Hamilton

The post is dedicated to Matt Waugh and Teri Wicker :)

After months of falling in and out of love with houses after the highs and lows of denials and counter offers, I have settled on a cute little house on the South side of Lansing. It's perfect and very reminiscent of my parents house, which they have lived in for about twenty years now.

I now wonder if subconsciously that is why I picked the place, if only I can create as good of memories and grow a family there as they have. From the Spartan green shutters to the big front window, to the old wood floors, it takes me back to my childhood and shows me a glimpse of the future.
I met the inspector at the house yesterday to give it a good thorough once over before the offer became final. We met under the pine tree near the driveway as April snowflakes fell from the branches onto the papers in his hand, the described the inspection process, ensuring detail and integrity in his work, we proceeded to walk around the outside of the home.

He pointed at cracks in the walkway and around the porch steps, instructed me on the need to fill them due to potential safety risks, he pointed up at a leaking eaves dropping onto a rotted portion of wood over the door and said it would possibly lead to water damage.
I begin to see dollar signs, anxiety, frustration and scenes from the Tom Hanks movie Money Pit, I nod my head as he explains things in words from another language "grade, beam joists, S-traps..". I am fully overwhelmed as my mental capacity to keep a list of these maintenance issues has now exhausted itself.
All in all, he says, the house is in good shape. Good electricity, the plumbing is good, insulation fantastic, but the furnace is old and may not last too much longer. I am overwhelmed, but relieved. How nice it is to know the condition of something before you commit. To know what may break, what needs immediate repair, what can be done to improve structures, what to expect from the home in years down the road.

To know the condition.

How nice it would be to do a routine inspection of ourselves, not like getting a physical once a year, or reflecting on New Years and making resolutions that never stick. But to kneel in our crawlspaces, climb into our attics amidst the cobwebs and dust, inspect the foundation, check for leaks and potential safety hazards. To be completely honest with ourselves and exposing the condition we are truly in. To put it into a report and to show those who are making their investment in us, possibly to the one we are spending our life with.
You can't always foresee things, actually you rarely can foresee things happening, but I hope we all can somehow prepare for maintenance, repairs, improvements in ourselves, others and the place we call home.

Oil spills and Ego Boundaries..

I'm spending my days watching endless gallons of oil spill into the sea of blue, creating a marble swirl of thick brown encapsulating parts of untouched waters. They merge together in a meeting iconic of greed and beauty, of simple and complex. Sad looking Pelicans wonder onto the shore, and I'm beginning to think that I never want to drive my car again. It's been happening for weeks, but slowly, even though the gasoline geyser isn't fixed, news have shifted into other directions. Obama doesn't want any more blame for the actions of how the situation is being handled, Joran Van der Sloot killed another innocent woman, and Lindsey Lohan's alcohol monitoring ankle bracelet alarmed yesterday. The world continues to turn, as does the pages of our newspapers.

I have my NCLEX study book open, recalling lab values and answering questions like:
"The nurse knows that the physician is most likely to order which of the following laboratory tests to evaluate a client for hypoxia?"
1) Hematocrit
2) Sputum analysis
3) Arterial Blood gas (ABG) analysis
4) Total hemoglobin.
(the answer is 3, in case you were wondering!)

