Purim Planning 2011

Thanks to Adar Bet, I have been able to procrastinate in my Purim planning this year. In fact, I had kind of skipped over it in my head, skipping happily over costumes and graggers and mishloach manot and moving straight to Pesach stressing. However, once I got recruited to help plan the shul's annual Purim fundraiser, I realized it was time to stop dragging my heels and start preparing!

Even though I'm sure I could put my creative thinking cap on and make a costume from scratch, I honestly just don't have the time, energy, or desire right now. Maybe another year. Maybe. So instead, I will be relying on costumes made by someone else, preferably ones that will be able to withstand multiple uses. I'm already anticipating that YS will need to wear his at school, at shul Saturday night, to shul Sunday morning, and to the seuda Sunday afternoon. That requires a lot of endurance, and a made-by-me costume just isn't going to do.

I've gotten lucky the past few Purims. Thanks to recycled costumes from cousins, I haven't actually had to buy a costume until this year. I tried hitting the stores post-Halloween to get some good deals, but as soon as the clock struck midnight and the calendar changed to November, the costumes were off of the shelves and put away until next year. So, I am actually sucking it up and spending money on store-bought costumes, because sometimes I'm allowed to be lazy and do it the easy way.

Did I say easy way? In my head, this is how my planned conversation with YS was going to go:

Me: Do you want to be a dinosaur for Purim?
YS: Yes! I do! I will happily wear my costume to all events and won't complain a bit.

In reality, the conversations (yes, there were several) went like this:

Me: What do you want to be for Purim?
YS: A moon! And you will be night. And AM will be the stars. And Abba will be the sun.

Will a moon costume be easy to buy online? No? VETO! Try again.

Me: Since "Dinosaur Train" is your new favorite show, do you want to be a dinosaur for Purim?
YS: No. I want to be a window.

VETO! A window? Seriously? While I was happy that he wasn't begging to be a super hero like most boys in his class, I was a bit perplexed at his choice of costumes. Try again.




I sat at the computer for a LONG time and looked through my options on the Toys R Us website. I decided on a cute scarecrow for AM. I figured he'll look adorable even if he refuses to wear the hat.





For YS, I narrowed it down to a few good options and revisited the subject with him.

Me: Do you want to be a dinosaur or a blue crayon for Purim? Blue is your favorite color!
YS: A blue crayon!
Me: Ok, great! You'll be a blue crayon and AM will be a scarecrow.
YS: I want to be a scarecrow! I'll be a blue crayon next year.

So we sat together at the computer and looked for a 4T scarecrow costume, but alas, there was nothing in a reasonable price range. Finally, I pulled up the list of 4T boys costumes and let him scroll through. In the end, this is what we ordered:

Thank you Toysrus.com for making my life easier. Now I just have to pray that they fit and he doesn't change his mind in the next three weeks. Hahahaha. Yeah right. Let's just say I won't be cutting off any tags until Purim night!

Sometimes quitters win

As a child, I was really good at quitting. I quit ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, clarinet, karate, ice skating, Brownies, yearbook (only after being editor in 8th grade), tennis, singing, speech team, and swim team. There are probably some other after-school activities that I'm forgetting, if only because they made such a brief and meaningless impact on my life. I did hold onto a couple of activities for great lengths of time. Though I would be hard-pressed to eke out Heart and Soul today, piano was a constant in my life for ten years or so. Horseback riding also stood the test of time, until I got tired of having frozen toes in the winter, even while wearing two pairs of socks under my riding boots. Besides, once I finally convinced my parents to buy me my own horse (which they later sold while I was at camp one summer), the challenge was basically complete. I also managed to stick around Hebrew School for much longer than most kids my age, taking greater-than-normal interest in tutoring the younger kids and helping them prepare for their big milestone days.

I recognize that I was so lucky to have the opportunity to try all of these different activities, and nobody is going to enjoy everything they try, but I still think it's a bit funny that I was such a good quitter. Of course I still managed to fill my resume with plenty of quality extracurricular activities so that the colleges I applied to would be impressed enough to admit me, but I still sometimes feel a twang of regret at not having a cool skill or impressive talent to showcase. Thank goodness YS and AM have an incredibly athletic father who can pass along his sports genes to them!

