lavendersparkle

My, it has been a long time since I have updated. I'm still reading my reading page every day or so, but life has been just the right combination of busy, happy and uneventful to keep me from writing posts with any regularity.

I thought I'd give you an update on my spiritual PDE efforts.

I have now read my way through the whole Tanach in translation. I think it has given me an appreciation of how the bits that pop up as haftarahs fit in with the whole. I commented to a friend that it was a bit like actually sitting down to watch the box set of a show you've previously just caught the odd repeat of when flicking through TV channels. I've found the reading on my commute method every week quite useful, so I've bought The Observant Life on Kindle and have just started reading that. In terms of Talmud, I'm continuing going to Talmud study at my rabbi's house about once a fortnight and I've also started doing chavrutah with kerrypolka on the alternative weeks. We're doing about one daf (page) a go in English, which means that it will take over a 100 years for us to get through the Babylonian Talmud at this rate. I don't think we're going to make it.

I have done less well with the Hebrew. I've only attempted any translation about three times in the last more than three months. I just can't seem to bring myself to get into the habit of studying it regularly. Grammar exercises are boring but translation at my current standard is a massive slog, looking up the majority of the vocabulary and trying to remind myself of the verb and noun forms. I think another obstacle is that I need a grammar book and a big dictionary to have a hope at translating anything, which means that Hebrew practice can't be done on my commute, which is a shame because I find that the easiest time to slot in learning (the Tanach was read almost exclusively on the Northern Line). I'd welcome suggestions for ways to brush up my Biblical Hebrew other than just sucking it up and getting on with doing it on a regular basis.

I'm starting to think more about children. Don't jump the gun with the 'mazel tov's, but as a happily married non-childfree woman in her thirtieth year, they're beginning to become less of a far off hypothetical. I've been thinking about the kind of Jewish upbringing and eduction I'd like to provide for my children. Now, I hate the 'Judaism as a giant intergenerational ponzi scheme' but I think that, just as 'what would you do if you had a million pounds?' can be a useful thought experiment, 'what kind of religious example do you want to give to your children?' can be a useful thought experiment to work out what you'd like your religious life to be. This has motivated me more to improve my Hebrew. It's also made me want to explore prayer. Aside from shul, I almost never engage in set prayer. I think when (G@d willing) I have children, I'd like to encourage them to start and end the day with prayer. Many times in the past I've had a go at praying regularly, but I've never kept it up. This time I'm having a go at starting small. Really small. I'm trying to get into the habit of saying Modah Ani when I wake up in the morning. I'll see how I go at that.

I'd like to set up a filter on here to discuss *cough*taharat hamishpacha*cough*. I'm quite an open person but I know that Alec gets embarrassed with me broadcasting this sort of stuff across t'internets, but I think it would be OK on a select filter. I'm probably not going to use it very much, but tell me if you'd like in.

I've been thinking about this for a while. To be honest, I don't know if it's a serious suggestion or a bizarre satire.

I think I took things a bit too much to heart as a child when they taught us about sharing. I'm so lucky to have everything I have and I get the urge to share it with people who weren't so lucky. An example of this is that I get the urge to share my husband. I'm so lucky to have him and he's so wonderful that whenever I hear of female friends having difficulty finding a nice male partner I get the urge to say "Look, I found a great one. We could share." Now this is a non-starter because Alec has a say in things and he is deeply monogamous by nature and took the message from Big Love that three wives means three times the nagging and more than three times the arguments. He also claims that if I talk about this to much with female friends they'll start avoiding me.

From a less personal point of view, I notice that there seem to be more good single women than good single men. When I think of my friends, there are lots of women who I can't understand still being single because they seem like such perfect girlfriend/wife material but not so much so with my male friends. I'm starting to think that there just aren't enough good men to go around.

From a more political perspective, I think polygamy could be like political lesbianism lite. I can see the logic of feminist separatism on statistical level. Women with male partners are more likely to be abused by their partners and their children are more likely to be abused by their partners because men are much more likely statistically to be abusive toward their family than women. Sometimes I get infuriated by the way feminism is always having to make itself palatable to men and sometimes I think that logically we should just up and off and set things up without them. On the other hand, I like some men and I don't want men who act kingly and righteously to be excluded from this utopia. I'm also aware that for some women, all the feminist theory in the world isn't going to stop them liking cock.

I think political polygamy could bring some of the advantages of political lesbianism. Women might be safer in polygamous marriages because they are sharing their partners and their living spaces with other women who could be more likely to see and act to protect each other and their children from abuse. They could also help to screen potential husbands for each other. Women could see how a man acted with his current partners to see whether he had abusive tendencies which only came out when he was living with a partner. So one side of the benefit can be summarised as women who share husbands would be able to protect each other.

The other side of it is that if you practise polygamy you don't have to have as many married men as in polygamous society. You can skim off the least sexist/abusive x% of men to have relationships with women and not have to expose women to the rest of them. Furthermore, the very real risk that if they don't sort themselves out they'll not be able to get a female partner, could force men to stop thinking that they're G@d's gift just because they have a Y chromosome. If a man doesn't want to do his share of the housework, he knows that his girlfriend could leave him for a man whose wives will confirm that he does. I suppose it's a similar argument to those saying that popular schools should be able to expand their intake. Good husbands will have more wives and all men will have to be better husbands if they want to have a wife.

