An old friend

When I first started using Facebook, not too long after it started to become popular, I felt like I was way too old for it. It seemed like only teenagers were on. And then Hadas (now almost 15) decided not to friend me :-( making it seem even more like it wasn't my place... [She later ditched Facebook, got back on & decided that adults are OK.] Now it seems like more and more people are on Facebook and this week I was able to get in touch with an old friend. From fourth grade (1977-78 school year).

I sent her a message entitled, "Wondering". And asked if she'd lived where we lived at the time. I got her response the next day. Yes. And very quickly she remembered who I was, including all sorts of details that I didn't (like that she used to love braiding my hair and that we used to hide in the closet to use lip gloss :-)) And I guess that if you grew up in one place and had a bunch of friends for your whole life, that might not be that exciting, even though it's been 30 years (um, yeah, Eema - my mom is still actually in her mid-to-late 20's, so that's really going to confuse her :-)) but for me, having grown up as a US Army brat and having moved away from my friends all the time, this is REALLY cool. My parents have friends who they've kept in touch with all those years, but their kids weren't my friends and I doubt we'd have any real memories together (with one exception I can think of).

It feels like such a gift that someone else is able to piece a part of my childhood back together with me. And as she said, we were so cool back then :-) We really were!

Thanks!

Thank you so much to everyone who keeps checking in despite my lack of posting...

My ISP is responsible for part of it - I had several days during which I wasn't able to log in, so I missed a real time congratulations to Kirby (now over at Children Mentioned) on the birth of her beautiful baby, Abby Rose.

My own Abigail had a bit of a fit when she first heard the name and told me, "I'm SO angry. That's MY name." (she went on with this for about 3 minutes) but as soon as I told her that they were going to call her Abby, she was instantly fine with it. I must admit it was hilarious to hear her go on about it. I guess that's what happens after a long day at preschool...

I'm beyond swamped. What Ohad and I usually do is that we each take on way too many things to do and then we split the work in the best way we can (like I'm doing the html for one of his experiments, while he finds articles that I need for my resesarch) but simple math (which we are both supposedly really good at) would show that it just doesn't work... but then, somehow, we work like crazy people, often until 11 or 12 at night and on Fridays and (today) at 7:30am and we manage to catch up. We're still not at that caught up stage right now, but I hope we'll get there sometime in the next few months... Or that we'll at least find time to drink coffee together in the morning without discussing the table of contents for the user manual I'm writing...

Hadas seems to really be enjoying her new school. If there's any kid who would do well in a place like the school she's going to, it's Hadas. She's very independent and confident. She's always been responsible about doing her schoolwork without being reminded and she really loves to learn. She gets along well with her roommates too. We're still learning what having her home on the weekends means - we want her to be happy to come home but to still feel like part of the family in terms of responsibility, so we let her sleep late, but asked her to help clear the table. It seems to be going well.

Oops. That was just Hadas on the phone. Her cold isn't getting better and she wanted to know what to do. Hard to be a long-distance mom :-(

I'm going to be that kind of mother...

It never occurred to me what I'd be like when my kids left home and it always seemed like it was about a million years away - until Hadas got into IASA, which meant she'd live on campus, in Jerusalem, starting this fall (i.e. last week).

On Thursday, after she finally finished packing her things, we drove to Jerusalem, got the key to her dorm room & went to set things up. Then there were about 4 hours of really interesting speeches (seriously) that made me totally jealous that I'm not going there (I'll omit the part about having to spend quite a lot of time keeping Yirmi from screaming) and then ate a dinner that looked much better than it tasted. And it didn't look that good. Hadas said they'd made a special effort for the parents and that the food she'd had when she spent 3 days there in April was actually worse. Maybe I don't need to worry about her gaining weight there...

I cry really easily. Perhaps I can blame the pregnancies, but maybe I was just always really emotional... in any case, when I drove off on Thursday, we just hugged each other and said goodbye - no tears. Hadas called before she went to sleep and then I've spoken to her every day since. She still feels like she's in summer camp, is getting along amazingly well with her 3 roommates (in their very simple, small room) and seems happy. When I talked to her on Sunday, we talked about food and she said she misses real food - so today I made her rice and chicken, with her favorite sauce and packed it up for her to take to her dorm. That's the first thing I've done that makes me feel really old.

