Holiday Weekends

Long weekends for the last 2 years haven't been quite the same as pre-baby weekends where I could relax, visit friends, and generally be completely selfish until the alarm went off Monday morning. Of course that is all to be expected to change when baby makes three, but this weekend was the first holiday I can remember truly being as enjoyable as those lazy days. Max was an angel for the most part, daddy was helpful, we saw lots of friends, and took a trip to the city. I did not want to get up for work today, but I woke up happy realizing that life has truly become mine again. And maybe soon we will be talking about #2.

Quizzes

I secretly love all the Facebook quizzes that have been going around as it is fun to look back on my life - books I've read, high school days, etc, and with a list of specific questions, memories I though I'd forgotten come back. However, my biggest problem with the quizzes is the constant updates on Facebook from a handful of people that take every quiz known to man and clog up the home pages of all their friends. I am pretty sure no one cares what color, movie, season, you are. NO ONE!



So, knowing I'm only bothering the few people that seek out my blog, here are the answers to my favorite quiz - mostly because I love to read. Feel free to recommend your favorite books as well!

100 booksThe BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

I have read around 34 books on this list.

Instructions:1) Copy into a new note and put an X after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible (all)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (alot of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X 2
9 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 5
1 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X +
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt X
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola X
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Toole
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo x

Chain Letters

Max received his first chain letter today - a request for stickers to be mailed to the first person on the list and send the letter to 6 more friends, with the ultimate goal that you will get 36 packs of stickers in a few weeks. Seriously, WTF?!?!

As a pre-teen I used to get these letters all the time, and probably even sent a few out in my day, but I can't actually remember ever getting a single pack of stickers or whatever the game was for then. Not one single time! My mother used to tell me not to bother, but I was a determined 10 year old.

Now, Max isn't even two yet and he got his first chain letter. Seriously! The friend who had her 3 year old daughter actually participate is a good friend that I would not have expected to be taken by this nonsense (and I hope she doesn't read this blog, but if her name isn't Polly the odds are low). Because for my little rant, when I am struggling to balance a family, job, birthday party, holiday season, and all the rest, why would I want to take even an hour to retype this letter, add names to a list and mail it to 6 unsuspecting friends and endure their wrath at the end of the week.

Ok, rant over... but no, I will not do as the letter suggest and call the girls mommy and let her know I won't be participating because it wouldn't be fair for this girl to get less stickers. Sorry, bitchy moment!

My First Sedar

With 48 hours notice, I am hosting my first sedar tomorrow night. Thankfully for me, there is far less pressure the second night of Passover, as everyone will have been to a Sedar the first night.

My mother (who's idea this last minute celebration was to begin with) will be providing the rotisserie chicken, as there is just no way I can make a turkey while working a full day tomorrow. However, with Passover comes a lot of traditional foods, some of which are just used for a small taste, after hours of prep time. So, this morning I bought the parsley, snagged the last shank bone from the butcher, boiled eggs, and made Charosetz (for the non-initiated it is a mix of walnuts, apples, wine and cinnamon, and serves as breakfast all week long for me!)

I am excited to use my sedar plate for the first time! It was an engagement gift from family friends, purchased for us 9 years ago. Since then, the mother has passed on. She was a dear friend of my in-laws and her son was a groomsman in our wedding. Tucked inside the box was a card she had sent with the gift that I must have kept as a reminder of who the gift was from. It brought tears to my eyes last night, and will remain with the plate when it is rewrapped for years to come.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow evening. And for as much as I might wish I could clone myself to get everything done between tonight's family gathering and having to work a full day tomorrow, being able to host a Jewish celebration with my family, really makes me proud. Glad that I do manage to balance everything in life, as best I can. And happy that we are instilling a sense of Judaism in Max at an early age. While next year won't be in Jerusalem, it very well might be at the Reissman's!

Passover and Easter

Max went to his first Egg Hunt this weekend and had a blast, once he realized that picking up eggs and collecting them in a bucket (because we are jewish, duh) was the entire game!

