In Which my Head Explodes at Summer Camp

I didn't read the Sunday paper yesterday. I was back at camp instead.

It was alumni day up in Malibu, the occasion for which I set foot in a place I haven't seen since 1994, and which felt somehow the same, and also totally different.

The dirt and the heat and dehydration were all the same: check. The wooden plaques we engraved with in-jokes when we thought we were so cool, and that our in-jokes were the best ones ever, and when engraving C.I.T. plaques was the most important thing one could do on the planet—those were all still there. The one over the amphitheater that says, "You are entering this magic place: Forget what you have learned," on the entry side, and "You are leaving this magic place: Remember what you have taken," on the exit side, that was still there, still penned in the letters that seem to be the universal hand belonging to Southern California Jewish girls of a certain era with hippie tendencies and unfettered creative aspirations and mind-blowing, eye-bulging optimism.

Among the differences: Today's campers are whiners who tell their parents things that they should know to keep to themselves, and their parents are litigious, and their parents are the types who send threatening emails. So—we're told by the camp director who once was a camper when we were campers, and who had a mullet back then, but it was totally cool—you cannot punish a kid anymore by making him hug a tree and say the Hamotzee backwards or whatever it was. You must punish a kid by making him sign a contract of some sort, which threatens explusion if the behavior continues. There are real consequences.

These kids get Otter Pops instead of candy on some days. This is not an insignificant change, because I connect Abba Zabbas with only one reference on earth, and that is eating them on a bottom bunk with feet up on the plank under the top bunk, where many words and names were scribbled alongside swirls in indelible markers. “G-8 is great.” “AD slept here, summer ’89.”

Also, these kids have Ipods in their cabins and tents. We had our best-ever counselor DK singing "Crazy for You" over a karaoke tape to help us fall asleep. And these girls? They have doors on their cabins. Doors! We used to have only two walls in those same wooden structures, and we also walked uphill both ways in the snow to get to the bathroom cabin...

...which still looks the same, but it has been painted. No longer do the words "MA is a bitch, but I love him," penned by JH circa 1988, remain in one of the stalls. And no longer does that whole structure reek of Aussie Sprunch Spray, which had been pulled from Caboodles and applied liberally to curly manes on Friday nights, when we were supposed to be clean, and were for a moment, before we got our feet instantly muddy on the walk to Mercaz.

And there's more. These 21st-century kids sing in Hebrew a lot. I mean, we sang in Hebrew a lot too, but these kids seem to be asked to take their Judiasm more seriously, to treat it almost as if it were a bona fide religion as much as the pure enjoyment of our shared culture and our community. And, one of the rare English songs in these kids' song books is "Hey There Delilah," which is wrong for so many reasons.

And then there's the fact that our camp now has many areas, including a new organic garden laid out in the shape of the state of Israel, dedicated to the memory of fellow camper MB, who was killed by a suicide bomber while studying at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2002. In some senses, camp is a more serious place now.

But before all this, there were the 1980s, when girls wore high-cut bikinis and odd-shaped, new-fangled monokinis, and when we all used to shout in unison, sort of inexplicably, "Cowabunga, I'm stoked on those hot, primo tubes. Ow!" when our bus turned off Mulholland Highway onto the Pacific Coast Highway as we headed to Zuma beach. And we relived those memories as we sifted through curled black-and-white photos sprawled out on a tabletop in the dining hall, where kids sang many extra verses at the end of the Birkat Hamazon that I had never even heard before.

At the ropes course, under the fancy new rock climbing wall, we asked a 14-year-old camper if she knew how old we were. It was a trick question, so she didn't want to answer. We made it easy for her: "Do we look more like your counselors, or more like your parents?"

"Like my parents."