But instead of being interested as I should be in these matters, I have been ready a book called "The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth" by M. Scott Peck M.D. "New" is relative, being that the book was written in 1978. I'm not usually a fan of self help type literature, but maybe it's just the new stuff that is all marshmallow-y. This guy tells it straight up.
He defines love as "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth". He incorporates dependency, cathexis, self-sacrifice and the giving of attention in attributing to love. But he got me with the "falling in love" chapter: It starts with such a good opener, "No matter whom we fall in love with, we sooner or later fall out of love if the relationship continues long enough", the honeymoon always ends, the bloom of romance always fades..
To understand the phenomenon of falling in love and the inevitability of its ending, it is necessary to examine the nature of what psychiatrists call ego boundaries. From what we can ascertain by indirect evidence, it appears that newborn infants during the first few months of its life does not distinguish between itself and the rest of the universe. As the infant recognizes its will to be on its own and not that of the universe, it begins to make other distinctions between itself and the world.
The essence of the phenomenon of falling in love is a sudden collapse of a section of an individual's ego boundaries, permitting one to merge his or her identity with that of another person. The sudden release of oneself from oneself, the explosive pouring out of oneself into the beloved, and the dramatic surcease of loneliness accompanying this collapse of ego boundaries is experienced by most of us is ecstatic. We and our beloved are one! Loneliness no more!
But then..
"they begin to come to the sickening realization that they are not one with the beloved, that the beloved has and will continue to have their own desires, tastes, prejudices, and timing different than the other's. One by one, gradually, or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place, gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love".
It's not to say that you can't still love that person, but that feeling of being in love for the first time, fades. It's easy to pretend, given what the media perpetuates of love, that it is easy, romantic and free-flowing and will stand by us until death. To those who have lost love, been trampled on by someone that "loved" us, been cheated on, etc. The feeling of falling in love might have been there, but true love was not, or if it was the elements to make it last were not. Love takes dedication, extension of one's self, sacrifice. It's a choice.

Check out M.Scott Peck's other books, "A World Waiting to be Born: Civility Rediscovered" and "The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace"

When I was in 5th Grade I wanted to be Clara Barton. Look at me now!

Two years ago I had no idea what it really meant to be a nurse, I just thought it would be a noble thing to do, as Kurt Vonnegut said about Mary in Slaughter-House Five, "Mary O'Hare is a trained nurse, which is a lovely thing for a woman to be".
I also think it's a lovely thing to be.

So this is the story of a young woman who thought it would be lovely to be a nurse.

I've discovered that it is lovely, and it's frightening, and it can make you cry, and make you laugh, and it is exhausting, and often very disgusting, it's demanding, it's rewarding.
It requires total dedication, enthusiasm, wanting to possess understanding and knowledge of the human body, of the human spirit, the mind, the body, the connection of mind and body. It demands of you compassion, a gentle touch, a warm smile. You must stand up for what you belief is right, maintain your voice, because you are your patient's voice as well.
I've cried with a mother as her baby was entering into the world.
I've been in the operating room, watching pieces of a brain tumor being suctioned out of a middle-aged woman's head, knowing that this is someone's daughter, sister, mother, and hearing the surgeon say that her odds for surviving are minimal.
Days when you feel like there is nothing more you could do to help, and those days when the simplest thing brings the biggest smile to someone's face.
Two years of the hardest work of my life, endless nights of staying up late, poured over stacks of books, the coffee pot continuously on. The moments that have surrounded the academia; my nephew being born, and now he can say my name. The friends I have gained and the ones I have lost. My summer abroad and how that changed me forever. The truest things I have learned about myself, things that have been there all along, but through this, I can now see clearly and distinctively.
I am walking and looking back. I started with uncertainty but with passion, and prevailed. There were stumbling blocks along the way, and times when I wanted to walk back, but I followed the trail that I had envisioned. Now I stand at the end of the bridge, and there is a whole world to discover.

This great evil - where's it come from?

How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from?

Who's doing this?

Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light?

Mocking us with the sight of what we might of known?

Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?

Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?

-Explosions in the Sky "Have you passed through the Night?"

