i love deadlines.

i also love the wwhhooooossshhhing sound they make as they fly by.

as a student and as a professional, i've learned that deadlines are cause for mixed celebration … depending, of course, which side of the deadline you're on. they can be deeply meaningful: a demarcation of accomplishment, indication of completion, a moment to step back and reflect.

a job well done.

assuming that is, that you actually did whatever you were supposed to do.

and the truth is that even if you do the task, your deadline doesn't mean that the someone else on the other side will hold up his/her end of the deal.

speaking from experience, i essentially worked from last thursday morning through last friday evening to get out what i've deemed an "identity piece" for the organization i work for (which is the reason for the scarcity of posts late last week, although i know there is no excuse). it had to be done by friday morning so the printer could turn around a mock-up for me by friday afternoon and could go to print with it by monday and have it ready for the board meeting this coming friday.

guess who had it ready friday morning even though it entailed staying up most of the night?

guess who didn't have time to get to it on friday?

right.

wwhoooossshhhh.

but guess who will kick and scream and bitch out whoever need be to have this damn identity piece ready for this damn board meeting?

turns out that being bitchy ... i mean, "outspoken," has its perks.

furthermore, application deadlines and i have been going head to head. so far, the score is about even. and if by even, you mean i'm getting my ass kicked. i swear, if you can figure out how to apply to law school and business school at the same time and actually get accepted somewhere, you should just be granted the degree.

because the saying "this isn't rocket science" doesn't apply to this situation. in fact, i'm fairly certain that if i can pull this off, i will tackle nasa next. beware mars. nasa has never had an over-achiever like this one.

and so, i've made some deadlines. i've missed a whole bunch. basically, i'm not banking on any school to accept me based on my applications or accomplishments. at this point, i'm just hoping that someone will take pity on my soul.

a haiku:

applying to school
hoping letters do not read:
"dear debbie, you suck."

i know, i know. i'll probably end up pursing some degree or some combination at some school in some country some time next year. but the truth is that the deadline i've been waiting for is actually today. and no one told me, so i will miss it. and the rest of my life will be determined by the fact that i was unable to meet this one deadline. the destiny i am meant to have and the career i was supposed to fulfill will never been realized.

the next foodnetwork star.

someone else will become rich and famous at my expense.

wwhoooossshhhh.

i have always loved food. (my parents can attest to the fact that i have never, ever, been a picky eater. so can my pants). i have always loved making food. in fact, my "hobbies" as listed on my resume for every grad school read: cooking, baking, politics, blogging, and basketball. (okay, so i exaggerated about the basketball; but it makes me more well-rounded right? and we can only pray that they'll never read this blog).

i don't brag about much (riigggghht), but i would rock as a food network personality. i have the charm of giada, the waistline of ina, the bubbliness of rach, the enthusiasm of emeril, the ego of bobby, and the love for food of mario. and i have a crush on alton, but that's totally different.

i am not a food network groupie; i am the food network.

and so i'm stuck doing applications and working until whatever hour of the night on something that will probably get fucked up somewhere else instead of directing my own tv show.

my inability to do anything right as a twenty-something/nothing has foiled me again.

on an episode of desperate housewives, brie, the show's neurotic -- and obviously my favorite --character, snaps "don't confuse my anal-retentiveness for affection."

in that moment, brie did something that so few can achieve: it summed up my life.

the only other quasi-adequate description i've ever heard of my personality is "debbie's bubbly. but like ... with razor blades."

i've found that my anal-retentiveness has grown in other facets of my life as it becomes less of a burden at work; i've also become much more aware with other people's neuroticisms.

eric hates being late. anywhere. in fact, he would rather not see a movie if it means he has to show up less than 20 minutes before it starts.

but he loves gambling with the gas in his car. sometimes, i swear he thinks that the light coming on means that he still has another half a tank of gas left.

i, on the other hand, have no qualms about being late to anything (perhaps a combination of the jewish/hispanic heritages and the years of influence of my exboyfriend), and, in fact, i hate being early.

but i start having full-on heart palpitations when my gas tank falls below half – okay really, a quarter -- of a tank. in fact, i'm usually convinced that my car will stop working unless i find a gas station immediately.

i also can't stand clutter. everything in my life is in neat piles and/or color coded. the papers on my desk. the clothes in my drawers. the shirts in my closet (well, color coded, then in order by sleeve length, style, and season). the boys in my life. i like spacious places and have no attraction to "chatchkies" (yiddish word meaning "stuff" or "crap").

i need order. and i need it to look like order too.

my sister's apartment, however, is like an antique warehouse. there are old sewingbaskets on top of antique china cabinets which are next to aged bookcases across from old-fashioned window panes turned into mirrors which hold candles above her flowered sofa-bed couch. she has more crap in her apartment than there are delis in new york city.

antiques give me the creeps; they're like are a luxury market for consignment goods. i mean, really, they're items that we can (mostly) still buy today with other people's body juices on them. all body juices.

but my sister loves the stuff. and collects the crap like it's her job (which it isn't; rumor has it that she's a doctor). as far as i'm concerned, the crap just doesn't fit into my life ... or into my apartment.

but when my sister was in town, she insisted on cleaning my washing machine. and was horrified that i use the same dustbuster to dust up the catfood as to sweep up the kitchen floor. as far as i can tell, if my clothes come out clean, then why do you have to clean the machine? and i don't think that the dustbuster really cares if it's picking up catfood or peoplefood.

we're just anal about different things.

but i guess that's the way it always works.

