Thirteen years married to Andrew.

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Happy 13th Anniversary, Honey….

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All my friends are here with me.

The other day, we went to a great coffee shop with another family. We were hanging out, drinking our lattes. And as luck would have it, the Kinderman came in and set up. I figured all our boys would roll their eyes.

But no. That man engaged these 8 and 9 year olds. Really got them singing! And though they’d never admit it publicly, they had a blast and didn’t want to leave.

We’re so busy helping our kids grow up. It’s so cool to watch them just act their age.

Back to school.

I’m nervous. I am going to school. Middle school. Tonight is the ever-dreaded back-to-school night. I check in at the homeroom. Then, I’m given my son’s schedule and I have to go to each class and sit at his desks. I have Social Studies, Science, Writing, English, Math and Art. Thankfully, no PE tonight. I couldn’t bear to wear a gym uniform.

When I was in school, our gym uniform was yellow with snaps – a dress thing – and bloomers. Bloomers? Do you even think that anyone under 40 knows what the heck bloomers are? Yikes. Now they have shorts and t-shirts. And the boys wear the same thing as the girls!

But I digress.

Elementary School. It’s very comfy and cozy. But this Middle School thing? Not comfortable. I am not liking this at all!

Rumor has it that I cried the first day of school every year of my life. At least that’s what my mother says. Maybe it’s true. I don’t remember every year. There must be one year that I was happy with my class assignment. There must be a year that I wasn’t totally stressed out. Right? Whatever….

So as I drive myself to my first real visit to Middle School…I need to keep reminding myself…

I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry….

Day 5.

Day 5 and they still make me smile.

In a rush.

This will be brief. Why? Because it appears that over the past several days and today included, I have left myself about 10 minutes combined to do what I want to do and about 4 hours combined to sleep. Arghhh. So I’m off to fight the DC traffic for a breakfast meeting.

Last night, I gave a speech at a dinner/fashion show event for charity. It was, I’m told, well received.

I wrote the speech on scrap paper in the hallway a few minutes before the event.

And it made me think. Because in college, some of my best papers were written after work (3:00 am) and before my first class (8:00 am) on the day they were due. And in my business life, some of the best proposals and presentations were put together with similar haste.

Am I just a procrastinator? Maybe so. But the truth is that I think about what I want to say from the minute I know it has to be done and then put it to paper (or screen) after it’s been molded. Maybe.

Maybe I’m just a slacker.

Happy new year.

Today is the beginning of the year 5767. If this year is anything like last year, I’m afraid I’ll keep writing 5766 on my checks. (ba-da-boom)

As we do every year, we go to religious services. For many Jews, the high holy days (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) are the only days they attend, save for a family bar mitzvah or a wedding here and there. So there’s a lot of pressure on the Rabbi to say something motivating enough for all the two-times-a-year folks to consider making a little more effort in the coming year. (We go fairly regularly, in case you were wondering….)

This year, I felt our Rabbi fell a little short. His sermon neither motivated me nor got me thinking. Maybe it had a different effect on others, but to me, it was about a concept that I have no ambivalence about…

But something else at services today got me really thinking. There was a spider. Seriously, a spider. It was crawling up the tallis (prayer shawl) of a man two rows in front of me. He was a cute little fella – almost clear and not very big. I was enjoying watching his voyage up the fringes. And I was thinking about Sammy Spider, the star of a series of children’s books about Jewish holidays.

So I watched Sammy (I decided to call him Sammy). The sermon, as I mentioned, was not rocking my world. I watched as Sam bravely edged over until he could touch the tallis of the man next to him. And he started to move quickly across the beautifully embroidered Hebrew letters.

But then, it happened. It was almost in slow motion. A friend of ours who was in the row between Sammy and us (I’ll keep his identity anonymous…!) reached out with his program and let Sammy crawl onto it.

At first, I thought he wanted to save Sammy from getting lost among the tallit. But I started to realize that he had evil intentions. He was not saving Sammy, he was plotting to kill him!

I wanted to shout out! Stop! Killing is wrong. And in the house of worship on the holiest of days! NOOOOOOOOOO…………..

And then, that wicked man put the program on the floor and stomped on Sammy. He perished right there on the carpet.

