What Kids Want

My nephew, age 9, stumbles into the house with a can of soda in one hand, and a bag of questionable "nosh" in the other. 

"I'll take that," I say, and pluck both from his hands. 

"Hey!" 

"I have a bunch of grapes for you." 

His eyes light up. "Purple?" he asks hopefully. 

"Purple." 

Well, in that case . . . 

After slicing up an apple for his baby-ish brother, the 3-year-old murmurs, "I want chocolate." 

"Sure," I tell him, waving to the big bin of Hershey's finest in the pantry. "Just eat two slices first." 

I hand him two, one for each hand, and tug away away the bowl from him, closer to his sister. Frantically he munches away, freeing a paw, and pulls the dish back. He plows through them all, with no coaxing from me.

At dinner the big boy gives me another hard time; he barely ate his pasta. While Ta munches on pistachios, the kids only want the discarded salty shells to suck on. 

"Do you want to grow tall, like Daddy? You have to eat the right foods. Here, just taste a pistachio." 

He willingly crunches one, and the next thing I know, I can barely shell them fast enough.

As for the baby? Well, he has become obsessed with sugar snap pea innards. Surrounded by fruit and chocolate wrappers, he ignores the other offerings as his eagle-eye glare is focused on my hands as I slice open the pods and pour out the peas. "More!" he demands. 

Via campeastral.blogspot.com

"I don't have any more." 

"MORE!" 

Sure, they "want" candy. Right.    

The Company You Keep

In trying to comprehend my daily davening, I have become fond of the English translation available in my Artscroll. Following brachos, there are is a "Yihee Ratzon," originally recited by Rabbi Yehudah HaNassi, as "prayer for protection in day-to-day dealings with one's fellow men." One of the requests are for distance from an "evil friend."

I once attended a sheva brachos where Rabbi Yaakov Reisman spole. In the first mishna in Rosh Hashana, it lists the four "New Years"; the "New Year" for the trees is listed. 

Now, he asks, what is it about trees that they merit their own celebration? C'mon, it's a tree. 

Via chabad.org

Because the tree New Year is mentioned at the same time as the other New Years, it gets a party on that merit alone. Therefore, he concluded, it is the company you keep.

I thought of this when reading "Friends Can Be Dangerous" by Laurence Steinberg. According to new studies, just the presence of other peers can make teenagers behave recklessly. Not, as was previously believed, the presence of the "bad friend"; just having other fellow teenagers around bring out the worst in teenagers. 

This sort of behavior continues even unto college age students; when alone, they make the responsible choice with long-term benefits. When other college students are there, they have an adolescent's knee-jerk, all-about-now reaction.

Humans outgrow this proclivity with adulthood, thank goodness. But if simply having other people around can bring out the stupid in a teenager, what damage does an actively bad friend do to an adult?

I don't think we always honest about the state of our friendships. In teenage-hood, I made a friendship or two that, well, did not make me feel too good. I somehow managed to casually fade them out; it was almost as if I sensed the . . . corruption, if you will, on a physical level. 

I think we are also often fooled by outside appearances. The "bad friend" is, obviously, someone who looks different, sounds different, dresses different. But the "bad friend" is usually who looks the same, sounds the same, dresses the same. But in the end, his off-handedness about religion and feinkeit leave a mark. 

Be aware. If you come home from hanging out with a pal and feel a burning need to take a shower . . .  

See Yourself

Liz Tuccillo in He's Just Not That Into You: 

For me, the jubilation of finally realizing what I'm worth and what I'm not going to put up with anymore slowly, eventually moved on to utter, bone-crushing loneliness . . . Well, good for me, I get to spend Valentine's Day with my mother . . . 

I don't know about you, but I wanted my reward. A huge, seismic shift had occurred in my entire outlook on love and dating, and I believed the heavens should honor me by delivering to me a really nice boyfriend. Unfortunately, life doesn't work like that . . . most often, the reward for feeling better about yourself and no longer letting people treat you poorly is just that - feeling better about yourself and not having people treat you poorly . . .

Replacing the mediocre relationships, halfhearted men, and meaningless e-mails and texts is not just bone-crushing loneliness. It's confidence. It is the miraculous emotion that rolls in to replace all the relationship rubble that has been swept away. No one is making you feel like you aren't enough. No situation is making you feel unlovable. There is just you. There is just you and your standards, and soon enough there is confidence. And the more of it that comes, the more positive reinforcement you will get from the outside world.       

Continuing on the previous post on this subject, I mentioned that it is fear, not feebly cited "statistics," that drive the single population into a panic. 

