How I spent my birthday

Me, this morning:  “What dreams did you have?”

Naomi Rivka:  “I dreamed about all my favourite actors…”

“Like who?”

“Tinkerbell, Cinderella… and Dora.”

Right now they are sitting in high chairs, eating breakfast and screaming “Barium,” Gavriel Zev’s version of Naomi Rivka’s version of my middle name (Miriam).

Yesterday:

• Annoying 2 hours retrieving a friend’s voicemail messages.  I thought it would take half an hour… ugh.
• Ted took kiddies out to buy my surprise (no luck:  they’re closed for 2 months or something)
• Out to lunch with Mommy – Bistro Grande, fish & chips – yum!
• Up to Cayne’s:  new cutlery for 12, yay!
• Cemetery.  Beth Tzedek cemetery doesn’t have individual headstones, just a main headstone for the family (so my father was buried under my mother’s maiden name) and a flat stone on the ground for each person.  Couldn’t find the stone on the ground so we shuffled around for a bit trying to clear it.  Made corny jokes about dancing on his grave.  Chucked a couple of little rocks in the general direction of where my mother thought the stone was.
• Down to the Corning outlet:  new dishes for 12, yay!
• Home, exhausted.  Check on Ted and the kids.  Put out a few metaphorical fires.  Play Farmville.
• Rush out to shul.  Pick up my mother, shul for mincha, kaddish.  Leave before Maariv:  we’re done, after all!
• Pick up Elisheva from school – arrive early, get Second Cup and wait for her.
• Take Elisheva and my mother to Yorkdale, say goodbye to my mother (she just wanted a ride; she was going to The Bay to return something).
• Visit every single $#!^ shoe store in Yorkdale.  There are lots.  Examine the same five models of boots in every single store.
• Issue ultimatum:  “you are not leaving here until you choose boots.”  Veto the boots she ultimately chooses because – well, look at them!  They are not boots, they are socks.
• Leave Yorkdale without boots.  Elisheva works through her frustration and proposes a plan whereby she is allowed to buy the “socks” if she also buys a pair of Value Village “decoy boots” to wear outside in the cold and winter weather.
• Rush home, pick up YBoy, take him to learning.
• Drive to Value Village.
• Find a $10 pair of boots that fit and that will do just fine.  Browse, buy some other stuff just to work out my own frustration.
• Pick up YBoy, return home.
• Put kiddies to bed.
• Supper!  Chicken and rice, originally delicious, I’m sure, but eventually cold and dry, dry, DRY.  But at least I was good and hungry from all my birthday/yahrzeit adventures.

Two shots of my father’s grave, courtesy of Google maps:





Hey, I never realized you could see it right from Bathurst, but I think that divot in the earth really is it.  That will save time:  just toss the rocks out the window as we drive past!

Naomi Rivka (eating lunch now – we’ve been out for a while):  “I’m going to live in Israel, and I’m going to tell all the people at Kever Rochel that I have a friend and her middle name is Rochel – Yakira Rochel.”