Knitting success!

As many of you know I am a bit of a frustrated knitter. I work very slowly, and I am easily distracted. With the arrival of cooler temperatures, and a new niece, I found motivation to pick my knitting back up. A pink chenille sweater for the niece is well underway, and I have completed my first project in a LONG time.

Now that I'm teaching more, I feel compelled to wear hats more often, since I get frustrated with kippot (yarmulkes) that slide off my hair. When I checked out the most recent issue of Knitty a few weeks ago, I took note of a simple, adorable hat--Urchin. I love berets, and I'm sort of bored with the plain Parkhurst cotton berets I frequently wear. Unfortunately, I get extremely irritated from wool, which keeps me from buying most of the cute hats I see in stores. Once I picked the Urchin pattern, I needed to find an appropriate yarn with minimal, if any, wool. On eBay, I found Classic Elite Bubbles, a cotton-blend in #2410, a blue tweed. I knitted it on size 10 1/2 needles, even though the pattern calls for size 11.

In less than a week, the hat is done. It fits. I am very happy. Photos will follow.

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness?

At the apartment in Berkeley (where I lived with female J.), we didn't have a dishwasher, but I wasn't particularly disturbed by the state of our dishes. Like most older apartments, there wasn't good lighting. If our dishes were anything less than sparkling, I didn't usually notice. Every once in a while, I'd "reject" a washed dish and put it back in the sink. J. felt the same way. Her only preferences were about the type of sponge we used (Dobie) and that we shouldn't use the natural dish soap. In everything else, we were all-natural girls, but dishes just didn't seem as clean.

Ever since I moved into this apartment, I have had a goal. And it is cleanliness of the dish kind. You see, the townhouse's kitchen sink is just below a window. Once again, the only dishwashers are human. At first, I noticed the grime and the filminess. Then, I realized that there was a huge difference between the cleanliness of the dishes I did in daylight rather than at night. Now I just accept that I will have to re-clean dishes washed at night, when my insufficient kitchen lighting fails to provide sufficient task lighting for the sink.

I changed my dish soap. Since then, I have tried at least 6 different dish soap formulas. I still haven't found the right one. The current tester: Method, unscented. (I could also rant for a while about my distaste for the scenting of every cleaning product imaginable. But that is for another time.) I'm not sure it's up to the task, but the jury is still out.

Meanwhile, J. (that is, the husband J.) and I just bought a condo. With a teeny, tiny dishwasher, one that at first glance appears to be a garbage compactor because of its narrow proportion. I really, honestly hope the little machine does its work. I think I even still have my beloved Ecover dishwashing tabs from years ago, when I last had a dishwasher.

In Sickness and in Health

Okay, so J. and I didn't take the standard American, Christian vows... but less than two months into marriage, and we have already had more than one test of the "sickness" part of partnership. As Joshua is taking care of me today--getting groceries, doing dishes, calling attentively to check on me--I figured I should reflect on this a bit.

As a few of you already know, J. was in the hospital less than two weeks after we got married. Six days after the wedding, he started having neck pain. The next day, Sunday, he had neck pain so bad that he couldn't turn his neck at all. On Monday, J. woke up with a fever. At this point, the Bride insists on his seeing a doctor. Fever plus neck or head pain of that severity equals potential meningitis. For the next few days, we went to multiple doctors for multiple imaging procedures and blood tests.

That Thursday, J. got a phone call from the doctors telling him that his blood culture was forming as-yet-unidentified bacteria and he needed to go to the hospital immediately. So, a quick packing of a bag, and we were off to Stanford Hospital, where J. got the best of care and a lumbar puncture to rule out the meningitis. We were there for just over a day. The bacteria turned out to be an unusual strain of salmonella para typhi which manifested as blood poisoning before showing gastrointestinal symptoms. A day of massive antibiotics took out the salmonella very quickly, but the lumbar puncture left him with an absolutely horrific headache that ended up lasting for 8 or 9 days, and was worse any time he was even slightly upright. (After that, he was fine.)

And--oh, yeah--this all happened just days before we were to leave on our honeymoon. He got home from the hospital on Friday, and we left on Monday for Fiji and New Zealand.

