Was that a Vacation??? Damn…(or: what I’ve been doing for two weeks)

As I have been repeatedly pointing out, I was on vacation for the last two weeks.

Not that, blogwise, it should have been all that easy to tell. I had meticulously placed my posts in cue, set to explode into cyberspace at precisely timed intervals. Most of my commentators were regulars, so their comments should have neatly popped into existence the minute they hit ENTER. It should have been so easy.

I have maintained all along that SOMEONE has had it out for me. Someone high up, with excellent connections.

First, there was boobygate (if you don’t know what that is, you’re probably lucky).

Then, the debacle at Timeless Bliss forced me to interrupt my scheduled vacation and actually WRITE something. Again, I figured my 20 or so regular readers would leave instant comments, and it wouldn’t take any real time out of my vacation.

Instead, I was barraged by new commentators (not that I’m complaining, mind you!), and tried desperately to make it back to my computer for a few minutes a few times a day to publish their comments. I do apologize. It would have been so much more fun if it had all been live, but, c’est la vie.

So? What have I been doing, if I haven’t been writing?

My youngest son was Bar Mitzvah last weekend.

For those of you unfamiliar with this Jewish rite of passage, at the age of 13, Jewish boys are considered responsible for their actions, and for obeying the commands of the Torah. As a symbol of this new requirement, the Bar Mitzvah (lit: son of the mitzvah, or requirement) leads the congregation in a Torah service.

Yes, it’s a lovely idea.

But in America, the Bar Mitzvah has come to mean not the man-child, but the festivities surrounding it.

While ordinary (read, non-Jewish) kids go to soccer and tennis and boy scouts and deal with homework, 13 year old Jews go to Hebrew School and Hebrew tutoring, four times a week (while doing all those other things, too).

Not that a challenge isn’t good for the youngsters. But why do the MOMS have to be challenged, as well???

As I noted earlier, somebody has been trying to tell me something about this Bar Mitzvah from the beginning.

Stretch got dropped by the system. He didn’t get properly plugged in to the tutoring and schooling until three months late (despite many urgent emails from his parents, I might add). He was doing the service alone, and he had a longer Torah and Haftorah portion than normal.

Thank that same somebody that he’s smart (and he’s homeschooled, which meant we could rearrange a lot). He did in three months more work than most kids do in six.

Every time we had to go to the Temple for a rehearsal or a tutoring session, previously sunny skies opened up to torrents of cold, miserable rain.

The weekend of the ceremony itself, Houston’s lovely 70-80 degree, sunny days yielded to a Canadian cold front (currently being blamed on a favorite aunt), dropping our temps to 40 and soaking us with freezing drizzle.

I’m telling you, Somebody was out to get me. From the beginning. (BTW: rabbis can spin anything. He shrugged his shoulders and said we needed the rain.)

And then there were the festivities. They’re what makes a mom’s life really miserable.

We had about twenty-five relatives in from out of town, mostly Canada. We had to feed them: Friday night, Saturday lunch, Sunday brunch. We had to give them directions to everything. We had to cater to wild whims (like a relative who decided to send JUST her 15 year old son).

And the house had to be neat enough to find the table tops and convince them that we weren’t going to give them ptomaine.

SO…the first week, I spent cooking and cleaning.

Then the catering, the ceremony itself, and more catering; then the party. Then the cleaning up.

None of this was made any easier by the fact that my husband spent the entire two weeks confined to his comfy chair because his back was (IS) out.

(When I find out which somebody is responsible for all of this, there’s going to be hell to pay.)

And some of the relatives stayed on for a week. That was okay. These are the good relatives. But it also meant that I spent time with them instead of doing the normal junk that goes on during a day. Which meant that all the normal junk was still waiting for me at the end of that day (because, apparently, none of my GENIUS sons knows how to load a dishwasher or take out the trash unless I’m standing behind them).

It’s Monday, now. The house is quiet. The kids are back in school, Stretch is writing thank you notes (’cause that’s educational, right?), and I’m contemplating.

I feel like I did when I was nursing. So many demands on me. So little time to fill them all. So many hands outstretched, requiring aid and sympathy and hugs.

The daily grind goes on. Get up, feed the dog, make coffee, get the paper. Nag at the kids. Clean the kitchen. Laundry has piled up, and the house really needs to be cleaned again.

Now, when do I get this vacation?

In the nobody-can-make-this-up, piece de resistance punch line, the Grouch, who spent the entire last week looting and plundering some poor village in cyberspace, came out for breakfast this morning, stretched, and whined, “I’m so exhausted.”

Damn.

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