"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream."--Kerouac

I am in such a good place right now. I've been listening to Joni Mitchell and wrapping super-belated Channukah presents all day for my trip to Florida tomorrow (!!!). Combine that with a morning walk around chilly, sunny DC and some cinnamon-infused oatmeal and baby, I'm unstoppable!

Oh, and did I mention that I'm finished with the semester? Well, I am. I'm finished and it feels so good. Last night, I fell asleep while reading in bed and it was glorious. I haven't been able to read for pleasure in so long. Winter Break, you really know how to spoil a girl.

So what have I been up to since last Tuesday?

Well, Zan visited last week and we saw Judy Gold's one-woman show. And it was hilarious, and it was so nice to see Zan and even though we hadn't seen each other in a while, it was as if we hadn't missed a beat! I also appreciate that Zan gets most Jewish humor. The show is based around Judy's life as a gay, 6'1, Jewish mother of two. It reminded me a lot of Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays but not as polished--which makes sense, since the show just started its run a week prior.

Anyway, like I was saying, I cannot wait to get home to Florida. Monday night I'm seeing the Simmons and we're having a bbq and on Tuesday I'm going to visit Grandpa Schaeffer and hopefully see Stacey and Sarah. I miss them a lot, and I hope Sarah ends up in DC next year. It would be great to have her as a roomate/at arm's length. Oh and Jenn is home and I'm really hoping we can spend some one-on-one time together to catch up. Our lives, somehow, are at a very similar crossroads right now. We're each in long "distance-y" relationships and it's comforting to be "going through it" with someone who you can be so candid and open with.

Oh, and New Years Eve should be too much fun for words.

I'm hoping that by blogging about paper-writing, I'll feel more motivated to make this one final push and be done with it. Overall, I've been feeling really lazy and unproductive lately. Maybe it's the holiday season or the overall feeling of restlessness that's been pumping through my veins since November, but all I do lately is look at travel blogs and plan make-believe vacations to beautiful (and warm) hiking spots and far-off ...states.

But I really need to get going--get going on this final paper, get going on cleaning my apartment and doing laundry, get going on meeting new people, get going on figuring out when I'm going home.

I didn't realize how much I needed this break, but I can't wait to relax and not have to worry about classes and readings.

Have I mentioned that teaching is the only thing keeping me grounded? Well it is, and I'm thankful.

"The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings. Let food be your medicine." - Hippocrates

December, I love you.

Last night, I took the "long way" home from campus. I walked through Georgetown's neighborhoods, and, like the voyeur I am, peaked in stranger's windows admiring their Christmas trees and lights. There's something so magical about this time of year and I feel so thankful to be able to enjoy it.

I also have a TON of gifts that need, at some point, to be sent on their way via US Postage. I know Hannukah is pretty much over, but unfortunately friends and family of all creeds will be getting their gifts probably sometime late next week. It will be worth it, though. Oh yes.

Tonight, after turning in paper 1 of 2 (almost there!!!) I went to Trader Joe's and bought winter butternut squash in celebration of December, my favorite month. And, oh my lord, was that a good decision. I chopped it up, added a little olive oil and S&P, put it in the oven at 350 and I was set. Luckily I also made enough to have leftovers to take me through the blizzard (?) that's taking over the nation's capital as we (you? and I?) speak!

I'm not sure why I've been so adventurous in the kitchen lately. It's probably a form of paper-writing procrastination. If you know me, you know I'm a creature of habit. Give me a big bowl of oatmeal, some soy milk, and an apple doused in peanut butter at every meal, and I'm a happy camper. There's something more "grown-up" though about cooking "real" food, and maybe that's something I'm needing to feeling right now.

I also went to temple, again. It was nice, but I was so out of it from writing all day and then rushing around in order to get dinner in my belly and myself out the door in time for services. I'll probably go again though--the Rabbi did a sort of "close reading" of the Torah portion which reminded me of my English courses. I liked that--way more than the preachy-sermons I am used to.

Oh, and the other day I was officially accepted to the TESL program and got to talking with a Lingistics grad student about the course. Sounds like it'll be fairly more intense than I thought--especially for an online course--but I'm still looking forward to it. I felt a little funny though filling out the language proficiency section on the application and it got me thinking about Hebrew again. There have been two points in my life that I've felt "proficient" in Hebrew, and both times I've let it slip away. The first, I can't really blame myself for. It was after leaving Donna Klein and transferring to public school (gasp!) Lord knows that awkward 13 year old needed to focus on taming her 'fro and putting in contact lenses more than studying verb conjugation. (amen) The second time was in College. Even though I took the bare minimum (2 years) it was amazing how everything from years previous just sort of came back up to the surface so easily. But other classes and priorities took precedent over Hebrew again, and now, while I can understand most of what I hear, I really can no longer speak it...coherently.

Anyway, this snowy weekend I plan to enjoy some TJ's dark chocolate cocoa (!!!) and plow through (...) my LAST paper of the semester!

happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city--george burns.

I flew back to DC late last night--yes, that's right, on Thanksgiving. And even though there was no turkey waiting for me when I got home, the crisp air that hit my face as I walked out of the airport felt good and sweet, like November is supposed to.

Coming home a day early meant that today hasn't felt like a Friday, and all in all I feel a little off my game. Then again, I guess that's to be expected. I still haven't been able to think too much about the last seven days, to digest it all and reconcile what I eventually need to reconcile. It just feels like a half-remembered bad dream.

