Two Women Blogging

Self-Centered ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 19:50:00 +0000

There's so much going on that I could write about. Eve is preparing for her bat mitzvah. We're a month away from the Presidential election here in the US, and some of the Republican political rhetoric is straight out of A Handmaid's Tale. I started a post in response to Jennifer Weiner's article in Allure and this video responding to fat-shaming and haven't finished it.

I'm not all that pressed for time, and I'm not tired - I have more energy than I've had in a very long time. I've caught up on a lot of house and work responsibilities that have been waiting for months; when I'm done with this, I'll go back to cleaning out the kitchen cabinets. So why am I so quiet here? I tried to put the guilt aside for a while and think diagnostically instead of critically, and I think I've figured it out.

Five months ago, I changed my eating habits and started to exercise again. The results have been gratifying (that's where all that extra energy is coming from) and have made it easier than I expected to stick to the plan - but now I'm living in a changed and changing body, and I'm feeling the emotions that I used food to avoid. When I have time to reflect and write, that's what's on my mind. I don't really want to write publicly about this process - it's too raw and personal and, for now, too new. The part of my brain and spirit that needed to write here is otherwise occupied.

This all feels remarkably self-centered and somewhat selfish to me. I'm not accustomed to all this introspection. I've never been reluctant to share. I'm spending more time and more mental and emotional energy on me and that feels selfish, even though I know it's necessary and even though Sam and Eve are enthusiastically supporting me.

I'm not shutting the blog down, but I am going to let it go fallow and not feel guilty. This has been - and continues to be - an amazing experience, and I am grateful for everyone who reads and comments and creates a sense of community - especially to MPJ and Tigermom, my dear friends here and in "real" life. I know this conversation will continue. Thank you all.

Sex, Rock-and-Roll, and Language ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:00:00 +0000

No sooner do I start writing about kids and language than Lisa Belkin writes this at HuffPo, linking to a blog post from a woman who doesn't want her three-year-old to use the word penis. He's a boy - so he's an owner-operator, but apparently until he went to preschool and was corrupted by the big, bad outside world, he didn't know the word.

What?

Seriously?

We used every correct anatomical term with Eve - including vulva for external genitalia, instead of the usual vagina-covers-everything approach. I don't think I ever had much shyness about using these words, but if I did it was long gone before medical school. I was a dorm health aide in college, and one of our training sessions involved listing every word and phrase we'd ever heard as a euphemism for genitalia or sexual acts or forms of contraception. It was a very interesting afternoon, and by the end, I was perfectly comfortable with all the words I knew, and some I didn't. It was no big deal, after that, for my three-year-old to point to the dog and say "Mommy, he has a penis. He's a boy". (I am aware that not all penis-bearing humans are boys, but I didn't explain that when she was three. She knows now.)

There are words I don't like - I won't ever use cunt, no matter how many women tell me it's been reclaimed - and generally I am far more comfortable with the real, non-euphemized words than with the street vernacular, but I've heard them all and I can repeat them without blushing.

Which is a good thing, because last night we were driving home from shul and Eve tuned the radio to her favorite Top 40 station. A song came on I hadn't heard before - something about a whistle - and she said "Mom, do you know this song is really about blow jobs?"

No, I didn't. Nor did I know that you knew the term "blow job". By the time we got home, she'd learned the correct term (apparently in health class, they didn't teach them the word fellatio), and also been reminded that men also perform oral sex on women - it's not a one-way street. "Have you ever done that?" Yup. "YUCK". I'm glad you feel that way.

Baby Talk ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:26:00 +0000

This post on Motherlode made me smile. It reminded me of me.

I was one of those verbally precocious and fairly obnoxious little kids who speak like an adult. I read well beyond grade level, I read all the time, and I didn't have many friends my own age. Add to that an unusual ability to think on my feet and parents who included their children in almost all adult conversations, and you have an eight-year-old who talks in long, verbose paragraphs, with grammar and vocabulary more often employed by pretentious graduate students. My parents found it amusing and my grandfather found it gratifying. My teachers and my peers were neither amused nor proud.

