How much exercise is enough?
I ask because I need to know. I have a big project I'm working on, and I wonder--do I dare skip the gym to work on it?
I admit, I'm a bit of a gym devotee. Five days a week, ie Monday through Friday, I take Step classes, which include weights, and also other accouterments like using one of those big balls, and bands that you wear between your ankles, and those heavy bars (I use 18 lbs) and wrap-around ankle weights, and those half-cylinder balancing foams, and those stretchy rubber tubes with handles at the ends. I like the high-choreography classes, and I'm a bouncer--meaning I do a lot of jumping around, and always include the "extras" for the higher-level workout. I come out of these workouts dripping with perspiration, or, if you're very polite, like Rudolph the Reindeer, "you would even say she glows." A lot.
I've been doing this for a lot of years. Probably more than the age of many of my instructors.
I can't say it's fun. Sometimes when an instructor really does a complicated or innovative routine, without repeating stuff a zillion times, then yes, it's a LOT of fun. I had one teacher a few years ago who was SO fun, I was willing to get up really early to take his classes. Unfortunately, he had AIDS and had to stop teaching. Dare I say that the very best Step teachers I've had were all gay guys?
I take classes compulsively because I'm afraid not to. I don't want to get un-toned. I don't want to lose flexibility. Especially, I don't want to lose the extra energy and endurance I get as a result. I like that I am competent and I like the "regulars" with whom I take classes. They notice if I'm not there (and I miss them if they're not there, too). There's a camaraderie among people who take the same classes together over time. Not really a deep friendship, but certainly a friendship on a level that can only be forged from enduring something challenging together. OK, this isn't mountain-climbing, but there's a degree of discipline in showing up to push yourself every day.
But now, I've got this project, and it crossed my mind that I could sure use another four or six hours a week to work on it. Can I cut out two days' workouts? (That's what I'm considering now.) Would I be consumed with guilt? I need advice. Have you gotten in an exercise routine and couldn't allow yourself to get out? SHOULD I???
The Northwest rain pelted and pinged on my umbrella today, glancing from the pavement up onto my wet shoes and legs. Its constance obscured the colorful wares in each of the booths I passed at soggy Salmon Days, a celebration of the return of the salmon to Issaquah creek that occurs each year with a plethora of art booths, several stages blasting rock music, and displays at the Issaquah salmon hatchery, to which a record number of fish are leaping and wriggling this year, through narrow and rocky tributaries, to return to spawn.
The fish are truly a miracle of nature, as they are born in fresh water streams, yet ride the current to the salty ocean to live their lives, finally using mysterious means to make their way back to the very spot of their births to release the eggs of the subsequent generation--and die. During a fair-weather fair, great crowds line the bridges over the creek, watching the most amazing display of three-foot-long salmon leaping out of the water, trying to ford a gushing waterfall. Those are the stupid salmon, however, because nearby is a "salmon ladder," a stepped tunnel that runs alongside the waterfall that allows the fish to swim upstream in calm safety. It's lined with viewing windows, and watching these huge fish, many of whom have tattered fins and decaying scales after a lifetime at sea, as they make their way in the urgency of instinct to their birthplace, is an awesome experience. The only reason why God would create such bizarre creatures is to instill in us a sense of wonder. Well, that, and to provide a healthy meal for about ten bucks.
In any case, it's all a great reason for a festival, and the fish are foremost in the fun, with thirty-foot-long effigies, carried on poles by eight people, swimming their way through the crowd (above, photographed in a previous year). Despite the rain this year, the hatchery still swarmed with families gawking at the exhibits of fingerlings and taxidermed fish, and the naturalists on the bridge still fielded questions, dressed in their slickers.
Usually it's the finale fair of the season (aren't you relieved to know...), always billed to run "rain or shine." And today was defiantly rainy, with splashing puddles, and gushing spouts drenching visitors when the white rip-stop canopies on the craft-vendor booths suddenly disgorged their collected pools. In a surreal switch, the people celebrating the fish were immersed in their honoree's habitat.