my mom won't go to bed if there are still dishes in the sink. my dad won't go anywhere without his legal pad of "things to do." my brother has to be on time. my sister has to have her lint-remover and dustbuster. and by the way, eric cleans before the cleaning service comes to the apartment.

spi can't study unless he's in starbucks and/or its less than 24-hours before something is due. glenda has to sit at a certain seat at a table. gabe is picky about his writing instruments. deion names his brushes and combs. and don't ever, ever, ask dean about how a car works.

granted, there is a difference between being anal about a couple things and being anal about a lot of things.

i can't go to bed without showering. i have to color-code my planner. i need to sit next to the window on an airplane. i can't go to class without doing the work (and i never miss class). i must wear two different types of deodorant at all times. i always have my toenails painted. i've had the same pillow for six years and can't sleep without it. i travel with more toiletries than i travel with clothes. i alphabetize the spice rack. and eat most finger food with a fork.

and if i tell you i'm going to do something, i'm going to do it.

(but tell me to write it down; or i might forget.)

it's true: it is draining to be a perfectionist and exhausting to be so anal-retentive. but it does make life more interesting.

and for some of us, it's all we've got ...

i always thought that maturing meant that you get more organized and more productive as you get older.

as far as i can tell, it appears that by the time most people finish college and/or grad school, organization and productivity have already peeked. and libidos.

seems to me that the rest of our lives is all downhill.

i've always been anal-retentive; it's either a gift or a curse and probably both. but it's just part of who i am. i remember having strep throat in 7th grade and insisting on going to school because i had tests in biology and social studies the following day … and then being too sick the next day to even go take the tests. and coming down with scarlet fever at my bat mitzvah party the weekend before midterms and insisting on taking them all on time.

i wish someone had told me back then that getting a's when you're 13 doesn't count for anything. gabe told me the same thing about my college grades, but i'm still unconvinced. because when you're anal-retentive, things like that count for everything.

yet, as a professional, i have never, ever, been this disorganized and unproductive in my life.

you need a memo in two weeks? are you kidding? in college, i would have had it back to you the next day; same day if you asked nicely or offered sexual favor. i'm so lazy now that it takes me a couple of days to turn something like that around, probably because i spend the first 2-3 hours in the office everyday looking at stories about brittney's baby and writing a blog. plus, i have to have my grande-nonfat-vanilla-bone-dry-cappachino around 10:30 am. which makes time management hard to do because it's not like i get a syllabus at the beginning of each semester that outlines my work and deadlines for the next 5 months. you see, at work, you just have to … guess ... what you're supposed to do.

and it turns out that i'm not as good at guessing as i am at doing the things that i know i have to do.

::sniff::

i … don’t … have … esp.

::sniffle::

i just can't seem to color-code my life at work and cannot function without it.

::sob::

it is emotionally draining to be a perfectionist. well, i guess it was emotionally draining because i’m not a perfectionist in my job or my grad school applications anymore. and really, that’s all i do these days. well … work, apply, blog and watch season 1 of lost.

and even if i go to law school i can’t be admitted to the federal law bar.

because this former perfectionist is now not only … average … but i’m also a felon.

yesterday, eric and i got citations from the district of columbia.

... for littering.

(i swear i'm not kidding.)

we each received a $75 ticket, a court date, a photo of some trash bags, and copies of discarded mail addressed to each of us. so let me get this straight: i live in a posh area where there have been multiple assaults in the last 2 months and the police are spending their time going through trash bags and writing tickets to two jewish kids who live less than 20 feet from a trash chute?

i’ve decided to consult the harvard lawyers i work with for advice.

eric, however, has decided to take this on his first case … pro bono.

so we’re taking pictures of our trash can, our trash chute, our dumpster, posting notices on every floor of our apartment building, doing an apartment investigation, and attempting to coalesce other neighborly “litterers.” we're keeping notes and generating theories. we're finding evidence and identifying assumptions. we'd hire an attorney, but we're both pretty convinced that teaching the lsat qualifies us to practice law ourselves.

the truth is that once anal-retentive, always anal-retentive. and it only takes one perfectionist to remind another how it goes.

i'm a communications person.

i didn't mean to be … it kind of happened by accident. (good going debb; nothing like making serious life choices based on chance.)

i was looking for a job when i graduated college that combined my knowledge for the nonprofit world with my blood-sucking instinct to make money in the forprofit world. which is how i found 2852; or rather, how 2852 found me.

(2852 is code name for my old job. it's not just an address, it's a way of life for anyone who once worked there.)

apparently, they did communications and public relations. and now i do too.

if they had done arthroscopic surgery or crepe making, i'd do that now too.

but i guess we all learn to live with our choices.

fortunately, they didn't do hair removal. at least not on purpose.

the way in which people communicate has always fascinated me. maybe it's because i grew up in a bilingual city. maybe it's because i didn't speak for the first time until i was two and a half (and haven't stopped since). or maybe it's because i've convinced myself that i've "always" been fascinated by communication because that's what i've told every law school in my personal statement.

no matter. now, like i said, it has "always" fascinated me.

these days, communication is fast, cheap, and easy. like mcdonalds. and a handful of girls i knew in high school.

the fact that i “do” communication is kind of paradoxical for people like my exboyfriend, former friends, and most of the acquaintances who know me. the truth is i … am … not such a … good … communicator. i don't like to talk about my feelings (okay, well i guess i'm starting to with the production of my book), i sweep animosity under the rug and i hate small talk.

but give me 20 minutes to whip out a press release. maybe 25 to make some pitch calls. and 30 to think through brand management. turns out that i may not be good at all parts of this job, but some of it i "get," not just because i've learned it on the job (i haven't), but because some of this communications crap doesn't require academia.

branding, communications and public relations is sexist, classist, ageist, capitalist, and emotionally-based. and that’s probably why i’m good at it.

let me give you an example:

put this aqua-marine box in front of any girl and tell her to just ignore it. stay calm.

