fox

• September 15. Himself's aunt dies following an illness of several months.
• September 18. We bury her.
• September 19. Himself flies out on a business trip. He is apparently one of two people consistently wearing a mask at company-wide events this week.
• September 20. The prince is pukey after dinner and (worse) in the middle of the night.
• September 21. I keep the prince home from school. He is fine. On the other coast, Himself has to remove his mask at dinnertime in a poorly ventilated area with other people.
• September 22. The prince goes back to school. On the other coast, Himself is notified that someone at his company tested positive for covid that morning. He himself tests negative. He flies home, arriving in the middle of the night.
• September 23. Himself tests negative for covid. I receive a jury summons in the mail; my boss and I agree that if this were a movie, the critics would say "The main character's Stuff is a little too concentrated."
• September 24. Himself tests positive for covid. The prince and I test negative. Himself puts a mask on and doesn't eat with us at meal times; we open practically every window in the house and turn on all the fans; I sleep in the guest room. (The bed in there is much softer than in our room, which I can handle but himself finds uncomfortable.)
• September 25. The prince and I test negative. Himself feels fine. He keeps his mask on, we keep the windows open, I sleep in the guest room.
• September 26. The prince and I test negative; Himself feels terrible, but not sick enough for antivirals, apparently. He keeps his mask on and all the windows open. I go to the pharmacy to pick up his prescriptions so he doesn't have to bring his known issues indoors. I get my flu shot while I'm there, though later in the day I regret this decision, because I do get some side effects, and what I don't need right now are ambiguous headaches and other upper respiratory symptoms. I feel kind of cruddy at the prince's bedtime and take a Sudafed, which does what it does vis-a-vis opening my sinuses but also contributes to an extremely jittery night of sleep. In the guest room.
• September 27. The prince and I test negative. Himself feels a little better. (Eleven people who were at the Wednesday evening dinnertime thing are now down with covid. His boss, apparently, feels incredibly guilty—as well he should, in my view, and this company is now three for three on all-staff whatnots that turned into super-spreader events, so although Himself wasn't wild about going to this one but ultimately felt like he kind of had to, if they do another I think he is going to Respectfully Decline.) I close my thumb in the front door when the prince and I get home from school, and it is not that bad, but I'm scraped so thin I just sob for a few minutes. Himself keeps his mask on and all the windows open. I sleep in the guest room.
• September 28. The prince and I test negative, which if my math is right closes the window? That is, if Himself was exposed Wednesday evening 21st and first tested positive Saturday morning 24th, that's the morning of the third day, and our last unguarded exposure was Friday evening 23rd, so the morning of the third day was Monday morning 26th; but if Himself was exposed on the plane on the way out, then his first positive test was the morning of the fifth day, and the same period for us would end today, right now, this morning.

Except for the day the prince was home from school, I'm also working full time, right, and there's end-of-fiscal-year rigmarole and some general utter lack of common sense from some higher-ups we'd like to think would have stopped making these particular bad decisions after the literal years we've been asking them to do that one thing this other way for the general benefit of everyone, but you know how work goes, so. Normally I'd probably have been gnashing my teeth a bit over that. This year, ha.

The doctors also told Himself he would likely no longer be shedding virus five days after his positive test or his last day of symptoms, whichever is later, so because he's still coughing a bit I can't move back out of the guest room yet. But I think . . . I may have dodged it? Again? Because the prince had it six weeks ago, and when he was crying his tears went into my eyes, and yet I remained uninfected; and now Himself spent two nights breathing in my face from the other side of the bed, and yet here I am. Maybe the fact that my bivalent booster had a few days longer to cook than Himself's kept me safer? I don't know, but it feels like a lot of dice rolls I've come out on the winning side of, for which I'm very grateful, although after the couple of weeks we've had over here (and about to turn the corner into October, which is annually the month in which I feel the crappiest, as it contains the anniversary of my own dad's demise), I feel like I deserve it.

Himself is on a business trip for the first time since February 2020. Naturally he was nervous about this, partly because the last three or four trips he took before the plague were unpleasant experiences for reasons relating to why he's not at either of those jobs anymore, and partly because, well, plague. So here's how our past few days have gone:

( Sunday, we buried his aunt. )

( Monday, he took the prince to school as normal. )

( Monday also had language research. )

Tuesday, I took the prince to school early to drop in at the morning edition of the extended-day program he already always goes to in the afternoons, came home, had a whole workday, answered the phone like a chump when my mom called exactly at quitting time, and went to pick up the kid. There are always some people being jerks on the road at the evening rush hour, but this was a particularly unanimously obnoxious experience, and at a red light I even posted to Discord about it:

AgentReynard (Fox) (she/her)
must everyone operating a motor vehicle in my community this afternoon be an utter ass?

