a blended life

Work update: I need a job. So far I have a job that is exactly one hour per week. It's working for an after school program at Blue School--a private school in Lower Manhattan that was started by Blue Man Group. I'm pretty stoked about my one hour a week here. However...that one special hour will not tide us over. I was tentatively offered another job and it fell through. I'd like to teach piano lessons but have yet to find any neighbors that don't speak either Yiddish or Bengali. I have an interview Monday for a job that is teaching SAT prep for high schoolers on Saturdays only. It looks like I'll be doing a hodge podge of work, trying to make ends meet, get out of the house and accommodate a possibly difficult semester of Jacob trying to apply for residency. I've decided to homeschool the girls for sure. No other school or option is panning out to be a better choice. The decision soothes some fears and concerns while introducing some new ones. No choice wa...

Having the girls home again has been everything I wanted it to be. They are smarter in some ways, scarred in others, and much more open-minded and adaptable than I give them credit for. Today I took them on a long subway ride into Manhattan to find the Cupcake ATM. They took the whole thing in stride--the vast variety of people, the noise, the smells, the rushing and the waiting. It looked like watching two little born and raised New Yorkers. They put me to shame, with my carrying on and on the past two months about litter, heat and weirdos. They even got BORED, which I thought was a wonderful sign of resiliency. They weren't overstimulated or too emotionally caught up in the newness. They were just bored of the ride. I was so happy! They are sleeping peacefully tonight. Leah walks around the house saying, "This place is so cute! " Hannah needs to move her body and specifically requested a park for tomorrow. I wanted to have a record somewhere of the Broadway show we we...

People, I screwed up my template again. I can't even believe it. Please accept my apologies. In other news, my blog has had 15,000 page views since I started writing 6 1/2 years ago. I feel like I should celebrate or something.

I seem to have fixed my new blog look the best I know how, though I realized only 15 hours into the process that what I really wanted was polkadots. But we're all gonna have to live with the dots for a while because I'm too exhausted with the process to fix it anytime soon. My post about Delaware will probably be as short as my trip was and as exciting as Delaware is capable of being. Jacob insisted I come with him on this overnight trip, probably for two reasons: a) He wanted company to ease the nerves involving his big test and b) He was concerned, as he should have been, that I would light a match to our new apartment and walk away.  So I halfheartedly followed. Jacob thought he was so funny  by starting every sentence with "I'm well aware, Delaware, that _______" and then filling in the blank with something totally unrelated. This was how we spent the 4 hour drive down. 4 hours because it was Friday night on the New Jersey turnpike. Awesome timing, us...

Blog under construction!!! Translate: I treated myself to a shmancy blog template that I accidentally fell in love with on Easy. And I don't understand how to install it. So gimme a few days, eh? Stay tuned this week--I know everyone is dying to hear about my exciting weekend in Delaware. Sarcasm intended.

I hope you can see this video of a pole dancer--I was really impressed! Today marks a monumental milestone in our effort to be New Yorkers--we have moved our stuff out of a storage unit and into the apartment I will now refer in future posts as home . (Translation: Jacob hired a trio of movers from Ukraine, Georgia the country and Russia to move our useless garbage from one borough to another. They did a fantastic job, by the way.) We live on a semi-busy corner south of Greenwood Cemetery. Here's the building and we are on the ground floor, covered up by those trees. Behind us is the Jewish girls school and on the other side is an Islamic center. Our upstairs neighbors just moved here from Bangladesh and don't understand the appliances or plumbing--including toilet flushing. They also don't understand English. Here's the larger of the two bedrooms, where we decided the girls can live. I don't know where to even set up their beds. The living room...

I learned when I moved to Miami that I needed places to go that were soothing, rejuvenating, and peaceful when I couldn't go to the temple. It wasn't hard to figure out--Miami is paradise with mosquitoes and I'm such a sucker for the ocean. Coconut Grove and those banyan trees, Biscayne National Park, Marco Island, and anything involving the Keys.  It's been harder for me to find a happy place here. "Crowded" means something different to me now and I realize that people here find solace in the midst of sirens, garbage, honking horns and hordes of lost tourists. I've wanted to grab people who look like they've found their center and shake them, " How on earth can you smile like that in the middle of all this??"  I don't want to sound like a total curmudgeon, so I'll stop ranting and announce that I've found a few place that really reset my soul, especially while we're technically homeless and the temple is being cleane...