When I was about 13, and "no friends my own age" was getting old, I made a conscious effort to start talking more like a kid. I never really got there, but it was enough of a change to irritate my grandfather. Mission accomplished. I stopped worrying about it in college, where most of us talked like pretentious graduate students, and I figured I'd found my tribe. Now I code-switch when I'm with patients or non-medical folk to avoid the worst of MediBabble, and the rest of the time I let my word freak flag fly.

When Eve was born, Sam and I did not stop talking in full sentences and we didn't really change our vocabularies. There was a fair amount of "widdle babeee cutieee pieee" because she was a widdle babeee cutieee pieee, but by the time she was two or three that stopped. Eve is much more interested in being one of the crowd than I ever was, so she has always talked like a kid. I didn't take the advice of one friend who suggested that we avoid Dr. Seuss until she was learning to read, and instead read to her from Shakespeare and Frost and Donne - I waited a long time to read "Green Eggs and Ham" to a child, and I intended to enjoy it (although I have to say that "Hop on Pop" goes on way too long). We found lots of other wonderful rhyming books - my favorite was Two Cool Cows - with more sophisticated language. And we didn't curtail our vocabularies.

Cursing was different. My parents never cursed in front of us - well, no more than the occasional "damn". I heard my mother say "SHIT" precisely once in my first 20 years, and that's when she was vacuuming without her glasses and ran the machine over, yes, shit (the dog was getting old). My father thought this was so funny that he volunteered to clean the vacuum - Mom intended to throw it out. When I was a junior in college, my father commented that someone didn't know "shit from shinola". My mother said "Not in front of the child!" and my father said "She's 21. It's time, Susie". My extensive childhood vocabulary didn't extend to the "really bad words" - I didn't pick those up until college.

Once I picked them up, I had a hard time putting them down, though. I can control myself at work, since it's entirely unprofessional to curse around patients, but at home I can sound like the proverbial sailor. When Eve was born, I eliminated the very worst words but never completely extinguished "damn" and "hell". We never tried to stop her from saying them, either, and by the time she was 10, and we knew she was hearing "fuck" and "shit" on the playground every day, we stopped censoring ourselves. We told her that we didn't care if she used those words, as long as she wasn't saying them at someone. In our house, we don't use "gay" or "lame" or "retarded" as slurs. We don't say "homo" at all. We don't call women "bitches" and we don't tolerate any version of the n-word. We've told her that our standards are pretty much the opposite of other people's, and that she should watch her language at other people's houses. But when the dog tangles his leash under the refrigerator and she's the one lying on the floor trying to unsnare it while the dog licks her face, then I don't see anything wrong with a muttered "holy fuck".

I Have Eaten Too Much Chicken Soup To Write, So Here Is An Infographic ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:22:00 +0000

I didn't make it.

A Sweet New Year ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 20:23:00 +0000

Brisket, kugel, chicken soup, challah, black beans (for our vegetarian guests) and apple and pumpkin pie (our traditional desserts) are all waiting their turn. The last load of pre-dinner dishes is in the dishwasher and the bowl of apples is on the table. I'm still working on the aliyah I'm supposed to chant tomorrow.

Wishing all of you a sweet New Year. May we be written in the Book of Life for a good year, a year of peace. L'shanah tovah.

With This Ring ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 03:08:00 +0000

I love weddings. I love the sentiment and the ceremony and the music and the cake and the "how we met" stories. I love the dressed-up little kids and the parents trying not to cry and the one thing that you always forget but it ends up OK anyway.

Most of all, I love sitting next to Sam at a wedding, and leaning into his shoulder or squeezing his hand when something reminds me of us, because I know what he's thinking. I love seeing him mist up when someone uses the same processional we had, or a similar reading. I love it when our eyes meet and he looks at me the same way he did, all those years ago, when he was so nervous that he said "I do" early because the rabbi paused halfway through the vows.

Every wedding is a chapter in a story, and I love stories, especially when my own has a happy ending.

Justice, Generosity and Boundaries ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 02:51:00 +0000

We sent Eve to public school in a urban, challenged district because we wanted her to grow up in the real world, not in the upper-middle-class, all-white, all-our-children-are-above-average-and-should-go-to-college bubbles we grew up in. She grew up in the real world - she learned about food stamps and fathers in jail and mothers who couldn't pay the rent and 16-year-old sisters who had babies and kids who couldn't afford pencils and notebooks.

And now she's learning about homelessness.

