In which I share embarrassing moments with my blog audience

I tend to be secretive, but since I started blogging I find myself sharing all kinds of embarrassing things to produce amusing posts. Bear with me while I meander a bit--there is a punch line to the following story.

It started several months ago when I tore a leg muscle. Around that time I couldn’t figure out why my legs were tired all the time, even after a short walk. I was convinced that I had some horrible degenerative disease. Then, while carrying a cranky four-year-old, I tripped over a mound meant to prevent cars from entering a park. She got a bump on the head; I got a bruised knee and sore muscles. A few days later I tripped again, this time on nothing. Result: Two bruised knees and noticeable bruises on my face. Two weeks later the marks have just about disappeared.

After the second fall I realized that my shoes were causing the problem. I wear orthotics and orthopedic running shoes, and as everyone knows, running shoes wear out. (My metal orthotics never need replacing except for the leather lining.) Usually I am careful to replace worn-out shoes immediately; these were already eight months old so I should have thought of it. Instead I suffered extreme pain for two months while functioning on a suboptimal level, lacking stamina for walking or standing.

I hate running errands even when my feet don’t hurt, but I forced myself. In my town we have several orthopedic stores serving the large elderly population so I easily found a new, comfortable pair of shoes --white New Balance 627 for those who are interested.

Now that morning I had more cash on hand than usual. Even though conventional wisdom says that credit cards lead to excess spending, excess cash is the problem for me. In this case it was a reimbursement for a credit card purchase so technically I had already spent the money.

With feet uncurled from the joy of not having to hang onto flimsy shoes for dear life, I went to buy some new lipstick. My little girl had totally destroyed my last tube (or whatever you call a container of lipstick) months ago, forcing me to attend at least one wedding with bare lips. That is extreme even for me. After some debate I chose a shade. The saleslady generously applied blusher and convinced me to buy that too. (If not for the cash I believe I would have resisted.)

When my friend dropped off my daughter after playgroup she made a comment about my new makeup. I didn't think much of it, but my older daughter was quite concerned. She took one look at my face and said, “Did you fall again?”

I still haven't opened the blusher -- I'm planning to exchange it for something useful.

A stranger in the house--only in Israel

Last night we paid a shiva (condolence) call to a dear friend and neighbor who lost her mother z"l. We began talking about condolence calls from people you don't recognize, and being too embarrassed to ask who they are. She recalled the following story about someone who asked, and received an unexpected reply.

While at a neighbor's shiva, a Hassid dressed in tights, kapote, and gartel walked into the house and sat down. A hush fell over the visitors. (I actually saw something similar happen at a recent shiva, but that Hassid brought an entourage.) The mourner, who happened to have many chassidic relatives, asked him if he was related to her. He said no.

"Why have you come?" she asked.

"I'm the repairman," the Hassid said. "I'm here to fix your washing machine."

And he proceeded to do just that.

Links on Hyper-Tzniut

My post on extreme tzniut received over 50 comments. Bloggers discussing it on their own blogs include Lilith, Jewlicious, Frumhouse, JacobdaJew, Rafi, Miriam, and Tikkun Olam.

A Russian-Israeli blogger named "antidos" also wrote about it, but I couldn't read what he said.

Since writing the post I've discovered subcategories among the face-coverers. Not all subscribe to Rabbanit Keren's philosophy about speech fasts and multiple layers of clothes.

More links on Hyper-Tzniut.

In other blog news, Jack's Shack hosts the ultimate Jewish blog carnival, Haveil Havalim # 151.

Batya posted the recent Kosher Cooking Carnival: Extreme Weather Edition. You can submit posts for the February edition, hosted by Food History, here. I'll be hosting the April, pre-Pesach edition.

The "I Can" Exercise

From Aidel Maidel

You have 15 minutes to make a list of sentences that start with "I can." You aren't supposed to edit it, either.

Here's mine.

