Black Friday 2019

My personal challenge, maybe my contribution, has been to make Thanksgiving dinner, followed by shabbos dinner, followed by my wife's birthday, with Hanukkah tossed to the calendar mix some years, though not this year.

Holiday shopping challenged me as well, thinking about the recipient as an individual with , things they like to do, teams they root for, and their elements of heritage, all of which can be translated to small gifts.

Circumstances change over the years, both for me and for the normal function of the world.  The gift list is much smaller, challenge of staying in budget much higher.  Stores are now open Sundays, a novelty in Boston when I first started this.  I no longer have to go to work on usual workdays and I am now rather attentive to not shopping on shabbos, now that there are ample other opportunities, though my regard for other Jewish elements may have waned.  And my dinners have become more grand, served at my house, leaving me with quite a lot of dishes to do. 

While we have on-line access to purchasing, it does not pay for items under $10.  For birthday gifts of larger cost that need transport, it's the way to go, for shipping on my own, I keep the gift selections light. 

Black Friday has itself changed.  Stores now open in the evening on Thanksgiving.  They used to open at 4-5 AM the following day, with steep discounts.   The ads would come in a large newspaper edition, and still do.  I would target one or two items, either for myself or for my wife's birthday gift, set out before dawn for Value City, of blessed memory, make a bee line for what I want to get, pay for it and be on my way before rosy-fingered dawn came over the parking lot.  No reason to do that now.  I don't need anything, don't particularly want anything, and wife's birthday gift is better expressed as an experience over a product.  The retailers have figured this out.  Stores open either at 6 o7 AM, the early bird discounts leave me unimpressed.   I wash dishes instead.

New Mattress

Sleep has not gone well for a few years.  Attempts at sleep hygiene falter.  I have improved the environment, keeping the temperature down in the summer, minimizing  distracting light, and discouraging though not eliminating those blue light emitting screens.  Since getting a big screen TV in My Space, I hardly ever watch TV in the bedroom.  Bedding needed to be changed.  I suspected that for a while, having bought a substantial mattress topper at Costco a number of years ago to salvage a sagging mattress.  It worked well for a long time but in recent  years I would again flop into bed.  My Space acquired a great recliner chair that proved more supportive and comfortable than my mattress with topper, as did every hotel mattress for a few years.

The mattress had to be replaced, so I included this among my semi-annual personal initiatives in the category of Major Purchase.  Now, not too big a purchase.  Since semi-annual goes from July through December, I started poking into furniture stores last summer.  Raymour & Flanigan, a major regional retailer, was rather helpful.  Prices seemed above what I wanted to spend and many options bumped up a box spring, which I didn't need.  At a trip to IKEA for dining chair replacement this summer, I casually looked at their mattresses.  The salespeople told me I could get mattress only, which brought the price to about what I wanted to spend.  Some brief sampling, then some higher end sampling at Boscov's.  IKEA won out.

I cannot just replace my mattress unilaterally.  My wife agreed to try out the IKEA offerings.  We settled on a firm option, a little above average in price, payed extra for delivery which saved us state sales tax and a small sum to review the old one.

It arrived on the specified date, brought in by two burly gentlemen from the Republic of Georgia with minimal English facility.  The men really struggled to get it upstairs, which surprised me since we have had bigger furniture that that placed in the bedrooms.  Eventually mission accomplished.  They took the old saggy mattress, leaving us with quite a lot of plastic and cardboard packing not included in the removal agreement to say nothing of scattered objects of whatever to clear the path that they needed to get the mattress upstairs.  My wife put on a protective pad, then made the bed and I flopped myself horizontal for a few minutes.  Easy to tell before and after.

IKEA allows a 100 night return policy.  At three nights it feels like a keeper.  I fall asleep more readily, feel more rested on awakening but the sleep pattern remains one of overnight awakening at about the same times as previously.  Have no idea where REM and non-REM sleep appear amid the usual three sessions of sleep.  I can now work on staying upright from the time of morning awakening until assigned bedtime, as cat-naps may be the barrier to a full night's sleep.  And I have the energy to do that after quite a long time of what is probably chronic sleep deprivation.  I'll know in a few weeks.

