When I'm 64...Happy B-Day Israel!

Am I really the only person out there who thought of this?  Happy Birthday to Israel, who turns 64 today.  Happy Israel Independence Day!





Would love to get back there.  It has been since 1997 for me.

What's that?  Did I hear that Phish is playing their first shows there this year on December 8, 2012?  Before you get all over your Phantasy Tour with that, I will take credit for all the out-there reasons I came up with.  Just please remember to add me to the crew.

Mama's gotta dream.  Isn't there something about vision boards and affirmations that people are all into?

Yom Ha'Atzmaut Sameach, people.

Loving the Early Childhood drop off

It is so easy to forget how sweet and innocent the 4s and 5s are.  Just now at drop off, I reminded my youngest, The Wolfman's Brother, to enjoy his day in preschool as a four year old.  He looked at me with that creeping 5 year old just around the corner look of, "c'mon, mama, don't embarras me now." How does he know that already?

The early years slip away too fast.  Like Ferris said, if we don't stop to look around every once in a while, we could miss it.

My 4 year old will soon be 5, and that babyness (yep, he is the youngest, which compounds this burst of sentimentality) is quickly melting away.  It is so bittersweet.  What could be better than a morning of duplos followed by starting a school garden?

Gotta eat it up while I can.

The Pity Post

There comes a time in every mom bloggers blog-of-a-life where she is granted the opportunity to bitch and moan*.  In honor of my 188th post, I hereby grant you a peak at some of my current grievances.  Keep in mind I haven't bitched much here at all.  The whole point of the Whole Phamily is to seek out the good.  But I felt it high time to let out a barbaric yawp, bloggy-style.

I think it all boils down to a few (ahem, um, I meant 20)  key points, which are, in no particular order:

1. lack of focus.
2. more fun to procrastinate.
3. my writing sucks balls.
4. I go on and freakin' on.  And on and on and on.  Point well taken:  there are too many bullet points here for any reader to follow.
5. Other Women have it better.  Who are these Other Women?  Mom bloggers who know more than me, successful women, ivy-educated women who market themselves well, community college grads who market themselves well, 13 year olds who market themselves well (oh, wait, that is a boy), socialites who haven't dipped into the bowl of botox yet, self-proclaimed type A personality women.
6. Along the lines of #5, I am neither a hard worker nor come from money.  I'm so screwed.
7. Making lemonade out of the proverbial lemon is too hard.
8. I have good things to say and I think no one will ever listen (aside from you, dear reader who is one of my 20 or so loyal ones).  
9. I'd rather be dancing at a Phish show.
10. I'd rather be dancing at a Dead show (oh, wait, Jerry is dead).  Still, no one is comping my tix or putting me on any guest lists for any shows that I know of.
11. I'd rather be dancing.  Thank you, Capezio.
12. I want it now (along the lines of Veruca Salt, but I don't want to go down as a bad egg).
13. Easier to live vicariously through other people (similar to #5).
14. Too hard to create my own, but...
15. ...I'm too opinionated to keep my mouth shut.
16. Want someone else to do the work for me.
17. Still not a Skinny Bitch.  You thought I wasn't a bitch?  My nickname at age 6 was crab, but I hide the shell and claws well.
18. Still not just plain ole' skinny.  Don't give me any of that "well, you don't want to be too skinny" bullshit because what I'm talking about is just being thin, not anorexic, okay?  And just fitting comfortably into clothing.  No, I'm not a plus size.
19. Everything is too itchy.  I like cotton and stretch but not too much stretch because that irritates my skin.  No silk.  No wool.  Only some synthentics.  Is my best case scenario relegated to a life clad in Eileen Fisher?
20. As of yet, still not a  fag hag.  Derek Blasberg and Jonathan Adler, we can still be buddies.  But since #17 and #18 exist, I doubt I fit the bill.

And yet, I have a lot to be grateful for:

Kids
Husband
Health
Parents living
College degree
Masters Degree
Not being able to outsource one of my favorite activities:  sleeping
First crack at working in 8+ years.