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Stuff About Being Jewish I Have Heard Lately That Has Tickled Me

"I think being a New Yorker is probably like being Jewish: You're either born that way or you aren't, and while you can convert, nobody will make it easy for you and nobody thinks it's the same."
—From Capella's blog, on her impending move

"You've heard the saying: Gentiles leave and don't say goodbye. Jews say goodbye and don't leave."
—From a guest at a Shabbat dinner in Venice earlier this month, as we all edged ever closer to the door and never quite got there

"When you get back from Vegas, let's go for drinks. Or Jewish drinks: food."
—From another AD with very good hair, by way of Facebook email

Also, at the end of a craps table at Mandalay Bay last week, I was positioned next to some guys who kept saying, "Easy money, all day, every day! Easy money!" They said this before each shooter rolled the dice. And I'm like, hello, Jewish much? No, not. We don't say that stuff on account of we're superstitious, even if we're just rolling dice, and not even naming babies before they are born or wishing somebody a safe flight. (Maybe we could say "easy money" and then also say kein ahora each time too, but that would get cumbersome and also kind of embarrassing.)

Reckless Driving Incident

Today I was browsing the grocery aisles at Target when another woman shopper ran her cart right over the toes on my flip-fopped right foot. I was startled and it hurt like hell, and moreover I thought it was going to mess up my 20-minutes-old pedicure (OPI Cajun Shrimp).

The other woman was so upset that she might have hurt me that she frantically apologized over and over, and then in a flash of panic let slip out, "Can I kiss it?" But not in a creepy foot-fetish way (like that guy outside the Macy's offices in San Francisco who always used to accost us on our way up from the BART station talking about, "nice...pretty...toes..."). But in a total Jewish mom kind of way; I could just hear the words coming out of my own mom's mouth. After the foot pain subsided, I released my toes from my massaging hand, and told her, no, no, no, it's no problem, of course you didn't mean it, things happen.

Then she said, "Are you...are you Jewish?" Yes, I'm Jewish, "Are you the daughter of...?" Nope, wrong Jewish parents' daughter. But I knew the reason she'd been distracted enough to run over my foot was that she was fixed on me trying to discern whether I was this person she suspected I was. I had wondered why she'd been staring.

[Vastly oversimplified kicker:] In this town, people offer to kiss your foot after running it over with a shopping cart in Target. In the Target in Queens, they steal your full cart so they can use it themselves, and throw all of its contents, including your scarf and winter coat with a monthly MetroCard in the pocket, on the floor under the boys' underwear racks. OK, so maybe that only happened once, but it obviously scarred me.

Shake Ya Tail Feather

Who among you has had a tailbone injury? I have learned, in the week since I earned mine after making rather abrupt contact with a Lake Tahoe mountainside, that this injury is known for its tenacity and painfulness. I have learned this not just from my own experience, but from sharing my story with most people I encounter (you know how I do). The instructor teaching the new class at the gym on Friday told me she's never been able to sit in the same spot for more than half an hour since she landed awkwardly after going down a playground slide when she was five. I have heard at least three similar stories, and this is not encouraging.

Let me also tell you what you look like when you walk if your lower back area aches. You look like a nine-months-pregnant lady, trying in vain to protect her back while she manages a waddle. And when you try to pick something up, you look like a very old woman, the kind who pushes a wheelie cart around and wears a head scarf. This is the most scarring part of the experience—this feeling like an old lady—because deep down I know I am really still wild at 30. Still wild, with a bit of a limp maybe. And plus, I bruised my tailbone sledding, dude. What's better than that at 30?

On Saturday night, we had drinks with a bunch of miscellaneous people I mostly didn't know. One of them was a 29 year old who attributed his baby face to his Asian genes, and the fact that he still acts like he's 12. He works in some way in the extreme sports field, and said that he loves to snowboard rails and has had concussions and even vomited blood after wiping out, but "whatever dude, I have life insurance, so at least my parents will get rich." He also said, "I figure one day my friends will just be like, 'Oh what happened to that dude? He's no longer with us—figures.'" He said all of this with a whatever-bro giggle. It was amazing. It's like the exact opposite of anything I would say, or any way I could possibly behave with this Jewish upbringing. It's fun to be reminded of all the differences in perspectives out there.

