Our garage

Jonathan and I kept thinking that the automatic lights over the garage were broken. One works perfectly whenever we drive up in the car, but the other one flicks on and off all day and night. We figured it was the sensor and made plans to fix it. Then we saw Simcha and Osher glued to the bathroom window, which overlooks the backyard. What were they looking at, you ask? At the multiple squirrels playing on the garage roof. And at the birds in the tree adjacent to the roof, which keep flitting and flying right in front of the light sensor and turning it on.

To me, this is wildlife.

New baby on the way!

Okay, I’m sure you’re thinking I’m talking about Wiggly, but I’m not. I’m actually referring to my new (as-of-yet-without-a-name) Mini Cooper that I ordered and that is due to arrive the first week of August. Not that I’m not excited about my unborn son, I am. It’s just that I feel I have a better idea what to get excited about with a Mini Cooper; I test-drove one and picked out every feature. There are no baby dealerships, if you can believe that. I know because I checked. Apparently you’re expected to just take whatever random kid pops out.

Anyway, we are getting a Mini Cooper S Clubman in white with black trim. The Clubman is the new model of Mini that they came out with this year. It is a tad longer with more room and a cool extra side door on the passenger side for easier entry and exit. Below is a picture of the baby-to-be. It will be assembled in Oxford, England, shipped across the pond and delivered to my dealership here in Cincinnati (that is only 4 miles away, aka, meant to be).

For more information, click here.

Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking: “Minis are so small! They can’t be safe!” In fact, the Mini is safer than 90% of the cars currently on the road. It has a 5 (out of 5) star rating for front impact and roll-over, and 4 stars for side impact. It has 6 air bags, one to protect each passenger’s chest, head, and abdomen. In addition to anti-lock brakes, it has a computer that can control the power delivery and braking on each wheel in order to prevent them from ever slipping. It also detects if your car starts to slide sideways in a turn, and it will automatically attempt to straighten it out without you doing a thing. This will be especially useful in the icy, hilly roads of Cincinnati.

But why a Mini? After all, there are other cars with similar safety features. The Mini is very unique in its design. You can see that by just looking at it, but when you start researching the features and abilities of other cars, you will realize that there is no car that achieves the same MPG, handling, acceleration, and safety in one car. None. I examined Toyotas, Hondas, and lots of other cars even way above my price range, and none can do all that the Mini can do, even for 4x the price. As I’m selling my motorcycle I need to get my adrenaline somehow!

Of course, mileage was a big concern. Only the Prius gets better gas mileage. Most hybrids don’t do as well as the Mini, and its small, extremely strong frame is a big part of that. The other reason is the BMW-designed engine that was built from the ground up with the sole purpose of getting the most power out of the least amount of fuel. It’s only 7 MPG less than the Prius, but has almost twice the power and more than twice the acceleration.

“But Jonathan, you’re over six feet tall, how will you fit?” Amazingly, the front seat has ample head and leg room. The rear seats have slightly less leg room, but still lots of head room. The only sacrifice for room is in the storage capacity, and ease of entry and exit from the back seat. Even with the extra door, people who don’t move well will have a challenge. If transport of relatives comes into play, I’ll probably pick them up in the Camry. But as I will use this car for commuting 99% of the time, I’m not worried. There is a sacrifice made with every car, and space is the least painful of them. The Camry will be the main baby-mobile.

There is an aspect of the Mini that no one can understand until you drive one. It is the most enjoyable car I have ever driven. If you ever get the chance to visit a Mini dealership, take one out for a test drive. You will never forget the experience.

I hear the same goes for having your own child. Everyone tells me that they are worth all the expense and time. Often people say they are the best thing in their life… even though there are no chrome exterior options.

Weekend

Mattoon was absolutely amazing. There were 18 people there for the last service, which is more than even came for Yom Kippur. (Remember, there are only eight families.) The service went really well, and my sermon even moved a few people to tears. During the announcements at the end, they presented me with two CDs of Hebrew and Yiddish lullabies. And one of the women spent a month making the baby a quilt!! It's adorable, with teddy bears and a pale blue backing. The ride there and back was beautiful even, with all the fields on the way sprouting green, and lush trees everywhere.

Today I did nothing. NOTHING. As in, slept til 1pm and then afterwards took a nap. It's been glorious.

My only other news, somewhat depressing, is that my wedding ring doesn't fit well anymore. I took it off and put on my engagement ring instead, which is a size or two bigger. Sigh. But then again, it's okay to gain lots of weight when you're six months pregnant, right? :)

Wiggle ultrasound pics

Wiggle profile - you can click on the picture to make it bigger and see Jonathan's labels.



Wiggle foot

Wiggle boy bits

And other less important things..

- I've finished all my papers but one due on the 28th. I've actually gotten some back already and have done well so far.

