Valuable use of time and memory

or you can watch it here.

I got here via Treppenwitz today. Apparently, it’s already 2 years old.

But I think it’s timeless.

borrowed again, for a reason!

Seriously, I’m buying.

Also, seriously, so applicable for Pesach! Let me know what you think!

mah. nish. ma.

This is a statement of how out of it I really am.

Out of touch? Not so much, but out of the general realm of the public.

A while ago, I had stopped into Rite-Aid to look for Jean Nate cologne, of blessed memory. And although they didn’t have that, they did have this unlikely brand of nail polish, called:

Mah. nish. ma.

Now those of you who speak Hebrew and have spent some time in Israel will recognize that phrase. It means colloquially, “How ya doin’?” (It’s a bit dated now, having been replaced by what the doorman at the Hotel Belleclaire said to us .) But still, it’s an odd name for a cosmetics company/line.

I tried google and bing to find out the home name of the company in vain. (I KNOW!!!) I did find a few people who link to it, but you know, I’m not going to bother connecting those dots for you. They say basically it’s a cheap-end nail polish and you can do all kinds of fancy shmancy things with it, but not alone. So they list all kinds of things that they do with their nail art.

Soooo not my bag.

I don’t have strong nails. That is one of the gifts I received from my mother. It’s a gift because it lets me not focus on them. She always instructed me to take care of them, make sure that the moon is displayed, but then that’s the end of that.

Yes, she got her nails done, but then again, she lived in that kind of world. I in the world of mikveh, where you have to keep your nails trimmed and unpolished, was very happy to leave that world of paint to everyone else.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong, mind you–I’m just saying that it’s just not me and I have no interest in making it me. I will say that you have to watch to make sure that it doesn’t go too far and that you pay more attention to your inner beauty and not focus on the shell.

Be that as it may, what brings this up today is the post that I saw on a website that I usually admire–womenyoushouldknow.net. Today they were letting us know about the story of two Harvard-educated women (who used their harvard.edu email account to draw up interest, apparently) who have created this phenomenon called Birchbox.

A bit of a description from the womenwho follows now:

Hayley and Katia’s Birchbox concept is genius in both its problem solving nature and its simplicity. For just $10 a month, Birchbox members receive a box filled with a selection of 4-5 beauty samples from top tier brands delivered right to their front door. The generously sized samples – just enough to keep you entertained for 30 days – include anything from skincare, makeup and fragrance to cult beauty tools, body and hair care products by well-known brands and emerging newcomers.

Can you guess what my problem is?

Not with the Birchbox idea in and of itself.

With the idea of makeup as entertainment.

I think they could have found another word. But the fact that they didn’t is troubling.

my home is a foreign place

That refers to yesterday’s piece. I really think you should be able to look at it with more detail, so I’ll post my best shot and then you can increase the size.

If you wish.

Perhaps even better, I found an audio link to the description that the artist gives of her work. Perhaps you’ll understand why I think it’s so amazing after you listen.

http://media.moma.org/audios/embed/285/2057

some thoughts about having favorite things

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 did not watch the game but i saw this commercial

afterwards on line, first via Fast Company. But I can’t copy directly from there, so here it is via youtube:

Good ad?

Great ad.

Great look.

Great spokesperson. Can’t do better than Clint for grit. He’s our generation’s John Wayne, I guess.

Great line.

Great message.

Is it political? Doesn’t matter.

Much better than the game, because whatever it is, it is not a game.

Will we be able to carry the message into action?

I will try to remember it, being in my second half myself.

And we’ll have to see what everyone else does, won’t we?

food anxieties

Ah being a host. The challenges of making someone feel at home, when they’re clearly not. I’ve written about dealing with other people’s food limitations before (here, if you want to revisit). And as I said there, ISHI has a whole boatload of food limitations, but clearly a small dinghy compared to others.

We had a couple with a yachtfull of issues today. They gave me a chart, what’s not okay and what’s good for them to eat.

Our Super Picky Diet – “But it won’t be like this forever”

GRAINS & STARCHES	PROTEIN	VEGGIES/FRUIT	OTHER
NOT GOOD TO EAT
Wheat	Tofu	Cranberries	Chocolate
Spelt	Beans incl. garbanzos (humus)	Melon	Fresh garlic, fresh onions
Barley	Tahini, sesame, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds	Grapefruit or oranges	Hot spices (black pepper, ginger, cayenne, curry)
Rye	Dairy (cow, goat, sheep)	Spinach	Soy milk, almond milk
Oats	Other soy products	Winter squash	Olives
Udi bread or other store-bought gluten-free bread	Nuts	Hot peppers (e.g. chili peppers)	Brewer’s yeast
	Lentils	Jerusalem artichokes
	Eggs	Raw tomato
		Pineapple and mango
GOOD TO EAT
Rice and rice noodles	Tempe	Lemon	Coconut
Quinoa	Chicken	Summer squash	All other spices
Potatoes	Fish (any kind but Haddock)	Apples, berries, pears,	Rice milk
Millet	Beef	Salads, sweet peppers
Sweet potatoes	Mung beans	Kale, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, carrots, celery, parsley, coriander, fennel, peas,
Corn (in moderation)
		All other fruits and veggies