Really, I was like, huh. You're an alien. I am terrified for your poor parents, oy, and I don't know what they've done to deserve this. But you sure sound like you have a lot of fun.

He's The One I Blame For My Treo Dependency

me: covering gq's vma party @ the mirage. soo wish u were here. smooch times infinity squared. luv u like soja luvs freedom.

CJ: no justice no peace. i'm sitting on the floor at anna sui taking polaroids of my shoe. isn't fashion so glamorous?

me: wait wish u were here 2 c this 1 lothlorien girl in a hemp anklet doing the robot w/her casa z man on the dance floor. like 1 of these kids is not like the others.

CJ: BIG THANGS POPPIN IN 5768. SHOFAR SO GOOD. APPLES AND HONIES. CHALLAH BACK.


**
L'shana tova tikatevu, homies.

The Half Dome Report

Our group of 10 adventurers is back from Yosemite where we embarked yesterday on our big, much-anticipated Half Dome hike. Just got back now, in fact. I walked in the door, took a fabulously long shower (if only it never had to end), and emerged with about 32 ounces of leave-in conditioner in the ol’ mane—which was desperately worse for the wear. And I’m utterly exhausted, but I thought it would be the most honest and raw time to write about the experience, so here goes.

Some background for those readers who may have come upon this by Googling “hiking Half Dome” or the like: I am 29 and do four to five rigorous weight training and cardio workouts per week in the gym, but I’m not known for being outdoorsy or a hiker. I am fond of clean fingernails and so forth, but I was eager to take on this challenge because LP was such a dutiful and excited leader (this adventure having been on her to-do list forever) and I was grateful for the opportunity to try something I would not likely initiate myself. It goes without saying, but my experience was not identical to the other hikers in my group, and this is only my tale of the intense journey undertaken alongside them.

I’d read so many blogs about the hike before attempting it, and I found that nearly all of the writers focused on the physical experience, with little mention of the emotional one, so that’s much of what I’ll write here (which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me in real life). I also hope I’ll get the chronology of trail milestones right, because many of them have already merged together in my memory.

***
We awoke at 5 AM yesterday, and made it to the trail head at about 7:45 AM. (We’d already walked an easy mile from the car to that point.) We took the Mist Trail up the first couple miles, which takes you past Vernal Falls via an intense stretch of granite stairs. Per the trail’s name, it was wet and we were prepared with windbreakers (although it was the beginning of the end for my hair). I was wearing a heart rate monitor, and noticed I was really coming close to my maximum heart rate even in this first stretch (although I’m convinced my heart rate at rest has increased by 10+ BPM in the last few months due to work-related stress, so that was probably not an unrelated factor in the high reading). I’m sure we were all feeling exerted, but I really felt fine and recharged after a short Power Bar rest to enjoy the fantastic view. At this point, DL had a bit of a nose bleed, which may have already been an altitude issue, since we’d come from Los Angeles and the Yosemite Valley floor is at 4,000 feet—and I believe we’d already climbed about 2,000 feet from there. (The blue-eyed guy later told me that it was around here that he saw a woman vomiting from exertion off to the side. When her hat fell off her head, her boyfriend, who was cautiously standing paces away said, “Ah, your hat fell.” Nice guy.) A bit further up, an arcing rainbow spanned the notch view through the granite. Spectacular.

More granite steps upon more and more, and I was managing, but a few of us stopped to the side to wait for another to catch up. We ate some more trail mix and pressed on. Keep in mind that this hike is more than eight miles to the top, and nearly all of it is accomplished by going continually up, up, up.

But there is one sandy stretch of about a mile that is roughly flat, which we encountered next. This is such a nice relief. The Merced River runs next to it, the pine smell pervades, and some wildflowers grow. And it’s perhaps the first time I could really appreciate those things because I wasn’t just focusing on the work involved with ascent. There’s a bathroom here with a composting toilet (if I recall that’s the last stop before the squat-behind-a-tree method becomes the go-to relief). Also around here you get your first glimpse of the dome, but it’s sort of a meaningless gauge of distance because there are so many switchbacks over about five miles still between you and it. But with the extreme zoom on my camera I was able to catch my first sight of the folks climbing up the cables at the very top.

