Ben and his buddy, J.K.

About two months ago my third grader finished reading the first Harry Potter. For a kid who has struggled to sit down and commit to a "real" book, this was a big accomplishment for him. He was encompassed with all things Harry simply by the joy of reading such a wonderful book and being moved by each and every word.

His fascination wasn't just with the book though, he was intrigued by J.K. Rowling as a person. Lucky for him he had to do an oral report on a biography of someone famous and decided to dress up like Harry and present the creative author behind the character. Around the same time my 6th grader was doing an assignment where he had to write a letter to a famous person or business. A light switched on in Ben's face and he announced he was going to write a letter to J.K. Rowling. About 15 minutes later he handed me a perfectly handwritten letter that told the author how happy he was to read her book and how much he liked it. We googled where to send it and off it went.

Jump ahead to today when I opened the mailbox and pulled out an envelope from Scholastic Publishing addressed to Ben. It took me a few seconds to figure it out, but when I did, Ben came running. How thrilling for a 9 year old to realize his letter had been read by someone and responded to. I had already talked to him about the volume of mail she must get and he certainly wasn't expecting a hand-written note from her, but any response was enough for him. Inside the envelope was a photograph of the author and a wonderful letter that apologized for not being able to respond personally to each and every letter sent. He was thrilled. What a wonderful experience for a child to know his words and thoughts matter and grownups will listen and respond.

He tucked it all away in his backpack to show his class on Monday. After that he said it will hang in a place of honor on his bulletin board.

The longest 11 days

18 days ago Jason left for India. On day two, I woke up and my laptop wouldn’t let me log in. What ensued was craziness. Jason is my tech support in all things, and he wasn’t here. My brother did his best remotely and my computer limped along for a few days, but with each day it got worse. Luckily my blackberry, a tiny little thing I can put in the pocket of my jeans, connected me to the world.

I still had email, I could text, and Jason could call me if the time was right. It still boggles my mind that on day three I sat at Noah’s baseball practice on a sunny Sunday and talked to my husband on the other side of the world like he was down the street. Pretty cool. But he wasn’t down the street. He was on the other side of the world, and somewhere in between, on day six, a volcano in Iceland decided to erupt. Excuse me?

After a long week of being the single parent, on day eight, our phone rang at seven in the morning and it was Jason telling me what we had feared. He was stuck. The plane he had hoped to get on later in the day was grounded in Germany. He was in the corporate travel office where three Indian employees were all working frantically to find flights home for Jason and two colleagues. One would be sent the other direction around the globe, through the Far East to the west coast, whereas the Jason and his boss would try to avoid the volcanic ash by going further south through Dubai, then over to Washington, DC. If all went as planned, he would get home two days late, on my 39th birthday. Day eleven.

I prepared for another weekend alone with the kids, and my sister came up to spend time with us. She took us out for a birthday lunch a day early, day ten. She even made sure the kids had a card for me, and that the waiters and waitresses sang to me. It still wasn’t right though.

On day eleven, I woke up alone and a year older. Alanya did her best reminding me over and over “You aren’t old, you’re young!” Somehow she didn’t convince me. Since Friday I had been dealing with the realization that no matter what we did, Jason was stuck on the other side of the world. It wasn’t a very good feeling. And until he came home, or at least was talking to me from American soil, I wouldn’t be happy.

First an email from Washington, DC, but they missed their connection. Then, an email from Boston. Finally, a phone call from the car. 2pm on my birthday I walked into the house to find a freshly showered, utterly exhausted husband, and it was the best birthday present ever.

All in all he was gone eleven days, but I can’t remember the last time we were apart that long. Too long. Reminds me of the summer he lived in Chicago and I was in Tunisia for nearly three months. Back then, Skype was only on the Jetsons, email was non-existent, and calling was still “long distance.” After that summer, we said never again, and we were engaged weeks later. Although I’m happy Jason had this experience to go to India, and I was happy to have the time with the kids, it served as a reminder of why we entered this marriage in the first place. We don’t want to spend another day apart from one another.

