78 Days: The pleasance of normalcy

I had a decent day.  That should be something to celebrate.  A decent couple of days.  Yesterday I was in Jerusalem seeing good friends, hanging out, laughing, and even participated in an impromptu evening barbecue on the rooftop of a friend’s hippie-digs in a fun secular-religious-mixed-up-ancient-hippie neighborhood called Nachla’ot. Spicy sausage and marinated chicken thighs.  Oh yah.

Today, I had breakfast with my sister (totally forgot about the plans and went in hastily thrown on clothes and an unwashed face) at a nice cafe.  Made the mistake of ordering the only thing I’m kind of allowed to eat without realizing that it was the most expensive thing on the menu.  Ya, I paid around ten bucks, US, for a bowl of plain yogurt.  ‘Cause I can’t eat sugar or yeast.  Which means no fruit or sweet muesli or honey.  Or anything else cheaper on the menu, for that matter, like pastries or breakfast sandwiches.

Tomer Reshef Salon

Then I went and got my hair cut with my mom.  I have the best, the very best hair stylist in Israel.  Maybe in the world.  They call her the queen of the curly-haired people.  And goodness knows, more people in Israel than in any other place in the world have curly hair.  Or wavy hair.  Or frizzy huge undefinable hair.  The whole Jew-fro thing.  Yah.  This lady conquered it all.  If you can read Hebrew, or just want to see some cool hair photos, visit this article about Tomer Reshef’s Salon in a very hip designer-laden area of south Tel Aviv.  The philosophy is this: if you don’t use conditioner, your hair won’t frizz.  And I can safely say, it is true.  Takes some time.  But you can use a great aromatic natural oil “mask” after you wash your hair and leave it in.  Helps the curls stick.  It’s an all natural place.

My mother annoys me very quickly.  Luckily, as she was getting her hair colored and it would take another hour, I used the time to find wholesale warehouse kinda priced framers.  South Tel Aviv rocks.  It’s old.  It’s crumbly in areas.  It’s dirty.  But it’s got the goods.  Furniture, clothes, you name it, warehouse style.  In Italy, I bought a lot of great artwork.  Signed stuff, original prints, great souvenirs, but some of the stuff I know I’m going to love looking at for years.  And unlike my usual self (I have bought amazing art in the past, only to have put off framing for so long as to have forgotten it in boxes…for years), I took care of framing immediately.  I’m so excited to have picutres, my own pictures, with good frames and glass and matting, that I have chosen.  Such a relief, after living in someone else’s artist’s studio, stacks of paintings, walls full of paintings, none framed or framed well, none that I’ve chosen to be up there.  I shouldn’t be speaking so of my grandfather’s work.  People ooh and ahh when they visit me here.  It’s all a colorful picnic in theory…but you wouldn’t want to live there, ya know.

I will sum up with this, as I write too damned much, and I know people aren’t getting to the end.  Have you ever heard of a sabich?  It’s kind of like a sandwich.  Similar to falafel.  Hails from Iraq.  Well, I love them.  And I had one today at my favorite place to get them: Sabick Frishman, on the corner of Frishman and Dizingoff.  Just imagine, if you will…a whole pita, slit on top so you can smear the inside with hummus, tahini, a spicy chili-like paste, and amba (another sauce, bright orangey-yellow, very spicy and curry-flavored, made out of pickled mangos), filled with deep fried eggplant slices, sliced up hard-boiled egg, and chunks of baked potato, topped with finely chopped tomato salad, slices of onion (sprinkled with red sumac – a heavenly spice – that’s what really makes shawarma taste like shawarma, if you were interested), cilantro, more tahini, and a special spicy mixed vegetable salad.  You can then choose on your own to put various pickled and/or curried-pickled veggies on top.  It is heaven.  Feast your eyes on this:

After I ate, I went to this fab tiny little used book store with a (relatively) huge English-language sci-fi section.  Did you know there seem to be hundreds of spin-off Star Trek books?  I found an entire shelf of Star Trek Voyager novels.  Bizarre.  Do they take place after the crew gets back to the Alpha Quadrant?  Or during the Delta Quadrant voyage, and the authors somehow find a way to not mess up the TV show’s plotline?  Weird.  Who reads this stuff? And why do there seem to be many, many authors?  Who keeps the storylines straight?  Who safeguards the characters? Wonder if I should give it a try.  The reading or the writing…ha!

