Graduation Gift

When my parents have the money, which will be when they finish paying off my college tuition (sometime in the next month), they have promised me a college graduation gift.  I have picked out a special pair of Sabbath and holiday candlesticks from...you guessed it...the Yair Emanuel site (emanuel-judaica.com).

I do have candlesticks that I am using right now, but they are the ones I have been using since I was a little girl.  Here is a picture:

I want a pair that I have chosen using my adult tastes.  The pair I have picked out is brushed metal (like the purple handwashing cup I bought with babysitting money this past Summer), and they are pink.  I would have preferred purple, I think (everything should be purple!), but this candlestick style does not come in purple.

What makes this pair of candlesticks so expensive is not so much the cost of the candlesticks themselves (39 dollars), although I definitely do not have that much money to throw around right now, but the cost of shipping from Israel (where the Yair Emanuel company is based), which on a three-dimensional object (meaning not a kippah) will nearly double, if not actually double, the price.  However, for a college graduation gift, my parents have said it is OK to spend that much.

I had wanted to get the candlesticks before I moved, to sort of double as a housewarming gift, but I understand that money is money.  My family is not doing so well right now (my mother, a psychiatrist, is  making a lot; my father, however, as an Army colonel in the Reserves, is barely working) and I want them to prioritize paying off college so my official transcript can be released and sent to Rabbinical schools.  It is the last piece of my application, and it is already over two weeks late.

That's all for now! Later today I am meeting up with a friend whom I haven't seen in a while.  She works in downtown Manhattan, and I will take the subway alone for the first time ever (well, the New York subway, anyway; I've done it in Boston) to  meet up with her on her lunch hour. 

I promise to post a picture of my new candlesticks when I get them.  Perhaps I'll take the picture right before I use them the first time, so they have Sabbath candles in them, and post it after the Sabbath.  I like that idea.  Unless they get here on a Monday or something, and I don't want to wait that long.  Then I will just open them, set them up on the cloth I use under my candles (and, now that I am  lighting real candles, with a piece of aluminum foil under the candlesticks and on top of the cloth, so nothing catches fire), and take pictures.

"Coming Home to Our People, Coming Home to Our Land, Coming Home from All Directions Scattered Like the Sand"

(Title is a song quote, just not sure from where.)

I have slipped easily and seamlessly back into being a fully observant Jew.  I washed my hands ritually this morning, and I have not missed an opportunity to pray since I decided to start praying three times a day again.  Tomorrow when I have lunch out with a friend, I will take along a small prayerbook and say the Grace After Meals.

I thought you all might like to see a picture of my prayer-and-religious-study area.  Here it is:

Kosher Kitchen Challenges and Wonderful Fun

Below is a picture of the teeny, tiny kitchen in my apartment.  The sink cannot be kosher because there is only one of it (and therefore no way to keep meat and dairy separate); the countertop (far right in this picture) poses a similar challenge.

What to do? You may notice two cutting boards (red and white) and two sink mats (also red and white) behind the sink.  The red ones are for meat, and the white ones are for dairy.  Every time I wish to put a dish on the counter, I first lay down a cutting board; every time I need to put a dish in the sink, I put down a sink mat.  Annoying, but there you go.

Also, I have made an official prayer-and-religious-study area of my apartment! I turned the rocking chair so that it faced East (and I am really trying to use that chair only for those purposes), laid down the rug about halfway between the bed and the chair, and put my pink lamp in line with the rug. 

 Right next to where the chair is now is a fireplace; it is boarded up, but it still has a nice, deep mantlepiece.  On this mantlepiece I put my tallitot and tefillin (in separate piles, so I can grab a tallis on the Sabbath without worrying about touching the tefillin, which are forbidden), as well as the ritual books that I hope to use every day: my Bible, my Book of Psalms, and my favorite Prayerbook. 

Letting A Little More Judaism Back In

Two days ago, I moved into an apartment in Brooklyn Heights.  I'm beyond blessed that my grandparents own this building and are willing to let me live in the smallest apartment (basement studio).

Recently, what with one thing and another, my Judaism has waned a bit.  I was still keeping the Sabbath, still keeping kosher, and still donning a kippah and tallit katan each day, but that was about it.

This is the order in which I would like to add things back:

1. Daily prayer, three times a day
2. Morning handwashing
3. Grace after meals

If I add all that back in, I will have a fulfilling Jewish life.

Hebrew Birthday (Happy Birthday, Me!)

Today is my Hebrew birthday, the one I now acknowledge and celebrate.  The Hebrew date is the seventeenth of the month of Shevat.  The date moves around the English calendar, because the Hebrew calendar is lunar; next year, for example, my birthday will fall on February thirteenth.

Because Jewish days start the night before, I opened my birthday gift last night.  This year, I got a Vermont Teddy Beat misfit bear (four colors of brown plush on one bear, and allegedly each bear unique), which I have been wanting for years.  Her name is Theodora, so she can go by Teddy, and her middle name is Ketamine, because of all the good that that treatment did for me.

And now I am a whole year older! Goodness gracious, I don't feel 23!

"A Miracle Happened Today; Was I Aware? Did I Even Care?"

(Title quotation from an addictive Jewish song I like.)

Now.  My miracle story:

Recently I went for a two-week Ketamine treatment at Rutgers University hospital in Newark, NJ, to help solve my RSD (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, a chronic pain syndrome affecting the nervous system).  Ketamine is a big-deal pain killer, with big-deal side effects, delivered intravenously.  Side effects can include psychosis; and yes, I experienced that and dealt with it.

But.  But.  But.

My pain is SO MUCH LESS.  I now stay in single-digit numbers  ALL THE TIME.  Also, the pain is localized again; the ONLY areas that EVER hurt now are my feet and my hands.

Wow.  Wow.  WOW.

Thank you to God first, my doctor second, and the medication third.

Thank you.

Big Adventure

Today I leave for the city and my Ketamine treatment at a hospital in Newark, NJ.  My father is taking me because the procedure is outpatient, but involves sedation, so I need someone to bring me back and forth.  I'm due at the hospital at 7:00 am tomorrow, and the infusion starts at 8:00 am.  It takes an hour to get ready because the medicine is made just for each patient and the pharmacists cannot make it until the patient is in the building.  Two weeks from now, and I should be feeling much better...I can hardly wait, and I'll hold on to that vision through the hard times.