... are you fucking kidding? no way in hell.

or ask any guy how fast a ferrari goes (about 200 miles an hour), and then ask how fast the average speed limit is in the city or in a residential area. so tell me again why you want a ferrari?
get it?

that's communications. unfortunately, i don't do communications for either tiffanys or ferrari, and it's probably because i don't talk about my feelings.

and i guess that’s how i wound up writing opeds about nonprofit franchising, personal feature stories of lawyers with huge egos, and planned giving brochures.

you know what i want? i want someone to pay me to tell them how twenty-somethings function, feel and fornicate. if the washingtonienne can do it and aaron karo can do it (by the way. yes, i know he exists. and yes, i’ve seen his ruminations. and yes, everytime he sends out an email, someone forwards it to me with a note that reads, “have you ever seen this?” and no, i’m not trying to compete with him, but if anyone can get him to endorse this blog or my budding authorship or send me a personal email, i will give him/her a percentage of my profits and/or dedicate my first book to him/her; consider it a challenge), then why can’t i?

guess sometimes those accidental twists of fate are what separates the twenty-somethings who “make it” and those of us stuck with a blog and 30 grad school applications.

and maybe that's what life is about. the intersection of the series of choices we make by accident and the series of events that happen to us by accident.

(revised)

"so ... are we related?"

i was picking up a key to my friend's apartment where i'm staying in new york from the front desk. the doorman was tickled. coincidentally, or not, his name was also ... rosenbaum.

now i know there are a handful of rosenbaums in this world, but really, i've only met two or three in my lifetime. but here i was chatting away in some city i don't live in with some doorman i don't know who was determined to figure out if and how we were related.

only in new york city.

let's be honest. if there are rosenbaums anywhere in this world they're only in a couple places:

1. poland.
2. colombia.
3. (5 from miami)
4. new york city.

during this new york rendevous, i realized that the prospect of grad school is more and more intriguing and yet, more and more ... terrifying. i attended a business school marketing class and a law school trusts & estates classes.

as i was sitting there, i inhaled deeply.

::sigh::

the sound of pounding keyboards.

the sight of nervous answers.

the smell of fierce competition, high-strung students and over-achieving smarty-pants.

damn i love it. i don't mind being a professional, but this, this, is where i belong.

being surrounded by twenty-somethings grad students instead of twenty-something professionals gave me the opportunity to survey a new subject pool to test my twenty-something hypotheses. (namely frustration, mating, identity development, maturation, masterbation, and a whole lot of growing up and growing down).

turns out that for the most part, i'm right: being in your twenties sucks.

the major difference i can identify is that as a student, one's an active student for a dozen or so hours a week, but is committed to being a student, nonetheless, 24-hours a day. as a professional, we work 3 to 4 times that, but when we leave at 5:30(ish), the only committment i have is to jack bauer, donald trump, and jon stewart.

having to go back to school, however, is honestly a terrifying prospect.

you mean i have to be on-my-game 24-hours a day for the next four years?

i'm going to leave grad school and be almost thiry and most likely, gray.

you think i bitch a lot now, just wait until i go back to school. you can damn-well bet i'm going to kick and scream my way through grad school. can't wait.

by the way, mr. rosenbaum and i aren't related. he doesn't have a jose rosenbaum, pedro rosenbaum and felipe in his familia.

freaking out.

i'm going to this prospective business school diversity conference in new york for the weekend, and i'm feeling ... inadequate ... to say the least.

diversity? yeah.

i'm hispanic. and jewish. and female. and partially nuts. and i have a hitchhiker's thumb. so there: i'm diverse.

although it seems that touting the jewish thing isn't so ... diverse ... at law schools and business schools. it is a well known fact that admissions committees open applications with last names like goldberg, feldman, solomon, schwartz rosenschumtzensteinbergbaum and think, "oh look. another jewish kid from south florida/new york/los angeles."

so it appears that the brown hair, blue eyes and jewish last name aren't going to get me so far in this admissions process. and i'm hispanic by all technical definitions.

for inquiring minds, i'll even tell you how (it's actually a good story): when my grandparents fled europe before world war ii, they were denied entrance into the united states because they were jewish. they first went to mexico, but found ranging anti-semitism there. so they settled in a small jewish community in bogotá, colombia where my father was born and raised.

my grandfather then won the lottery (twice) in colombia and bought his way and his family's way into the united states some time later.

and if i don't believe that there are jews in colombia, my first friend - ilana - in college was a colombian jew too. our familias were even compadres in the cocaine-capitol of the world.

so you know what? and as a budding unscrupulous lawyer and a blossoming unprincipled businesswoman, i say: "if you got it flaunt it."

flaunt. flaunt. flaunt. flaunt. flaunt. flaunt. flaunt. flaunt.

the only problem i can see is that this diversity program is going to have two groups of people: hispanic-americans and african-americans. in case you don't know what i look like (see picture above), i don't look like either.

so i've taken matters into my own hands.

i went tanning.