At this point, I’d already drank two liters of water from my Platypus (I’d found it hard to ration since you can’t see how much remains in your backpack), but our group had use of a filter and pumped water at the next stream we encountered, which, it turned out was the last filterable water I remember seeing. According to my Polar heart rate monitor (which I have tested and believe is fully reliable), I’d already burned close to 2,000 calories at this point. And we saw a very pretty little butterfly alight near the spring.

At some point we saw a sign that said 2.0 miles to Half Dome, and I mistakenly allowed myself to feel like we were almost there. (Ha.) (HA!) This was a particularly treacherous stretch, and my heart rate monitor was flashing at me (I never read the manual, of course, but I assume the flashing heart means cease and desist. SE suggested I apply more sunscreen because my chest was getting pink, but I’m like, “Girl, I think that’s just my heart trying to leap out of my chest…” I believe most of us girls, who had clustered together at this point, were in roughly the same condition.) Five of us gals sat down to rest on a fallen tree. Another girl, a stranger, passed us and said, “FYI, there are termites all over that log.” And we all just looked at her and managed a giggle when we realized that no mere termite swarm in the vicinity of our shorts-clad bums was going to deprive us of this little rest.

The blue-eyed guy, whom I hadn’t seen for miles—and ended up being somewhat of a dark horse master of this hike—came bounding down the hill to pick up my pack for me and carry it a few dozen paces, since he’d already been up further and mysteriously had energy to spare. Not too much further up and we came to a clearing where for the first time we could see—everything. Everything! The valley floor thousands of feet below, snow left on other peaks, waterfalls. And to the left and up, Half Dome. There we could clearly see the treacherous cables that guide hikers up the last 1,000 or so nearly vertical feet (I’ve read it’s a 45-degree grade, but it looks like, er, 9 million degrees) to the top—the cables about which I’d read so much and knew I was going to have to overcome tremendous fear to conquer. But what we also saw below the cables were a bunch of folks scurrying up a cable-less stretch of granite in a way that seemed, at least from where we were standing, to defy gravity. Looking at those hikers, I said to LP, “I don’t get it.” And she goes, “I absolutely don’t get it either. How…?”

Pressing on, we got to that stretch next. It’s a series of switchback steps cut into the granite, which I either had not read about, or had not understood the severity of. So up, up, up I’m heading, facing straight into the rock, until I heard the woman right in front of me say to her friend, “I need to go back down right now,” with an urgency that flipped a switch in me. I looked down. And then, in Hitchcockian fashion (perhaps not, but I like the film-school drama of saying so), my view got all distorted and foreshortened and vertiginous. And I started to panic. I wanted to train my brain to keep the fear at bay, but my physical body betrayed me and I began to hyperventilate. I moved off to the side of the path and clutched on to a bit of granite (natch—what else?), and three of the girls in my crew caught up with me and comforted me.

And then I heard a man’s voice from a few paces above say, “You need some of this?” And there was a guy clutching onto a small pine tree with his right arm and holding out a bottle of Jack with his left. Turned out he’d experienced a spell of the same vertigo and his girlfriend had gone ahead without him. He was essentially paralyzed with fear—clutching some flora and a bottle in desperation. (Which I admit is at least a little bit hilarious in retrospect. But I didn't agree that drinking on the side of a mountain could help one get either up or down safely.) Somehow, inspired by the girls’ pep talks, and my determination to press on in spite of the fear, (oh, and a small blue anti-anxiety pill from the bejeweled pill box in my backpack—what, like I was leaving camp without it?), we all headed up the switchbacks and our new friend put away the bottle and followed suit. I was holding onto the rocks instead of walking fully upright—leaning in gave me more confidence. Seeing my condition (and hearing my loud hyperventilation) I got a lot of encouragement from hikers passing us on the way down. “One hundred more yards—you’re there. Right where those two trees are—you’re so there…” someone said. I looked up and saw the blue-eyed guy standing by two trees and I mustered all my strength to hustle up toward him. In this stretch, though, there were no steps at all—just an impossibly steep slab of granite that is more than a little bit sandy.