- Jonathan's release (work thing) went long this weekend. He was on the phone for 36 hours straight. I brought him Mountain Dew at regular intervals. During quiet parts of the call he amused himself by tracking our Mini on the website. It's currently "scheduled for production," with an ETA to get to us in the first week of August.

- We got a table pad for our nice dining room table, because the cats are already clawing it. Practice for children, yes?

- I picked up a Bar Mitzvah tutoring job for the summer. It'll be nice to keep up my teaching skills over the summer, plus it's some extra money.

- It's rained so much here that the lawn is growing like... well, like a weed. We need to buy a lawnmower, getting a gardener to come this often is ridiculous. The only catch is that Jonathan and I are both allergic to grass. Sigh.. this gardening thing really didn't seem so complicated when we lived in a desert.

- This past weekend was the last day of Sunday school. The year went by fast! I also confirmed I'm officially going to teach the same grade next year. That makes things *so* much easier in terms of using the same lesson plans.

- One of Jonathan's coworkers is giving us a dresser for our guest room, yay. So when you people visit to see Wiggly in October you no longer will have to live out of a suitcase. :)

- I have one last pulpit visit this weekend, which I have very mixed feelings about. I'm glad it's over because I'm ready for a break, but I'll miss the people.

- Everyone wish my mom Refua Shleima (healing). Jan and Beverly are planning to leave for Israel on Friday, but Jan was just diagnosed with bronchitis. I told her, how are you supposed to go tromping all over Jerusalem to see my old stomping grounds if you can't breathe?!

I started summer school and OY it's long, but it's actually not as bad as I feared. The prof is really into it, so despite myself I am too. Did you know that the character who argues with God about Job in the Bible is called "hasatan," THE satan, which was the word for a Babylonian prosecutor? It wasn't a negative thing at all, but translated as The Adversary. It's only in the second Temple period that haSatan became Satan the devil. Cool, huh?


And that's life this week in a nutshell.

We're going to have a son!

And everything looks completely normal! The heartbeat was healthy, there are no markers for Down's Syndrome or anything else, and the kid is wiggling around like crazy. I'm superstitious so I'm not going to publicly announce the name on the blog - we're still gonna call him Wiggly until he's out of the womb - but we do have a name in mind.

Ultrasound pictures will be posted as soon as scan them. So realistically, not until tomorrow or the next day. :)

I felt the baby move!

It was sooo cool - like a fluttering, or an air bubble. I wasn't sure if it was the fetus or indigestion at first. Then it kept happening. :)

So here's me at 20 weeks.




In non-baby related news, another mini-paper is now out of the way. Three more are due by tomorrow, then the big 15-20 page Midrash due Monday and the history research paper on the 28th. Class starts next week, work at the American Jewish Archives the week after. So next week is mostly relaxation! A big part of that will be emails... I'm so woefully behind it isn't even funny. Doron and Rachelle, I cringe at how long ago you two wrote me! Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Anyway. Okay. Enough blog procrastination. Rosenzweig and Maimonides, here I come!

Arg!

My summer class was just cancelled! I was supposed to be taking "'The Sixties' in Jewish American Literature: Assimilation and Rebellion." We were going to read Philip Roth, Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and others. But apparently I was literally the ONLY student signed up for it, so they canned it. Why didn't people want to take this course?!

Now I'm signed up for "Faith and Suffering in Jewish Interpretations of Job." I'm sure it will be educational, but you have to admit, it just doesn't sound like nearly as much fun.

Progress

Another exam and another paper is out of the way, hooray! My next pieces are due Friday, so that gives me a little breathing room. Refua shleima to Sylvan, who just got out of surgery, and yay for the Enterprise rental company, who found my spare set of keys in the rental car I'd taken to my pulpit ("pregnancy brain" is real, I swear. I could barely remember dropping them there).

In the past few days, I have learned the following:

1) April showers do not bring May flowers in Ohio. May deluges bring about incredible lushness and possible June flowers. I have never been in so much rain in my life. And why is that Ohioans don't turn on their lights when driving in the rain? Apparently they're just used to it.

2) It is amazing who one finds on Google chat at 3am EST when one is writing papers. All my West Coast friends are still awake!

3) I have a much closer HUC community here than I'd thought. All the women in our class except one went out for breakfast after yesterday's final, and they were so supportive of all my childcare/schooling issues, I was extremely surprised. And happy. I hadn't really noticed these relationships moving from "acquaintance-ship" to "friendship," and it hit me all at once, in a great way.

4) It's still weird to have a 15-minute drive somewhere and go across the river twice. Literally, to get to some places 15 minutes from our house, we drive to Kentucky and back, because that's where the freeways lead. I'm not over it.

5) The alarm companies are very smart. They only start transmitting emergency data from your house to the police a few days after the system is installed. I hadn't realized what a good thing this is, but what do you know, there's a big learning curve in how to use an alarm system! Let's just say I've gotten really good at turning off beeping when I press the wrong things.

