Prayer

In Judaism, we have a set liturgy; if it's a Sunday (or Tuesday or Wednesday) morning, we say the same thing no matter where we are. If it's the start of a new month, same deal. And within each service there is The Prayer. In all of our text, if the word "ha-tefilla" (literally "the prayer") is used, it refers to this central prayer. It is the same three times a day, Sunday through Friday. And I love it. I love the first blessing where we praise the G-d of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, where I think about how G-d welcomes each of us regardless of our observance level or our commitment to G-d. I love the sixth blessing where we acknowledge our flaws and ask for forgiveness. I love the seventh (? I don't have the text in front of me to count) blessing where we ask G-d to bless the year--more meaningful in light of an explanation I learned once that "blessing" equals "multiply" in the sense of be fruitful and ___: give us this year and many more.

But while I relish the ability to interpret the fixed liturgy in ways that are meaningful to me, I sometimes feel the lack of a more free-form type of prayer.

My grandfather passed away a few weeks ago, and since no one else in my family is observant, I have taken it upon myself to say kaddish. (I hope Grandpa wouldn't mind.) So I have been going to services in the morning and gotten back in the habit of davening (praying) at least one time a day, and I have begun using the time after I am done reciting my own Prayer to add personal hopes and wishes. The very first day I did this, I included a prayer for one of my friends who had been unemployed for nine months, and the next day she got a job offer! (Just a fantastic coincidence; that's not actually how I think G-d works.)

This week I began adding a request that G-d direct/enable/assist me to be in touch with my sister. There's no reason why we're not in touch more, just that neither one of us is terribly good at phone calls, and we didn't have a very good model of good familial relationships growing up. So, unlike the guy who prays to win the lottery but never buys a ticket, I called my sister today. I got to talk to my nephew (who is almost 6! where does the time go?) and then chatted with my sister about her state's teacher licensing exam that she has to take in a few weeks. (I guess there isn't reciprocity with the state where she used to live. I knew that her state doesn't like to admit lawyers to practice based on bar admission elsewhere, but teachers? Strange.) She has to study because what special ed teacher of 3-6 year olds knows about the causes of the drought in the Dakotas in the 1930s? (I think that's what the question was that she told me about. And no, she's not in either of the Dakotas.)

Anyway, I seem to be having pretty good luck with my prayers (still praying for Once Lost to find Clay) so if you have anything that you need...

Consequences

I've been reading Yondalla's blog from the beginning for about the past week. This has not been an example of good decision-making, as it has distracted me from work, from washing dishes, from sleeping, and from working on job applications.

In fact, it has been a perfect example of natural consequences.

When one reads a year's worth of blog posts in six days, some themes come up again and again. One of those has been--to put it ineloquently but to include both positive and negative--responding to behavior. There are two sides to this: praise for positive behavior, and consequences for negative behavior. (Though, as I think about it, praise is just one type of consequence of positive behavior. So perhaps there is just one side, and that is consequences.)

At my old job, I rarely got any feedback on my performance, and when I did, it was negative. So when I started my current job and one of the first emails from my boss was positive feedback, I created a "props" folder in my email and started saving certain emails to it so that I could go back and re-read them if I was feeling particularly inept. (This did not help on the day that I remember being passively criticized for incorrect data entry--when all else fails, I know that I'm good at data entry--and spent much of the day bundling pens...because of course that was "all I was capable of doing." That was in my pre-Celexa days.)

I think that I respond well to positive feedback. But only when it comes from an outside source. I don't do well with patting myself on the back. And therefore, I end up experiencing natural consequences--perhaps a subconcious self-sabotage? I let job listings accumulate in my inbox without applying for them, so that the job that sounded perfect closed a week ago. I forget to pay my credit card bill on time despite being able to pay it off, so I have a late fee plus interest. I stay up too late reading blogs and then am tired all day the next day. I do all these irresponsible things and then think that there is no way I'm responsible enough to take care of a kid.

There is another job that closes on Wednesday, so I need to work on my cover letter. I am procrastinating on that by writing this post. But it needs to be hand-delivered (I had a nice snarky comment here but realized it might give away what Big City I live in) so I should get it done to allow for some flexibility in when I go to deliver it. It would be great if the natural consequence of applying is to actually get the job!

More advice please-window security

And the saga continues. When Licensing Worker came for her first visit, she told me that I would need to get some sort of lock for my windows to keep a kid from accidentally falling out. An important thing since I live on the 4th floor.