Congregational Senescence

All synagogues have life cycles.  While in Venice last summer, there was a Jewish quarter with vestigial congregations that assembled minyanim but were once more than part of Venice's Jewish History.  My daughter spent the Holy Days in Albania.  She could walk to a 6th century synagogue ruins but would have to take transit to an active congregation on Corfu to experience worship.  Shuls just come and go.  All were once nascent.  Some are now at their peak, others are historical sites that were once thriving.

Our shul has gone through its life cycle, senescent but not ended.  We started more than 100 years ago, had a merger, had a move to a building designed for its needs, engaged a transforming Rabbi who shaped its identity, had a school that molded a fine legacy for us in many places, and for a variety of reasons has swooned in a way that will resist reversal.  Our white elephant of a building has been converted to cash to offset declining membership  revenue.  Participatory invitations are currently largely limited to a small subset of people.  I think our current state would be one of assisted living, tenants of a more active congregation that has a better result of absorbing its members into ongoing activities and creating new ones.  We are approaching what for people would be called end of life planning.

In many ways I have been the observer and historian.  Invitations to be a participant are few and largely based on technical skill rather than my inquisitive mind, which has been helpful there in other ways but not very contributory now, or at least not very desired now.  When I started there, defecting from elsewhere, I found myself attracted to the Rabbi's knowledge and intellect.  We had many great discussions about Judaism and beyond.  A Cantor arrived, partly with my committee assistance, who also impressed me with his breadth of skill and not quite polymath mind.  I could overlook the flaws, maybe even resist the attempt to rationalize them.  A certain amount of discord developed that would create factions and competition, though never vindictive.

A change in leadership, both officer and religious, made a good demarcation point.  Talent moved on, but it also became less a source of our identity.  Hopes for a new young Rabbi making an impact on young membership never materialized.  We retain pockets of excellence but that has long since become subordinate to more perfunctory things.  Could the Rabbi have written his vision for the progress of his congregation on a yellow pad within a year of his arrival?  I don't know if he ever tried. Can he do it now?  Doubt it, but maybe.   Did he ever nurture talent or chat with defectors?  Maybe, though my best guess would be no.

We find ourselves now at a branch point.  The congregation in its current trajectory cannot sustain the career of our Rabbi to normal retirement age.  It is time to bail out.  And provisions to do that have begun.  Unfortunately, the provisions to reverse this seem a committee of the same people who misjudged the situation ten years back.  What was once a grass roots community has increasingly resembled that USY clique of remote memory.  You now have a few people invited to do a lot of things and a fair number of people with dormant talent that is not valued enough to seek out.  Reversal or renewal cannot happen with that mode of thinking.  I don't think it will.

Out for Coffee

Coffee and me go back to college.  The school cafeteria offered breakfast coffee for 10 cents with unlimited refills.  Most mornings I would get a bow tie pastry with it, streusel + confectioners sugar coated for 25 cents, leaving me with energy for AM classes.  Within a year, I found an orange percolator that served me well studying for exams at night through medical school.  Can't remember where I lost it.  My father drank instant.  Phooey.

Living in Harvard housing, the Square had a shop called Coffee Connection, introduced to me by my wife.  They may have been the precursor to Starbucks, which eventually absorbed them.  Early on a weekend morning I could head over there and purchase a brew in an individual French press.  They had multiple types and you could buy beans, thus my first home coffee grinder, a blade type.  As I ventured to Fanueil Hall Marketplace, there were other places to sample different coffees,  12 oz for about 75 cents.  My home still had canned coffee, whatever was discounted at the supermarket, though by then I had developed a preference for Folgers over the other large commercial brands.  Only one blend per manufacturer at the time.

Fondness for coffee has continued to this day.  I have a bunch of French Presses, a keurig maker, three coffee cones, two drip machines, a stovetop percolator and and electric percolator, not to mention a party sized urn that rarely gets used and both manual and electric espresso makers.  My staple, though has been the keurig cups, enabling variety and ease of use with small sacrifice to taste.  Why ever go out?