Now off to take the car in. The parts for our long-broken side mirror have arrived, and it shall soon be fixed. A working car, what a concept.

Happenings

What a whirlwind of a week. I wrote three papers, took one final, and now only have one exam tomorrow and six papers due by next Monday. Only. Sigh. This week is gonna suck.

Our alarm system was installed this weekend. Which is exciting in a way, because for the first time in our lives, it means we have actual things to steal. Plus, it feels better knowing there's an alarm when I'm going to be home alone with the baby come fall.

My pulpit was awesome, as usual. Just extremely tiring. I really like actually being there, but the driving-five-hours part each way? Ugh. Especially this trip when I had to stop almost every hour for a bathroom break!

The penultimate day of Hebrew school went well too. We did "prophet review" of everything we'd learned so far. The part that went best is also, ironically, the part I spent the least time planning: I brought out a whole bunch of stuff (e.g. pipe cleaners, glitter glue, cotton balls, toilet paper rolls, etc.) and asked them to "create something that symbolizes your favorite prophet." These kids are so creative, I was very impressed. I would have been the kid doodling on the piece of paper, not making picture-worthy pieces of art.

What else? Simcha is back to normal, he goes back to the vet on Wednesday for a checkup. The steering on our car went out so we're getting that fixed. Oh, and we saw Iron Man, which was very fun, with unexpected depth. We also rented Juno, which was smart and sassy. I have a chiropractor's appt tonight that I'm very much looking forward to because my hips have not quite adjusted to their new position yet. My midwife also asks me to record a food chart of what I'm eating so I can make sure I get enough protein, and I've learned that come the end of the day, it is possible to get tired of cottage cheese, and I need to know how to cook meat. (aka Jonathan will be learning soon :))

Now off to study and learn how to sing the Sheva Brachot, the seven wedding blessings.

Mazel tov!

To Kim and Ari, on their as-yet-unnamed baby girl. I think that pregnancy is in the water here: half the people I know are either getting pregnant, giving birth, or are trying to conceive. Maybe it's the age too... three years ago everyone was getting married.

Simcha's cheek is doing much better, btw. Aside from keeping his left eye half-closed, he's acting almost totally normal again.

AND we made a decision about the car. Mini Cooper Clubman it is! You only live once.

The Great Escape

Jonathan and I had quite a scare tonight, as Mr. Brave but Stupid Simcha decided he had spring fever.

Ari was visiting and the moment he opened the door, Simcha was out like a shot. Last time this was annoying, but do-able - I caught him, carried him inside by his scruff, and that was that. Not so today. Ari and Jonathan spent 10 minutes chasing him around our yard, the neighbor's yard, around the house, to the back, and around again. The cat was in a panic. Ari had even had him in his arms at one point, but he squirmed and hissed and jumped out. Jonathan finally caught him by plunging his hand into a pile of leaves where Simcha had jumped, fumbling for him blindly, and pulling him out.

We took inside to give him a good scolding, and to wash him, when we realized he was still panicking. What we had thought was dirt was actually a wound. He has a big gash along his left cheek right below his eye, probably from the wire fence he jumped over. It was around the time that we noticed that Osher noticed too, and started meowing wildly and trying to lick Simcha.

So. Our very first trip to the Cincinnati emergency vet was quite worrying. Our baby was in pain! Luckily he didn't need stitches, but we do need to put one ointment on his eye three times a day, one ointment on his cheek wound twice a day, and then give him oral antibiotics for two weeks.

When we got home Osher was in a tizzy, and wouldn't stop sniffing Simcha. He hasn't left his side, nor ours. I think he was worried himself, he'd never been left alone before with no Simcha or no human parents. Poor things, they're all pooped out now and curled up beside my desk as I type this.

All in all, NOT how we intended to spend our Monday evening.

Last day!

Today was the last day of school, hooray! I was very excited until I overheard Karen talking about how she had added up the pages of all our papers due, and we'll be writing between 80-100 pages in the next week. Sigh. Why must finals come so soon after the end of school? I think they should give us way more time to celebrate, then a reading week, then only after *that* we should have stuff due.

Simcha had a grand adventure this afternoon. I opened the front door to come in and he leapt right over my bag to head for the great outdoors. I cornered him in the crawlspace underneath the house... not my idea of a good time, but he was thrilled. Now he's sitting on the top of the couch next to the open window, meowing and talking up a storm.

Yesterday was the longest day ever: class, class, cantillation final, home for an hour, pay bills, then evening class from 7-10pm. Ugh. But when I got home Jonathan and I talked seriously about selling his motorcycle and buying a car: we're test-driving a few this weekend to decide what to buy. It's been a year, and this one-car thing is really starting to grate. Getting one is long overdue, and I'm looking forward to it. Now if only Jonathan and I can agree on what to buy... :)

And finally, the contents of Savta's package. She knows how to pack it in! (note the most important part in the background, i.e. the pickles.)