And because it was nearly impossible to see, with sheets of rain, juggling umbrellas, and the swaths of plastic that vendors draped over their offerings, I took only two mediocre photos.
I did leave with a prize, however--Costco had a booth where you could roll two dice, and if you got doubles or lucky 7, the attendants, with great excitement, handed you a plastic bag with a mystery gift inside. I threw those dice against the black-velvet lined tray, and--voila! Double threes! Gleefully, I grabbed my sack and turned back into the rain, opening it as I jostled with my umbrella, walking into the downpour.
I'll always remember Salmon Days '007, not for any beautiful jewelry I bought, nor the rousing entertainment, or even the oddball fishy exhibits...but because I won... a roll of toilet paper. And probably that was the most practical souvenir of all.
It is the Jewish holiday of "Sukkot," the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the "shalosh regalim," the three "legs" of a triad of festivals for which all Jews used to make pilgrimage to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Called in the Torah "the time of our rejoicing," it is a happy holiday where observant Jews build booths on our balconies and back yards, covered with cut tree branches or plants called "skach." There we "dwell" for seven days (eight in the diaspora), eating all our meals and, if at all possible, sleeping out there, too.
Our succa has cut fir branches on top, and walls of clear vinyl sheets so we can retain our view and the daylight. If the holiday doesn't sound peculiar enough already, it is in these temporary structures that we shake the "lulav," a giant asparagus-like combo of four types of organic material--myrtle, palm and willow branches, held with a lemon-esque fruit called an "etrog."
Our family's succa is decorated with garlands that can take the rain (it was my innovation to cut hanging door "curtains" styled of stars and colorful rings by Target for dorm rooms into separate garlands) and strings of summer patio-lights (little clusters of grapes, luminaria-style metal bulb-shades, glass spheres, all also from Target). We have shimmery foil accordion flowers hung on the far wall, tin foil and construction paper chains the kids made years ago (the paper one hung inside the window-wall that forms one of the succa walls). We have colorful posters in Hebrew describing the "ushpezin," the spiritual "guests" we welcome each day into the succa, and the crops mentioned in the Bible that grew in the Holy Land. Also, I've hung realistic soft-plastic grape clusters, apples, strawberries and acorns around the edges and from the cross-beams (no farther than three t'fachim--hand-breadths--from the ceiling). The rules for constructing a succa are all very precisely described in the commentaries. The decorations are a matter of personal custom and taste.
We're taught that we put together our huts to:
--enable us to recognize our vulnerability and reliance on God,
--associate this experience with the ultimate redemption of the Messiah in days to come, when humanity will dwell in peace within a giant succa (made from the skin of the Leviathan, whatever that will be!), and
--feel God's unconditional love and regard for us, similar to His enveloping the Jews of the exodus in the "ananay kavod," the "clouds of honor" that protected them from the elements and emphasized their unity as they traveled as a people toward the Promised Land.
Even having learned all of the above, and plenty more, in my many years of Jewish study, I will confess that while I enjoy this holiday (enormous amount of work preparing and hosting guests aside), it still strikes me as bizarre. The message of our reliance on God rather than an arrogant assumption that what we build is a "real" shelter, is valuable, and I guess I can see where going outside for a week might convey it better than simply having a picnic. But the lulav? OK, its species are said to represent various types of Jews, those who do mitzvot and don't; those who are knowledgeable in Torah, and not, but that sounds like an after-the-fact rationalization for a very strange ritual. Ultimately, I guess, it, like many of our mitzvot, is actually a test to see if we're willing to do commandments just because God told us to.