Oh, and my car died today, but that's OK. Although I'm not all that superstitious, experience has taught me the old adage that "things happen in three's" holds true. The first two events were, as you know, my grandmother's funeral and our house being robbed the next day. The death of my car, then, completes the cycle. Believe it or not, I'm a little relieved, because the passing of that third event should mean that the bad luck is behind me. I had actually been anxiously awaiting the third "catastrophe" so that I could move on with my life, and there were far worse things that could have happened than the hassle of calling AAA (Especially considering the tone that the previous two events set).

Nonetheless, today I tried very hard to get my mind off things. I started off the day with a big, comforting bowl of oatmeal (my favorite breakfast) and spent too many hours at Target listening to Christmas music and buying myriad odds and ends for both my apartment and my friends and family. I was going to go to the gym, but felt that my time would be better served getting a huge flatbread salad from Cosi and then going home and taking a long shower and curling up on my couch.

And then I wrote down a list of things I want to do during Christmas break. (It's beyond me that the only thing that stands between me and winter vacation are two 15 page papers. Where on Earth did this semester go? ) My lofty cold-weather plans include painting assorted pottery at ColorMeMine (!!!), going to synagogue and making my first concerted effort in four years to meet other Jews (...), cooking REAL food (and becoming a more adventurous cook in the process), and maybe visiting my Uncle in Connecticut again (I'm hooked on this whole invention called "New England").


This is all, fingers crossed, assuming my grandfather doesn't pass away, which is a distinct possibility. In which case, I'll be back in Florida despite my best efforts.

I also, in the spirit of the holiday, composed a brief list of what I'm most thankful for:
1. My parents, and sister, and my grandparents
2. My and their health
3. My Uncle and Aunt
4. Refer to 2.
5. My Boca friends, my Williamsburg friends, and my Georgetown friends.

..."Oatmeal" would have been on that list as well, but it seemed that if I wrote that down then all bets would be off and I wouldn't be able to, in good conscience, look anyone else, not mentioned on the list, in the eye ever again....because how do you explain to someone that they were trumped by breakfast cereal?

Tonight, still in pursuit of regaining my pre-thanksgiving routine and composure, I was feeling adventurous and inspired by this great blog I came across: http://eatliverun.com and I made the most DELICIOUS and filling dinner! I found a great recipe for rosemary and thyme baked chicken and added a side of mashed sweet potatoes and sauted spinach. For some reason, the decision to cook a real dinner tonight made me feel calm for the first time in several days. Despite all the sweets and bread that we had while sitting shiva, we hadn't really had too many sit-down meals. It felt good to do so tonight, to add back some semblance of normalcy.

we are for each other; then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis

My grandmother passed away. My grandmother. She passed away. She died. My grandmother.

No matter how many times I say it or re-say it, it never sounds right. How does a woman like that, a woman who never stopped talking, stop talking for good? Her apartment is now hollow and quiet, all that's left is the puffing sound of my grandfather's oxygen machine. Is this death? Is this what it sounds like?

And then there's my grandfather and, thanks to age and senility, there's his inability to hold onto the memory of his wife's death for more than an hour. It slips away from him; the glue refuses to hold and things fall apart and each time we have to remind him where his dead wife has gone to.

The fact is I've been lucky enough in life to never have had to deal directly with death. In fact, I've thought astoundingly little about death and what death means and what I believe death to be. If you asked me two weeks ago what I thought of death, I'd say it was when your heart stopped beating and your brain stopped thinking and your being stopped being. But now, I don't know about any of that.

I tell my students to stop thinking in binaries. Maybe I should do the same. Specifically, what I'm thinking of is William Wordsworth's "We Are Seven" and the little girl who insists that she and her siblings "are seven" even though "two were buried in a grave." "Are" and "Were" are verbs meant to separate what is from what was, but lately it doesn't seem enough--as if, there needs to be a verb for all that falls in between.

If she is around, at least I know that she'll be glad at how the ceremony went and she'd, for once, love the way her hair and makeup were done. Of course, the lingering crumbs all over her counters and Chloe Dog on the furniture might be enough to aggravate the dead to rise again.

I don't think I'm coming home at all this winter break. Florida is a place where people come to die and, after this whole ordeal, I am very much in the mood for (the) living.

I write/ and write, and transcend/ nothing, escape/ nothing, nothing/ is truly born from me,/ yet magically it's better/ than nothing

I've been wanting to start a blog since August, ever since I began graduate school at Georgetown. I'm not sure why I waited so long. I guess that although I've been nearly bursting at the seams with feelings of what I can only think to describe as a type of mania--an extreme and unrelenting sense of elation--those feelings have also prevented me from writing anything down. In other words, I've been suffering from sensory overload, from too many good things occurring all at once. The result has been that those feelings--until now--have pretty much transcended any type of (human) articulation. For one reason or another though, tonight I'm finally able--and willing--to harness those squeals and spasms of delight into...real words.

Over the past two months, it's become more and more apparent that a Master's program in English literature is more a lifestyle choice than an academic means to an end. It's only November and I've already presented my first conference paper, spent more than a handful of "happy hours" talking about literary cannon, seen four productions at the Shakespeare Theater Company, and met some of the most wonderful and wacky English majors I could have ever hoped to meet. Basically, the term "graduate school" has come to mean anything entailing a combination of good literature, good wine, and good people.

And even though I'm having the time of my life, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving and seeing friends and family (and eating turkey and obscene amounts of pumpkin pie).

There have been a good deal of personal demons that I've spent the last year working hard to overcome/come to terms with, and I can't even begin to explain how incredible it feels to finally be able to wake up each morning and feel happy and strong and confident; in truth, a year ago I would not have thought that these feelings were possible; heck, a year ago, Georgetown wasn't even on the table, let alone finishing my senior year. But, somehow, I'm here and I've done it.

I'm excited to see what else is in store.