What notable things happened today?
Today marks 8 years since my mom entered the SF General ER to never emerge from that hospital alive. I do my best to give today and the next 3 days until the day of her passing as little thought as possible.
Before I had kids, I kept myself busy with self care or fun distractions to keep my mind elsewhere. These days, with two kids, I thankfully (I guess) have plenty of distractions and little time to dwell.
Filed under Personal Reflections
Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?
Heck yes I do. “Doroga uhodit v dal”, aka “The road goes into the distance” by Alexandra Brushtein was the quintessential coming of age story of a Jewish girl at the turn of the 20th century in Czarist Russia. It was a memoir of the author’s growing up and experiencing antisemitism, growth of communism and social class frictions that increasingly led to violence in pre revolution Russia. This book was a childhood favorite of my mom’s which is how a copy ended up in our home library. .
I loved this book so much that when it was accidentally given away to the local Catholic Church (the irony of that does not escape me) when we were packing for immigration, I threw such a monumental fit that my dad went and got the book back. And now it sits on my shelf in my own family library stamped with logo of the Kostyol of Saint Florian of Shargorod.
Even though I rarely read it, it’s yet another link to my childhood and memories of my connection with my mama.
What fears have you overcome and how?
This is kind of an odd prompt. I don’t know if I’ve overcome any fears at all, if anything, it’s more that I’ve come to either accept them somehow or find ways around or through them.
Filed under Personal Reflections
What personal belongings do you hold most dear?
Most of my mom’s jewelry even if I can’t wear some of it like her rings because her fingers were smaller.
Some of my books from childhood that I brought over when we came from Ukraine.
My old journals.
My kids’ hospital tags and random clothes
My entire wedding outfit and my bouquet because it sadly rotted.
Filed under Personal Reflections
I am a mom every single day because of my babies. Yeah, it’s nice there is a randomly picked day in May to celebrate us, probably because it’s pretty? But our work, our babies are a constant job, a constant source of love, joy and frustration.
Just as we love and take care of our babies every day( be it human babies, or fur babies), we deserve to be celebrated each and every day.
,
Filed under Personal Reflections
Makes for a busy mom and wife. It’s been a minute….and while I don’t have much down time to post reviews. I do enjoy updating y’all on bits of my life.
I’m now a mom of two!!! Something that will probably take a year or so to fully absorb into my essence.
I have two wonderful boys: my big guy Raphi is almost five and a half, and my little guy, Stellan is 7 months old! I adore them. They make it ok to not have enough time to write 😝
Filed under Fun stuff!, Personal Reflections
Are coming! Yours truly is about to have a week off ! In a week! For a variety of personal reasons I am leaving my current job at the end of the week, and then after a week off, I am starting a new one!
For me, that’ll be a second job change in less than 2 years, after a decade at one place. But changes are needed.
I hope to bring some new reviews during my time off so please keep checking in!
~E
Filed under Personal Reflections
I will start reading some of my Kindle books.
It’s honestly kind of amazing to me how many I’ve purchased over the last decade plus (most on sale but a handful at full price). And they sit there, slowly accumulating via occasional purchase or as Net Galley ARCS, as I keep taking other library books out.
There are dozens of books that would be a great potential addition to this blog and I need to commit to writing again as I mentioned in my last entry.
So there, I said it, therefore, I must do it and I better be held accountable by those of you who actually continue to give my little blog the read of the day even as I forgot about it for several years.
There are many ways young children encounter stories. A new study finds a “Goldilocks effect,” where a cartoon may be “too hot” and audiobooks “too cold” f
— Read on www.kqed.org/mindshift/51281/whats-going-on-in-your-childs-brain-when-you-read-them-a-story
Currently attempting to finish The Tattooist of Auschwitz before the library Lon expires for probably the 5th time.
I don’t know what I can offer review wise because it seems to me this book is getting a ton of well deserved press from oodles of other people. It’s a wonderful piece of literature and history and nothing I could offer would be profound or new or more meaningful than anything that hasn’t been already said.
What it does remind me while reading it now in conjunction with so much anti-Israel feeling in the world is that this ANTI is not new. Within living memory of some of us, more than 6 million of us were brutally murdered, not counting over a million Roma, disabled, members of LGBT community and anyone else the Nazi regime deemed unhuman. Do I agree with all of the political policies in Israel? NO. But my people deserve our own place under the sun. And not because we were murdered but because it is our historical homeland. Quit denying it under the guise of supporting Palestine. It always boils down to hating the Jews. If you are anti Zionist, you don’t believe Jews have a right to their own land. It’s the same damned argument of the last 2 millennia. You don’t want us in your land and yet you deny us the right to our own history as well. I didn’t realize we sprung out of ether after all.
attempts to recover my lost multisyllabic gumption
New Jewish Books
Exploring what it means to be Jewish
the stories behind the pictures, and vice versa
Jewish Books Are Awesome 