early in the pre-dawn hours (to avoid the travesty that is Cinci) we will be heading south to the mountains of TN for a few days.  it will be nice to get out of here and see our family for a change.  smokies here we come!  expect lots of  mountain shots;  just can’t get enough, after living in the midwest.  cue southern/memphis blues.

E has been perfecting her fry bread recipe, faintly remembered from childhood with her grandmother, who was from a pocono (?) tribe which was taken over by the shawnee.  if you had to subsist on something, this is the way to go!  evidenced by partial consumption pre-photo.  amazing how something so simple can be so satisfying.

i knew we oldsters struggling to survive on low SSA fixed incomes were not getting a cost of living raise this year (or any time soon), but guess what bogus reason they give?  and i quote:

“The law does not permit an increase in benefits when there is no increase in the cost of living.  So your benefit will stay the same in 2016.  There was no increase in the cost of living during the past year based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) published by the Department of Labor.  The CPI is the Federal government’s official measure used to calculate cost of living increases.”

uh huh.  no increase in the COL.  well that proves it.  convenient (for the conservative pricks in their penthouses).  a few cents per month would really kill them.  my monthly income wouldn’t even pay the rent in most places in the country, let alone other necessary expenses.  i had to leave my stable but modest-paying job to caregive for my dying parents for even less, no benefits, no way to resume work in the indefinite future.  many people are in the same boat.  they worked hard as long as they were able to, paid into the system, then one crisis intervened to render them in need of that system.  but the system is controlled by greedy assholes who call that freeloading.

i was fortunate to find a fellow-struggler to move in with in a cheap part of the country and share expenses. not everyone finds that. we have both been forced to retire early due to forces beyond our control. i could have easily become homeless or reduced to living in a hellhole facility, paid for by taxpayers.  so i’m not complaining, just saying many more people are not so lucky.  those on top think we’re too stupid and sheeplike to see through them, and still expect us to vote for them?!  they are a joke, and i hope it backfires on them one day, though not holding my breath.

rant over.  keep your spirits up, and those of others, during this darkest of seasons.  🙂

it snowed for a second!  but too ephemeral to prove.

here is skelly presiding over erev shabbat.

i just wanted to say ‘that infernal machine’.  the elliptical is glowering at me from the next room.  :/

which has nothing to do with my point, which is this:  i really dislike this time of year.  it brings the worst out in people.  jewish people pretty much just ignore it and wait for it to be over, watching bemused as the frenzy plays out.   all the painful ghosts of xmases past, all the unreal expectations that can never be met, all the going broke for another year until it starts all over again, all the frayed nerves—it seems neurotic and obsessive to me, almost infernal and diabolical, like that machine, only not as health-improving.  but that’s just me.

my intention is not to insult what’s important to many people.  it’s just perplexing sometimes.  to paraphrase ziva david, chanukah is all about family, but what is christmas about?  i see so many people being unhappy and unsatisfied, slaves to materialism and competition, excluding and being shut out.  if it’s about religion, it’s a pretty harsh, greedy, uncompassionate god.  if it’s about family, it can be very conditional and hurtful.  i’ve seen firsthand what this time of year can do to people who have been devastated by loss and marginalization.  it just grinds the hurt deeper.

in the end, what may redeem this season are families like ours, consisting of individuals who have all weathered various fractured, dysfunctional, painful pasts, with all the scars and imperfections, welcoming and taking each other in, without unrealistic expectations.  reinventing what a family can be in the true sense, a place to be yourself and be accepted.  somewhere you can ignore the insane world and create your own new ‘traditions’.  not based on how much money you have to spend on stuff, but on mutual love and respect.  we’re thankful for the family we do have and the welcome we have received, especially after the transitions of the past year.

here are the legen-wait for it-dary See’s marshmints and my lucky loaded dreidel which is programmed to land almost exclusively on gimel, which according to the rules means drink and eat marsh mints.  here are drinks.  somehow all the other letters mean that too, not sure why.  only, E can’t handle a Real drink (mine) so i get more.  plus her Lady’s drink.  this game is cool.  try it at home.  do not drive.  the end.

this evening we went over to the fen as usual.  it was WARM!  so surreal to be this springlike.  birds were everywhere.  we did not see mr. Big Beaver, but we saw a young one swimming along. (sorry, not pictured.)  we live for beavers!  we could swear we heard frogs jumping into the water—never happens this time of year.  hmm, could it be (gasp) climate change?   all of nature is confused.

and here it is…the grand finale, complete with a rare sighting of YT, just to be different.  hopefully after hanukkah, the evil torture machine will do its diabolical work.  meanwhile, happy 8th.  sad to see it go, but it was good.  E made pizza, of course. i finally relented and put the pandora hanukkah station on.  corny!!  and now to transition to ‘that’ time of year, may it pass soon. but the lights are shiny, at any rate.

hanukkah always goes by too fast.  but we had a pretty good one—latkes, blintzes, pizza(?), our fun new dreidel drinking game (by YT copyright trademark)*, enhanced by the fine See’s chocolate assortment The Bobs so kindly sent, and NOT the insanity frenzy of the outside world this time of year.  and ‘in case’ we gained too much weight, the new torture machine is lurking diabolically in the background.  yay.  so all in all, not bad.  see following post for actual candle-lighting.  i wanted to drag it out as long as i could.

*to review:

nun= 🙁 no one drinks.

gimel= all drink.

hey= all toast “HEY” and drink.

shin= other person drinks yours, you pass. in a group: everyone drinks but you.

if chocolate enters the equation, just eat some at every gimel (and maybe cheat a little, if you’re candy-deprived the rest of the year, like us.)

today we visited E’s son (and some other family members) at the cemetery.  a sad time for her.  it never really gets behind her.

to regroup, we went to one of our favorite shops in yellow springs, house of ravenwood, to stock up on incense-y things, look at all the shiny gemstones, and talk to a fellow aquarian who somehow transferred good vibes to us.  he was a retired air force zen hippie with mystical powers, go figure.

then of course on to our default watering hole for a good beer, bell’s (michigan) best brown ale, and some pizza with blue cheese and sriracha, pretty different.

finally, candle-lighting 7.