The Hebrew School madness has begun. Amayn.
In a fit of goyisher guilt (differnt from Jewish guilt – with a Methodist twist) I signed up the kids for Hebrew School and joined our local shul (temple) at the same time. ( Can I get an “OY!”) THAT’S no small chunk of change. So every Wednesday Hannah will go from 4 – 6, and every Sunday both kids go from 11 – 1. Thank heaven we didn’t sign them up for soccer or baseball. Not only could we NOT afford it, we’d have to miss half the games. And I realized with a tremendous start that Hannah will be TWELVE in three years.
Girls generally have their Bat Mizvah (in Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative temples) when they’re 12. Boys have their Bar Mitzvah when they’re 13. In Reform temples the education continues with a Confirmation later in the high school years. It keeps them off the streets.
So far, so good. The hardest thing to figure out is the carpool system (we all get numbers, mine is 107) but I’m certain I’ll mistress it in good time. Probably the morning of Max’s Bar Mitzvah.
Yarn to the Ceiling
Boxes and boxes of the stuff! Wool, cotton, linen, hemp, silk – these men are going to be WELL dressed! I’ve sent out yarn to 22 knitters so far – most of them men – and now comes the waiting part. Suffice to say, I am NOT the most popular person at the post office. The other day when I was mailing 200 books I thought I’d be nice and divide them up bewtween 5 PO’s that I visit in the area. But when I went into the first one the woman had such attitude about my paltry 40 books (she was VERY bent out of shape, and before she’d help me she had to finish her conversation with a co-worker about going to Atlantic City over Columbus Day weekend).
When she finally deigned to begin weighing the packages she looked them over
– “Is that all?”
– “Yes. I know it’s a lot…”
– [sharply] “Lissen Honey, I do hundreds of packages a day – ”
So I went to my car and got the other 160 boxes. And she processed them. Each with delivery confirmation.
What the heck, there was no line, it’s the largest PO in the area (and 1/4 as busy as my own South Orange PO, which always has a line of 20 people), and if she’d been the teeniest bit nicer I would have just stopped at 40. Each with delivery confirmation.