What would you say if I told you that you could take part in a fabulous seder opportunity TODAY?
This evening we hosted a passover seder with our normal tuesday night crew and visiting distinguished author Helen DeWitt. From her blog yesterday we learned that Helen is visiting our our humble Massachusetts, apparently scoping out local Barnes and Nobles. Normal people would give that sort of information that a casual hmmmm and let it go. Normal people don't do stalky things like send their favorite author an email inviting her to a passover seder less than four hours away.
At 1:30pm I sent this note:
Hi Helen,I saw from the blog that you're in the Boston area this week. On the small chance that you're doing nothing this evening and the even smaller chance that you might be interested, I wanted to invite you to a passover seder we're hosting in our home this evening in Bedford (about thirty minutes north of where you're staying).
The more I type this the more I realize what a bizarre thing it is to invite a stranger to dinner, especially on extremely short notice. I assure you we're not ax murderers. We're just fans of the blog and saw you were in the general area and wanted to extend a little hometown hospitality. But it's so hard to strike the right tone over email, so of course if this invitation seems creepy then absolutely feel free to ignore it and sorry to bother you.
Sincerely,
Leah Archibald
[phone number and address here to indicate legit-ness]
Turns out if you want to go about inviting dash kidnapping a visiting author, this is apparently the way to do it. Ten minutes later Helen wrote back and accepted the invitation.
Wait what? That really happened?
My first inclination was to panic. I'm a bit rusty on my German, Japanese, and ancient Greek. What on earth would we talk about in the car? My French is up to speed of course, but who's isn't? Also, the front seat of my car was covered in trash. That last bit at least was actionable.
Front seat clutter deposited safely in the trunk, I picked up Helen at her motel. In person she is just as lovely and brilliant as she is in her writing. If you haven't already, you should pick up her fabulous book The Last Samurai. Buy it second-hand and send Helen an appropriate contribution (see link and explanation here in the right-hand column).
Of course, Harvey took the visit of a foreign dignitary as a challenge to prove he is still the most important celebrity in the house. He screamed non-stop from six to nine. This from a boy who usually plays quietly and then goes right to sleep. Says his mother. Her word for it will not be taken.
Rascal on the other hand was a gracious host and begged at the table only so much as was endearing and not so much as to make himself a nuisance. In an upset victory, the good child award goes to R. Puppykins.
I for my part pulled out my most bizarre stories for our guest. You want to convince someone that you're not a crazy stalker? Talk about how you buried your placenta in the back yard! Or how you can buy a sheep's uterus at H-Mart.
(Ewe.)
Despite the yelling and the craziness and the running up and down the stairs to set the pumps on a basement that is once again completely flooded, Dan and the cool kids acquitted themselves well, pulling off a wildly acceptable seder.
Next time in Jerusalem! Or whatever... next time with a bigger table. Or with more vegetarian options. Baby steps. Although I don't know what we could do for a more exciting guest participant. Is Umberto Eco still alive? He is, isn't he. Can any of you guys muster an email in Italian?.
UPDATE: Passover on the blogosphere
Helen has graciously blogged her experience at our seder last evening.
How exciting! And also embarrassing. You see, my advance degree is in business and not in classics, so I had to look up several terms.
First busman's holiday. Apparently it means "A vacation during which one engages in activity that is similar to one's usual." Oh, that makes sense. So talking about work when you're not working is a sort of busman's holiday. Because a busman would need to get on a bus to go on vacation, I guess. I'm sure Dan knows the correct derivation, but that's why I married him after all. To tell me what tricky words and phrases mean.
And then to give me their language of origin.
I also had to look up Rashomon.
"The Rashomon effect is the effect of the subjectivity of perception on recollection, by which observers of an event are able to produce substantially different but equally plausible accounts of it."
Ha ha! It's funny because my blog entry reveals the world seen through the lens of my crippling social anxiety and neurosis. How terribly true. I've never got such a chuckle from a dictionary entry.
I guess it's all about context.
I should have remembered the part about lifting a rod to part the waters...
