359th Friday Blog Roundup

We left our shul for a year to join a different one.  Before we went away, I liked our shul.  It had a great service and a great rabbi.  At the same time, it was far distance-wise and we didn’t have a ton of friends there, so it didn’t feel like a terrible idea to try a new place.  Except the new place was an awful fit; awful to the point where I stopped keeping Shabbat for a year.  I didn’t make a challah.  I didn’t light the candles.  I didn’t attend shul.  I didn’t feel Jewish.

Josh promised me last Yom Kippur that by this Rosh Hashanah, we’d be back at our usual place.  I can’t even tell you how much it felt like I was walking into a hug to re-enter the building.  To be in that service again.  To see the rabbi and his family.  I didn’t realize how much it went beyond “like” until I had to be away from it for a year.  And suddenly, I saw its worth.

This Rosh Hashanah, we took our seats near the Cullens (so named by us because this vampire family never seems to age.  We have sat next to them for six years and while our hair greys and our midsections get fuller, they remain forever locked in youth — from the grandmother down to the teenaged grandchildren — who have seemingly been high school students for all six years).  And I could feel my entire body relax.  It didn’t seem that long a distance to drive once you saw what was closer.  And it turns out that we do have a lot of friends there, ones I had sort of glossed over mentally when I was convincing myself that I’d be happy with the move.

It felt so good to be home.

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You may have noticed little social media buttons at the bottom of my posts.  I added it on Wednesday since I felt like it was time to join the 21st century (or 5772 — woohoo! a shout out to all my Jewish friends!)  Also, a friend wanted to share a post and mentioned how difficult it is to share posts sometimes when you don’t have those buttons.  So now I have those buttons if you’d like to use them.  And frankly, I’d love you to click if something I wrote moves you to tell others about it.

Go on, I know you’ve been itching to tell the world about how my hamster pees in a handstand.

Apparently, you can only see the buttons if you’re in the actual post vs. being on the main url for the blog and scrolling downward.  Fancy!

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I want to see both Moneyball and 50/50.  I am debating whether or not I have the attention span to see them back-to-back on the same day.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “A Fond Farewell” (Waiting for Our Miracle)
• “I’m Scared” (Where Do We Go From Here?)
• “Fuck It (Pun Intended)” (Les Terres Fertiles)
• “Tweeting a Funeral” (BlogHer)
• “What I Sounded Like 17 Years Ago” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “One Year Blogoversary” (Yolk)
• “One Day, Maybe My Mother Will Understand” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Slowly Backing Away” (Whitney&Erick)
• “Feeling Restless” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Left Behind” (Mojo Working)
• “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again” (Four of a Kind)
• “This is My 66_th Post” (The Smartness)
• “My Toddler Bites” (Creating Motherhood)
• “What NOT to Say” (In Due Time)
• “I Couldn’t Bite My Tongue Completely” (Holy Crap! You Can’t Talk About Miscarriage)

Still Kicking Your Collective Ass: I am so proud of you again!  15 posts!  Keep up the good work: there is a whole world of blog posts out there worthy of a little extra attention.  This week, the dates are things written between September 23rd and the 30th.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Eggs in a Row has a post about how large numbers can loom in the mind.  While she rationally knows that 32 years old is not quite ancient, it also doesn’t mesh with what her heart knows about her desired timeline.  She admits: “Because honestly, in the scheme of things, I know that I need to just breathe.  Freaking out about my age (which I know isn’t that old whatsoever) is kind of like counting the hours of sleep I could get now, if I just fell asleep.”  This post resonated with me as a fellow clock-watcher/worrier.

Perfect Moment Mondays are back at Write Mind Open Heart, and I love Lori’s take on an adoption conference she attended.  She starts: “Now I know how Trekkies feel. Not during their “real” lives, but while at StarCon.”  It’s about spending time with your tribe, about meeting the people you’ve been conversing with online for years, as well as spending time with people who get it.

Geebaby has a post about processing the SA results and how it differed from her husband’s reaction.  The bad news brought for her relief and answers, parameters and boundaries.  For her husband, the results were life-changing, devastating.  Isn’t this a gorgeous description: “This week, we gave and received pain, rocking back and forth as our emotions allowed.  Two sides of the same coin.”

Lastly, Somewhere in the Middle has a post about sugar; about a churro that never appeared and cinnamon sugar chips that didn’t quite make her feel as good as she hoped.  In fact, they had the opposite effect.  The more she ate, the sicker she felt: physically and emotionally.  “I still felt so empty, so lost. and so angry.  And the more time that passed by, I started to feel worse about what I had done.  I can’t do that again. I can’t eat food to make myself feel better, that kind of thinking creates more problems than I’m willing to deal with. I have enough to be going on with, thank you very much.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I love being back at my old shul.  I have joined the 21st century and added social media buttons.  I want to see both Moneyball and 50/50.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 23rd and September 30th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.