Except for a handful of occasions, I have always tried to keep politics out of my blog and grow a happy space focusing on sustainability, chicken keeping, crafts, and other fun stuff.
October 7th changed all that. It changed the world, shook us all to the core, and took us to a dark place Jews never thought they’d be in again since gaining a sovereign state.
This is a time when we need your support. People who stand with Israel are invaluable allies in an old-new scary tide of antisemitism rising in the world.
Some words about how we are doing: these events also taught us the importance of being prepared, as well as we can, for dire situations. There were serious issues with food supply in the days following October 7th. People blazed through grocery stores, emptying shelves, and restocking didn’t happen until after a major delay. I was happy we had a full pantry.
The world is in turmoil. If you can get a personal weapon, do that! I would, if gun license requirements in Israel weren’t so ridiculously strict (especially when you consider the current events).
There were a few days when we were all afraid to get out of the house. We were sheltering in place, like in the early days of Covid. When this happens, you’ll be glad to have a good stock of books, board games, and art and craft supplies to keep the family entertained- although these certainly aren’t essentials.
I believe good will always eventually trump over evil, but we’re facing some dark and difficult times. Stand united. Support each other; if you can, check on your Jewish neighbors and friends. I won’t lie, we’re not OK. But we will be.
I’ve been planning to write about other things, but right now I’ll just take a few minutes to let everyone know we’re OK and not in the missile range at the moment.
THANK YOU SO MUCH, everyone who took the time to email and message me. Your thoughts and concern are very much appreciated.
As you know, things are grim here, but we’re doing our best to carry on with as much normalcy as usual for the children’s sake. We still have public transportation running and I was able to go into town for some errands today.
As I just wrote in a social media post, hatred never ends, but then, neither do the Jewish people. Too many have tried to wipe us out in the course of history. Yet, nevertheless, here we are.
Thank you for the good wishes and prayers on behalf of our soldiers, policemen, first responders, volunteers, and other brave people helping handle this crisis.
A statement I encountered on social media got me so full of things to say I pulled out of my unplanned blogging hiatus. Here it goes (simplified for clarity):
“Stay-at-home moms who are looking to reenter the workforce are extremely attractive to employers because they offer so many useful and versatile skills. Therefore, if you’re a SAHM, it will be easy to find a job at any future point.”
What can I say? I do wish the job market worked this way… but it doesn’t.
As one of the more realistic people on that thread said, “Employers aren’t looking at what you COULD do… only at what you have already DONE.”
After I finished my degree, I spent a decade having babies, mucking out chickens, and handling mountains of laundry. Any credentials I had became obsolete, and I had nothing to put on my resume when I eventually started applying for jobs. I was lost, because when I opted out, I never thought there might come a day when I’d be desperately looking for work.
Trust me, employers weren’t lining up saying, “Wow! This woman can change a diaper on a toddler who’s standing on his head, and she’s a real pro at matching socks. That’s a hire!”
Eventually I managed to land my first long-term editing gig, which paid like a Scrooge but allowed me to gain experience I used as a springboard into better things. It was hard; I recall the days of balancing my laptop on the corner of the nursing pillow as my baby snoozed. It got easier at some point, but I’m still a freelancer. I don’t enjoy the security or pay that my peers managed to gain by staying in the workforce.
Do I regret this? No. I made choices; being with my children was and is priceless; I love the flexibility of working remotely. But what I wish I had done, and what I hope everyone does, is walk into this situation with eyes open.
Everything is a tradeoff. If you take a decade off to focus on parenting, reentering the job market may be a grueling uphill struggle. If you choose to work part-time and/or from home, you might miss out on opportunities. You may need to settle for lower pay and no security. You may lie awake at night panicking about what’s going to happen.
I don’t want to discourage anyone, but let’s just stay real. Yes, you can find paid work after many years of full time parenting. Just don’t expect this to be easy, fast, or instantly super lucrative.
Today, there’s an increasing trend of viewing clothes as disposable – cheap stuff that’s meant to be tossed after a couple of uses. Gone are the days of mending and altering clothes, and re-using the fabric when the item has reached the end of its lifespan.
While many clothes today are of a really shoddy quality, you can still get a lot more wear out of them with simple mending: replacing lost buttons, sewing up a ripped seam, or stitching a hole before it grows too large.
I always save buttons and often use them to mend different items, often not the original ones. I have also noticed that, while the stitch quality in clothing is often subpar, the fabric itself is OK, especially if I choose cotton. A couple of minutes’ work buys me months, if not years of extended use.
Many of our clothes are actually hand-me-downs in pristine condition except for a missing button or another such little easily fixable thing. I love taking something that would otherwise be thrown out and giving it new life.
To keep my mending organized, I put all the items in a pile on a dresser in my room. The clothes only go back into the closet when they’re ready to wear.
Your clothes will last longer if you invest in higher-quality items, but that’s not always possible with a bunch of growing and active kids. However, thrift stores in your area might yield some treasures if you have the time to look.
Another way to keep clothes in better condition is not washing them that often. Sometimes, an airing is more than enough to make the item ready to wear again. For me, washing after every use is non-optional only for underwear. Less laundry is also great for other, obvious reasons, like less work and a reduced electricity bill.