Like I said, I'm not sure if this is a serious suggestion or a parody. Just some thinking out of the box.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you.

The words I got from atriec were: religion, marriage, clothing, Queens', food

( religion )

( marriage )

( clothing )

( Queens' )

( food )

Things got a bit biblical here yesterday when we experienced a plague of lice. Well, actually, Alec mainly experienced the plague as I was a shul during the worst of it and he managed to get rid of the worst of it before I returned home.

The culprits were thrips, an annoying, seemingly pointless tiny insect which sucks the goodness out of food crops, and swarms. With the heat Alec and I have been sleeping with the bedroom window wide open. Happily I didn't bother to look out of the bedroom window as I was getting ready for shul so I left blissfully unaware that the entire area behind the blind was covered in the blighters. Alec, on the other hand, got up after I'd left, went into the living room and opened up the french windows, before looking out the bedroom window and seeing the swarm there. He quickly grabbed the hoover and sucked them up, unaware that even more of them were coming in through the open french windows until he walked into the living room to find thousands of them on the ceiling. So Alec had to close all of the window in the flat to keep them out whilst he proceeded to hoover the ceiling. This morning I tentatively opened one window a bit and we don't appear to have been engulfed in another plague.

Thrips are very annoying, however they have some advantages. They aren't attracted to food, so the shabbat lunch waiting on the kitchen side was fine, although I had a short panic when I thought the pepper in the salad dressing might be thrips. They are attracted to white things and light, so after Alec hoovered most of them up, a lot of the rest could be disposed of by leaving a light on and wiping them all off the lamp with damp cloth. The down side of their fondness for white light things is that MacBooks are a bit of a Mecca to them. So now there are a few thrips which will be staying with us, as they are inside my computer. Two of them are very clearly inside my computer because they got inside the screen and promptly died. Alec helpfully looked at the internet and found that the only way to deal with this would be to send the MacBook back the manufacturer to be disassembled to see if they could get them out. I don't want to bother doing that so for now I have two very dead pixels in my screen.

I think I might try to lose some weight. I don't know how much I weigh but I'm pretty sure that it's more than I weighed a year ago. I don't want to be stick thin, I love my little round belly, but lately I've noticed that it's getting less little and more round. I preferred it when it was a soft little curve rather than a greater expanse of flesh. I've definitely put on weight because I tried to put two things on this morning which I haven't worn in over six months and they didn't fit any more. Loosing a few pounds will probably be cheaper than replacing all of my clothes.

I've identified two main causes of the weight increase. Both are related to married life. I love baking and an oven of my own and a husband who likes cake have been great spurs to regular cake production. The problem with this is that this means that there is usually an inviting cake dome of cakes or biscuits about the place, which really needs eating up. So if I've made something I like I'll get the urge to snack on it throughout the day. I think I actually like making cake more than I like eating it, so I must try hard to get friends to come and eat my produce so I don't eat it all myself. I might make some batches of cakes today and take them down to the friends of Magen David Adom garden party.

The other issue is portion sizes. Alec and I tend to be scrupulously fair when portioning food between us. However, the nutritional needs of a 6"2 man and a 5"9 woman are not the same. If we were to eat exactly the same amount logically either I'd put on weight or he'd lose weight. On top of that, we both do the thing where you show affection by making lots of food and encouraging the other to eat. Before we got married I didn't usually have dessert, but Alec feels a bit guilty having dessert if I don't so he encourages me to and then even if I'm full I have some or I'll wait half an hour for a bit of space in my stomach and have some.

I'm aware that the best plan is to really stop the habits of eating when I'm not hungry, because it's a terrible habit to get into if your metabolism works properly. I think I'll also investigate getting a calories counter book. I don't think I'd aim for a particular number of calories a day, but I'm not sure exactly how different foods compare (obviously ice cream is more fattening than lettuce but I'm not sure how, for example, veggie chilli compares to veggie shepherds pie and broccli). I'm quite easy going about food, so if I'm trying to reduce my not-so-little-any-more round belly, I may as well pick lower calories meals.

Anyway, that's the plan.

Alec has been away for the weekend. He went away hillwalking/climbing in Wales from Friday morning until Monday night. He tried to persuade me to come with him but the idea of traipsing along in the rain and sharing a bunk room with several of our male friends didn't appeal. I don't think that I really like him being away for that long. One problem was that I found it quite difficult to sleep with him away so this afternoon zonked out in the afternoon in my 'able to sleep after cause of stress gone' way.

A couple of days ago Alec and I were chatting about the future and came up with an idea of how we could one day have a family pet despite Alec being allergic to fur and feathers. Pigs! As intelligent and sociable as a dog but without the allergy inducing fur and either way, they live outside. Also good because they can be fed a vegetarian diet. It's illegal to feed pigs food which could have been in contact with any meat, so kitchen scraps from a diary kosher kitchen are almost perfect to supplement their diet. Another plus is that it would probably ensure that our children never ate pork.