I should have stayed quiet.

What happened next was we got home; I put the kid's bookbag and jacket (which had been in the bookbag) and lunchbag in the laundry because they were rank from watermelon juice having spilled out of one of his tupperwares; we had dinner, including sharing a slice of walnut povitica my father-in-law had brought over on Sunday; I took out the trash and the recycling, as Tuesday is Garbage Eve in our neighborhood; and meanwhile I excused the kid from the table when he asked, and he went to play games on the iPad, as is his habit. The second rabbi friend replied to the all-clear, saying "Oops, missed the initial message completely, glad it's sorted, how are you doing?" and I said "Oh, you know, handling the camera at a funeral that was a long time coming, followed by several days of solo parenting a kindergartener in a plague while managing long-distance tech support for my brain-injured widowed mother. Basically living the dream." Sandwich generation, after all.

I should. have stayed. quiet.

( A few minutes later, the prince said Mommy? I don't feel good. )

( So okay. )

I apparently did not succeed in washing the VapoRub entirely off my hands before the next time I rubbed my eyes, so that sucked, but I thought great, one complaint about traffic and this is what happens to my evening, it is wine o'clock, dudes.

( Luckily I didn't bother actually drinking any wine. )

( Wednesday )

I am unlikely to complain about traffic on the school run ever again.

The bar mitzvah boy loves the basketball yarmulke (and didn't already have one) and plans to wear it at the ceremony.

\o/

So my uncle is dying. My aunt, a few days ago, asked if I knew my late grandparents' Hebrew names. (This was before she'd said how bad it was; I foolishly assumed this information would be used only in people's prayers for his recovery, but now I know it will likely be used on his headstone.) I knew my grandfather's, but had never been told my grandmother's. My late father would have known, but he and his late sister are obviously not in a position to tell us. I suggested that my grandmother's brother—side note, poor guy is about 85 and when this is over will have buried his parents, his only brother, all three of his sisters, and all three of one of those sister's children; like, what vindictive deity's corn flakes did he pee in as a kid?—might know; there's also a cousin in Chicago and one in Houston who seem like the sort of record keepers who might know or be able to find out such a thing.

No dice. Totally distraught great-uncle doesn't know; Dad's cousin S doesn't know; Grandma's cousin L doesn't know. Mom can't find it in any of Dad's family-tree stuff. L and her husband, as well as my mother-in-law, assure us that lacking a parent's Hebrew name one can substitute Avram (for men) or Sarah (for women), because Abraham and Sarah were the father and mother of us all. But just asking three people and then giving up ( isn't how we do things here. )

After two years away, I expect to be back in yuletide this year, so I am watching the new mods learn the modding ropes with a certain degree of interest.

( Clothes, body shape fussing, etc. )

Tonight I am going to make the cinnamon apple honey cake I've made for the past few Rosh Hashanahs, and bring it to work tomorrow. I thought about making it in muffin tins instead of cake pans, but then decided that won't work because the apple slices go in the bottom of the cake pan and then the cake gets inverted, and having apples at the bottom of your muffin cups wouldn't be the same. Putting the apples on the top of the muffins I think they'd get dried out. So regular cake pans it is.

Although we still haven't sorted out how to do plain caramels, I'm so ... what's the word ... emboldened by my success with the apple cider caramels that now I want to make hamantaschen. And because we are the way we are (that is, because the Gentleman Caller has made me this way; the best snack in the world is a tablespoon of jam you made yourself in a cup of yogurt you made yourself, and who am I?), I want to make my own poppyseed filling.

Am I off my nut? I know there's a Thing now where people have worked out what sorts of things you're better off making yourself and what sorts of things you're better off just buying commercially. (Make the bread, buy the butter, right? That's the cookbook I didn't get my sister-in-law for MLKmas.) If I try to make homemade hamantaschen with homemade poppyseed filling, will I be sorry? stuck with three pounds of poppyseeds? both?