"Because life isn't fair" the distressed mom whispered into the ear of the boy sitting next to me at the dinner as she breaks off another piece of Matzos. A second before the six year old was asking why his sister got a bigger piece. Somewhat of an appropriate statement for a festive dinner that celebrates the release of bondage and slavery of the Jews. We put our fingers into the grape Manischewitz wine and flick off a drop onto the Seder plate for each of the Makot Mitzrayim ,a representation that with the freedom came horrible destruction and death. You can't have a celebration without remembering the hardships that brought you there. Death of the firstborn, totally not fair. Slavery, really not fair. Swarms of locusts, flies, infliction of boils and lice, that sucks. I hear people say that with religion there is always guilt. You're a sinner and you can never be good enough, every wayward step you take riddles you with fear from the all-mighty. What can't be changed gets put on God. What we don't like about ourselves we also blame on God. When a beautiful thing happens, the birth of a child or a sunset painted so perfectly in the sky only the majestic could have mastered, we thank "him". If you win a Grammy you should thank him also.
Do we feel so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of this Universe, to place it all on God?
I'm getting to a point here. During the Seder as we dropped our wine from the cups, we then proceeded to drop out wine for these plagues:
1) Plague of burdened health care systems: Malaria infection significantly burdens health care systems. In some countries, the disease may account for as much as 40% of public health expenditures
2) Plague of over $12 billion in lost workforce productivity: Malaria debilitates those infected, preventing them from going to work. In Africa, this incapacitation nearly costs $12 billion in lost productivity a year, hindering the economic development of third world countries.
3) Plague of familial burden: Malaria causes human pain and suffering, hampers children's schooling and social development, causes permanent neurological damages and impacts families financial stability.
4) Plague of child death: Malaria is the leading cause of under-five mortality in Africa. Every 30 seconds, a child dies from malarial infection.
5) Plague of indifference to a preventable disease. Malaria is both preventable and treatable. When brought under control, death, heath care burdens and lost productivity can drastically decrease.
What I like about Judaism is that it's viewed as our duty to help those with Malaria, to fight for justices- economic justice, human rights issues, to stop hunger and the effects of disease, to help those in need. Because of not now, when and if not I, then who?
It's not because of religious guilt, but because like our ancestors struggled for freedom, it's our opportunity to help those who struggle.

Because life isn't fair, but we want to make it fair.

www.urj.org/nets

Fighting fires.

He sleeps with a 457 under his companion pillow, well he told me he didn't anymore but I saw him showing it off with the rest of his guns. He still has the line of old telephones lining the wall against where the couch sits. When I was little I didn't realize they were only for show and thought my grandpa must be a very important person to have so many phones and I bet he got so many calls. Not only was he important for the many phones he had but he was a firefighter. I pictured him busting down doors and saving children as flames engulfed him, coming home smelling of smoke, taking off his boots and waiting for one of the lines to ring, to be a hero for another day. The knowledge of him that I severely lacked, I compensated with make believe stories. The one I do remember, and tell often, is when I was 6 or 7, going for a Fire Truck ride in an old vintage engine around the streets of Madison. The bells ringing, riding in the open summer air, like we were the only ones in a special day parade. He was always special to me growing up, but later in life I began to think less of him a hero and more just a retired grandfather.
This past summer I found out he had cancer and I prayed the hero would return. He was going through treatment and didn't want visitors. I was overseas and didn't know what was going on. The updates showed his progress and eventually he began to feel better. I never knew the extent of his sickness until a few days ago, when I finally got the chance to cross state lines to see him. He said he was in the hospital for four weeks. He had a PICC line. A colostomy. Radiation. Weeks and weeks of nausea, vomiting. Extreme weight loss. As a nurse, I can picture all of this, I know how sick he means when he says sick. At one point, he was almost sure he was going to die. But he said he came to terms at that point that he had lived a good life. He has done what he wanted to do. Had good memories. He did his best to overcome.
He is telling me this over coffee at a Greek diner down the street from my hotel. I look at him and see the hero, emerging from the fire.

Lately.

I read about the Gulabi gang in Bust Magazine the other day. They are a group of women in India who consider themselves vigilantes who take direct action against violence and injustices not just against women but the disadvantaged citizens of local towns and villages in India. Read about them..http://www.gulabigang.org/index.html

Just watched "Wristcutters: A Love Story"after a classmate mentioned that Tom Waits is in it. To add to my delight I find out that it is based on a book (Knellers Happy Campers) by one of my favorite Israeli authors, Etgar Keret. It was amazing and I would really recommend watching it.

http://shemspeed.com/store.php : Nice tunes
http://www.brooklynindustries.com : Nice shirts

