Posted Thursday, June 26, 2008 4:27 PM
When I moved in to my husband’s house, I became a full-fledged member of a community I knew nothing about. The house we live in has been in my dear husband’s (DH) family since his grandparents lived there. When we were dating, I scouted out the important stuff: the grocery store, the gas station, the drug store and, of course, the Starbucks.
My DH knows all of our neighbors, their kids, pets and jobs. I know there’s one guy on the street who gardens every morning, and there is family who has been offering Lambada lessons in their homes in the afternoons.
There are very few Jewish families in our neighborhood – at one time, when Lawrence Welk was on the air, there were more.
Last week, a yellow newsletter appeared in our mailbox informing us that everyone in our area was invited to a Neighborhood Association meeting. I had never been to one, so I had different vision in my head of what to expect.
I had a flash to the tenants meeting I remember seeing on “Will and Grace” and to the town meetings on “Little House on the Prairie” where everyone would gather at the church and Mrs. Oleson would gossip and scowl.
So this week, we went to the meeting – at a church. Big crosses. Hymn books. The whole-nine yards. The neighbors who came were very nice … and informative. It was like having our own Mrs Oleson, except without the scowl.
We learned all about disaster preparedness – emergency kits and what to do in the event of a natural disaster (fun stuff, right). The entire time the fire department rep was talking, DH kept leaned over to me and whispering: “we need that, we should do that, we have to have that.”
I looked at him and said: “You do know the odds of an 8.0 quake hitting in the next five minutes are really slim.”
Then the subject came up of Neighborhood Watch. Now that was something I could get behind. I learned we have two halfway houses, in the southern part of our community; a graffiti problem in the northern part; a bar that, because of grandfather laws, is down the street from a daycare; and, best of all, a crack house of — as one person put it — “Nazi lowriders.”
They never had to deal with that in Walnut Grove.
Before the meeting ended, the coordinator mentioned that we had a great turnout – and that if the block captains could be the point people for their areas, maybe we could get more people involved.
Since I love being the center of the action, DH and I signed up. Cpt. Jewish Newlywed reporting for duty!
Although, it looks like if we want to get more people to the next meeting, I better brush up on my gardening and get some rhythm. 
Posted Thursday, June 19, 2008 11:41 AM
This Friday afternoon is the start of summer, which should make me very happy: BBQ dinners, ice cream trucks, really stupid TV shows that the networks are too embarrassed to run during the regular season. Summer … you can’t say it without smiling.
For most of my life, summer meant vacation. I would go to JCC day camp and sing songs and make lanyard key chains and learn dances and sit around a big circle at Shabbat. Then when camp was over, I would visit my family in California and we’d go to Disneyland and to the beach and have a great two weeks before school started.
From the time I turned 16 through when I graduated from college, summer meant a job -- everywhere from Sportmart to the Disneyland College Program to an internship at a newspaper, with a vacation right before returning to school, sometimes.
When I graduated from college and moved to California, summer meant a job with more sun during my commute.
Now that I am married, summer means two of us in jobs with more sun during our commutes.
Notice a pattern?
As two adults without children, taking a summer vacation is not only difficult – it is expensive. Hotel prices, airline prices, gas prices – everything is higher in the summer, not to mention the crowds.
However, just because we can’t take a summer vacation, doesn’t mean we can’t take a vacation.
Now, instead of June being our favorite month – it is May and October (the two months in which we’ve been taking our vacations). October is perfect – the days are cool and it is after the insanity of the High Holidays. May is perfect – the days are a little warmer and the kids aren’t out of school yet.
My husband and I are fortunate people who can afford to cruise. We know others are not as lucky and, because of high gas prices, can pretty much only enjoy a “Married With Children” vacation (where Al stays at home on the couch and his family can’t talk to him for a week because he’s on “vacation”).
This October, we are cruising in the Caribbean for our one-year anniversary. Since it is off-season, we found a great price for the cruise and the hotel at Walt Disney World the night before. We were even able to upgrade to first class using less miles as it is considered “off peak.”
Less crowds, less cost … a possible hurricane, but hey – we live in earthquake country, so who am I to complain?
Everyone else can look forward to a summer vacation – we’re counting down the days till fall. Three months and counting….. 
Posted Friday, June 06, 2008 1:05 PM
When “Desperate Housewives” aired its season finale last month, I thought my “guilty pleasure” television-watching days would have to be put on hiatus. I am a fan of “Big Brother,” which comes back on the air later this summer for three days a week, but there is only so much “stupid” one person can take.
