My hobbies

Because I am very talented, I have managed to squeeze in a couple of hobbies in between all the carpools that I do. One of these you may have already figured out. It is called Starbucks. This is a very good hobby. Here's why: you can do it alone, with friends, and with children. You can do it on the rare Friday when your Big Shot Husband is working at home and he is nice enough to make you a quesadilla to take and eat it with your coffee. Like a date. You can do it while you're working (or blogging, like I am doing as I type), reading, staring at the people around you wondering why they don't have jobs or filling out school forms. If you build model airplanes as a hobby, for example, you can't do any of these things surrounding the hobby. I feel I have chosen well.

I also enjoy the dog-eat-dog aspect of getting a table at particularly crowded Starbucks where lots of people go to "work." This happened just yesterday. I ended up at the only available table, the one with the wheelchair sign on it. Though I felt a little guilty, there was nobody there who needed it.  And since I was doing actual PAID work yesterday, I felt especially justified in grabbing the table because I had lots and lots of articles on diabetes that I was busy summarizing (yes, it is extremely fascinating work, yawn).

OK, so total oops when a couple who were extremely disabled appeared on the scene. The lady looked at me accusingly (yes, she was right), and I jumped up and said, "Ma'am, would you like this table?" "Well, yes,"she said, looking down at her canes (doh!). Of course it took me a million hours to gather the 57 articles I was summarizing, my lunch, my coffee, my computer, my mouse pad and my purse and skedaddle to another table. Cringe. But it was the most exciting thing that happened to me yesterday. Well, almost. Because that brings me to my second hobby: Yiddish!

Every time anyone learns about my passion for the language (which I started learning a year and a half ago now), they invariably ask, "Why?" And look at me as if I am from another planet. They are right. But I also have a theory as to where my Yiddish love stems from. I believe that in the 19th century, I was a lovely shtetl-living girl named Rivka. That's my Hebrew name in real life. My nom de plume is Honeycake, my nom de Jew is Rivka.

Anyway, Rivka lived on a shtetl and was married to a fun-loving Rebbe who loved her for her sharp mind and not-too-shabby looks (work with me, people). He gave her ten children (K"H) and she worked tirelessly to keep their dwelling clean, put good food on the table, educate her children, and tend to the chickens. She was a ba'alas chesed and well-respected in her shtetl. And she spoke tons of Yiddish, duh.

Now, obviously some of Rivka's traits have morphed over the centuries, but the Yiddish loving part is still 100% there. And I firmly believe that because little Rivka worked her fingers to the bone in the shtetl, today this Rivka likes to relax (I mean work) at Starbucks.

So yesterday I trekked back to the JCC for another start of another semester of Yiddish at the JCC!! It was so much fun. This session, we have a new boy in class. His name is Rudy and he's from Brooklyn. And he's in his 70s. Like everyone else in the class. That's right, it's an early-bird special crowd in Intermediate Yiddish, but those are my peeps.

We started off the class with the teacher (who's not that old, maybe 50s), speaking only in Yiddish. Pure heaven. He asked us all to introduce ourselves. Here's what I said:
"Ich heis Lekach. Ich voyn in a shtetl. Ich bin a mame. Un a schreiber!" (My name is Honeycake. I live in a small community with lots of other Orthodox Jews. I am a mother. And a writer). So zayde number 1 asks, "Du bist a schreiber?" (You are a writer?) So I said, "Ich hob a blog.!" Right?! I am plugging Honeycake613 any way I can.

Anyway, here's why I really love Yiddish. It's the only language that is impossible to teach with language tapes (there aren't any), television shows (none), movies (few available), immersion (difficult to impossible--there are no cultural exchange programs with New Square or Mea Shearim). It is a language that is taught with linguistics, history, songs, jokes, and Jewish religion. For example, last night we learned the origins of Slavic words and sounds in Yiddish. That was most of the class. The highlight of the class for me, though, was when our teacher said about a particular imperative, "That's the word you use when you point." Have you ever taken a language class where that sentence was uttered? As the DEFINITION of a word? Awesome.