She came home today to be at the scouts (she has a group of 5th graders) - about 1-1/2 hours each way - and she got to spend a total of about 20 minutes at home. The older kids go away a lot anyway, since they spend time with their dad, but it's so different - she doesn't really live here anymore & when she comes home, it will be to visit us. It's hard to get used to the idea. I'm really happy for her and I know the school is a fabulous opportunity - she's going to get the kind of education most people can only dream of. But I kind of miss having her around.

The Olympics are almost over

Note: Cross-posted on FertilityStories

I have really enjoyed watching the Olympics. Abigail (Guli) claims they're boring, but then - she's 3 and she'd rather watch Richard Scarry's Best Learning Songs Video Ever (a great video really, but it doesn't outdo the Olympics, at least not for me - and BTW, what is that insane pricing???). I remember watching in the middle of the night, while feeding Matan and Lilach, in 1996 - with the time difference (7 hours earlier there) it worked out great. I am already waiting for 2012.

In the meantime, Gwendomama, who I met at the BlogHer party in Macy's awarded me a Kick-Ass Blogger award (yes, that's the one and only time you'll see that word in my blog, I'm sure, as it's not one I ever use...) So - first - thanks :-) My blogging has a long way to go, but I do believe it's going to get better someday soon...

In the tradition of such awards, I'm supposed to pass it on to 5 bloggers:

Kirby, who doesn't blog often enough, but, when she does, she makes up for it. She's expecting her first baby any day now and still joined us on a yarn-spinning, goat-milking, archeological tour on Wednesday. How amazing is that?

Erin, who is a career mom and a very real person, one who's not afraid to say how she feels - even when it's far from easy.

Topcat who is a recovering addict, an infertility survivor and now dealing with her husband's cancer. And she's still got a sense of humor & plenty of attitude.

Doc Grumbles who grew up in a very screwed-up family that provides her with plenty of things to write about. And despite it all, she's so cool...

Sara who lives in Korea with her husband and daughter. I always look forward to reading her posts & I've particularly enjoyed the ones about life in Korea recently.

It's hard to stop at just 5... There are a lot of really great bloggers out there :-)

Wonders never cease

Psycho-ex just proposed to his girlfriend (at Lilach's bat mitzvah celebration, which we did not attend) and she said yes...

One of the best things about this is that he's moving away :-) (Unfortunately, the kids will still have to go there and she really doesn't like 2 of them and said - just last week - that she would never move in with psycho-ex again because she can't stand them - yes, she said this to their faces...)

One more thing down

I just sent out the first draft of the screens for a new security system for which I'm designing the user interface (the company draws up the specs, I make screens that people can use, a graphic designer makes it pretty and a programmer makes it work). The fact that I am able to do this between fixing up my seminar paper and having 6 kids home surprises even me.

I also wrote a speech for Lilach's Bat Mitzvah party (one that her father is throwing for her, that we're not going to). Her father's girlfriend had hit ctrl-c > ctrl-v from Wikipedia (in Hebrew) and then just deleted the "mother" in the thank you's section (actually, it was much worse than that, but I'll try to get to that in another post) and with Lilach having a difficult enough time reading things that she does understand, I thought it was really unfair (not to mention the fact that it seemed as if she had been born via immaculate male conception which was just weird). She loves the speech and since it includes a lot of bible passages (which are difficult to read correctly), Hadas is going to read those out loud for her. They practiced together today and it sounded great.

I even called my ex-sister-in-law yesterday to wish her happy birthday and to thank her for the powerpoint presentation that she made for Lilach (apparently she put in lots of pictures of the little girls too :-))

OK, back to the Olympics (at least I get to watch while I feed Yirmi :-))

Met with my advisor

First of all, she's really nice, which makes everything easier. I have a lot of work to do, especially in terms of statistics, but nothing really has to be reworked, which is cool. I am going to ask for an extension, though I haven't quite figured out yet how to do that... As for the results, which my advisor agreed are very interesting, I will only post them after I have turned in the paper (as she instructed me). It makes sense to me anyway...

In other news, for anyone who missed my update yesterday, Nomi can now eat eggs! She is still allergic to sesame seeds, bananas, kiwis and almonds (as far as we know) and is not allowed to have any nuts or peanuts until she's 3, but the two biggies (milk and eggs) are behind us. I think neither of us see it as a huge relief, because we've found so many ways to work around it that it really didn't make things difficult for us and we were never really worried that she had a dangerous allergy. On the other hand, it will be really fun to see her able to eat things that we've had to tell her to avoid for so long.