I like getting comments or even kudos over at the AO3 on things I wrote ages ago (which, I grant, is all of it, at the moment - but I mean even relatively speaking), particularly when I get a lot of kudos from the same person in a way that sure suggests to me someone read something of mine and liked it enough to read more just because I wrote it. :-)

A couple of weeks ago the Gentleman Caller and I were watching the Redskins stink up the joint and I suggested they could do worse than follow Jewish superstition (it's not even really a custom, I don't think, just an idea that sticks around) and change their name. He had not heard of this, which surprised me, because I know I've heard it in multiple places. The idea is, if you're very ill, in addition to everything the doctors and rabbis do for you, another tactic is to change your name so the Angel of Death will not be able to find you. (I believe a popular name to change to is Chaim, meaning 'life' - but I've never known what you're meant to do if you're desperately ill and your name is already Chaim.) Anyway, we suggested the Redskins might change their name to the Victors or some such thing (GC suggested the Bullets, actually, at first), and then they might turn their season around. Then they won! ... that day. But since then, you know, not so much. Should have listened to us.

The name-changing concept has been on my mind lately what with my dad's poor health as well, of course. I don't think he will change his name. But it's something to hold in reserve.

I'm making him a pair of socks; I made him a pair of socks out of Dream in Color's "Good Luck Jade" when he had his surgery three years ago, and he loves them to bits - only this fall when he got them out they were a bit moth-bitten, so over Thanksgiving I mended them as best I could and promised to make him some new ones. I am now making good progress on the second sock in a pair out of DiC's "Grow", another lovely green (I have a magnet on my refrigerator which claims to quote from Talmud: "Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, 'Grow, grow'"), which will be better than the first ones in every way, and which will be stored with moth-repellent and possibly in plastic bags. :-) And I'll tell you what: this is a 72-stitch sock with an 18-row cuff, a 36-row heel flap, and 36 repeats of the pattern between the cuff and the toe. That's nine 18's, I believe, and (as many of you know) 18 is the numerical value of chai, 'life', an auspicious number in Judaism (as-many-of-you-know donations to causes are customarily made in multiples of 18, for example, as are cash gifts at bar mitzvahs e.g.). I was halfway done with the pair of socks when he was halfway done with his radiation. Not just superstitions, you see, but superduperstitions. That's right.

Haroset is haros'd, and it was faster than doing it by hand - but no less messy, omfg.

Matzo balls are mixed and chilling. I've got a couple of hours before I have to get going on the brisket if I don't want it to be shoe leather by dinner time. Rah rah rah!

Copied and pasted from the Facebooks, mainly.

So look. I know we're meant to avoid ascribing to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, so it would be charitable (to say the least) to conclude that Sarah Palin and/or her speechwriters and other handlers had heard the phrase "blood libel" at some point and drawn a couple of conclusions about what it seems to mean, and used it in the present context of how it really is not quite appropriate to blame her and her gunsight-map thing for Jared Lee Loughner's shooting rampage in Tucscon, and the fact that nobody working for her was in a position to say (or maybe in a position to reach her with) "Um, Governor, let's have a careful think about whether these are the specific words you really want to use" was just bad staff work.

I can't do it. I think that woman is much more shrewd than that, and ignorant about a lot of things but not about right-wing Christian Dominionism - and the particular brand of Zionism that comes from the Christian Right makes my skin crawl, by the way, because it has nothing to do with sympathy toward the Jews in any way, shape, or form - and I think she did choose her words carefully and deliberately, knowing full well that she was elevating the importance of what she believes is happening to her, or trivializing what "blood libel" actually refers to, or, hey, why not both.

Side note. I had a history teacher in high school who said on numerous occasions that I can remember that what happened to the indigenous peoples of North America when the Europeans got here was "the true holocaust". And we know what he meant, which was that as a percentage of the population exterminated by violence and disease, the genocide of the Native Americans by and because of white Europeans was much more nearly complete (if you'll accept that, semantically [g] - my mother doesn't like comparing absolutes, but she's not here, is she) than the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis. Which is true. But saying "that was the true holocaust" kind of comes right out and suggests that the one we've known all this time as the Holocaust was some sort of mere aspirant, which is kind of an offensive thing for a gentile to say, especially to a roomful of teenagers. And (speaking of semantics and dragging in etymology), that's aside from the fact that the North American version didn't involve fire, certainly not the way the European one did, so you'll have to call it holo-[something else], Dr. S, thanks.

So back to the point, which is that this indefinite article the present right wing is using is kind of precious and disingenuous, because there's generally just the one blood libel, and calling Sarah Palin out for an ill-judged bit of graphic design isn't it.

My speaking voice is shot to hell, but it turns out my singing voice is still a-ok (apart from some of my lower notes, which are creaky and not-nice at the moment). I took a quasi-nap (it was v. restful, but I wasn't actually asleep) between concerts, lying diagonally on a few stairs and draping my robe over me like a blanket.