So I went online and bought these nifty screw-type locks:

And it turned out that they don't fit on my windows. Okay, they were less than a dollar per lock, so not a huge deal.

I went back online and bought these window stoppers that are suction cups:

Just under six dollars each, so at this point I've spent a total of about $100 for my 14 windows. A small price to pay for making sure that a kid doesn't fall out of a window. And yes, I thought about how easy it is to take a suction cup off of a window. But almost every other lock I saw required screwing things into the window frame, which would be a neat trick to try with my metal window frames.

This is what I was thinking: these are to protect kids from accidental falls. Taking the lock off the window will require an intentional act (which for a small kid would also require climbing on something). If a kid is determined to fall out of the window, he or she will figure out how to open the window far enough to do so. Maybe I shouldn't have said that to Licensing Worker, but on minute 10 of the conversation yesterday in trying to convince her that my window stoppers are sufficient, I was losing my duck-like ability to let it all roll off my back. (Actually, I never had much of a duck-like ability to let it all roll off my back. Working on it.)

She is going to talk to her supervisor. In the meantime, I've come across another possibility: the "Burglabar." Just like the suction cups, though, or any other of these options, it can be de-activated so that the window can be opened all the way.

Here is what my jurisdictions rules require for foster homes:

[###] A foster home shall have and use protective devices on all
windows to prevent a child from falling out of the window.

...

[###] A foster home shall have and use safety locks on all windows and
doors on or above the second floor.

Given this, do you think I should go ahead and order the Burglabar, wait until I hear back from the Licensing Worker, write a treatise on why none of these are guaranteed methods of keeping a kid safe, or shoot an email to my friend the chief of staff of the agency?

Brief observation

I understand that being able to take leave from work in order to meet with the licensing worker demonstrates that I have enough flexibility in my job to deal with emergencies with a kiddo.

But four hours of leave for a fifteen minute visit is just inappropriate. If I were paid by the hour, I would be pissed. And I don't use that type of language lightly. Plus, the more I have to take off before I'm licensed, the less time I'll have saved to take off when I really need to!

Cooking

I'm a pretty good cook. I don't think I'll ever win any prizes or be a famous chef, but for a while I thought that if the law gig didn't work out, maybe I would be a kosher caterer. (Now my back-up career plan is editing.) I won't tell you about the time that I managed to burn spaghetti.

I don't cook as much, or as varied, as I should, because I'm lazy and hate washing dishes. (See: goals #3 and #4.) But last night I compromised and even though I made pasta for dinner, I tossed some brocolli into the sauce. (And then I set aside the second serving to bring for lunch today, instead of just eating it. If you ever were looking for an excuse to eat dessert first, that might be it.)

But my mom seems to think that I'm a brilliant cook and she even calls me for advice. She'll ask me for a recipe, I'll say "oh, a bit of this and a bit of that" and she'll say "but how much???" To which I always reply, "uh, mom? You're the one who taught me to cook. You should know that I don't cook with measuring cups."

I bake bread, I fry eggs, I poach fish, I'm attempting to infuse oil (we'll see how it goes), but there are a few things that I just am not capable of.

An aside to put this in context before I tell you what I absolutely cannot cook. I love Yondalla. And it occurred to me that I hadn't read her blog from the beginning. So I am doing so now. (Shh, don't tell the boss.) One of her house rules is that everyone has one night a week that they cook dinner. And one of her posts talks about her son making breakfast for dinner.

I am utterly incapable of making pancakes. (And omelets, and latkes.) What am I going to do if kiddo doesn't like french toast or waffles but insists that special breakfasts must include pancakes? Just another thing to add to my list of fears.*


*Please know that my list of fears includes many, many more serious things than my inability to make pancakes. I'm going into this with a whole boatload of naivete but am not completely unrealistic. I'll post more about my serious fears later.

Update on Goals

It's been almost a month since I posted my goals for the summer. Clearly, one of my goals should have been to improve my work ethic. I say "clearly" because this is my second post written while at work in three business days. I'm at a point in a project (a project, I should add, that I am dorkily excited about) where I am stuck because I can't figure out how to follow the directions.* And this is incredibly frustrating, so in an effort to sound like I'm doing something and to not go crazy, I have decided to provide an update on my goals.

Goal # so important it didn't get a number: getting licensed.
Progress: As I mentioned last night, my second licensing visit is on Wednesday afternoon. Are there more hoops to jump through after that? I hope not. But who knows...

