kind of taking orders but mostly not. So when a potential client called me the other day asking about a ketubah for an August wedding, I understood why maternity leave is so critical, especially in the first few months. This is how the conversation went:

her: So how does it work exactly?
me: Well, basically once you decide on a design and make your buy, I mean buy your transaction. I mean make your transaction, then I will send you the different texts to choose from and something to write in your information. Like a form. On the computer. A pdf.
her: You mean like an in-take form?
me: Yes. that. And then you fill it in with your details and tell me which text you want for the inside. That I can flow in. For the Hebrew part and the English too. which you can also write yourself. But you don't have too. I have texts. Jesus, someone take the phone away from me.
her: Can you send the texts now so I can get a head start?
me: Sure, no problem. Just send me your email address in an ETSY convo.
her: How about if you just write it down since we're on the phone.
me: Right. good idea. I'll just write that down.
her: Great. I really appreciate your taking this order even though you're on leave.
me: Yes. I appreciate you too. I mean *it*. I appreciate it. The order. And you, too. Thanks.

Remind me not to go on the radio or on any talk shows in the next few months since I sound like a moron.

Perplexting

2011-07-11T12:05:00.000-07:00

This is the picture of my son's mouth that I texted to my dentist wondering if I should bring him in to be seen. He has this crazy stubborn snaggle tooth that for the last two months has been about to fall out. But instead of falling out it has completely shifted to one side creating a space for what I can only imagine is some kind of saber tooth. So it actually looks like he's already lost the tooth, but alas, he has not. And adding to his frustration he recently got his six year molars so not only is he the only six year old in the universe, by his reckoning, that hasn't lost any teeth, he's actually getting more teeth. Life is not fair.

My dentist never wrote back. Is it bad form to send pics and questions to your health care providers on their cell phones? He did give me his cell after all. I should have learned my lesson two weeks before when I texted the mohel a picture of my baby's penis to be sure that all was healing well. Never got an answer there either. I might need a refresher on what is and is not an appropriate use of texting. I think I will lay off sending pictures until my hormone levels even out.

Keep Calm and Carry Idan

2011-07-10T16:46:00.000-07:00

I figure I better write this one quick before I forget again and have another baby.

Having a baby is rough. Even the third time around. I will admit that I sort of thought, well I've done this twice and my kids are older now, so how hard could it be to just add one more to the mix. He'll just get dragged around and he'll sleep though anything and he'll raise himself, kind of. I knew it would be a lot of work but somehow I thought it would be easier than it is.

It's not easy. Those first few weeks are horrible. Even if we take out the sleep deprivation and the hormones and the two other kids and the constant appeal for your attention, even without all of that, it's still so difficult. Because your body is wrecked. I was in constant pain for those first two, even three, weeks. I honestly forgot about the pain - nature's way of ensuring the survival of the species. And then add in everything we subtracted before and it's almost impossible. A former colleague of mine once told me that in her culture a new mom and baby are not allowed to leave the house for the first month after the birth and I used to think that was crazy. Now I think it's wise. And with my mom and mother-in-law helping me out this past month, it's basically what I was able to do - stay put. But now they're gone and in fact, everyone's gone.

I've actually been on my own with the baby the last few days. My other two are with Mr. Rosen and the extended Rosen clan in the Eastern Sierras for a camping trip (this morning my sister in law sent me a video of Mr. Rosen in his underwear playing Neil Young on his guitar surrounded by snow capped mountains, a flowing creek and green meadows - not bad). The day before they left I had a nervous breakdown wondering how I will manage with this grumpy baby who appears to be more in his tenth month of gestation than his first month of life. And how will I get anything done if I'm the only one around to hold him. Plus I was a little weepy about my kids being away for six days. That will be the longest we've been apart. And also wondering when my husband would ever bond with our son. I was basically an irrational basket case. The next morning the place was a complete circus getting ready for this trip but once they were gone I felt a calm wash over the house and over me. And the baby. For the first time since the hospital he could nurse without having his sister rubbing his head or kissing his feet or his brother asking a million questions. We didn't have to be anywhere. We finally had a moment to get to know each other a little.

So with the first tumultuous month behind us we are enjoying a few days of calm. We don't have to take anyone to camp or pick anyone up so our days are free to go grocery shopping or go on walks or see friends or do nothing at all but eat and poop. I even got around to filling some ETSY orders. And because I don't have to worry about when I wake up in the morning, the nights are easier. And then the whole day is easier and I can carry around this yummy little baby without carrying around the weight of the world.

Namesakes

2011-06-22T22:55:00.000-07:00

Grammy Edythe Kutlow and Grandma Helen Sachs

As read at his bris...

Dear Idan,
You’ve only been in our family a little over a week and already I can’t imagine my life without you in it. You are so tiny and yet your arrival on the 49th day of the Omer, the period of great anticipation before God gave us the Torah on Mt. Sinai, has profound meaning for our family. Like your brother Shalev, you showed up a day early for the big party. He was born a day before Simchat Torah and you, the day before Shavuot. I guess that’s how you get the best seats. Nonetheless your birthdate appears to be very auspicious. You were born on 6.6.11 at 10 to 10 at night. And I’m no gematria expert but when you multiply six and six you get 36 or double chai. It’s no wonder that you are a Gemini, the sun sign of the twins.

Your arrival is really the beginning of the next chapter in our lives, the one that’s set in Israel, and your name, Idan – meaning “era” in Hebrew – is meant to signify this new adventure. You are also named to honor two important women in our family. Idan is for my Grammy Edythe Kutlow. Your second name, Hillel is to honor your Aba’s Grandma Helen Sachs. Both were incredibly strong women who faced significant challenges in their younger lives but both lived to be well into their nineties. Edythe Kutlow, born in New York City, would have been 101 years old this year. She lived for several years in an orphanage when her own mother was unable to provide for her financially. A resourceful and beautiful girl she lived to find a life partner in Benjamin Kutlow, have three terrific children, nine fantastic grandchildren (I'm the ninth) and now her eighteenth great grandchild. She was incredibly gifted with her hands and made beautiful heirloom baby blankets, kippot, needlepoints and afghans. She even crocheted the kippah that your Aba is wearing today for our wedding nine years ago. She was 92. Aba’s Grandma Helen Sachs was born in Leipzig, Germany and managed to escape the Nazis with the help of her brother in 1939 to resettle in America. Many of her family members could not fathom the evil of the Shoah and stayed behind, including her mother who died in Auschwitz. Helen resettled in Worcester, Massachusetts and along with her husband Julius, had two wonderful daughters and three incredible grandchildren – one of whom was your Aba. You would be her sixth great grandchild Idan. Her lineage was meant to perish in the holocaust and yet here we are, celebrating your new branch on a family tree that only continues to flourish.

The name Hillel also honors the great rabbinic sage who is known for having said,
Im ein ani li mi li. If I am not for myself, who will be for me.
Uch sh’ani l’atmzi ma ani. If I am only for myself who am I.
V’im lo achshav, ematai. And if not now, when.

He is also known for his ethic of reciprocity, or "Golden Rule":
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.

You’ve come into a world with many challenges and you belong to a people, both Jewish and Israeli, that has faced and continues to face some of the greatest manifestations of hatred the world has known. And yet we are hopeful that you and your generation will be the ones to usher in peace, acceptance, compromise and love. That yours will be the “Idan Hillel” – the era of mutual respect. That is our greatest wish for you, for our family and friends and for the whole world. So you have a lot of work ahead little guy.

One last bit. Idan, you are our third and, it’s safe to say, our last child. Like you, I am also a third child. It’s not always easy Idan. The older two will be in cahoots a lot of the time and you’ll have to make up your own games and use your imagination a lot. You’ll make up for it with very close friends though and when you’re older the age gap between you and your siblings will fade and you’ll forget about how your big brother and sister teased you. Well you won’t forget, but you’ll forgive. Mostly.

And so today we welcome you into a family and a community that already loves you very very much. And we wish you a long and wonderful life shared with the ones you love.

After Birth Story

2011-06-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

The thing about the third time around is that the after part is horrible. Everyone said this would be the case, but I thought how bad could it be compared to pushing out a nine pound human? Turns out, pretty bad. My iron stores were already pretty low and some other blood related thing was low too. Clotting or white blood cell count or some such thing. So for two hours or more after the birth I had nurses and doctors pushing on my abdomen to help expel all of the crap that was hanging around in there. And there was a lot. Nevermind the placenta (which we brought home in a cooler, by the way, and had a friend dehydrate, pulverize and encapsulate for personal consumption. Kooky, to be sure, but good for the healing. And there's a lot of healing going on over here.) I'm talking about tons of blood and clotty bits of ME. Like human tissue. MINE. All this without even considering that I'm already in a world of pain from the 9 POUND BABY I have just passed through my vagina. And while I am grateful for what amounts to only about three hours of labor (as opposed to 28 with my first child and 9 with my second), a fast and furious delivery can often mean a train wreck downstairs, if you catch my drift. So the midwife puts on her seamstress hat and gets to work while the other nurses put on their baker hats and get to work kneading the flabby, doughy blob that is now my midsection.

After some time it appears that I am bleeding too much and there is some fear that something is left behind. Like maybe my lungs are still in there and my heart. Because I am sure that all else has been expelled. So they're weighing the blood and the doctor on call, the one I don't like, comes in to tell me that I will likely need a D&C which is short for drug the new mom and scrape out her contracting uterus with a small tennis racket. Terrific. At this point I sort of don't care, though part of me feels like I went through the trouble of having the baby drug free so it's a little annoying that now I need all of this medical intervention. Meanwhile my midwife is standing behind him mouthing don't worry dahling. We won't need to do it. The doctor's cookoo. The doctor says he'll have to come back in half an hour to see if the bleeding has slowed. That's when I get two shots of something in my thigh, another medication up my tush and a pitocin drip to try and get my uterus to contract, soften up (or maybe harden up - whatever it was supposed to do) and avoid the D&C. It works but the contractions are atrocious. Nevertheless I'm still flying on endorphins so none of it matters. And squishy baby is now being washed off and weighed and poked and rocked and kissed and swayed. Then he pees on Mr. Rosen. All systems are go.

I spend the next day and a half in the hospital getting pricked and poked and cathetered and pressed on. The baby slept both nights in the nursery because as much as I love the idea of rooming in, we'll be rooming in the next 18 years so I'd rather get some rest. Plus, Mr. Rosen was sleeping at home with the kids and there was no way I could get up at night to pick up the baby in a timely manner. Better they bring him in to nurse and hand him to me. It was painful enough just to sit upright in the bed.

My big kids come to visit with Grandma in the morning and they are thrilled with their new brother. My son is actually more thrilled by all of the medical equipment. And my daughter quickly climbs into bed with me. So I pick up my belly and move it to one side to make room for her. The rest of the day is spent getting my ice changed, getting my pee measured, taking ibuprofen and getting my son the snapping turtle to nurse. Good times.

And now it's just a matter of adjusting to our new situation. The first night home Mr. Rosen, in a sleepless fog, asked if we could just let the baby cry (he cried a lot that night. Big baby. No milk. Mad baby). I think we do that at four months, not three days. Lots to remember. Just today I remembered that trick about putting the baby down two hours after they wake up in the morning. Totally worked. Today anyway. Tomorrow is a whole other story...

Birth Story

2011-06-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

When my due date on June 4th approached I decided to sign up for some acupuncture so we could get this party started. Dr. Lee took one look at my belly and says, "Baby head on side. No good." No kidding Doc. Let's poke him with needles until he gets engaged in my pelvis! What say you? And that's exactly what he did. My mom had come to town two days before so we were fine with coverage and I was starting to worry that this baby was getting too big. Sunday comes and goes. On Monday I decide this is the day. I go to see my midwife in the morning but since she is on call and catching a baby, I see another midwife. I am two centimeters dilated. Not bad. I ask her to strip my membranes which I'm not even really sure what that is but I know it stimulates dilation and is less "messy" than drinking castor oil. Indeed she does a quick swipe and I grow to three centimeters almost immediately. At 2:30 I have my second appointment with Dr. Lee. He checks the pulse of my right middle finger and concludes, "Baby engaged. Let's make contractions." Let's do it Doc! More needles. I walk home after (how rad that my acupuncturist is two blocks from my house!) and spend the rest of the afternoon getting my stuff organized for the hospital and finishing up some orders.