Lehavdil, I had a date that arrived on time, and Ta gave him a once over. There wasn't more than a minute of interaction between the two, a few words exchanged, a shaking of the hands. But as soon as we left he turned to Ma and said, "He's trying too hard." 

"Trying too hard" doesn't sound too bad, really. What girl wouldn't be flattered by a guy trying hard (for once)? A well-maintained car. A lavish meal. Not an insult to be heard. 

But there is also that squirm-inducing comments, as he tries so hard he sticks his foot into his mouth. He tries so hard, he states the obvious. He tries so hard, I suspect he began fabricating lies here in there to make himself sound more impressive. 

Nothing like a fib or ten to make a gal's heart grow fonder. 

"Trying too hard" comes from a place of inadequacy: "I am not enough." We are what we are, and the Bashefer has someone, out there, for each and every one of us.

I dealt with being alone earlier on; I have never had an easy time making friends. Nor was I willing to tolerate any "abuse." I rarely compromised. Like Greg says before in the book, it is worse to be in a bad relationship where you don't feel respected than to be alone. I firmly believe that. 

If a person isn't a content, complete individual without a spouse, an ensuing romantic relationship won't be a healthy one. 

Use the current alone-stage to catalogue oneself. What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? What are character traits that could use improvement? How can I behave in a manner in which I can now like myself?

Loneliness does suck. But it is also an opportunity.       

Battle of the Bulge: We Can All Dream

After watching myself for a few days, I can't stop rhapsodizing to myself during davening one morning. 

Goodness, I feel great! Light, airy, like gravity couldn't keep me down! Why would I ever overeat when I feel so fantastic? It's so simple! It makes absolutely no sense for me to stuff my face in that mindless way. This is first day of the rest of my life, I shall always be in the grips of iron self control, because I want to hold on to this ecstatic sensation always! 

Then the kinfauna come to visit.

"Eat up the rest of your supper." 

"But I'm fuuuuuull." 

"Two more bites." 

Two grudging bites. 

I can't throw away good food, even though I had supper already.

Next day: 

"Can I have some cake?" 

"After you eat lunch." 

She eats lunch. 

"Now can I have cake?" 

"Sure. A piece for you . . . while I stand here by the open Tupperware and mindlessly munch."

You get the gist.

Davening the next morning: 

I don't understand. It made no sense. I still over-ate! Why? Incomprehensible! Well, today is the first day of the rest of my life!

I can gently roll off that wagon. It doesn't take that much effort to. But clamber back on again, as soon as may be. It'll take a little more koyach, but just keep forging onward.

Antibiotic Wisely

Whenever one of the kinfauna whine that something "has germs," I have to take a deep breath and count to ten. 

"Tell me," I say in a low, villain-esque voice, "what sort of terrible, horrible disease did someone get because a glass wasn't washed and dried until 'sparkling'?" 

They smile sheepishly and accept the non-sterilized cup of water. 

The scientific community has been retracting all of the disinfectant and antibiotic hysteria of recent years, now calling for discretion. Not only that, but some even encourage dirt exposure. 

From the OMO "Dirt is good" campaign

There are many "gut" problems nowadays, and a number are caused by antibiotic overuse and sterile environments. Our kishkes are composed of a beautiful ecosystem of bacteria that keeps our bodies humming along smoothly, and antibiotics annihilate the good with the bad. It can take years to recreate that necessary population.

I have even read that those with a genetic predisposition to intestinal disorders ("Speaking Up About an Uncomfortable Condition" by Jane E. Brody), such as IBS, should actively expose themselves to germs: 

Dr. Sartor also noted that early exposure to common viruses and bacteria can strengthen the immune system and keep it from attacking normal tissues.

“My advice to parents and grandparents is, ‘Let them eat dirt,’ ” he said.

Dr. Abigail Zuger reviewed Dr. Martin Blaser's book, Missing Microbes ("We Kill Germs at Our Peril"), who cautions against antibiotic overuse as well.

For other increasingly common conditions such as asthma, inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease, Dr. Blaser offers an inversion of the so-called hygiene hypothesis, which holds that by removing us from contact with outdoor microbes, sanitized modern life has allowed the immune system to spiral out of control. Instead, he suggests, blame rests on the distortion of our internal microbial world.

Don't get me wrong, antibiotics are amazing, but they have a time and place. Some doctors chuck them at their patients like Tic-Tacs, though, and too much of a good thing can be detrimental.   

When I got sinus infections I would limp to my doctor and beg for a prescription, which he merrily provided. But it would have gone away anyway in the same time that I was popping those pills.

