A Tiny (???) Tallis Bag

Remember when I said that I needed to make a tallis bag for Squidette?

Well I did as promised.

The colors are not what I initially envisioned but rather the ones that jumped out at me in the quilt shop.

And the bag is not quite the size I thought it had to be.

Rather, it is the size that I thought it should be, but not the size it really needed to be.

It's actually about twice the size.
My answer? I'll make a second for Squidette and then make myself an extra large tallis.

Sound like a plan?

Bad Days, Good Days, Skink Nights

No matter how the day goes, there is always a cute, cuddly lizard to come home to a night.




The kid's not bad either!

The Tallis and the Tickets

After my last post, Cookie responded with a good suggestion as to where I could keep the tickets in the future to avoid losing them again.
Her idea is a good one but I suspect I will go back to our old storage spot -- updated for our current family situation.

And here goes another "Mom and the High Holy Days" story ...

Back in the days when Mom and Mike and I would go to services together, we'd walk over to the synagogue with our tickets in our hands. When we got inside and were seated, we all handed our tickets to Mike, who tucked them in his tallis (tallit) bag. The reasoning was simple -- Mom and I usually did not have pockets in which to tuck the tickets. When we could, we let Mike carry the apartment keys in his suit pockets and the keys and tickets were all that we carried. It harkens back to the rules restricting what one can carry on the Sabbath or High Holy days. It also harkens back to the fact that even back then they briefly searched bags and purses and not having one just made entry faster.

Back to the tickets ...

One year we forgot to remove the tickets after Yom Kippor and the following year we discovered them in the tallis bag. And quickly realized that they were exactly the same color as the previous year. Woo Hoo! Extra tickets! This started the tradition of storing the tickets from year to year in Mike's tallis bag. We never used the "extras" but it was always nice to know that we could bring in an extra family member if they wanted to come.

The color of the tickets held steady for several years and then we switched our service preference and started going to the early service instead of the late one. [Our synagogue has so many families that two seatings are required for the High Holy days. The clergy are very careful to make sure that the services are as identical as possible.] The early service tickets were a different color which made the old, hoarded tickets useless to us. We continued, however, hoarding the new tickets until two things happened. One, Mike stopped going to services and two, they started changing up the color of the tickets from year to year. I guess we weren't the only ones who realized what was going on.

This brings us to 2009 ...

As we were toting around Squidette's tallis today, I mentioned that she really needed a bag for it. Carrying around an unprotected tallis is just asking for trouble. Particularly when one does not have a purse to tuck it into and one is going to lunch right after services.

You see, I am still, when possible, carrying on the tradition of traveling lightly on the Holy days. Now, however, I make sure to wear a suit with pockets deep enough to handle my apartment or car keys (one or the other, never both), my drivers license, some cash / credit and a small handful of tissues. Yes, my pockets bulge and look a bit unattractive but I do not have a purse that has to be tucked somewhere out of sight while ushering. I made Little Squid (as the male with pockets) take his (turned off) cell phone so I wouldn't have to carry mine and so we could easily hook up with our friends for lunch after services. Yes, I am already using my son the way Mom used Mike. Squidette did not have any pockets and my shallow suit jacket pockets were already bulging.

***

Tomorrow I intend to take a walk over to the quilting store and see about getting a set of fat quarters in blues and whites. I'm thinking a simple Jewish Star on top of a nice background fabric with a button closure. It has to be a fairly large bag since the tallis is a big one.

Mike offered his tallis bag to the cause but there are two problems with his. One: it's actually a t'fillin bag and hence 1/2 the size of a normal tallis bag and two: we can't find it. We didn't even try to find his tallis for Squidette's bat mitzvah (though we probably knew where it was back then) since his tallis is too small for him. It was bought to fit a thirteen-year-old boy and not a grown man. Instead, Mike wore my dad's tallis and my dad wore my Zedda's tallis. We have a vague idea of where Mike's tallis is but when I looked for it before, to take a photo for this post, I could not easily find it.

So there you have it. The Tallis and the Tickets. Not an especially gripping tale, but one of fond memories and lots of side-references.

Shana Tova -- Happy New Year

I lost my tickets.

Every year our high holy day tickets arrive a month or so in advance of the holiday. I am always very careful to put them somewhere safe.

Well, not always. At least not this year.

Long story short -- I sent an email to the appropriate person and there will be replacements waiting at the door tomorrow night.