G’night y’all.  I have to get back to reading manuscripts.  I’m a big-ass procrastinator.  Gotta be ready by 8 am.  And it’s 11:45 pm.  Ahhh!

Just for kicks...who can refuse a Borg sex kitten

83 Days: Star Trek Voyager?

Seven of Nine

Good morning, world!  It’s a Saturday.  And I have about 9 days left in Israel.  It’s kind of a “vacation” amount of time…except for that I live here.  I have something like 8 important appointments to keep in the next week…amazing that I was able to schedule them all…ranging from my psychiatrist, to my waxist, to my Chinese medicine doctor, and much, much, more.  And today…nothing to do but enjoy a family lunch in celebration of my cousin’s 17th birthday…and tolerate my increasingly annoying mother who is staying with me for a couple days.  It’s a long story.  Don’t ask now, I don’t feel like telling it.  She came back from Italy with me and is staying until the end of June.  Which is a good thing I’m coming to the States in 9 days!

Some thoughts.

Star Trek Voyager.  A great TV series.  Not my abolute favorite Star Trek series (that would be TNG).  But something about the modernity of it, the better effects, the younger more sexy romantic situations, the isolation of the Delta quadrant…make it all very fun to watch.  And, I don’t think I mention my love of Star Trek, and of Star Trek Voyager too much on my blog.  Maybe a small handful of times.  Certainly, I don’t think I’ve ever devoted an entire entry to it.  But for some reason, in the last two weeks, most of my traffic has been coming from people searching for Star Trek Voyager.  Upwards of 50 people a day, sometimes.  For a teeny tiny non-profession and don’t wanna be kinda blog like mine, that’s surprising.  Thanks trekkie guys!  I don’t think I’m contributing much to the online trekkie-sphere, but I’m curious as to why everyone’s been coming to me.

Other thoughts.  I read two great sci-fi books in the last few weeks.  Classics that I should have read years ago.  One that I started, in fact, when I was 12, but put down in the first five pages or so.  And I’m kind of glad I waited.  The more sci-fi I read, the less I understand why it’s a genre.  Do you know why it’s a genre?  I mean, any book that involves outer space or the future is categorized as sci-fi.  Even stuff that doesn’t happen in space, but is merely an imagined sort of near-future with some imagined new technology, is sci-fi.  Because sci-fi books, the best of them, usually have little to do with science directly.  They are so much more about that human condition, social commentary, and excellent storytelling.  So what, they happen to happen in space?!  Was 1984 considered sci-fi?  Was Brave New World?  Maybe they were.  But besides Jules Verne, at the time, I don’t suppose there was much of a “genre” around.  Anyway, I read books.  Excellent books.  If they happen to be sci-fi, fine.  And I love forward-minded writers.  Who often happen to write stories that take place in the future or out in space.  Oh well.

The two books I read and loved reading every minute I was reading them are, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, and Foundation by Isaac Asimov, the latter being the one I attempted reading back in 1992.  Apparently, I have a whole series to enjoy now, from each of these books.  Ender’s Game I started reading at the Ashram, moving from dim light to dim light at night, trying to squint my way through the pages and avoid the loud trans music that was intermittantly being blasted all over the compound.  And Foundation, funnily enough, I found at the Budapest airport as I was waiting for my flight to Rome on a 5 hour layover.  It called to me.  It was one of the few books in English at one of those portable book stalls between gates, bright orange, with the name Asimov popping off the spine.  When I try and subsequently fail to like a book, the memory stays with me, and I felt compelled to redeem my 12-year-old self from the shame of having rejected Asimov.  So there, I was, engrossed in the fall of the Empire, my bags of duty free Hungarian Tokaij dangling from my arm as I waited to board.  It made my vacation, too.  I finished Foundation on the cliffs of Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre national park, nothing but blue sea and sky and a slowly setting sun before me.