For J., it was a massively stressful, scary, and painful experience; for me, it was massively stressful, scary, and exhausting. It did, however, leave us feeling very close to one another, to review our priorities, and appreciate the wonder of marriage. J. was very glad that he had me to take care of him at home and advocate for him at the hospital. I literally mopped his sweaty brow. For my part, I gained first-person insight into the weighty responsibility of being responsible for another person's health and well-being. The idea that I was now responsible for emergency decisions and even had Joshua deferring to my opinions on his non-urgent hospital care was clearer than ever. And both of us spent a lot of time contemplating how singles living far from their parents--particularly single men, who are less likely to have networks of friends who are willing and able to make the necessary sacrifices of time and energy--ever cope with being REALLY sick.

RL's Current Online Obsessions and Pastimes

1) Boggled.org: I love Boggle. J. will only play a few games with me at a time. My sister and I grew up playing Boggle with grown-ups, since there were no cousins of our generation for many months. J. hasn't learned to think the Boggle way yet, so he gets demoralized after a few games. I used to get my Boggle on by playing at WEBoggle. However, WEBoggle has a few drawbacks, particularly the fact that you have to wait for games to start (you play with others in real time) and that it can be VERY slow, sometimes so much so that dozens of words won't be registered. Then I found Boggled. I am much happier now. You still compete with others, just not in real time. It is always ready with a game for you. You can register and track your scores and records (for each game--highest score, most points for a single word, most words, and longest word). Instead of standard Boggle scoring, you are awarded points for each word according to its length AND rareness.

Yes, I know that my visceral reactions to incorrect grammar and spelling are bizarre... yet "unjuster" does not belong on the list of acceptable terms.

And you can see a pie graph that displays the relative proportion of each level of word difficulty. However, the thing I get frustrated about most is still there--the words that are included and excluded. For example, tose, which means "to tease or comb" in OBSOLETE English. Not Modern English. There are also SO many acceptable spellings of words and varied inflections of words that I get the creepy crawlies down my spine. (Yes, I know that my visceral reactions to incorrect grammar and spelling are bizarre... yet "unjuster" does not belong on the list of acceptable terms.)

2) Viva Caligula: I saw a strange promo sending me to the Adult Swim website. I soon got sucked in by the unabated violence--particularly the spurts of blood when on a rampage. I have 18 out of 26 weapons and a hand that really hurts. I think the reason why I like it most is because the game's shortcuts actually make sense to me: it's really easy to remember what key to push when your weapon's first letter is the key you hit to deploy it.

3) Google Calendar: As many of you might know, I am highly inept at keeping a calendar. Even when I have one, I forget to use it. And I have been known to double- and even triple-book myself. Now that I have to include J. in the schedule, things are a bit more complicated and require a better system. I really like that the calendar does the color-coding I need, J. and I can both edit and view events, and that I can have the Jewish calendar superimposed with no work on my part.

4) Surfing for My Teaching: I am SO happy about being back in the classroom. I love my new students, and I am really excited about preparing awesome lessons for them. I've got three different grades at two schools. I haven't even met the eighth graders yet.

Post-Honeymoon New Zealand Obsession

Upon returning from our amazing honeymoon (its perfection only slightly marred by J.'s salmonella adventure), I became obsessed with the history of New Zealand and spent an obscene amount of time researching the natural history of New Zealand, its flora, fauna, and people. In particular, I was blown away by the performance of Maori music and dance we saw at the Auckland Museum. (You can find video of the cultural experience performance at You Tube.) I was fascinated by the relationship between mundane Maori activities--fishing, boating, fighting--and the dance. The Haka is their signature dance. It was performed in battle to intimidate the enemy. Today, the national rugby team, the All Blacks, performs it in international meets. The last time it was used in battle was WWII.

I was also fascinated by the fact that New Zealand was the last landmass occupied by humans and is so distant that no mammals lived there until more recent times. Birds dominate the native fauna. Moa are now extinct, but they were enormous birds that were at the top of the food chain prior to the arrival of the Maori's Polynesian ancestors.

Lastly, I should give a few more general comments on our honeymoon. It must be said that the Kiwi people are the nicest I've ever met. It's like they all understand that being friendly and polite really is a better way to get along. The food is amazing. Our local favorites were Kapiti ice cream and Cin Cin, a wonderful restaurant at the marina. Auckland is a lovely city, and J. and I concur that we must go back to Auckland again as the starting place for future New Zealand adventures.

