Last Day in Feb., Need to Post!

I can't believe I only posted four times in the month of February.  Unbelievable.  That's what happens when I work full-time and come home exhausted every day.  At any rate, it's the last day in February and I felt the need to put pen to paper, er...or the digital equivalent thereof.  I only have a few moments because it's after 10 p.m. and I need my beauty rest (translation: am too old to do all-nighters anymore; can't function without 7 or 8 hours sleep.).

I have the sort of job which one takes home with one, even though I vowed never to teach again. Well, all right.  I didn't actually vow. More like I prayed.  Nevertheless (and always the more), here I am, teaching again, and this time toddlers--with a vengence!  It is sometimes much easier to teach grade school (even with the grading-papers-at-home-syndrome) than 18 month to 2 year olds, which is the age-group that I work with.  I come home exhausted (am I repeating myself?), needing absolute silence.  With no children at home, I do get a modicum of that, at least.

Suffice it to say, the last thing I want to do when I get home is school work--or blog.  Have absolutely no energy for either--I just want to vegetate.  Of course, tonight I ended up doing both - school work, and blogging.  I did not pass go.  I did not collect $200.  I did not vegetate. 

Well, there's always next week...happy March, everyone!

( p.s. Don't get me wrong.  If I didn't love this age group, I wouldn't be teaching them. These are great kids, each and every one of them a special little human being.  And I work at the absolute best preschool in the entire state.)


*Copyright alert: No infringement of any text or graphic copyright is ever intended on this blog. If you own the copyright to any original image or document used for the creation of the graphics or information on this site, please contact the blog administrator with all pertinent info so that proper credit can be given. If you wish to have it removed from the site, just say the word; it shall be, ASAP.

Belong to Your Tribe: The Right Way to "Raise" Children

Here is a great Rabbi Manis Friedman video (thank you to my friend Shoshana Z.) on the Torah view on raising children.  No matter what you do, you "raise your child." If you neglect him/her, you're still raising him--with neglect.
Another interesting point: in the past, children learned about life from 'living it' with their parents.  And then they invented schools.

Listen to the message Rabbi Manis Friedman tells us about what 'raising children' really means. Beautiful and insightful.

Visit Jewish.TV for more Jewish videos.

It Never Rains But it Pours...

So those of you on Facebook already know what we've (read: me) been going through.  Not that my D.H. isn't exhausted with working on the town home practically single-handedly--but that on top of putting house back together, flood in basement, inventorying what was damaged (dozens of books which were stored away in boxes on the utility room floor), I got very sick, the worst during Shabbat.  I actually had a fever.  I can't remember the last time I had a fever. I wasn't able to help him at all.  He put our new bed frames together without my assistance (did I tell you we had to buy new frames because the 30-year old one finally gave up the ghost? It just wouldn't put back together. Oh well. We got our money's worth out of it.).

Tonight will be the first night we are not 'guests' in our own home.  By that I mean, from the day we returned we slept in Rambo's old room because we had no bed frames.  This room will now be the guest room.  Toodle's old room is now our home office.  Somehow, using the odd pieces we own we squeezed both our computers and tables and cabinets into her room.  Except for the huge file cabinet which kind of hits you in the face as you walk in the door, it doesn't look half bad.

We are not "there yet" - we still have much left to do: stuff (great word, that) is all over the place inside boxes, out of boxes, hanging over things (such as the couches and chairs), and just plain empty boxes piled up in a large corner of the living room, waiting for the management to pick them up and take them away.

We haven't put the books back in their bookcases, including most of the sifrei kodesh. They are in boxes right in front of their bookcase.  Downstairs, we can't put back the books because the bookcases have to be hammered back together where their backs pulled out.  Besides, half those books were water damaged (well, we did want to clear out a lot of stuff; this sort of forces us to...).

Lamps are not up on walls, curtains not up on windows but rather are hanging in the coat closet where there is thusly no room for...coats (we have vertical blinds, so we do have privacy), we can't find our coat rack which used to hang opposite the coat closet, and the carpet is pilling like crazy and needs to be vacuumed--it's new--and the very last thing will be hanging the pictures and artwork. Right now, parts of our house are disaster city.