Last thought of the moment (as I really need to shower and dress and wrap birthday gifts in the 37 minutes I have left).  Did you ever consider how likely it is that you are?  What I mean by that is, how likely was your conception and birth?  There are people out there who are likelier than me.  People whose parents were high school sweethearts, whose grandparents were the same, who come from the same types of communities, maybe the same religion, ethnic background, etc.  Then there are highly unlikely people.  Like our current president.  How likely was it that a white, white, white girl, originally from Kansas, living in Hawaii, met a Kenyan student?  How likely?  In my case, my very crazy Israeli mother met and married an American tourist she knew for less than two weeks, an American tourist who happened to be from Chicago…she then endured four years of a crappy abusive marriage to him in Chicago before getting up the courage to divorce him.  Then, in all the craziness of her single life in Chicago, she and her roommates have a party, invite tons of random people, including my father’s cousin E, a woman my mother met at a bathhouse of all places.  E brings my dad, right out of college, to this house party.  Do they get together then?  No.  Months later, my mother is set up on a blind double date by none other than this woman E.  She doesn’t like her date, but her friend’s date happens to by my dad, whom my mother recognizes.  And here’s the thing.  My mother would never have dated this pasty, tall, gangly, freckled, bizarro had he told her his real age!  That’s right.  He lied and told her he was 25.  My mother was 28, and that even put her off.  But had she known that he was really 23, OMG.  So, crazy Israeli woman, somehow gets to Chicago via a spontaneous stupid marriage.  Pasty-white, gangly, American, right out of college, totally out of his league, happens to meet this woman through bizarre encounters.  Yes, they are both Jewish.  That’s the only similarity.  Because their families both hated this relationship.  Am I likely?  Am I?  I don’t think so.  Maybe more likely than Obama.  But not by much.

How likely was your conception?  What a thought…

Have a great day, folks.  Live long and prosper!

141 Days: Hicks, Lincoln, Darwin, Randomness

Lots of random things shooting around my head…and I’m going with stream of consciousness, here.

Discovered Bill Hicks, an exceptional comedian who died of cancer at the age of 33 in 1994.  I discovered him surfing, as you do (well, not “as you do,” really: the smart women I wine with on Wednesday nights want to set me up with a friend of theirs, and they gave me his name to look up on facebook, and he had posted the monologue David Letterman omitted from broadcast on October 1, 1993, just a few months before Hicks died).  He’s great.  The Letterman clip was good.  But I liked this one better:

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin born on the same day, February 12, 1809.  Someone important and inspirational made that connection recently, and I can’t remember where I read or heard it.  In the grand scheme of things, important people are occasionally going to be born on the same day.  But perhaps not people this important.  I wonder what on God’s green earth was happening with the stars and the fates on that wintry day in 1809.

My table is slanted.  I don’t understand, as it’s not wobbly.  BTW, I’m at one of my fave cafe’s, Dizi, featured in a previous post or two.

I’m determined to make writing fun again.  I’ve got to work on this book, it’s one of my main three goals this week.  I’m going clip photos of supermodels from the early 90’s heyday of supermodels.  I’m going to find fun pre-teen stationery to write fake letters on.  I’m going to read the criticism that’s been generously given to me.  I’m going to take it to heart, soak in the spirit of the changes I need to make, and then start slowly.  I will not get offended, dispirited, jaded, etc.

The amazing soundtrack to Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? is playing.  Keep on the sunny side of life, indeed.

I am still moving too slowly.  Though my clothes are still folded, my bed made, and the dishes are still washed.  And I finally got my psychiatrist on the phone and booked an appointment (another of the top 3 things to do this week).  And I called into my new wine job, and they gave me my first round of holiday shifts, so exciting to be leading wine tastings (!!!), which will also give me a chance to make over a thousand shekels before leaving for Italy.  Doesn’t sound like I’ve been moving slowly.  But I have.  If you take into account that I slept until almost 10 am, wasn’t even slightly productive until after 12 pm, didn’t shower until 2 pm, and didn’t leave the house until 3 pm.  And I watched an episode of Star Trek Voyager in there.  Even Bill Hicks believes in space exploration.