Fiji was also awesome, but we mostly saw the island resort we had booked through Luxury Link (an amazing resource for big discounts on luxury travel). Vomo resort occupies an entire small island off the west coast of the main island of Fiji. They waited on us hand and foot, and were particularly helpful in bringing us meals to our cabin (called a bure), where Joshua was resting up from his lumbar puncture. The room and amenities were first class; the beach was unforgettable. The fish were absolutely gorgeous; you could walk right into the reef and see them. The water is so clear that we could see straight down to the bottom from our helicopter ride back to the airport. I did my first snorkeling jump from a boat and spent large portions of each day in or beside the water. For some bizarre reason, I rose at dawn every day we were in Fiji. I would wander out and lay in a hammock by the water and watch the world wake up.

Recommended Resources:
Pacific migrations - From West to East Polynesia - Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
Auckland Museum Maori Resources

Bedtime for BNB

I am writing this five minutes before my bedtime. I wanted to post something. Then I read a sweet e-mail from my mother-in-law, and got pinged by a friend. And finished folding some laundry (clean pillowcases and table linens). And wrote my co-teacher about a message I want to e-mail our students.

I have a hard time setting and keeping a bedtime. J. is urging me to get better at this. But it is hard when he is still hard at work in the office upstairs. He reminds me constantly that I need more sleep than he does. Which is true. And I have a bad cold, so he reminds me even more forcefully. But there are always more things to do....

Another Bride! (In which our Heroine ponders a pickle jar and a slew of bethrothals)

About a year and a half ago, my friend S. got married. This was notable for a few reasons. Chief among these was that almost no one in my close social circle had gotten married in years. After a period in my twenties of at least a wedding or two a year, there was a bit of a dry spell. And suddenly, S. met a lovely man (B.) and soon thereafter became engaged. They married. And then the floodgates opened.

S. says that she was a stubborn pickle--you know, the one that gets stuck in the neck of a jar, keeping the rest from being pulled out. Thus, the rest of us were the stuck pickles. Or something like that.

S. got married, and the rest of us followed. I got engaged about six months after that. Then, S.'s former roommate, another of my closest friends. Next, my roommate J. (the female J.) got engaged. But that could have been the result of her moving into my bedroom, which I had recently left. That room had previously been occupied by a series of people, male and female, most of whom have now been married or gotten pretty close.

Another friend in that circle of friends just announced her engagement.

And that doesn't even count husband J.'s brother who just got married, or the two or three other members of his family who are now engaged.

This glut of weddings may or may not be related to lucky bedrooms or the liberation of S. from the metaphoric pickle jar. But the winds are changing, and they smell like buttercream frosting and champagne.

The eBay Dress (In which a wedding gown is found from an unexpected source)

I am occasionally obsessed with eBay and always in pursuit of a bargain. After attempting dress shopping at David's Bridal (at least to see myself in dresses that fit rather than samples and compare styles) and an underwhelming, overwhelming outlet, I started looking on eBay, just to see what is out there.

And I found a dress. And it was the right size. (I checked the size charts on the designer's website.) And it looked beautiful. When it arrived, it was just as pristine as promised, even if the train was longer than I wanted.

My wedding-gown-to-be was from the Spring 2004 Collection ,by Mon Cheri, and no longer available anywhere. Since I saw many other dresses from that season available elsewhere, I'm going to assume that it was a popular model. (I confirmed with Mon Cheri that the picture did describe a dress they made.) It was listed as NWT (new, with tags). It was being sold for... $175. That's right, $175. The dress was apparently a remainder at a bridal store that someone inherited and was dissolving. It and three more dresses were being sold on eBay for the same price. With shipping and insurance, the total wasn't much more. Eventually, I did have to sink another $375 in for the alterations. But it was gorgeous and fit perfectly in the end.

Shacking Up (In which the heroine and her intended begin to cohabit)

After many months of commuting 1 1/2 hours each way to-and-from my beloved J.'s home, I was exhausted. Granted, we lived only 32 miles apart. And J. could drive the distance in much less time. But I was usually the one doing the schlep. J. had no roommate. J. worked more days of the week. And riding public transportation means that you can actually use your commute time for more enjoyable things than watching out for other drivers with death wishes. So, in theory, I wasn't really losing work time... I was just doing my reading for class or prepping for students on trains and busses.