(common, tanning? i'm brilliant sometimes.)

and i'm practicing my accented english. the one i unintentionally put on while talking to spanish speakers. the one i learned from my housekeeper/nanny growing up. the one that i've developed as a coping mechanism for these sorts of situations. sabes?

don't get me wrong: i speak spanish. i understand spanish. and i've learned spanish academically and in department stores in miami. but if any native-speaker hears one word come from my mouth, he/she knows my inadequacies.

i'm not really sure how i get myself into these situations.

sometimes i think that if i just let people judge me on my abilities (blogging, cooking, and showering) rather than my inadequacies (being hispanic), i'd be better off.

but i'll deal with that after i get into grad school.

hey. no one can deny that i'm not resourceful.

it's monday morning.

inevitably, someone is going to ask me how my weekend was.

(in fact, deion already has)

and i'm not sure what to say. because really ... it sucked. but you know you can't say that. so instead, i'll probably say "it was great!"

but if someone asks me "well what did you do?" either i have to start lying or i have to admit i was lying when i said it was great.

instead of sitting for 9 hours a day at my computer at work, i sat for longer than that on both saturday and sunday at my computer at home. and here's what i have to report: i've submitted 3 applications within 24-hours of each deadline to two small business schools that no one has probably ever heard of (whar-something and harv-something) and one of the most selective law schools in the country.

and now that they're submitted, i've found typos in each. good going, captain screw-up. nothing like putting you're best foot forward (sic).

i'm kicking myself because i forgot to mention these little latin phi beta kappa and summa cum laude thingies -- and all my summer internships. nothing like working my ass off to earn those titles to forget them. so as far as i know, some admission committee will be sitting around the table and the conversation will go something like this:

"well her grades are good."

"her scores are fine."

"she does have professional experience at two companies we've never heard of. think she made them up?"

"and what the hell did she do during her undergraduate summers?"

"why the hell did she write a thesis in abnormal psychology [which is a question gabe has been asking for years]?"

"well, this other jewish-hispanic candidate from a different wannabe-ivy-league-school with good grades and fine scores at least has summer internships. let's accept her instead."

i'm fucked. i really am.

"debbie, you're going to get in somewhere."

**newsflash**newsflash**newsflash**

i don't want to get in somewhere. i want to get in everywhere.

well, at least somewhere good.

by the way, how come law school applications are an average of $70-$90 to submit and business school applications are about $200 a piece? think someone should tell the law school admissions people that the business school education proves itself worthy by being able to inflate its price without losing demand?

someone reminded me of the quote: "whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger."

somehow, i don't think that whoever said it had grad school applications in mind. because as far as i can tell one of two things is going to happen: 1) they will kill me; or 2) there is no way in hell i'm going to be any stronger when they're over.

so in short, my weekend sucked.

although, to be fair, i did attend "club lost" on friday and saturday evenings. and by "club lost" i mean eric-and-i-bought-the-whole-first-season-of-lost and-are-watching-the-entire-thing-so-we-can-start to-watch-season-two-on-tv.

as i was sitting there on saturday evening sipping reisling wine while my friends were at bars chugging beer, it hit me.

jisaacs was right.

i do suck at life.

i don't like staying up past 11 on weeknights or going clubbing on weekends. i don't like drinking to get drunk (unless i'm at a wedding) or drinking anything that tastes gross. i don't like fried foods or fast food. my idea of fun is going to costco and whole foods. and i'd rather watch tv in my pajamas than almost anything else.

by no stretch of the imagination, i just went from being 23 to acting 45. (i can only hope that i'll grow out of this and de-mature once i to back school.)

and these applications are causing me so much stress that there is a 50/50 chance that i'll arrive on my first day of grad school with a full head of gray hair.

so really, how was your weekend?

*sarcasm is on vacation for the weekend. creativity has been stiffled by grad school applications. both will return next week*

in an effort to earn the "heart-warming" part of the "witty, smart, and often heart-warming" validation quote i'll get from oprah or dr. ruth one day, i think this is a good story to tell. i didn't make it up; i just pretended to.


INFORMATION PLEASE

When I was quite young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person – her name was Information Please and there was nothing she did not know. Information Please could supply anybody’s number and the correct time.

My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn’t seem to be any reason in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway – The telephone! I unhooked the receiver in the parlor and held it to my ear. Information Please I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.

A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear. “Information.”

“I hurt my finger. . .” I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough now that I had an audience.

“Isn’t your mother home?” came the question.

“Nobody’s home but me.” I blubbered. “Are you bleeding?”

“No,” I replied. “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.”

“Can you open your icebox?” she asked. I said I could. “Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger.”

After that I called Information Please for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math, and she told me my pet chipmunk I had caught in the park just the day before would eat fruits and nuts.

And there was the time that Petey, our pet canary died. I called Information Please and told her the sad story. She listened, then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child.

She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.”

Somehow I felt better. Another day I was on the telephone. “Information Please.”

“Information,” said the now familiar voice.

“How do you spell fix?” I asked.

All this took place in a small town in the pacific Northwest. Then when I was 9 years old, we moved across the country to Boston. A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about half an hour or so between plane, and I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, “Information Please”.

Miraculously, I heard again the small, clear voice I knew so well, “Information.” I hadn’t planned this but I heard myself saying, “Could you tell me please how-to spell fix?”

There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, “I guess that your finger must have healed by now.

“I wonder, she said, if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls.”

I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister. “Please do, just ask for Sally.”

Just three months later I was back in Seattle . . . A different voice answered Information and I asked for Sally. “Are you a friend?”

“Yes, a very old friend.”