1. I can read two novels at once, and keep the plots straight.
2. I can type fast.
3. I can blog.
4. I can apologize when needed.
5. I can negotiate between a lot of different people to solve a problem.
6. I can explain complicated ideas in a simple way.
7. I can drive a car.
8. I can explain what forms of birth control are compatible with nursing.
9. I can distinguish between giving information and support, and giving advice.
10. I can cook for Shabbat in two hours.
11. I can drive a stick shift.
12. I can run a group.
13. I can meet someone for the first time, and within 5 minutes have them telling me their life story.
14. I can meet someone for the first time, and not have them tell me their life story within five minutes.
15. I can plan a menu that is varied in color, texture, and nutrition and appropriate for the time of year.
16. I can make tables in Word documents.
17. I can catch a spelling mistake from a mile away.
18. I can finish a blog post in an hour.
19. I can spend several days writing a blog post.
20. I can pinpoint what to do to change the tone of someone's writing.
21. I can reply to silly blog memes.
22. I can brush my teeth.
23. I can get myself dressed.
24. I can make homemade, nutritious meals for a family of eight.
25. I can teach kids to be happy with what they have.
26. I can read a novel in a day.
27. I can write a boring post in reply to a meme, that will cause my readers to go "ho-hum."
28. I can ignore my husband, who is telling me something, because I am not supposed to interrupt myself while doing this meme.
29. I can wonder why I am still doing this, instead of going to sleep.
30. I can sit at the computer on a Thursday evening, instead of cooking.
31. I can wash my floor on Wednesday and need to do it again on Friday.
32. I can agree on Wednesday to host a party on Motzei Shabbat (Saturday evening).
33. I can welcome potential converts from Russian-speaking backgrounds to my Shabbat table and make them feel welcome.
34. I can help these potential converts feel that Judaism is a beautiful thing, even if my kids are about to kill each other.
    
35. I can give myself an extra two minutes, because I am just getting started and I was distracted by my husband.
36. I can give myself permission to stop, even though I know I will think of ten brilliant things immediately.
    

(I ran the spell-check anyway.)

"Ma, we live in a slum"

When my husband's aunt and uncle made aliyah from the US in the 60's, they spent a few years in Bnei Brak. That first morning, one of the children noticed laundry hanging outside some nearby buildings. "Ma," he said, "We live in a slum."

A reader of my post, Twelve Things I Love about Israel, had a similar reaction when I listed laundry as one of my favorite Israeli activities. (Helene, if you're still around please delurk.) I think it's a shame that so many Israelis use dryers; we have sun nine months out of twelve. Even on cloudy, threatening days a good wind can blow laundry dry in a few hours.

Most Israeli apartment buildings contain a shaft just for laundry lines. A decorative railing hides your dirty (from the pollution) linens but allows air to circulate. In my old building, the lines were completely covered by a concrete roof. In my current apartment I have to pay attention to the state of the clouds. If only the weather report would predict the exact hour rain will fall on my nearly dry clothes.

From the 6th floor window, out of which I do my hanging, I have a view of a dangerous, unsignalled intersection. A left turn is legal only in one of the four directions, and drivers coming from the side street can't go straight; they must turn right.

Israeli drivers are affronted, I mean affronted, when forbidden to go straight through an intersection. The violation rate is about one per load of laundry. Once or twice I reported a truck driver to his employer, but without a license plate number they couldn't identify him. When I am driving behind someone about to make an illegal turn I start honking; I also signal the correct direction to drivers as I'm crossing the street. My kids start cheering if I get the drivers to change their mind.

I'm protective of that intersection; my kids cross there all the time. Occasionally the police stake out the corner and catch offenders; I figure they get about 0.0001% of the lawbreakers. I haven't noticed a deterrent effect.

I'll be watching, though.

Ramat Beit Shemesh

A man was brutally beaten by thugs in the neighborhood of Ramat Beit Shemesh.

Rafi has the story, including pictures, and a letter he wrote to the Knesset.

Dov Bear has a statement, The Victim's Words, and a call to action.

At Rabbi Harry Maryles' blog: A Charedi Hero.