However, by the time six months had rolled around, I was already wiped out. Sure, I could theoretically work at J.'s apartment. I brought my laptop. I'd bring grading or reading or research materials. And I sometimes managed to accomplish things. Yet, I somehow had this constant lack of focus, a sense of being without a place. If I was at J.'s, I missed my friends, my books, my food, my stuff. If I was at home, I was missing J. I had a hard time bonding with people in J.'s general vicinity because I wasn't there to hang out on weeknights and J.'s bachelor pad wasn't really guest-friendly. But I always felt that I was missing out on weekend social time with my own neighborhood friends.

Plus, I hated having to bring stuff everywhere... I got a huge backpack so that I could bring 5 days' worth of clothes and books with me. If I was working on a research paper, I'd end up schlepping 30 pounds of books on the train.

It pretty much sucked, and it was apparently getting to J., too. I remember exactly when J. first asked me to live with him. OK--I can't remember when it was (I think it was spring). But I remember where we were and what we were doing. J. and I were in the parking lot of his apartment complex, on our way to the car. The conversation continued as we headed off to meet a friend of ours for dinner at a Japanese restaurant. And I said, "I really want to, but no."

What motivated this possibly unexpected negative reply? I'm not entirely sure, although there were certainly a number of factors. My grandfather (now sadly departed) once told me that he'd disown me if I lived with a man without marrying him. I'd already watched a number of friends go through the living-together-then-breaking-up deal. Other friends had to wait for five years to get married to their live-in sweetheart (which I now felt too old to do). Whatever combination of factors there were, they somehow outweighed my growing aversion to commuting. I told J. that I wanted to live with him, but wanted to wait until we decided if we wanted to get married. And that was that.

Several months later, I happily received J.'s proposal. Immediately thereafter, J. wanted to know when we could move in together. It took us a few more months (from early August until December 1st) and quite a bit of apartment searching, but we are now shacking up. Which was hard to explain to my grandmother and my Orthodox sister. It has certainly made a lot of things easier... I get to stock my preferred groceries in the house now.

But it takes getting used to. It took us at least a week to realize that we could be in different rooms at the same time (our townhouse is much larger than the old two-room apartment). J. threw his quiet version of a mini-fit the first time we went to the grocery store, and I put the kibosh on the non-kosher meat. I snapped at him one day when he came home hungry without warning me and then kept interrupting my cooking with unpacking questions. (Of course, I hadn't told him to call and let me know if he wanted food as soon as he came home...) J. is slightly mystified my winter blues and neuroses, and I read too much into his moods. I can't save my meltdowns for the privacy of my own bedroom and hide them from him. And we are, as expected, discovering each other's idiosyncratic habits. (Isn't it a good thing if I run around the house turning off the lights in unoccupied rooms?)

Then, there is the whole category of mutually reinforced bad habits. J. eats lots of sweet snack foods--which I have a hard time resisting. This led to J. throwing a bag-and-a-half of left over Halloween candy into the trash when I confessed that I was having a hard time resisting the siren song of the Kit Kats, even though I was able to resist both his box of Entemanns chocolate-covered doughnuts and all but two of his really yummy ginger and lemon sandwich cookies. When we were both working from home on Friday, J. noticed that my tendency to stay in my pajamas all day is not really helpful to my attempts to be productive and alert, even if he weathers it fine. We both stay up way too late. And when we try to go to bed at the same time, and I like to have two hours more sleep a night than J. does, that means that I get up way too late.

And, finally, there's the usual getting-used-to-the-new-home bit. We can hear the noise from both the train and the close-by airport until late at night. We spent the better part of our first month fighting with the heating unit and trying to keep warm on nights where the temperature outside was in the 30s and inside was no higher than 55 (our thermostat hit its bottom reading). I can't see my school friends all the time, but I get to see J.'s friends (now my friends, too).
I only now have a desk in our shared office, so that I can work upstairs, away from the temptations of TV, Tivo, and Playstation--none of which I've had for years. We're still partially in boxes, but we chip away at them, a little bit each week.

During one of our chilly afternoons, when we were enjoying the fireplace, I realized that I was very content. Part of me has fantasized all my life about having a man at home as my partner and friend. And I have that, even if it is not an unqualified delight. J. is pretty wonderful. Even if he can't keep on top of the dishes, dislikes vegetables and melty cheese (separately or in combination), doesn't understand the mechanics of Ikea furniture, leaves beard trimmings all over the bathroom sink, and watches a lot of sports.