Eve's friend Marcella lived with her mom and five other kids, some siblings and some half-siblings and at least one cousin, in a rowhouse in one of the most challenged areas of the city. Last week, one of their neighbors left a pot unattended on a stove. Five houses were destroyed in the fire. Everyone in Marcella's family got out safely and a brave bystander rescued their two dogs. The Red Cross put them up in a hotel for three days, and then they had to leave the hotel - and they have nowhere to go. Marcella texted Eve to say "We're out on the curb in front of our house and I don't know what we're going to do".

Sam got in touch with the school district and we gave Marcella and her mom the name and number of the office that assists homeless students; the school district has strong motivation to make sure Marcella and her sibling and cousin are all in school, and they have access to other programs. Eve is packing up some clothes to give to Marcella, along with some extra school supplies. We talked about why it's so difficult to find a new place to live - about deposits and landlords and exorbitant housing prices - and about the ways in which government could do a better job. But we didn't invite Marcella and her family to stay here. Eve didn't ask and we didn't offer.

We have room - we probably have as much room as they were living in. I wish I were the kind of person who could throw my house open to anyone in need. I wish I could really follow the commandment to care for the orphan and the widow and the stranger at our gates. I know I can't. Eve spent a fair amount of time at Marcella's last year; their house is chaotic and full of conflict. I don't know Marcella's mom at all. We live in an area of the city that isn't really served by public transit and it's too far for the younger kids to walk to school. Are those reasons or excuses?

Sam and I like to think we have a social conscience. We give money and we give time and we both work in relatively underpaid jobs because we believe in the value of what we do; we are still impossibly and unimaginably lucky and privileged. We would never be on the street because we have family who could take us in, and who could give us money. We have always had a safety net that Marcella will never know. I can't save everyone; I'm not required to save everyone. I know that. I have a right and even an obligation to keep my own family safe and to give myself a break from the chaos and emotional stress of the stories I hear at work. And yet, somewhere inside, I will always feel that I am not doing everything I could be doing to heal the world.

Conversations With My Daughter ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Where did you and Daddy live when you were first married?

Well, we actually lived 3,000 miles apart for the first few months.

Really? That must have been hard. How often did you see each other?

About every six weeks, during the school year, but less often during the summer.

Wow. That's not very much.

No, it's not - and we didn't have Email or cellphones or texting.

What did you do when you saw each other?

Um.

Did you play games?

No, not really.

Did you go out to restaurants?

Well, sometimes.

Did you go shopping?

No.

Well, what did you do?

You probably don't know what we spent most of our time doing, honey.

Eeuw! You didn't have to tell me THAT!

It's Not About The Number ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:57:00 +0000

(yeah, I know, NaBloPoMo didn't so much go the way I planned. Oh, well.)

As I mentioned recently, I've made a major change in my lifestyle. I've cut down on carbs, stepped up the fruits and vegetables and protein, and started packing my lunch rather than grabbing takeout or eating the cookies and cakes that families bring in to the nurses. I've also starting walking a few times a week. I feel better - my stamina has improved, my back and knees feel better, I have more energy, and I don't get short of breath climbing the stairs any more.

Yes, I've lost weight. And that's the hard part.

I don't want to focus on the scale. I am fat enough - and had such disordered eating - that any move toward a healthier diet would have led to losing weight, but I need to feel successful no matter what I weigh. I am successful, right now, even though the numbers have stayed the same since the end of July. I know the scale will shift again when I start more vigorous exercise (as soon as the new treadmill arrives next week) - but that's not the point. The point is I will be able to walk further, move faster, stand longer without pain, and maybe even be able to go hiking again next summer. I will be able to give up the ibuprofen entirely (now I've cut down from daily to two or three times a week) and my knees won't hurt. I will be healthier. If I keep it up, eventually I'll be able to do without the cPAP and we can think about more spontaneous and less encumbered travel - or even camping again. That's the goal.

