via TYWKIWDBI.
Lovely, isn’t it?
The comments on the Youtube page are of course, interesting. Some are so poignant and some are so amusing.
“WHAT IS SHE SAYING?” is my favorite.
Obviously, you’ve never had a daughter or been one.
And yes, it goes by in a blink of an eye.
Thankfully, my children have better memories than I do. And some of the memories are actually true, so that’s good, too.
D#1 reminded me that her niece, my granddaughter about whom I wrote yesterday, did reveal 3 life-long dreams, but the order was a bit different than I remembered. Oh at least I remembered there were 3, so I’m feeling pretty good about myself.
The second one was different because she did get to experience it that day.
Her dream was to run down the middle of the street.
Now before you go reporting us to Child Services, this was a street that was closed off to traffic, with a path down the middle.
Sort of like this
but without the police detail.
So after she revealed this life-long dream, she and her cousins were allowed to run down the middle of the street for about 20 5 yards.
That seemed to do the trick for her.
Until she revealed the next life-long dream of eating the tons of candy.
Which brings me to the topic of the title.
What we go through in life is often just dealing with the present crisis. We rarely get to revisit old issues. I thought I had written about ISHI’s life as if he were an emergency room doctor, but perhaps not. But that is the case, running from one crisis to the next. And the reality is that is what we all do, but perhaps not as reactions to other people’s crises, but our own doing.
And we don’t often enough follow up (much less follow through).
And perhaps that’s what counting the Omer is about.
It’s looking forward, but following up. It’s reviewing how long it’s been since leaving Egypt, but moving towards a goal of getting the Torah. So it’s training us, those of us who have problems with time management in particular, how to pay attention to both where we’ve come from and where we’re going.
Sort of like in the middle of a road, with life-long dreams ahead and behind, well-accomplished.
from the previous post–
I forgot that the reason I wanted to include it was a conversation with granddaughter #2. While waiting for her brother’s shirt to be dried by the slightly less than efficient air blower in the men’s bathroom, due to the insistence of my father, more than by his mother, this sparkly young lady declared (yes in caps)
“CAN YOU TAKE ME INTO THE MEN’S BATHROOM? MY LIFE’S DREAM IS TO KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.”
Mind you, she’s not quite 8.
The answer, of course, was no.
Then when we actually finished sufficiently drying him out, or at least his shirt, and we continued with our adventures outside, she revealed another life-long dream; to eat tons of candy.
Or something like that.
And then there was one other. I don’t even remember what it was. Except I wish her many more and a life full of biggest dreams possible. She will take it far.
I want to buy stock in hyperbole.
Or at least a tee-shirt.
Did I get your attention?
Did you think I was going to spill the beans about someone?
Nah, just cleaning for Pesach.
I found the oddest things so far.
I also found this, well, yes, as I was cleaning up. Sure, let’s go with that.
Forest bathing
The Japanese term Shinrin-yoku may literally mean “forest bathing,” but it doesn’t involve soaking in a tub among the trees. Rather it refers to spending time in the woods for its therapeutic (or bathing) effect. Most of us have felt tension slip away in the midst of trees and nature’s beauty. But science now confirms its healing influence on the body. When you spend a few hours on a woodland hike or camping by a lake you breathe in phytoncides, active substances released by plants to protect them against insects and from rotting, which appear to lower blood pressure and stress and boost your immune system.
(with apologies to the Marx brothers)
Do you ever wonder about phrases? When I realize how ridiculous some things are, I do. It’s better than thinking about how ridiculous people are, after all.
For example, ISHI and I were talking about how a certain child must think she’s the cat’s meow.
Which led to me saying, “She must think she’s the dog’s bark.”
And ISHI adding, “And the cow’s moo!”
So, how DID the phrase originate?
Absolutely fascinating, this internet thing!
Don’t know about its veracity, but sounds good!
CAT’S PAJAMAS: The strange thing about “the cat’s pajamas” is that most people, regardless of age, are familiar with the expression, and may even use it in their speech or writing. Today it’s considered old-fashioned or quaint, and it’s said with tongue in cheek or for effect, but it’s definitely not dead.
It means ‘a wonderful or remarkable person or thing’. But it nearly always implies stylishness and newness-it’s ‘the greatest thing since sliced bread’.
“The cat’s pajamas” (and THE CAT’S MEOW, “the cat’s whiskers”), was a very popular expression in the 1920s, associated with the daring and unconventional jazz-age flappers. H. L. Mencken describes the flapper as a young woman who “has forgotten how to simper; she seldom blushes; and it is impossible to shock her.” The lexicographers William and Mary Morris suggest that these “cat” expressions may have originated even earlier, first used in girls’ schools. Alternatively, some sources attribute coinage to Tad Dorgan, sportswriter and cartoonist. The original use was definitely American, but “the cat’s pyjamas,” “the cat’s miaow” [[‘sic’]]also caught on in England.
