Shabbat D'varim: A Top 10 List

 Credit:  Words with Friends

A while back, I wrote a Top 10 List for Shabbat Kedoshim.  Today was a different kind of Shabbat…

10. I kept hitting the snooze button…on both the alarm clock and the iPhone.

9.  When I finally rolled over at 10:13 a.m., my minyan buddies were getting ready to open to page 172 for Ma Tovu.  I was still in my jammies.

8.  Once I got out of bed—at about the time they probably were finishing t’filah ha-lev and turning to the Torah service—I didn’t bother making it.

7.  By noon, when services were over and everyone was putting a schmear on their bagels, drinking the brown mud that passes for coffee and opening their Plaut-Bamberger Torah Commentaries, I was reading the paper leisurely.

6.  I caught up on my emails and played a few rounds of Words with Friends.

5.  I also took care of a bit of long overdue blog maintenance…and wrote this post.

4.  I shmyed around on Facebook, vacationing vicariously with friends at Arches National Park, Tanglewood, San Jose and Kutz Camp, where today was Celebrate Dorothy Walrond Day.

3.  I read a bit in my latest book, The People of Forever are Not Afraid.  Stay tuned for a review.

2.  To be fair, I also read a few pages in Les Miserables.  After all, tomorrow is Bastille Day.

1.  Later, when it’s time to go to bed, I won’t have to unmake my bed.

Shavua tov!

You Would Have Loved Today

Dear The Mums,

My summer course starts on Monday and I’ve got a lot of reading to do before then, but there are a few things about today that I want to fill you in on while they’re still fresh in my mind.  For starters, it’s Bastille Day so in your honor (and as you always did) I bought two French crullers at Dunkin Donuts and took them to Amy’s house, where Daddy, Ian, Amy and I had lunch this afternoon.  I didn’t know that she’d made a peach cobbler (with fresh peaches from the Union Square green market) for dessert so we sent the crullers home with Daddy…along with the suggestion that he have them for a snack with coffee – one tonight and one tomorrow. 

The afternoon would have looked very familiar to you.  After lunch we spent time just hanging out—playing Bananagrams and Mastermind.  Ian’s a whiz at both games and hardly needs any help with Bananagrams at all.  One of his words was “helicopter,” which he came up with (and spelled correctly) all by himself.  And then this:  One of my words was “ova.”  When he asked, “What’s an ova?” Amy and I both responded that it’s an egg.  He then said matter-of-factly, “Oh, like ovary.”  I nearly fell over, but he and Amy told me that this year in school they’d had “the talk” and he knew all about “that stuff.”

But, I’ve already gotten ahead of myself.  Before I even got to Amy's, I went to minyan and Torah study, where this week’s parashah was Pinchas.  Although it’s not Lech L'cha, your favorite, I know you loved those feminist daughters of Zelophehad – Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah.  It seems to me that you—who frequently was dissatisfied with the status quo—would think it especially fitting that the parashah in which these five sisters asked for and obtained a hereditary hold on their father’s land coincides with the commemoration of the uprising at the Bastille prison that marked the demise of France’s royal leadership and led to sovereignty for the people.  So many people fighting for change...it's all good.

Anyway, I need to go do some of the reading for class on Monday night, but wanted you to know about the day…it’s one you would really have enjoyed and I’m sorry you weren’t here to share it with us.

Miss you...xoxo,

~ Boo!