The admission letters have begun to roll in and the girl who calls me Abba is going to have options because she has gotten into three universities.
Since she hasn’t heard from all and doesn’t expect to hear from some for a while there is time before we have to engage in a reality check about which school gets the privilege of my financial support.
Or should I say before we figure out which school I can afford to send her to. There is no doubt that we’ll figure out how to make it work, but I am not expecting it to be simple.
Still I have confidence in it working out for both logical reasons and illogical ones. I feel like it will happen just as I feel like others things will and most of the time they do.
For now I am content on watching her open the emails with the same look of excitement and wonder as when she was a little girl.
Chinese Food On Christmas
Not sure if we’ll do the traditional Chinese food thing on Christmas but I can almost guarantee I’ll go grab some bagels from Oren.
They are pretty darn good and given how few M.O.T. businesses there are on this side of town I am happy to offer support.
The timing of the post is kind of funny because an associate asked me what I do on Christmas and wondered if I hang out at the Jewish shops.
I laughed and told him I don’t limit my shopping to one particular brand or place but that I am conscious of where I choose to shop or alternatively not shop at.
Life as a tribesman in Texas is different than Los Angeles as back home there were so many of us you could forget being a minority. You could be as observant or as non observant as you wanted to be with little effort.
It is a little bit different here as you are almost always reminded that you are part of a small minority. Most of the time it is not done out of malice or any sort of intent to offend or bully.
People assume everyone around them celebrates Christmas and don’t understand why we don’t, assuming we have the conversation.
Most of the time it doesn’t come up and I don’t feel a need to engage. There have been moments where it has been necessary, primarily school related.
Sometimes things have gotten ugly and people have tried to bully me into silence. That generally works out poorly because public schools don’t have as much freedom and latitude to act with no regard for the consequences.
Sadly that hasn’t translated into masks and Covid protocols but that is a different situation.
Anyhoo, my time worrying about public school as a parent is coming to an end and that throws me a bit.
My baby girl, the one who keeps getting into colleges just started preschool last week or so it feels.
Some of the older guys have told me to buckle up because they say I’ll blink and she’ll be married and that I’ll blink again and she’ll make me a grandfathe.
“What do you want to be called? Grandpa, Pop, Saba?”
“Dad or Abba is fine. I look forward to becoming Granda, but not yet. She is too damn young now. It would be bad if I had to play mohel.”
They laugh and say they remember thinking like that and I tell them to enjoy their grandkids and that I can wait.
Toilets & Attics
Got two more days of work before I shut it down for the year and I can’t wait.
Desperate to not take another staycation but forced to live with desperation just a little bit longer.
Mostly ok with that because I need to turn off the brain and stop the melon from smoking due to the overuse.
Decided to try and get some of the chores out of the way so that I don’t spend all my time doing things that have to be done.
Need time to do nothing and feel ok with it or something because I choose to.
So I the big Orange box and picked up some filters, tools and miscellaneous items. Got to replace a fill valve in one toilet and look at resetting another.
Climbed into the attic where I have to play twister to take out the old filter and install the new and as usual amazed myself by not stepping through the ceiling or having the stairs collapse under me.
Got to do some more organizing inside and in the garage and then spend some time writing. Or should I say more time because that is what it is.
Hard to believe 2021 is almost complete and yet here we are at the end. I am sure the guys are right about one thing, blink and your kids get older.
What a crazy world indeed.
You know, the Chinese restaurant open on Christmas trope isn’t true here in the Syracuse area. I guess there’s not a large enough Jewish community to support it, though this year’s one where I’d have thought about at least ordering takeout since I’ll be alone.
Good luck with the colleges. Things were much different for me back in the day, which is why I went to a state college and absolutely loved it, and my parents didn’t have to worry about getting a loan that was higher than their combined income at the time; whew!
I am not sure how big a community we have there, though I know about five people so there is that. 🙂
Quite a bit of the Chinese food here is what I think of as White people Chinese food and the places are filled primarily with White people. I look for restaurants that are populated by whatever ethnic population’s food is being served.
College is different from when I went. It is 34 years since my freshman year and the costs are exponentially higher, but so it goes. We’ll do our best to make good choices based on education and finances.
It’s 44 1/2 years since my freshman year… ouch! lol I’m with you on Chinese food in America… at least most of it. On a trip to NYC back in 2005, I went into a Chinese restaurant with others. While looking at the menu, I noticed Chinese people at the table next to ours eating something that wasn’t on the menu. I asked the guy if what he was eating was on my menu; he looked at my menu and said “this doesn’t look like the menu I had.” When the waitress came back I asked if I could have what the guy was eating at the other table. Suddenly her English wasn’t good enough for her to understand my question… right! lol
Forty-four years huh, goes quickly. I’ll blink and be at the same mark. 😉
When I go out for specific kinds of food I usually look to see who is eating in there. I like to see the ‘people’ that are tied to that particular kind of food. Helps me feel it is more authentic, but there are some things that are beyond my willingness to try so sometimes that has to be mitigated a bit. 😉
That is a funny story about the waitress. Guess they didn’t want to share the secret menu with you. 🙂