Haaretz article

And soon, a return to our regular programming.

Someone in the government has been looking at my blog

VISITOR ANALYSIS
Referring Link	http://www.blogger.com/profile/13715046177293916034
Host Name
IP Address	[deleted]
Country	Israel
Region	Yerushalayim (jerusalem)
City	Jerusalem
ISP	Israeli Government Network
Returning Visits	0
Visit Length	13 mins 25 secs
And look at what pernicious posts they examined for right-wing incitement:

Navigation Path

Date	Time	WebPage
21st January 2008	10:16:35	www.blogger.com/profile/13715046177293916034 mominisrael.blogspot.com/
21st January 2008	10:19:24	mominisrael.blogspot.com/ mominisrael.blogspot.com/2008/01/motherhood-as-profession-housework.html
21st January 2008	10:28:38	mominisrael.blogspot.com/ mominisrael.blogspot.com/2007/12/do-kids-care-if-your-house-is-dirty.html
21st January 2008	10:29:42	www.blogger.com/profile/13715046177293916034 mominisrael.blogspot.com/
21st January 2008	10:30:00	mominisrael.blogspot.com/ mominisrael.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-i-made-career-out-of-motherhood_07.html

Where are the parents?

Seven teenage girls have been arrested for settling an illegal outpost, and held in jail for over two weeks. Yitzhak Kadman, the director of the National Council for the Child, has called for their release. The girls, most of whom are only 14 years old, broke the law but did not commit a serious crime. The girls refuse to identify themselves or sign any statements because they don't recognize the authority of the court. Judges have upheld the prosecutor's decision to keep the girls in jail until they cooperate with the authorities.

The fact that they are still being held is an outrage and an embarrassment for the country. The girls should be released.

On the other side we have the parents, who could identify the girls and file a petition for their release. They have refused. In a Makor Rishon interview one mother said it would be like stabbing her daughter in the back. The parents have gotten together and agreed that the girls would be "hurt" and would get the feeling that the parents "don't agree with their decisions."

Parents should not let young teenage daughters fight the community's ideological battles with jail time. Let the parents sit in jail instead (although one mother says that she's proud of her daughter for her actions, as she could never sit in jail herself). They are not encouraging their children's autonomy by subjecting them to prison. The parents' job is to look at the big picture and get them out of jail, before there is any more psychological and (hopefully not any) physical damage. It's possible to explain, even to teenagers, that you support their cause but that you cannot let them pay such a price, and that until they are 18 they cannot make such life-altering decisions without their parents' consent.

In the religious community we discourage adult women from going into the army. How can we let 14-year-old girls sit in jail?

Either the parents are afraid of their teenagers' reaction, or they believe so deeply in their cause that they are willing to sacrifice their children's well-being to it.

My husband says I'm being too harsh on the parents, some of whom are still traumatized by the eviction from Gush Katif (the Jewish communities in Gaza). The article quotes a mother who said that the disengagement turned her daughter from a girl into a young woman who "needs to take responsibility because the adults failed." My husband says this demonstrates a sense of failure on the part of the parents, who are pinning their hopes on the next generation.

My husband is right; I'm being too harsh on the parents. Because they are getting implicit or explicit support from many others in the community, including rabbis and political leaders, who should be telling the parents to do what they have to do to get those girls out of jail.

Update

Tu Beshevat game: Name that fruit

On Monday night and Tuesday we will celebrate Tu Bishvat, the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. Tu Bishvat is also known as the new year of the trees; the Mishnah mentions this date as the cutoff point when counting the age of a tree. This is important for the laws of terumot and maaserot (tithing) and shmittah (the sabbatical year), as well as orlah (fruit from a tree is prohibited until the tree is in its fourth or fifth year). It has become traditional in modern Israel to plant trees in honor of the holiday, even though the rabbis probably picked this mid-winter date because it's the least likely time to plant trees and would cause the least confusion about which year is involved.