Also:

I have finished and submitted my official report from Rice Lake. Only a month after the event! I am considering this a victory, given how much I really didn't want to do it. (Have been intending to do it since Thanksgiving, of course, and kept putting it off. I eventually concluded, Huh. I guess I've been dreading this.)

But I really need to get going on yuletide. I have the same 861 words I had last Monday, and the same doubt about 168 of them approx., and I need to move forward rather than standing still. I will be in much more trouble if I don't finish this one on time. Aie!

... I think tonight (or some time this week, anyway) I will buy some Green & Black's and pretend it's wrapped in gold foil so I can consider it Hanukkah gelt. (I could even get some gold foil, I guess. And then pretend the bits of chocolate were circular. Why not?) (I should note that when I make a seder, I buy an ordinary brisket rather than a kosher one -- because my kitchen isn't kosher, and I'm not kosher, so, you know, right? Thus it is with me. Traditions, yes; laws, no. My little "j" gets me through the day. :-D)

I never knew my great-grandparents. On my mother's side, I think they had all died before I was born; possibly my mother's last grandfather died when I was a baby. On my father's side, my grandfather's parents died before I was born, I believe. I know that my grandmother's parents lived until I was about a year -- I have a picture of them looking at me in my carrier on someone's kitchen table -- but unsurprisingly, I don't remember them. I do know that they left Europe -- on my grandfather's side, Austria and Poland; on my grandmother's, Romania, or, what is now Moldova, a town that appears in the lists of communities annihilated by the Nazis -- in the 1920's, while the leaving was good. She came with his family; her family stayed behind, or, of course, left by another road, not of their choosing, and never came back. My great-grandmother's youngest sister survived, moved to Israel, remarried to another survivor. Them, I remember, and I remember the tattoos on their arms, from which I would avert my eyes.

I keep hearing people say they wish they were surprised by the loathsome, ugly, latent anti-Semitism that's been oozing out into the light the past few days. It must be naivete, but I am surprised. I would not be surprised by up-front bigotry, but I really had it in my head that people who have Issues with Jews and Judaism tended to be pretty blunt about it (whether they had ever met a Jew or not). Right? I mean, people who use verbal "Jew", who think it's okay to call someone a kike [a word I had to brace myself to type], them I can handle. This stuff about "things that make me uneasy about Jewish culture (outside of the religion)", and "I can get where people are coming from who say that Jews 'whine' too much about the holocaust to this date. ... None of the other groups who were killed in the holocaust expect the German government to pay them money for the horrible things that happened back then" ... it boggles my mind. I am honestly baffled. And what I hate almost as much as the fact that it's there in the first place is that I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it, which means that any number of you could be quietly thinking the same thing and I'd have no idea.

If you think we -- Jews practicing and not, female-line children who still go to shul and male-line children who are not Jews per Jewish law but are still products of generations (and would have been Jewish enough for the SS, I'll point out) -- if you think we should, as a group, "get over it" or "move on" or "stop whining"? ... Look, when I am tired of listening to people bitch about things, I have been known to say so, but they are things that on the scale of human experience are hangnails compared to locking a mass of humanity in an oven and burning them to dust. There are times when I think fixating on the past is detrimental to the future. This is not one of those times; and at those times, that is my reason for thinking it, and not because I'm tired of hearing people moan about something in the past that I wasn't even responsible for. "It's not my fault" is nothing. It's nothing.

So. To return to the subject: if you think we as a group need to quit our bitching -- I don't like ultimata, so I won't say if you think X we can't be friends anymore, but ... but.

Well. synecdochic had better, more organized thoughts than mine this morning, so actually, having brought it up, I'm going to bounce you over to her. And then say this:



The woman in this picture is me. The infant is a four- (five-, now) month-old baby cousin. We are the great-granddaughters of Jews who either left Romania when the leaving was good, or didn't. Our great-grandmothers had at least two more sisters and I believe one brother; a family of four or five. Our generation, now that this baby is in it, numbers five. [eta: No, wait, I've left out some people. Let's think again. My great-grandmother had five children. Of these, three survived to adulthood; one had four children, and the other two each had three -- that is, my father had a brother and a sister and seven first cousins. Counting down from the oldest to the youngest, those ten grandchildren of my great-grandmother have children in the numbers: two, two, none, three, two, one, one, two, none, none. So my great-grandmother has thirteen great-grandchildren; but my great-great-grandmother has fourteen great-great-grandchildren, which, when you've had four or five children, is just not that many. Is my point.]

There should be more of us, filling in the 30-year gap between myself and this baby, shouldn't there?

"Get over it", indeed.