At 4:30 a package arrives. It's the mezuzah that I ordered a week ago. When we had the house on the market we took down all of our mezuzahs to remove all religious affiliation. What were we thinking? How could we bring a new baby into the house without a mezuzah? So I ordered this one which arrived just in time and I hung it up on the correct side of the door so as not to offend any future carpet cleaners.

At about 5:30 I have a series of random contractions and sort of have the feeling it is showtime. I start making dinner for the kids and then walk over to the dry cleaners to pick up the tablecloth I had them make from this awesome piece of fabric I'd just bought. There is a mariachi band playing at the school across the street. Very festive. Today is definitely the day.

By 6:30 I am keeping track of contractions and texting my husband to get the hell home. I boil some water to make corn. Contraction. I download some paperwork. Contraction. Make the cous cous. Contraction. Hug my kids who are starting to wonder why mommy is leaning against the refrigerator ever five minutes and humming.

him: Is the baby on your vagina?
me: Pretty soon I think.

Mr. Rosen gets home and he gets everything in the car. We say goodbye to the kids and grandma. I am pumped! The hospital is seven minutes away and we arrive at 8:00 pm. My contractions are still pretty manageable but I am quite sure that things will move quickly. I come to learn later that Mr. Rosen is thinking he's in this for the next 10-15 hours and is unsure how he will manage the pain of his pinched nerve while trying to compress my hips during contractions. Brother.

I check in at reception and appear to be fairly calm for a woman in labor. Another midwife is somewhat doubtful based on my appearance that I will deliver any time soon. I remember doing this with my first baby and looking like a lunatic because I have been in labor already 24 hours and arrive at reception at 9 centimeters. This time around things are under control. Indeed, the nurse checks me and I am at 5 centimeters. They hook me to the fetal monitor and Mr. Rosen and I slow dance our way through about a half hour of contractions. My midwife arrives and ties a sheet around my belly to hopefully get the baby's shoulders in line with its head. By now the contractions are getting kind of hairy so I pad over to the shower and Mr. Rosen braces my hips during contractions while nurse Michelle counts them out for me and student nurse Manhung (yes, a lovely male Vietnamese nurse named Manhung, as in Man Hung), sprays my butt and back with warm water. At one point my midwife mistakenly calls him Hungman in her Mary Poppins accent and I'm pretty sure I giggled myself from 8 to 9 centimeters.

After about forty minutes I know it's time and I need to push. The contractions are relentless. Michelle checks me while in the tub with what feels like her whole fist and my water breaks so I hobble out of the tub and walk toward the bed. Meanwhile Manhung and the gang are trying to untie the wet bed sheet that I am wearing like a kimono. Do you have a visual? I come to learn that this is the first birth Manhung had ever attended. Awesome. He can't wait to get home and tell his new wife so they can hurry up and get pregnant. I can't even get to the bed before I have to push like crazy. I climb onto my side and pull my knee up to my chin and push as hard as I can. The gang is cheering me on. Manhung is shouting that I can do it. Something feels not quite right and my telepathic midwife tells me to roll to the other side when I realize this is exactly how I delivered my daughter. Another push and out came his head. One more push and out came the rest of him including my intestines, uterus, bladder, 30 years worth of swallowed bubble gum, a marble, three dollars and fifty cents, a rubber duckie and a pit bull. All of it. Just pouring out of me. Including about a liter of blood (this part will prove to be kind of scary but mostly annoying later in the story). And then he was on me. This giant, slimy, hairy gorgeous thing that only one second before was on the inside. He's out and I'm high as a kite.

part II to follow.

Welcome

2011-06-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

Idan Hillel (ee-DAHN he-LEHL)
6.6.11 at 9:50 pm
8 lbs 15 oz
21 inches (23 with hair)

All are recovering nicely at home.
The epic tale of his timely arrival coming soon.
Plus a few words about his name and namesakes.
For now, a big sigh of joy.
xoxo

Wiser for the journey

2011-06-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago I tried my hand at the National Stationery Show in New York. I had never been and I was five months pregnant and I had decided I would just wing it with my own line of cards. I did very little research, spent a few thousand dollars on the booth and a curtain and renting a table, plane tickets for my Mr. Rosen and my mom and I, and off we went flying by the seat of our pants. And I remember one night before going to bed saying to Mr. Rosen, what if I don't bring enough brochures or what if I can't fulfill all of my (zillions of) orders. Brother.

We got there and I felt completely overwhelmed. People had shipped or ordered whole store fronts. Everything in my booth we packed in our suitcases. I remember renting a car and driving to the IKEA first out in Jersey and then on Long Island looking for stuff to make our booth a little more substantial. We only had a day. We stayed with friends in Soho and used some of their furniture. And friends in New York stopped by the booth. It was cute in the end. But I remember feeling mostly dejected by the whole thing. Everyone had the same kind of stationery - little icons of purses and heels in pinks and greens, all preppy throw-back. Some of it was exquisite - the Hello! Lucky stuff and other letter press creations. But that cutesy stuff was selling well. Hardly anyone stopped in my booth. I had to kind of lure them in and puff out my belly so they'd think I was kind of cutesy. In the end it wasn't a complete bust. I got five contracts and one was even from Whole Foods in NYC. But still, altogether they maybe amounted to about $1000. Not exactly what I was expecting.

I sold that collection (it was the inner toddler stuff) for another few years, here and there. Some on ETSY and some to shops. When I was on maternity leave with number two I had renewed energy and actually reached out to some blogs. I even got some coverage on Cool Mom Picks and Design Mom. It was fun. But the sales weren't exactly pouring in. So I stopped. I mean, I was also working full time and raising these two kids. It was more than I could manage.

And then after taking some time off I got a second wind. Started my blog. Started reading other blogs. Got inspired by what some other self-taught artists were doing and started painting again. Different stuff. Started developing my own style. Started getting into ketubahs and Judaica and sort of found a little niche for myself. And here we are. Seven years later.

Two weeks ago one of my images debuted at the National Stationery Show with a company called Calypso. Not a whole collection, mind you. Just the one. But I didn't have to fly my pregnant self there and spend a week and a small fortune getting it seen. I just got an email one day in March that said they wanted to use an image. We agreed on licensing terms. And here we are. Ironically it's a "congratulations on your move" card. I have a stack of them at home now so when someone does decide to buy our house, I am well equipped to congratulate them.

Funny how sometimes the choices we make lead us back to the start - wiser for the journey.

Art therapy

2011-05-27T10:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning my daughter came into the office while I was trying to squeeze in some work time before getting the kids off to school and she asked if I always knew how to draw. And I told her that I always liked to draw and I did it a lot when I was a kid. And she got big tears in her eyes and said, but I can't do it like you. My drawings aren't pretty.

And the truth is they're not. Neither of my kids are prodigies, let's just say. Both of them mostly scribble. And I vacillate between being fine with that and being disappointed. How awful, right? But true. For a while my son talked all the time about how he wanted to be an artist. But he almost never decides to just get some markers and draw. He'll get them and write a letter about something or write his name with ten exclamation points. But drawing doesn't come to mind when he's bored at home. He'd rather write memos in his organizer. I'm not kidding. And when we sit down together to draw in the afternoon most often both kids want me to draw something for them or want me to decide what they should draw. Aren't kids supposed to be naturally free and expressive in their visual creativity? The whole exercise makes me irritated. Mostly because I know it's my own fault. I'm probably what's stifling them. I stifle myself sometimes too. The truth is I'm not great at drawing. It's hard for me to just draw a chair or a person or a piece of fruit. Which is why I don't draw those things. Play to your strengths, I say, which for me is color.

So when my little girl came to me distressed about her own abilities all I could think was that I wished I had something I'd drawn as a kid. A few paintings from kindergarten to show my kids that this is how it starts. A scribble. A stick figure. No aspect. No proportion. Just color and love. And outside the lines. Maybe we should go see a Jackson Pollack or Mark Rothko exhibit so they can see that even famous artists scribble and make a big mess.

That afternoon I decided to try something new. While my daughter was napping, my son and I tried some still life drawing and we both drew southpaw. Except he really is left-handed and I'm not. So it gave me an exercise in letting go a little which gave my drawings a kid-like quality. He liked them and liked how his pictures turned out too. It was positive all around. Then he asked if I wanted his drawings and I said absolutely yes. That's when he showed his true talent. He turned on all the charm and replied they cost $2 each. I might hire him to be my agent.

Finnished

2011-05-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Bridge Ketubah

It's not a title typo. I actually completed a ketubah a few weeks ago that was half in the traditional Aramaic and half in Finnish! Soon after I did a name print for someone in Hebrew, English and SANSKRIT which required an act of God, Vishnu and Buddha to get the font to work on my Mac. And my most recent multi-cultural expression was this Turkish/American ketubah, complete with a New York skyline, the wooden fence along the Jersey shore, Libra scales, the bridge over the Bosphorus or the San Francisco Bay or the East River (take your pick), the Sultan's signature, the Turkish flag, three evil eyes, an Istanbul skyline and a plethora of pomegranates (the name, in Turkish, of the groom's ancestral home). They've actually asked to change the sky to more of a periwinkle, which, thanks to the Photoshop magic wand, I can probably do. And then I'll finally be finnished too and ready to welcome a baby into this vibrant, connected world we've created.

One more coat Aba

2011-05-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Thirteen years ago I was doing an assignment for Fodor's in Sharm El Sheik Egypt and Mr. Rosen came along as my heavy. Well he came along to stay in fancy hotels for free and generally hang out at the beach while I wrote about accommodation and dining in the Sinai. In this post I mentioned a big fight we had had over the color of my toes. I had just returned from the United States with bubble gum pink toenails and he was appalled. They did look appalling, but in a fun, summery way.

Take note of above picture. This is what having a daughter does to men I think. Makes them all squishy and devoted. Mr. Rosen only has one daughter and by the looks of it, that's all he's going to get. Which is fine because frankly I don't think he could love another little girl any more than he does this one.

Underwater

2011-05-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

It's a race now to finish up on these last orders and commissions before I can breathe a little easier and relax a little until junior arrives. I'm almost done with a commission from the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. They had purchased twelve of my animal prints a while back which now hang in the Bass Center for Childhood Cancers and Blood Diseases. And about a month ago they called again to commission fifteen sea creatures for their pediatric surgery waiting room. FIFTEEN NEW ANIMALS. So you can image I've been feeling a little underwater, but nothing like the home stretch of pregnancy to light a fire under your tush (that might also be the hemorrhoids burning). So I cranked these little guys out over the weekend and now I'm in the process of preparing them for print.

Two commissions down and one to go. The third is an original ketubah design for an American bride and a Turkish groom. Lots of interesting symbolism. We even incorporated the Sultan's signature! That's a first.

Breakfast love champion

2011-05-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning my son woke up, went pee and then walked straight to the kitchen. My daughter and I listened as it seemed like he was maybe doing the dishes. Highly unlikely. But we heard him drag the chair to the sink and turn on the faucet and jangle around some glass and ceramic sounding things. A few minutes later he arrived in my bedroom with a bowl full of cereal, a teaspoon for my daughter and a tablespoon for me. And a giant grin. He made us breakfast in bed. He got the measuring cup out of the sink and washed it, measured the cereal so he wouldn't put too much, poured milk to almost cover the cereal and served us in bed.

True tale.

Mr. Rosen had decided last minute to go camping near San Francisco and then run the Bay to Breakers race and spend a day and a half by himself before ~~he's on house arrest~~ the baby comes. I'm all for these kinds of short breaks. For him and for me. So I was solo with the kids. Two nights before I had had a complete panic attack which included sobbing and hyperventilating in my bed. It was so bad that my daughter started crying and came to nuzzle and comingle our snot. I had just received my new macbook pro and was trying to migrate everything from the old machine and nothing worked and I was (am) sitting on a pile of orders, not to mention two more commissions, and a bunch more organizing before I deliver, so I just completely lost my shit. And I think it dawned on these kids that mommies sometimes have a hard time too. Even this mommy. So they stepped up in a big way which included breakfast in bed from a boy who every day of his entire life has woken up grumpy and walked into our room to whine for breakfast before he even says hello. Well now he says good morning half a second before he asks for breakfast, at my insistence.