And I haven't even tackled my office yet, with it's six boxes of...stuff (there's that word again): papers, medical files, school work, etc.

I'll take pictures when we are done (don't worry--the photos above are not really my home).


*Copyright alert: No infringement of any text or graphic copyright is ever intended on this blog. If you own the copyright to any original image or document used for the creation of the graphics or information on this site, please contact the blog administrator with all pertinent info so that proper credit can be given. If you wish to have it removed from the site, just say the word; it shall be, ASAP.
but for gosh sakes who would want to actually claim those photos anyway

Blog Carnivals You Should Check Out

The latest Haveil Havalim #303 is up and running here,  as well as the KCC: Kosher Cooking Carnival, over here.
Meant to include these in my last post, but everything got waterlogged.  Happy reading (-and stay dry)!

No Time to Post--Busy Moving Back Home

As I mentioned many posts ago (or maybe I didn't), we were forced to move out of our town home for 'renovations' which we didn't ask for nor wanted.  Quick review: the new owners of the rental complex in which we live had signed their contract (so they said) with the stipulation that they would renovate every apartment and town home within a certain period of time.  Ours was one of the last un-renovated town homes , and we had the option of moving to another one, moving back to ours, or vacating the premises le-gamrei*; in other words, we had to get out no matter what.  Unfortunately, the management was perfectly within its rights, because they weren't breaking our lease--they were just not renewing it.

To make a long story longer, we had to move, one way or the other.  After checking out several other town homes in this complex, we came to the conclusion that we really liked our place, which we had chosen 7 years ago and waited two weeks extra until the tenants had moved out.  So we opted to move out temporarily, and return to the same town home after renovations were completed.  Of course, this had to be done at our own expense: hiring the movers to move out all our furniture, as if we were leaving town--and paying for storing it at their storage facility, as well as finding a place for us to live temporarily.  A major pain-in-the-neck, and expense that, with my D. H. still unemployed, was a real hardship.

We lucked out, because the arrangement we made with our next-door-neighbor to stay in his town home (he was keeping it although he was working out of state), though right next door to us, was not ideal: it was a sparsely furnited 'bachelor pad,' with a non-kosher kitchen.  In addition, we would have had to get some big guys to drag our mattresses up the stairs to his 2nd bedroom, and it would be awkward, to say the least.  We wouldn't be able to cook there, and it would be uncomfortable if he came home for a weekend visit (this is a guy we did not know well, but he had a very good heart to agree to this).

At any rate, this arrangement was changed when the management postponed the renovation on us.  Instead, because they screwed up our timetable, we were given a guest apartment, fully furnished and at no cost to us for the month of January while our town home was being painted, floored, carpeted, kitchen gutted and bathrooms partially redone.  At least, they did that for us.  Because upon return, we were going to have to pay the higher rent because of these 'renovations.' Which was their whole purpose to begin with!

So here we are, finally back in our old place, still chaotic with personal belongings in boxes all over the house--however with new kitchen appliances, cabinets, floors, freshly painted walls, new carpeting with thicker padding--and what happens? The day after we move in, the very neighbor's town home where we were originally going to stay--floods from a frozen pipe which burst--it looked as if it had exploded--in the middle of his kitchen wall (guess I forgot to mention the exteme cold weather and huge snowfalls we've been having here), seeps into our downstairs family room in the basement and floods half the room, with our sofa and table and other furniture just having been moved back in.  Half the utility room (-a storage area off the family room where the laundry room also is) where we had stored all our downstairs books and kitchen dishes and Shabbat china in boxes stacked upon each other, was flooded.  Boxes tumbled down.  Books were water damaged.  China was broken.

We are now assessing the damage for our insurance company, whose adjuster should be contacting us shortly. I guess I shouldn't complain.  Our neighbor's place was trashed.

Is Hashem trying to send us a message? Am I over-interpreting?

Well, at least I finally found our shower curtain.  Now we can...shower again after five days! (Just kidding.  We have a hall bathroom.)