Once an item is really beyond repair, you can use it as a rag, make a rag rug, or repurpose it as pet bedding. Some people make yarn from used t-shirts, although I personally find this a little too labor intensive.
If you have a favorite hack for making clothes last longer, let me know in the comments!
I’ve been making up stories in my head and jotting them down for as long as I could make out letters. And fiction remains my passion now, when 90% of my working time is taken up by creating content for other people.
Every book release is a victory to me; victory over time restraints, exhaustion, and that experience of being pulled in a million different directions you live through as a work-from-home parent.
Today, I’m celebrating. My environmental sci-fi series, Frozen World, is finally complete after five years and six books. I have just released the final installment, The Ruins of Glory. Woohoo!
In honor of the launch, I’m making the first book in the series, The Last Outpost, free for the next few days. So if you haven’t read it yet, now is the perfect time to dip your toes into the series!
Some time ago, I wrote about the potential pitfalls of investing a lot of time and resources into unpaid, unacknowledged work, even and especially if you’re working in a family business and/or for your spouse.
Honestly, I didn’t expect the post to get any traction. I mostly treated it as a mini-rant on my private web corner. But surprisingly (or perhaps not), I keep getting feedback on what I wrote back then.
Here are a couple of the public comments:
“My husband left me for a younger girl and abandoned me. For 25 years, I worked with him in his company and never had a role, never been put on the books at all. I have no social security at all. What do I do?”
“We bought a business 7 years into a common law marriage. It was in my wife’s name only. I have worked there for free for 19 years. Never thought much about it until now. We have been together 25 years now and she just left me and moved out for a guy she just met. I’m left running her business that was ours by myself now. I’m 66, disabled because of the hard work at the business. I can’t get medicare or SS because she never paid for me… now I’m told that it’s her business and I benefited from it by having a place to live and food for 19 years! I’m tired, disabled and left without anything.”
You guys, these people did what appears the most natural thing in the world. They trusted their partners and put in the work for a family business without keeping score. Because that’s what you do when you’re married, right? But it can lead to some absolutely heartbreaking, glaringly unfair situations. I believe the commenters may have some legal recourse, but it would probably take a skilled lawyer who’d agree to work on a contingency basis.
When I was younger, I didn’t believe in planning for financial crises. I saw it as pessimism, or lack of faith, or whatever. I was all about looking at the future with a bright and trusting outlook, and I got my comeuppance. You guys know the story: I moved into the middle of nowhere, cut myself from all transportation and resources, and was left with no means to provide for myself and the kids when we hit a long stretch of unemployment, underemployment, and disastrous financial decisions. I remember there was one job opportunity that was SUCH a great fit for me and so close to home… only 10 minutes’ ride – but as I had no car, it might as well have been on the moon! I remember thinking, “I did this to myself. My own lack of forethought put me in this position.”
I’m in a different and better place now. And I know I talk a lot about finances and financial security. I do this because I feel a duty to warn people: don’t entrust your whole future (and your children’s future) to one person, even if this person is the love of your life. People can fail you. I bet the people who commented on my original post never thought their partners would abandon them. But even if everyone is 100% faithful and well-intentioned, people still fall sick, lose jobs, and run into unexpected financial pitfalls.
Protect yourselves, folks. If you stay home with your kids, have something to fall back on. If you pour your soul into working in a family business, make sure you get official recognition for your role, if not a salary. If you’re married to someone who isn’t very good with money, consider setting up a separate bank account for your own and your children’s sake.
That’s all for now. Here’s to a joyous month of Nissan and a happy, non-stressful Passover.
In case you’ve wondered where I’ve been, I’ve fallen victim to the most violent, nastiest, knock-you-off-your-feet ear infection you may imagine. But on the up side, I’ve had the time to finish this little beauty – a scarf in Malabrigo Mora, one of the finest and priciest yarns in the Malabrigo line.
I’ve been wanting to crochet with 100% mulberry silk for a while. Yes, I know silk is controversial: it involves killing thousands of Bombyx mori and there are many sustainability issues. But it’s a traditional and fully biodegradable fiber, so I thought that, upon the whole, I may try it just once (my budget likely won’t allow for massive silk yarn purchases).
Working with Malabrigo Mora, 100% mulberry silk in fingering weight, drove home the whole point of silk: its luxurious, soft feeling against the skin, its suitability for warm weather, its zero irritation factor (superior even to the finest merino and alpaca yarns), its gorgeous shimmer and just the sheer delight of it.
As a yarn, Malabrigo Mora is beautiful to work with. It’s a 4-ply fingering-weight yarn that comes in a range of stunning Malabrigo colors, slightly muted compared to their merino/alpaca offerings because silk takes dye a little differently. This yarn is very even in thickness and doesn’t tend to snag or split. I expected a very slippery texture to this yarn, but Mora was just perfect: it had just the right grip to feel comfortable on a metal hook.
Mora comes in 50-gram, 225-yard hanks. It took me exactly two hanks to make a scarf using a mesh stitch which was a great yarn-saver (openwork stitches are fantastic when you’re trying to make an expensive yarn go a long way). This scarf has a gorgeous drape and will be a joy to wear.
Watch this video for a nice summary of Malabrigo Mora – I know I dug all around the web for info about this yarn before splurging. It was totally worth it.
Domestic Felicity 