My Purim night was OK.  Just OK.  It was amazing to witness the debauchery in Tel Aviv.  But not drinking made participating really hard.   The “high tech” mega-company party I went to was kind of fun, however far too crowded.  There was free drink (shucks, no alcohol for me…poo!), free food, lots of cool entertainment.  And celebrity performers, too.   It was OK, but I think atmosphere is very important, and stick too many people in too small a space that isn’t well organized, and I can’t find ways to have fun.   My other friend’s party was slightly better, and I knew at least half the people.  BUT everyone was pretty well sloshed by the time I got there.  Which was kind of hilarious.  But also kind of boring.  I kind of played mommy at the end.  We all left to go to the Florentine block party, THE place to be on Purim. They shut down all the streets in this semi-dump semi-gentrified bohemian neighborhood.  And I’ve never seen so many people out on the streets before in my life.  Never.  And it was 3 am.  Tons of music, alcohol, craziness.  This being Israel, I was nervous being around there.  I didn’t think there was enough police protection for an event this huge, especially with everyone in costume (plenty of ways to hide stuff and people), drunk, young-ish, and affluent (this is Tel Aviv here).  I left my drunk friends and booked it home with another sober friend who’d be spending the night on my couch (not as easy as it sounds, we had to wade out way through acres of these people and get out of the neighborhood before we could find a cab that was also not stuck in gridlock traffic).  Next year, I’ll hopefully be able to drink.  And no block parties for me.  Give me a nice private party any ole day, and I’m a happy camper.

And now I really have to work.  Yes, work!  Get the file out!  Find those supermodels!  Read those notes!  Go!  Go!  Go!

271 Days: One Thing at a Time

I am back in trouble-land again.  Indeed I am.

Last week was a good week.  Ish.  And now.  And now.

I woke up this morning with a headache so bad that I could hardly move.  It was major dehydration.  It seems for the past four or five days or so, I just stopped drinking much.  Mix a bit of alcohol (OK, a lot on the horrid date night), and a couple shots of Bailey’s last night, just for kicks.  I am a zombie.  Might as well change my name.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone off the Lamictal.  I am always tired.  Always.

The Pitiful Shameful List of my life this week?

• No Friends seen in a long while, don’t even feel like calling anyone.
• No dates in longer, even though I’m back on Jdate (hurrah!-not).
• No writing – even though I went to a great workshop, was really revved, wrote a decent article for a magazine last week, and all.  And all.  And I am a zombie.
• No gym – never crossed my mind to go, not even any guilt – which is shameful.
• No resumes sent – even though I’m miserable at work, and the light at the end of my tunnel (other than publishing the book one day soon or getting picked up by the food network) is that I can always get another boring desk job that will be more tolerable than this one.  Yet!  I haven’t sent them out.

So.  What to do?  Another doctor appointment to get yet another second opinion.  Force myself to the gym.  Contact any old loser on Jdate and just go out.  Get out of the house.  Call my supposed friends.  Force myself to go out.  Plan something for the near/medium future.  Like a big Thanksgiving dinner (I went to a hotel last year…ugh, what a sin!).  And write.  Even though it’s scary.  And it’s easier to watch Youtube and keep up with the election and watch House and Start Trek Voyager and Coupling.  Even reading a book, in my situation, does not help me get out of the rut.  Books are just as bad if not worse than television and the internet.  Why?  Books are my ultimate in living vicariously.  Shit.  I love books.

So.  Knock on wood a million times over for tomorrow.  Please be well Mr Obama.  Get some sleep, yourself.  Drink some water.  Try not to freak out.  Take care of yourself.  You can do this.  You can be an adult.  You can clean the kitchen and sweep the floor and mop the floor and scrub the bathroom and do the laundry.  You can find a place to watch the elections tomorrow night.  You can do this.  You are not hopeless.  You are not alone.  Even though it seems that way.  Even though you spend almost all your time alone.  It will be OK.  It is OK.

And just so you don’t all think I’m going off the deep end, here is a link to a fantastically great poem that a friend back in Chicago introduced me to.  Here is William Carlos Williams and Danse Russe.  Who’s to say I can’t be the happy genius of my household, too?

286 Days: Taking risks, ashram madness, a downer of a homecoming

Ashram was fantastic.  I prefer it quiet, not like it was over the weekend, busting at the seams with people, a crazy mad amount of new-age workshops and meditation sessions, and tents as far as the eye can see.  I can’t stand the Patchouli crowd for too long.  Visiting is nice.  Dread locks are kind of funky for a while.  But it ain’t reality.  Some highlights:

