When Life Gives You Rain...

...you gotta run through the puddles!

There's something magical about a rainstorm after a long stretch of hot, sunny days.

There's a feeling in the air...there are puddles to be splashed!

Everything feels washed clean...(except the dirty socks)

And there's an extra level of giddiness when your mama says, "don't worry, we can wash everything later!"

Some days...you just have to embrace the puddles.

Odd Nesting Behavior

They say that pregnant women "nest" when they're getting close to having a baby.

Some of the odd nest-like things I've found myself doing:
- cleaning out the car (and being frustrated that the car wash was closed on a rainy day. I didn't care about the outside, just wanted a good inner vacuum/scrub! Can't they understand that?)
- becoming slightly obsessed with organizing things, like putting the photo albums in order by date.
- ruthlessly dispensing with anything that remotely seems like it might be ready for the "donation" bin, including any piece of maternity clothing that doesn't quite cover my belly any more.
- stocking up on things that seem like they'll be good to eat after the baby comes
- waking up in the middle of the night and wondering what else I've forgotten to do...and of course, remembering that once the baby comes, those things can still get done.

I'm normally a pretty neat and tidy person, but sometimes I think this gets a little ridiculous. After all, when I went into labor with my first-born, I wouldn't let us leave for the hospital until we had made the bed.

And my sweet hubby obliged me.

(And then made fun of me for the past 9 years about it.)

If they can't get this right....

....you might wonder about all the other things going wrong.

I'm just saying.

Tuesday Torah: Making Do....

Sometimes you gotta make poetry with whatever life gives you....
(or whatever you find in the kitchen drawer)

What's your Torah today?
Leave your link...

Troubleshooting Tomatoes...and other questions

(I apologize in advance for the stream-of-consciousness post. I don't usually post like this but I feel the need for a brain dump. Blogland here I come!)

Have you seen this MyBlogLog? People have it all over, so I went to check it out. Now I have an account. Why do we all need so many accounts!? But I have them. How many do you have? (Ilana-Davita asked how many email addresses we have. How many "services" do you follow? I'm on flickr, del.icio.us, technorati, youtube, facebook, stumbleupon, twitter, and probably a few more that I don't even remember. What do you think is cool online?)

to my Gardening Friends (and anyone who has a good guess):
Why do my tomatoes have this dark spot under the stem on some of them

and this spotting on the leaves?

Am I in trouble here???? And when will they turn red and be edible!? The yellow plum ones are starting to turn yellow and look plummy er, yummy. And my one chili pepper is beautiful but not red yet. Wonder what it would taste like....

FrumeSarah is hosting Haveil Havalim. I'm waiting patiently for it to show up.

Did you know you can re-arrange your blog list in Google Reader? Is this a new thing? Or have I been clueless. I hated how they started out in alphabetical order but somehow got all messed up. Now I have folders. Life is good. What feed reader do you use? How many feeds do you read? I have 229 subscriptions. Luckily they don't all post every day!

I have been hard at work on the PTA newsletter. Hopefully it will be done this week and then I can show you where my creative energies have been going over the last week or so.

We are moved back into our newly renovated synagogue building. I can't quite believe it, I still wander around and I'm so happy to have all my books (which have been in storage) back with me. I missed their cute little bookie faces. Have you ever lived through a renovation? Ugh.

Do you ever go back and read your old blog posts? I was just looking for something to link to in this very random post that I'm reading. I think I need to go back and read some...and then share with you my favorite posts. I'm making a list of posts for the next few weeks. Time to get organized, serious, and into High Holy Day mode. I had better line up the blog plan...Elul, here we come! How do you get ready for the High Holy Days? Anyone else out there thinking about the first of Tishrei already?

There was a whole piece on NPR this morning (on the way to Torah Study) about the liberal blogosphere. Did you know that is a real word? I kinda thought we made it up out here in blogland. Even cooler is the J-Blogosphere, which has its own Wikipedia entry. And of course, a convention, which I can't quite get to in person. Are you going? Wait, don't answer that. I don't want to be jealous of you. Okay, answer. I want to know. Even if I'm going to be jealous.

I hope I've given you lots of interesting questions to answer! Say hi even if you don't have any answers....

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five places i've been this week (aside from all the random links above!)

love this cute bag (kippah tip to scribbit)

you can make baked potatoes in your crock-pot!? who knew.

how awesome are these muffins

pencil and paper games

might fix my tomato problem

from my del.icio.us (join my network? it's free. it's fun. who knows what you'll find!)
where have you been!?