Day 1 - Reality sinks in

Harder than it looks

When I woke up this morning, I was not alone in the room.  I had overslept my alarm by twenty minutes, and three children had closed in on me with various requests and inquiries.  This one needed me to write a check to bring to school, that one wanted to know if her mother had landed yet (what for, I certainly don't know).  

I allowed Amiel to invite the Gantz twins from down the street, 
since having friends over = not bored children = less trouble for me

As the day slowly progressed, the enormity of the task before me made itself known.  Rather quickly I became aware of just how hard my dedicated wife works in order to keep the house in order -- cooking, laundry, cleaning, monitoring the level of clean clothes of each respective child, keeping the freezer stocked with baked goods and pre-cooked food for days when she's not available or too busy or tired to cook, etc. etc. the list goes on.  I can't say that up 'til now I was unaware of all the myriad tasks that were involved in running the household, or of the dizzying dance necessary to meet all the children's needs and wants, in addition to taking care of an infant who has only just learnt (sic) to keep herself entertained for a few minutes at a time.  In fact, I have always been an active participant in all the abovementioned processes, at times more and at times less.  

But it's different when you have to do it yourself (instead of a baby I have orders I'm overdue to deliver from two very different professions).  As our Sages quipped "אל תדון את האדם עד שתגיע למקומו".  Loosely translated:  Don't judge a man until you've filled his shoes.  Now the day has come, and while I can pat myself on the back for having raised my voice less than she would on an average day (but remember, today's still my first day on the job), I can't say the house is in a good a shape as it usually is.  Life, as my dear father always says, is full of compromises.

Mixing business and pleasure

After a long and illustrious career as a Sofer Stam, or ritual scribe (see my other blogs), I recently made a change over to software development.  For the past six months, my sole professional tool has been my laptop.  I've been working as a freelance programmer, all the while looking for a steady job.  This past Thursday, my big break finally came, and I got into a small software company in Tel Aviv.  I made it clear in the previous stage of the interviewing process that I would not be able to start work until my wife returned home, and they had no problem with it.  So I have a month to finish up a couple of projects I've been working on.  This wouldn't be a big deal if I didn't have to run a household at the same time.  

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I long ago promised a friend's sister-in-law that I would write tefillin (phylacteries) for her twin boys, at the latest by Shavuot.  Well, Shavuot passed us by a week ago and as of this morning I hadn't even started.

So I need time to write Java in Netbeans (the development environment), and write parchment scrolls with a turkey quill.  The former I can attempt to do while children are buzzing around, doing their own things, but for the latter I need quiet, I need to be isolated (or in the words of Elmer Fudd, "I need toto concentwation!").

The house is a mess and I don't care,
I've got to write this post
(sing to the tune of "Jimmy Cracked Corn")

In the mornings, the house is quiet and mostly empty.   Nearly all the kids are in school or preschool.  Noam, aged 2, is at home this year.  No daycare, no babysitter, just the caretakers who brought him into the world.  Most days he takes a nap in the morning for an hour and a half.  So that means I can write the tefillin for an hour and a half in the morning, another hour every evening, within four days I should be able to finish both pairs.  This morning I put him down for his nap and sat down at the ol' scribery table to get to work.  First I changed the ink, inspected the quill, smoothed out the parchment with fine sandpaper, and started writing.  Half an hour later, Noam was standing in the doorway.  He apparently did not succeed in falling asleep, as sometimes happens (who said being two years old isn't hard?).  I continued to write, and he quietly and respectlfully stood next to me for a few minutes.  Then he starting talking, then tugging on my arm...  I gave up.  Maybe it'll take me a few more days than I thought...

My first day on the job is nearing its end, and I have some foreboding about how much I'll be able to get through my work in the coming four weeks.  It's now 9:30 pm, and I still have to hang up wet laundry, wash a formidable pile of dirty dishes, tidy up the living room, pray the evening prayer, and, oh yeah, I wanted to get a little more work down before going to bed.  For some reason the only thing that's clear to me that I can't push off is this blog post.  It feels as if I've there are so many things I've wanted to put into writing, so many feelings I've wanted to commit to memory (with parity, on Google's servers), that when I start to write about one thing they all try to jump onto the screen at once.  So I apologize if my ramblings here are somewhat off the topic, you have to understand the therapeutic value this blog has for me.  I guess what I'm trying to say, dear readers, is that I'm not writing this for you at all, but just for me.