So the writer goes to the Rabbi...

I had no idea I needed a summer sabbatical from my blog. Honest. But apparently I did. And now that my kids are back in school, I feel like writing again. It’s not that I haven’t thought about writing before. In fact, I’ve composed at least one blog post in my head every day for the last few months. But I didn’t write them down and I blame this entirely on Blogger for not perfecting their brain-to-keyboard interface yet. Thus my thoughts have gone unwritten, unpublished, and forgotten, which is probably not so tragic as it sounds.

Trust me, you haven’t missed much. I’ve basically spent the last few months enacting the story of the Jewish couple who go to their rabbi complaining that their house is too small. The Rabbi says to them “bring all your chickens into the house.” They bring in the chickens. Then when the couple continues to complain, the Rabbi tells them to bring in all the goats, then the cow, etc. Soon their house is full of livestock and feathers and noise and horrible smells and they are losing their minds. Truly desperate, they go back to the rabbi and he says, “Okay, now take all the animals back outside.” And when they do (and clean up the mess) they look at each other and say, “Yes, this is MUCH better.”

We began with moving everything from the lower half of our house into the upper rooms. Then came the tearing up of carpet and knocking down of walls. Soon it escalated to jackhammering the floor to make way for new plumbing. At one point, our basement looked like this:


No chickens, but plenty of noise, foul smells and a sinking feeling in my gut that we had made a big mistake. A big, expensive, ineradicable, we will have to live with this for the rest of our lives because we plan to keep this house forever but now I’m thinking “to heck with the bad market, let’s sell and start over again somewhere else” mistake.

But here we are, several weeks later, with a new basement and children who are happy in their rooms and only the faint smell of goat poop that dissipates more with each day. Ken and I are pretty much of the opinion that Yes, this is MUCH better.

The really good news is that soon, very soon, as soon as we can finish clearing out the boys' room upstairs and moving Nora into said boys' room (and convincing her that she can live without purple walls and a princess bed for a few months while we finish other projects), we will have a real office. Yes Virginia, a Room of One's Own in which to write. I plan to write a novel to celebrate. (Ha!) But seriously, I can manage blog posts now and then. I actually miss writing. I woke up this morning, very early, feeling desperate to write. Maybe I needed the sabbatical as much as I needed the cow in my kitchen.