Lucky for you, I have carpool now because I could go on and on about Yiddish. I will sign off with the following lyrics from a famous Yiddish tune (one of my faves) that I was just thinking about:

A bisl zun a bisl regn
A ruig ort dem kop tzu legn
Abi gezunt ken men gliklakh zayn

A little sun, a little rain [actually a lot of rain today]
A quiet place where things are mellow (or I can lay my head) [I can't believe they wrote about Starbucks back then]
As long as you have your health, you can be happy!

I'll keep reminding myself of that as I slog through traffic to pick up my kids. One thing you can say about the shtetl: no minivans allowed.

YouTube is my parenting tool

Since I am the proud mother of a 10-year-old boy (Pes), I have begun to learn a few things about boys in general. I grew up in a house with a sister, and have almost exclusively girl cousins, so I just didn't grow up with boys. Having friends and schoolmates who are boys is one thing, living with them is quite another. One thing I have learned is: they are not big on discussing feelings. If, for example, I were to ask Zsa Zsa or Eva to elucidate the finer points of emotion stratification vis-a-vis friendship disappointment, school stress, or an unsuccessful shopping expedition, we would be here for days. Boys, not so.

There are other differences as well. Pes would be happy if I were not so cognizant of his personal hygiene. We had a discussion on the topic this summer and he said, "Oh, I don't need that (meaning, hygiene). I'm going to be one of those guys who sits on the couch all day eating cheese puffs. I'll be a cheesepuffologist like Rat (see Pearls Before Swine)." OK, then.

Lately, in honor of the upcoming Rosh Hashana holiday, I have been taking stock of my life and trying to institute some improvements. I'm sure you can guess that one of these is to (ding ding ding you guessed it) be a better mother. This evening, I parlayed my resolution into an activity I thought we could all enjoy--It's called watching stuff on YouTube.

It started when I noticed that Zsa Zsa and Pes had begun some sort of synchronized hand clapping/dance thingamajig and what's the first thing I thought of? Of course, Ross and Monica's dance routine, Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve, first aired Thurs, Dec 16, 1999. Friends. The TV Show. Keep up, Mother.

So I ran to the computer and was like, "Kids, gather 'round, you have to see this it is SOOO funny!" Any chance to run to the computer and watch something at my house is like feeding raw meat to lions and within seconds, we were all whooping it up with Ross and Monica. They laughed, I laughed, it was great. Then, Pes reminded me that as we were viewing another YouTube video on Rosh Hashana the day before (yes, I know), I got him hooked on "Charlie bit my finger." For those of you who haven't seen this, it is the funniest 56 seconds you will ever see. And it has over 370 MILLION hits so if you haven't seen it yet, I'll give you a second to go do that now.

Good job. We had all had a great laugh, and everyone took turns feeling the scar tissue on my leg. I somberly recounted the war story in which I earned that scar; a two-year-old Gorby biting my leg right through my jean skirt causing a near-fainting episode from the pain. Incidentally, it was Gorby who laughed the absolute hardest at "Charlie bit my finger." Then, it was off to bed.

Around 9 o'clock, Pes came downstairs to say goodnight and since Big Shot Husband was not home yet, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to gauge how I'm doing as a mother. One thing I always fear is that my kids don't feel loved enough because I can sometimes, once in a while, be a little tad bit critical of them. Knowing that my subject was a 10-year-old boy who wasn't about to give me a lengthy discourse on his psyche, I came up with a clever multiple choice test.

"So, Pes," I said, "Do you feel like I love you?"
"Duh, Mommy, of course," said Pes.
"So, like, if you're at school and you're really upset about something, do you think to yourself:
a) I wish Mommy were here;
b) I can't wait until I can hug Mommy later;
c) I know Mommy loves me; or
d) Charlie Bit My Finger."

Gales of laughter erupted. He shook his head, indicating, I guess, e) None of the above.
"But Mommy," he said, "Today on our field trip when we were doing the pulley thingy when I had to go really high up in the air, I thought to myself, 'My mom would be really proud of me.'" That's all I needed to know.