But...am I a heretic?...how is the oddness of Jewish commandments different from Mormon beliefs and practice that endanger Mitt Romney's presidential bid? Mormons have rationalizations and explanations for their theology and behaviors that seem weird, even wildly unacceptable, to the rest of us. And they're fully convinced that theirs is God's true religion for mankind, and they're willing to give two years of their lives as missionaries to convince others of it. But lots of Christians, for example, refuse to vote for Mitt Romney, an upstanding, patriotic, brilliant statesman, because his theology, (not his lifestyle, which is exemplary) is illogical. Dare I confess that I, too, find his faith a deterrent?
Yet I'm willing to quiver a lulav and etrog in a succa for a week, "blessing" God for sanctifying us with His commandment to wave it. And lulav shaking didn't seem to hurt Joe Lieberman's acceptability. Doesn't compute.
In any case, here in the Northwest, we have been deluged with rain, on and off. The three days of holiday so far--two of Sukkot followed by Shabbat--allowed us three festive meals with guests under the fir boughs. After a drippy soup course on Shabbat, however, the clouds let fly, and the thirteen of us grabbed our place-settings and ran for cover. All day today, rain has pelted our succa. The dahlia centerpiece is drooping, the cheerful tablecloth is sodden, two garlands hang lifeless, having come unattached at one end. The time of our rejoicing continues, though it would proceed more heartily on my part were the sun to emerge.
Catching up on the newspaper this morning, I read the front-page headline in the Seattle Times of a week ago, titled "An Ode To Gray," describing our morose weather over the past several months--typically the only time when our webbed feet could metamorphose into toes and our pasty bodies eagerly absorb a bit of Vitamin D. "The National Weather Service recorded not a single clear day in June at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport," the article began. "Zip. zed, nil, nada. July and August also offered a dreary parade of partly-cloudy this, and cloudy that, with drizzle thrown in... Should Puget Sound residents feel entitled to grouse? Yes. A mere 19 clear days were recorded all summer at Sea-Tac."
So, to my friends in the mossy Northwest, may you wave your Asparagus proudly in the sunshine, may your skach stay fresh, and your family gather in harmony as we continue the time of our rejoicing...
Last night, my life flashed before my eyes. Thank God, I was not on the verge of death, though some say that on the eve of Yom Kippur, we are in such a state. Last night, I saw flashes of all my memorable moments since 2003, in fractions-of-a-second glimpses. I was mesmerized; I couldn't budge, as time moved before me; my daughter went from a gangly little girl to beautiful young woman; my son from pre-pubescent child to a young man nearly six feet tall. The seasons changed as I stared, with afternoons in the swimming pool shifting to autumn pumpkin fields and falling leaves, to snow-covered driveways with kids on sleds, through Passovers in Phoenix, San Diego, Hawaii, Los Angeles, and tulip fields of blindingly brilliant color.
All on my computer screen.
I had installed a new printer, one that works through a local internet connection, and upon its settling in on my hard drive, the web offered me the chance to start up. Click! And suddenly all the photos in my "My Pictures" file--about 19,000 of them--started appearing in front of me. Apparently, I'd inadvertently started up a photo editing and organizing program that needed to download all my photos so I could use it. Never mind that I've got several other brands of the same kind of software (my favorite by far is Microsoft Picture It! because it offers you one button none of the others do: "sharpen or blur." If the photo is a gooey mess, one shift of this slider gives you sharpness! Amazing! It's rescued and perfected many an underlit snapshot).
But I took this display of my life as more than just an internet quirk. On the eve of Yom Kippur, I assigned it an almost mystical significance. It allowed me to realize how very blessed I am, how free from any real problems, and to pledge (ble nedar!) to be worthy of such riches by applying myself to mitzvot and Torah study with greater dedication. It inspired me to take Yom Kippur even more seriously--I think of the word 'pleading'--that the coming year allows me to continue with the same opportunities, creating the same types of marvelous memories, that I saw last night on my computer screen.
Maybe this sounds hokey. Like most people, I do see Yom Kippur as a challenge, something difficult to get through. But of course it's the opposite; it's a means toward liberation, a clean slate. I wish all my Jewish friends g'mar chatima tova, may you be sealed for a good and sweet year, and may you enjoy each moment as much as I've enjoyed mine.