“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you. Sally has been working part-time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago.” But before I could hang up she said, “Wait a minute. Did you say your name was Paul?”

“Yes.” “Well, Sally left a message for you. ‘Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He’ll know what I mean.’”

And I did.

this is an excerpt from a d'var torah (sermon) i gave on yom kippur (which is today) senior year in college. for months after i gave it, people asked me for the text. until today, no one has ever seen it. it's long; but it's a goodie. and i'm too hungry to write anything else.


Martha Beck tells the following story:

"One day, when Adam was 5, I took all three of my children out to pick up a few household items. We were at someplace like KMart where they sell gardening goods. Flowers and shrubs were lined up on benches and tables just outside the door.

"The display drew Adam like a moth to a flame. His eyes got round and he began to coo. By the time I had lifted Lizzie into the shopping cart, Adam had disappeared. 'Adam' I hollered 'Get back here!' He looked up and blinked. 'Come on!' Adam shrugged and, with a lingering look at the gardening display, trudged over to my grocery cart.

"Just then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned. A very tall, very craggy, very elderly man was standing behind me. He had the huge, rough hands of a lifelong farmer. '"Excuse me, ma'am,' He said. 'I was wondering if you noticed what your boy was doing just now.' I felt a surge of apprehension. Adam had done some profoundly embarrassing things in his short lifetime... The old man leaned 'Your boy,' he said, 'Stopped to smell every single pant in the display outside. He didn't just smell the flowers, he smelled the shrubs, too. He smelled every bush they have out there. I think he even smelled the dirt.'

"I blinked at him, not altogether sure I was getting the point. The farmer turned and gestured. We went outside to the gardening display, the old man leading. He was leaning over, his eyes closed, inhaling deeply through his nose. 'Smell this,' he said, pointing to the juniper. Katie and Adam had already begun sniffing. I put my face close to the shrub and smelled it. It had a tangy, sharp scent, somewhere between citrus rind and sagebrush. The smell brought back a sudden flurry of memories from my childhood. 'It's something, isn't it? Now try this one.'

"We went on smelling bushes for 5 or 10 minutes, until we'd sniffed our way through the whole display. Adam and the girls through it was wonderful; they snuffled through the rows of plants like happy truffle hogs. When we were finished, the old man straightened up to his full height and tipped his hat. 'Things aren’t always what they seem, are they?' he said."


It seems to me that, today, on Yom Kippur, things are certainly not what they seem.

I wanted to use this opportunity to talk about Jewish identity in college and what it means to be a Jewish student of the 21st century. Those are subjects in which I'm well versed and knowledgeable enough to impart some wisdom. But when I sat down to write, those insights fell short of what I wanted to say.

Desperate for some inspiration, perhaps the result of the undeniable quarter-life crisis fated for senior year, a very good friend of mine told me to read, Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. It is the story of two driven Harvard academics who find out in mid-pregnancy that their unborn son will be retarded. The couple ignores the abundant means, motive, and opportunity to obtain an abortion. They decide to allow their baby to be born. What they did not realize is that they themselves were the ones to be born, infants in a new world where magic is common-place, Harvard professors are the slow learners, and the retarded babies are the master teachers.

The Talmud calls Yom Kippur simply "the day." It is a day spent in fasting and prayer, introspection and penance, but at the same time counted among the joyous festivals of the year. Yom Kippur, as is often pointed out, does not come to mark any national, historical or cosmological event, as do most of the other Jewish holidays. It concentrates on the individual in the solitude of sin and confession. Yet, its significance is perhaps no less communal than personal, no less national than religious.

While sin and atonement are solitary affairs, Judaism teaches us that they also possess very weighty communal aspects. As individuals, we confront sin and repentance every day of the year; on Yom Kippur, however, we bring our "personal baggage" to the synagogue to be submerged within it.

We think about our sin of failing to care for those in need. Of failing to educate and inspire. Of failing to be an inclusive individual and community. Of failing to celebrate our personal heroes, our muses, our parents and our friends. Of failing to be humble and gracious.

However, I would also like to propose that maybe the day of Yom Kippur allows us to step out of the realm of our fast paced, hectic lives. Yom Kippur is an opportunity for us to get away from our routine lives and, for just a day, consider the world around us.

If we think about it, we are so caught up in our needs and wants, the demands of our classes and meetings, the preoccupations with our friends and with our adversaries, that we do not have time to enjoy the everyday magic and miracles in the world around us, the world that must hold the answers to choosing life and personal growth. And the kind of magic I'm talking about isn't the tornados or the parting of the red sea kind of magic.

I'm talking about the smell of roses, the miracle of sunsets, the taste of chocolate, the intimacy we find in other people, the feeling of being in love.

Maybe as Beck suggest "...real magic doesn't come from achieving the perfect appearance, from being Cinderella at the ball with both glass slippers and a killer hairstyle. Maybe the real magic is in the pumpkin, in the mice, in the moonlight; not beyond ordinary life, but within it."

Maybe, coincidences are G-d's way of remaining anonymous.

It seems to me that, today, on Yom Kippur, things are certainly not what they seem. It's that eerie feeling you get when you feel like your life is under control -- just not your control. But it's holding on, because somehow, you know that life has a way of working itself out.

But today, and in this new year, I challenge you to notice the beauty and magic you encounter in your everyday life. The way your mom calls when you pick up the phone to dial home. How the sky clears up after a bad test. The cab driver who greets you with "Shalom!" The clouds that look remarkably like cotton balls or the picture-perfect sunrise over the ocean on New Years morning. Watching fireworks over the Lincoln memorial. The smell of camp. The taste of warm homemade chocolate chip cookies or yellow cake. The touch of someone you love. The feeling of completeness when you are with your best friends. Seeing people as they really are without accepting the value that our often senseless world assigns them.

The ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, comfort, and warmth for an in each other.

Interactions with people we love might be the most holy experience of our lives. Maybe "the meaning of life isn’t what happens to people. Maybe the meaning of life is what happens between people."

We spend too much time trashing our treasures and treasuring our trash. We bustle around trying to create the impression that we are cool, invulnerable and in perfect control, when in fact we are awkward, scared and overwhelmed. As you struggle to drown out the grumble of your stomach, I encourage you to notice the magic in the world around you. Inhale the autumn air. Find beauty in the smell of clean sheets. Look for rainbows -- not only in the sky but in sprinklers and the dish-soap bubbles and patches of oil in the parking lot.

Most importantly, today and in the coming year, I hope that you find time to stop and smell the flowers ... and the bushes and shrubs too.

And may today be an easy fast filled with wonder, self-reflection, and above all ... magic.

i've been thinking.

and since i use my brain less and less frequently as i work more and more, i don't want to miss out on this brain wave activity.

tomorrow, for the jews, is the day of atonement. which not only requires a whole bunch of apologies but also a whole bunch of not eating.

i have fasted on yom kippur since i was 9. jews aren't required to begin fasting until they reach the mature adult age of 13, but like i said, i’m an overachiever.

for the first time in my life, i didn't attend services last week for the new year. and i have been feeling this overwhelming sense of guilt. and if you've never wrestled with jewish guilt, the best description of it is secular guilt on steroids: it eats you alive.

to make up for my growing jewish skepticism, i've been thinking that maybe i should attend reform, conservative, and orthodox services tomorrow. okay, not really. eric, my boyfriend, is fairly certain that michigan's loss this past weekend is due to his lack of attendance last week at the new year services too. so he started fasting and atoning on monday.

which brings me to my next point of contention (take that, law school!). when surrounded by jews, fasting becomes a competition.

"i didn't eat anything today."

"yeah well, i didn't drink anything today."

"so what? i didn't even brush my teeth for fear of accidentally ingesting some water!"

"well, i fasted the whole month to make sure i didn't even have food in my stomach on yom kippur!"

it's absurd. but we jews can be very competitive ... although usually not in sports; usually, just in eating. and let's be honest. i can eat more than you.

most other religions have confessional year-round, yet the jews get it all done in one day. what? are we more efficient? or are we naïve enough to think we have less to atone and apologize for?

also, since jews don't believe in a real "hell" (just an alternative that is slightly less grand than heaven), why should we even bother?

the whole apology-because-judaism-says-today's-the-day-to-do-it is a tradition i've just never been into. rather, i find myself in the service generating huge amounts of anxiety and jewish guilt, which i suppose is, in itself, penance.

but some people take the apology thing seriously.

without fail, i have a handful of friends who call to ask for my forgiveness each year. seriously, i can't even remember that time i found out you called me a bitch to your sister's best friend's roomate's cousin. but because you brought it up, it only makes me remember to be mad at you. really, i hold grudges for a week at a time, and then i sweep everything under the rug.

unlike my mom, who doesn't have a grudge rug, and thus holds grudges indefinitely.

but by far, my favorite apologies that i get this time of year are the ones that come in the form of mass emails and away messages that say something along the lines of "please forgive me if i've done anything wrong to you this year."

really?! is that sufficient? because if it is, i have 200 people on my buddy list and probably a thousand email addresses i can wrack up to send apologies to. so if that's cool with you, g-d, i'd rather do that than make everyone else fear the wrath of my bitchiness that i inevitably get from hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) from fasting every year.

just out of curiosity, do blogs work too?

this past weekend, eric, my boyfriend, convinced me to go with him to ann arbor, michigan. he told me it was so "we could visit the law school" and i could "visit the business school." after he made the tickets, hotel reservations, and rental car arrangements, i learned that it was also, coincidentally, homecoming.

let me start by saying that really, i have no big-ten allegiances. (sorry eric). don't get me wrong: i want the michigan wolverines to win when they play, but not so much because i want them to go to the rose bowl so much as i don't want to deal with eric in a bad mood for 6 months. (which turns out to actually beat dealing with 111,000 people in a bad mood.)

during our short visit, there were plenty of eye-opening situations: private meetings with the assistant dean of admissions at the law school, the guy who founded the business school's entrepreneurial program, a personal tour of the law school, and even a sit-down lunch with one of the school's top professors. but what i was drawn to was the profound school spirit.

granted, the only basis of comparison i have is my alma mater: wash u. without a doubt, i had an amazing college experience: stellar academics, a laundry list of co-curricular activities (they aren't considered "extra"-curricular at wash u), a great group of friends, plenty of drunk stories to tell, and even some scandals to report. by all measures, i am completely satisfied with my undergraduate experience.

but the trip to ann arbor has made me wonder if perhaps my own experience was lacking some essentials to a "successful" college experience. like the safe sex store's lube wrestling contest.

i learned that wash u lacks in some areas: namely -- sports. i think we have a football team (in fact, we do. i lived next door to two of the hottest football players my freshman year whom i begged to no avail to take advantage of me), a tennis team (in fact, we do. i grew up with one of the star players on the men's team), and a girls basketball team (yep. we got that too. they won a national title a couple years while i was there.) yet apparently, division 3 is to division 1 schools like poppy bagels are to heroin junkies.