Despite my gadgetry, I cannot duplicate what Starbucks and the like do.  WaWa has some varieties of good consistency at a lower price which I get when I am in transit.  When coffee houses were a novelty to me, the coffee in its variety, made with expertise, was my destination.  More recently, though, the destination has been less beverage and more transient space rental while I plan my week on Sunday mornings at the Brew HaHa or take my laptop to Starbucks to rent space at their counter while I type an essay.  Artists and Bohemians have been meeting at European coffee houses for centuries, less to drink coffee and more to expand their minds with each other.  I do it alone, but same basic principle.  Since the purpose is to minimize distraction and promote focus, I stopped going to the nearest Starbucks with loud music and traffic in favor of a newer one, more thoughtfully laid out to enable productive efforts.  The Brew HaHa is also quiet with the tables placed away from customer traffic.  And my car, with it's paper 20 oz cup of Ethiopian or Peruvian special, affords me the ultimate in solitude as I pay attention to the road.  Usually I have a destination, sometimes important, sometimes not.  So while coffee has remained a cheap hobby for me from my earliest adult years, sometimes the taste is supportive of something else that often has greater importance.  But we don't engage in great thought sipping Maxwell House.

Hanukkah Gifts

As newlyweds, or perhaps even before, we established a gift protocol along the lines of my in-laws family.  Parents, grandparents, and siblings would get one not too expensive gift from each other.  Spouses and children would arrange for one small gift each day.  Over time, we have become the senior generation.  Once we had kids, our siblings fell off the gift list.  Now we have our first new addition in a while, a fiancee, leaving me with 20 trinkets to acquire this year, eight for my wife and four each per child while my wife assumes a similar number.

Geographic realities made us experienced at shipping them on time.  Inflation, though, has only taken a minor toll.  We get less for our spending limit but there is no barrier to shopping at Goodwill where discounts override newness.  My son once got a skateboard within budget that way.

Add to that a December and a January birthday, with higher spending limits, and the amount of creativity needed to fulfill expectations can be challenging, though in a gratifying way.  It may be the only time when I must consider the uniqueness of each individual on the list. 

Needed to get away, I ventured out but came home mostly with ideas.  I had purchased two items previously at a crafts display.  If I see something that shouts Hanukkah, any time of the year, I acquire it and store it in a place easy to remember.  By far the most difficult purchase was always for my father who needed nothing, wanted nothing, and kept his interests obscure.  My nuclear family has many interests.  Some like a fondness for spirits maybe need acknowledgement in only the smallest way.  We have cats, we have Jewish, we have, sports teams.  There is always an edible, always one with kosher certifications.  Even when giving gifts to office staff, none of whom were Jewish, I would never give anyone food I would not eat myself, making an exception of a turkey drive for the needy if I qualified for a free bird from the supermarket.   Food in various forms remains readily available though seasonal specialties from gingerbread houses to hot sauces to drink enhancers no longer carry that desired OU.  Since the ladies can never have too many earrings, those work well.  Sized clothing doesn't work as well but it is generally light and unbreakable when shipped.  Eventually mugs and kitchen doodads create clutter.  Cosmetics have a way of accumulating too but are technically consumable.   Glass does not ship well, particularly when filled with liquid.

Give a few other stores a shot tomorrow.  Since the gifts are small, on-line shopping tends not to be cost effective for Hanukkah, probably the way to go for birthdays.

Prepping Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner has been my challenge for a long time.  I would make it, planning the menu weeks in advance, then transport the whole thing to my in-laws.  Since my mother-in-law's passing, it made more sense for the people to come to us, which is how it has been.

The day and the meal have their traditions, American ones and personal ones.  Like many families, the gathering has become less populated for a host of reasons ranging from kids who have moved away to Trumpanzee relatives who avoid hostility or hard feelings by not coming.  I will cook for whoever comes.