The bunny, my friend Sheila, was quite frightening - not her fault. But as you can see Max did not enjoy that part as much as the chocolate collecting part. Of course he never got to eat any of the chocolate as mommy and daddy helped a little too much! Hey, Passover is coming up and we won't eat any good sweets for 8 days.

He ended the day with a rousing dance on the pagoda platform. I must note that it was not raining, but Max wouldn't leave the house without his raincoat, and I wasn't up for the battle.

And we ended the day with 25 readings of P is for Passover - Max now knows all his letters and can't point out a Kipah. It can be hard to teach Judaism when Easter is far more fun! But I want Max to understand all religions, so if an occassional chocolate bunny makes his way to our house, I'm okay with that!

Colgate Wisp

Saw a press release this morning on this new product (no, I am not a paid blogger) and it looks like the answer to my dreams! It is a disposable, one use toothbrush, smaller than the average lipstick and you can see all about it HERE.

I can't tell you how often I've finished up a cup of coffee and wished I could go brush. Back in my smoking days I would suck on mints constantly, but they just never do the trick. Since having a baby, I hate to admit it, but there have been days I've just forgotten in a harried attempt to get everyone out the door on time.

This product seems to be priced reasonably and will avoid my former solution of carrying a small toothpaste in my bag. You can imagine the messes I've had!

Nap Time for Mommy

5:30-6:15am wakeups for three weeks, after over a year of sleeping uptil 7:30-8! Seriously, not sure what to do here and open to all advice.

Eight Years

Today is our eighth anniversary! I've now been married longer than I was in high school and college combined. I pointed this out to a friend of mine at work and she pointed out that when I got married in 2001, she was a sophmore in High School. That made me feel older than anything else.

Celebrations change once you have children, so instead of a romantic meal out with a bottle of wine, we will be having take out sushi and diet coke to celebrate! But I did get a day at the spa on Sunday, so who can complain.

No Go

It breaks my heart when Max cries as I leave for work in the morning, but today instead of crying he said "No go Mommy" I know this too should break my heart, but I was just too excited that he was using a full sentence that I left the house smiling. Maybe I missed the point.

Bright Spot

The octo-mom's plan all along was to collect welfare. Not as dumb as I thought; at least she had a plan.

TV Excitement

One of the few things I hate about the holiday season is the lack of any new TV shows. I know, I should be out partying with friends and colleagues every night, but clearly with a 20 month old at home and wanting to watch our budgets, most people I know are still at home 5 out of 7 nights a week. And those nights are far more dull without trashy reality tv and soap opera like prime time dramas to obsess over. Yes, I could spend quality time making gourmet meals for Adam and I to enjoy with a bottle of wine, but really, at the end of a long work day, once Max is in bed, trashy tv is the way to go!

And with last nights combo of Gossip Girl and Momma's Boys, all is right in my world again!

Israel/Gaza

I want to write about the conflict in Gaza, but have had trouble wrapping my head around all my thoughts right now, so I apologize for some disjointed thoughts.

I get so frustrated with US Media depicting this as a war between two countries, equally to blame and equally in defense of their own. That is not the case. Hamas bombed Israel for years while the Israeli Govt sat back and watched; taking the high road as the stronger, more powerful nation and wanting to avoid an all out war. We did this for seven years!

Well, when is it enough - apparantely right now! Israel was tired of watching its country be bombed, people dying (even just one death is too much) and the world telling Israel to be the better man and not react. Time is up and Israel decided to fight back. To protect their land. And I am fully behind their actions. Am I upset that Palestinian children have died - of course! What Jew wouldn't be devastated at the death of innocent children? But what other choice do we have? Can we let Hamas gain strenght and momentum until they demolish all of Israel? No.

And more importantly, what if Israel called up President Bush and told him not to bomb Iraq - let the Iraqi's fight among themselves. Would Bush have said "okay, your call!" No. Well than Israel, at the very least, deserves complete understanding from us - if not military aid to help stamp out terrorism. We should be united in this, not made to feel like Israel is the aggressor.