A word, if I may, about holiday cards. Thank you to those of you who have been kind enough to send them to me, knowing that I don't send cards myself. But since I don't send cards, it just doesn't seem fair for me to let you send them to me, so although I understand and appreciate your well wishes, I'm going to call a little mini-moratorium here on sending my address out so you can send me cards. Nothing personal, not to anyone, believe me. So, holiday cards. I'll probably write more on the underlying issue tomorrow, which is my 15th Re-Birthday -- now that's hard to believe -- but I stopped sending holiday cards 15 years ago, when I had more pressing things on my mind (heh heh) like a brain tumor and wondering if I would ever spend another Christmas with my children. I skipped the whole card thing, and amazingly, the earth continued to spin on its axis and dogs and cats did not mate, nor did any other harbingers of world-wide disaster and destruction appear. So the next year, I figured Hey, my holiday cards, or lack thereof, didn't seem to cause a ripple in the universe, and I gave it up for good. I don't, btw, send Jewish New Year cards either, nor do I send or give birthday, anniversary, or any other cards. It's just not something I do, for whatever reason.
(Shirl, of course, lurved giving any and all cards, always seemed to have an endless supply on hand and was always buying more, never forgot anyone's birthday, no matter how distant, and thought the poems in the cards had truly deep meaning. So there's your reason, I guess.)
I have slept reasonably well the last two nights, but I still feel like I have to catch up. Maybe I'll get to take a nap today. I find that when I sleep well I wake up achier, as if I didn't move around enough all night to keep everything from stiffening up. You know what they say about getting old, t'ain't for sissies.
I won the bidding on the Robert E. Lee bobblehead, so that means I get to keep Thomas Jefferson and I have nice little Civil War set of Lee, Grant, and Lincoln for the Hubs. That should do for this year. Mostly, he likes to buy his hobby stuff himself, like maps and books, but I can occasionally squeeze in a goofy toy. (K got him a Robert E. Lee action figure at a museum a couple of years ago. He also has an excellent t-shirt, which he ordered himself from somewhere, with Lee on the front and a quotation on the back "I wish these people would just go away and leave us alone.") Anyway, I hope the bobbles get here before Christmas.
The Ancestral Foods of My People
When K got up, I took a break from writing and went out for bagels. Bagels are everywhere now, right? Are they good? We tend to have this snobbery thing going here which is that once you are 50 miles from New York City, you can't get a decent bagel. Here is Bizarro Town, we have at least a half dozen bagel places, all of which produce what we believe to be the finest bagels known to man. When I was a kid, "getting bagels" meant that Jack came home with a bag of a dozen assorted, and maybe a half pound of sliced lox, lox to us being what is often called "belly lox", delicious, salty, pink sliced salmon.
But the bagel places in town now pretty much all will prepare your bagel for you, which is more expensive by the bagel but cheaper than buying bagels by the dozen and lox by the pound. And since my kids rejected the salty belly lox years back, I got my two plain bagels this morning with cream cheese and sliced nova, the more traditional, less salty lox.
I have no idea how lox became associated with bagels, and therefore, Jewish food, since I think it's some sort of Scandinavian thing orginally; you know, you can get "lax" at the Ikea restaurant. Don't care. It's all about the bagels, you know; crispy crust and soft inside, not too big, not too small, hole in just the right proportion to the rest of it, seeds or toppings, if you get them, just right, not covering the whole damn thing a la Dunkin Donuts. Bagels, the perfect food.
The coffee I got there sucks, but that was just the icing on the cake, as it were. I was there, so I got coffee, the day's second cup since I got a DD latte on my way to ShopRite a couple of hours ago. I can deal.
I so rarely write in the morning; we'll have to see what the day brings. I'm thinking about a Re-Birthday entry for tomorrow. Fifteen. Who'd a thunk it?