Because this year is a shmittah year, we will not plant any trees. Any fruit produced from blossoms that bloomed after this Tu Bishvat will be considered fruit of the current sabbatical year (meaning it will begin to be a concern around Passover through Passover next year), and have a special status known as "kedushat sheviit." Vegetables go according to the year that they are picked (you can read more about shmittah here.)

In honor of Tu Bishvat, my daughter lovingly collected, arranged, and photographed the fifteen fruits in the pictures. She refused to include any dried fruits, because even though they are considered "Tu Bishvat" fruit, they were a compromise for Jews who celebrated the holiday in the Diaspora. In many places fresh fruit wasn't available, but all of the fruits pictured above grew in Israel. Can you name each one? (Thanks also to commenter Tamiri; one of the fruits grew in her garden.)

Bonus: Two of the fruits are technically vegetables, have kedushat sheviit, and require the blessing of "borei pri ha'adamah" ("the Creator of the fruits of the ground").

Happy Tu Bishvat!

Friday links

The Shabak (Israeli general security services) has interrogated a blogger -- Muqata has the story.

Also via Muqata, a humorous blog by the survivor of a terror attack: My Shrapnel

Frumhouse has a video with samples of stylistic tzanua (modest) clothing. I'll skip the skin-tight styles, thanks.

And while we're at it, here's a link to last week's Jewish blog carnival Haveil Havalim at Life in Israel. After producing 150 editions (I know how much work he puts into it even when he is not hosting), Soccer Dad is transferring the headache responsibility over to Jack's Shack. Jack, better you than me we know you'll do a great job.

The Kosher Cooking Carnival is coming up next week. Meander on over to me-ander to post your recipes and food-related items.

Shabbat shalom.

FLYing and landing

I discovered Flylady when I was pregnant with my fifth child. She took the best of SHE, imbued it with her own unique style and transferred it from a filebox to the internet.

Flylady immediately got rid of SHE's biggest problem. She says that the index cards made you feel guilty, and guilt keeps you from cleaning your house. Her attitude is to "Jump in wherever you are. You are not behind."

She divides the house into five zones, one for each week (or part thereof) in the month. In the beginning you focus on getting rid of clutter in each "zone." Once your clutter is gone (and even if you give up on Flylady at this point, you will never accumulate so much again), you work on keeping the zone orderly and clean. Another Flylady trademark, borrowed from SHE, is to get fully dressed each morning including lace-up shoes (so you can't take them off) and makeup (for women). The idea is that you should take your housework seriously, like a real job.

I followed Flylady's plan faithfully for at two or three years. The height of my Flylady experience (or should I say my highest flight?) was the day I ran into a friend while dropping off a child at gan. The friend had an hour to kill so I invited her home. She couldn't believe how neat the house was and how great I looked (I was wearing makeup) even though I had a young baby. For a long time, I didn't want to tell her about Flylady. Partly I was embarrassed to be following this clearly insane woman from North Carolina. But the bigger reason is that it felt like cheating. It's amazing how many hangups we can have about housework. In the end I told her, because, after all, I had cleaned my house, not Flylady.

The friend joined, and felt that Flylady was almost like a mother to her. Her own mother had never taught her homemaking.

Flylady spends little time on techniques, although if she comes across a timesaver she passes it on. It doesn't matter how you clean, as long as you do it. You start by shining your sink every night. Theoretically, if you keep one small part of your house clean the rest will follow. Once shining your sink is second nature, you decide to keep your kitchen table cleared. At the same time she encourages you to get rid of the clutter, the guilt and the perfectionism.

Perfectionism was a big one for me. When I had cleaning help, I criticized them (in my mind) because they left gunk on the sink strainer. In the meantime, without the help my own house was full of dust and clutter.

At some point I got tired of Flylady's exhortations and dozens of daily emails. I couldn't manage to really stick to the routines. Also, while she has toned down the Christian aspect a lot, the longer I live here the more talk about "blessings" bothered me.

I didn't tell my husband about Flylady and during the whole period of decluttering, shiny sinks and rotating Zones, my husband never commented. He is much better about putting things away than I am, and I'm sure that deep down he noticed and appreciated it. He just didn't get around to expressing it.

