more…

First a disclaimer: I have been hesitant to launch into e-readers in any way since their inception. E-readers remove that intoxicating smell of ink from the reading experience, as well as the ability to dog-ear the corners in a way that makes you feel like a fourth grade rebel. You can’t rip off the half of the crappy novel you’ve finished reading and hand it to your cousin while you’re on vacation and you may not be able to open a novel ten years later and see your old comments in the margins. And even worse, you will never be able to open a used book and read someone else’s margin notes, which is one of the best perks about reading used books, besides the cheap price.

After spending a significant amount off time last Fall working on an iPad for a project, I started noticing how big and bulky my previously thought to be sleek and light laptop was beginning to feel. And when the Kindle Fire was announced, I was thrilled by its price point as well as it’s smaller size, because really, even though everyone raves about the iPad’s size, it seriously felt pretty maxi to me. Beautiful, but large. And hard to hold in bed, which is where I wanted to find myself browsing when I had the free time.

And then, I got a Kindle Fire from my husband for Chanuka. It was the best present I’ve received since the blue Schwin was delivered to our front door when I was eleven. I loved the clean and simple packaging (and yes, I often buy wine on that basis, too) and the fact that there were no instructions encouraged me to just plug it in and go. And it did.

Since set up syncs with your Amazon account, every e-book I’d ever bought from Amazon with the futile hope of reading it on the bus ride home from work on my laptop was instantly loaded onto my Kindle. My first night’s reading was set up for me and I spent the evening reading whitepapers and articles I’d downloaded for a future moment when I had time.

The next day I downloaded some apps. Mainly Twitter, Words with Friends, and AmazonFresh. But on the Kindle, they were easy and fun and addicting and well, I’ll never really get over the pleasure of ordering groceries from bed in the middle of the night when I suddenly remember we’re out of milk and I was supposed to supply snack for soccer. And its paperback size is just lovely and easy to hold.

And then I rediscovered the Kindle services. I browsed through the store and saw that I could download free books on a borrowed basis. Free? Books? Seriously? I instantly downloaded the new Jeffery Eugenides book that I’d been waiting to come out into paperback. Me? Even though I’m cheap, I didn’t have to wait.

And then I saw the short story selections. 99 cents for a short story? Count me in. I made myself an espresso and browsed the titles in a way I haven’t been able to since my first kid was born. I lost myself in book samples and saved the titles I wanted to read in the future. I read the reviews and added my own opinions. And I found myself sending titles to people I thought would be interested in them.

Yes, it was a bit disarming how easy it was to purchase and how little I had to do to access my Amazon account. And my son, who received the basic Kindle, was informed that he had to be incredibly careful with that aspect of the technology. Anyone who accessed my reader could charge up a storm fairly easily, though I’m assuming in future iterations Amazon will address this issue.

Regardless, I was back in the book store. It was heady and freeing and exciting.

Later, I went back to look up a coat I’d seen a few weeks back to see if it was on sale yet and started browsing the store site. They didn’t have a dedicated android or tablet app and the experience was only just a bit more gratifying than browsing on my Windows 7 Phone. Not a rich or exceedingly pleasing experience at all–just functional.

But that’s okay. Because for that, the iPad is a better experience. It’s rich and luxurious, they way a shopping experience has the potential to be.

The Kindle, it’s a reader. Which is awesome. It’s what I want it to be because it brought my bookstores back to this busy working mother.

As for my printed books? I’m not ready to give up on them yet. Maybe they’ll go back to being the luxury items they once were. A reason to save trees, but much more accessible than they used to be.

Though nobody should ever have to be deprived of that amazing smell of fresh book.

The most wonderful time of the year…
It may be, but it’s also one of the most complicated.
When I sent my kids to Jewish Day School, I expected the annual conversation about why we don’t celebrate Xmas, but somehow I expected the impact to be lighter than it was as the only Jewish kid in my elementary school classes.