And yet it takes everything I have to keep from weighing myself every day (I do it once a week, but that's a struggle). When I realized I had plateaued, I had to work hard to keep from reducing my intake further, even though I know that my current meal plan is healthy and balanced for me. And then I had to fight the voice in my head that said "Oh, screw it. If you're not going to lose more weight, give it up and buy some chocolate!" I sometimes feel guilty when I eat until I'm full and virtuous when I go to bed hungry. It's an internal battle to eat a piece of chicken and salad rather than a bowl of spaghetti when I'm alone for dinner, and then to resist the urge to reward myself with cinnamon toast. Oh, I have (whole-grain) spaghetti and (whole-wheat) toast and (small pieces of) dessert and even candy sometimes - sometimes, and in small quantities. But most days it's lean protein and lots of veggies and the constant, furious, arguing with myself.

The voices in my head are amplified by the voices of other women. Not aimed at me - no one has ever said anything nasty about my weight, at least not since sixth grade - but aimed at themselves. Women who are fit and healthy and active but who have a roll around their middle, or thighs that touch each other. Women (like me) who feel that being overweight negates everything we've accomplished in life. The casual, unthinking language we use - how we're "being good" when we eat vegetables and "being bad" when we eat cake, how "fat" is the very worst thing we can say about each other but the most common way we describe ourselves, how we say "Oh, I'm a COW" when we don't look like the women on the covers of magazines, how we judge judge judge ourselves and every other woman we see. "How can she wear that? Doesn't she know how she looks"? I can hear the unceasing obbligato of judgment in my own head when I see women in clothes that show bulges or rolls around the middle or legs that aren't perfectly tanned and toned. And that judgment doesn't stop when I look at myself, of course. It's no wonder that Eve owns the only full-length mirror in this house.

So here I am, making the most difficult change I've ever made in my life, coping with the roiling emotions that I used to treat with carbohydrates, and unable to talk to anyone about it because I can't join that toxic conversation. Not that avoiding the conversation completely is an option - people are starting to notice that I look different and to comment on it, and I have to respond - but I can't say much without getting into trading diet tips and listening to women who weigh half what I do call themselves "huge". And I have to do this while teaching my naturally slim dancing-school daughter that fat is not evil, that it's not about looks but about fitness, that it's OK for her to have dessert even if I don't, and that even though it's OK to have dessert it's not OK to have dessert instead of protein and vegetables. It's a minefield, and I'm walking through it without a map.

Texting With My Daughter ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:18:00 +0000

Hey, Mom, I know what I want for my birthday.

Oh?

Facebook and Twitter accounts! Since I will be 13 and it will be legal! YEAH!!!!

I see.

I'll be allowed then, right? Or you can just give me one now cause I'm so mature.

Shouldn't you be talking to your grandmother? Aren't you at a show?

The show hasn't started yet and I am talking to her. Don't try to change the subject, Mom.

Me?

You didn't answer yet.

I'm not going to answer. This is August. Your birthday is in January.

Soooo there's a quote. Better sooner than later.

I've heard that.

Safety ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:46:00 +0000

I am not a Sikh. I am not Muslim. I am not a Christian. The shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, the arson attack at a mosque in Illinois, and the attack on a guard related to a Christian group in DC, do not directly threaten me. They do not change my essential view of the world. They do not make me feel less safe. I am not newly afraid when I walk into shul. If you are now, suddenly, for the first time, feeling threatened or insecure as you walk into your place of worship - that is a sign of privilege. Like all privilege, you can't see it or touch it or smell it until you step out from under it.

I am no fan of Focus on the Family. I think they promote inequity and misogyny and the subordination of women; I think they violate the separation of church and state and that their policies, when enacted, kill people. And yet I class the attack on the security guard with the others because it is the same abomination. It is terrorism. There is no Limbaugh/O'Reilly-hyped War on Christianity - but some of you have now entered our world. This is the world I have always lived in, and that you are now seeing for the first time.

No child should have to grow up the way I did, the way Hindu and Muslim and Sikh and Jewish children in the US do now. No parent should have to teach their children what my mother taught me and what I have taught my daughter: that there are people in the world who hate us for no reason, and who will try to kill us. No adult should take it for granted, as we do, that there must be armed guards at worship services on our holiest days.

Welcome to our world. Let us now begin to heal it, together.

Conversations With My Daughter, The Home-From-Camp Edition ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 19:13:00 +0000

Wow, the grocery store has changed! But I guess I haven't been here in, like, two years.

Not since you got old enough to stay home by yourself. Why did you decide to come today?

Because I've been away and I wanted to spend time with you.