Today I "did" the Puyallup. No, it's not a new dance craze. Not a strange Chinese import food that "did" me in. It's not even an "Eats Shoots and Leaves" grammatical puzzle. Nor a tongue-twister (It's Pew-AL-up).
Just like thousands of Northwesterners, I look forwarding to "doing" the Puyallup every September. It's our state's biggest fair.
If you've been reading my blog, you know I'm hooked on these kinds of events. Craft fairs, community fairs, Jewish fairs...fair's fair, as they say. But this is the big one. This is where the 4-H kids exhibit their prize hogs. Where I watched youngsters with their trained llamas jump hurdles. Where table settings for two 
were judged on creativity, and the winner had a pair of sparkling Ruby Slippers and, down the miniscule spread, a diminutive yellow brick road. Where a hypnotist gave a show that had two thousand people on bleachers mesmerized. Where a man stood sculpting giant pumpkins into pirates and wolves. (above).
This is the show with the carney barkers, hooking passersby to pay $5 to toss a ring over a floating yellow duckie. Where walkways were shared with enormous stuffed devils and dragons toted by dared dates. This is the kind of fair where several pavillions-full of one-product booths sell innovations like cord retractors and chamois wipers and orthotics for your tired feet. Where rows of folding chairs hold captivated audiences for demonstrations of chopping machines, miracle
pots, bleed-together-colors crayons, and apple corer-peeler-slicers. That's the one that worked on me. I bought two.
There's plenty to grab the attention of fair-goers. That's the official title for those of us who paid our $10 admissions, as loudspeaker announcements proclaimed: "Fair-goers, see the cow milking demonstration in Pavillion A in just five minutes!" Instead, we watched chainsaw-wielding carvers create bears and eagles from log stumps. While watching a quilting club creating a complex coverlet, we heard, "Fair-goers, don't miss the cake-decorating demonstration in just five minutes!" Tempting, but I was ready to brave the noisy and chaotic world of the amusement rides.
Not to actually RIDE them--I can't fathom who'd pay $5 to scream till hoarse while thrust in a metal bleacher fifty feet back and forth, and then upside down. But young and old lined up to do it. The "Big Drop" was a pole at least ten stories tall that an open-air cylinder holding a dozen shrieking folk plummeted down at impossibly swift speeds. The tilt-a-whirl swished yelling patrons in dizzying circles and then horizontally on their sides. That whole area of the fair was so loud with screaming that my spouse couldn't take it.
The range of people who comprise the fair-goers is another attraction for me. Many more than I usually see are, um, generously proportioned. Wearing Bermuda shorts. In the rain. Yes, it was indeed raining today, and others of my fair-going ilk--many others, actually--sported those lovely umbrella-hats, the ones with wedges of contrasting colors that open out with metal spokes. The people who didn't bother to look up when leaving their houses bought Puyallup Fair ponchos, lavish blue plastic billows that could accommodate the most portly participant. Many people dressed in costume for the fair, painting neon colors in their hair, or bringing out their Halloween hats a little early. Lots
of them showed their approval of the famous Fair Food via slurps, drips and burps.
Fair food is justifiably adored. And this year, we can eat all that greasy delight--curly fries, onion flowers, sizzled candy bars--without fear of trans fats. Well, today, we Jews couldn't eat--or drink--anything because it was the Fast of Gedalia, one of six Jewish fast days during the year. This was especially difficult given that one of the most coveted of fair foods is the kosher Fischer Scone. This soft triangle filled with honey-butter and fresh berry jam, served warm, is a tradition that goes back fifty years. My son, who went to the fair last Sunday with his youth group, ate his fill and then brought back a dozen. His private stash. We got no fair scones. No fair.