Maurice Weseen’s “Dictionary of American Slang”; lists more “cat” variants: “the cat’s eyebrow, ankle, adenoids, tonsils, galoshes, cufflinks, roller skates, and cradle.” [[also “cat’s nuts,” and “cat’s kittens.”]]. Stuart Flexner, in “I Hear America Talking,” discusses similar expressions–”just about any combination of an animal, fish, or fowl with a part of the body or article of clothing that was inappropriate for it: the bee’s knees, the snake’s hips, the clam’s garter, the eel’s ankle, the elephant’s instep, the tiger’s spots, the leopard’s stripes, the sardine’s whiskers, the pig’s wings.” Other sources list “the kipper’s knickers, the duck’s quack, the gnat’s elbow, the elephant’s (fallen) arches, the bullfrog’s beard, the canary’s tusks, the cuckoo’s chin, the butterfly’s book, the caterpillar’s kimono, the turtle’s neck.”
Except for “the bee’s knees” which rhymes, the other expressions don’t make much sense. A cat’s persistent meow and a duck’s quack is annoying to some people, and they don’t exactly express approval and satisfaction. At least a cat does have a meow and whiskers, but pajamas, galoshes, or eyebrows, no. Reasonable explanations include the fact that “cat’s whiskers” was the term for hair-thin wires used in tuning wireless crystal sets, and pajamas were a relatively new fashion in the 1920s.
You’re welcome 
.
I like to think of myself as not being consumer-driven. And yet, at the end of the day, I like my creature comforts. I think that’s it, more than anything. I like to be comfortable. So that means comfortable clothing, housing, and other sundry stuff.
I don’t think that’s a problem. We live in this world, so we might as well be comfortable for the ride.
Lately, I’ve been thinking of the things that make me happy. It started with a realization about redecorating my kitchen. It’s that I don’t want to. A few years ago, we finally replaced our kitchen floor, which I had hated from the very start when we moved into the house. But values and choices, other things always came first. When we needed to replace our very dead stove, then it became reasonable to replace the floor. But how many years later, we still haven’t replaced the wallpaper and it really doesn’t match the floor and it looks old.
It is. We have had this wallpaper for 30 years. That’s time, don’t you think? Plus, when we put in the new stove, it was smaller than the original one (which was huge only because it had a storage drawer on the side, pretty unusable), and there was a large patch on the wall that doesn’t even have any cover. Actually, that looks better than the paper, at this stage.
So what’s keeping me from moving on this? Yes money is always an issue, but if/when we sell the house, we have to fix it, so we might as well do it now and get some sense of pleasure out of it.
Right?
Here’s the thing.
And it’s a thing.
It’s a sugar bowl.
My mother went to Spain? France? I forget and found it and gave it to me, saying, “It matches your kitchen.”
So…
If I changed the color of the wallpaper to match the floor more closely, then it won’t match the sugar bowl.
The floor color was chosen to match the living room and the wood and to tie the rooms together more. And with the intention of changing the wallpaper in the kitchen, going with a southwestern kind of look.
So do I look to the future and forget the past?
I received the following email:
| Dear but mostly hers,Thank you for ordering from the Parents.com Store. We have received your order, and it is currently being processed. Please print this e-mail for your records. It contains your order number and other important details.Stop back again for more great home and family ideas!Your order number is: blahblahblah | ||||||||||||
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Can you figure out all the issues (sorry) here?
Here’s my list:
I wrote an email asking for them to please give the subscription to someone else. Someone for which it would be useful.
[They promise they'll get back to me within two days.]
After all, I might read the magazine and just feel guilty how I did it all wrong.
And what would be the benefit of that?
A friend of mine just commented to me in an email about a fellow from our community who’s joining the navy. She was surprised because, as she said,
“He’s no spring chicken.”
I know what it means, but I wanted to know what it means.
So, since I’m not from the poultry enthusiasts, being a lacto-ovo-vegetarian myself, but I do have a love of language, I checked out the expression.
Here’s what wisegeek has to say:
Agriculturally speaking, there really is a creature known as a spring chicken, although chefs may call it a Cornish game hen or Poussin. Bred primarily for eating, a spring chicken is a very young bird with a high ratio of white to dark meat. The meat of a spring chicken is said to be much juicier and more tender than older chickens raised for the dinner table. During the earliest days of poultry farming, it was impossible to raise chicks during the cold winter months, so a chicken brought to market in the spring was prized for its youth and fresher flavor.