Respecting Boundaries ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Today is Family Shabbat at Eve's camp. It's the next-to-last day of the camp session, and all the parents are invited to share Shabbat services and lunch with their kids. Then we go away and come back on Sunday to pick them up. The services at camp are our favorite kind of services - outdoors and full of music and dance and laughter and wisdom and learning. It's a blast to see Eve with her friends and to meet her counselors and hear her tell us about all the different things she's done in all the different places we walk past. The camp community is nurturing and welcoming and everything we love about Jewish community.

And we're not there, because Eve asked us not to come.

She told us last year that it was really hard when we showed up and then left again. It's like she's not at camp any more, but she is, and then we leave and she misses us and she's sad about leaving her friends, and it's just hard. Eve hates goodbyes - always has - and I'm sure this is in some way connected to the adoption losses. On Monday, her letter arrived saying "Please don't come. I want to see you on Sunday for the first time. It will be easier for me".

We thought about telling her we were coming anyway - we have hotel reservations nearby for the weekend, friends of ours will be there, and it's what we want to do - but we decided to respect her wishes. We're at the hotel enjoying some couple time, and we'll pick her up tomorrow. Part of me feels like we're giving her too much power; part of me is proud of her for asking for what she needs; part of me is terrified that we're losing her (that part's completely irrational but impossible to silence). And part of me just misses her and doesn't want to wait another day to hug her.

So many parts. So much love and fear and pride and joy. So much a family.

Things Every Mom Says ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 19:50:00 +0000

Lisa Belkin writes about ThingsEveryMomSays, which is apparently trending on Twitter (I don't tweet, but I trust her). We've all had those disconcerting, time-bending moments when we hear our mother's voice come out of our mouths. Sometimes I choose to say what my mother said, because there are some things my mom got right. And sometimes I lose my temper and think "Did I just say that, or did my mother suddenly inhabit my body"?

Last spring, Eve texted me at work to ask me a question and didn't take "no" for an answer. I went back and forth with her for about 30 minutes while I was trying to see patients and finish paperwork, and then she texted me when I was in the car headed to a home visit. I couldn't text her back, so I called her, and the rational, calm response I'd planned vanished. What came out of my mouth instead was "How dare you...." I don't think I'd ever said that to her before. I don't usually think that way. But when my mother was angry, pushed past the point of reason by something we'd done, that's what she said. Sometimes she still says it.

I wonder if my grandmother said it to her, and my great-grandmother said the Yiddish equivalent...and so on and so on. Some patterns can be broken. Some linger on.

Missed a Day, Again ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:27:00 +0000

I came home last night after leading the shiva minyan for Moshe to find an Email about another friend sitting vigil in the ICU with her critically injured spouse, and I had no energy for prompts or posts or anything else.

Life is real and life is earnest, as Longfellow said.

Moshe's Farewell ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 01:35:00 +0000

I can't imagine shul without Moshe. Moshe and Deborah were always there, about halfway back on the left side, where he thought the light was better. They helped found our Congregation and they kept it going - they worked on garage sales, they lead services, they organized potlucks, they chaired committees, they welcomed a stream of student rabbis and they mentored new leaders.

Moshe taught me the Friday night melodies. He sat on the bet din for Sam's conversion, and Sam ordered a tallit just like Moshe's - long and wide, to be worn doubled up on the shoulders. Moshe and Deborah were in the congregation when we brought Eve to her first Shabbat service. He was my mentor when I was President the first time, and he and Deborah told us the history of this house when we moved here from the outlying suburbs. They kvelled with us at Eve's naming, and they cried with us when we came back to shul with empty arms after we lost Jesse and Rose.

Moshe was preparing for his second bar mitzvah - at 83, you get to do it again - when he suffered a stroke. We cancelled the service, but six months later he was back, wearing his beret and sitting in his usual seat. Deborah set up a music stand to hold his prayerbook, and he could still sing. That was six years ago. They've been hard years, and the last six months have been the kind of terrible half-existence that no one should have to endure. It seemed even more of an indignity than usual because it was Moshe - tall, strong, opinionated, kind, brilliant, Moshe. His death last night was a blessing, and a terrible loss.

Tomorrow we will gather for his funeral; tomorrow night I will lead service for the first shiva minyan. It's only fitting, since I learned to lead services from Moshe. I am not ready for the torch to be passed, but the time has come. Tomorrow we will sing for Moshe, as Moshe sang for us for so long.