My menu has its fixed and variable points.  Turkey remains a centerpiece, though no longer the big glorious bird which has gotten rather expensive with not enough people to eat it.  Empire makes a half-breast which I will make for shabbos sometimes and in recent years for Thanksgiving as well.  Appetizers vary.  I made something with Tofu last year.  Soup varies, typically mushroom and barley.  This year tomato with Israeli couscous seem the top choice.  Salad varies less.  Greens now come already cut and triple washed so I have made garden salads.  Israeli salads are easy to make.  I think I'll make a cabbage slaw this year.  Cranberry sauce come from the berries that I boil myself.  There are variants of this but mostly sugar, water, and cranberries.  Sweet potatoes come in a variety of preparations but there is always something with sweet potato.  I've been making stuffing in the crock pot because it is easy and keeps the oven clear for other things.  For a vegetable I get what is on sale that week.  I do not know why brussels sprouts dominate on line searches of Thanksgiving menus.  I like them but not everyone does.  And I've never made a green bean casserole.  Green beans on sale can be made plain or dressed with nuts or sauces.  For dessert, I usually make something with apples.  Strudel or apple cake this year.  The apple cake is a lot easier.  And beverage is usually soda or sparkling cider.  Last year I got wine and might again this year.

It challenges me.

November Under Way

If May is lusty, which I've never quite found it, then November might be reflective.  Thanksgiving gathers a dwindling cohort of family but still challenges my mind to arrange an repast second only to Seder and challenges my tenacity in executing it, with major cleanup the following two days.  Veterans Day was intended to be reflective but the hundred years since the original World War I armistice moved memory to history.  Still, a small moment of genuine respect remains for those who participated.

Medicare, of which I am now a beneficiary, has its Open Season, the chance to change supplementary options.  I've not raked leaves in many years but it used to be a major November initiative.  Some years, but not this one, Hanukkah arrives by November's end.  Even though it spans the Christmas season this calendar year, I reserve shopping time.  Partly I like to have it done before the Xmas crush, partly gift giving affords a chance to reflect on what each recipient is like and what captures their individual interests.

My father's yahrtzeit usually appears in November, now approaching its tenth anniversary.  But this being a Jewish leap year, it does not appear until December.  My mother's birthday was November 7, an annual day of celebration in her lifetime.  And since my wife's birthday appears just beyond the monthly transition to December, some November thought goes into that celebration.

November also marks the 2/3 point of my semi-annual projects.  I have a good inkling of what has gone well, what to pursue a little more, what be better abandoned or replaced.

Some years, but not this one, we vote.  Sometimes I'm with the majority, sometimes not.  But with this task, along with the others, November might really be about deciding what I stand for and pursuing it, whether at the ballot, with family, or the things I do on my own behalf.

Empty Nester Shabbos Dinner

We have some semblance of supper most days.  Even on the two major fast days, a meal precedes the fast.  And I have been fortunate to prioritize supper with my family most nights, as did President Obama who had more pressures on his time.  Once a week we have shabbos dinner, never leftovers, virtually never eaten out unless traveling.  It surpasses caloric sustenance.  We have kiddush, sometimes delayed if sundown arrives after our usual suppertime.  We have challah.  Often that meal has more than one course, though not always.  It is elevated above supper on the other days.

Ironically, my very favorite shabbos dinners took place my final two years of medical school.  I ate alone.  There was a vegetarian restaurant that I liked within walking distance of my apartment.  It is unusual to be able to select from an entire menu so this was a special destination reserved for the onset of shabbos.  And I always ate alone there, enjoying the creativity of the chef and the folk music of a guitarist.  But that dinner is only eaten alone out of necessity.  Once I married, that was allotted time for my wife, unless my residency schedule had me on call Friday night, and with children, we all assembled unless a parent was away at conference or a child at camp.

Shabbos dinner remains a designated highlight of our week, though the children are long on their own.  When working, I had to cook chicken, our usual entree, very early in the winter, when shabbos would commence long before I arrived home.  Now as retired people living as a couple, we have more flexibility.  Chicken still dominates, kiddush and challah remain.  Gefilte fish is long gone, though I have a few jars in the pantry which serve more as a snack.  I try to have some pareve munchee on hand.  Kosher beef has gotten expensive since the Rubashkins were shut down and some hauled off to the Otisville Minyan so crock pot beef stew has gotten less frequent.  And we were never singers of zemirot.

Despite the special occasion, we rarely extend or receive an invitation from other families. While we are empty-nesters, a look around the sanctuary at shabbos morning services reveals quite a lot of people who have been widowed.  I never queried whether or how often they invite each other or get invited as guests.  And as my experience as a medical student attests, the dinner can be made a week's high point even eating alone among strangers. But that's not the intent of our tradition.  I assume, perhaps wrongly, that our Rabbi has the pulse of how those who now live alone introduce the weekly shabbos to their homes.  Maybe it can be improved.  Maybe we should be the ones to try.