It's just amazing how Hashem set up this world, down to our symbiotic relationship with teeny tiny microbes.     

"**** Statistics."

Liz Tuccillo in He's Just Not That Into You:

 . . . I'm just going to come right out with it: There aren't that many good men around. Statistics prove it, articles and books have been written to verify it, and women would be happy to testify under oath about it. There are more good women out there than good men. Oh, wait, there's this one as well: A lot of men want to date much younger women, so as you get older, there are even fewer men that want to date you.

Behold, ladies, the very same arguments for the "shidduch crisis" (urgle) that I've heard before. 

Liz continues that this is why many fabulous women (such as herself) lower their expectations. Considerably. But then she says it is because they hate being alone.

I am deeply pragmatic, so given the sheer statistics, I don't have a clue what to say. I know we have to love ourselves and think we deserve happiness and be optimistic. I also think it sucks to be single. Greg, are you telling us that we we should just stay single and picky and not settle (and thus not settle down) until we have met the person we think is the one?

Do you see how her argument changes? First, it is that it is near impossible to find a decent being with  a Y chromosome, but next she says that settling comes from hating loneliness. To me, that sounds like two separate arguments. 

What if this whole "shidduch crisis" hooey is just a front for the scary emotions we don't want to face: We cannot bear our own company. 

Being single, especially in the frum world, does suck. We base our whole religion on the sanctity of the home. Maintaining shalom bayis is a major thing. It has been wired into our DNA beyond the biological need to reproduce that spiritual fulfillment lies in marriage. Plus, it sucks to be alone. God said so, right after He created Adam. 

Greg Behrendt responds: 

Statistics are bleak . . . You can't do anything with these statistics except scare yourself and you girlfriends. So I say, "**** statistics." It's your life - how dare you not have faith in it! . . . I believe life will turn out well. More fervently, I believe that you have no other choice than to believe that. I am writing this book, and women will be reading it, because we are all tired of operating from a place of fear. 

Fear. What single hasn't had that terrifying vision of a cat-filled future? When you come home, defeated, from yet another date (after being dateless for months), wondering when you can finally get off the farshtinkener merry-go-round?  When everyone around you (what "shidduch crisis"?!) pair off casually.

Someone has to be blamed. We are used to blaming someone. We don't want to blame ourselves, though. So we say "shidduch crisis." We say "statistics." We say empty terms that clash with our religion. Or we aren't honest enough to say, "I hate being alone. I'm scared of my future. I'm frightened that there is something wrong with me. And I just don't want to wait anymore."

You know what "statistics" also say about a tiny nation the size of New Jersey surrounded by murderous superpowers? Don't quote "statistics" to me!

Because what is the point of being a frum Jew, if I need lessons in emunah from a stand-up comedian?

Compassionate Literacy

I am not sure if I am genetically inclined to reading, or if I was simply raised to be a reader. 

As far back as I can remember, Ma was always taking out books for me in the library. She knew the good authors from her many years of prowling the aisles. Then the grand transition from children's books (the eminent Fudge series by Judy Blume!) to young adult—Journey for a Princess, The Calico Captive, Mrs. Mike, Step to the Music. 

Now I do my own selections, placing requests online; I prance into the library with anticipatory glee to collect a delicious stack from the wheezing librarian. P.G. Wodehouse, Lois McMaster Bujold (for which I owe Sparrow eternal gratitude), Norah Lofts (I have an homage to her scheduled), Frank Herbert, Nancy Mitford, Edna Ferber, and Bernard Cornwell are my current obsessions. 

The house is adorned with baskets full of children's picture books, the den shelves are stocked with Gordon Korman. But not all children seem to be geared to read. 

As my niece sits on my head on a Shabbos afternoon, I beg: "Just get a book." 

She doesn't move. 

"Go read something!" I eventually order. "We have books upon books upon books!" 

She don't budge. 

Frank Bruni shares my literate concern for the next generation in "Read, Kids, Read." 

There’s research on this, and it’s cited in a recent article in The Guardian by Dan Hurley, who wrote that after “three years interviewing psychologists and neuroscientists around the world,” he’d concluded that “reading and intelligence have a relationship so close as to be symbiotic.”

In terms of smarts and success, is reading causative or merely correlated? Which comes first, “The Hardy Boys” or the hardy mind? That’s difficult to unravel, but several studies have suggested that people who read fiction, reveling in its analysis of character and motivation, are more adept at reading people, too: at sizing up the social whirl around them. They’re more empathetic. God knows we need that.