But then on a random Sunday - not my birthday and not mother's day - he goes and measures cereal for a covert breakfast mission and all is made lighter. One gesture and being a mommy feels magical again.

ps. I have since figured out my data migration problem and the world, mine at least, is a peaceful place.

Everyone has a butt

2011-05-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

It took every bit of restraint and good judgement to not post the picture of my daughter at age two wearing my knee high boots up to her naked tush. Instead a picture of her with her cousin with their Saba.

These conversations never get old. The ones about vaginas and penises that you have with a four year old. And when you're pregnant and pretty explicit with your kids about how baby comes out, then conversation returns to this topic very often. The other day I was driving my daughter for her ear check-up and she starts in about how only girls have vaginas and only boys have penises. And our baby has a penis because he's a boy. But everyone has a butt. Then she listed everyone she knew who has a butt.

Ben has a butt.
Jonah has a butt.
Sienna has a butt.
Aba has a butt.
Mommy has a butt.
Grandma has a butt.
Shalev has a butt.
Saba has a butt.
Savta has a butt.
Saba has a butt.
Talia with the long hair has a butt.
Dr. Murray has a butt.
Aunt Jenny has a butt.

So we're all the same in the back! (her words).

How awesome is that? Why can't we all just get along since we all have butts? I'm going straight to the UN with this revelation.

Am I the only one

2011-05-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

Or are there other mothers in the world who want to be alone on Mother's Day? Well not completely alone. I want to sleep in while my thoughtful husband prepares a giant yummy breakfast for me and I want my kids to adorn me with all kinds of noodle necklaces and popsicle stick frames and flowers from our garden. And then I want them to leave me alone for the rest of the day to do whatever I want, which in the case of Mother's Day 2011, was finish up some work, take a nice long shower, go get coffee and then Pinkberry, take a nap and loaf around. And that's how it all went down this year. Total perfection.

And this beauty of a mid century teak chair in need of re-upholstery was my gift. I found it on Craigslist on Saturday and Mr. Rosen went to pick up for me. It was $25. Here it is with a few swatches from the Outside Oslo collection by Jessica Jones although I might go with a chartreuse naugahyde instead. Something that pops a little. I have to decide soon because I'm redoing my nursing rocker at the same time with the same guy and something tells me that the little gopher who is burrowing a hole to China via my pelvis might be on his way sooner than we think.

And speaking of which, there are only three days left until my ETSY shop closes for the summer. Maternity leave starts at midnight on Friday May 13th. You can still find plenty of goodies in the shop for 20% off when you use the code MATERNITY at checkout.

No rest for the nesting

2011-05-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

This sparkling oasis is not my bedroom unfortunately.

It's from the May Anthopologie catalog.

I am officially in crazed nesting mode. Running around buying new pillows. Reupholstering my nursing chair. Desperate for a mid century walnut credenza. And my god if I don't find just the right fitted sheet I might die. This is what brought me to Anthropologie this morning. A single-mindedness so sharp and a belly so large I could only be one thing - a woman in her ninth month.

Unfortunately a woman in her ninth month does not have all her wits about her as she is too focused on putting the final touches on her baby - some more lung tissue, longer eyelashes, a few more feet of intestines and, in our case, seven more inches of hair. She cannot be bothered to remember trivial things like the fact that her husband's bike is strapped to the roof of her car. For instance.

I pull into the lot and find the closest spot to the entrance because we are having a heat wave and my feet have suddenly swelled to twice their normal size. And this spot is especially lovely as it is under a shady tree. A very low-branched, shady tree, and now with fewer branches, as I plow Mr. Rosen's bike right through it. Oops.

I reverse and pull into a different spot further away, get out and examine the damage. The bike is on its side now, but seemingly intact. With no alternative I hoist myself onto the roof of my black wagon careful to avoid scalding my hands and knees and try to unhook the back tire so I can realign the bike and resume my mission. The wheel does not budge and no matter how I fidget with the strap I can't get it off the back tire.

Do you have an image of what's going on here? There is an eight month pregnant woman in a tank top on the roof of her car wrestling with a mountain bike. And it's me. Hi. So I get down and call Mr. Rosen who is home sick today with a high fever and the sweats. He explains what to do but says he's coming over anyway to be sure my water doesn't break on his mountain bike. Because that would be HORRIBLE. For the bike.

But I don't have patience so I get up there again and follow his instructions, get the bike vertical and strap it on. Now I'm covered in bike grease and shiny with sweat but the bike is back on and I have exactly five minutes to spend at Anthropologie which is exactly how long it takes me to peruse the three items in the sale section. I emerge from the store to find Mr. Rosen tightening the straps to protect me from future harm. What a guy.

Tomorrow I will attempt to re-roof our house. The end.

Totally tubular

2011-04-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

This picture has nothing to do with anything except it's my daughter snuggled up with another mammal who has equally distinctive ears.

My daughter had her fourth set of tubes put in on Monday morning because there was apparently a wall of infection behind her ear drums. Delightful. She's gotten so accustomed to this routine that she woke up, put on something comfy, came to give me a kiss goodbye and said, I'll see you after my ear surgery mommy. Just as casually as if she was saying, I'll see you after preschool. But this time she felt some of the nasty side affects of anesthesia. Namely the nausea. She was vomiting and had to stick around for a while. But by the afternoon she was awake again and in good spirits and retelling her ordeal to her brother - how she threw up on the nurse and in the toilet. Then she asked for matzoh with Nutella so we headed out to the porch to enjoy a mid-afternoon treat. And during our conversation she turned to me and asked why we were yelling. I guess she can hear now. And all of my yelling over the last few months has been medically validated.

From my tabernacle to yours

2011-04-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

In the middle of all of our house and life chaos I was asked to create the artwork for the To Life Festival. The one I participated in for the first time last October. The one where my husband built a TABERNACLE in the middle of California Avenue in Palo Alto. That one. They had seen this piece in process (the second one) on the blog and wanted something similar that REEKED of Jewish life, music, culture and celebration. They didn't specifically say they wanted a ram at the top of the tree, but what's a Jewish celebration without a sacrificial ram? Am I right?

Admittedly, there's a lot going on here. Maybe too much. Perhaps a reflection of my own current state. Hopefully they will love it and it will draw people from all over the world to Palo Alto on September 18, 2011 to eat falafel, hear klezmer music and buy Jewish art. And now that we're staying in town a while longer, they can even buy my Jewish art. Straight from my tabernacle.

Liberated

2011-04-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

That ghostly figure in the background might be Elijah the Prophet.
The two bottles of wine in front of my husband are definitely empty.

I think it was Eisenhower who said something like Planning is essential. Plans are useless. Boy if that doesn't just smack of reality right now. I don't even know where to begin, except that on Monday we had an offer on our house - one that annoyed me because we had already lowered the price considerably and the offer was even below that. But we took it. It was the first night of Passover and all I could think of was redemption from slavery. And we had become slaves to this house over the last three months. So it felt like the right time to move on. Dayenu.

And we had an epic seder that night. Elijah the Prophet showed up and the kids went wild. This time all I could find was a twin fitted sheet and some kind of head wrap plus Mr. Rosen's tallis. So we wrapped up my oldest brother and he danced in all hunched over to cover his bare chest where the sheet didn't quite fit, drank some wine and got out of there before any of the kids realized that Uncle Aaron and Elijah never seem to be in the same room at the same time. And on my mom's suggestion we each wrote some Passover poetry and read aloud at the table. All attempts were well received and some made me cry laughing, mostly my brothers teasing my husband - a family pastime.

It went mostly over his head though because by then Mr. Rosen was quite drunk on the four (maybe seven) cups of ceremonial wine. But he had good reason to drown his sorrow, and not just because we were once slaves in Egypt. In fact on the way over he had received a call from our agent to say that there was a complication with the offer. The buyers were pulling out because the property was misclassified at the county. Two years ago, in a panic over our home value and soon to expire 5/1 ARM, I had asked if it was possible to change the designation from a condo to a single family home since the property is half a duplex and the only other people in the Home Owner's Association are Fred and Susan, owners of the other half of the duplex. A nice, pushover man at the county said that was fine. He never bothered to mention that it was for county tax purposes only and that the legal description of the property would remain a condo. And so would the records at the city level. So our buyers were very concerned and rightfully so. It was a clusterfuck of biblical proportion. And might require parting the Red Sea to undo.

My husband only mentioned all of this the next day so that my family could enjoy what may be our last seder together for some time because that is the kind of ridiculously awesome person that he is. And the two days after that were spent making calls and going down to the county to ask for records to be changed so that all legal documentation could be matchy matchy. Our buyers agreed to submit a new offer but at a much lower price. We tried to negotiate, because that's what we do. We're Jews. But this couple couldn't take the pressure anymore and withdrew their offer completely. No counter. Nothing. Apparently their parents, who were bankrolling the 50% deposit, were not happy with all of the hoopla and the young couple who adored the house crumbled.

And we couldn't be more thrilled. Because it's over for the time being. We get to have our baby in this amazing little house and stay here until all is settled down and we are mentally prepared for our next move. The stager came on Friday and took all his stuff away and the sign came down. And we spent the weekend putting a few things back in our house and enjoying all of the space. We also stayed home all weekend. No open houses. No showings. No previews. I didn't even make the effing beds. We played music and ate Nutella on matzoh on our porch and didn't give a rat's ass about the crumbs. We even planted sungold tomatoes from the farmer's market which we'll be enjoying all summer. In our home.

Weeds

2011-04-12T20:02:00.000-07:00

Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.

A.A. Milne (via Eeyore)

I've been trying to walk most days to keep my blood sugar down and my hips supple. They seize up on me every morning. Something about widening to make room for a baby's head to get lodged in there. The walking helps. This is a shot of my favorite garden in our neighborhood. I remember when the woman planted it a few years ago and now it grows more enormous every year. That's because it's mainly weeds. Like these beauties. I think they're called Milkweed and they grow huge. They don't say kids grow like weeds for nothing. This is just a tiny corner of the garden but the rest is mostly more of the same - a lot of bordeaux and lavender mixed with chartreuse and other yummy shades of green in a kind of cabbagy melange. Delish. And it wouldn't be a garden in my neighborhood without a few orange California poppies which, even if you hated them, though you never could, they'd find a way into your soil (and your heart). Happy spring.

In case the belly alone wasn't noticeable

2011-04-03T22:23:00.000-07:00

This is what seven months pregnant in the snow looks like. I don't have any maternity ski clothes. I'm not even really sure anyone makes maternity ski clothes in this litigious society since it seems a little reckless to ski when you're T minus two months. I had thought I would just wear my ski pants unzipped for our weekend in Lake Tahoe, but it became clear that would not be an option when I could not get them over my ass. So I wore my jeans. But thankfully on her last visit my mom brought up a giant jacket that we have kept all these years for no reason and here I am in it. It was gifted to me by an old friend from Jr. High who later went to Georgetown and was somehow involved in traffic control for Bill Clinton's first inauguration. It's pylon orange, as you can tell, and, knowing that I always had a thing for orange, he let me have it. Or maybe I took it. Not important. It's size extra-large and since I am now extra-large, you better believe it came in handy on this trip.

On a side note, it reminded me of when I was a senior in college and Greg had graduated early to go do a service project in South Africa. We actually wrote letters to each other on those flimsy blue airmail trifolds. Once he sent me an orange beaded bracelet from Swaziland that I adored. I showed it to my boyfriend at the time and complained how come he didn't know that orange was my favorite color. I was obviously looking to pick a fight, as was my way at the six week point of any relationship. And he said, because this guy has known you since you were twelve and I've known you all of two months. He had a point. Which is why I kept him around for three more months before I had to let him go.

Where was I? Yes, trudging around in my gigantic orange jacket all weekend. We took the kids skiing and tubing and sledding. And they ran around the house in their long underwear playing made-up games with their cousins. Sixty degrees and 20 feet of new snow thanks to our most recent storm, the one that lasted forty days and forty nights and officially ended California's drought. EPIC.

Junior has a thing for orange too.

Ten Years Ago Today - Buddha Day

2011-03-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago today my husband and I were sitting in an internet cafe in Katmandu sending out some emails and planning our trek in the Himalayas. At the end of that trek we would be engaged. I will have also lost my inhaler and gotten kicked by a horse and Mr. Rosen will have thrown up more than a dozen times from altitude sickness. Pussy. But on this day we were still reeling from our three weeks in Thailand and happy to be in the cooler, dryer climate of Nepal. Here's a snippet from the email I wrote on May 31, 2001.

