Juliet Comes Alive

I got about 4 inches cut off my hair yesterday.  Nobody noticed.  That's not to say no one saw my hair.  It's a curly mop of mostly brown and some leftover gold from the summer mixed with what my long-time hair-dresser* says is much too much gray.  (She wants me to color my hair.  I'm fine with the gray, but she had a compelling argument... "Everyone else is doing it." ... Where are we?  In middle school?)  I digress.  


I saw several people I knew today when I ventured in to my my town's delightful farmers' market.  Every Sunday from May through October we host this...and today was a glorious day.  Vendors were out in full force, the sun was shining, leaves just starting to change and the weather was perfect, high 60's.  There was a guitar player singing Dylan, Jorma, and CSNY.  When he finished, a jazz quartet set up under a tent.  Everywhere I went, from the soap maker to the pickle guy, I ran into friends, acquaintances,Temple members, and, to my delight, even my Rabbi!  I struck up conversations with strangers, as people are prone to do on days like this.


As I say, no one noticed that my hair was shorter, but everyone has noticed that I seem very happy.  For one thing, it's Sunday and I am out and enjoying a fall day.  This is something that I have not had the luxury of doing in, well, about 30 years.  As a religious school teacher and then long-time Hebrew school director, Sundays have always been my big work day.  I have not had a school-year Sunday off in years, or if I have, then it's because I have something else to do, or I am sick in bed.  So to be enjoying a fall day and buying artisanal breads while listening to Gershwin is just a joy.


Halfway through my life I changed jobs.  


I like change.  I like to try new things.  Just this year I have tried Thai and Indian food.  This very day I baked an apple crisp for the first time.  (None of these were great, but I did try them all!) I now no longer sit at the helm of one synagogue's school, but find myself in a new role, as a consultant and regional educator to many synagogues. I am also teaching more this year.  I love the field of Jewish Education.  You might say I found my calling at a very young age (20) when I started my first job as a Sunday School teacher during my senior year of college.  I adored it, I didn't mind waking up early on Sundays, and I was a natural. Now, 32 years later,  I haven't left this cherished world of Jewish ed, but I do have my Sundays back. 


I am really enjoying the new challenges of these new jobs and the welcome surprises that the change of the schedule has brought me.  I have found some focus and renewed energy on work, family and fun. 


Why did I make this change now?   I had to.  It was time. Maybe that's fuel for another blog entry.  


For now I will enjoy my time and ponder the bigger questions.  How can I use my experiences to help others?  How can I continue to make the ancient Jewish texts relevant to the students who are even more over-programmed than ever?   Is the smoked mozzarella at the farmers market really smoked, or do they use chemicals to give it that flavor?  Should I consider moving away from the 1978 Frampton Comes Alive style haircut? 

Classic Rock

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

* Sorry about the word hairdresser.  It's the woman who cuts my hair.  It's a dorky word now that I'm typing it, but what else should I call her?  What would she call herself?  Probably a stylist.  I can't even believe the whole first paragraph is dedicated to my hair, though I was sitting at the beauty parlor (there I go again... salon) yesterday musing to myself how much time and how many dollars people, mostly women are spending on their hair.  So I guess one paragraph (well, now two) is okay.  


And an apology here... I just realized after I published this that clicking on the links to hear the music takes you away from the blog, rather than opening up a new window to hear the music simultaneously.   Sorry about that.  I'll work on that.  I do recommend checking out the music, of course.  Just don't ADD yourself right off this page into a YouTube frenzy of classic rock clips and forget to finish reading.

And It Surely Looks Like Rain

It's Saturday afternoon, August 27, 2011.  The Hurricane Irene is on her way.  It's all people are talking, tweeting, facebooking and blogging about.  Even me.


We are all "battening down the hatches" or however you spell that, and preparing for this storm of the half- century.  If it's as big as they predict, there's a good chance that we will probably have a flooded basement and lose power.  I don't live near the ocean, but if you have read my earlier blogs, I do live on a small lake which becomes a mighty, well, lake that overflows when we have these types of weather situations. 


Here's how we've prepared so far: 


1.  Eldest child has escaped to his own apartment in Boston, also in the danger zone, but a rental and not his problem.  He's carefree and probably just making sure his laptop, Droid and flashlights are at the ready.  I hope that I've taught him well and he has a stocked fridge and liquor cabinet.


2.  Middle child has also escaped to visit friend in Ann Arbor... she'll enjoy the hurricane from the comfort of the midwest which is scheduled for no weather at all this weekend.


3.  Youngest son did his obligatory 1/2  hour of helping move stuff around the garage and is hanging with his friends before being stuck in the house with his parents.  I believe he's a little put off by the threat of no electricity and having to play Grateful Dead-opoly with Mom and Dad for two days by candle light.