***

Now for the long story that is going through my head and keeping me awake. Let's call it ...

Remembrances of High Holy Days before and after ... or ... Missing Mom

Mom (my mother-in-law in this story) has been gone for four full years now. This will be the fifth set of High Holy days since her demise.

I still miss her.

When Mike and I started living together, we also started worshiping together. (Or at least going to services together.)

While I was not a member of our synagogue until after our marriage, I always managed to get in to High Holy day services with Mike and Mom on their extra tickets. Since my brother-in-law was still in school and Mike was in graduate school, Mom qualified for "student" tickets for them. I went on my brother-in-law's ticket. (They don't check names and he was out of town.)

We'd always get there early because Mom liked to be able to "see." She had to be able to view the action on the bemah to be happy. We'd joke about it and tease her about having to stand on line for 45 minutes in order to get the good seats in the sanctuary. After a period of years, we wore her down and convinced her that the balcony was just fine and, that if she got an aisle seat, she could see just fine.

It was a compromise that worked well for several years -- except for the year that we discovered the second row of the balcony. This row, for some strange reason, has at least 2 inches less leg room then the other rows. I have long legs. Very long legs. In the other aisles my knees rubbed up against the back of the seats in front of me. In the second aisle ... let's just say that I made Mom switch seats with me during one of the standing bits so that I could put my feet into the aisle. I had bruises on my knees for a few days after.

---

Once the kids were born, Mike and I worshiped in shifts. He'd go with Mom on Rosh Hashanah evening and I'd go in the morning. The other person stayed at Mom's apartment with the kid(s). For Yom Kippor, we reversed it because he "should say Yiskor* for his father." (In quotes because that was how Mom felt and not what Mike felt.)

Then the kids got older and could come with us and go to the children's programs that ran in the classrooms upstairs in the synagogue.

That's when Mike stopped going to High Holy day services. He's an adult and can make up his own mind. He'd kept going for all of those years to keep his Mom company. Now that the child care issues were over, he allowed me to take that role. Since I wanted to go anyway, it worked. By then, Mom had mostly come to terms with Mike's feelinga about the whole organized religion thing and. as long as she had me, she was essentially o.k. with it.

---

So Mom and I went and after one or two times together, we discovered that if we arrived just as the line was letting into the synagogue, then we could usually find seats in one of the tiny pews at the back of the sanctuary -- the two seaters.

And we were happy.

We'll forget the year that I bit off the head of the temple administrator after I could not find the kids in the rooms that I left them in ...

Then Mom left us.

My vague recollections of that first set of holidays, coming after a summer of packing up her apartment, include Mike joining me, at least for Yom Kippor morning. Because he should say Yiskor for his mother.

That was the only year I asked him to join me though he still asks, every year, if I want him to go wth me.

The next year, I went, essentially, alone. The kids were in their parallel program having a good time. And I had no one to shmooze with before services or to nod with in agreement (or disagreement) during the sermon. Or to compare notes with afterwards.

I joined friends in the auditorium that year for Yom Kippor and discovered great sightlines. When I wondered to Mike, why Mom had never tried it, he said that she hated the chatty atmosphere that went with those wonderful sightlines.

After another set of services there, I understood why. It didn't help that my friends are of the late arriving sort, so I still had no one to shmooze with before services began.

Then, two years ago I was invited to usher ... and the rest is history. I LOVE ushering. The hustle and bustle and movement. While I do not get the quiet, contemplative time that I associate with worship -- hey, I wasn't really getting it anyway. And that's what late nights are for -- like tonight when everyone is asleep and I can think deep thoughts. And share them with you.

---

I had no intentions of going to evening services tomorrow. I figured we'd have a nice family dinner together and the kids and I would go in the morning -- we are ushering. But then I lost the tickets and now I feel that I have to go, just to justify the late email asking for help (I probably could have talked my way in on Saturday since we are on the ushering list).

In a strange way I am glad my hand was forced. I'm kind of looking forward to this now ... Squidette may or may not join me. Little Squid is taking a pass. I'm going to volunteer my services as an expert usher (they thought about upgrading my carnation color last year!) but, if I am not needed, I will ...

Shmooze before the services with my daughter.

Nod sagely with her during the sermon (or laugh discretely).

And truly understand why Mom wanted someone with her. And why Mike went for all those years -- and then always offered to go with me afterwards.

It's about more than the religion. It's about a shared experience and being with those you love during something that is important to you.