We took the night train back to Bangkok where we saw the golden Buddha - a huge, five ton, solid gold Buddha. Just about the shiniest thing I have ever seen. As it was our last day in the the city we attempted to see the 49 meter lounging Buddha too but when we arrived we were told it was Buddha Day and that there was a ceremony so we couldn't go in. Buddha Day? Then a guy told us that could take a tuk tuk ride and see the sitting Buddha and the lucky Buddha and the standing Buddha and then the export shop for only 20 baht. Unusually cheap. Why? Buddha Day. Good for Tourists. Buy jewelry.
We figured we were being set up for a scam and that Mr. Rosen might end up dressed as a woman in a tranny show if things got ugly. Bangkok has a scary underbelly. So we left. Then we asked another guy who also said it was Buddha Day and offered to drive us around. The export shop was having a promotion for tourists to buy things tax free. You buy, okay. You no buy, okay. So we figured what the hell and jumped in the tuk tuk.

We see one Buddha and then another and then another and then the guy takes us to this jewelry shop. We walk in looking like big sweaty shlumps having just inhaled five kilometers worth of exhaust from the vehicle in front of us exhaust while everyone else appears refined in their suits and bad toupees. They must have taken cars. It's obvious we're not going to buy anything so we find our way to the exit. The driver is annoyed and says we have to stay longer than ten minutes so that he can get his petrol coupon. Stupid foreigners. We understand. Buddha Day.

So we go to another place and Mr. Rosen and I start trying on rings like idiots and the owner is annoyed because his masterful powers of deduction have led him to believe we have no intention of buying anything and that we're just there for the coupon. But we hang out for ten minutes and the driver gets his coupon. What a funny day. Buddhas, coupons, toupees, precious stones. Time to cool down with a banana shake.
Namaste.

Anyone remember what you were doing ten years ago today? Celebrating Buddha Day in Thailand? Do share.

Giveaway

2011-03-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you know that Liv over at Choosing Beauty is hosting a giveaway - up to $40 for the print of your choice from my ETSY shop. You have to leave a comment with the name of your favorite print (and there are ways to be entered more than once to increase your odds). The giveaway ends tonight. Go comment! I once commented and won two beautiful prints by this lovely artist and friend.

Also, Liv has launched a terrific website called Feel Good Deal of the Day with all kinds of great deals on stuff you love anyway. I just got 40% off my order from Esprit.com and one of the things I ordered is stretchy enough to fit me even now! That's some stretchy-ass material!

What else? My pal Aimee is teaching in what looks to be a fantastic e-course where 21 artists share their techniques. You listen and learn at your own pace and it runs from April through August so you have plenty of time to soak it all up.

A few months ago my mom unearthed a series of emails I had sent ten years ago while Mr. Rosen and I were traveling the world. I think I will post a few in a "Ten Years Ago Today" series. Can you remember what you were doing ten years ago? I hardly remember what I did yesterday. Thank goodness for the digital paper trail.

And last, thanks to everyone for your support as we navigate this period of mondo-transition. It is enormously comforting to hear your stories too.

There's no place like home

2011-03-23T14:04:00.000-07:00

Self-portrait by my four-year old

We're working through some stuff over here. With Mr. Rosen in Israel this week and a series of back out buyers on our house, I am thinking about a lot of things. Like maybe we don't really want to sell the house right now and that's why it hasn't sold. I try not to over-analyze these things, but as I get myself mentally prepared to birth this baby in two months, I'm thinking a lot about some of the stories I read four years ago in Ina May Gaskin's Guide to Childbirth. About how one woman was stalled out during labor because she wasn't mentally prepared to bring this child into the world (I think her mother-in-law was in the room or she hadn't thought of a name yet or something like that. Maybe she had just fought with her partner - who knows. My brain is mush). So her physical body just closed up. She needed to let go of her anxiety so that her body could open up and do its thing, which eventually she did and her baby was born.

I have a feeling that I am mentally holding on to my home. I'm telling myself that more than anything I want to avail myself of this house so that we can move on with our lives and continue to plan for the next part. And when jerk-face backed out yesterday at the eleventh hour I just sobbed. I wanted this thing over. I want the kids to have their friends over again. And I am so sick of making the beds every morning and wiping down the bathroom and doing the dishes on the off chance that someone will want to show the house. But I know there's a part of me that's anxious about where we'll live next. And another part of me that wants to bring the new baby home to this house just like the others.

The other interesting thing is that every time I hear that someone thought the house was darling but doesn't want to live across from a school or in a neighborhood that's so "diverse" I get all mama bear over the house. Like, how dare you talk to my house that way and not value the same things that I value. It must all be part of the process of letting go. A home can be so much more than a place to live and there's obviously a lot more wrapped up in this house than I ever knew. Not to mention all of the uncertainty represented by leaving our home. I don't think we're getting cold feet but this move is forcing us to examine our own ideas about home and where it is and what it means and how do we find it again. I might try clicking my heels.

Purim Shpiel

2011-03-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

We're celebrating Purim this week, a Jewish holiday filled with storytelling, masquerade and drunken antics. It celebrates the story of Queen Esther, a Jewish girl in Persia who was chosen to be Queen and single-handedly saved the Jews by telling King Ahashverosh that his Prime Minister, Haman, was planning to kill them all. There's a lot more to the story but it shares a similar plot to most all Jewish festivals.

They tried to kill us.
We won.
Let's eat a lot of food.

Customs include making hamantaschen - three cornered cookies to symbolize the bad prime minister's hat (or his Spock-like ears) - making a lot of noise every time his name is mentioned in the ritual reading of the story, dressing up as a character from the story or as anything you like and giving baskets of treats and goodies. And adults are commanded to get so drunk they cannot tell the difference between King Ahashverosh and Haman. That's pretty friggin drunk.

Purim was never my favorite holiday for many of the same reasons that I never liked Halloween. I was embarrassed to dress up. I worried that other kids would laugh at me. I never liked my home-made costumes. And having to do this twice a year instead of just on Halloween made it all the more painful. Mr. Rosen felt exactly the same way growing up in Israel, though he was spared the extra torture of Halloween.

And that is why I was especially proud of my son yesterday because yesterday morning, last minute and possibly against my better judgment, I signed him up to go to a Purim workshop at an Israeli woman's house in the next town over where they would hear the story of Purim, make hamantaschen and goody parcels, play games, sing songs, all while parading around in costume. And mostly with kids he doesn't know. And no parents. And all in Hebrew, which he doesn't always understand. When I told him after school that he and his friend were going to this party and that he could dress up, he was nervous. What if the other kids laugh at me? You see, he was having second thoughts about his costume, one he'd been planning since Halloween. He wanted to dress up as Miss Viola Swamp from the book Miss Nelson is Missing.

Miss Viola Swamp is the alter ego of Miss Nelson, a school teacher who can't command the respect of her students. One day she comes to school dressed as her own substitute, Miss Viola Swamp, an ugly, mean witch who is so terrifying that the kids will do anything, even behave, to get Miss Nelson back. Excellent book. The costume is a big black wig and a giant nose and black fingernails and striped tights and a black dress. Yesterday we bought all of those things, except for the dress. Instead we belted one of Mr. Rosen's black tee-shirts. My son was delighted with his costume but he was concerned (his word) about how other kids would react. He asked me what I would do if I were him.

This is where I lied because if I were him I would have just worn the lion costume from Halloween. But instead I told him straight up that I would be Miss Viola Swamp if that's who I really wanted to be and as long as I was happy with that decision, then no one else would care. And that's what he did. Amidst a sea of pirates, Iron Men, Bat Men, Skeletors and Buzz Light Years was my son, Miss Viola Swamp, dressed in yellow and black striped tights and a belted black tee-shirt. And either no one said a word or he was too happy to notice. Either way, despite a genetic predisposition for hating costume holidays, we might just have a kid who loves Purim. And himself.

Small talk

2011-03-11T10:42:00.000-08:00

I already know why my son will stop talking to me when he's a teenager. It's because for the first twelve years of his life he will have talked to me incessantly about things I am not interested in and I will tell him numerous times, when I have reached capacity, that I don't want to talk anymore and can he please zip it. That I'm not that interested in electricity. Or the settings of my iPhone. Or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is ironic since I'm the one that introduced him to both the book and the movie as they are my favorites. Rather were my favorites until he talked about them so much that I wanted to drown him in a river of chocolate).

I need quiet. I need long periods of time during my day when no one is talking to me. Which is why I thank god every day for my mornings when I'm at home working or writing or whatever I'm doing. And I have these mornings so that by the afternoon I can pay attention to what he's saying and respond and engage and try my best to encourage his curiosity. I want him to ask questions. To think about how it all works and make his own sense of the world. I just don't want to always answer him. Sometimes I can't answer him. And why is it that I don't know how the scanner communicates to the printer. I mean I use these two things everyday. Why am I not interested? Because I just want it to work. I don't care how.

But he cares. He cares so much that he makes up stories about it. How the scanner speaks only in English to the computer and the computer has to translate the message into Hebrew because the printer only speaks Hebrew. And the scanner needs the computer to pass along his message to make the image print. I mean it's effing brilliant if you ask me, but hearing about it everyday makes me insane. He once told me about how there's someone else at school who likes to talk even more than he does and he told me about that person for forty-five minutes.

But I know a time will come when the roles will be reversed and I will desperately try to elicit conversation, even just information, from his eye-rolling, pimply head. And when he's silent I'll fill the silence with endless questions and stories and ramblings. But that will make him shrink away further. And there I'll be with no one to help me with my phone settings or my printer. And it will be my own damn fault.

Money

2011-03-10T12:09:00.000-08:00

Family heirloom coin bank now belonging to my son who is saving up for his own laminator.

To honor the person who invented e-filing and Uncle Sam himself for giving us back our money, I offer a poem by Dana Gioia, Poet Laureate and former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts (and MBA from Stanford - way to use both sides of your brain Dana!) I especially like the last stanza.

Money
by Dana Gioia

Money, the long green,
cash, stash, rhino, jack
or just plain dough.

Chock it up, fork it over,
shell it out. Watch it
burn holds through pockets.

To be made of it! To have it
to burn! Greenbacks, double eagles,
megabucks and Ginnie Maes.

It greases the palm, feathers a nest,
holds heads above water,
makes both ends meet.

Money breeds money.
Gathering interest, compounding daily.
Always in circulation.

Money. You don't know where it's been,
but you put it where your mouth is.
And it talks.

Bad Dreams

2011-03-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

This is my psyche self-portrait. Because based on the dreams I've been having lately, I am loony tunes. On the outside I am trying to hold together a crazy amount of stress and chaos, despite my Martha Stewart home interior. This past weekend was our first open house and while we had plenty of traffic and a few folks who showed up multiple times, we don't have any offers yet. Mind you, we've been on the market for four days so my discouragement is very premature. And our awesome super agent is not concerned at all. Nonetheless my anxiety about the sale of our house and my ability to keep it immaculate and show it with an hour's notice, is clearly starting to have an effect on the ole subconscious.

Two nights ago I dreamed that someone broke into our house. A large man with unusually short arms. More like flippers actually. Mr. Rosen beat the crap out of him with a filled water bottle. But we were still devastated by the damage this might cause to our property value.

And last night, I was meant to perform in front of a giant audience. Sing, to be precise. Something I have actually done before, though not for quite a while. There was a particular theme to the performance which I can't recall right now but I wasn't to go on until maybe fourth or fifth and everyone before me was Broadway quality theatricality with costumes, make-up and a chorus of back-up talent. It was so obvious I was the impostor. And I hadn't even decided on the song, though I was pretty sure it would be the Bonnie Raitt song I Can't Make You Love Me, except I couldn't remember the second half of the chorus.

Turn down the lights.
Turn down the bed.
Turn down these voices,
Inside my head.

That's about right.
I need a drink, and the pregnancy tea is not doing it for me.