• AUM Meditation – a student of Osho’s created this method.  It takes 2.5 hours, done with a group, and it goes through twelve stages of human emotion, from anger, to love, to laughter, tears, and much more.  It was a roller coaster, and I felt such release.  Imagine getting to be crazy, getting to scream as much as you need, be hugged by 50 other people, etc.
• Spiritual Leadership – an interesting conversation with a kabbalisticly oriented therapist and leader.  I connected intensely to what she was describing.  Leaders may in fact be born.  I suppose many of us may be born into our purpose.  And if we’re not accomplishing it, we feel immense suffering.  Every one of us is a pipe, a funnel, a conduit.  We receive information, we learn, and we are meant to pass on.  If we don’t, we are stopped up.  Like I need a spiritual plumber…. (ha, ha, ha).
• Laughing Yoga – kind of fun, kind of bizarre.  It’s a “fake it until you make it” kind of process.  All sorts of group exercizes where we are made to laugh.  And we had to laugh whether it was real or not.  Eventually, it became real.  And it didn’t always (I mean, I was there for almost 2 hours).  But the theory is, the body doesn’t know the difference between real laughter and fake laughter.  By laughing, you are tricking the brain into releaseing endorphins.  Laughing can heal dramatically.  Hence, clowns in hospitals, etc.  Don’t know if I would cut out the medical profession altogether, but, hey, I might just force myself to laugh for a couple minutes every day.
• Psychodrama – a type of therapy whereby the person acts, along with the therapist, on a stage, in situations that trigger the person’s issues.  Very interesting indeed.  I was just an audience member for much of this, but it seemed quite powerful and effective.
• Eye contact – every session I went to that involved interactivity stressed eye contact.  Duh.  I come from the theatre world.  I have been in therapy.  Eye contact is very very important.  But I came to realize how difficult it was for many people.  We were instructive to look carefully into each others’ eyes, and still there were people averting their gaze, people looking down, and all sorts of “pretend looking,” taking a quick glance, kind of, and moving away.  Eye contact is powerful.  People cried during exercises where I kept a steady connection.  It helped them to know I was with them and listening.  That I cared.

Anyway, I met some cool people, hung out a bit with some friends I had met at the writing workshop the last time I had been at the ashram, and had a decent, if rushed, weird time.  Excellent chai tea, though.  Decent vegetarian grub.  But they make a killing, they do.  Not cheap to buy the food there, and there is little other choice.  No fires allowed anywhere on the ashram or campsite, so no cooking.  We brought some snacks which helped us skip meals.

But on returning to Tel Aviv, I did not have an easy time.  I slept OK, the cats survived without me.  And there was a new episode of Star Trek Voyager uploaded.  But on waking up this morning, I was in a different world entirely.  Like the weekend hadn’t happened.  Or rather, maybe my reality of being back made it that much worse.  Juxtaposition.  Such a cool word.  Such mixed results in reality.  I had the hardest time getting out of bed.  It took over an hour to convince myself to take a shower.  I hoped that I would be envigorated when I got out, but no.  No.  I was moving through sludge.  I called my assistant to tell her I probably wouldn’t be in but that I’d work from home.  Hardly.  I tried so hard, answered some email, but I fell apart.  I was so tired.  I slept for several hours in the middle of the day.  Then tried to work again.  Then gave up, cleaned out the cat box, and went to a cafe.  Sat and did nothing as I drank a fruit smoothie.  Then feeling guilty, got up, went to a bookstore, and bought my boss a birthday present (it was last week).  Then I went to therapy.

So…it seems I grew up in an environment where I was taught NOT to take risks.  An environment where even if I took a risk, I felt confident that I did not have a safety net, that Mom and Dad were not close behind to catch me or back me up.  Which sums it up pretty well.  Thank you to my therapist for packaging this explanation up so well.

I know I have to leave this job.  It is toxic.  I feel trapped.  Often.  And especially now.  But as I learned in therapy, I somehow believe that I am not capable of earning a living doing something I enjoy.  That staying with the status quo, with the safe, is the best option.  I have completely internalized this.  But being the open-minded smart, ambitious person that I am, have always conflicted with it.  And it’s won out most of the time.  The fear-monger in me.  The anti-risk-taker.  Not any more.

My task this week is to brainstorm and take small steps at coming up with a real option.  A career I can both love and thrive at financially.  Why not?  I am a very capable person.  So what if I am deathly afraid of failure.  Of being without money.  Without an income.  Without a plan.  Of having to crawl back to the family as a shameful failure?

I risk not living a life at all if I don’t just jump…and I still have India.  I will go this year.  I will.  It’s rather cheap from Amman.  Maybe…600-700 USD.  Roundtrip.  Half that of going to the States.  Awesome.