XO

Choosing the Chosen, Chapter 1

As I am getting ready in the bathroom this morning I begin to say the Shema. I close my eyes and think of Jerusalem. Throughout the day the song that I remember from Friday night service that goes with the T’filah goes through my head “nanananana Adonai/nanananana s’fatai tiftach/nanananana u’fi yagid/u’fi yagid t’hilatecha”. I begin to laugh as I think of where this all came from, when did I memorize the Shema? See, I am not Jewish.
I am becoming Jewish.
When this comes out from my mouth, I am most often met with a “huh??”, or often another frequent three letter word, “why?”. One of my favorite response: “You can do that?”
A women at Hillel where I live said, “I’m always curious about converts, because this is such a hard religion, it’s a lot to take on”. She couldn’t put it in better terms.
It has been a two year process, this converting business. The journey has paralleled other profound events in my life. I guess I could say the events in my life have propelled my search for truth and for God. Events that landed me in my bathroom, in the morning, saying the Shema*

*Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
"Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One"

Life as a Nursing Student..

My patient today spoke Spanish only. I know hardly any Spanish.
"Como estas?" (emphasising the question mark not because its a question but because I'm sure Im screwing up the simplest phrase almost everyone knows)
She smiles and waves her hand back and forth.
I palpate her abdomen and she winches. I glance at my notebook that I conveniently wrote down a few words.
"dolor?"
"si"
I'm wishing I had paid attention to Dora the Explorer some more, surely my niece would know more Spanish than me. As she is speaking Spanish to me, I keep thinking of the response in Hebrew because that is the only other language I know. I almost respond "ani lo mayveena" (I do not understand) this will not help.
"Gracias" I say as I finish the exam
"Thank you.." She says very proudly
I smile and nod.
Time to learn some Spanish!

My favorite Sandwich..

Haloumi (Halumi) cheese

Cream Cheese

Pickles

Tomato

Lettuce=

Delicious

I had this sandwich for the first time at Israel's famous espresso bar Aroma. It tastes especially good with an ice Aroma, which is a whole different great thing. I've been making these sandwiches since I've been back and have had request about the making of them, so its simple here it is..

You will need these things. The cheese is imported from Cyprus, check your local markets (and Meijer also carries it)

Get everything ready: 2 slices tomato, lettuce to cover bread slices, 2 kosher dill slices (I put on a cloth to get extra juices out) and some cream cheese in a little dish. Slice the Haloumi cheese (it breaks easily so be careful), slice about 1/4 inch.

Put a splash of olive oil in a hot pan, put the cheese in and let it grill about 45 seconds on each side. It will start to get brown and bubbly. This is good :)

The layering is important. First spread softened cream cheese on wheat bread, lay down the lettuce on top of cream cheese, tomato and pickles (place vertical), then the Haloumi on top also vertically.

Classy and Smart.

Browsing through the bookselves the other day, one in particular caught my eye, "The Scarlet Letter". Looking at the cover I thought maybe it was a remake, like Pride Prejudice and Zombies, but nope it was the original but with a fantastic cover. Artist Ruben Toledo has revamped some classics from Penguin books with beauuuutiful covers!

The Couture Classics have arrived. Daily Candy joins the blog buzz over the new Ruben Toledo-designed Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions of Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, and Pride and Prejudice. Toledo, an award-winning fashion illustrator, contributes his couture-inspired artwork to Penguin's long history of excellence in book design- Penguin Books

Alef.

The uniform hangs there. An Olive ghost. It has hung there all day Saturday, a cruel reminder that tomorrow it will be possessed again, no longer lifeless. It is clean and perfectly pressed, a glimmering pin and light blue ribbons on the sleeves softens the harshness of the Army tone. He stands in front of it and stares, hoping maybe he can scare it into submission and it will tuck itself away back in the closet. But it's Sunday, the cruelest day for soldiers, and the uniform will not be defeated. So, slowly he puts it on.

Pants. Belt. Tourniquet in the pocket. Shirt. Beret. Gun.

And he says goodybe to his family. The elevator takes us down to the street where we walk quietly to the stop. And we go separate ways and wait until the next time when the ghost returns.

Creating Sustainable Culture

This isn't about the trendy "going green". It's called "permaculture" and the meaning is revolutionary. You don't have to be a hippy (ahem, all of you hippy haters..) and even if you think that global warming is a farce, you can't ignore the fact that we have a responsibility to protect the environment and to be conscious of the implications of our daily actions. This is more than environmental change, its social change, relational change..
Reform Judaism Magazine - Earthcare: An Ethical Culture Designed to Save Our Planet & Ourselves
This article talks with members of Kibbutz Lotan Center for Creative Ecology in the Negev of Israel who teach and practice permaculture.