NaBloPoMo 7 ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 12:35:00 +0000

Prompt: What candy did you eat once that you wish you could get again?

Hmm. I don't think there's any candy that I loved as a kid that has disappeared. My favorite non-chocolate candy, Goetz's Caramel Creams, are alive and well and easily obtainable here. And chocolate has certainly not gone away....

....but when I was 15 and went to Europe for the first time, I had Swiss chocolate that wasn't (at that time) exported to the US. It was completely different from any chocolate I had ever eaten before, and I don't think I've tasted its equal since. The flavor was wonderful, of course, but there was something about the consistency and texture that was also remarkable. I don't even remember the brand name. It was sublime.

(OK, this one is late but it's NOT MY FAULT. I wrote it last night but Blogger didn't publish it. Humph).

NaBloPoMo 6 ~by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 01:36:00 +0000

Prompt: What was the first candy you ever tried?

I will be very curious if anyone can actually answer this question. Can any of you answer it? Please tell me in comments. I have no idea. I'm sure I had candy when I was very small, because there was almost always candy in our house and in my grandmother's house. There's a reasonable chance it was butterscotch - my father didn't care for chocolate and both Mom and Dad loved butterscotch. That's a deduction, though, not a memory.

What I do remember is the stash of After Eight mints that my mother kept in the living room cabinet. After Eights are thin wafers of chocolate with a creamy mint center. Mom served them fanned out on small silver plates at the end of dinner parties. While I generally prefer my chocolate unadulterated by other flavors, I make an exception for chocolate and mint, which surely were made to go together. The After Eights were off limits, but I used to sneak one out of the box whenever I thought I could get away with it. There is no other candy that tastes quite the same to me - I think the subterfuge enhanced the flavor.

Thunderstorms ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 22:46:00 +0000

I never much minded the terrible twos. We could see the tantrums coming, the way you can see thunderstorms approaching in the desert, and sometimes we could get to shelter (put Eve to bed or feed her) and avoid the downpour. If the rain did break over our heads, we'd hunker down and ride it out. It always passed, and the skies were always clear afterwards.

Three was much harder for me because three was on purpose. Two happened to her, but when she was three, she was deliberately antagonistic. She did not WANT to put on her shoes or let me comb her hair or sit down in her chair. She wasn't tired. She wasn't hungry. She just didn't want to, she realized she had a choice, and she chose to argue with us. She was still three, so she couldn't really be reasoned with, and of course if we pushed, she just pushed back, harder. It took a while before I learned to be very careful what choices I offered, and to respond as calmly and neutrally as I could even when she stamped her foot and tried to spit at me (that last one was so ineffective that I hard time keeping a straight face).

I've been trying to remember the lessons of two and three as we navigate twelve and look at thirteen coming closer. Sometimes she's hungry and sometimes she's tired, which is no surprise, because it takes a lot of protein and a lot of energy to grow three inches in four months. Sometimes she's anxious about the pecking order at school, and sometimes she's lonely for Laura, and sometimes she's just, well, sometimes it's the thunderstorm bearing down on us in the desert. Now she can be reasoned with, but not when the emotional lightning is in the air.

Like so many parents in every generation, I forget all this, and I forget what it was like when she was two and three. I have a hard time staying calm and neutral. It's obvious that Chloe's opinion about Eve's hair, or what Morgan said to Josie in homeroom, is completely trivial and unworthy of the level of energy involved in the dramatic recreation that is playing nightly in our kitchen. I want Eve to ignore all that and focus her outrage on the bullying and the racist/homophobic/sexist language she hears in the hallways - but she, of course, shrugs all that off as "just the way things are". My rational brain knows that I am expecting too much if I expect to Eve to share my adult sensibility about social justice and oppression. My rational brain also knows that she is learning our values, and that she will find her own path. Despite my rational brain, my own internal weather system starts to circle and I thunder back at her.

We're coming up on the last week of our respite from adolescence. Eve has been at sleepaway camp for ten days, and as much as I miss her, it's been a nice break. When she comes home, I will try to remember that my job is to be a shelter from the storm.

Woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off I sat and wondered.....