Growing Pains

2011-03-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

In between our many visits to doctor last week I had a moment of clarity and asked Mr. Rosen to take this picture before the painters wiped away the last five years of our family's growth. This is a little column wall that separates our kitchen, living and dining rooms. The prefect size to stand and be measured. This process of clearing out the house and getting it and ourselves ready for the next era has been an exciting and worthwhile process. Everything about it feels right. And yet, when I stopped to think about this wall and how much we've grown, the kids mostly taller and me, on and off more rotund, I almost start to weep. When we moved in here I was four months pregnant with our eldest. And seven years later I am six months pregnant with our third. This is the house where we grew a family. Where Mr. Rosen and I grew into parents. Where we grew professionally and spiritually and personally. And the kids grew to be able to reach the counter, the sink, the light switch, the cookie jar. And still growing. All of us.

ps. If anyone knows of any cute measurement posters, send a link. Mr. Rosen copied down all of the measurements for transfer to something we can actually take with us.

Studio Tour

2011-02-28T22:52:00.000-08:00

Remember when Mr. Rosen and I were working on turning our garage/office/guest room into more of a studio? And he wanted to kill me for just moving ahead willy nilly? And I wanted to kill him for not understanding my vision and sense of urgency? Yes. Good times.

I never did post any pictures of the final product. Including the best part - THE MURPHY BED. Hand-built by Mr. Rosen himself. Well I have some shots now but only because I cheated. We just had our house staged, as in we paid a guy to bring in a crap load of attractive furniture and make our house look appealing to the masses. Such silliness. But apparently this practice pays you back in spades. My mother-in-law sent me this recent NY Times article about staging and that's why I went out and bought $1200 worth of Italian shoes. To trick someone into buying my fabulous house and fabulous lifestyle. Right.

Anyway, they also staged the studio, though happily everyone was fine with me keeping my corner as is (albeit tidied up) and all of my production supplies available so I could keep working while we show the house. Mr. Rosen was not so lucky and all of his crap, including his desk and shelves, went into storage. So really it does look very close to the real thing except now instead of two desk areas, there's only one and a little "reading nook". The funniest part is that the stager, a lovely gay man from San Francisco, grabbed two books from my closet to display. "Creating a Life Worth Living" and "What to Expect the First Year". Maybe he thought they were both about making and raising babies. Or maybe he thought they were both about starting your own business. Titles can be deceiving. And so can studio tours. Enjoy!

East of Eden

2011-02-25T20:28:00.000-08:00

East of Eden

This was another one of the paintings from the retreat that started out as a giant mess of finger painting. What amazed me about the process was how much symbolism emerged for me without my realizing. I draw a lot of swirly things in my regular work, that are kind of a cross between leaves and eyes, like in this one and this one. And because this was the first day, I went to my comfort zone and started making more of the same on top of the background. But they took on the shape of a giant cactus - all spiky and poky and menacing. And standing in the shadow of this beast of a plant are five tulips. Interesting. A flower that can be uprooted and stored in the off-season and then replanted elsewhere, weather permitting. And a compass pointing east made its appearance on the last day of class. I only put everything together in my head once it was down on the paper.

One other thing to note about the class is that I think I may have figured out what to do with the many blank journals I have purchased and never used over the years. My friend Aimee over at Artsyville and I have often discussed how blank journals terrify us. She's found a cool way to get beyond the fear and expectation of those white pages. For me, I might try using them to wipe my hands when they're too full of paint. Then at least the white will be less intimidating. And I'll have a surface for experimenting with faces and shapes. We did a lot of that in class - wrong-handed, blind, fist-gripped painting and drawing. I found that the less I tried, the freer I got, the more I liked the outcome. Imagine that.

Night Owls

2011-02-23T23:39:00.000-08:00

Night Owls, acrylic and pastel on wood panel

I painted this the morning after I'd taken my daughter to the ER when her fever hit 105. They checked her out and, besides the fever, there appeared to be nothing wrong. The ibuprofen hadn't worked earlier so they gave her Tylenol which brought the fever down to 99 and they discharged us. The next morning she was weak but her fever was still down. I went back for the last day of my art workshop and this image of a mama owl and her baby emerged. I checked in with Mr. Rosen every few hours the rest of the day and her fever continued to rise, though never passing 103. Then she started complaining of chest pain. When I got home she looked gray. Her breathing was super rapid and very shallow. But of course by now we were nearing night, when all things medical become extra scary because nothing is open and no one is available. She and I were up much of that night too. She came into our room around 3am asking for medicine so I knew it was bad. She has never willingly taken medication. She finally fell asleep on the floor by our bed with her panting breath and I was basically on watch the rest of the night.

I took her to urgent care the next morning and her xray confirmed what I had suspected. Pneumonia. She got a shot of antibiotics in the tush, affirming her disdain for medication, and we met my husband and son at a motel near our house because the painters had already arrived. Our plan had been to drive down on Monday to be at my mom's for the week while our house was painted in preparation for sale. But not with this sick baby owl. So we set up shop at the Tropicana Lodge and spent the day in and out of sleep while Mr. Rosen and junior continued moving our stuff into storage. Another restless night.

Finally Tuesday morning we saw her pediatrician. The antibiotics were working. She was getting her coloring back and had an appetite. I filled the rest of the prescription (I will spare you the story of how she then refused to take her oral medication saying she'd rather have another shot in her ass followed by the hour and half negotiation that ensued when I said, among many other equally ridiculous things, that she should be grateful her medicine tastes like strawberries because when I was a girl the medicine tasted like gasoline.) By noon we were medicated and on our way to Grandma's.

She's getting better everyday and I'm happy for an excuse besides my laziness to not take them to Disneyland. Thanks everyone for your well wishes. xo

Metamorphosis

2011-02-20T22:04:00.000-08:00

Metamorphosis on Day 1

There is much to say about the three days I just spent painting with Jesse Reno at An Artful Journey retreat in Los Gatos. While I did meet some lovely women and wonderful artists, some of whom I'd already come across on ETSY, my experience was not the life-changing, soul-sister bonding, love fest that I think many people experience. This was mainly because I have too much other stuff going on, I elected to stay at home rather than the dorm and unfortunately my daughter had a 105 fever last night which landed us in the ER until 2am (we got her fever down but she's not out of the woods).

That said, something in me cracked open in these three days and I discovered a new way to make art and love making art. We approached each painting in exactly the opposite manner that I usually go at it. I normally have in my head exactly what I want to paint and then I sketch it several times and then I trace it onto the final watercolor paper and outline it in black ink. Then I fill it with color. Except I can go for weeks and weeks with nothing I wan to paint.

With Jesse we painted only with our fingers for the entire first day. We created what he calls the grounds. A rich and layered background with no subject or expectation. Then we spent the next day reducing the chaos of the grounds into an image or a collection of images. In some cases, when nothing appeared, we went in and drew a figure or a posture on top of everything and blocked out the rest. This was HARD. In this particular piece I only really saw the bird head thing in the upper right corner, which was originally the lower right corner. So I made a big figure and blocked out the rest.

Metamorphosis on day 2

We worked on three or four paintings at a time wiping excess paint from one piece onto another one. Finally we tied our pieces down with some detail elements. In some cases we wrecked half the painting before we could go back in to resurrect it some other form. No attachment.

We worked mainly on 18x24 Bristol paper but some folks brought in wood. I tried a piece on wood at the end and really liked the feel. My hands were covered in paint the entire time. And Jesse was a riot. I am exhausted now. And need to pack up the rest of the house before the painters arrive tomorrow morning. Hopefully my daughter will be well enough for the drive south to Grandma's. I'll share my other four paintings over the next few days.

Metamorphosis on day 3

"She surrendered to the magic."

Stirring the sauce, getting the guns to Jimmy

2011-02-16T08:08:00.000-08:00

This is the line we use in our family when things are starting to spin out of control. When we have a hundred things to get done and the feds are closing in. It's a line from Goodfellas and Henry Hill is on the phone saying he has to get his brother from the hospital, drop off some stuff for Lois, make sure to stir the sauce and then get the guns to Jimmy. Meanwhile the feds are flying over his house in helicopters because the jig is up. Time to join the witness protection program.

So that's what it's like here. We're juggling a million little things, stirring the sauce AND trying to get the damn guns over to Jimmy's before we put our house on the market. Which is in two weeks. Meanwhile I signed up for a three day workshop to learn some new media techniques with Jesse Reno, which will likely be completely awesome if I can keep myself focused, which starts in TWO DAYS. But before all that I need to get keys made for our realtor, get paint chips for the painters who are coming at 9am on Monday and box up everything else that's still in the house while staying on top of my orders in what has been a freakishly fertile February (sales-wise) so that on Monday morning we can drive down to southern California to see my mom and go to Disneyland. And the day after we get back the stager comes and the house has to be immaculate for the next 2-3 weeks or until we sell. This is starting to make me twitch since we usually can't go more than 12 hours before the house looks like a helicopter actually landed in the living room.And those are the twelve house when the kids are asleep.

Other items to share:

Daily deal is still on. Several boxes of Inner Toddler gift cards are left. Get them before they move to storage and from storage onto a slow boat to Israel...
Please go vote for my friend Jenn Louis, who runs an incredible restaurant in Portland called Lincoln, in CNN's Eatocracy poll. This is the restaurant where I took Aimee during that fabulous weekend last December.
Sign up for my friend Liv's Feel Good Deal of the Day. Liv is magic. And she may possibly have the ability to stop time. This is the only way I can explain how she's able to put out a daily newsletter (and blog everyday!) with great inspirational, motivational content and fabulous deals!
How cute is my new(ish) watch in the picture? It's from this company and the whole this is biodegradable. I think you can bury it and more watches will grow.

And now I'm off to stir the sauce (and then get the guns to Jimmy). If you don't ever hear from me gain, it's because I joined witness protection.

Four

2011-02-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Sugar Bee,

Today you're four years old and pretty much a real person. It all kind of came together this year. You finally could hear and speak and now you don't stop talking and you have many opinions about your clothes and your hair and your friends and your brother and us. Many many opinions. Here are some of my favorites:

Your baby brother should be named either Toilet Head or Boy Beauty.
Mommy has a stinky mouth in the mornings and so does Aba.
Your big brother is nice.
You never want to talk to your brother ever again in the whole wide world.
Mommy doesn't know how to brush hair. Only Aba does.
Mommy is the only one who can brush hair because Aba doesn't know how.
Only your teacher makes good ponytails.
You hate baths except most of the time when you don't.
You don't like socks except with hearts or stripes. Or plain. Or dots.
We can always love each other, even when we're mad.

The truth is, for all of your opinions, you are a happy-go-lucky, funny, funny girl. You're a classic middle child - willing to share, easy-going, considerate, self-assured. That's why we had to have another baby, so you could fulfill your destiny. As I write this you are rushing to clean up the Play Mobile castle set you just got for your birthday so that none of our baby friends will choke on any of the zillion bitty pieces. You're already such a good big sister.

Enjoy your special day, special girl.

I love you,
Mommy

Thar She Blows

2011-02-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

I'm getting large. And, trust me, I am profoundly aware of my size. So when I say that I'm five and a half months along, do me a favor and say this exact phrase: Gee, you look great.

Do not veer from the phrase. Clever add-ons like "for a whale" or "Any day now right?" should be avoided. And I don't need to know about how you looked like I do now when you were on your way to the hospital. Or how I must be having twins. Good one. Original.

But speaking of whales, and originals, this chunky little original acrylic is today's Daily Deal. Thar she blows.

Daily Deal

2011-02-07T18:19:00.000-08:00

As part of the GREAT PURGE OF 2011 to prepare our home for sale, I am selling a whole bunch of my work, that is otherwise not available, at lower than wholesale prices before it gets hauled off to Public Storage, including:

Framed prints
Matted prints
Originals

These are pieces that I prepared for shows or fairs or whatever. All in perfect condition. I'll post one item a day in the DAILY DEAL section of my ETSY shop and if you get to it before anyone else, it's yours. If it says only one left, there is really only one. When I have multiples, I will list them all. Shipping remains $5 except for framed stuff which is more like $8 or $10 depending on how big it is.

Today's item (a framed one of the pic above) is up!

We told the kids

2011-02-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

Tonight's family meeting had four items on the agenda.
1. If you want an iPhone app that costs money, you have to pay for it with your allowance money.
2. Everyone is doing a kickass job helping mommy and aba with the move. Kudos.
3. No licking your friends. It passes germs. (And there will be plenty of time for that later).
4. After the baby's born and after summer camp, we're moving to Israel.