I will be a great chef or personal chef or food media mogul or food writer or novelist or cheesemonger or restaurant critic or documentary filmmaker or…or…or…

Osho

295 Days: One Year in Israel

Jerusalem Light

Today is my one-year anniversary.  I have been living in Israel for one year.  It’s hard to believe.  I still feel like a hermit.  I still feel green, new, clueless.  And I don’t feel like I have any more courage, ingenuity, spirit, pride, or anything more than when I got here.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I’ve had therapy.  Lots of therapy.  And drugs.  And I’ve published something.  Something small, yes.  But something that has gotten amazing feedback.  And I graduated from culinary school.  So, besides the job issues that never cease, and never will cease, as making a living has to be done, anywhere in the world, something was accomplished this year.  Another certificate.  More experience.  Some emotional progress.  Yet, a great deal of treading water, treading on known, old, not-so-healthy paths.  But there is light.  There is light.  It’s an interesting feeling knowing that we never really grow out of childhood.  I will always be stuck at 16.  In many ways.  We are all adolescents.  Faking it.

I thought I would have a party.  Instead I’m alone at home.  Not altogether bad.  Trying to plot the next few turns, make the next plans, straighten myself out.  Alas, major exhaustion from Yom Kippur yesterday, and continued recovery from the 2-week Irish visitation, has gotten me plonked down in front of youtube and the like, watching Star Trek Voyager.  I am thinking of going out and getting some expensive beer.  Then again, I really really need to stop spending money.  I have less in my account than I thought.  And that’s not good.  But it is an important day.  Will two Belgian beers and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s really set me back all that much in comparison to the enjoyment it will all bring?  Yes, it’s worth it.  But in the end, it really is more of an issue of getting up and out of the chair (at least it’s a chair and not a sofa or bed).  As it’s Shabbat, I will have to trek 20 minutes to the local AM:PM, the only shop that’s open around here.  Gotta love Israel.  It is nice, though, to have a real palpable feeling of “otherness” for the weekend.  It’s much more quiet, relaxed, even though it’s inconvenient not having buses or shops or stores or restaurants open locally.

The cats are back.  They were at my sister’s for the duration of the Irish visit.  Not sure I’m glad, as they are a royal pain.  The company is OK some of the time.

Another year.  Appropriate it came right after Yom Kippur.  After the gates of heaven slammed shut for another year.  Another chance.  I didn’t really pray.  Even though I was in synagogue a good deal yesterday.  Even though I fasted.  I am not sure I believe in prayer.  I didn’t feel too spiritual.  I felt good, actually.  Felt calm.  Sleepy.  Adult.  Slightly nostalgic, but not in a negative, wish-I-were-back-there, kind of way.  I awoke on the morning of Yom Kippur having had a very goo night’s sleep.  I was in Jerusalem staying with a very good friend of mine, a woman I feel more at home with than almost anyone in my family.  She had laid a matress for me on her living room floor and given me perhaps the most comfortable comforter to sleep with.  I remember waking several times during the night wondering why it wasn’t yet morning and time to go to services.  And when I finally woke for the real morning, the memory of my family’s last vacation to Hawaii was on my mind.  It was one of the best trips we’d ever taken.  All of us adult.  All of us more or less getting along.  We were on Kauai where my parents have a time share, a place we’d been several times before.  And the vacation was spent on calm beaches, fun small restaurants, cooking meals together in the kitchen, and playing Scrabble.  Lots of Scrabble.  And mostly me winning, as is the case in my family.  It was a good time.  And even though the fast was not easy for me this year, I took a nap after we broke the fast on my friends sofa, with that wonderful comforter, and I felt safe.  A safety I feel with very few people.  A safety I rarely if ever feel with my immediate family.  A safety I feel when I’m with people I know will take care of me and always welcome me with open arms, no questions asked, no guilt piled on, no judgment doled out.  It was only for 20 minutes or so, but I will remember it for a long time.

I am thankful to her from the core of my being for creating safe, warm, loving spaces in this often cold and confusing world. It’s rare for me to feel comfortable on anyone else’s sofas.  There are perhaps three I can think of.  So, thank you to the Queen with the most comfortable Jerusalem sofa and comforter.

And will there be another year?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  Time will tell, all too well.

Star Trek Voyager