I listen to
NPR a lot and I really love most of their programming. But there's one show I can't stand to listen to. The
Diane Rehm Show. I find her voice unbearable to listen to for more than a moment. She sounds like a 90 year old woman who spent the last 80 years chain smoking and swigging whiskey while being just a touch retarded to boot. And I mentioned that to someone today and they informed me that she in fact has a neurological disorder that interferes with her speech. So now, of course, I feel like a shitty person.
In other news....
My cousin's wedding was the other day. Me, my sister and my sister-in-law all unintentionally wore red dresses in the same shade of red and similar styles. It was a weird coincidence and no one would shut up about it
all night long. Everyone kept coming up and asking if we had planned it. What the hell? Who plans things like that other than seven year olds who want to be twins or tragic children with crazy mothers who force them to dress in matching outfits until they get old enough and enough therapy to rebel?
The wedding itself was ok. The ceremony was a little (and by a little I mean a lot) weird. My cousin is Jewish, though non-practicing and her now husband is an...I don't know what but also non-practicing. They were married by a woman minister who started the ceremony off with a Jewish blessing and ended the blessing, "in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit." Whaaa? Then we transitioned to some kind of Wiccan thing, "blessed be by the element of water, blessed be by the element of fire, etc." From there we went into some Native American stuff...something about nature and salmon swimming upstream, I have no idea. There was a unity candle, for a touch of Catholicism and finally, a Celtic knot tying ceremony to round things off. But the best part was before the ceremony even started, while we were waiting for it to begin, the music that was playing was the soundtrack to Lord of the Rings. Cause nothing says nuptials like Frodo, Orcs and a trip to Mordor!
The rest of the wedding was fun since my sister and I had already extracted a solemn promise from our cousin that she would not force us to endure the agonizing and humiliating ritual that is the catching of the bouquet we could enjoy the reception without that dread hanging over us. In fact, we got proactive about the matter and cornered all of our other single cousins and extracted similar vows from them, even though one aunt protested and swore that the last wedding she was at, the girl who caught the bouquet was engaged a month later. I told her that if superstitions worked I would have been married about 100 times over by now. Do you have any idea how many bubbemeisers, segulas and minhagim I faithfully kept for 10 years in the hopes of getting married? Believe me, if it were as easy as catching a bunch of flowers I'd be celebrating my eighth anniversary or something. Uh...not that I'm bitter or anything.
(Seriously though...off the top of my head: keeping a little sliver of the plate the mothers break at the vort, being a shomeret, specific keppitlach of Tehillim, saying Shir HaShirim for 40 days, sipping the wine at Sheva Brachos, eating the challah at the wedding and at Sheva Brachos, 18 cents every day before davening, wearing the brides jewelry while she's under the chuppah and those are just a
few of the things I recall doing in the hopes of getting married and not having to hear the dreaded words, "Soon by you!" at every freaking event I attended. It was never soon by me. Again...not bitter or anything. Wow...this went to a really unexpected place. Moving on.)
Tomorrow starts Passover. My parents hold the seders every year and I always go over the day before to help cook and clean and get stuff ready. Today before I went over my parents called and told me they needed a few things from the kosher grocery store. Now, Jewish people will understand what kind of nightmare I was about to undergo. For all you non-Jews out there picture...Christmas Eve shopping, but there's only one store in the entire world and it's the size of a shoebox and everyone else in the world is there too. It's like that. But with more wigs and Yiddish.
I finally got a digital converter box for my tv. Now I have 13 channels instead of 4. I am practically giddy at the selection now offered me, even though one of those channels is in Spanish and another appears to show nothing but the 5 day forecast. I don't care! 13 channels! Whee!
What else? I still don't like my job, but whatever, I guess I'm supposed to be grateful to have a job. It really sucks to have to be grateful for something you hate. My company isn't even in trouble or anything remotely like that but they're still cutting benefits and raises and budgets and payroll like we might have to declare bankruptcy tomorrow or something. And I have a new boss who drinks the company kool-aid by the gallon, so that means I have to pretend to drink it, too, which is really exhausting. She actually says things like, "retail is detail!" and "teamwork makes the dream work!" And she isn't being ironic or sarcastic like I am when I say those things.
She loves her job, which is awesome for her, don't get me wrong, if you like the taste of kool-aid, cheers baby and drink up. The problem is she thinks that anyone who isn't passionate about being there should get the hell out. In her words, "If you're not passionate about being here, if you don't love it, then go be successful somewhere else." Which...nice theory but seriously. In my experience not a lot of people are lucky enough to have a job they feel really passionate about. Especially in this economy. People need to eat and pay rent. They need a paycheck and I don't think you can or should punish people for not being in love with their jobs as long as they actually
do the job. Believe me, I would like nothing more than to walk into work on Friday and declare that I'm leaving in order to go make my living writing snarky things on the internet, or giving people my opinions on whatever or napping, but until those things pay as much as my current job and come with benefits, I'm kind of stuck where I am. With the kool-aid drinker.