4.  Garage is cleaned out, garbage cans moved in.  The guy actually did arrive and put in a larger drain and pipes to drain the water out of our driveway so hopefully the flooding we usually get will not be so bad.  We do have a few holes in our roof (see "Phase One") so a leak could be in our future.  We have frozen bags of water and are filling up a few coolers of water, just in  case.  We have a full fridge, and of course, a full liquor cabinet.  Also, the great Mayor Corey Booker (Newark) suggests filling up your cars with gas and getting cash today, so that's done too.


Tom Petty said "The Waiting is the Hardest Part."  I think it's the cleaning.  If I could just sit on the couch with a nice cold drink and wait, I mean really, how hard could that possibly be?  But I need to get back to it and get everything off the basement floor and away from the windows.  


Before I go... I changed the set up of this blog so you can post your comments.  (I think.  Try it and let me know.)

And a prize goes to the person who can name this object I found while cleaning the basement!








Stay safe, and enjoy the ride!

Who'll Stop the Rain

Picture a Nicholas Sparks movie adaptation of one of his novels.  (You can't?  Ask your sister / mother / girlfriend/ gay friend.) 


The four kids (mentioned yesterday) are sitting blithely around the pool.  It's tomorrow, so it's sunny, and someone has cleaned the pool.  They are joking and laughing, and having snack and drinks out there (in plastic cups, of course).  Scene cuts to worried Mom (me) inside on the computer, tracking Hurricane Irene. 

Next scene cuts to very uptight father at work.  He's looking at the bank statement online and wildly clicking things to see if he can make money appear where it needs to be.  Viewers are perplexed.


Cut to May of this summer.  No, make that May of six years ago. Yes, that's how they do it in the movies.


The parents look pretty much the same, but the kids of course are six years younger. We come to take a final look at the house we are about to buy.  After at least 5 years of  taking our tiny house on and off the market, debating whether to stay in our  little town in Northern NJ, comparing the value of a decent sized house with a decent sized yard, we have finally sold our place and settled on what basically amounts to a brick raised ranch.  On what is arguably the nicest piece of property in the entire town.  (Did I use arguably correctly here? Read on and let me know what you think.)  As I have said, the house is really just a shoebox, only one room bigger than the one we've just sold, though each room is a little larger (except the master bathroom, which I may get to in another entry).  But then there's the yard.

And here's the funny thing.  We had pretty much decided we didn't care about the yard, as long as we had enough room in the house for our "stuff."  That lasted right up until we saw the yard.  The first thing you notice is that the front door is facing a huge front yard, but is set up away from the street.  It's hard to describe and also harder to find.  Kids on Halloween have a very tough time (guess you could say it's our trick if they want to get their treat). 

The next thing you see is that there's a beautiful pool, shaped like a chipotle pepper.  Of course, we didn't realize it at first.  I mean, of course we knew there was a pool, and that it had a fun shape, but chipotle peppers didn't come into vogue til recently, and we had really not identified it as any specific type of pepper at the time.




 

Pool with people in it.

Kids canoeing on the lake.



But the piece de resistance is the fact that behind the house and the pool flows a small river, or creek, punctuated by two waterfalls. This little pocket of zen surrenity in the midst of suburbia is what our family has called home for six years.  We love our upper lake, our waterfalls, and lower lake.  We love our barely-used canoe and the fact that there are snapping turtles in the middle lake that sometimes need rescuing.  We love that the upper lake has an abundance of fish in it, and on spring and summer nights you can see them jumping out of the water to catch insects. 

We don't love that this summer, for some reason, this lake has begun to overflow into our pool.  Which brings us to this past May.

Pool with mud in it.

The tranquil lake overflowed into the lovely blue pool TWICE, causing thousands of dollars worth of work, mess, and damage to pool, property and flooding into the house.  The pool had to be drained both times and refilled, leaving it with a stained and cracked bottom.  We had a berm built to staunch the flow of the water, and it has been tested already (and will be tested again with the impending Irene and her winds and water).

And our movie cuts back to today.  And our unknowing, naive but happy young adults are enjoying the pool and hammock... not knowing the worry in their parents' hearts.  Will the berm hold up?  Will the redirected water find a different way into the pool or into the thrice-flooded house?  (Yes, the house.  This could be the sequel, or possibly a prequel to this cinematic thriller.)  And, if you've been playing along, you'll recall that we are still not sure if there is a hole in the roof where the tree fell on the house, as the roofing contractor has failed to show at each of our arranged appointments so far.  And while we are on the subject of the money pit we call our home, we are still waiting for a no-show plumber to dig a new drainage system to allow for the water to flow away from our home and into the lawn and lake.

So, maybe it's really not like a Nicholas Sparks' movie at all.  Perhaps it should be more aptly called "Little House in the Suburbs." 

Stay tuned to find out how we fare during Hurricane Irene...