Zsa Zsa gets braces

So last week, my Zsa Zsa got braces. This is a good thing since she has some weird things happening in her little mouth. Let's just say that her teeth look she is the progeny of two first cousins marrying. Luckily, she's pretty smart, so the inbreeding didn't seem to affect her intellect. Actually, there are people who have said that Big Shot Husband and I look alike. This is ludicrous. Big Shot Husband is tall, dark and handsome and I am, well, short. And pale. One person actually asked where our families were from (Russia, Poland) and smiled a see-I-knew-it smile. I mean, I'm sure they are onto something since no other Ashkenazic Jews come from those locales. Ahem.

Anyway, have you noticed that certain people are always trying to discuss how your kids resemble/act like/otherwise take after you or your husband? Like, I always get, "Your girls look just like you," or, "Perfect Eldest Son must be JUST LIKE Big Shot Husband when he was that age," or, "Gorby sure is athletic, which one of you is?" This one garners the following response: "It's a mutated recessive gene." I mean, I'm not sure if people are trying to make conversation, or are just interested in that sort of thing. But if the comment is flattering to me, I don't question it too much. Sometimes, however, it's not so flattering. To me.

I had this boss once whom I really respected. He was funny and smart and liked me and I really enjoyed working for him. To be honest, I think the reason he talked to me so often is that he was totally interested in Big Shot Husband's doings, which, at the time, were pretty darn interesting.

So even though he had eight kids of his own, I still thought he would DEFINITELY be interested in what 5- year-old Pes was up to and how smart he was. At that time, I was one of those REALLY ANNOYING parents who tells everyone how brilliant their first-born child is (N.B. to my friends who are reading this: yes, I know I still do this).

Anyway, my boss always seemed impressed with my tales of Pes's newest trick. So one day I was bragging about how Pes could recite all 43 (at the time) presidents in order. (I didn't mention that it was a big fat joke between Pes, Big Shot Husband and Mother that I had never heard of Chester A. Arthur before Pes started his studies). I went on a bit about the Presidents trick and his affinity for chess, and boss looked at me and said, "Wow, he sounds really smart. He must get that from your husband."

Back to Zsa Zsa's braces. We're at the friendly neighborhood orthodontist (yes, he's friendly and we live in the same neighborhood but of course his office is inconveniently located in the next city). I take a deep breath and ruminate on how completely crazy the day had been thus far (it was exactly noon at this point). It was pouring all day, I had done a million errands, I schlepped 25 minutes to school to collect her, then sloshed another 25 minutes in the opposite direction to the orthodontist.

As we arrived, I thought about how this was the end of the day already, as by the time we were finished, we would be heading to preschool to pick up Gorbachev, doing a quick "kill an hour" errand before getting Eva, arriving home at 4+ and doing homework, dinner blahblahblah, culminating in the prodigal son finally returning home after mishmar, basketball etc at 7PM and I know you are so bored by this your eyes are glazing over.

I have noticed of late that since some of my children are cognitively able to intereface at a semi-sophisticated level, I sometimes confide in them. This is usually a mistake. Nonetheless, as we were waiting for the appointment, hanging out in the bathroom, I confided in Zsa Zsa that this appointment really was somewhat inconvenient being right in the middle of the day and we're always rushing around and it's hard to get things done, and the day was over almost as soon as it had begun.

She said, "Mommy, how do the other mommies manage? I mean, Dr./Mrs. E has 6 kids, and Mrs. S has 7 kids, and Mrs.L has 10 kids and the so-and-so's have twelve kids, and they all seem to do it...
Don't worry, you'll get used to it." And she dried her hands and walked confidently out of the bathroom.

I looked after her and sighed. She's eight years old. How many more years of Life Lessons from Zsa Zsa will I have to endure? But of course, she's right. The mommies we know have a million kids and still seem to manage. And one day, G-d willing, she'll be a mommy and she'll complain to me about how much she has to do and how she has 57 carpools, and Shloimy has an ear infection, and Malky needs glasses and the baby was up all night and I'll just say, "Don't worry, you'll get used to it."

Shopping with the Gabor Sisters

So every year around this time, Mother and I take Zsa Zsa and Ava (8 and 6) to a department store to buy pretty frocks for Shabbos/Yom Tov/Simchas etc for the fall/winter season. Each girl gets around four dresses and in recent memory, they came from the 4-6x section of the store. I have been concerned, of late, that though Zsa Zsa is a mere slip of a girl at four foot one and 44 pounds, the four footers and above really do land in the realm of size 7.

