Family Flying Off

After a very busy nine days, my family, or at least some of them, are flying back to the States having been here for nine-ish days. It's been very full on. Mostly fine. My family isn't really into doing anything. Most of their time here was spent sitting on the sofa. But M got to spend time with some of her family, which we are on rather short supply of, and she loved it. So that was good.  It cost me a lot of money, which wasn't so good. I did a sense check in an online forum I frequent and perhaps my expectation wasn't right that guests should pay for their way. But I ended up shelling out a lot for almost all the food to feed three additional adults for two meals a day, plus TDay itself (minus the turkey which my dad covered). But... money makes people nuts. I'm not thrilled it cost me a lot to have a good time with family for a week, but, it is what it is and a good time was had by all. So there you have it.  And we had the extra bonus of it being the first night of Chanukah last night, so we got to celebrate that too which isn't typical but was also very nice.

I was hopeful that things were slowly getting into some sort of normal pattern where Covid was with us but manageable, and then omicron hit the scene. I'm glad the family is headed home today because more restrictions seem inevitable and have already started. I have students coming in two weeks and we have no idea what the situation will be then. Everyone is feeling a bit anxious and that's fair. My booster is scheduled for the 24th of December, so after the students go. If I feel crappy, that's fine seeing as we don't celebrate XMas. I would just like to get it on board.

In the meantime, the nights continue to be longer. The weather is cold. Work is alright. I'm sad that my family is gone. Even though they are a pain in the ass a lot of the time, it was nice to have them around and spend time with them. Especially this side as I haven't seen them for two years. Hopefully we can make it to the States in the summer, but it's so hard to know.

Shabbat shallom y'all

 

One thing I've gotten into the habit of is Friday night dinners.  Being Jewish has always been a fairly low key undertone to my life. There's no real equivalent to American Reformed Jews here in the UK.  On top of which I now live in a fairly small city (150k population). While it's nice and international, the religious communities are small.  My choices are chabad (no) or UK Reform which is more like US Conservative. But if I want my daughter to connect to her Jewish heritage, needs must. So we belong to the local Reform Synagogue, which is fine. And I do my part to increase our activities at hone, hence Shabbat.  

It's also been a great way to connect with my mom, who now has a small retirement flat in the same city and stays here 6 months out of the year. When she's not here, we do video Shabbat together. It's actually turned into a really nice family thing and a way for me to create a religious association where we generally have very few. Judaism is a lot about family- and I'm glad that I've been able to create this tradition. Although obviously contrived because I never really did Shabbat dinner pre-kid. But I'm okay with that.

I've perfected my bread machine challah dough recipe. I make little challah's because we're only two people and I don't eat a lot of bread. So one batch of dough makes 4 little challah- a month worth of Shabbat dinners.  We say all the blessings, but I've yet to introduce more of the 'day of rest' concepts to my daughter. Right now, we just do Friday dinner. That's cool. It's something.  I look forward to it. It makes a nice rhythm to the week.

It would be nice to share it with a bigger community.  This may come in time, there's been talks with some synagogue friends about joined up Shabbat dinners but Friday nights are tough, especially with kids. It's fine.

Anyway, I've made a few playlists of Shabbat music, getting in the spirit. Bread is defrosting on the table (soon to go into the oven) and candles and wine are ready.  Shabbat shalom y'all!

Remember me?

 

It's been a long time. No one I know appears to be blogging anymore. In fact, I very much doubt that most people in general are blogging anymore. Now it's all insta and tiktok. That's fine. I'm old. I can be old school about this.

Once upon a time, I wrote a lot. Journaling was part of my routine. I went from paper journals to blogging. And then it all stopped. I can't really pinpoint the slide. It just happened. And years of my life passed. They've been some great years. I'm a mother now. That's different. I'm still close friends with the guy I had started seeing casually over seven years ago. We're not together- and that's absolutely for the best. But he's very much a part of our lives. No, he's not the dad. My girl's got a doner not a dad don't you know.

We've had a global pandemic. The world turned upside down.

The planetary situation gets worse.

Life goes on.

I am trying to work on myself for a bit. This may mean getting back in touch with writing. We'll see.

I've made a good life for myself. I've got a solid job, and my kid. What I don't have are particularly close friends anymore. I miss that. I've got tons of acquaintances. Lots of general friends. But my best friends have all moved away, become distant, etc. It's hard. I get it. I'm probably not the best at keeping in touch either. It feels like they have new lives and friends.  I guess it's good that I've always been pretty used to being on my own. Not that I'm really on my own, caring for a tiny human. But you know what I mean.

I think I stopped writing because things seemed less important. They say as you get older your emotions tend to flatten. For me I think this has been completely true. I used to care a lot about a lot of things. I used to have strong opinions about pretty much everything. Now, not so much. I mean, if pushed, I certainly have an opinion, but I'm not sure I care like I used to.  Although I'm sure that the people I interact with regularly probably still think I'm fairly opinionated! That's okay. I'm not saying I'm a completely different person. But things change.

It could be my age. It could also be a product of the modern age. Everything on demand. On the phone. Stuff is funny for half a second and you move on.  There definitely hasn't been loads to talk about while stuck at home for two years. In 18 months I didn't go more than 5 miles from my house. That sucked. Raising a kid is tiring. Rewarding, but tiring. I haven't read a book in five years. I keep buying them. I mean, I like books. But when I'll read them, I have no idea.

I don't mean to suggest that things are bad. Mostly the opposite. Things are pretty good. Job is good, family is good. I guess I'm not striving for things like I used to. I'm not sure what my goals are now. Keep doing what I'm doing. Raise my girl. Have some holidays. Eat nice food. I'm lucky. I know I'm tremendously lucky. It's not perfect. I don't have everything I ever dreamed, but my life is good. So I find that I'm content. And unfortunately, content just seems.... boring.

I started on this plan that suggested journaling and gratitude as a way of improving yourself. I don't know if I'm down with gratitude. But I thought I could just start by writing. See what happens. Maybe I'll keep it up, and maybe I'll be gone another seven years. Who knows?