Now we fully expected a total and complete multi-party meltdown after we dropped this bomb. Because we have talked to the kids before about the possibility of moving to Israel and our son has mostly responded negatively. As in, no way in hell. I want to be with Heather and Aly in first grade. I want to move to Orange County and live with Grandma in a house with stairs. I don't want to go to school where everyone speaks Hebrew. I don't want it to be nighttime when it's daytime for Grandma. I don't want to carry a gun (I don't know where he picked that one up, but unfortunately that's a valid concern).

This is how that part of the conversation went.
Me: ...our whole family is moving to Israel.
Him: And Grandma too?
Me: No, Grandma is staying here. But she'll visit us and we'll visit her.
Pause
Him: We'll have to redo the settings on your iPhone I bet.
Me: Right. You could be very helpful to mommy with your expertise.
Him: And the plugs are different there. I'd have to practice putting in the the two round holes instead of the two rectangular slots.
Me: That's true. But we could bring all of your old electricity stuff and you could show your new friends how different electricity is in America.
Him: Ya. And there's really big slides in Israel.
Me: In every city.
Him: And I can go to work with Saba and Savta.
Me: Yes. And maybe some of our friends will come to visit us!
Her: And have a sleep over!

This was the abridged version. The original dialogue was heavy on the iPhone settings and the new phone number and calling people in the middle of the night which will be daytime for them, and the video chat feature that my phone has and Aly's dad's phone has. I figured I should just let him talk about iPhone settings for as long as he needed to process this whole thing. I'm sure this isn't the end of the conversation since there's another six months until it happens, but considering how worried we were about telling them, this was a stellar beginning.

The one where I mention we're moving to Israel

2011-02-03T08:36:00.000-08:00

Jerusalem doorway

How's that for a zinger title?
It's been ten wonderful years but we are finally closing up shop in America folks. And moving back to Israel. Holy crap, that's right. And we're doing it this summer. With an infant. So I'm a little overwhelmed. And a little stressed. But relieved to have made this decision because nothing sucks more than indecision. Except for hemorrhoids.

I'm excited about the move though I have no delusions that this will be easy or comfortable or enjoyable. At least for the first six to ~~twelve~~ twenty-four months in country. I figure if I keep my expectations very low there's a chance I'll be pleasantly surprised. Or an opportunity for an ~~"I told you it would be a nightmare"~~ open dialogue with Mr. Rosen. That said, the enormity of it all is kind of making me feel like having a third baby is no big deal. When you compare it to selling your home, finding a place to live in another country, a school for your big kid, a preschool for your little kid, a job nearby for your husband, all within an hour drive to your in laws, in a good school district, in a place that's beautiful, and affordable, and not blazing hot in the summer, and move all your stuff there, by boat, and buy a car, and modify your business for international fulfillment, and find new doctors, new dentists, a replacement for Trader Joe's (as if it were possible) and be emotionally available for your distressed children all the while caring for your infant without the benefit of your own mommy nearby as you navigate the social and educational systems being the functional illiterate that you are, yes, having a third child seems like a walk in the park. This without mention of occasional bombings from Gaza. Or Lebanon. Or, even more life-threatening, the maniacal way people drive in Israel.

But here are many things I am looking forward to, in no particular order:

Having a bigger house.
Starting fresh.
Getting old funky furniture from the south Tel Aviv flea market.
Connecting with the vibrant art and design community.
Shoko b'sakit (come visit me and I'll buy you one).
Fantastic grandparents who are available for babysitting. And sleep-overs.
Cheap outbound shipping (so say my Israeli ETSY comrades).
Long weekends in Turkey, Greece, Cypress, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt...
Not having to take my kids out of school for Jewish holidays.
Really strong lattes. Stronger than Peets.
Olives.
Fresh pita.
Sabbath.
School that's six days a week (!!)
Fully bilingual kids.
Aunt Dana and Uncle Yaniv.
Jerusalem.
The Mediterranean Sea. Despite the jellyfish.
Grocers calling me sweetie. (Trust me, it's endearing).
Getting out of traffic tickets just by speaking English.
The shoes.

So I hope you won't mind if I dream and rant and process with you as this next part of our life unfolds. And Israeli readers are welcome to send information about your awesome elementary school and community. I'm all ears.

Moving

2011-02-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

Our house when we bought it, April 2004

OK I have another good reason, besides the astrological shift, as to why I am not blogging much these days. We're moving. As in we're packing most of our belongings into a 10x15 foot storage unit, having our house painted and staged, adding some needed mid-winter curb appeal to the front landscaping and putting our home on the market March 2. You want it?

We have had the discussion about whether or not to sell our house every January for the last three years and this is the year it is happening. There are several reasons we need to sell including but not limited to THE THIRD BABY. Our neighbors, bless them, raised four kids in a house the same size as ours (900 square feet). But their twin sons lived in their room in bunk beds until they were twelve. No thanks.

So we are heavy duty into the process. It's amazing the things you acquire in seven years. We don't have a lot by some standards, and way too much by other standards. Mostly I am enjoying the purge. Just today I took three giant bags of adult clothing over to a homeless shelter. And bags and bags of baby and toddler clothes of the sex we won't need going forward (yes, we know what we're having) are being divvied up among friends. By February 18 we need to have most of our stuff in storage so the house can be magically transformed into a Pottery Barn catalog spread. So the kids' room will have a few cute stuffies and a stack of classic children's books. And three discreet bins under the bed where they can hide their favorite things. Everything else will be packed or "lost in transit".

We actually took them to the storage unit on Sunday and they thought it was totally bizarre. My daughter asked in all earnest if we were moving there. Let's hope not.

So the house is upside down and I spend my days packing up our belongings trying not to lose too much time reading old letters. In the evenings Mr. Rosen loads the boxes into the utility van that my brother conveniently left in our carport while he's in Mexico through the end of March. We could not have planned that one better even if we had both remained Virgos.*

*Mr. Rosen is also a former Virgo, genotypically speaking, though he exhibits none of the classic characteristics.

Daily Schedule Derailed by Astrological Shift

2011-01-20T08:55:00.000-08:00

If I was still a Virgo I'm sure that I'd have been able to keep to my new daily schedule and I'd have four or five new paintings by now. I'd get through each day in my usual focused fashion and move from slot to slot like the obsessive pedantic creature that I thought I was. But it turns out I am a LEO. A LEO, people? For the love of ginger! This makes no sense. It's a whole new world order. No wonder I have been so self absorbed lately. And luxuriating in my bed despite the repeated reminders by my 6am alarm. I'm a lion! I don't have time for schedules. I'm too busy ruling the jungle.

Nonetheless, I did manage to finally get started on a suite of paintings that celebrate the sabbath. Which reminds me. Time for a cat nap.

Did your zodiac sign change? I'm not sure what to make of it. Except that maybe it's time to ditch moody, organized and judgmental in favor of enterprising, courageous and confident. Plus affectionate. Prrrrrr.....

Twenty weeks

2011-01-16T13:56:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's best not to ask for advice. Like when you're 37 and pregnant, for example, and you can't decide whether or not to do an amniocentesis. Hypothetically. And your gut tells you the baby is fine. And your screening scores tell you, really, the baby is fine. But you ask your friends. And everyone has a story about this one who miscarried because of the amnio and that one who had a baby with Downs Syndrome even though the Nuchal Translucency reported favorable odds. And then your head is full of stories instead of your own good sense.

So you end up shrieking on the phone at your poor midwife, a woman you refer to as Mary Poppins, for not returning your calls when a decision must be made because the window of opportunity is closing. Hypothetically. Though, in your defense, it would have been nice if she had called you back five days ago when you first called to express your anxiety and gave you a little of the support that you needed to make this decision before all the panic set in. And she apologizes profusely for being so unavailable and it is not like her at all, which it is not, and you both cry. And she sets you up with an appointment to see a genetic counselor, which you do, and even your husband comes because he can tell you are hanging by a thread . And the genetic counselor is lovely and helpful and informed and is probably wondering why you're even there since all signs point toward a normal, healthy baby. At birth anyway.

You breathe a sigh and remember your gut. And the next day you see your midwife for your 20 week appointment and you both cry again and you try to explain how emotional you are in this third pregnancy because so much is at stake and how could it be, what with the law of limited good, that you might end up with three perfectly healthy babies when so many babies are sick? Or can't even get conceived?

And she reminds you that you are worthy of many good things in your life, a concept that is hard for you to embrace. And that goodness can be mysterious. And you remember the conversations you've had with your husband about chasing perfect babies and how there are no guarantees. Even an amnio can't guarantee that something won't go south at delivery, or age 2 or sixteen or forty-five. Or ever. There is no going back.

So you surrender to the knowledge that control is only temporary and more than likely a total illusion. And you breathe deeply and trust that this baby and this experience is exactly as it should be and that you are prepared for whatever comes.*

* prenatal testing is a very personal experience for every woman/couple. This was mine. Everyone comes to their own decisions based on many many factors. For some, the decision is not quite as fraught with anxiety. We do what we have to do.

The drain

2011-01-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

I am considering this contraption instead of tubes next time around.

My daughter had her third ear surgery about two weeks before our little winter vacation. Tubes in. Adenoids out. Her recovery was bionic. An hour later she was wanting to go the school playground. No Tylenol. Nada. She did have a slight runny nose which I thought might complicate matters, but we pressed onward and she seemed to be on a steady course for total recovery.

Then her nose became a faucet. For two weeks we blew that thing dry. Except it never dried. It just kept running and running. And I thought, by God, she is surely losing gray matter at this rate. How much snot could possibly come out of her head? A lot of snot. Her nose became a portal to other worlds. The cleft above her lip became raw and peely. She was a vision of loveliness.

It appears her small nostrils simply could not handle the flow of gunk and soon her ears began to drain. Sticky, stinky, infected ear gunk began pouring out the side of her head. She'd wake up with hair stuck to her face in every direction, cemented on by this stuff.

And I'm thinking, I want my money back on that surgery. She's turned into the spawn of Frankenstein because of that damned surgery. And it's not just the goop. Her moods have left the rest of us drained. She saw her otologist and came home with antibiotics but this is where the real drain begins. Having to put drops in her ears three times a day and getting her to wear her hair in pigtails so that the slime doesn't get tangled up in her hair is totally exhausting. Three friggin times a day I have to explain again the importance of this rigmarole. And every time she protests. We are on day ten and I am about to bleed out my own ears from all the drama. I think what we need is a plumber.

A Pondsi scheme for the masses

2011-01-12T11:52:00.000-08:00

I have OK skin. My skin was never notably fabulous but it's fairly typical, especially from a distance. Up close is a different story. It's bumpy and blotchy and dry and porous, enough so that over the years I have spent a goodly amount of time and money on scrubs, cleansers, creams, masks, facials and medication, from organic to toxic and everything in between.

In the end I found that birth control pills were the only thing that really cleared up my skin. And I have been on them for a hundred years. But then it was time to get pregnant and be pregnant so my skin got a little out of hand and I was back to three step cleanses and spot treatments and 2% of this gel and 5% of that gel. This has gone on for so long that I now have pimples AND wrinkles. Sometimes one inside the other. It just seems that I should have one or the other but not both. I mean come on GOD. There is a season - turn turn turn!

And then two weeks ago I had a dream about my Papa Benny who's been dead nearly 25 years. And in the dream he said one word. Pond's. Pond's? I woke up remembering that my mom once told me that he'd always said there was no point in buying all of the other cleanser garbage because it was all made of the same stuff as Pond's cold cream and Pond's was cheaper. It is unclear why he had an opinion about this since he was a gangster. Although my grandmother was a showgirl so maybe he knew this from her. Anyway, the next day, during a fact finding mission, I discovered that Pond's is pretty much the cheapest thing you can buy at the drugstore. And there are like seven ingredients, none of which are parabens.

So I bought it and do you know what? It's like a little jar of magic. It turns out my skin and the rest of me is seriously dehydrated which I know because at my last ultrasound I drank 20 ounces of water and even that was not enough to fill my bladder and thus tilt my uterus for better viewing. The water got absorbed everywhere else before it could reach my bladder because I am a walking Sahara Desert. Here I had been scrubbing the crap out of my skin all of these years making it dryer and more irritated when all I needed to do was drink some water and slather on some Pond's. The zits are actually softening up and filling in the wrinkles! It's like my own brand of Botox! And people have commented! Though they naturally assume it's the pregnancy glow. But they are wrong! It's the Pond's! So god bless Unilever and Papa Benny. I can now declare puberty over and hang tight for peri-menopause.