same stuff; different addiction.

to be honest, i never missed the sports while i was at wash u. i didn't have time to. i was so busy in my own mishegas (yiddish for "bullshit") that i wouldn't have had time to attend a sports event even if i scheduled it in my color-coded planner.

well ... actually, if i had scheduled time for it in my planner, it would have gotten done.

and as far as i was concerned, we had school spirit. afterall, hundreds of sorority girls wore wash u (children's) sweatshirts all the time with their black pants. and really, does it get any more exciting than that?

apparently, it does.

every corner in ann arbor has a michigan paraphernalia store: they have the usual michigan tshirt, sweatshirts, sweatpants, keychains, bottle openers, etc. but they also have michigan arm slings, thongs, condoms, and yarmulkes.

i think i once saw a wash u calculator and a wash u slide rule. maybe an abacus too.

eric also took me to the annual homecoming mud-bowl where some fraternities played tackle football in a huge field of mud. every play was followed by an all-out brawl with punching and shirt ripping.

i think i once went to a wash u quiz bowl that got pretty crazy.

eric also "happened" to secure two pairs of seats to the homecoming football game. the "big house" seats some 110,000 people. and it has a marching band. a 250-person marching band.

the wash u "field house" is good for two things: aephi aerobics and presidential debates.

as i was sitting at the football game, i remembered one summer night back in high school when one of my closest guy friends, cheeks, drove me home the night before he left for college.

"debb, can i tell you a secret?" he asked as we were stopped at the red light on kendall and red road.

"of course," i replied.

"i've never told anyone this. but at my bar-mitzvah, i had only one wish: to attend the university of michigan for college. and tomorrow i'm leaving for my freshman year there," he told me.

"i know," i said. "i'm really excited for you."

which i was.

but until this weekend, i don't think i really understood what it meant to bleed maize and blue.

in truth, i wouldn't trade spi and gabe, ilana and jamie, jisaacs and blaser, brian, brian, or brian, bubbie jaf-jaf and sabrina, deb and alyson for anything. not even the "big house." or a 250-person marching band.

(but the marching band is tempting.)

but it does make me wonder how different life would have been if a good friend hadn't called me during the first month of my senior year, insisted that i visit him at wash u because i "belonged there" just two weeks before the early decision deadline, talked me out of applying early to penn, or it hadn’t been 65 degrees and cloudless back in october 1999.

maybe then i'd be a wolverine. or a 'cane. or a quaker.

one things for sure though. either way, i'd still be a nerd.

you know that quote, "how lucky i am to have friends who make saying goodbye so difficult?"

how lucky i am to have blog readers who send me angry emails when i do not post!

i have been out of town and not computer accessible since wednesday. (who knew there was such a thing as not-computer-accessible these days. i thought they even had computers and wireless internet in the wilderness now, but apparently i'm wrong.)

i was not in the wilderness, by the way.

further, the harvard business school application is due tomorrow, which has offically ruined my columbus-he-wasn't-even-looking-for-america-finders-keepers-losers-weepers-day-off. the good news is that 20 minutes ago, i officially submitted my first application. and paid $225 to be rejected from one the best business institutions in the united states!

tally: 1 down, 29 to go.

monday evening began the jewish high holidays. which actually is a little deceiving for many young adults because the high holidays actually have nothing to do with getting high.

the first of the two high holidays that began monday eve is the jewish new year. again deceiving. because this new year doesn’t involve excessive drinking like the gregorian new year. we do that later this month on a different holiday and on the jewish halloween. afterall, why have one holiday dedicated to drinking when you can have two?

anyway.

i guess i have decided to write about the jewish thing because religion is a chapter in my book. for the non-jewish reader(s?), keep reading. this won't be too jewish; promise. downstairs-amy did not believe i could make religion funny, and she enjoyed the chapter.

i am an anomaly in my family. somehow, in high school, i found religion. well, i didn’t find religion so much as i found a bunch of kids who were all jewish like me. and we did some jewish things together in between hanging out, hooking up, and sabotaging christmas.

i got dragged to a couple youth group programs by this girl in my carpool. i had a really good time and told my family i wanted to become a paid member. my older, much wiser, sister told me that when she was my age, only losers joined that group. and that if i became "one of them," she couldn't promise she’d ever talk to me again.

so i joined.

i found an amazing group of guy friends. i found a tight niche of (2) girls. i found that being jewish could be cool despite the 75-year-old-hebrew-school-smelly-israeli-women-teachers-who-wore-too-much-make-up-and-perfume who made being jewish the least desirable aspect of any kid’s life.

i developed this jewish identity unlike anyone else in my family that really wasn't based on attending religious services (which i didn't do) or not eating pork (which i did). it was just founded on the fact that i had a bunch of jewish friends.

the other thing about teenage jewish youth group, is that it provides an "informal education;" one that isn’t taught in high school. it taught me about planning programs for my peers. it taught me the qualities of being a leader. it taught me how to speak in public confidently. it taught me how to give blow jobs too.

when i graduated high school, i naturally fell into jewish life on my college campus too. the skills i had learned through youth group in high school came in "handy" during college. all of them. ::wink::wink::

except that unlike my peripherally jewish friends in high school, my jewish friends in college were actually jewish. like they didn’t eat pork, they went to services, they lit candles on friday nights. in fact, by the time i graduated, i knew nine kids who were "pre-rab" (like pre-med or pre-law, except they were pre-rabbinical school), including my senior year roommate.

so i became actually jewish too. at least i tried.

one friday night senior year, i hosted a dinner for a group of friends. in order to accommodate the ones who wouldn’t eat out of my kitchen (i didn’t separate milk and meat), i brought all of it over to spi and gabe’s place. all of it: the matzah ball soup, the salad, the six side dishes and the two desserts. the only thing spi and gabe were tasked with was to make some chicken. when we began eating, the guests were overly complementary about the food.