Frugality is not a high priority for Flylady. If you follow her system you will save money because you won't buy things you don't need, you'll locate what you already own and you'll be a better planner. But she encourages you to buy nice things and to use disposables. Participation is free, but she sells a lot of stuff to support her website. I own her duster, but I'm not sure it works on the thick Israeli dust (I have an Israeli friend who is convinced that dust doesn't exist in America); I prefer a slightly damp rag.

Another thing that caused me to let up on Flylady was becoming pregnant with #6. During the pregnancy we had a crisis involving one of our children, and (unrelated to the crisis) sold our old apartment. We had moved into our previous apartment with one child and moved out with six. The previous owner of the new apartment lost his father the day we were supposed to get the keys, we suffered from traumatic renovations that culminated in moving in with no kitchen, and we celebrated our son's Bar Mitzvah a few weeks later. With the backdrop of my stepmother's terminal illness (she was diagnosed the day #6 was born and died a year later), this meant that last week, 3.5 years after ordering the kitchen, I finally figured out how to shine the glass on my oven doors.

By George, I think she's got it!

My little girl, who is turning four tonight, started speech therapy because she said "ee" instead of "oo" (see here) like a Galitzianer. The therapist was able to correct it in the first session, but pointed out that my daughter also failed to distinguish between a short "e" and "a"; "bad" and "bed" both came out "bad." We hadn't noticed that she had a bit of a cockney accent, like Eliza in My Fair Lady. "Amy" came out as a rounded "aye-my."

At the fourth session she was still having trouble; it's hard to open your mouth just the right amount. My husband practiced singing "The Rain in Spain" with her. And a few days after that last session, she suddenly said the sounds correctly. And so my husband said, "By George, I think she's got it!"

Life After Housework

The idea that someone could write a book about cleaning techniques was a revelation to me. I bought Is There Life after Housework in the local used bookstore because I couldn't resist the title. The author, Don Aslett, explains everything you need to about cleaning your house. If you are thinking about becoming a professional cleaner (apropos recent comments on Orthonomics), Aslett tells you how.

My sister-in-law once bought another of his books, Clutter's Last Stand, only to discover that she already owned a copy.)

Aslett advocates "going with the flow" and tackling chores when you have the most energy. He doesn't believe in cleaning things when they aren't dirty, as opposed to SHE's Pam and Peggy, who rely on a strict schedule. This might be an example of Pam and Peggy's claim that most books on home organization are not deisgned for people who really need them.

Strict schedules don't work for me for more than a limited time, so I prefer a combination of the two approaches.

Aslett focuses on specific cleaning techniques, some of which require specialized equipment. Here are the tips I found most helpful:

• Arrange your house to make it easy to clean. Built-in furniture is easiest to maintain because you don't need to move it. I had a friend who was always complaining about things that rolled under the sofa. I used to tell her that you don't think about those things when you buy a sofa, but maybe you should.
  
• Use the 4-step method for cleaning flat surfaces like floors and counters: a) Sweep or brush away dirt; b) Wet the surface with soapy water and let it soak a bit. If necessary, scrape sticky areas with a brush or "scotch-brite" pad. c) Squeegee the dirty water into a dustpan or drain. d) Wipe the area once more with a clean damp cloth. This is exactly how Israelis do "sponja," that method of cleaning floors that baffles us Americans.
  
• Use a sprayer (recipe included) and cleaning cloth (made from an old towel) for the bathroom and kitchen; you can easily maintain a bathroom by spraying, waiting for three minutes, and wiping. A sponge and bucket of soapy water means that the first time you dip the dirty rag into the water to rinse it out, your water is already dirty and you are spreading it.
  
• When using a squeegee to clean windows, wipe the blade with a damp cloth in between swipes to prevent streaks.

Aslett explains the challenge of homemakers with hard water. When water evaporates, the minerals in the water remain. That is the source of hard-to-remove "crust" around a faucet. Drying fixtures after use prevents this problem. I think hard water is the reason Israeli bathrooms are renovated so frequently.