Enter "Swingtown"
The CBS drama, being touted as “That '70s Sex Show,” is the perfect summertime addition to my DVR “record me” list. The show airs Thursdays at 10 p.m., meaning after the kiddies have gone to sleep. Considering this was a show originally optioned to HBO, it is no surprise that CBS would slot it in “adult viewing” time.
I asked my husband if he wanted to watch “Swingtown” with me. He told me he’d skip it, so I watched it in our room while he worked in the living room. He came in at 10:54 and proceeded to ask me who everyone was – I explained as best I could, but with nine main characters, I’m afraid I didn’t do that great a job. When the closing credits came up, he looked at me with his face in a scowl and said: ‘I hate you,” which in our world is code for “I hate that I started watching this because now I have to watch next week.”
The show takes place during the summer of 1976 in Winnetka, Ill., a town 15 minutes from where I grew up in the north shore of Chicago. The three couples – the “swingers” (they have an open marriage); “the squares” (the wife is a prude with a capital “P”) and the “in-betweens” (she’s looking for something more, but he seems to be missing it) – are all played phenomenally.
From a newlywed perspective, the show is a study in marriage (at least the marriages of the 1970s). What category do you fall into? I My guess would be that most people fall into the middle one, not necessarily that they want to swing, but that they are sometimes looking to shake things up a bit.
Some have asked if this is the kind of show we should have on the networks. Personally, I feel that if they can show shoot-'em-up cop shows and “ewww that was gross” medical dramas, having a show where sex is talked about but never shown is totally fine.
After all, aren't things supposed to get hotter in the summer?
Posted Thursday, May 22, 2008 1:05 PM
I’ve heard that once a couple gets married, they lose the part of themselves that attracted them to each other in the first place. So how do you find yourself again? Well, as Maria in the “The Sound of Music” wisely said, “Let’s start at the very beginning.”
When I first met my husband in person, we went for coffee and walked around a shopping center. The second time we met, a week later, it was at CityWalk at Universal Studios. The third time was New Year’s Eve and we went out for dinner. Those first three meetings were followed by hundreds of others.
We dated. And why? To get to know each other better.
So what is the point in dating after we married? Well go back to those first dates. There was romance. There was flirting. There were butterflies. There was suspense. Everything that makes dating fun. Of course, marriage removes the uncertainty of if he will call again.
I’ve mentioned before how everything my husband and I do socially is written down in leather-bound planner. Amazingly enough, we hit a weekend when we had nothing scheduled.
My husband asked if he could take me on a date. Something fun and not too far (with gas prices being so high everything lately is closed to home). I told him he could take me wherever he wanted. So we’re off to Solvang.
He asked if I wanted to do anything special during our trip. I told him that I am at his disposal, happy to do whatever he wanted. We get to enjoy a drive up the coast followed by a day of eating, walking and shopping – plus flirting, handholding, romance and all the best aspects of dating.
With our busy lives, we don’t have time to take a romantic vacation for a few months. But thanks to two people willing to go back in time a bit, we can be the couple we once were – and will be again.
Posted Thursday, May 15, 2008 3:27 PM
I would hardly call myself a luddite. I'm addicted to my e-mail,
have become an expert on Cube Crash on Facebook, even met my husband on
JDate.
But there is one thing I refuse to update: my datebook.
When
I graduated from high school, a friend of my former stepmothers bought
me a Scully leather-bound day planner. For more than a decade I have
been faithfully buying the replacement planner inserts (I'm a total
dork as it is something I look forward to every November).
I
love the feeling of writing something down and being able to cross it
out when it is over. I can flip ahead and flip back without having to
turn anything on.
I even saved my entire calendar from last year so I could keep track of all the insane things I did leading up to the wedding.
My
husband, on the other hand, keeps track of important things in his
computer, on his phone and somewhere in his memory banks (which means
some stuff slips through the cracks from time to time).
I was born to organize and plan. I enjoy being the social secretary
for the family (at least for the two of us). Similar to what the
president goes through daily - my husband gets a briefing. This is what
we have planned for this evening … or this weekend … or tomorrow
morning.
For example: Friday Night, dinner with mom; Saturday, Disneyland;
Sunday, Israel Independence Day Festival; Monday, Rosh Chodesh planning
meeting (OK, that one’s mine, but if I don’t remind my hubby he
worries).
It’s kind of fun to have your whole life – literally –
in your hands. It has a spot on the side for papers, so I have the
print outs our upcoming vacations, in order, of course, along with
random pieces of paper that I can't think of where to put, but I carry
around with me because "you never know."