"the noodle kugel is great!"
"the soup is delicious!"
"the desserts look amazing!"

which is when gabe piped in. "but i made the chicken!" he shouted.

we all started at him.

he hasn't lived that one down.

while barely jewish to my friends, i was super-jew in my family. my brother and sister stayed away, afraid that i might be contagious. my mom tried to be supportive. my dad pretended it didn't exist. my jewish identity grew more cultural and i yearned for more religion as i went through college. i guess "doing religion" with your friends was a lot cleaner than "doing drugs."

and then i graduated and left it all behind.

when i moved to dc, it was too expensive to "join" a local synagogue and everything around here seems... "too jewish." for some reason, the same prescriptions just don't work without the group of friends i had in college.

but i haven't become an angry agnostic or atheist. that would require a decision about how i feel about the existence of a "higher being" (g-d). to be honest, i just don't want to think about it right now.

so i dropped the religion thing.

mostly.

i still don't eat pork or shellfish.

just in case, you know?

i've learned that when i "profile" a single person in lieu of something completely and totally embarrassing that's happened to me, my blog reviews are not as stellar. therefore, i can't help but reach the conclusion that many of you loyal readers are actually voyeurists who get a kick out of my misery. hot.

but today there must be an exception.

this past weekend, my little brother turned 20. had i been a more diligent blogger, i would have already written this. alas, it turns out that i am now slacking at work, at blogging, and at religion. between my boss, the readers, and g-d, someone is bound to be pissed at me.

anyway.

i wish i could say that this blog highlights my brother's faults and profoundly embarrasses him. the truth is that he is really a cool kid. he's deep and thoughtful so it's hard to capture him appropriately.

but that's never stopped me before.

although my lil' bro has been a reader of my rants since this blog's inception, his 20th birthday means that he's official. it also means that for the first time in 15 years, my parents do not have to deal with a teenager. i suppose that's an accomplishment and a relief for the majority of parental units, but here's how i see it: my parents now have to deal with 3 twenty-somethings, all at different phases of their twenties, but 3 twenty-somethings nonetheless. and given my struggles and my sister's rebelliousness, the next decade will probably be filled with bitching, arguing, excessive expenses, tattoos, overtly sexual comments and drinking. so really, they might as well still have 3 teenagers.

josh has undergone quite the transformation in his 20 years. he is notoriously impatient. when he wants something, it can't wait. for instance, he decided he wanted a salt-water fish tank. he had a 10 gallon one within a day. he had a 125 gallon one within a month. it's just the way he is. (come to think of it, it's kind of the way i am too. genetics are a funny thing.)

but josh made that facet of his personality clear when he was born two months premature, which proceeded to collapse his lungs upon his second breath. now, if we say we're going to leave for grandma's at 4pm, he's dressed and ready to go at 3:45pm – usually at that point, they rest of us are just getting into a shower.

being on time = not my thing.
getting mad at me for being late = his thing.

josh has also surpassed me as the "smart child" (see previous blog), which is a contentious issue in the family. okay, apparently it's only an issue because i keep talking about it. josh doesn't want the title, but just because i want it means that i can never have it. that's just the way it works.

my brother is also a loner. he's always had hobbies, but never hobbies like football or baseball. his hobbies have included kayaking (which he practiced in our pool), rock climbing (which he quickly learned he couldn't do alone), model airplane flying (he owned 2 or 3 four foot planes), scuba diving (he's deep-water certified, but hasn't gone more than a handful of times), mountain bmx biking (he had the entire outfit and helmet to show; blackmail pictures available upon request), model rocket building and launching (i guess that was when he was younger), guitar (classical and flamenco), sailing (catamarans), and fish tanks (salt water). he once tried to play lacrosse for his middle school team, but that was short lived when he realized it involved other people.

he has an unparalleled ability to convince my parents that his newest hobby is "the real thing." as such, in his short 20 years, he has acquired: 3 fish tanks, 2 or 3 model airplanes, a kayak, a bmx bike, his own sailboat, an electric guitar and 2 classical ones, a lacrosse stick or two, and his own belay and chalk bag. just as a general reference, jewish kids don’t really do most of those things.

for josh, hobbies aren't as much about enjoying the experience as it is about mastering it. he loves the chase. it's the way most guys describe the pursuit of women (or my sister describes dating), except josh is chasing inanimate objects. as for dating, he takes after his older sisters: he's a serial monogamist.

when my sister and i admitted to each other in the early 90s about our secret love to watch cooking shows (bfn -- before the food network was mainstream and cool), my little brother did too. and so for us, food isn't about nourishment; food equals family time. and always overeating. that's a rosenbaum thing.

we have already decided that when josh hits his mid-life crisis, all of us will quit our jobs to open a restaurant. josh is going to design the menu, i'm going to run the business aspect, and my sister will … flirt with the customers.

which means we only have about 30 years to get ourselves educated, find a spouse, establish ourselves professionally, save enough money, and maybe have some offspring in between.

better get cracking, josh. i'm bound to screw up, so you better be "smart child" enough for the two of us.

you're my favorite brother. happy belated birthday, kiddo.