“Mama,” Naomi said to me the other day, “Our house looks haunted compared to all our neighbors with their pretty lights.”
“Haunted?” I said. “Well, certainly a little darker. But think about how much fun we’re having inside the house.” B snickered, most likely thinking about the bickering that had been going on all morning and then my own tirade about how messy everything was, including the fence out front that desperately needed to be replaced. Our neighbors told us it had been there for as long as they lived there and that was at least thirty years.
So I pulled out the box of Chanuka decorations we drag out every year, as well as some felt, glitter and glue and we commenced to get all crafty with ourselves and create some new decorations to up our Chanuka bling factor…

Then we broke out the cookie cutters and made cookies.

“We should give them to the neighbors,” Tali decided.

“But they don’t celebrate Chanuka,” Naomi said. Shouldn’t we be giving them tree and candy cane cookies?”

“Why wouldn’t they like these cookies?” I asked them. They shrugged, but didn’t look like they were buying my reasoning that why wouldn’t their neighbors like the same silver sparkles that were exciting to them.

In the middle of wrapping up the cookies with cellophane and ribbon, I looked up and saw that B had demolished much of the fence we’d been talking about earlier. Suddenly, we could see the entire front yard and street from the kitchen. The light in the house looked totally different. There was definitely more light in the house, even during the dark Seattle days. Sure, the flower beds were totally torn up in the process and we’d have to wait until spring to do anything about it, but light is a really good thing in December in Seattle.

The girls and I took the cookie packages to our neighbors and at each house we stopped at, we stopped and visited. The girls were asked about Chanuka and we also got to learn about some Swedish traditions. At each house, the girls got more and more excited.

“Why don’t we do this more often?”  and “Did you see how excited they were to get dreidel cookies?” Even though Chanuka has nothing to do with Xmas besides the time of year, it felt good to share the holidays with the neighbors. It felt good to feel more a part of our neighborhood community. And in the darkest days of the year, who doesn’t need a little community?

So we decided to make our cookie deliveries an annual event. And later that evening when we lit our Chanukiyot, we noticed something else. Where we previously only saw that fence, now the reflection of our candles in the window flickered along with the holiday lights across the street. Tali saw it first and ran outside to the front.

“Hey! Now you can see our Chanukiyot from the street!”

We walked out to front yard to see our five Chanukiyot in the window, cheerfully lit and visible to everyone.

“We have decorations,” Naomi said proudly. “No more haunted house.”

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This post was sponsored by Olympus.

Wordless Wednesday…

Last weekend the news came out that the Brewers’ Ryan Braun took Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs). We were at a party and got the call from Sam.

“The news is saying Ryan Braun took drugs and my stomach hurts.”

I’m not positive the two were connected, but I am guessing yes. Because really, despite the fact that the Brewers aren’t our home team, Ryan Braun has been a pretty huge celebrity in our house. Yes, he is an all-star, was Rookie of the Year in 2007 and was just awarded the MVP. But he is also nicknamed the Hebrew Hammer and having a sports hero who is Jewish is not a common theme in American sports history. He’s been a role model and a source of pride and inspiration for our family. We even considered trying to get my mom to name her new puppy after him. Brauny.

“Don’t name pets after baseball players,” my brother warned Sam.
“You’re such a pessimist,”I told him. Yet, in less than a month, his warning came true.

Buried in my closet were Chanuka gifts with Braun’s name and number… Damn baseball players. And my son was moping.

“Do you think he did it?” He asks me the next night.”He says he didn’t.”

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Nobody has ever been able to win those cases when they say the didn’t.”

“I don’t think he did it,” he says. “I believe him.”

“I just hope that if he did do it, he owns up to it,” I say. “It’d be harder to forgive him if he fights with lies.”

We’re both silent for a moment. And then Sam says, “I still want that jersey, Mom. Nobody is perfect. Who knows what he’ll do next. Maybe he’ll learn something.”

“I think you’re right,” I tell him with pride. “No one is perfect.”