"In the 1970s, Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist,and one of his students, David Holmgren, developed the concept- a contraction of "permanent agriculture" (or sustainable agriculture) that soon turned into "permanent culture" (or sustainable culture). Permaculture is a culture, philosophy, and design method that teaches us to look at a whole system or problem, to observe how the parts relate, and to mend what needs fixing by applying time-tested substainable practices. For example, when we're about to purchase an item at the store, such as a bottle of milk, rather than think only of its immediate usuage, which is only a small part of the system, we consider the whole picture: Do I really need it, where was it produced, what materials is it made of,and always, what happens after its used, how will it be disposed of? To guide us in our decision-making, permaculture has a simple reference we call "the three ethics"
1) Care of the earth, including all living things-plants, animals, land, water and air
2) Care of people, promoting access to resources, self reliance, community responsibility and
3) Fare Share, placing limits on consumption to assure that the planets limited resources are used wisely and equitably. Now before we make our milk purchase, we can ask: "Care of the earth" questions: were the animals who gave the milk treated well? Were they fed sprayed food which might affect milk quality as well as the earth the food was grown in? Is the dairy farm local, avoiding pollution that would be generated from the milk's transport? We ask "Care of the people" questions: Does the farmer properly manage the manure so as not to pollute the local drinking water? Will the milk sale generate income for a neighborhood farm, increasing the liklihood that money will be resused efficiently within the local area? And we ask "Fare Share" questions too: Are part of the cow pastures and woodlands kept"wild" for wildlife? Can the milk bottle be reused or recycled easily or will disposing of it contribute to the landfill? Once we truly understand that we only have one planet Earth and her resources are limited, we appreciate that we are invested with the power to change Earth, for better or worse, in any decision we make. -Mike Kaplin, co creater, director and head permaculture teacher, Center for Creative Ecology

Not the settling down type...

When I was in 4th grade I wanted to go live with gorillas in the jungles of South America. I would go to the library and sit next to the shelf that held the wildlife books and visit my favorite book on the shelf.. an autobiography by Jane Goodall. She was amazing to me. I tried hard to imagine what it would be like to live in the jungle, away from comforts, to be accepted by a group of animals as family.

My daydreaming continued, it swayed from living in the jungles to moving to England and being a great writer, to joining the Air Force and being a pilot. My dreams never placed me in one place. I was never the girl who planned her wedding and acted it out with Ken and Barbie. I was on my karaoke machine broadcasting news to the world..

The other day I asked the guy I am dating what some of his dreams were and he didn't have much to say, "I always just pictured myself getting married, having kids, enjoying grandkids". Fantastic. What else?..

He then asked me, and ten minutes later after I rambled about every possible thing there is to do in the world, he says "You don't seem like the settling down type.."

Although I do want the goodness that is marriage and children I don't want it at the cost of living a routine/normal/boring life. And I know it's possible but you have to find the right way to do it. In motion. Out of the box. Maybe in the jungle..

Bringing light..

On Chanukah, the Almighty wants us to remember that we have the ability today to bring pure light into our lives. He wants us to remember all the times when we weren’t afraid to face the darkness. He wants us to believe in what is best and pure inside of us, no matter how small that spark of sincerity may be.

And then He takes each of our tiny sparks and fills our lives with light. That is the miracle.

We see this all the time in our lives. You keep one hour of Shabbos, but you keep that hour with a full heart. And God eventually helps you to keep an entire Shabbos. You learn one sentence of Torah a day with the untainted openness to receive wisdom, and the Almighty teaches you more than you could have ever imagined . You say one prayer with pure intentions, and He preserves the echo of that prayer for generations to come.

At the beginning of time, God created a special light that stretched from one end of the world to the other. Under that light, nothing died and nothing rotted. It was a beautiful, healing, infinite light. But it only lasted 36 hours because God saw that the light wasn’t fitting for this world where we need some darkness in order to have free will. So He hid the light away and allows it to shine only in the World to Come where there is no pain and no concealment.