But the distractions from our hunger were too delicious to ignore. It happened to be Hispanic Day at the fair, and an arch of red, white and green balloons led to the stadium, packed with eager fans of the celebrated Latino bands in the lineup. On the way to the seats were booths appealing to the audience--with come-ons in Spanish. Too "gordo"? Try their weight loss aid. Like musica? Three all-Spanish radio stations offered promotions and free pens, bumper stickers and prizes.
Our day at the fair was shortened as the rain pelted our umbrellas and we anticipated the long walk to our car (we saved $10 by finding a spot on the street) and the slow traffic home. But I'd snapped lots of photos and seen enough to feel fulfilled. We'd "done" the Puyallup...unless we can convince our daughter, who's home from college for the Jewish holidays, to return with us next week...
I felt a little funny leaving my blog for Rosh Hashana with such a heavy-duty post. So I wanted to write a quickie about how I spent my day yesterday.
Pouring water. And waiting. In a tiny pantry.
I had been recruited by my sorority daughter to help on the first official day of "rush." For nine days now, that daughter has been imprisoned in her big brick building on Sorority Row, forbidden to leave for any reason (she had to make Shabbat in her room!). During those days--sacrificed from vacation, since actual school doesn't start till Sept. 29--the eighty girls in her sorority faced a grueling schedule that would try any athlete's prowess--they were memorizing dance moves. It's their ritualized version of "Sorority Musical," but in this one, they ALL look like Sharpay. But sweeter, of course.
Foremost on the list of routines was the "door chant," where, eight times per day for three days straight, they welcome a new group of recruits to their front portal. Supervised by a Rush Governess (my term), about 30 hopefuls in identical lavender t-shirts advertising their wanna-be status, stand outside the front door at the appointed time. Along the street, down the block, in front of the doors of the other sororities stand similar nervous clusters, waiting for the exact moment when their Governess mounts the steps to the front door and gives it three loud raps.
That's the cue. The sorority girls' choreography falls in place to their shrieked cheer-like chant--popping up from alternating upper and lower-story windows, opening the front door to reveal a human pyramid of girls, lines of girls jumping out in front of the door and then quickly back in. Waving their arms! Leaping to and fro! Pouncing on each others' backs! At TOP VOLUME!!!
Sorority Row is a frenzy of screaming girls, awed girls, wow'd girls...each group in newly-delivered matching t-shirts, hair just-so, makeup passed inspection. The din is high-pitched and extreme! Then, as suddenly as it began, it stops. Emerging from the front door to the wide-eyed neophytes are a pair of ambassadors: "Welcome to the Delta Chai Epsilon Whatever House!! We want to get to know YOU! Please COME ON IN!!"
I must confess to something. I was not supposed to exist anywhere near that display. I was supposed to be back in the kitchen behind closed doors wearing my white apron. Instead, as the recruits gathered in front, I tip-toed out the back door, skulked along the edge of the parking lot, dashed across the street (where some frat boys sat along their Animal House stairs, anticipating the show) and ducked behind some cars. With my camera set on "video."
In my clandestine hideout, I didn't have the best view, but I did capture a lot of it. Of course, the whole thing was maybe, oh, three minutes long. Once the greeters started admitting the freshmen, I darted back, along the far fence, behind the parked truck, and slipped in the back door, unseen. Two other moms and I were then stuck in the kitchen, awaiting any request for glasses of water. Unable to leave our nook for fifty minutes, when the second round began.
I heard the second chant from behind an inside doorjamb, but eased my camera lens sooooo inobtrusively around the door frame's edge to get a partial record of the performance from the rear--and RAN into the kitchen before it ended, lest I be observed. Apparently the whole event is monitored by snoopy Pan-Hellenic officials who give houses "points off" if anyone other than actual sorority members is even glimpsed momentarily.