And when that gets opened next week, I’ll know that while I hope Braun actually is the first player to overturn that accusation, at the very least, he has taught my boy (while obviously not intentionally) not only something about baseball but about the importance of forgiveness.

So right off, I want to issue a PSA…
If you’re reading this and you’re a guy and you have no interest in things that you’d rather not know about women, or probably more specifically about me, and even more specifically about me and mammograms, then you should probably just skip this post. And if you don’t, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And now back to our regular programming.

So, as many of you know, I turned 40 this year. You might remember the birthday party that the Princess helped me throw. The anticipation was traumatic enough to not talk about it much, but in truth, 40 has been totally great. New career changes, kids are getting older, and well, I’m pretty happy. All good.

But as a woman, being 40 also means some other stuff. Mainly mammogram. But the thing is, people don’t really talk about those. And by people, I mean women. And by talk about, I mean actually MENTION. Because while we talk about EVERYTHING else, this once remained sort of a mystery.

So for all you 39 year olds out there, this one’s for you… No more mystery.

Like an idiot, I was sort of excited about the whole mammogram thing. It seemed like a rite of passage thing. And I’m all about embracing 40–the alternative is worse and all–and all about fighting breast cancer so it seemed like something to stand behind. Or in front of. Or something.

At my physical last week, my doctor set me up with an appointment for the next day. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I felt giddy. ‘I can’t believe I’m old enough for a MAMMOGRAM!”

And when the nurse called me in from the waiting room with another woman, I thought, “Oh, fun… It’s a social thing.”

She took us back to a room with two dressing room stalls, told us to strip from the waist up, change into a robe, and then wait. I hurried into my robe and was already out in the waiting room when the other woman, middle aged and grim looking, came out.

“Kind of like a spa, right?” I quipped, trying to keep it light. I think she grunted and sat down in the chair next to me and picked up an outdated magazine.

“This is my first mammogram,” I said to her. She seemed pretty grim.

“Congratulations,” she said to me without looking up from her magazine. Sweet.

The nurse comes in and calls my name first and I’m relieved to leave the waiting room. She tells me to take off the robe and put my left breast on the table.

“Wha??”

“Left breast on the table,” she says. “Hold still and don’t look.”

I start feeling a bit of panic. My breasts don’t do things separately. And obviously I don’t move fast enough because the nurse then takes my left breast and puts it on the table for me. Eeee.

“Don’t look,” she tells me. And of course, I look. My poor breast is smashed butterfly-like in between two glass panels like a mammary pancake. I am sure she told me not to look because it’d be too disturbing.

I’m kept in that vice until she takes the photos and then repeats on the right side. This time I don’t look but silently assure myself that this is totally necessary and it’s a good thing because breast cancer is evil and yes, it’s a good thing and WHY. HAS. NOBODY. EVER. TOLD. ME. THAT. THEY’D. BE. MAKING. TORTILLAS OUT OF MY BOOBS???!!!

Seriously, I know a lot of women and while this totally did not compare one iota to childbirth or many other painful things, I went into this completely ignorant, like a 40 year old babe in the woods. And it’s completely worth it to know that I’m healthy and all, but seriously, I knew every second of what would happen with getting my period and developing and then childbirth and nursing and all that stuff. Mammograms? Nothing.

After the procedure, I went back to the changing room (it no longer felt like a dressing room), changed back into my clothes and ran into my buddy. She gave me a nod and I nodded back.

So for all of you about to turn 40, and you KNOW who you are, go get that squishy thing, but for the love of all that is good and decent, DO NOT LOOK.

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Amazingly, the holidays are upon us. Not sure how it happened since I feel like just yesterday it was summer and then the start of school. I feel like our crazy schedule has us moving so incredibly fast that I can barely keep up. There are next semester forms to fill out, homework to check on, field trips that I’m barely remembering, birthday parties that I’m not sure I’ve remembered and many hours of work–which is a really good thing–but makes all those other things I have to remember really difficult. And what about the quality time? All those hugs and morning cuddles that get lost in the rush? The alarm clock goes off so early, and we’re never ready for it.