The thing is, when thinking about writing this blog post, I realized that there is something I never did quit. It's a passion that I have now turned into a career, even though there's no way to show it off at a talent show.

Since a very young age, I have been committed to social justice. I'm not sure where it really came from - while my mother is definitely socially-minded and has always been involved in important Lexington non-profits, she never exactly sat me down and said, "this is right, and this is wrong." I guess that's the thing about really great parents; they don't have to tell you those things directly. Instead, my parents were able to teach me right from wrong just by following the right path themselves and hoping I was paying attention. In the sixth grade, after starting a mini-revolution against a racist ballroom dancing school, I was given a humanitarian award. Later, as a senior in high school, I won a small scholarship for my social justice work. I went to diversity camp, led diversity clubs at school, participated in leadership workshops, and created and implemented a self-esteem/diversity appreciation curriculum for local middle school students (with my best friend and partner-in-crime, HL, who was by my side during most of the activities on this list). I was deeply passionate about teaching young people the importance of tolerance and valued every opportunity I had to participate in related activities or trainings.

Then I went to Brown.

Brown manages to attract some of the most liberal-minded and progressive young people. Some say it's one of the most liberal schools out there. Others say it's only liberal for the Ivy League. Still, I found myself surrounded by people who already valued tolerance and diversity, and appreciating each other's differences was something that was expected. There didn't seem to be the need to sit around and discuss it to death like I had in middle and high school. So, I didn't. Instead, I stayed busy with Hillel and my sorority and studying my butt off. Sure, I walked out of class in protest of the war in Iraq, but then I boarded a plane to the Bahamas the next day and enjoyed Spring Break without giving much thought to Democracy.

Before my senior year at Brown, I was faced with the awful predicament of choosing what to do after college. After college?! Uhhh....CRAP! I considered my options and decided that I really wanted to become a lawyer who somehow "fixed" the foster care system. Okay Rachel. Good idea. So, my parents shelled out big bucks for an LSAT class, I studied my butt off, and before I knew it I was walking out of the test feeling good about my efforts but fairly sure that I had no desire to be a lawyer. The next plan involved taking a "year off" with HL, where we would spend half of it backpacking around Europe and the other half working in Australia. We soon realized we were way too poor for that idea! HL changed her plans to teaching English in China, which seemed like a good idea until SARS broke out, so she headed to law school, and I headed to New York to join AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps, where I would spend a year living in a strange intersection of MTV's The Real World and Americorps. I lived with strangers (awesome, amazing, incredible strangers), spent my evenings in facilitated discussions about Judaism and social justice, and worked full-time at an alternative high school in Brooklyn for students with severe drug addictions and mental health diagnoses. I decided to become a Social Worker, spent the next year applying to graduate school, and cheerfully enrolled in a dual degree program for Jewish Communal Service.

Now I work at an incredible organization that truly makes a difference. I work with a team of dedicated people who collectively agree to put up with sometimes less-than-ideal working conditions because we know we're doing good things and helping people who need help. I spend every day pursuing the thing I never quit: fighting for a better life for everyone.

I may not be able to hold my own in a tennis game with D, turn a perfect pirouette, play a piano sonata, or kick ass like EJW, but I can go to work every day and feel good about what I do, knowing that I am still the person I was in middle school when I decided that everyone needs a voice and someone to stick up for them when life isn't going their way.

Tree-cicle

I hate winter. I do. I hate it. I hate being cold and having a drippy nose and wearing boots every day and trying to get the boys loaded into their carseats with a big puffy coat on and not being able to get where I need to be because of snow and school cancellations and late babysitters and having to move the car away from the curb before D and YS can get in the passenger side because suddenly the curb is a foot away where it should be because of a snow drift and $500 heating bills and chapped lips and freezing cold offices and being scared to walk outside because of ice and being scared to drive because of ice and using more gas than necessary using 4-wheel drive and being stressed out from the weather and always feeling bulky and shoveling snow and having to stock up on rock salt and...well...you get the drift.

BUT...

