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.
You guys, it’s that time of the year again. Purim behind, Pesach ahead. I have this itch to throw out half of our stuff and scrub the rest. Plenty of good intentions, though they don’t always come to fruition.
I made a big master list and just read some useful tips to remind myself not to sweat it. I won’t disclose everything I still have to do, but here’s a partial list of what I’m glad to say I WON’T do, at least not before this crazy messy holiday is over:
Sorting through closets
Cleaning windows
Yard work
Painting dirty wall and ceiling sections
Deep-scrubbing the bathtub
Repeat after me: Pesach cleaning is not spring cleaning. Dust is not leavened bread. Clutter is not chametz.
The kitchen is the real challenge. The lady from the link I’ve shared above says cleaning out and prepping the kitchen for Pesach only takes a day. That may be possible if you have a whole day free, tons of energy, and no kids at home. Personally, I have a big kitchen with lots of storage spaces and nooks and crannies. I also have to stop to eat and rest from time to time. I typically set aside a day just to clean the refrigerator.
At least I’m learning from year to year. For me, the biggest challenge is the couple of days when almost everything – the stove, the refrigerator, the counters – is already clean, but it’s too early to take out the Pesach dishes and start using them. So I’m sort of in a limbo where I can’t cook at all, and sitting on the front steps and eating sandwiches gets old eventually. There’s no time to figure out anything decent to eat.
Last year, eventually, I was just so HUNGRY. So were the kids. I called to order pizza (something I never do) and it turned out they were too busy to do deliveries. I could have cried. We ended up eating instant noodles.
So, this year, my challenge will be to stock up on nutritious snacks and food for those critical couple of days before the kitchen makes its yearly transition.
Oh well, we’ve made it before and will make it this year too. Happy Pesach/Spring cleaning, everyone!
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.
When food prices soar and people are struggling to maintain food security, those who annihilate free food sources completely miss the direction the wind is blowing.
Right next to our home, there was an old, abandoned-looking little house with several lovely orange and lemon trees. Its elderly owner had moved to a long-term care facility and let the neighbors know they could pick the fruit to their heart’s content. We’d carefully step over the sagged low fence and bring home bags of lemons and oranges.
Time passed. Not long ago, the elderly homeowner passed and his heirs put the house up for sale. An enterprising young couple bought it, divided it into two sublet units, and cut down the beautiful old trees.
My heart broke when I saw the lush green branches being dragged to the waste disposal and left there to wait for the municipality’s truck. My kids, who saw it too, nearly cried. We stopped next to the branches for a while, picked a few last oranges, and said goodbye to the tree that had given so much to so many people over the years. Today, I saw they were preparing to pour concrete over the place where the trees had stood.
It’s not the first time we have recently witnessed fruit trees being decimated. Just a few weeks ago, our municipality uprooted two ancient, magnificent trees from which people in the neighborhood used to pick olives every year. Some bean-counter must have decided that fruit trees aren’t worth their annual upkeep, like pruning or removing falling fruit.
Here’s what I think. I believe that when food prices soar and people are struggling to maintain food security, those who annihilate free food sources completely miss the direction the wind is blowing.
Luckily, we still have plenty of abandoned yards and public spaces where we can pick lemons, oranges, and tangerines. They might be smaller and have more pits than regular varieties you’d find in the store, which might be the reason why most people don’t bother with them, but they’re perfectly good for juicing.
In Judaism, fruit trees hold a special place and it’s generally forbidden to cut them down for no good reason. I think it’s one of the greatest pieces of wisdom in Jewish lore – the respectful, almost reverent attitude toward sources of food and life.
Rosemary is one of my favorite herbs. So hardy and easy to grow, and with so many uses. This native Mediterranean shrub thrives in bright sun and warm temperatures, so you should be able to grow rosemary in zones 8 and 9.
I love rosemary for its versatility. It’s great for cooking, has outstanding health properties, and requires little care and not a lot of water. Even better, bees love it, but chickens don’t like to eat it, so a mature rosemary bush can even grow in any place you use as a chicken run.
I use rosemary as a:
#1 Cough and cold remedy. Rosemary has antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. Just make some rosemary tea when you’re under the weather and enjoy it with a little honey. I find it helps soothe coughs and sore throats.
#2 Cooking herb. Rosemary really brings out the flavor of meat and fish; oven-baked salmon sprinkled with salt, coarse ground pepper, and rosemary leaves is my favorite.
#3 Lice and bug repellent. Rosemary’s pungent smell repels lice, mosquitoes, and other bugs. You can spray hair with a little rosemary infusion or dab some rosemary tea behind children’s ears to defend them against a lice infestation.
#4 Fragrance. I’ve added rosemary to home-processed soaps, sometimes combined with mint and eucalyptus extracts.
I got my rosemary plant from someone who simply cut off a branch and let it develop roots in water. I haven’t been very successful in rooting rosemary cuttings in water myself, but I’ve seen it work for other people. You can also buy a young plant from a nursery and add it to your herb garden. Rosemary takes some time to really start growing, but once it gets going, you may need to prune it once in a while to keep it from overrunning its space.
I’ve had this marshmallow-soft ball of enormous-sized yarn sitting in the closet for a while simply because I didn’t have a hook large enough to use with it. Then, finally, I figured out how to use my finger as a crochet hook! I was surprised at how quick and easy it was. The technique I used was very similar to what this video shows.
The rectangle in the photo above took me under an hour and works great as a chair seat cover. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of super bulky yarn – I’m more into fingering-weight yarns and fine wearables – but jumbo yarns can be a nice option if you’re looking to whip up a quick handmade gift.
Domestic Felicity 