Metaphorically speaking, a spring chicken could represent a person in the prime of his or her youth. A spring chicken may be a little naive or unseasoned at times, but it often makes up in physical agility and personality what it may lack in worldly experience. A young college student may be described as a spring chicken by others who envy his or her youthful appearance or unclouded worldview.
Then I found a very cute drawing on a very cute site called the DAD Project.
Since it’s so cute, I thought I’d find out more, so here it is:
The D.A.D. (Drawing A Day) Project - an ongoing, online, art-based fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society, the largest national charitable funder of cancer research in Canada.
We are two sisters, Emily and Serena. Our father was diagnosed in May 2009 with metastatic stage 4 colon cancer in his lungs and liver. After a courageous year-and-a-half battle, he passed away in early October 2010.
One of the toughest things we faced when our Dad was sick was this overwhelming feeling of helplessness. As we are both illustrators, we launched The D.A.D. Project in June 2010 as a creative effort to give back to an organization that helped our father, and that helps so many others who are fighting cancer.
We are continuing this project as a tribute to our Dad whom we miss everyday.
But, as good ideas go, this ran out of steam, since they posted on Jan 1 that they would not be doing a drawing a day, but more sporadic. And perhaps, since their goal was to support this worthy cause for their father, once he passed away, the strength of the initiative faded.
Like no longer a spring chicken.
So, with this all in mind, why would the navy want spring chickens? Because going to war is naive?
The fellow in the navy, who is according to my friend, no spring chicken, is the same age as my youngest son.
He will always be a spring chicken to me.
I admit it. I love looking at people, especially people looking at other things. At the Guggenheim was a strange exhibit, Maurizio Cattelan: All. Go to the link and watch a neat photo of the installation process. It might actually be more interesting than the exhibit. What’s very bizarre about this “artist” is that he is so cunning about taking on the position as society jester. ISHI and I were wondering about the use of the harlequin by Picasso and others of the early 20th century.
Okay, I found something. I think it’s relevant to the discussion at hand. Apparently, the word that Picasso would have used is saltimbanque.
In 1905 Picasso abandoned the palette and subject matter of the Blue period, turning to images of fairground and circus performers, whom he depicted in a range of chalky red hues. Accordingly, this phase of his work has come to be known as the Rose period. Picasso observed these figures firsthand at the Cirque Medrano, as well as in the streets and outskirts of the city, where a migrant community of acrobats, musicians, and clowns– saltimbanques–entertained passing spectators. Such figures commonly occur in romantic and symbolist art and verse (from Daumier and Seurat to Baudelaire and Rimbaud), where the saltimbanque exists in a perpetual state of melancholy and social alienation. In the poems of Guillaume Apollinaire, one of several poets who were among the artist’s closest friends at this time, the acrobat acquires an air of mystery and enchantment that clearly corresponds to Picasso’s tone. Through paintings, watercolors, gouaches, drawings, and prints, Picasso tends to show his fairground performers at rest, often in domestic settings that are genial and warm. Yet in keeping with their relatively impoverished circumstances and the saltimbanque’s traditional role as a symbol of the neglected artist, a pervasive ennui suffuses Rose period pictures.
Got it? I do think that works for Cattelan, too. I mean, look at what he presents! But really, what interested me more is how he strung everything up and even more, how people looked at the work. Huge crowds, really looking. And I love how people dress for museums. Especially in New York. So of course, I took photos. So here are some in a gallery I think best for this.
And yes, I love the photos of the little girl the most. What did she do to deserve this?
Our grandson, the little one here, insists that a fork is a “poon” and a spoon is a fork. If you offer him a fork, he’ll correct you and say “a poon”. And visa-versa. And so at dinner tonight, take-out from Sushi Metsuyan, he spits out the spicy fish poppers, but eats the tofu and the grilled mango from the Nakate Tofu and as much of the California roll that his brother will give him, but takes a new “poon” each time he returns from walking away from the table. And leaves his ice cream to go back to more tofu.
You see, he’s two years old now and the world is his. If you say that a certain item is yours, he’ll correct you and say it’s his. So it’s his toys and his booster seat and his bike and his bike helmet (the pink one and the blue one) and his gloves (all the pairs that he can put his hands on) and his hat. His brother’s hat, his old hat, and anything else that goes on his head. Especially the doll hat. We returned a doll hat that someone in his family had left at our house. He insisted that he could wear it. We tried to let a toy bear wear the hat and he thought that was a hoot. No, it belonged on his head. But the bear was allowed to wear a scarf, something that had come off one of his sister’s shirts. After all, it was very cold today and the bear needed to be warm.
It’s extraordinary to watch someone learn to play and represent the world in symbols, while still owning the world.
I would publish a gallery of the little one’s wearing of the hats, but I won’t. I will publish other photos later when we return to home. In the meantime, we’re enjoying not being home and just being at home in the universe.