Sigh.

And this made me think. How many times could something terrible be stopped if people would stand up and shout out? What is it about getting involved that terrifies people so? We need to look out for each other. There are horrors in our world. If we do nothing to stop it, does our complacency make us partially responsible?

I’m sorry Sammy is dead. Though, he was nothing to me. We had nothing in common, lived different lives, had different priorities. He probably had a different religion from me (I never had the chance to ask) and I’m sure he was culturally at the other end of the spectrum from me.

But someone loved him. And someone will miss him. And that matters.

Life.

There is something about the sight of a plain pine box at the front of the room that stops my breath. I look around at all these people who loved this woman. They belong here. And her family comes in from the family room where they are greeted by the people who came to comfort them like a receiving line at a wedding. I feel like I’m invading their privacy seeing their grief. It’s so raw. Her husband looks so lost. Her children hold each other for support. And they hold their grandmother.

And it occurs to me that this happens every day. And that for every death, there are people this sad and this lost. And the feeling overwhelmes me.

Rather than fall prey to the feeling, I choose to live each day as best I can and love as much as possible. And to make a difference to someone.

The power of nice.

I’m a bzzagent. And they sent me this book to read and talk about. I’ve only read part of it, and like it so far. But that’s not what this post is about. It’s just that the sunny yellow cover keeps starting at me. And while I was thinking about some things that happened over the last couple days, it inspired me.

Growing up with my dad was fun. No doubt. But one of the things that I always loved about going out with him was the conversations. Not with me. We had a lot, of course, but with the bank teller and the gas station attendant and the receptionist and the clerk… Basically, with everyone. My dad is friendly. He strikes up a conversation wherever he goes. I never thought that was unusual.

And, I thought it was commonplace to take food offerings to people. Like candy to the dental assistant or donuts to the pediatrician’s office. These days, my father buys dozens of Krispy Kremes and delivers them all around town – to the oncologist, to the internist, to all the people who were so nice to him when he was sick. He does this a lot. I mean a lot. When you see my dad coming, you know there’s a good chance that he’s carrying thousands of sticky calories with him.

Recently, I went to a casino in Delaware with him to play the slots. (Maryland has horse racing and lottery, but slots would be immoral?) Anyway, we went in and he checked in with his member card. The woman knew him by name. Before she saw the card. We played a while and went to cash out. (I won!) The cashier said, “Are you Bob’s daughter? We love your father!” And so on, and so on…..

So what I’m trying to say is that, to me, talking to strangers and being friendly is genetic. At least from one side of the family.

So, much to the embarrassment of my husband and, sometimes, my children, I talk to everyone. The guy who checks the membership cards at the gym (Kwame) knows me by name and I know where his other job is and always stop and say hi. You won’t be surprised to hear that most people don’t acknowledge him at all. I know that Norma at the post office has worked there, at this exact location, for almost all her adult life. She knows that I’m selling stuff on eBay for charity. And she told me today what store I can go to and get free packing peanuts. Evidently they just throw them out. You think she tells a lot of people about that? I think it’s payback for all the times I saved my packing peanuts for Julie. Julie is our mail carrier and has been since we moved in. She has a bad knee. Married with no children. Used to be very athletic. Has a sister she is close to. And she’s hooked on eBay. So I saved my packing stuff for her. Except now, I need it. And she understands.

Gary, who works at Bloom, has a terrible cold. He should have called in sick. But he’s going to go straight home and get some sleep. Beverly, who answered the phone at the Kings Contrivance Village Center today, had such a lovely phone voice. I mentioned it. Not to butter her up, but because she did. I doubt that’s why she was so helpful as I was looking for information about booking the venue.

When I had some beautiful memorial cards printed, I got to talking to the owner. Turns out she is a member of the same congregation as me. She might even join NCJW. This morning, I started a conversation with a woman who works out with the same trainer as me. She always looks so sad. She and I had never spoken, but surely knew who each other was. She seemed so relieved to have human contact. She, who I thought was so shy, went into a huge history of her muscular life. I think she even smiled.

My life is enhanced by others. And I feel lucky that I’m not afraid or embarrassed to start a conversation.