Maybe I should actually get to work to try to make some bucks so we can rehire the cleaning help.   More on my decision to temporarily let go of our cleaning help for about 3 months so we could save $ to afford Mountain Jam coming your way, soon!

More about my new venture another time...If Jamie did it in DC, then I can do it in Philadelphia!






Thanks to Liz Gumbinner for that lift.


*this is based on no scientific data.  I just made that up cuz I wanted to bitch and moan.  Time to go back and fluff the pillows.

Call Me Maybe

Yep, trusty spin class keeps me honest.  I actually really, really like this new tune which debuted nearly 2 months ago and has gone viral to over 30 MM (that's million, for you non Wall Street types.)

Carly Rae Jepsen, or at least her stylists, did good by me with the sweet placement of the VW Jetta.




Seems like I have a new tune I can listen to with Concealed Light and maybe be the cool mom I think I am.

God knows she is sick and tired of listening to Bob Marley, Phish and the Grateful Dead.

Maybe.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day

And you thought I didn't know my hip hop.  Here, from the 1998 album Swarm, is "Never Again," performed by the  Wu-Tang Killa Bees, an affiliate of Wu Tang Clan.  They should be showing this video to kids in Hebrew schools.  Sure beats my experience with this disturbing photos that they showed me in Hebrew day school.  The pictures of course are powerful, but listening to a group rap about it at the same time brings it to another level.




Always remembering.

My thoughts in Amsterdam more than ten years ago?  Anne Frank:  mein shvester, mein freund.

Raging Diaspora

File this one under original beta-test "hippy charedi"  (since this term was just revealed to us by the Nunever recently):

Check out The Diaspora Yeshiva Band from performing "Pitchu Li" in a 1979 sound check - they are rocking it out!

Banjo player (is that Avraham Rosenblum, because we really don't know!) is rocking it out, and of course the fashion is totally the rage.


 

Where can we get an old-school kibbutznik hat like the chaver on the right?

Caine's Arcade

All because a 9 year old boy took some initiative.
built a cardboard arcade.
his dad let him do what he wanted during summer vacation.
a filmmaker/creative DIY guy driving a 1996 Toyota Corolla needed a spare part drove past the arcade Caine built in his dad's auto parts shop,



I love that I am the 127th  person to be "talking" about Interconnected on Facebook.

Loving that man named Nirvan who put this together has a company called Interconnected.

Didn't ya know that I love the number 127?

No, folks, this wasn't by chance.

Kudos to all the folks involved.

Caine is  GOING TO COLLEGE!  (well, alone, today they have raised $44,000)
A little boy with a family auto parts store in East LA now has a college fund.

More Positive Vibrations

Along the lines of world peace and unity, Rocker T offers a great guitar lesson a number of years ago to friends at the Rainbow Gathering in 2003.

Thanks, Zev, for uploading this beautiful video.

 

Kind of makes you want to read more carefully the side of a Dr. Bronner's bottle of Castille soap.  Just a point of interest that the Bronner family were originally German Jews.  The family name was Heilbronner, and the "Heil' part was dropped as Hitler rose to power.  The reggae connection is for sure there!

Once In A While You Shown The Light

In the strangest places if you look at it right.  I have a touch of the blues, but when I heard Sublime's "Scarlet Begonias" this morning, my mood was lifted.  I wasn't a 90s garage band fan, but when Jerry's energy comes through with this tune how can things be bad?



I'm gonna be happy with the rings on my fingers and maybe I'll put some bells on my shoes, at least figuratively.  But not the rings.  They are real.  Love rocks are a girl's best friend, didn't you know?  And I will be happy to light Shabbat candles tonight and see the light in a very cozy place:  my home.  With my very own daughter Concealed Light.

Love Your Children, Pay Attention to Them

That was the message of Eva Sandler last week, who lost her husband and two children in a recent terrorist attack in Toulouse, France.  May we only know happiness and joy going forward.  The irony of this blog post is that currently I am ignoring my children while they eat their supper to watch the media coverage from last week's funeral.

May the victims' memories be a blessing.





I know it isn't the Jewish tradition to play music or give flowers when a person dies, but I still can't help but think towards CSN.