Coincidentally Rookie Moms are also talking about lotions and potions, but for the very pre-pubescent. Just wait kids. You're in for a treat in another few years...

Winter Merry Making

2011-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

Chingaderas at Jackalope

Hi folks. It's been a while. We're back from a long and winding winter vacation and it's taken some time to get my groove back. Obviously my new year's resolution was not to blog everyday. Thank goodness. To be honest I don't have any New Year's resolutions because I think they suck. And past experience dictates that I will fail/give up by week two. Who needs that kind of disappointment? I did however make a Daily Schedule for myself which now hangs in my office. I've been meaning to do this for, I don't know, TWO YEARS. So if feels good to have it and will feel even better to use it. I hope. I am thinking about goals for this year and my life coach was awesome enough to send out a worksheet to help me do that.

I have some more big news to share soon, because that's the kind of year it's going to be, but before all that here's a little recap of the last three weeks. Good times. Great memories.

Dress up at Bowers Museum in Orange County.

Crafting with Grandma

Quality time with Mr. Rosen

The historic whale at the Newport Beach Bay Bay where I used to play as a kid.

Sun and surf in San Diego

Mini skis for mini people

Rosy cheeked cousins

Newest niece with her aba

Riding out the snow storm with some indoor crafting

Crash and burn sledding with my sister in law

Kitchen chemistry with Saba

Snowy pottery at my favorite store in Santa Fe

Dear REI

2010-12-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

This is a little note to say thank you for being so awesome and for standing by your lifetime warranty. I went into your new Tustin store wearing my ten year old REI shell and carrying the down jacket that zips into it. Both were dripping wet since it's been pouring rain here for the last 152 hours. I took off the shell to reveal what looks like a horrible case of dandruff dusting on my shoulders. It is in fact from the jacket which, after traveling with me through countless countries and snowy peaks, has begun to disintegrate from the inside. That is why I brought this old friend in to your store, to see if I might exchange it for a newer model. A lovely cashier looked up my membership, which I have have had for going on 15 years, and discovered that the jacket transaction was on record, purchased in Manhattan Beach in 2000 for $200 cash. I remembered the price too because it was a lot of money when I was 22. I mean 27. The cashier asked if I'd like store credit or cash.

I walked to my car in the pouring rain in my t-shirt with $220 cash in my wallet. Now THAT is a lifetime warranty. Because that jacket and I had been through a lifetime of adventure together, packed into ten fun years. A part of me is sad to see her go. But an even bigger part of me is RICH and eying a sassy red Patagonia number, size medium.

You just earned my lifetime guarantee too.

warmly (once I get my new jacket),
Susie L.

Tustin Lanes

2010-12-23T08:10:00.000-08:00

We're here for a visit with Grandma doing the regular stuff. Except it has not stopped raining since I started driving down Interstate 5 on Sunday. So we're doing the regular inside stuff. Which is very limited when your kids don't want to go to the movie theater because they suck. That leaves shopping, an activity that I try to avoid at all cost if I have my children with me, and bowling.

On Tuesday we bowled and it was epic. My daughter developed her own technique - carrying the ball to the lane, setting it down and rolling it as hard as she could. My son would run and then throw the ball with both hands. My parents used to be in a league in the 80s and I used to roam around the bowling alley when I could escape the daycare area, which I almost always could. We'd eat nachos and hot dogs and play video games while grown men and women in silky polyester team shirts flirted, cursed, smoked and bowled their hearts out. The eighties were so awesome.

We'd go there as teenagers too. And sometimes on college break. So Tustin Lanes holds many vague but happy memories for me. And now maybe it does for them too. My son was especially enamored by the shoes. How many times I contemplated stealing a pair of bowling shoes in high school. I even came a few times with flip flops so I wouldn't miss the shoes left behind. Alas, no hope for this goody two shoes.

Dear friends and family

2010-12-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

It's been an incredible year and I feel so grateful to be alive and writing this letter to you. We have many things to be thankful for, most notably our incredibly gifted and talented children. Kevin turned six in October and continues to wear the same shirt every day to school. His consistency and commitment to (his) fashion is inspiring to many other kindergartners. Janna will turn four this coming February and continues to excel in ear surgery. She had her third set of tubes put in this December and her adenoids, those mysterious non-essentials, removed. Janna is only the latest in a long line of luminaries with exceptionally distinctive cranial plumbing in our family. We couldn't be more proud of the way she is carrying on this tradition.

Robert continues to work on the next generation of hearing aids. When asked if his design will revolutionize the industry his response was, "What?" Janice's business Mishmish Studio is taking over the watercolor folk modern Judaica category enjoying double digit awareness. The two hours a day she has to work on the business is generally just enough time to turn on her computer, log into her social networking platforms and let everyone know she's off to pick up the kids. Again. In other exciting news Janice and Robert are expecting their third child mid 2011. This development has led to a major career opportunity for Janice who has now been featured in several "before category" advertising spots namely Proactive, Bay Area Body Wraps and Lunesta.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season and a fantastic new year.

Warmly,
The Jeffersons
Robert, Janice, Kevin and Janna

ps. This was indeed our family pic from 2009 and was used by my former employer to showcase the "Pop Art Ornament Christmas Card". Note the interesting name choices. I guess we movin' on up.

Cup runneth over

2010-12-08T12:31:00.000-08:00

Well yesterday was a banner day. It didn't start out great when a black squirrel jumped over my arm as I was opening our front gate and scared the bejeezies out of me. Holy vampire rodent! But then lady luck sent me a few emails that I had won not one, but TWO blog giveaways. And I'm even more excited to tell you about where they came from.

The first was all serendipity. My friend Liv, who I met at our October blogger/artist retreat, was hosting her weekly Happy HeArt giveaway - two prints by our other dear friend Lori, also present at the retreat. I often enter, when I remember, because the giveaways are always great. And last week's was no different. First a word on these two friends. These women and their art/presence in the world are completely inspiring to me. They each have powerful stories to tell. And their blogs are bursting with love and gratitude and beauty. But what you may not know is that they are hilariously funny too. When a one-liner is delivered with a sweet Minnesotan accent it's all the more delicious. Anyway, I'm taking the kids to visit my mom in my hometown for our winter break and will see my two oldest friends from elementary school so these will make the perfect gifts and then I'll have to order another for myself!

And THEN, as if a rainbow wasn't already shining out of my tushy, I got another email from one of my new favorite bloggers, Tulpen, congratulating me on my second win, a pair of gorgeous earrings from her sister's ETSY shop called Silver and Stones. I mean what are the chances? Happy Hanukkah to me! Listen, if you are in the mood for a crazy rant or a story about one of the charming old ladies at the nursing home where Tulpen nurses or a powerful reminder that, really, the kids are alright, go visit her immediately. She drops the f*bomb a lot. As much as I would if my mom wasn't one of my readers. And then go to Silver and Stones and get bejeweled in something twinkly.

I am off to play the lottery and ride out this winning streak.

**REMINDER** The 30% off sale at my shop continues through Friday December 10. Use code CHARM3 at checkout.

Third time's the charm

2010-12-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

While I could very well blame this extended belly on the number of fried donuts and potato latkes I have consumed over the last five days - indeed there was never a more enthusiastic Hanukkah celebrant - in fact I am pregnant and the baby is due at the end of May. (The belly is not actually as large as it would appear in this dramatized photo, but still - third pregnancy starts showing at about four weeks and a day. Delightful.).

And my many feelings on the subject range from relief and joy to anxiety and terror. So that's been fun. Very relaxing. It may also explain why I haven't been able to do much of anything besides eat chicken apple sausage. But the nausea seems to have ended and I'm not quite as exhausted (as in I'm not falling asleep in the middle of a titillating game of Zingo, although admittedly this has also happened while not pregnant).

I also bought an iphone.

Which reminds me of the scene from Fiddler on the Roof when someone runs in and says "she's here! she's here!" and we're meant to believe that Tseidel had her baby and then it cuts to the scene where Motel the tailor is using a peddle sewing machine and Tseidel has already had the baby which is not nearly as exciting news as the arrival of the new foot-powered sewing machine.

To celebrate this news with you (the baby, not the iphone) I am hosting a sale in the shop through this Friday, December 10th. Since every third child knows the third time's the charm, use the code CHARM3 and get 30% off your order. All orders will go out by December 17 and then the shop closes down for some holiday travel and merry making.

Happy shopping! xo

Everything is Illuminated

2010-12-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

Last night we celebrated the first night of Hanukkah with friends. We stuffed ourselves with latkes and the kids lit candles and we sang songs and spun dreidles. By some stroke of luck we managed to get ourselves invited out for nearly every night of Hanukkah which means I'll be making the salad for the next eight nights. Tonight we're off to my son's old preschool teacher's house for an evening of Hanukkah songs, more candles and more latkes.

Inspired by all of this glowy goodness I made an Etsy treasury last night filled with illuminated masterpieces. Feast your eyes! And happy Festival of Lights!

Talking shit

2010-12-01T08:40:00.000-08:00

I have a secret. I encourage potty talk in our house. Poo and pee are funny and everyone knows it so, for instance, when my daughter slips on a stray sock in the hallway and bumps her head, we point our fingers at the sock and say in earnest you're a poo poo sock! And then we turn around and stick our butts out at the sock. And my daughter is no longer crying.

It's childish. I know. And largely inappropriate. And many things about excrement are not funny at all. But many things are hilarious. Now the dinner table is another story. The rule is that if we talk about potty stuff at the dinner table then we have to talk about chicken fingers and salad while on the toilet. That makes them laugh every time and the distraction causes them to forget what they were saying.

There are times when we take shit seriously. Like the other day we were hopping trains for the afternoon and ended up at Sunnyvale station when I was suddenly gripped by the runs. Thankfully and not a moment too soon I spied a public bathroom at the station. It had a keypad which worried me, but then we saw someone exit so we ran and caught the door. The kids came in with me and after warning them about what was coming, they huddled in the furthest corner.

Him: Do you have diarrhea?
Me: Yes, sweetie. It seems so. Did you ever have diarrhea?
Him: Yes. I don't like it. It's like the kaki flies out of your tushy at light speed.
Me: Exactly.
Her: You stink mommy.

But back to potty talk. I urge you to incorporate potty talk into your arsenal of distraction techniques. Kids are fighting? Go up and smell both of their butts and say, who made a poo poo? I guarantee they will stop fighting and fall over laughing. This is probably only worthwhile if both are out of diapers.

I'll understand if you don't want your kids to play at our house any more.

Bedbugs and other visitors

2010-11-30T16:52:00.000-08:00

My daughter has been coming into our room every night since she could walk basically. I had set up a little blanket for her on the floor by my bed a while back so she could come in and not wake me up. But now that it's winter we use that blanket also so if I don't remember to set out another blanket then she comes in wanting a blanket or wanting in our bed. Either way she wakes me up. Every night. But thanks to what I can only imagine is a bed bug infestation in her sleeping bag, I may have broken her of this habit. Here's how it went down.

My brother came to stay with us for two nights around Thanksgiving and ended up sleeping in her bed, the lower bunk, since my mom was in the Murphy. So both kids slept in their sleeping bags on our floor. My daughter woke up the next morning covered in bites. Little ones. Dozens of them. Poor girl. My son got a few too so we thought either it was from putting them in the yardage bin while raking the leaves on Thanksgiving - an annual tradition - or the bugs came home with us from our last camping trip and have been living in the sleeping bags in our attic. Or there are just bugs in our attic and now, via the sleeping bags, they are living among us. The next night night she slept on our floor and we had our spare duvet down there for her. She got more bites. That duvet had been in the attic too. And it had also been camping. So we've now washed everything and the carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow morning to hopefully scrub away anything else lurking in the carpets. But she's convinced that sleeping on the carpet gives her bites so as long as we can keep her out of our bed, she only has one place to go and that's her own bed. Which hopefully is not infested too because that would totally ruin my plan. And we'd probably have to burn down the house.

Life is Elsewhere

2010-11-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

I'm a little bit stuck on this subject.