***

Shana Tova -- May this year be a good and sweet one and may you be inscribed in the book of life for another year.


*Yiskor: memorial service for the departed

New Addition!

No, not what you think. I'm finished bringing humans into this world. Lizards, on the other hand ...
Meet Lynx (to possibly be renamed later).
Lynx is a blue tongued skink and belongs to Not-So-Little Squid. He arrived at my school this morning courtesy of the wonderful Zach and UPS (and my parent coordinator who bravely brought the box to my classroom).
See how happy they are together?

(After I released little Lynx from his packaging, I kept going over to his temporary "cage" and saying "hi." Periodically I petted him (yup, I stroked his head and back) and cuddled him. I also spoke in a really soft and calm voice the entire time he was in my office. Makes me think that maybe I should get one to keep at work ...)

Oh, and we think he is already plotting with the turtles. They are planning their escape and subsequent world domination.

One More Year

As I sit here and try to compose an appropriate birthday post, I find myself at a loss for words. Instead, tears of happiness and joy cloud my eyes as I try to write down just what about my son makes him so very special to me.

Is it how he always knows when I need a hug?

Or how much he infuriates his dad -- for making the same mistakes that Mike did at that age?

Is it how he constantly takes me by surprise with his talents and his interests?

Or how he is so very like my dad.

Maybe it is because he is so much like his sister, and yet so very, very different.

Or that he is just himself. Our Monster. Our Little Squid.

Happy Birthday, Little Squid.

May you have many, many more!

Just a few more days ...

Summer is over and in a few more days I will have just one more year of being a mother of a pre-teen. Pretty scary. I mean, where did the time go? I swear it was just yesterday that I was holding him and thinking about the true meaning of window-guards. [It was 3 a.m. As an infant, Little Squid was NOT a good sleeper.]

Fortunately, little ones are made cute for a reason -- so that their parents don't kill them in infancy -- and he survived. And in a few short days, he'll be 12.

On Wednesday he goes back to school. For the first time he will be totally responsible for getting himself to and from school. No more big sister to lean on. And no more mom to come running at a moments notice when he gets a mid-morning migraine. He'll have to wait until 11:00 (by which time the migraine may have gone away). I'll be teaching.

Yup. I'm returning to the classroom on Wednesday morning. It's not a new job, just a part time return to my roots. The rest of the day I will still be an Assistant Principal. Actually, I'll be one all day, just one who teaches. I'm nervous and excited. It's been far too long since I had my own class and I miss it. I just hope I have not lost my touch. I'm starting with the egg-in-a-bottle "trick." Wish me luck!

Summer Knits

During our travels there has been lots of small knitting going on.

First, and foremost is the Whisper Cardigan. I spied this in Interweave Knits a while ago and decided that I had the perfect, handspun, yarn for it. And so, I spent months knitting it. That's what happens when one knits a cardigan in laceweight yarn.It came out nice but I'm not crazy about it. It's one of those things that looks better in the magazine then on my body. Oh well, live and learn. I probably still wear it occassionally.

Then there were socks.

And socks.

And socks.
The first pair (right-most sock) was started just before the New Year and finished up just as July began. They are mine. The yarn was purchased in Lancaster, PA last summer so I really had to finish them before this year's trip.

The second pair (center sock) was knit in fairly short order as my "camp pick-up waiting" pair and is for the lovely Squidette. The yarn is a Regia something that we picked up at Webs in February.

The third pair (left-most sock) was my "don't need to look" pair that was started during a viewing of the latest Star Trek movie, continued during Harry Potter, had more inches added while my eyes dilated at the opthomologist, saw some action on the trip to Pittsburgh and was the ONLY project taken on the bike trip. The second sock gained major inches in the corn maze and while sitting around a campfire and was finally finished on our way back from a short trip to the Catskill mountains earlier this week. The yarn is a Regia or a Socking or something like that -- I lost the ball band a long time ago. Squidette picked it out at Webs and it was always designated as socks for Mike. "Blind" knitting often takes the shape of socks for Mike since he has such large feet that I don't have to worry about measuring for very long stretches of time.

And finally, we have Squidette's new gloves. Sport weight alpaca dyed and purchased in Lancaster, PA on our most recent trip. There is more than enough left over for a pair of matching mittens which I will probably start in the next day or two.