The reason I have nervously approached this size 7 thing is that these days in America, dresses in the size 7-14 range are made to be as short and tight as possible. I have a teacher friend who says in her (secular) school, she sometimes walks behind girls on the staircase and tells them she can see their (thong) underwear. Um, yuck.

Anyway, we were on our way to the mall to purchase our fall/winter frocks when my phone rang.
"You're on your way to the mall, right dear?" asks Big Shot Husband.
"Yeah," I say.
"Could you please please see if you can find me a yellow tie to wear on TV tomorrow?" he sweetly requests. I grunt and hang up.

You see, when I am focused on a project, I DO NOT LIKE to veer away to another project as I usually allot a certain number of minutes to said project because I have tightly scheduled my next appointment. Yes, even on vacation. So I had allotted exactly one hour and ten minutes for the Gabor Shopping Extravaganza and did not want to go to a totally different store at a totally different part of the mall to start shopping for ties. Unfortunately, I mentioned the tie thing to Mother who is Big Shot Husband's groupie extraordinaire.

"Honeycake," she says, "we can just run into Department Store A for a few minutes to get the tie and then get the dresses at Department Store B."
"Mother," I say, "that is just not possible what with our time constraints and given that Department Store B is located at least a seven minute walk from Department Store A." (I am also excellent at estimating time and distance).
"Hm," she says thoughtfully.

We arrived at the mall and I saw Mother drive toward Department Store B (dresses) and then say, "Oh, you know what, there really isn't a lot of parking down there, I'm just going to park here, right in front of Department Store A (tie)." She is pretty smart and crafty, that mother of mine. That's why she is a medical doctor and I write blogs.

When we were safely at Department Store B, we split up. I looked for dresses with Eva in 4-6x and Mother and Zsa Zsa braved the 7-14 department. Since I had already gone online looking at the merchandise, I knew exactly which dresses I liked. Eva was pretty easy, we chose about eight dresses to try. Zsa Zsa, on the other hand, was extremely verbose and wanted to discuss each and every dress, both in the choosing stage and, later, in the try-on stage.

For example, I found a supercute dress in leopard print in size 7 and she said, "I don't really wear leopard, it's not my style." Um, what? I thought this girl was related to me and I adore animal prints. Plus, she IS a Gabor. In the dressing room, they tried on dress after dress, preening in the mirror and keeping up a running dialogue about the process.

Zsa Zsa: "They make really cute dresses these days."
Eva: "This I'm DEFINITELY getting."
Zsa Zsa: "That really brings out your eyes, Eva!"
Eva: "Wait, let me pose."
Zsa Zsa: "I have different poses for different dresses."

In the end, they each found four adorable dresses. Luckily, Zsa Zsa can still wear some 6x's but one of Zsa Zsa's dresses is a size 10(!) because the 7 was so tight and so short. And it fits her fine. We are in trouble next year. But we were done with fifteen minutes to spare. Oh, think of that! Mother could pick out ties for Big Shot Husband on our way out. She's pretty wily.

Meanwhile, I was proud of my daughters, with their tznius (modest) values, never asking for anything short or tight. Still dressing like adorable little girls (not trashy teenagers) since they are, after all, adorable little girls. I congratulated myself for the fact that they have never watched those deplorable shows on Nickelodeon so therefore don't know how "tweens" dress (that is the dumbest word ever, by the way). I thought of the values they learn at school and how their dress code teaches them that even when away from school they should wear long skirts, knee socks and long sleeves. Even in summer. And, by the way, this dress code provides excellent sun protection!

The next day, I was sitting outside on my parents' deck, content with the world. And then I saw them. Zsa Zsa and Eva were playing dress-up. They took their regulation frum girl ankle length black skirts, hiked them up to their chests to approximate short dresses, tied cardigans around their necks to look like scarves, and put their hair in buns. I almost had a stroke. I thought of that Robert Palmer video circa 1986 ("Addicted to Love"). I looked at them again. Yep, dead ringers. I thought about how sweet, innocent, and modest they are. And how all the values I and their school have instilled can so quickly fly right out the window. But by an hour later, they were all buttoned up again. For now.