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I printed it out. I had it on my recipe holder. I re-read it carefully to plan my menu and shopped. I also asked them for clarification–if you can eat tempe, and that’s made out of soybeans…

“Yes, it’s an anomaly.”

I’m not sure she used that word, but I was going with it. We had challah; they had rice cakes. But for everyone I made magaricz, my eggplant spread that’s made without sesame or tomato, pea soup, green salad (yay! they can eat hearts of palm!), a huge bowl of roasted veggies, including potatoes, sweet potatoes, swiss chard, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, salmon, and then I was making a huge pot of rice and red quinoa pilaf. I had sauteed the onions and mushrooms, added the tempe, added the rice and red quinoa and was letting them all get nice and cozy with each other. That’s when I usually add my shoyu (soy sauce), so I made sure that I had my bottle without any wheat and started pouring that in and then

did I scream out loud or just in my own head?

It was definitely very loud in my head.

(UPDATE: ISHI says I screamed out loud.)

Yes, soybeans are on the no good part of the list.

So what would you do?

I stopped the momentary panic, added the water and let that cook. I took another pot, added white quinoa and let that cook. I put salt in that one.

Today, before the meal, I told them what happened and they said, “Great! You used the non-wheat shoyu! No problem!”

“But soybeans???”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

So was the olive oil that I had poured on practically everything.

Except the brownies. I have to have something for me.

update on the pootchie potchie mystery

(An aside: You’d think after typing Pootchie Potchie so many times yesterday, my computer would recognize that it is indeed what I wanted to type.)

Here’s the first email comment I got from D#!:

Huh, I wish I knew the answer to this! I remember the name, for sure, but don’t recall either a puppet or a dog! Bucky bucky the horse, that I remember!!

Love!

And here’s her second:

I don’t know…I looked at the pictures (saw this on the web, not just in my email) and when I saw the picture of the dog in my head I thought “Pootchie Patchie”

But maybe she named it that because the name already existed in the puppet and she liked it???

Love!!!!

Hmmm. A discrepancy of spelling. Maybe because she pronounces things in Ashkenazi…

Here’s my response:

That’s what abba thought…

And hers to that:

It IS quite a catchy name!

This will probably be the most definitive explanation that we get.

Oh, and about  Bucky Bucky, the horse. That’s another interesting story about fraud perpetrated, but by unknown assailants.

In fact, extremely curious.

My sister inherited a few toys from my kids to use for hers. She then passed a number of them back again to us when our first grandchild was born 10 years ago, and added in a number of them, to boot. One of them was the beloved Bucky Bucky, the Fisher-Price toy.

It looks like this one being sold on EBay today. Note that this is from 1976, which is even before I would have bought for our D#1.

Here’s a photo of our Bucky Bucky.

Can you figure this one out?

let’s start the new Gregorian year by borrowing, shall we?

Three resolutions for the new year–by Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks

An old Jewish story: Mendel meets David. He says, “Tell me, friend, how is life? I haven’t got much time, so tell me in one word.” David says, “In one word? Good.” Mendel says, “Give me a bit more detail. In two words, how is life?” David replies: “In two words? Not good.”That was 2011. It may be true for 2012. As a nation, we’re wealthier and healthier, but the economic outlook is uncertain and much of the world is troubled, if not in turmoil. What would be some Jewish advice for the coming year? First, thank God. Jews call this Barukh Hashem, “Blessed be the Lord.” In the shtetls, where Jews were poor and persecuted but deeply religious, if you asked: “How is business? the answer would come back: Barukh Hashem. How is the family? Barukh Hashem. Your health? Barukh Hashem. You might be ill, your children rebellious, your business terrible, but you thanked God. Jews knew how to rejoice in the midst of hardship. They laughed, they celebrated, they had the gift of simchah, the Jewish word for joy. They were not fools. They knew their fate was wretched. But they felt close to God. After all, he prayed in the same synagogue that they did. Second, love. Love your spouse and you will have a happy marriage. Love your children and you will have a happy family. Love your work and you will have a happy career. Love life and you will be blessed. “If only” is the opposite of love. If only my partner were more attractive, my children more appreciative, my colleagues more friendly, if only I earned more, achieved more. “If only” is toxic to happiness. It focuses on what we don’t have instead of what we do. The consumer culture invites us to an existence of “if only”. It’s the worst investment in life. True faith is all about love. Love God with all your heart, your soul, your might. Love your neighbour as yourself. Love the stranger because to others you are a stranger. You don’t have to be religious to love, but you have to love to be religious. Love is the space we make for that which is not me. By opening ourselves to something bigger than ourselves, we grow. Third, pray. Prayer is our dialogue with the infinite Other. It’s also hard, which is why we have prayer books. The finest collection of prayers is the book of Psalms. It embraces the spectrum of feeling from despair to jubilation. Prayer is to the soul what exercise is to the body, and without it we become emotionally flabby. Some people don’t pray because they try it and it does not work. They forget that prayer is done best in the company of others, in a holy place, in song, the language of the soul as it reaches out toward the unsayable. The most life-transforming prayers are choral not solo. Iris Murdoch has a lovely analogy for what prayer can achieve. She describes looking out of a window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of her surroundings, brooding on some resentment, feeling sorry for herself. Then, suddenly, she sees a hovering kestrel. “In a moment,” she says, “everything is altered. The brooding self . . . has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important.” She calls this “unselfing”, and that is what prayer achieves at its best. It opens our eyes to the wonder of the world. Three suggestions: more next month. But the principle is simple. When business is bad, invest in the spirit. If the economy stops growing, your happiness can still increase.

how to replace the mundane

I have to face reality.

I have been using Jean Naté Cologne for about oh how old am I? Let’s say 30 years. Maybe more. I don’t have the receipt from my first purchase, nor any memory of why I started using it. I know I had bottles of the After Bath Splash from my bat mitzvah years, so we’re talking about a really long time ago. But I don’t like the ABS. I do like the cologne.

Or at least I did.

It’s not being made any more.

Revlon discontinued it. This is the email I received from them over a month ago after trying to figure out why I couldn’t find the product any more.

Thank you for your recent comments from the Revlon website and your interest in our products.

Sometimes, because of fashion trends and limited consumer demand, it becomes necessary to discontinue an otherwise excellent product. Unfortunately, Revlon Jean Nate Cologne Spray is no longer being manufactured. Since fragrances are a matter of individual and personal preference, we are unable to suggest a substitute fragrance for you. We would encourage you to visit our fragrance display in retail stores in your area.

I told you I am used to being in the minority, but this is painful. I don’t like having to figure out something new because the old worked just fine.

Until it didn’t.

I don’t know how to find a replacement. I don’t really want to be sprayed at the Fragrance display because I’m in mourning. A little past denial now, but I used it every weekday for 30 plus years! For Shabbat I alternate between Chloe and Youth Dew. They’ll probably stop making Youth Dew soon so I bought a few to hold me for a while.

I’m not kidding.

I joined a group that looks like they’d be able to help me. It’s called Basenotes.

OMG they’re scary serious about their smells. It’s more serious than discussions about wine and liquors. Probably because those people drink. and are pretty happy.

Here’s an example of a recent review.

LP No. 9 by Penhaligon’s

The beginning of this classic fougere  with its  plenty of citrus, aromatic herbs, lavender and spices is severe, assertive, earthy and botanic. I agree who with writes that in this phase the fragrance seems a shadowy masculine, traditional with its combination of lavender, lime, a touch of moss, patchouli and bergamot. In this stage i catch the particular presence of terragon, an aromatic and “anisy” green note that i appreciate a lot in parfumery. It takes a while to start the floral-spicy explosion that is the middle stage before the fragrance morphs is a sort of delicate milky-musky floral with the dominant note of jasmine and carnation and with some rosey nuances whirling in the air. I smell some similarities with the scent of Dune Dior although this one is more earthy, classic and botanic. I guess some clove and cinnamon are in the almost tasty mix. Not bad, natural, finally soft but a bit poor in complexity and womanly sophistication.

They gave it a thumbs down, if you couldn’t tell. I couldn’t.

Of course any discussions they had about Jean Naté made me feel just a wee bit insignificant.

And boooooring.

But this note was an unexpected treat.

        Is it possible to ascertain what Heisenberg would wear?

According to that famous quantum physician’s uncertainty principle, determining the top notes would make it impossible to measure the basenotes, while focusing on the basenotes would prevent a reading of the top notes . Of course he might just put on L’Antimatière by Les Nez, which I am told smells precisely like Schrödinger’s cat.

Okay! Maybe I’ll have to check out this. I’ll keep giving them a chance, even just to find another gem like this one.