Currently on the needles:

the biking socks started last year for the Tour de France Knit-Along,

a cob-web weight shawl which I work on every 6 months or so,

a lace weight shawl which was started a few weeks ago after I finished Swallowtail,

and, a pair of socks for Little Squid which were started today and are about 2 inches in.

I think that's it.

On the spinning front I am working on the main color for Mike's sweater and am making steady if intermittent progress on it. All of the ancillary colors are spun and plyed though only one is skeined so far. I'll skein the other two right before I start plying the main color. That's when I'll finally need the bobbins for my Journey Wheel.

One more day of summer vacation....

Pittsburgh!

Following our adventure on the Great Allegheny Trail, we spent the weekend in Pittsburgh with my brother and his lovely wife.

They took us all over town and we sampled much of what Steel City has to offer, starting with a visit to the Heinz History Center. (Yes, they have a display of ketchup, why do you ask?)
(Interestingly enough, the new Heinz ketchup pin that Little Squid is sport on his hat did not come from here but was given to him a week later at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strausburg. Heinz has a lot of history with the railroads, including special cars to ship their products.)

We wandered around the museum for quite a while and hit what my brother considers to be the high point, an exhibit which explains the "Pittsburgh" dialect. Very educational.
Moving on, we strolled the Strip, discovering that Nothing happened in one location,

and having great fried fish in another (no, not at this church).
We finished it up with an over the top dinner for Josh's Birthday. (I was mostly off line for the entire trip, hence not birthday post for my youngest brother.) Don't they look cute!
Taking the dog for a walk, in an attempt to tire him and Little Squid out, we passed a street devoted to garages. I kid you not. It was not a back alley but a real street type street but all the houses fronted on other streets with their garages on this one.
As you can see, the tiring walk only lasted for so long ...
On the last day of our visit we got a tour of Carnegie Mellon University with it's Sky Walk
and painted fence. Apparently the paint is rarely dry on this fence, students keep repainting it. It used to be much thinner ...
CMU has sculpture scattered randomly around the campus. Little Squid particularly liked this one. It made him feel cool on a 90 degree day.
Then, off to the University of Pittsburg's Cathedral of Learning with its historically themed classrooms.





These are supposed to be true-to-life recreations of classrooms in other countries at other times but I suspect that the desktops were added for the convenience of the students who take classes in these rooms. Yes, they are really used for classes.









Josh's favorite is the Israel room with its white board hidden behind the mosaics below.


The common room. Can you imagine this full of students?

After visiting all of the open historical rooms we hiked back, had some lunch and hit the road. More adventures have followed and I promise to share some of them with you soon.

A Taste of Lancaster

A few days ago we made our annual pilgrimage to Lancaster, PA. This year, for the first time in three years, we camped out.

The tent is brand new, having discarded our two older (and smaller) tents during the great b*d bug debacle of 2007. Two of our sleeping bags are also brand new as the kids have outgrown the child-sized ones that they used to use.

Squidette was put in charge of erecting the tent with Little Squid assigned to assist while I started a fire. Experience has shown that if we do not start a fire by 5 or so then we will not eat until really late. (Mike was unloading the car and doing a small amount of unwinding after a nerve wracking drive through some really nasty rain.)

They did a great job until it came time to raise the roof. At that point the stronger (and taller) adults had to step in and help. We also had to put the fly on as neither child has the height or jumping ability to get it over the top of the tent.
Yes, it is huge but it served well and we were all as comfortable as one can get in a tent on a hill.

Little Squid woke up each morning in a heap at the bottom of the tent. The rest of us managed to mostly maintain our positions on our mats but he and I had the more slippery sleeping bags and with his lower mass, he had a lesser ability to stick to the slanted surface.

After a dinner of locally made / grown, slightly undercooked, sausage, corn on the cob and (fully cooked) bread,--and s'mores for desert, we sat around our pitiful fire and knit / read. A quiet and companionable evening as we listened to guitar music coming from a neighboring campsite.

The next day we trooped off to a local corn maze for another annual tradition and got ourselves good and lost and then found again as we wended our way through the maize.
I got a good amount done on this year's Corn Maze sock.
A hefty lunch at Good and Plenty (another tradition), some shopping and then back to the campground to swim and just hang out for the afternoon. We did not even attempt a fire until after dinner, dining instead, on cold (cooked) sausages, fruit and bread, all obtained from a local market. Yum! Then, we finally lit the fire and sat around trying to think of campfire songs and instead singing all sorts of silly stuff.