I don’t think I’ll ever
get into the Palm Pilot world, but I’m grateful every morning for our
DVR. It’s one thing to have everything organized in my life and my
husband’s life. It’s quite another to have to track the folks the “Big
Brother” house, the boys on the “Bachelorette,” the Oceanic Six and the
ladies of Wisteria Lane.
Posted Wednesday, May 07, 2008 7:21 PM
It was inevitable. We were married last fall and it was bound to happen.
Mother’s Day.
Between us, we have two mothers, two grandmothers and an aunt (OK, four of those women are mine, but still). Throw in two best friends who are turning 30 within a two weeks of each other and you have the makings of a present tornado.
There’s the question of flowers vs. candy vs. Starbucks vs. edible fruit arrangements -- or some combination of the above.
Do we get cards for everyone? Do we get one card for each mother signed by both of us – or two cards since this is the first Mother’s Day we each have a new mother-in-law.
I live 2,000 miles away from my mother, bubbe and one of my best friends (who was also my maid of honor), so in addition to finding a great gift; we also have to arrange for shipping. We live 20 minutes from my in-laws, so yeah – no shipping!
Luckily, my mother is coming in next weekend, so she’ll be receiving her gift in person.
We have until this weekend to figure out the card question – although last time I went to the store the weekend of a major card-giving holiday, it wasn’t pretty. So I think I’ll have to get there before the days that begin with S.
I can’t divulge what each woman is receiving as a gift, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
And since my mother is a frequent reader of this blog who said I never mentioned her …. Hello ma!
Posted Friday, May 02, 2008 2:22 PM
I came across an article yesterday called “Do You Mommy Your Husband?”
Women find themselves mothering their husbands because of societal pressures to be the ultimate woman, says Pepper Schwartz, a sociology professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
"We've been taught that the way to show love is to do for others," she says. And, according to Schwartz, some women believe that the more they nurture, the better a woman they are.
I’d like to think I don’t do this – but I know I’d be fooling myself. I pick up after my husband, remind him to not forget his keys or that he should have something besides a salad for dinner. And don't even get me started on how much I wish he hadn't have bought the new Grand Theft Auto.
We see images on TV all the time of married couples where the husband leaves his stuff all over and begs his wife to do this or that for him. In the last week I saw examples of this on “According to Jim,” “Still Standing,” “Reba,” “The Golden Girls,” “The George Lopez Show” and Everybody Loves Raymond. (Since family sitcoms are practically nonexsistant these days, I had to use reruns).
Considering the previous article I found on women spending seven hours a week on average cleaning up after their husbands, this article doesn’t surprise me.
Although, it does sound better than the reverse article: “Do You Daddy Your Wife.”
Sound off ladies (and gents), do you mommy your husband?
Posted Wednesday, April 23, 2008 6:42 PM
On the second night of Passover, my husband and I had the distinct pleasure of hosting our first seder. And may I say: We rocked!
I spent the first night of seder with my family in the Midwest and flew back Sunday morning. Our first night seder didn’t end until 12:35 a.m.; I had to leave the resort where my grandparents were staying by 7 a.m. – you do the math.
Of course we had plenty of food, and thanks to my amazing knowledge of all things Pesach, we were able to use The Concise Family Seder Hagaddah (with some extra commentary). We incorporated both the Miriam’s Cup and the orange on our seder plate. Our guests had a wonderful time and I didn’t have to spend al night cleaning plates and bowls – just some glasses and serving pieces (thank you paper plates).
However, as the youngest at the seder table, I STILL had to say the Four Questions. Something about that doesn’t seem right. We sang about the Four Sons to the tune of “Clemintine” and recalled the Plagues with some props and a song eerily similar to the “Twelve Days of Xmas” – but with the word “bloody” in place of “pear tree.”
We are now four days into the holiday and I have grown weary of matzah. For something that is not supposed to rise, it totally gets bigger in my stomach.
Since this is a holiday of freedom, I am free -- under the guide of becoming Sephardic for seven days – to eat sushi for dinner tonight (I’m really looking forward to having something NOT made with matzah).
This is not a “to-go” kind of holiday. The food is not made with ease in mind. I’ve never used so many plastic baggies and tin foil in my life. Someone needs to make kosher for Pesach microwave meals next year. I’ve been trying to get creative with my matzah sandwiches to no avail – egg salad and cheese is all I’ve seemed able to come up with.
This weekend we will be done with Passover 5768 and I will be able to enjoy the PB&J sandwiches I have haven’t been able to eat since last week. Not to say Passover isn’t a great holiday – but I’m very happy that, like Pollyanna would say, I’ll never be farther from the next one than I am right now.