Saturday, September 16, 2017

The Big 3-0

Turning 30 is a huge milestone. When I was a kid, most of my friends’ parents were all in their 30’s, leading me to believe that 30+ is old. My own parents were in their 40’s and 50’s when I was younger, so they were obviously ancient. Not to mention my grandmothers, one of whom was in her 80’s and the other in her 90’s. They were one step away from being living mummies.
Obviously as I’ve gotten older I’ve had to readjust my thinking a bit, especially as I have many single friends in their 30’s who still go out and have fun. In fact, there are some advantages to being 30. For one, I’m old enough to not have to take anyone’s crap anymore. If you’re talking nonsense, I now feel that it is acceptable for me to let you know that you’re talking nonsense. Also people tend to take you more seriously when you tell them you’re 30, as opposed to being in your 20’s. But basically, those are the only advantages.
I guess having some actual life experience is nice too. My sister asked me on my birthday what I had learned in my 30 years on this planet. My response was to not walk down the stairs while holding something in the dark. In hindsight, there were probably many other answers I could have given her. So after some serious pontificating, I have come up with a list of things that I have learned over the years.

1) Never make anyone tell you a secret if they don’t want to tell you, and if they want to tell you the secret, don’t let them. There’s a good reason why it was a secret in the first place. No one wants to get whacked because Tony couldn’t keep his big mouth shut in Sal’s Deli and blabbed to everyone where the money was hidden.

2) People are resistant to being dissuaded from their own opinion, even by a thoughtful, well stated, logical argument. This is why I mostly don’t argue with people about stuff like politics, religion, and social issues. And when I do, I generally regret it because neither of us has changed our opinions and we both now think the other is a complete idiot.

3) Your mother is always right. Even when she’s wrong, she’s still right. Case in point is this story:
I was walking with my mother... We argued about which direction to take. She took the long way and I took the short way. She got there a few seconds after me, but I got pooped on by a bird on the way. So she won that round.

4) Most modern art was probably made by accident. Like when someone dropped something into or onto something else and instead of chucking it, they made contemporary art out of lemons. For example, this sculpture was actually a lab accident. Apparently many types of plastic melt when you run them through an autoclave.

5) Never wear flip flops outside. They will invariably rip at the most inopportune time. Like, 2 hours away from home by foot in the middle of nowhere. Flip flops are the shitty roommates of shoes- totally unreliable.

6) There’s no manual on being an adult and no one really knows what they’re doing. However, paying your bills and having clean underwear are a good sign that you’re doing a passable job at the whole “adult” thing.

7) Life is too short not to be weird. Surround yourself with people that entertain you. Otherwise you’ll have to take up drinking out of boredom, like me.

8) Fashion is a social construct promoted by a bunch of old French guys who I’m pretty sure are just sipping champagne on the Riviera and laughing at the rest of us that we actually fell for it. Like seriously, what the hell even is this?! 


9) If you are unhappy about something in your life, you have 3 options- a) do nothing and continue suffering b) change your attitude about it and learn to accept it c) change whatever it is that you’re unhappy about. Either way, don’t keep complaining to me about it. Unless you want to pay me 200 shekels per hour.

10) Animals are way better than humans. With animals, you pretty much know what you’re going to get. Unconditional love (on the condition that you feed them of course) and companionship. I’ve never had a cat ditch me to hang out with his other friends or break up with me because “it just isn’t working.”


So these are the things I’ve learned. Thank you all for letting me share my wisdom with you. If you have anything to add, I’d love to hear it.

Friday, September 1, 2017

Adulting?

 Well I’ve been officially accepted to a masters program at HU. After 6.25 years of higher education. I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible, mainly G-d, because I’m pretty sure there was some divine intervention involved here. Also my parents for being so supportive, and keeping me fed and laundered for way more years than any adult should expect. Also for allowing me to loot, pillage, and plunder the kitchen every time I come home, even now that I’m out of the house and pretending to be a real adult.
Being an adult is hard. Do you ever feel like you’ve hit your limit on being responsible for the day? Like, you’ve gone to work, cleaned the apartment, done the laundry, and then... you get the electric bill in the mail, and it just sends you over the edge. It’s the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back. This happens to me sometimes. I get really dramatic about it too. I’m like, no, I refuse!!! F*** you electric company, I’ve adulted enough today! I’m going to eat a bowl of ice cream for dinner and watch cat videos all evening in my pajamas.
So now, being a real adult and all, I will be in school full time and working 3 jobs. Just like all successful adults. In case you’re wondering about all those jobs, I shall elaborate. 1) still working at the lab. This is my main job and part of my degree, which is a research based degree. 2) Still working with the older woman, helping her with “technological” things- like answering emails, buying books online, and printing documents from her printer. 3) The newest of my jobs is with an organization that hosts shabbat meals, mostly Friday nights, for groups from out of the country. Jews, non-Jews- anyone who wants to experience an authentic shabbat meal. I basically do the waitressing part of the meals, the setting up beforehand, the serving of the food (catered by the industrial area outside of Ma’ale Adumim), and the clearing up afterwards. As surprising as this might sound, I’m enjoying this job quite a lot more than I thought I would. It certainly has a few perks- flexibility (I sign up on the weeks I want to work), leftovers (cooking for one is quite a pain. It’s either an omelet for dinner, or an actual meal which will end up being eaten every day for the next week), and not having to find Friday night meal plans (which were usually just me posting my pleas for food and company on Facebook Thursday night in the hopes that someone would take pity on me). The most surprising thing about the job (considering I’m not exactly what one would call a “people person”) is the sociological aspect of the job. I get to observe from the background all these groups of people from all over the world, and the families hosting them. I have so far worked with a group of respected authors and artists from the US (non-Jewish), a group of women from the Jewish Federation (incidentally they were from the NJ chapter) with a few lone soldiers in attendance (the women LOVED that), a group of international students from the Moody Bible Institute (they had LOTS of questions for the hosts- about everything from shabbat observance, to Jews’ view on the Holy Trinity, to Judaism’s take on women and feminism), an extended Jewish family from Atlanta in Israel for a bar mitzvah (they gave me their card after the meal saying that they run an organization that gives grants and funding to groups researching brain cancer), and groups of mixed families from the US, Italy, China, France, and Belgium who got matched up for a shabbat meal (Jewish and non-Jewish, with different levels of religious observance in all religions). I have no idea where they find these groups of people, or where these groups of people find us, but there are many of these meals going on all over Jerusalem on any given Friday night.
I actually have my former roommate to thank for the job. He called me up one day and asked if I was interested in making some extra money. The offer sounded a bit suspicious, so I asked him if it involved the global drug trade or organ trafficking. He responded, “no, of course not! Don’t be ridiculous. It’s actually prostitution.”
In other news, I’m taking 2 years worth of vacation intermittently over the course of 3 weeks. In fact it may be more like 5 years worth of vacation. My parents and I just got back from a two and a half day stint in Akko. Next week I’ll be in Eilat for 3 days for a work conference (ok, so that’s not EXACTLY a vacation considering our schedule is lectures and poster sessions from 9am to 8pm every day), and perhaps a few days in Tel Aviv with my sister and her family who will be arriving in Israel when I’m in Eilat. Tina and David decided that flying with a 3 year old and a 2 month old would be a bucket of laughs, but I guess you take what you can get. In any case, it saves me from having to take an actual vacation and flying to the States.

The bottom line is that Johnny’s going to be sad and probably destroy the furniture while I’m gone. But that’s life with Johnny.