The second group, as with alternating batches throughout the day, was to be served "juice." The sorority had rented a hundred stemmed goblets for the occasion, and our job, we moms of the netherworld, was during the eight minutes between visitors' exit and new chant to quickly fill the glasses with flavored seltzer and ice, and carry them out to two locations in the living room, clearing away any used glasses from before. The "juice" round was when the volunteer moms were under pressure--we had to swoop out of the pantry with dishwasher racks, dump leftover water and insert the hundred glasses upside down, clean up paper napkins, wipe any spills, and hustle to make ourselves invisible. Then we waited in our stifling cranny, standing, doing nothing, until the tinkly bell signaling the departure of another group of hopefuls.
I was never in a sorority. It seems like a lot of fun. Perhaps with its own drawbacks and ridiculousness; perhaps with too much emphasis on the external. But it certainly was a kick--for one day--to be a mole at "rush." And now you know about it, too. Have a sweet New Year!
It's almost Rosh Hashana, the birthday of the world, or at least the birthday of the world with written language. This is the traditional time of self-evaluation, and repentance, with the hope that when God judges us, we will be granted another year, and a good, sweet one at that. In that vein, many people, myself included, use this pre-holiday time for reflection. And one of the things I noticed in my daily prayers is the emphasis on speech.
We recognize God in P'zukei d'Zimra, a section of praise in the morning prayers, as "He who spoke, and the world came into being...He who speaks and Who does...He Who decrees, and fulfills." Words, then, aren't just a means of communication, but the vehicle through which the world was created, and is maintained. It is through God's words that the world came into being--remember, "And the Lord said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light." Why didn't the bible just tell us that God created light? Why did He have to say it? Who was He speaking to? The Angels? Why should they be notified of what their Boss is going to do?
And then, later in our morning prayer, we humans respond to God's words creating us in kind, as "praised and glorified by the tongue of His devout ones and His servants." We then say how we're going to use our tongues--"We shall laud You...with praises and songs; we shall exalt You, praise You, glorify You, mention Your name and proclaim Your reign..."
Why should we do all this verbiage? God is certainly aware of His own grandeur. He knows very well that He's keeping us all going.
So, in my humble reflections, I remembered that saying the words creates the thing in the world (Rabbi Akiva Tatz has a great tape on this). And indeed, the Hebrew word for "word" (devar) also does mean "thing." By verbalizing our praise, God is given honor. By just thinking the idea, without forming speech, the actual "thing" of honoring God remains abstract, intangible, deniable. Without speaking the words, their message, their concepts just don't exist.
OK, so why is all this esoteric stuff relevant? Because in these Days of Awe, this is the way we both repent--and clear ourselves from our misdeeds--and create for ourselves a good year ahead. By spending those interminable hours in synagogue praying--creating via words--we are weaving ourselves a much better chance for the nod from God.
We ask for forgiveness (in words) from those we've wronged. We confess (in slichot and viduy) what we've done wrong--and the list of stuff that needs forgiveness is awfully heavy on verbal sins. With those sins, we created negativity for ourselves and others in this world. By specifically using words in our sincere repentance, we hope to erase or undo the bad stuff we created and with our words bring positive energy into our force-fields. We repeat a list of God's merciful characteristics, with the hope that verbalizing these will actualize them.
That's why it's so important that in my own New Year rehabilitation, I work on lushon ha ra (literally, "evil tongue"--saying negative things). I need to focus on speaking carefully, uplifting the content of what I say. I have to remember that with my words I'm creating--such power!!
We are made in God's image, meaning we have the ability to create, not just architecture and artworks and novels, but to create futures and relationships in this world--with our words. By praising God we are creating for ourselves a closeness to Him--the more you give to someone (eg parent to child), the more you're attached. God, as the ongoing giver of everything, is completely connected to us. We, on the other hand, have our words as a means to be connected to God-- by being like Him, using words to create.
So, those are a few of the things I've been thinking about as we enter into this intense and indeed awesome time. May 5768 be a healthy, safe, fulfilling and sweet year for you and your family!