Meet my "motorcycle"

Back in November, a friend of mine asked me if I skied. I had difficulty answering. Did I ski? Technically, no. Not in eleven years. Once when Noah was about six months old my mom watched him while Jason and I went skiing. It seemed like a whole lot of planning, worry and aching boobs in need of being nursed for us to enjoy it. We never went back. Two more babies, and forget it. A decade goes by.

Can I ski? Yes. I liked to think I was pretty good in my day. When I was in seventh grade I joined the ski club in middle school where once a week I climbed on a bus to a a mountain about an hour away, took a lesson and skied with my friends. It wasn't easy learning, but thanks to a very patient friend who skied with me every week and taught me to have confidence, I became a "skier". I did ski club at school for six years and continued skiing through college when I could.

Why was my friend asking? She had just gotten new skis and was determined to use them. Regularly. There are a few mountains within an hour from here and she convinced me we could get in a good day of skiing before beating the school bus home. I was game. Jason and I talked about it and decided that rental fees for the handful of outings would still be less than buying, so I would rent. I did, however, cave and buy a helmet as the thought of lice ruining a perfectly good skiing day turned my stomach.

One Sunday in January, Jason and I decided to take the kids skiing for the first time to see how they liked it. Despite the temperature being below 10 degrees, all three of them did awesome and have been asking to go back. Jason and I had a little over an hour to ski by ourselves while the kids were in lessons and once we got the cobwebs out of our knees it all came back to us. The rest of the day was on the bunny hill with the kids though.

A few days later Ski Buddy (SB) and I packed up early, both dads agreeing to get the kids on the bus, and headed to the slopes. After our first run, I was nearly giddy at how much fun it was, and how wrong it felt. The kids in school, Jason at work, and I was having an absolute ball flying down the mountain. Too luxurious. I felt like I was cheating on my husband.

By the following week, SB and I were more comfortable with each other's skill levels, took more chances and had a ball. This was not going to be a one time thing. I was itching to get equipment. This was my "motorcycle", a selfish luxury that was all about me and made me happy.

SB and I skied at least 5 or 6 times this year. Each time a great day. We'd sit on the chair, analyze our runs, how well we did, laugh over almost wiping out. We'd sometimes sit in the lodge and eat our lunch and sip on hot chocolate, just having a good time not being home, or volunteering at school, or running around crazy. Our last day it was about 65 degrees and the most spectacular sunny day ever. A great day to finish our season. Thanks SB!

Today, Jason and I went to a ski shop and I got the best early birthday gift ever. My own motorcycle. I can't wait for next year.

This week's chuckle

A few weeks ago a local grocery store had their warehouse distribution people go on strike. Every day there are guys standing there with their signs, trying to convince people to not shop there. I truly feel for these guys, and even stopped to talk with them one day. They just want a good wage and enough to feed their families. After the conversation I actually turned around and left without going in. I was so torn.

Since then, I'm ashamed to admit it, I have shopped there. I'm trying to feed my family too. The concept of striking is obviously hard for kids to grasp, or so I thought. When checking Alanya's spelling sentence homework this week it read

"My mom hurries through the picket line at the grocery store."

The great corned beef crisis of 2010

It's a busy time of year for the Cashew Family. Passover begins tonight at sundown, and Holy Week continues until Sunday with Easter. The house to clean, Easter baskets to fill, Matzoh Ball soup to make... no one said the life of a shiksa is an easy one.

Tonight at sundown our family will sit down to our Seder and celebrate Passover. For me, this is the Super Bowl of all Jewish holidays. Yes, Hanukkah is stretched out over eight nights, and we try hard to have holiday treats every day, but the holiday is rather laid back and it is what you make it. Roshashanna is another favorite, particularly for the kids, since our New Year celebration consists of a dinner predominantly made up of of fresh challah, apples and honey. Yom Kippur is low maintenance since Jason can't eat anyway, I just need to make sure we have a good meal to break his fast. But Passover is an entirely different story.

The word "seder" actually means order, as in the order of the meal, the order of the story, the order of the celebration. For approximately 4000 years Jewish families have sat down together and gone through the same exact "order" to celebrate the holiday. Talk about pressure for a shiksa trying her best.