Most work days I kick off my morning by walking Rascal and Harvey in the neighborhood woods. Since my recent job change this is the only exercise I get, so I look forward to it immensely. I put my motherhood duties first, however, so I decline the morning outing if there's a possibility of Harvey getting wet or sick. For the past two days it's been raining heavily, so Dan walked the dog himself. In Dan's absence we played how many dangerous things can you put in your mouth while momma gets ready for work.
Harvey, that is. I only very infrequently put dangerous things in my mouth.
Anyway, I was thrilled this morning that the rain let up and I could again participate in my daily ritual. I knew it had been raining a lot, so much that our basement flooded again, but last time this happened my calf-high boots could handle the puddles in the woods so I donned them again without worry.
Someone should explain to me the phenomenon of "water table." You can forward elementary-school diagrams to leah at this domain dot net.
So we got into the woods and I let Rascal off the leash. In a few minutes we approached our first puddle - one that had been there in the last rainstorm. My boots had handled it last time so I didn't think twice about wading in. Seconds later I felt the rush of freezing cold water into my boots. The water was up to my knees.
Freezing pain was followed by growing dread and increasing numbness. I imagine this is a tiny slice of what death must feel like. (Then again probably not, but that does sound lovely dramatic, doesn't it?)
According to Jill Homer, when freezing cold water rushes into your boot in the wilderness it's bad news. Here you can buy here book on traversing the alaskan tundra by bike. This being Bedford, I wasn't quite in iditarod territory. I was after all only ten minutes from home. But still, fear of consequences wasn't ill placed. My feet were starting to go numb. How long until frostbite sets in? And then gangrene? Will I ever complete a marathon again?
Or is gangrene for hot places and frostbite in cold places until the darn thing falls off? Why don't I know this?
At the moment Rascal was out of view. I screamed and screamed for him, the panic mounting in my voice. "Rascal? Rascal!!! Mommy's hurt and needs to go HOME!"
I frequently think the people with houses that border the woods shutter up the back windows when they hear me coming. That nut job again?
I prayed to God furiously that Rascal would come back. That the spirit of warmth would protect my toes. That I'd get out of the woods quickly relatively unscathed.
Miraculously, Rascal appeared moments later and I tromped the whole procession back across the lake and on home. So happy was I to get off those boots and socks and soggy jeans. This is about when I decided, "I'm friggin staying home from work today."
After an hour of dryness everything's fine and I have regained feeling in my toes.
The bible says we make stupid choices and them blame God for them (somewhere in proverbs - too tired to look it up.) That seems fair. I don't always blame God for my dumbass mistakes, but I do frequently ask him to bail me out, so to speak. Get me out of cold water. Get me out of hot water. I didn't wear the right boots. I've got too many loans. I'm in a career that's boring. Can you magically snap your fingers and make it okay?
Not sure what the answer is theologically speaking, but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for a yes.
Scary stuff: Massachusetts Cesarean Rates by Hospital
Are you thinking of giving birth in a Massachusetts hospital? The unnecesarean (bias clearly revealed in the blog title) summarizes the rate of this surgery in all major MA hospitals. The overall rate in our state is 33.7%. If you want to give birth at BIDMC, boston's most popular hospital where everyone says "the nurses are fantastic!" then you're 42% likely to deliver at knifepoint.
Choose a homebirth on the other hand, and you're 92% likely to come out of the process with your inside bits kept on the inside.
Obviously my outrage shows through. Distaste for cesarean was the number one reason I chose to give birth at home. Regardless of risk factors, women who start their pregnancies with the plan of delivering at home have an 8% chance of ending in cesarean. That means that merely by making the choice of different care provider, you decrease your risk of major abdominal surgery by 76%. Choose a hospital birth and you increase your risk by 321%.
That's not just selection bias. In 1996 the state-wide rate was 19.1%. Masachusetts women and babies haven't gotten phenomenally sicker since then. There's a systemic problem in the way doctors give birth. I'm sorry.... CURE birth.
Okay, I've said my piece. Tomorrow it's back to crafting photos. Stats and charts are here.