Those anxious to hear about Flylady will have to wait a bit longer.

For those with low housekeeping standards: She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel

If you are depressed about your housekeeping standards, you might take comfort from the memoir She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel. It's the sequel to "A Girl Named Zippy." Zippy's father decides to lower the ceiling to save heat, and his family is so impressed by this improvement (". . . we were astonished to discover that finally, one single thing in our house looked normal. . .") that her mother invites her church friends to the house for the first time. The family goes about making the house as respectable as they can. The women arrive and notice the father's weapons and ammunition, the collection of animal teeth, and the sanitary napkins in the open cabinet. Soon the guests hear an unusual sound coming from the ceiling. "It was mice, and from the sound of it, about fifty of them. They were apparently being disgorged from one of the holes in the original ceiling that Dad hadn't bothered to patch when he hung the new one. . . All of our cats leapt up on the backs of the furniture in agitation, staring at the ceiling and making growls deep in their throats. The dogs watched the cats, interested."

When they find rats in the basement, so the father loads the place with poison and collects the dead ones daily in garbage bags.

So do you feel better now?

Another thing that struck me about the book is how the heroine, who is fazed by nothing (and why not after growing up in that house), hates school and is a terrible student. She has to sit on her hands to keep from fidgeting, and visits the emergency room regularly. If she were growing up today, she would have been tested, analyzed and put on Ritalin. But they left her alone and she became a brilliant writer.

Fitting Housework into Life

When I had only two children, born eighteen months apart, I didn't spend a lot of time on housework. My oldest enjoyed scattering toys around the house, crumpling any paper he could find, and biting his baby brother when I got distracted for a moment.

My husband and I developed a system to manage the house: He would start a load of laundry before leaving for shul in the mornings, and hang it afterward. In the evenings, he cleaned up the scattered legos and washed the dishes. We ate mainly potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner. On Fridays, his day off, I frantically cooked and cleaned while he shopped.

At some point this stopped working. I had more children, more cooking and laundry, and more "stuff." And a lot less tolerance for mess. I no longer had the luxury of compartmentalizing the different areas of my life: childcare, housework, time for myself. I had to find a way to make everything work together.

When I decided I needed to learn more I came across Sidetracked Home Executives by Peggy Jones and Pam Young, sisters who complained that housekeeping books were written by and for people who already knew how to keep things straight. Jones and Young divide homemakers into two categories: BOs, "Born Organized," and "SHEs," from the book's title. They decide to clean up their mess and share their hilarious experiences with their readers. My favorite part is when the sisters beg their born-organized neighbor for just one tip, and she asks them whether they reuse teabags. The sisters say no, so the neighbor suggests they throw out the teabags instead of leaving them on the counter. This is a revelation for Pam and Peggy.

As usual with these self-help books, I started off gung-ho. I prepared the cumbersome filebox of color-coded cards, each containing a daily, weekly or monthly task. What ended it for me was an episode in the book when one of the sisters decided she could not face the scheduled floor washing. The other sister couldn't talk her into it, so they added a new rule: If you really, really, don't feel like doing a particular job, you can skip it. Twice. I soon found that my "weekly" chores (which, needless to say, were never weekly in the first place) started getting done once every three weeks.

Even though their original system had problems, it made me think about my approach to home management and I still use many of their ideas.

Toward the end of the book the sisters realize that they had taken pride in their (formerly) messy homes because they imagined their creative, artistic side would be thwarted. Many people struggle with issues relating housework (not to mention those of our family members).

We have been conditioned to put career first and family second; homemaking doesn't even make the list. But while you can pay someone else to clean your house, a housekeeper alone won't make your house into a home. Someone needs to be thinking about the big picture--what kind of family life and home do you want?

Next: I discover Flylady.

Related posts:
Do Kids Care if Your House Is Dirty?
The Truth about the Jewish Superwoman
Career and Motherhood--Intro
Career and Motherhood--Part I