Goal #1: find a new job.
Progress: nope. I've applied for a few jobs, but nothing has come of my applications yet.

Goal #2: reduce dependence on caffeine.
Progress: oops. If anything, I've increased my dependence on caffeine. It definitely doesn't help that I have a bottomless mug from a chain of bagel restaurants. I shelled out a bunch of bucks in October and can get free refills for the entire year. So every day on my way to work, I stop in and get a coke or a coffee. (And chat with Jeremy and Donnell, the cheerful-even-early-in-the-morning staff and manager.) If I were paying for each drink, I certainly wouldn't go every day. And I definitely wouldn't do what I did today... I ate a "savory" breakfast so wanted coke, but like having coffee at my desk. I had work with me, so I got a coke, sat down with it and read my work, and then got a coffee and went the rest of the way to work.
Related aside: There is a fast day coming up in a week (tisha b'av, for those who are keeping track). I know people who try to wean themselves of caffeine in preparation for fast days. But I don't understand this. Why suffer for a week when the fast day is only one day (and you are going to be miserable for that day anyway)?

Goal #3: wash dishes within a day of using them.
Progress: um... If you look in my sink right now, all of the dirty dishes are from yesterday. So I guess that counts. I've definitely been doing better. But I also still have the salad bowl from dinner last Shabbat (that is, the 10th) and a few other small things sitting on the counter.

Goal #4: eat more salad and less pasta.
Progress: oh dear. I discovered a new brand of vegetarian sausage last week and have been eating a lot of it. So I'm getting some nutrients beyond whatever nutritional value there is in pasta sauce. But protein is one thing and fruits and veg are another.

So there you have it--a report of my complete failure over the past month to make any progress with any of my goals. That gust of wind you just felt was my big sigh of disappointment.




*I am not sure if this is because I am too intelligent to follow the directions or because the directions were written that badly.

Thinking things through

As I mention in my glossary, I belong to a number of prayer communities--My Minyan1, My Minyan2, and My Shul. Last night I was talking online with one of the leaders of My Minyan2 [note to self: try to keep straight which is 1 and which is 2], and he asked a question that I need to answer. I am going to think though the issue here, and if you have any feedback, please don't be shy.

First, a bit of background, that probably isn't at all relevant to the issue at hand, but I might as well share. When I finished law school and was deciding where to live, I chose Big City specifically because of My Minyan1. I had been involved in the leadership for years until I stepped down from my most recent position about a month and a half ago. About two years ago, My Minyan2 was formed by a few friends of mine. The distinctions between the two minyanim and My Shul are in the philosophies/worldviews that drive the practices of each with respect to women's participation. Even though my worldview is more in line with that of My Minyan1, I started to have other issues with the community and, with the existence of My Minyan2, don't "need" My Minyan1 so much anymore.

So, all that on the table: my friend asked me last night if I wanted to be on the leadership of My Minyan2. In context, his question didn't appear reasoned. "Leah [a pseudonym, of course] seems annoyed about something that happened after services. Were you there?" [Note that the friend I was talking to was visiting his family in another Big City, so hadn't been at services.] I explained that Leah was the only leadership person who was there to help clean up afterwards. My friend's response was basically "the other leadership is a waste; do you want to be on the leadership?" Well of course I didn't think he was serious, especially because at various transition points in the past he hasn't asked me and has even had conversations with me where it is clear that I didn't have the "qualifications" that they were looking for.

He followed up, however, saying that my name HAS come up in recent conversations about leadership, and that the question is serious. The question is, am I interested.

I have a number of reasons for saying "no." Setting aside the major issue for a moment, it sounds like there are some serious teamwork problems on the current leadership, and I don't know that I want to join that. Then there's the issue that I've been leadership-free for only a month and a half and I had reasons for stepping down from that position other than philosophical ones.

And there's the BIG one: I have no idea when, or if, or for how long, I will be responsible for a kiddo. And I don't know what that will do to my ability to do "business" things in the evening, or to make it to services on time or even regularly, or if I'll have the kiddo with me when I do go to services, so I feel it would be irresponsible of me to take on this responsibility.

But there are reasons to say "yes," as well, though I don't think they outweigh the reasons to say "no." And these reasons are 1. I don't want the community to implode due to problems with the current leadership, and 2. I really do feel committed to the community and want to do my part (and 3. I feel honored to be asked).

So there we are. I promised my friend an email so I might just copy this and send it to him. And like I said above, if you have any insight, feel free to share.