My two girls are growing older, and I’m loving every minute of it.
“Will you have another one? You still could” I am asked once in a while. At forty one, yes I still technically could, and I guess I’ll continue to hear this question for 3-4 more years before it finally stops. I could have one more baby, but I don’t want to.
I know I’ve blogged about my fear of the future, in fact I blogged about it more than once. As a fairly anxious person, I like knowing where things stand, and I like to be in control. Of course, control is an illusion, and as life progresses, things keep changing and you learn for yourself how little control you really have.
So I’ve blogged about my desire, as a classic control freak, to have things stay the way they are, and about my reluctance to watch my kids grow and drift away, first emotionally, then physically, as they move out and embark on their independent lives.
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I’m in the midst of dealing with caffeine withdrawal. I have recently realized that I’m addicted to my very strong morning coffee and as I’m unwilling to be addicted to anything, I stopped cold turkey yesterday, which is probably not the best idea.
The terrible headache of yesterday has now turned into brain fog, sluggishness and general weakness. Let’s just hope it’s only a matter of a few more days, since it was just one daily cup (although likely as strong as three average cups!).
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This is very unfeminist of me, I’m sure. Or is it? My beloved late grandma Chava was the exact opposite of a feminist. Her happy place was the kitchen. Her only place was the kitchen, actually – she spent her entire life there, or so it seemed.
She cooked there, starting early in the morning and finishing late at night. She ate her meals there, and she rested in her little kitchen – I can still see her sitting in her usual chair, listening to the radio, dozing off. She was tired, no doubt – now that I cook so much I know how physically taxing cooking is, and she was also overweight and probably suffered from sleep apnea, so nights were not restful for her. No wonder she kept falling asleep sitting in that chair.
Thirty years later, and here I am, in the kitchen, happy. In many ways, I am happy in the same way that grandma was happy in her kitchen. Cooking is highly creative and deeply sensuous. As my friend J. likes to say, it’s the only place where she can start a task, complete it within a reasonable timeframe, and savor its success (or mourn its failure, as the case may be). The act of cooking is therapeutic, the act of eating pleasurable, and being your family’s hero – priceless (“Mom, may I have seconds?”)
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I was helping a fellow food blogger with her Facebook page, basically doing for free what I normally charge for, when I happened to mention that she could improve her food photos by using natural light.
Her reaction? She immediately disconnected, distanced herself, refused any further help from me and basically gave me the cold shoulder.
I was amazed!
Yes, my feedback was negative. And although it was not mean, it was direct – I never thought to sugarcoat it. But it was important, helpful feedback that she could leverage to become better at what she does, to be an even more awesome food blogger than she already is.
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When I set out to delete all my “fake” Facebook friends, I expected to get down to 300 friends, from my initial list of 500. To my surprise, I ended up with 245 friends – less than half of my original list.
Facebook means different things to different people, and to me, in the past, it meant “the more the merrier.” But as I grow and evolve I change my opinion on things, including social media. I started feeling that I was paying a price for the relatively high number of people in my Facebook network. The quality of my Facebook experience was low, diluted by annoying posts from people who were essentially strangers to me.
It’s not that the posts were inherently annoying, but coming from people I did not know, they created clutter that was becoming increasingly difficult to manage. Even as I was pressing “hide” or “unsubscribe from posts by” certain “friends,” the software was still sending me different types of updates from them.
This was just one of the reasons I have been feeling dissatisfied with Facebook. Something else was starting to bother me – the realization that so many of us, myself included, are not truly being ourselves on Facebook. So many of our Facebook postings are “look at my awesome life” type of posts, or even “my life is better than yours.” The occasional “I messed up” post is so refreshing actually, because they are so very rare.
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It’s strange to visit your own country and feel like a tourist, but that has been my experience on our last family visit to Israel. It suddenly dawned on me that I have spent more of my adult life in California than in Israel, which might explain why California feels more and more like home, while Israel is becoming this exotic place that you visit once a year, armed with a camera and lots of patience – it’s an intense place and Israelis are generous and kind, but quite aggressive.
Being a tourist in your own country is not all bad though – you get to do the really fun stuff, the things that only tourists do and no self-respecting local would dream of doing, such as going to the Old City of Jerusalem, and to the colorful Mahane Yehuda Market, armed with a camera, taking photos while exclaiming “This is so amazing!” while the locals try to take advantage of you and charge inflated prices for their merchandise – until they realize you are fluent in Hebrew.
My husband says jokingly that next year, we will find ourselves riding camels in the Negev – the utmost touristy experience. Who knows, we just might.
Orthodox Jews In the Old City
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Pastry shoes are pastry-colored athletic shoes from Angela and Vanessa Simmons, who are apparently the stars of some reality show, but since I don’t watch reality shows, the name of the show means little to me.
However, upon receiving an email from the company’s representative asking me if I would agree to a review and a giveaway of the shoes, I looked at the company’s website and realized that while I’m way too old for these shoes, my pre-teen girls are going to love them.
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I'm Vered DeLeeuw, a blogger for hire and a social media consultant. My social media campaigns increase brand awareness and loyalty, improve search engine rankings and drive targeted traffic to my clients' websites. Momgrind is my personal blog.
