Daily thoughts

If you are going to make rules, you should think them out better:

What if a person needs a service dog? Should that not be allowed? But then what if it's a service dog in training?

As to food, what if special food is needed for dietary or health purposes (hypoglycemic?)?

And this throwing of sweets, what if I think sweets are bad for my children? I think parents should be required to bring non-carbohydrate based treats for those children who should or may not eat sweets.

Also, if you are going to bring children, have them respect the furniture as you would have them respect the furniture in the house of a person you respect: maybe keep the shoes off the upholstery.

And let's make some rules for the rest of our Yishuv while we are at it:

This is the holy land, it's not just that we have a holy place-a synagogue-in a place we happen to live. Most of us are only a few generations from those who chose to live here because of the promise of this place, or maybe the freedom from oppression, terror and holocaust somewhere else. Let's make some rules for treating it accordingly.

How about we start by not stepping over garbage on our way to or from synagogue. It doesn't matter if you didn't put it there. Too often I am reminded of Crusty the Clown on the Simpsons: “Don't look at me, I didn't do it!” except in his case it's a joke, maybe a sad commentary. ntI don't get how Israelis, and especially religious ones, can give this answer with a straight face.

Or cleaning up the shmutz you just swept out of the synagogue, or your house, or any other building.

Or require yourselves to make the place you live more livable. I am reminded of going up to the tower once, and there was an army group there, and the commander telling people to look at this beautiful place, which it is, until you look down at your feet and see the garbage left by the various visitors to the place.

So I propose the rule: one in ten of your exercise routes, you must replace with a turn with a garbage bag on that route to make it beautiful. Then, when it is clean, as required.

Maybe we should have a rule requiring people to think: Who thought it was a good idea to place garbage cans right next to bus stops?

The Answer is Always More Bureaucracy

I obviously think we need more bureaucracy, not less.

Let's call out the Anthroposophists directly. What could be good about that approach if it disturbs my prayer?

Let's make a committee of rules for rule-makers for rules in synagogues.

Or we could just paraphrase Hillel: Please refrain from being an A-hole.

Instead, we have decided that “all the rest is commentary” must somehow be codified in some ridiculous bureaucratic set of rules that will just keep growing because it can't capture everything, and one day a girl will come in who has wheels in her shoes, and we'll have to decide if that's a scooter, or if she is exempt as long as she doesn't wheel too obviously to her place.

Hey there Family:

So I had it that today is Saba's birthday, but I might be a day off. For his eulogy, which I never delivered but virtually, I had it that he was born when Channukah's candles were shining brightest. He would have been ninety.

I am thinking that the people who live the longest are those who suck the most out of life. This is inspired by Molly Cummings Minot Cook, a bunch of whose tools, and a desk, I bought at an online auction. So I've thought about her, and wonder if she would have been the type of person to waste her time on such a thing as an estate auction when there is so much more important stuff to be done in the world.

But then what's important. For her, she was a big gardener. Maybe her tools, and wondering about legacies, are part of my garden.

I spent Wednesday afternoon/evening/night squeezing a door frame so that a door would close and open better (thanks it part to Ms. Cook's tools), setting up her desk (my basement office, picture above, and programming some of the phones on the phone system, and enjoy these things. But then there is often an “I should be doing other things.”

And that was Thursday. I didn't arrange for the driveway to be plowed figuring it's not that big, and I could shovel it. And I might have done so if I'd got out there at six inches, and come again when the snow was over.

Instead, I took a walk with my camera in the snow and cold for two or three hours (and took the picture for Lani's warehouse that I posted over at Ilan.red yesterday. And then I slept really well (I got up at 8:39), and prayed, and then I went out to shovel.

And it was good, and then it was too much, because other things are more important. And if I'd just sucked it up and bought the snow-blower I wanted to at the pawn shop a month ago, I'd have made quick work of the driveway, but it had a minor defect (I could have easily addressed), and I was like “Who needs it. I've never had one before.” And it's not the machine I need, but the time that is too precious, and I wasted too much.

So I guess it's a question of gardens, and maybe weeds. In the end, it's what I cultivate that grows: I should choose to cultivate the right things, and not get lost in the weeds, or the weeding, or someone else's garden, though a sojourn there can be nice.

Distraction, procrastination, or is it diversion and entertainment, or is it just the spin we put on it.

Yesterday, maybe this morning, I was looking for a graphic Ilan had sent me. I checked my e-mail, and an e-mail from Staples was there. I opened it. That is another's garden, or maybe one of those poison berries. Staples apparently has a bunch of chairs on sale, and I can admit my office chair has the bottom falling out, or I suspect the springs or under support have failed. I could use it long yet as it is, but it's pretty damned ugly. But the point is it took me off course.

The course was to find a graphic to get my business card done as I'd just come up with a New Year's card, and want to visit Lenny already (dammit!). But then I spent too much time on the New Year's postcard.

I think what I need is a list of trusty vendors, or a projects manager who can put all these things together for me. I have way more ideas than I can execute on my own. So someone I can give my card design idea to, who can hand it off to the right service person without my having to worry about it. Or the website design, or the funnel design, or . . . . You get the point.

Maybe save some things for therapy, vacuuming, the occasional ironing, but maybe not all the ironing. Fixing the lamp (forty years old probably, and from a special person; the lamp hasn't been well in a long time, the person long dead; it only needed two screws) complete with the smoke stains and smell.

Maybe get into dictating my correspondence and have it come back pretty, and not have to mess with it.

I suppose it's about learning what to let go, and where to play. I think that's the frame for your warehouse too, Ilan.

It's about knowing when to pull the occasional weed, and when to give the weeding over to a gardener.

So that's what I'm working on. And with the practice the same. I'm still exploring how that will look.

So that's my thought for now.

And a beautiful week to all of you. Be safe while your momma is gone. And have fun, and learn something, and find a way to put a smile on another person's face, and maybe one on yours will follow.

Hey there Birthday Boy:

I guess what I have to wish you is the knowledge that you are on the right path, the faith that the actions you take are the right ones, even when they turn out to be the wrong ones.

May your curiosity take you to better and better places. May you find there the things you never knew you were looking for but you were glad you found.

May you continue to grow wiser, and may you find more reasons to laugh every day.

May people read your thoughts and be lifted, carried to new worlds. May they respond, and laugh, and cry, and think, and put a smile on your face.

May you find friendship and never be lacking for people to share your journey. And may you find the one, in her time, to laugh, and cry, and make new human beings, and grow old with.

And may the world be a better place for you having visited it. And may that visit be a good long, wealthy, healthy, joy of a ride.

You can't get writing if you're wasting your time on social media, although you might find a lot of prompts if you look for them. My son seems to be good at coming up with them. You should check out his blog.

I come out of this week a bit more peaceful than I have many others,

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So it's funny how winter, with its connotation of darkness and cold, begins just at that moment when the days start getting longer. So I'm here and what to make of it. I don't want the next thirty years to look like the last, or the first, although I wax nostalgic for the ones that I was probably most confused and anxious through, let's say 18 to 28. While I am sure I was completely unsure of myself, they were also years ripe with possibility which is hard to conceive as being available now.

I did come home from synagogue with a certain spirit of lightness, like more is possible, like maybe I could run another marathon, and I could, but I've done that. There are actually a whole lot of marathons I could run, and it's time to pick one, maybe two, at the very outside three,…but I want to run them all. And that I know I can't.

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