Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Countdown to Atonement

Uh-oh.

Yom Kippur is just around the corner. Time for me to clean up the shit I've done this year. And the shit I did last year but didn't clean up in time. And the shit I've done all my life.

Man, it is a tough gig being Jewish. So here goes:

Mary Ford, I am sorry I wrote that snarky FB status about wanting the Republicans to lose their Congressional seats if they boycotted President Obama's speech last month because you are right - I totally supported the Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin because of Scott Walker.

Wait, you know what? I am not sorry. I am complicated, Mary Ford; deal with it. In fact, maybe you should atone for pointing out my contradictions. I have feelings too, you know.

Robin, I am sorry I secretly made you decaf coffee the other morning and told you it was real. The real coffee was in a package in the freezer and I didn't feel like bending down to open the freezer.

And Robin, I am sorry I said I needed the whole weekend to work on my novel and locked you out of the house because I spent that entire Saturday outside on the chaise lounge, reading THE ASK and then I spent all of Sunday testing various recipes for Sangria.

Also, sorry I drank all the Sangria. And passed out during sex. With your brother.

Lady at the JJill outlet store, I am sorry I insisted the zipper was already stretched out and broken on that skirt I tried on. It wasn't. But I think you knew that when you saw that half of the zipper was still stuck onto my underpants when I walked out of the dressing room. Sorry I called you a Nazi. And got you fired.

Claire, I am sorry I didn't click "like" on that FB status you wrote a few months ago about your new book doing so well. I had a momentary episode of envy and I had to take an Advil and lie down until I felt happy for your success. Ditto for Jane and Claudia, who lost weight this year.

Although, frankly, if you were really my friends you wouldn't lose weight. Or achieve success.

Karen, I am sorry that at your retirement party last weekend, when, after the gazillionth man told me that he's always been in love with you and you are the most beautiful woman he's EVER seen and that you are envy of every woman and the fantasy of every man and, oh, really I am really your sister? Really? Hunh. And then he'd look over at blonde, 5' 2", blue-eyed you in your short shorts and then he'd look back at 5' 7", bloodshot-eyed me in my muu-muu and there'd be this awkward silence, a veritable audial ellipsis, well, I am sorry that after that gazillionth guy said that to me, I said, "yeah. She is beautiful. Too bad about that chronic vaginitis and that one undescended testicle, huh?"

Sheila, I am sorry that I am going to get to work late this morning and tell you it was because I had diaharrea. I do not have diaharrea. I am going to be late because I am writing this blog post.

Not So Fast

Only a few weeks until the big day. Yom Kippur, of course. The Fast. It's on everyone's mind.

Unless you aren't Jewish. Hey, do the rest of you guys even have a day of atonement? What's up with that? Only the Jews have to atone for the shit we've done? Everyone else gets to just, I don't know, squeeze a few crocodile tears into their beer, send out a couple of those shortbread cookie bouquets to people they've wronged, and leave it at that? Fuck that shit.

Wait. WE feel bad about the shit we've done. AND we send out bouquets, albeit Jews are more likely to go with Edible Arrangements (fruit just seems Jewish) than shortbread cookies (which scream GENTILE) have to atone, as well. And we have to fast for 24 hours. NO FAIR. Chosen people, my ass.

As far as I know, God doesn't go 24 hours not eating; why do HIS/HER chosen people have to ????

I wonder what God eats. Wouldn't it be wild if God eats pork? That forbidding my people to eat it was really because S/He was worried about running out and S/He knows how my people are prone to wrapping leftovers in paper towels and putting them in our purses for a nosh later in the evening?  It makes sense, when you think of it. Allowing only Gentiles to eat pork ensures enough pork to feed them into perpetuity. Let us prove my theory:

All you Gentiles, open up your purses right now. Got any paper-towel -wrapped ham slices in there under the box of Chardonay? Yeah, didn't think so.

It's a sort of ancestral instinct. My people has historically fretted about where we will find our next meal. Because of the Exodus, of course. Since the Exodus, we've been very worried. And very hungry. And. unless we are wandering around Manhattan, all the decent restaurants close by 9. ('Cause we are not going to Red Robin, I'll tell you that much. My people does not go to Red Robin*.) And if we get too hungry, we will be weak, and unable to fulfill the Commandments we've been chosen to obey.

Like fasting on Yom Kippur.

 

*Red Robin is goyish. El Pollo Loco is Jewish. Because, you know, Mexican is Jewish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moseying From The Enemy

Well, summer vacation is over. And I have nothing so show for it.

I am amazed at how little I get done. And yet, I'm almost always out of breath. I know they say that on the journey of life, one should move slowly, smell the roses, take the detours. On the journey of my life, however, I don't take the detours as much as I just, well, kinda, stop. And rest. Sit. Readjust my underwear. Have a cookie. I can do, like four things each day and then I am spent. And I don't mean four Venti sized things either, like working from 9-5 and then raising kids and then ending world war and then doing my Kegels.

Yesterday I intended to write a blog post, work on the novel, make pesto, read three chapters in a book I really want to read, call my mom, go to Tai Chi with Robin, iron my linen pants, listen to all the shit Jackie O said and find that whisker on my chin that I felt the other day - the one that went from nothing to, like, 10 yards long and thick as a Sequoia in a week. Fuuuck, my chin hair moves faster than I do.

What I do yesterday is: eat dinner. Twice.

Is there something wrong with me? Where is my energy, my motivation, my "can do" spirit? I not only do NOT have a "can do" spirit, or even a "can't do" spirit; I have more of a "don't wanna do" spirit.

The problem is, I am pretty satisfied with my shit. Well, everything is fucked, of course, but I've seemed to adjust to that. My old mercurial life was exhausting.  And, frankly, it kinda rocks down here at the bottom of the expectation barrel. You get to nap a lot. And there are cookies. Albeit, not the ones you hoped for.

Why am I this way? As far as I know, I do not come from a lazy people. I mean, my people got the hell outta Russia when the Czar came after the Jews. You gotta have at least a modicum of "can do" spirit to get from Minsk to Chicago without rewards miles.

I'd be holed up in my shtetl hovel, watching the Cossacks pillaging my village and think, "maybe I should have taken that last mule outta here. But he was leaving at, like, dawn. I don't do dawn." At least, that's what I'd tell the Cossack as he was stealing my candlesticks and setting fire to my hovel. Maybe, if I was lucky, he'd be a sort of lazy Cossack, too. Maybe he'd light the torch and, when it didn't ignite on the first try, he'd give up and ask me if I had any cookies or something.

And we'd take a little break from the burning and pillaging and genocide. Have a snack. Rest up. Flirt. Start to make out a little.

Oh, don't judge my fantasy. Find me one dark, hairy Jewish girl in the shetl who wouldn't have checked out the smooth, hairless, blonde setting fire to her village and thought, "I could totally tap that." But, of course, she wouldn't. Because she hadn't shaved her legs in...well, ever.

It's a damn good thing no one is after me these days. The best I can do - in terms of running from the enemy - is moseying along. You know, as in, "April, 1881: With the Cossacks hot on my heels, wielding their knives and torches, I moseyed my way through Siberia, arriving at my condo on Lake Michigan in late 1993.

"Whereupon, I shaved my legs and took a nap."