Our family has developed our own traditions for Passover foods, one being a glazed corned beef for dinner. I like it because it's preparation is simple and works well with the fact that we sit at the table for what could be an hour before it's time to eat. No, it's not a traditional recipe, but a brisket is, and this is about as close as I can get to it.

Saturday morning I hit the grocery store in search of my corned beef and I was dismayed to find not one corned beef. The butcher's response "it isn't the season anymore." What?! Same story at two other stores. Apparently they stock up for St. Patrick's day and then it really isn't on their radar to get more until after the Easter rush for turkeys and hams. Not a corned beef to be found. I realized that in years past I always would buy the Passover corned beef when they were on sale for St. Patrick's Day, but I guess this year I wasn't really thinking of it. So on the eve of our seder I found myself corned beef-less. Jason says it doesn't matter. We'll do chicken. Which he also says is the Jewish answer to any menu-planning crisis.

Off to prep the chicken, wash the parsley, and set the table, and if I'm lucky I can get a quick run in to the store to get some things for the Easter baskets.

I can do this

No one could ever accuse me or my sweet husband of being talented Do-It-Yourself people. We are far from it. Over the years, we have become very talented at saving money to pay others to do things for us.

When we first became homeowners, we quickly learned our limits, not that we didn't try new things, but we knew when to call in the professionals. Snake a drain? No problem. Replace hardware in the shower? Easy. That is until the ancient, corroded pipe snapped off in Jason's hand. Time to call the plumber. Take down the ceiling tiles? Maybe. Until we discovered lead paint behind them. Professional time.

We did attempt to paint a room... once. Isn't painting the number one easy DIY project? Everyone says that on TV. We tried it. I wouldn't call it a disaster, but the end result wasn't very pretty to look at. Not really the effect we were going for. We haven't painted a room since.

I find our DIY aversion rather peculiar since we both come from hardy DIY stock. Jason's mother can wield a power tool like no other. If she can't do it herself, it probably isn't worth doing. On my side of the family, my father is meticulous with a project once he gets going and sets his mind to something. His strong suit is landscaping and gardening, another area we struggle with. Jason's philosophy is "if it's green and grows, I'm mowing it" and that's just about the extent of what he wants to do in the form of yard work. I'm not much better. I try, every year I try, to stay on top of the weeding and the edging and the deadheading and trimming. It just all seems so never ending that I lose my motivation, get overwhelmed and give in to the weeds.

I'm determined to change.

In November, we finally put a hardwood floor in our living room. I say "we" as in we paid a very nice local business to install it. My part of the project consisted of picking the floor and then staying home while the floor was installed. Tough, huh? What I didn't expect was that the new floor would lead to another project (don't they all?). I didn't realize that to install the floor the existing wood baseboard molding needed to be removed. I suppose someone must have mentioned that to me along the way, but I must have blocked it out. Much to my dismay, the molding suffered some damage being pried off and later reattached to the wall. We now had a beautiful floor and marked up, ugly baseboards.

My first reaction was to cry. My second was to hire someone to fix it. The more we talked about it the more we convinced ourselves we could do this. The affected areas weren't all that big once you looked around the room.Wood filler. Sand. Paint. We could do this.

Today I pulled out my brand new putty knife, donned some rubber gloves and started scraping filler into the dents and nail holes. I can do this. Maybe if I keep telling myself that, I'll start to believe it. Stay tuned for sanding. One step at a time.

Mystery Containers

I've been home sick with a cold for a few days, and I just opened the fridge to see what was hiding in the back. I pulled out a container of green beans, and knowing that I didn't serve them to Jason's mom who arrived a week ago, I opened them up and took a sniff. Problem is, I can't smell a thing. I'm stuffed up like a Build a Bear Workshop animal.

It appears I have two options. Throw everything in question away. Or, when Jason comes home, say "I think this stuff may be bad, will you smell it?"

For our entire marriage, Jason constantly points out to me how ridiculous it is for me to eat something, make a face and say, "I think this is bad. Try it."

Guess I'm throwing the stuff away. It only took me 14 years of marriage to figure out the answer to that question!