A litany of woes...

A recap of the last 120 hours:

1. Leave on Friday with the kids for the cape. David was to meet us there Saturday but instead...
2. David gets a stomach virus! David spends many hours barfing. We tell him not to try to come to the cape. He weeps in gratitude.
3. Lily spends Saturday and Sunday on my Dad's couch coughing, sneezing and blowing. Rebecca spends Saturday and Sunday worrying that she will get David's bug or Lily's cold.
4. Get home Monday morning. See wet cat footprints all over the house. Go to the basement where I find...
5. Water all over the floor! Assume that the water is from all of the rain we've been having. Start running dehumidifiers and curse my basement.
6. Several hours later hear David say, "Hey! There's no hot water!"
7. Feel a cold wave of horror as I realize where the water is coming from.
8. Confirm leaky water heater.
9. Swear loudly.
10. Call plumber at 6:30pm. Leave message.
11. Spend an hour heating pots of water on the stove and bringing them upstairs so that I can have a bath. Twelve trips up the stairs with scalding water and I have my tub. As god is my witness, I will not got to bed without my tub!
12. Go to bed. Listen to Lily cough.
13. 7:22 am the phone rings. It's the plumber. "Did I call too early?" I try to fake it, "Nope! I've been up for hours!"
14. Good news! The tank is still under warranty! Bad news- I have fifteen minutes to get dressed before the plumber gets here.
15. Plumber sends over new young plumbers. They look sixteen. I contemplate my own age. Realize I have become old.
16. Plumbers install new tank. Joy!
17. Load the dishwasher, set it to run and sit down in the next room with a cup of coffee and try to ignore the wet footprints, cat hair and dirty laundry all over the floor.
18. Hmmmmm. Dishwasher sounds much louder than usual.
19. Go into kitchen to witness a tsunami of dirty dishwasher water cascading across the floor.
20. Swear very, very loudly.
21. Call the plumber. Again. He insists the water heater would have nothing to do with the dishwasher problem.
22. Plumber boys return. They investigate dishwasher and confirm that the seals are leaking.
23. Dishwasher too old to repair.
24. Sit in my filthy kitchen and contemplate my life.

I sat there for a while. I had a little ice cream and sat in the sun. I spent a little time in denial, because denial can be a nice place to visit.

Finally I went back in the house and gave David the task of finding a new dishwasher. He tried to volley it back to me and so finally, we picked one together.  Once the dishwasher was settled I began the miserable task of pulling wet junk out of the basement. There is nothing like a wet basement to inspire me to get rid of everything I own.

After I was done in the basement I cleaned the cat footprints from the stairs and floors, washed the kitchen floor of grime and horror and had a nice long bath.

My house is cleanish, the basement is dryish and my checkbook is empty.

Miracles...

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah.

When David and I were first dating I asked him, "So does your family do anything special for Hanukkah?"

The answer was no, which sort of baffled me. Isn't Hanukkah some sort of Jewish Christmas?

It turns out that religiously it's not a major holiday, except to retailers who want folks to think otherwise.

The big Jewish holidays are Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Passover.

Unlike Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and Passover, Hanukkah is a holiday which is not from the Torah. It is the commemoration of a post biblical event, namely the victory of the Maccabees over the Greek rulers of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Temple in 164 BCE. It also celebrates a miracle that took place during this event. When the temple was rededicated, God miraculously made one day's worth of oil last for eight days.

There you have it. A small but crucial miracle. No virgin births and no reindeer.

In spite of it's lack of Santa, I love Hanukkah. I love the candle light and I love our family menorah. We have a few, but this menorah is our favorite. It was given to us by my dear stepmom the very first winter that David and I were together.



You can't tell because this picture is well, imperfect, but the Hebrew letters of this menorah spell Shalom.

Guess why the kids love Hanukkah?



Eights nights of gifts! We tend to keep the Hanukkah gifts small and fun- sort of like Hanukkah itself.

I have to conclude this post by telling you the other excitement of the day. Pugsley and Sophie ate an entire bag of organic (!) sunflower seeds and have spent the last three hours throwing up sunflower seeds and then trying to eat each others vomit.

This was not the excitement I was hoping for.

Whale watch of death...

When we arrived at Provincetown this morning for our whale watch it was 66 degrees. And windy. Like 15 miles an hour windy.

I began to have misgivings, but being a brave mother I put on another sweater and got in line to check-in at the whale watch place.

The young couple in line in front of me were doomed.

The attractive couple had on short sleeved shirts and shorts. After a few minutes of standing in the cold the woman put on a light sweatshirt and shyly asked her boyfriend if he wanted her to go to the car to get his long-sleeved shirt. At first he poo-pooed her, but finally agreed. As she walked back to their car, the boyfriend walked up to the counter.

I overheard the whale watch ticket agent say, "This ride will require motion-sickness medication. The seas are extremely rough." The boyfriend asked what the medication was and if they have it on board.

"Yes, we sell it on board. Are you sure you still want to go?" the ticket agent asked.

Do you know what that idiot man did? He said, "Yes, I still want to go."

He must hate his girlfriend, because he just signed her up for a three hour barf fest. Not just any old barf fest either- a really cold barf fest. I bet she deleted his number from her phone. After what he did I bet she moved to another state and changed her name.

I watched him walk off in search of his girlfriend and stepped up to the counter.

The ticket agent, knowing that I had overheard his warnings to the last customer, asked, "Do you still want to go on? It ain't going to be pretty."

"No!" I yelped.

"You're smart" he said. "It's going to be bad out there."

I thanked him for his candor and merrily skipped away, happy in the knowledge that not only was I not going to die on the boat, now I could go shopping instead! Sometimes the universe intervenes and gently pushes you away from the whale watch of death and towards the mall, home of skee ball, the food court and the joys of retail therapy.