Our neighbors, they of the guitar music (which I realized was recorded) stayed up way beyond our bedtime, chatting loudly. I couldn't really fault them, they did turn off the music at 10 (the campgrounds quiet time) but it started the night off badly for all of us and not one of us slept well.

Waking by 6:30 (habits are hard to break, especially when you haven't slept well to begin with), we breakfasted, read, and stared in awe at the incredibly dense fog that obscured our view of the cornfield just 100 yards away.

Once the fog had lifted a bit, we went off to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. We've been here once or twice before and really like looking at the old trains. It was their family weekend so they had some retired engineers there to explain some of the engines to us. After a full two hours we pulled ourselves away and went to Jakey's for lunch. It was our first time dining there but not our last! Mike, Squidette and I all had bar-b-que sandwiches of one sort or another--Little Squid was less adventurous and had a hamburger.

A trip to That Fish Place, That Pet Place then ensued with the acquisition of lots of food and supplies for our turtles-in-residence and for Little Squid's soon-to-be blue tongued skink. Then a "quick" round of mini-golf at a new-to-us place (with a good amount of shade!) and back to the campground for more swimming / reading / relaxing.

Our final campfire was more successful than our first two and we managed to successfully brown our corn and smoked sausages which were eaten with fresh cantalope and more local bread. Mmm ... whoopie pies finished up the meal. Sitting around the fire we passed around my BeBook with it's collection of books and read a variety of selections from Grimm's Fairy Tales. Mike started a story from Arabian Nights (on his Nokia tablet) and we laughed and joked and generally enjoyed each others company.

All of us slept much better--probably because we were so very tired from two nights of little sleep--and were abruptly awoken by our neighbors noisily rising at 5:00 a.m. Grr ...

I managed to fall back to sleep and the kids didn't hear them but Mike was up for the day at that point and woke me up when he finally decided to start packing.

And so we are now home, though not at the end of our summer travels. I know I promised you Pittsburgh and, of course, there is all the knitting that always happens while we travel. Please be patient, I will get to all in good time.

Squid on Wheels: The Great Allegheny Passage ... Day 4

Belle Vernon, PA to Mckeesport, PA

To answer Ina's question, yes, three of us did the ride on Bike Friday folding bikes. The bikes are made for touring and did a great job of it. Little Squid rode a Specialized Dolce road bike simply because he is still a bit too small for a Friday. If we do this again before he is big enough, we will try to get him a bike with fatter tires. He did fine on the skinny ones but they made for a slightly more nerve racking ride on the rough surfaces.

(Bottles of Nuun fizzing away in West Newton)

After a lovely night in the Belle Vernon Comfort Inn and a nice breakfast, we loaded our gear up and took off towards Mckeesport and the end of the trip.

Knowing that there were only about 27 miles ahead of us we figured that we would be back in Pittsburgh by noon or so.

(Hamming it up in West Newton -- the BEST bathrooms on the trail!)

(Ice cream and frozen yougart at the Yough Twister)

What we did not bargain on was encountering another family riding Bike Friday's! Just outside of Boston, after a rather uneventful ride (albeit one that finally featured ice cream) Mike spied two Bike Friday's in a back yard and pulled over to chat. Turns out that the family was in the last stages of a cross country trip. Gulp! They'd already done 2600 miles from Spokane, WA and were headed for Ocean City, MD. They had had 10 flat tires the day before and wound up camping in a kind strangers back yard for the night. Check out their blog, it is really good reading.
We chatted with them for a half hour or more and gave them some inner tubes for their Friday's and a spare folding tire. Hopefully that gave them an "umbrella" against future flats.

(Final bathroom break in Mckeesport)

The rest of the trip continued to be uneventful, even the road riding as we got into Mckeesport. We (thankfully) found the car right where we left it, just as we left it. I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't a little bit worried about leaving it in a strange town for four days.

Once the car was packed up we called my brother and arranged to pick him up so that we could gain access to his home. Warm showers and cold drinks were followed by two lovely days with my brother and sister-in-law touring Pittsburgh and eating fantastic food. The tale of the days in Pittsburgh, however, will have to wait.

Total biking mileage: 137 miles over four days. Also, about 3 miles of hiking in Ohiopyle, a town I highly recommend for a weekend get away if your idea of a good time is hiking, biking, and rafting.

Over all, a highly successful trip, one that may spur other long distance biking trips though perhaps not as long distance as our Friday friends.