I scrambled up quickly ahead of the others knowing I had to do it in one fell swoop—like ripping off a band-aid—if I was going to do it at all.

At the top, the girls sat down next to me, and I put my head in the blue-eyed guy’s lap and cried a little bit. I had read in several other blogs that this hike provoked tears in others for a number of reasons—exertion, elation, and convoluted feelings of triumph and insignificance in the face of, “this giant whirling rock [that is our earth] and how we're all going to die,” to quote a j-school buddy and commenter on this blog.

Tracing his fingers around the dirt and rocks, the blue-eyed guy discovered a left-behind ring and gave it to me. It has a silvery pearl in the center and some brown stones beside and, by the looks of it, it was probably owned by a hiker who uses rock crystal deodorant and wears Tevas, but it fits me just fine and I adore it.

We were at 8,000 feet now. Although the cables still remained, I felt I’d made it. I’d overcome the panic on the switchbacks and was content to wait with many other hikers (including our new pal with the Jack Daniels) who also waited for friends to make that last ascent. But the more I sat (along with another member of our own group), the more I battled the decision to go on. (Even trip organizer LP had looked at that daunting path of cables and said, "I'm not even sure that I want to..." but the hesitation passed and she boldly went on.) The line to get to the cables was actually nearly an hour long (Yosemite rush hour!) and I had a lot of time to contemplate whether I should join back up with my crew and head on up the cliff. I was looking for a sign. At some point, it was too late because those members of our group who were going had already headed up, and I was in absolutely no place to tackle that without support—given that I was not sure I was in any place to tackle it with support. Then some disappointment set in because I knew—I know for sure—I had the strength (mostly upper body is required) to make it, but the height held me back. And the times I saw an unsecured hat or water bottle skitter off the side of that cliff and clang down into oblivion—well, I was relieved with my choice.

MJ and I waited near the cables for a while, and then decided to make our way slowly down the switchbacks and meet our crew at the clearing below; that would give us time to tackle the challenge at our own pace. I found this actually far less disconcerting on the way down than on the way up—in fact, hardly disconcerting at all (small blue pill at work, perhaps? I wondered if I should have taken it a little sooner). We met up with the crew after they returned from the summit, and I continued to bite back some disappointment on the way down that I hadn’t attempted the cables. (Although—notwithstanding my confidence in my upper body strength from those “Armed and Dangerous” classes at the gym—I’m not sure how a Jewish girl with a Jewish mom and a piano-drop mindset* could really ever do that part, but I'm sure it happens. In fact, AE was a fine example yesterday! Although her outlook is generally more sunny-side than piano-drop, bless her heart for it.)

It was after 4 PM now and getting late to start down. All the blogs that I read that said going down was not easier on the body than going up, but that was far from true in our experience. We took the John Muir trail—longer in distance but with fewer granite steps—and made it all the way to the bottom in about three and a half hours and my heart rate never went above 134 in those 8.6 or so downhill miles. We were able to filter some more water from the river (I drank three liters on the way up and had been plum out for the way down) and I managed to get in some good heart-to-heart convos (or was it just altitude/exertion/spiritual experience-induced T.M.I.?) with each the blue-eyed guy and dear old friend LP on the way.

We did pass one other hiker who asked us how our day had been and of course we said it was amazing, even through our exhaustion—because indeed it had been so incredible—and she said, “I stopped having fun hours ago.” Hmm, I felt bad for the friend walking with her who must have had to listen to those complaints for about 15 miles. Later, we passed a charming group of deer, and a bit further down, I got a “Go Bears!” from a gal who saw the Cal logo on my visor, which tickled me to no end (natch). And somehow, even though I had visible dirt caked everywhere and a blond afro roughly the size of Manhattan island, some Stanford alum tried to pick me up on the way down the mountain. Of course, I have a boyfriend. And, importantly (with only one notable exception)—Cal girls worth their blue and gold don’t date Stanford boys anyway.