Dogs ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sun, 05 Aug 2012 00:10:00 +0000

Sam and I are Dog People. We are Large Dog People. I think this is a deep-seated personality trait, like introversion or hating broccoli. If you love large dogs, you will never be a Small Dog Person. I always figured that if you are a Large Dog Person, you should think carefully before you commit yourself to a Small Dog Person. Could you really be happy with someone who wants to share your home with a Miniature Pinscher? Or worse - a Chihauhua? Could you build a life with someone who thinks dogs need to wear clothing?

I found myself musing about this last week, as I visited a patient who has a Great Dane. Her husband has a Pomeranian. It's a second marriage, and she almost didn't marry him because of the Pomeranian, but the dogs got along OK so they took the plunge. This seemed to me to be very daring, but at least the Pom wasn't wearing a sweater.

NaBloPoMo Oops ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Three days in and I goofed. No post yesterday. That may have had something to do with the two home visits, three meetings, three admissions and two deaths that made up my work day, or perhaps the half-bottle of wine that accompanied our Shabbat dinner.

The prompt for yesterday was "what was the sweetest thing someone did for you today?" That was my friend Shira, who got up early to meet me for breakfast.

Today Sam and I are taking a pretend-vacation day. Eve is away at camp, and we're ignoring the cleaning, mowing and laundry in favor of a drive down to Not-so-big City, where we will indulge ourselves at the art museum Eve thinks is "boring" and a restaurant that doesn't serve anything she likes. That will be sweet, too.

NaBloPoMo 2 ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 01:06:00 +0000

I swear, some of these posts will start with actual ideas, but this is day 11 of my 12-day work stretch and I'm using another prompt from Melissa.

What is the sweetest thing someone said to you today?

"I love you". Sam, first thing this morning, when I had bed-head and pillow creases in my face.

NaBloPoMo 1 ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 23:00:00 +0000

August is NAtional BLOg POsting MOnth, or NaBloPoMo. So...

today's prompt from Melissa at BlogHer: Name something sweet you ate today.

Well.

See, I've made this major change in my approach to eating (no, it's not a diet) and that means I don't eat sweet stuff much any more. I usually take a piece of fruit for lunch but there wasn't any to pack this morning, and my strawberry yogurt didn't stay cold enough so lunch consisted only of cold steak and carrot sticks. Breakfast was scrambled eggs and dinner was stir-fried Thai-style scallops (yum) over brown rice. No time to stop for coffee today so only water and seltzer to drink - oh, and a glass of wine, but that was dry. Of course.

Oh! Wait! One of our nurses spent last week at the beach and returned with the de rigueur box of salt-water taffy. I had one piece. It was white, peppermint flavored, soft and chewy and very very delicious. And sweet. Yum.

Things I Could Do Without ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 16:58:00 +0000

Mike Tyson on Broadway.

Things I Could Do Without, Reality TV Edition ~ by Jay

noreply@blogger.com (Jay) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 02:46:00 +0000

We don't watch much reality TV. I've never seen an episode of "Survivor". I don't follow "American Idol". I can't imagine watching any of the various Bachelors or Bachelorettes. Eve and I do watch "So You Think You Can Dance", and I let her stay up to vote. And OK, OK, that was me watching "Design Star" on HGTV - and if remodeling shows like "Kitchen Cousins" count as reality TV, then I need to rewrite the opening sentence of the post. On the other hand, if watching hunky guys put together spectacular kitchens is wrong, I don't want to be right. Or something like that.

But no matter what, I have never been able to watch "A Baby Story" on TLC, and Oxygen has now gone them one better for shows I can't even consider. "I'm Having Their Baby" tells the stories of women who are struggling to decide "whether to go through with the most difficult decision of their lives" - placing their babies for adoption.

Let's start with terminology. No woman gives birth to someone else's baby. She may choose to place her baby for adoption, but even after placement (or "transfer", as Oxygen calls it), the baby is still her child. And she's not a "would-be mom". She's a pregnant woman, and after she gives birth, she is a mother. She remains a mother no matter where her child grows up. And don't start with me about she's-a-mother-not-a-mom, because that kind of reasoning makes me itch. If she's not really a
"mom", then why is it such a difficult decision?

My dearest Muzik is actually watching this, so you can change channels to her space for an informed critique after her head clears. Me, I'd rather watch Jerry Springer. Seriously.