But once a year, on Chanukah, God gives us access to this hidden light that resides in the deepest recesses of our souls. There are 36 candles lit during Chanukah, each candle representing an hour that this hidden light was revealed to the world.
Each candle that we light removes another layer of the curtain that blocks the hidden, precious light of our souls.

Each candle surrounds us with the purity of that little jar of oil that always has one drop left.

Because all we need is one pure thing. One pure image. One pure moment. One pure story.
And like fire giving to fire, light giving to light, soul giving to soul -- that one pure moment gives to the next pure moment. Candle to candle. Until the darkness disappears.

http://www.aish.com/h/c/t/sg/78053147.html

Get Self-Actualized!

Maslow described self-actualization as being "psychologically healthy, fully human, highly evolved, and fully mature". He believed that "healthy" or "self-actualized" individuals possess the following characteristics:

1) An appropriate perception of reality

2) The ability to accept oneself, others and human nature

3)The ability to manifest spontaneity

4) The capacity for focusing concentraion on problem solving

5)A need for detachment and a desire for privacy

6) Independence, autonomy, and a resistance to enculturation

7) An intensity of emotional reaction

8) A frequencty of "peak" experiences that validates the worthwhileness, richness and beauty of life

9) An identification with humankind

10) The ability to achieve satisfactory interpersonal relationships

11) A democratic character structure and strong sense of ethics

12) Creativeness

13) A degree of noncomformance



Freud may be crazy but Maslow has it right :)



In other news check out Priscilla Ahn, she is an amazing singer songwriter.

http://lala.com/zHez

ayfoh atah kesef? Po.

More recycled goods wallets. I made these ones for my Sar-El roommates that I met in Israel, using Bamba packages and maps of Tel Aviv that I grabbed from AM/PM. I even use recycled cereal boxes for the inside part to keep them sturdy :) I'm now like a little racoon digging through the trash and stockpiling ephemera on my desk.

I was lying in bed watching MADE TV and saw this amazing Japanese fellow who made instruments out of vegetables. You've got to see it..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5aUz9cDaCY

Prompting my friend Alberto to send me this one.. The Vegetable Orchestra...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpfYt7vRHuY

Beats macaroni tamborines..

I am sitting across from a group of newly hired employees at a local Tim Hortons. They are having their orientation and I am cringing for them. I hear the manager rattling off company policies and procedures that are in the league of the CIA. She informs them that there are “cameras everywhere in here” and that she can even watch them from the comfort of her own home, hyping it up saying how she called the shop late at night one time to tell the kid working the counter to tuck his shirt in.

She needs them to sign their background check forms, in case there are any known bagel thieves on her hands, and in an odd twist I hear everyone answering about what kind of belly button they have.

They are given their uniform, so that they fit into the kitsch of the corporate world and she dismisses them.

How easy is it for us to lose identity?

We are confronted over and over again of images of how things should be, the velvet curtain is pulled shut as the chaos and beauty and conflict of life is going on behind the scenes. We too often live as we are told, think thoughts we are bred to think, Spew out words that are only pleasing to the ones hearing them, and form this identity that is not us, but is what we are because of the influence of the fast, and “correct” world that we live in.

How easy is it for us to just go along with things and not questions why?

We didn’t stop questioning when we were 3 years old, so why are we doing it now? Over and over again children are relentless with getting to the facts. Maybe at this age we won’t be asking “why is the sky blue?” but we should definitely be asking questions until we feel satisfied with why we do things the way we do, why we believe the things that we do.

Life is a constant project of finding out who you are and relishing in it and sharing it with others.

That's all for now. Shalom xo

Nini's friend, P'nelle...

My mom knit this awesome Crocodile scarf, and my niece who could probably tell you the class and family of this species loved it. She prefers playing with her collegiate grade skeleton, or reading about Dinosaurs and bones. Last night she got out the skeleton and I would point to the bones and have her repeat the names.
So cute to hear a 3 year old say "ulna" "femor" and "patella" :)