The other day when I was leaving work I saw the coolest winter phenomenon. A little drip of water from the roof of our building was falling onto a tiny tree below, and it turned the tree into a tree-cicle. A tree-cicle is of course the scientific term for a tree that has turned into an icicle. This tree-cicle gave me one small reason not to hate winter.

A few of my favorites...

I wanted to start this blog off with a little roll call of some of my favorite things:

1. The Office. It is pee-in-your-pants funny and makes my office somehow seem less nuts. While it sometimes skates dangerously close to plain ol' dumb humor, the writers somehow manage to create real character development and are able to touch on the sadness at the core of many of the characters. It initially took me a while to get into the show, but now I am totally hooked!

2. Pomegranate Chobani greek yogurt. It's filling and delicious, not to mention protein-packed and low calorie! The generous portion of pomegranate seeds is my favorite part. Mmm mmm good!









3. My slippers from Ann Taylor Loft are soft and shimmery and fuzzy and wonderful. One of their most exciting features was that they were purchased using a gift card that had been left for dead (I thought I had spent everything, but for some reason it was still hanging out in my wallet) but then turned out to be worth the exact value of these amazing slippers! I have worn these around the house almost every day since buying them a couple of months ago, and I just love them.

4. Greyston Bakery! Ok, before this shout out, it's only fair for me to admit that I am closely connected to the Bakery. However, just because Greyston pays my paycheck, it doesn't mean that I can't truly appreciate the mmm mmm goodness of the Do-Goodie brownies and gluten free baked goods. The Bakery is staffed with incredibly competent, hard-working individuals who also happen to have encountered severe barriers to employment, such as incarceration, homelessness, mental illness, or substance abuse. At Greyston, however, there are no background checks or screenings; just come ready to work, put your name on the list, and show up when we call you! After a year of working your tush off, you "graduate" and become eligible for a full-time position with benefits. Do I love the Greyston Bakery because we value workforce development and giving everyone a chance? Yes! Do I love the Greyston Bakery because every time I drive up I get a whiff of a delicious chocolate aroma? Yes! Do I love the Greyston Bakery because we send 20,000 pounds (yes, that's four zeros after a 2) of brownie bits to Ben & Jerry's every day so they can fill their Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream with chewy brownie goodness? Yes! Do I love the Greyston Bakery because we don't hire people to bake brownies; we bake brownies to hire people? Yes! Might I suggest that you visit www.greystonbakery.com and www.greyston.org right now and discover all of the reasons YOU will love Greyston!

I'm a Millionaire

I've been searching my soul for a long time for the perfect blog idea. I have started and stopped numerous other blogs, but none of them really had a concept that worked for me all the time. In writing about YS's peanut allergy, there were occasional things to say, but in a regular day, it's not really addressed. In writing about funny things that YS says, poor AM was left out of the loop due to his limited vocabulary (right now his favorite words are "Abba," "cheese," and "ball" - there's not a lot to write about!). I decided to scrap those blogs and start this one, which will be about my favorite things.

At first I thought I would name it My Favorite Things, which would be especially fitting due to my long-lasting love affair with "The Sound of Music." Sadly, that name was taken, so I was back to the drawing board before I had really started. Then I realized that some of my initial ideas (funny things YS says, cute things AM does, desserts I love, funny things that happen at work, etc. etc.) are not only my favorite things. They're more than that. They are blessings. I thought about naming the blog Counting Blessings, but it didn't make me feel totally settled.

Then I remembered one of my favorite lessons in Pirkei Avos (Ethics of our Fathers). In 4:1, Ben Zoma asks and answers a very important question: Who is rich? He who is happy with what he has. Sometimes, when D and I are surfing the real estate sites for the perfect mansion we'll never afford, I'll remind him of this saying. While I can always dream for a house with perfectly painted walls, a car with better gas mileage, or a kitchen full of food that cooks itself, it's not so helpful. I should be - and I am - happy with what I have. I'm rich!

This blog with be the venue for me to share some of the things that make me so rich. This includes YS's witty revelations, AW's newest utterances, delicious meals I cook for D, funny interactions with my amazingly crazy co-workers, cool things I learn, fun places we go, interesting things I read, and my latest favorite things.

I've tried several blogs before this one. I hope it sticks! Feel free to leave feedback and comments.