On Wednesday we’re off for four days and my goal is to really and truly make it four days of true family time. I love Thanksgiving for the food, family and festivities, but this year, I’m really looking forward to the family and friends part. We’ll have 18 at our table and while the dinner to be cooked is a bit daunting, this year the girls are excited to help.

And so for the holidays, when I think about what is truly comforting, I’m thinking that having another year with the people I love around me is really what it’s all about. We’ll sit by the fire and create memories and hang out and cuddle. I love the meal, but I love the hang out time after the meal even more. Everyone is full and content, there’s a guitar and some singing, maybe some Scrabble and lots of dessert.

And even though on Monday, we’ll start the grind again, and even though it’s raining constantly and the days are getting shorter and shorter, knowing that more holidays are just around the bend makes this of of the most comforting times of the year.
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Comfort is the perfect gift for everyone on your holiday gift list, so be sure to take advantage of Tempur-Pedic’s Buy 2, get 1 free pillow offer! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.

Remember that uber cute penguin movie? Which one? Penguins seem to be the thing lately, but Happy Feet started the trend and now you have the chance to see the sequel! Let me know if you want to be one of the first to see it and Allied Marketing will give you and three guests free tix to see it on 11/14 at Thornton Creek Cinema in Seattle! You’ll also get this super cool prize pack pictured here.

See you there!

wordless wednesday… (it counts as a pet, right?)

When I learned of Steve Jobs’ death yesterday, I was saddened. I suppose it was expected to certain extent because anyone who has spent any time in the technology industry knew he’d been ill. I was surprised that his death came so soon after his resignation, angered that yet another person fell victim to cancer, and sobered by the fact that after accomplishing so much in such a short life, there were so many devastated by this loss, including his family who will suffer the most.

What I did not expect was the accumulated sadness I’ve felt over the past eighteen hours.

I’ve spent most of my adult life on PCs because of my work with Microsoft. And even when I left, I tried unsuccessfully to convert to Macs because they’re just so freaking cool and pretty and their ads and marketing are genius and well, I respect all those things. But what I realized this morning as I heard the continued coverage about Jobs is that although I have spent most of my life on PCs, Steve Jobs and his Macintosh have played a huge role in my life.

My first experience with computers with a TRS-80 my stepdad bought at Radio Shack. I loved learning the basic coding and creating rainbows on the screen, but it was an incredibly unglamorous experience.  When my Uncle bought the first Macintosh, I fell in love. I was young, but I knew this was huge. That small tan box with the cute screen, cute logo, and amazing user interface? I was on it any chance I could get at it.

And so when I was finally able buy my first Mac, the Macintosh 512Ke in college (I used some of Bat Mitzvah money), I was thrilled. Sure, it was cute and compact and perfect for a college student who moved every year (it had a handle for easy carrying!). But it was my outlet. I wrote my fiction and poetry on it, I wrote my papers on it, I got online with it and connected to email with my loud beeping modem that drove my roommates crazy so that I could communicate with my sister in Israel on it. It was my lifeline to the bigger world. I felt that. I remember having recurring nightmares at night about burglars coming in and stealing my Mac. Really.

Because the thing about that computer that became a lifelong lesson is that there was nothing I could do on that computer that I wouldn’t learn from. Sure, there were the papers and prose and things I could produce. But with technology, I could learn very new concepts and things. I could chat with people across the room, across the country and across the world. I could talk to people with new perspectives. I could self-publish and get a message out. I could create macros and programs that could change formatting, search and replace, make edits and generally make my work and me more efficient. I believed I could do anything with that computer. I still believe that there is a way to do anything with computers. The possibilities were endless and they still are.

The endless possibilities… Think different. Steve Jobs changed our lives. And while the loss of his life is ridiculously huge, his impact on our world during his shortened life is even larger.