"God knows" is right. 

One of the best recommendations from my mother was The Rich Are Different by Susan Howatch (there is a sequel, Sins of the Fathers. It took me four re-readings to realize it is a modern retelling of Julius Caesar and his heir, Octavion). What I adore about it is that the book is divided into segments, and the narration switches between the characters. When seeing the world through the many players' eyes, the stringencies of the black-and-white perspective blend together, forming inconclusive gray.

Are there villains, are there heroes? Who is the protagonist, who the antagonist? Is that character really so good? Is that person really so terrible? How do they consider the situation? 

How do other people see me?

If we spend our last hours or minutes of the night reading rather than watching television, we wake the next morning with thoughts less jumbled, moods less jangled. Reading has bequeathed what meditation promises. It has smoothed and focused us.

"Blue light" stimulation prevents slumber; I cannot, and I mean cannot, fall asleep without reading first, whether one page fifty. It calms me, soothes me, and eases me onto a serene plane as I leave the anxieties of the day behind. 

      

To read . . . perchance to dream . . . 

Turkey Brain

It seems none of us are immune to bias. While I have been more accustomed to religious observance as a means of discrimination, I have heard quite a bit about cookbooks versus textbooks. 

"You know, those girls," she sneers, "the only thing they know how to do is make challah." 

Via chabadofbelair.org

I have not yet heard the scorn from the other side (like "Those girls who read for fun!") so it seems to be a currently one-sided prejudice. 

Such an accuser conjures an image of a frumpy bluestocking, but she was actually quite stylish, sporting a designer bag. I was then even more confused. I would have thought such disgust over such gross physicality as a delectable dinner would spill over into other aesthetics, such as label-worship. 

I have, in recent years, become interested in cooking. If I am to truly do battle with the horrific diet of the typical American, I certainly have to be in a position to offer palatable alternatives. The process of extracting edibles from raw ingredients can be a complicated project, so to have it so derided as a pastime for the feeble-minded was certainly a puzzlement to me. 

I was fond of academia (until the professors' egos got in the way of the education); college, I found, was not strictly about learning—it was about thinking, to ponder the cultures and ways of many societies outside of our daily comprehension, and attempting to do so without judgement. 

We are all not meant to be the same; the world would be quite boring if we were. Marriages would be arranged by lotto; food would taste the same; fashion would require but one runway. 

If "that" girl knows how to make good challah but is not interested in the history of the Renaissance, God bless. But there are plenty of females who enjoy, say, both. I refuse to permit but two categories, "ignorant chef" or "hungry intellectual."

There is also a third alternative, of one who can't cook to save her life and flunked out of high school. She is also allowed to have her own strengths, her own accomplishments, outside of such a simple worldview. 

The truly well-read will acknowledge that an anthropological outlook is in order, and it behooves a graduate of higher education to step outside of her own standards and grant some goodwill to skills she does not possess. 

Can't we all just get along?  

Hearken to My Cream

I've been trying to terrorize you people to put sunscreen on every day, and I don't know to how much success. For those stragglers, watch and weep:

Contouring/Highlighting

Via missmaven.com

It has been a wobbly journey, but contouring and highlighting are very much worth the effort.

Via sparkleandmineblog.blogspot.com

I had managed to work out the concept of contouring—all that needed is matte bronzer. But stuck as I am on strictly matte products for everything else, I was stumped as to find a highlighter/luminizer without sparkle. 

Yet as I observed other makeup-ed females, some radiated a delicate gleam along their upper cheekbones. I was fascinated. 

After watching the 2013 version of "The Lady Vanishes," I decided to abandon, just this once, my matte standards. 

You can't really tell here, but the character Iris Carr had the most fabulously illuminated cheekbones.

I purchased the Sephora Microsmooth Baked Luminizer in 01 Stardust. As recommended by some online tutorials, I apply it in a "C", starting from my brow bone, around the eye, and along the top of my cheekbones (a "special" brush is not needed; I use the e.l.f. Studio Blush Brush, which is also good for contouring).

The luminizer is also ideal for dabbing in the inner corners of the eyes; it really makes them look awake and bright. 

 

For blending, since the contour grooves can sometimes be too harsh, or  come out too dark, I use the Fantasea Large Kabuki Brush. The bristles are so soft and malleable, and with a few buffs everything is beautifully blended out. 

The current icon whose name is synonymous with "contouring" is, of all people, Kim Kardashian.

 

She has to be thanked for reviving interest in contouring and highlighting. I think. 

And one more photo: 

 

Experiment, my lovelies!