Sleep Hygiene

Getting a continuous long duration night of sleep has been elusive, probably since my residency days when after being up all night on call, I would return home, assuming a supine position and dozing off as my due reward for my dedication to the rigors of medical training.  Such hazing is no longer permitted but those restful catchups have never been duplicated for me.

In more recent years, sleep has gotten far off schedule, even unscheduled sometimes.  I go to bed early, not always tired, and wake up for one reason or another while still in the wee hours on the clock with the red numbers.  I had a four pill sample of Ambien a long time ago, used them sparingly, but each time however they proved highly effective.  OTC diphenhydramine works as well, with a hangover the next day.  That hints of something chemically causing this which can be corrected in a pharmacological way, as unappealing as that is.  Since I no longer need to keep a work schedule, sleep deprivation, at least to the most restful stages, has not been a handicap and I am still pretty productive in my waking hours.  I wish I felt better and I wish I were less guilty about my naturally haphazard sleeping hours.  If I were incapacitated, I'd seek a sleep lab but since I'm not, the sage expert advice from cyberspace or the NEJM review should suffice.

I am familiar with clinical sleep hygiene advice, which I violate regularly.  I have set times for lights out and no computer screens, which I follow.  The bed is a refuge for reading.  At one time it was a refuge for television but since I got a super screen 55-inch model for My Space, I rarely watch the bedroom 24 incher from bed.  I bought a lounge chair which until recently has gone the way of all flat surfaces in my house.  Now cleared and used and off limits to piling random stuff atop the seat or footrest, I have an alternative to bed in my bedroom, and I'm starting to take advantage of it.  Coffee usually stops at noon or shortly thereafter.  Never drank much alcohol.  A Hot Toddy never served me well as a liquid hypnotic agent.

This summer I started working on keeping the bedroom cooler.  I had bought a room air conditioner as the central air conditioning never cooled the master bedroom as well as the lower rooms of our house.  It made a difference, not only for the ambient comfort but the background sounds seemed useful as white noise.  I have tried binaural sleep sounds, a sleep sound unit with waves or rain, blindfolds to create true darkness.  None are on the standard sleep hygiene suggestions, probably for lack of efficacy. 

And the bedding.  Mattress overdue for replacement.  A priority this fall.  Other bedding is fine but down comforter with duvet in the pattern of a black cat tends to be uneven, though warm.

Blue emitting light from screens is everywhere.  My smart phone with internet access is my connection to the world.  I have set a moratorium from 11PM to 5:30 AM which I have maintained with very rare minor lapses.  It may be better to shut the screens down earlier.  And the alarm clock, which I almost never use as either an alarm or as a radio though often as a clock, has those red numbers.  I have tried turning it around or covering the numbers with a washcloth with little discernible benefit.

And there's always Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  I'm not that desperate.

Storage Rental

One of my more inane monthly expenditures has been a small storage unit.  When first rented following the closure of my office nine years ago, it seemed a necessity.  I had financial records, employment records, books, more office supplies than I could give away, a large photocopier, a tall cherry red bookcase from Ikea, oodles of books.  And then I retired from the job that followed, with contents of desk drawers that belonged to me, not the hospital.  Some $18K in fees later, I am paying monthly to house stuff that I don't want.  The statute of limitations on financial records has lapsed, not that I could find any if requested.  The medical records were stored elsewhere and destroyed when the required storage time elapsed.  It's time to divest of the storage fees.  The only item that I know I want is that bookcase which will house quite a lot of books in my bedroom.

In the meantime, I have emptied most of my home files and made a commitment to myself to clean the basement, partly to have a single storage area in my home and partly for a form of end-of-life planning so my survivors do not have to pay somebody to do this. 

At three boxes a week, I can now see the floor of that storage unit.  Much has gone to shredding.  Office supplies need a home, which for now is two baskets in the lower hall.  My Franklin Planner accumulation has gone to a mixture of shredding and paper recycle.  Diplomas of various types have just come home, a closet to be identified for their indefinite storage.  I remain on schedule for the end of the year.  What to do with the money saved?  It will be something celebratory.