I was chatting with a mom from my son's kindergarten class and she was telling me how before they had kids she and her husband had lived in Alice Springs, Australia, for three years. And then they lived in England for two years where both kids were born. And then they moved here to be closer to family. I told her how I'd lived abroad for almost five years too and we lamented the end of those days since now we are both fully embroiled in motherhood and elementary school and suburban splendor all the while wondering what the hell happened? When did we turn into these other people?

Not that I used to live such a wild and crazy life. Let's be clear. In college I always took language classes at 8am so I went to bed at 10:00. Sometimes earlier. I sang in an a Capella group so that's about as nerdy as it gets. I never drank. My friends had to beg me to order a beer on my 21st birthday. In high school I only broke curfew once and that's because I didn't know Dances With Wolves was a three hour movie.

But when I was sixteen I went to London by myself to visit a friend and since then I've had the bug. The next year I went to Israel for five months. After college I went to Chile for five months with side trips to Peru and Argentina. Then I went to Israel for what I thought would be a year which turned into four+. During that time I traveled all over Europe. Always with a backpack, a Lonely Planet and not much money. But often with the address of a local friend or cousin or friend of a cousin whose couch was free. And then we took our big trip which brought me to places I'd never dreamed I would visit. Even in business school I managed to find an internship that had me living in a charming apartment in northern Belgium.

Those were my twenties. Running around the world, meeting wonderful people, learning languages. It was a ten year Eat Pray Love fest. And then I turned 30, got a job, bought a house, had babies and here I am looking down the barrel at the next thirty years feeling kind of hollow about the whole thing. And it's not just the kids. Lately I am bursting with love for these kids. But they have a funny way of making me feel tethered. Or maybe I'm the one doing the tethering.

Either way I can't figure out how to stop feeling like life is elsewhere. Because even when I was living my life elsewhere, I was still thinking about the next place. I even remember reading the book Life is Elsewhere by Milan Kundera, whose many books I have quickly devoured and just as quickly forgotten entirely, while staying at a guest house in Cuzco, Peru and wishing I was somewhere else. BESIDES CUZCO! Epically beautiful, spiritual and charming, "turn alpaca wool into just about anything" Cuzco. But for me life was elsewhere.

So where does that leave me? Us! Almost everyone I know around my age feels this to some degree. Bankers who wish they could open a deli. Lawyers who want to be chefs. Engineers who want to be bee keepers. I think that's why life coaching has taken off in the last ten years. We're a whole generation of people who have bought into this idea of having it all (work, family, love, adventure, passion, happiness, balance, inner peace) which, for me anyway, comes with a constant feeling like I've come up short.

To fill a gap, insert the thing that caused it.
Fill if up with other and twill yawn the more.
You cannot solder an abyss
With air.
-Emily Dickinson

I feel the gap. Sometimes I feel like I might have found what will close the gap. I thought painting would do that. Sometimes I feel swallowed by the gap. Sometimes I'm at The Gap and nothing fits right and there's a long line and I'm wondering what am I doing here?

Seriously, what am I doing here?

And yet, of one thing I am absolutely certain. Ten years from now, thirty years from now, I will look back on this time in my life with an aching fondness and remember how simple it was when the kids were small and relied on us for everything. How squishy they were. How a kiss fixed anything. How they ran to greet us at the front door. And I'll wish I could go back. Or hopefully by then I'll have learned to live in the present.

The Back Page

2010-11-16T22:53:00.000-08:00

Do you ever mean to just look at a few pages of your old journal and end up rereading the whole thing and then forget to pick up your kids from school? This always happens when I'm trying to purge some old stuff and I come across my journals and then I am completely derailed from the purging project. I don't have that many journals because I could never be bothered to write regularly. I have one, two actually, from when I was 17 and went to Israel to live on a farm for five months. I wrote every day. It's a thrilling account of a scared shitless teenager living halfway around the world wanting her mommy but instead waking up at 3am to clean incubators. Good times. And I have another journal from college that's mostly sporadic declarations of my unrequited love for some new pony-tailed, guiltar playing, pre-med goon that had the least bit of interest in yours truly. Sad but true. That journal also has some stuff from when I moved to Israel after college and met my husband. But then I mostly ever wrote in it when I was mad at him and wondering why on earth I was living in a place where you paid your bills at the post office for a guy whose idea of fun was reenacting Exodus by hiking in our underwear through the desert. It was like dating Moses.

When we left Israel I started a new journal. We had bought tickets to fly around the world for the 8 months we had before I started business school in the States. It was a fantastic trip full of adventure and turmoil and diarrhea and sand flies and hitchhiking and purple coral and Himalayan views and lost inhalers (mine - which sort of sucked at 14,000 feet), and 16 hour bus rides and yoga and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. We even got engaged on that trip.

This list is on the back page of that journal. I wrote it while we were in Northern India, spending time in Dharamsala, the home in exile of the Dalai Lama. We arrived after a harrowing journey from Delhi, the armpit of earth, and even though I had a 103 fever and was hallucinating, we schlepped ourselves up to the temple where His Holiness was giving audience. And he blessed us and gave us little red strings. This was super awesome but had no affect on my Dengue fever. We decided we should stay put for a few weeks because the mere thought of another long bus ride was making me bleed from my ears. So every morning I'd wake up and listen to the rats run diagonally across the roof of our guest house accommodations. Then I'd go get a mango lassi at the cafe down the road and then do Yoga for four hours with a yogi named Akhilesh. Then I'd come home and read and eat and play card games with other travelers. And then I'd park myself at the Internet cafe and figure out where we would stay in Copenhagen, our last stop before London and then California. And who had the cheapest one way ticket from London to LAX. And how we were getting from California to North Carolina. And how much money we still had left. And when I had to sign up for pre-MBA math camp. And who killed John F. Kennedy. And where was Al Capone's money if not in the secret vaults. And is there life elsewhere in the universe. And do they eat pita with Nutella.

Here I was living in a beautiful, albeit rustic, little village in Northern India with the Dalai Lama as my neighbor practicing yoga daily and eating as much chana masala and mango lassi as I could, all for $10 a day and yet completely consumed by the details of wrapping up our trip and starting business school another world away. Once again trying to control the ambiguity in my life.

How I would love to go back there now, and maybe stay in a place for $5 a night instead of $3 to avoid the rats, and just enjoy each day and each mango lassi and each yoga pose. And let all of my anxiety about the future waft away on a Tibetan monk's robes. I'd leave the back page of my journal for poetry or sketches. Or emergency toilet paper.

I'm getting the tiniest bit better at this actually. The living with ambiguity. We have a lot up in the air right now and while I still make lists and do research, I'm mostly letting it all simmer and thicken while I try to just enjoy where I am and trust the path. Maybe this comes with age? Our trip was already ten years ago. And here I am in the same breath that I write about enjoying the present, wishing I was traveling the world again. Sigh.

This Tuesday list was brought to you by the letter A.

I will meet you there

2010-11-13T11:33:00.000-08:00

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. - Rumi

Over the summer when I was desperate for more useful parenting tips I did a search on Positive Discipline training in my area and found a woman named Linda who does parent training workshops in this method. With very little understanding about the theories behind the methods, I had tried a few Positive Discipline tricks in the Spring to resounding success, but my tricks had run their course. The kids were on to me and I needed more ammo. We signed up for the course and recently completed it.

The painting, my first watercolor in months, is for Linda. For showing us that beyond our daily struggles, the wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a place where we can meet as a family.

*warning - here is where I tell stories about using Positive Discipline in our home. You are free to jump ship.

Things are much better now. Many of the power struggles are gone. I slip back into my old ways. Sometimes daily. But the kids are responding well and the conflict in our house has lessened. As has my own anxiety about permanently damaging them. This stuff is not easy. And in the beginning it feels mostly counter intuitive and also like everything you've done the last six years has sucked.

A few things that are working:

Family meetings
We just started having family meetings on Sundays. We start out with family yoga led by my son who takes a yoga class on Thursdays at the JCC. Then we talk about something great that happened this week. Then we can talk about something that's bothering us. Everyone is calm. We establish any new rules and revisit rules previously established. It's important to do this at the family meeting instead of in the heat of rule breaking or misbehaving. No one can listen or understand when he or she in limbic mode. In those moments we just try to diffuse and move on.
Allowance
We started giving the kids a dollar a week. And we stopped buying them stupid crap. Now they can spend their own money to buy their own stupid crap. But if they'd rather save their money, then we match it. And the allowance is not compensation for doing their chores. They have chores, like bringing their plates in from the table, but they know they have this job because they are part of our family and that we all have responsibilities. If they don't do their jobs, they still get paid, but we mention it at the family meeting. So far, they do their jobs and they feel they belong.

A few weeks ago my son had a complete freak out because I wouldn't buy him something or take him some where after school. I don't even remember. When he got home he continued to shriek about it while wearing his favorite pink plastic high heels. He ended up stamping his feet so hard that he broke both shoes. And then I had to put him in a straight jacket because he started to foam at the mouth and his head was spinning 360 degrees. After close to an hour he stopped crying and begged for new shoes. In this frustrating moment I reverted to my old ways and told him there was no way he would ever get new shoes because he didn't deserve them since this is the way he treats his belongings. Then the next day he begged for the shoes again and I said if he behaved well for the next two weeks I might buy them. Genius. Now we're in a power struggle that he can never win with a nebulous target we have no way of measuring. Outstanding. His only choice would be to one up me by being an even bigger pest. Three cheers!

I finally figured out what needed to be done. I told him that since he has his own money now he is welcome to buy himself a new pair of heels. His little bank only opens for withdrawal when he hits $10 so he had three weeks to wait but that I would continue to give him his $1 each week and that he could take his $5 to buy the heels and save the other $5. At first he wasn't thrilled about that idea. But once it sank in that he could buy his own things with his own money, he started to feel in control. And, like me, the boy really just wants control. He has one week left before the payout so he's getting excited. And he hasn't had a major come apart in going on three weeks.

Lots of resources on Positive Discipline on Linda's website and the Positive Discipline website. I haven't read any of the books but it's on my list right after I finish that third one in the Swedish murder media sex trade books.

Special Ops

2010-11-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

Second Generation Special Ops Reconnaissance Unit circa 2006

So my son goes to the parent participation school in our neighborhood which I know I've moaned about because it means I teach there and I get more emails than President Obama and it has generally taken over our lives. And yet we couldn't be happier about the place and the community and the education that our son is getting. Our closest and oldest friends in the area also send their son there and even though the boys are not in the same class they play a lot at recess and are generally happy to be together at school. The funny part is that the husband of this couple and my husband were in the Israeli army together. Basic training and the whole bit.

Fast forward twenty years and these two comrades in arms are sitting in parent education class for entering kindergartners at a public school halfway around the world. We were laughing about that the other day. I mean what are the chances?

The story goes that on the third day of training the parent education chair, a tiny woman from Hong Kong, asked for five volunteers for a role play activity and this friend leans over to my husband and whispers, in Hebrew, oh man, this is going to be rough. As if their commander had called everyone into formation and shouted, I heard that someone fell asleep on guard duty last night...

Oh man, this is going to be rough.

Running with 80 lb. packs for six days? Good times. Long reconnaissance missions in the dark with no food? Easy. Crawling through artillery fields along enemy territory? No problem. Getting up in front of fifty parents to act out some positive discipline concept? We surrender!

To Buy List

2010-11-09T08:14:00.000-08:00

This is the list that's on our fridge of the things we need to buy. Even though it's on the to do side of the list. You'll notice glasses is on the list. We've been on a spending freeze the last few months so the list has grown. We also lost a few things and a few things broke. But in the last month we've started working through the list. Buying the bunk bed and toy bins was huge and has helped to realigned my chakras. My new watch arrives on Thursday. And I used miles to buy an ipod shuffle since I lost the ipod nano that I got as a gift from an old employer. Thankfully my daughter found my husband's ipod in my car today. We had looked there, in the exact spot where she found it, without success. But last week I had the car washed and I suspect a very honest car washer found it and put it in that safe spot.

So now we're down to only a few more items. My husband needs new prescription sunglasses because his are broken and I need new glasses because I feel like I've been wearing the same pair of shoes for three years. He also needs a new bike (unfortunately one that will likely cost more than his car is worth, by a lot). I need a new wallet. We both need new phones. And then we just need the minivan and a new house. And a winning lottery ticket. And a nicer list pad. Done.

Artsyville has more lists for your Tuesday.