I just don’t think everyone looks at it that way.

Reading is Fundamental.

As a kid, I remember the “love to read” campaign, Reading is Fundamental. Until I looked it up today, I didn’t know it still existed. My brother and I used to laugh at the commercials – it split the word Fundamental into FUN and deMENTAL. I thought it was hysterical; guess I wasn’t as mature as I thought I was.

We read a lot in our house. Andrew reads so fast that when we were a new couple, I used to read the books he’d finish and test him – I never believed he did anything more than skim those things. But he absorbed every detail. What a gift. Our oldest son is like that, too. He likes reading more than just about anything. Keeping him in books can be a challenge, but we work at it. And now that he’s in middle school, there are some good books that are assigned reading. He’s reading Watership Down now. He’s tearing through it and begging for a trip to the library. Or to Borders — he has gift cards burning a hole in his pocket.

Our other sons have different tastes in books. I guess I thought we could just pass down the hundreds of good books we had to the next in line. But the middle guy doesn’t like the science fiction or fantasy books. He wants sports and funny stories. Oh, and Sports Illustrated for Kids and MAD Kids magazines. And then the youngest? While he’d read whatever was lying around, his preference leans towards information-filled books like Guinness Book of World’s Records and Sports Almanacs. (We do worry that he’ll want to play fantasy sports soon! He likes those stats!)

And I gravitate toward anything. Well, everything, actually.

We’ve always read to the boys. When they were little, we read to them all together. As they started getting older, we’d divide and conquer. Sadly, Davis doesn’t always want to be read to anymore. Sometimes. But not often.

The other two are only one grade apart and it still works to read to them together. Sometimes. Right now, I’m reading Bridge to Terabithia to them. Well actually just to Reed. Max pages through Captain Underpants instead of listening. That’s okay. I know what happens later in the book and I’m afraid to get there with them, anyway. When I read the book with Davis a few years ago, we never finished the last two chapters because he was so upset about the course of events. He wouldn’t let me go on.

I can say that the book is such an escape. The language so colloquial and the dialogue feels so real that I’m taken into rural life and I know these characters. Reed just loves to hear Jesse run. I understand. He’s going to love hearing the budding friendship develop. And he’s going to find it hard to hear some of the story later on… But what better conversation starter than a really great book?

Piñatas.

So tonight, wonderful friends of ours took us to see Jon Stewart. We sat in a corporate box. It was spacious and had waitress service. I felt a little guilty with all those people smashed into the pavillion and the poor souls on the muddy lawn behind that. But not that guilty.

The parents of our friend were in town and I was dying to meet the mom. She and I had some discourse via blog comments. Fun stuff. I often worry that it will be disappointing to meet in person one who charms you online. In this case? Not at all! She was very fun (and her husband wasn’t shabby either) and it was a lovely dinner. We went for Korean barbecue – one of my favorite meals. And then? Off to the venue….

We met up with the other guests of our gracious host and chatted it up a while in the patio area for sponsoring company folk. That would be us today. Woo Hoo! I love feeling special. And to boot I really love having a ladies’ room without a line that runs into Montgomery County. The conversation was riveting.

We went to the box to see the show. I have been to this venue about a thousand times and have never had the opportunity to be in a box. It was awesome. I know I said I felt a teeny bit guilty about it, but the fact is….I loved it! I could spread out. And, since I have a touch of claustrophobia I really appreciated the fact that I could breathe air that wasn’t a direct result of someone’s exhale. It was, oh so, refreshing!

The opening act was hysterical. Honestly, I wish I could remember that dude’s name because he was hysterical!

And Jon? Jon was topical. Poignant. Funny. Irreverent. And, he talked about some guy having relations with a piñata. I swear. He did. Really. Could I make that shit up?

The thing about this show was that every one there (and I mean every single fricking one there) was a Democrat. Well, at least not Republican. It was entertaining to see all these like-minded people laughing at a very funny man describing their deep feelings in such a funny way.

It was hard to see the festivities end. The company was great. The show was funny and thought-provoking (though the sound effects he made of his dog with explosive diarrhea and vomiting was quite disturbing) and we made new friends.

Jon Stewart might be most famous for his fake news show, but this was a real and very fun night.