This is us in 2019 on our most recent college girls trip (to Nashville). We wonder when we will all be together again in person?! Before I could start my video to join the Saturday morning services at a synagogue in Northern California I’ve never been to, and will probably never go to, the group text had already begun. “Show your face, Rach!” texted one of my friends from college. “Coming,” I texted back “only showing waist up [...]
We celebrated our next door neighbor's front yard bat mitzvah, outside in 2020. I spent a lot of time outside this year. We all did, right? At the outset of the global pandemic while following the rules (I’m a rule follower!) to flatten the curve and slow the spread of COVID-19, I found myself feeling quite isolated at home. We all felt that way, right? And so in order to keep my sanity and see the people I [...]
Welcome to the club, a club no one wants to be in. And yet somehow more and more of us seem to gain entry each and every single day. I learn about new members on the news, through a friend, a friend of a friend, a family member, a neighbor. Even though I may not know your name or what you look like, I know you. I was you. I am you. I joined this club over 16 years ago [...]
On the day this past April when I hit refresh approximately two hundred and thirty seven times on Instacart unable to get a time slot for delivery from my grocery store, I signed up to become a member of my local CSA. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. I didn’t know that until two weeks ago. A few of my friends have been members of this CSA, or as they call it, the farm, for many years. The regaled me [...]
I’ve spent way too much time already this summer worrying about how my teenage kids are feeling (mentally and physically) and simultaneously trying to figure out plans to keep them busy in light of their sleepaway summer camps being canceled. It should have been my son’s eighth summer and my daughter’s sixth one away at their beloved New England camps — their most favorite places in the world, but a global pandemic had other plans for them. When my kids [...]
There is no doubt that America has fallen in love with Governor Andrew Cuomo. I get it. I love him too. His late morning daily briefings are a highlight of my day. I have shed a tear or two during them when he tells me that he loves me, that he will take care of me and my family and that we can – that we will — get through this together. I believe him. I have also become a [...]
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like the Jewish High Holidays in that they provide a chance to be with family and friends and reflect on the past year of life, but fasting and making promises I am not sure I can keep are not really my thing. I also like the Passover Seder and sitting around a family table together, but then there’s the part about the plagues (the slaying of the first born never sat right with me) [...]
Dear: ◊ Chloe ◊ Dylan ◊ Lily ◊ Hunter ◊ Seven Home is: ◊ Insanely quiet ◊ Ridiculously neat ◊ Weird Today I: ◊ Focused on one thing at a time for more than ten minutes ◊ Emailed pictures of you from the camp web site to your grandparents and then spent a half hour explaining to them how to view them ◊ Went out to lunch with a friend and left my phone in my [...]
I recently read this amazing book called Cozy: The Art of Arranging Yourself In The World. It’s written by Isabel Gillies. I love her writing style. I love what she has to say. I’ve read two of her other books, Happens Every Day and A Year and Six Seconds: A Love Story and devoured them just like I did with Cozy. Cozy is part memoir, part how to, part recipe and fully awesome. Isabel says that to be cozy one must learn to identify the [...]
Here is a list of things I remember wanting to be when I was younger i.e. when I grow up I want to be a... Waitress I liked writing down food orders for my family and playing restaurant with my friends. I also had a name tag which had the letters of my name printed out in the colors of the rainbow. I pinned it on my shirt and thought that was pretty cool. Businesswoman I wanted a leather briefcase like my [...]