Then, just as dark was setting in around 8 PM, we made it to the bottom.

The blue-eyed boy was driving my car back to camp. I got in the passenger’s seat and, without warning, fell right to sleep mid-sentence. Back at Wawona, I was so exhausted that I flung myself about haphazardly like a pinball in the tent trying to change into my sweats and out of my hiking gear. By the light of the flashlight, I noticed blood caked in the inside of my white sock, but was in no state to investigate. I was like, “I’ll just file this under T for ‘deal with it tomorrow’…”

I dragged myself to the campfire, fairly catatonic from exhaustion—but strangely not at all hungry or thirsty. (I think the adrenaline had suppressed my hunger all day, since I never had felt like eating and had only forced myself. N.B.: According to my trusty heart rate monitor, I burned close to 6,000 calories all told, far more than the 2,500 or so some other bloggers have suggested.) It all gets very blurry here—I thought it was from fatigue, but it likely also had something to do with the high ratio of whiskey to hot chocolate in my mug—but we laughed and carried on and congratulated ourselves on doing this tremendous thing. I was seriously touched when KB produced a piece of my hair from who knows where and told me he’d brought it to the top so my DNA made it up the cables indeed even if I didn’t. That sounds like some kind of yarn, but if it’s really true, I think it’s adorable.

Yada, yada, veggie sausages, s’mores, popcorn, putting stuff on the fire to see if it would explode—details are sketchy. At some point we were back in the tent, but couldn’t sleep right away—and not just because of the ongoing revelry around the fire outside. The blue-eyed boy said to me, “All I see is granite when I close my eyes.” And it was just what I had been thinking too.

This morning I woke up with a headache (dehydration? whiskey hangover? combo?) and sore hip flexors and calves. A very, very cold river runs near the Wawona camp grounds, and after we all took an excruciating dip, I swear I came out feeling perfectly good as new. I said, “I feel just like I had a bit of a tough workout at the gym yesterday—nothing more than that!” [Spoiler alert: that was foreshadowing.]

We packed up camp, took a series of fabulously goofy group photos, said our goodbyes, and headed out. (Sniff…I hate when wonderful things have to end.)

Afterward, the blue-eyed guy and I had a 300-mile drive home, and we stopped periodically—once for gas, once to get lost in a very lousy part of Fresno, once for pea soup at a place shaped like a big windmill, and once for coffee and Half Dome postcards. And each time I got out of the car my legs betrayed me and threatned to collapse under me like foldable tent poles and it was like learning to walk from scratch. The blue-eyed guy said, “Aw. You’re just like a little fawn.” A totally fair comparison (but he was limping too).

And so, over the Grapevine and through the woods, I just hours ago made it back home to good ol’ Westwood and my clothes-eating cat. Scanning the weekend mail, I pulled out an envelope containing my renewed passport. How’s that for well-timed poetry? One massive hike tackled in an ineffably beautiful national park, zillions of new adventures to go.

*From Aimee Bender's essay "House of Love and Bragging" in The Modern Jewish Girl's Guide to Guilt:

"Here is the scene. Something good just happened. I am happy about it. Maybe it was a good writing day, or I am in a good relationship, or I have helped someone, or I feel a sense of self in a true, deep way. I am walking to the market, to buy myself a peach and fizzy water. It's a beautiful blue day. Or it's not, but my mood is so high that it doesn't matter. I myself am a beautful blue day.

Little do I know that the piano shipment in the freight airplane high above me has had a mishap. The baby grand piano, which was right at the bottom of the aircraft, has come loose. Someone didn't lock that airplane door. He was drunk. He was in a bad mood. The piano wasn't tied properly. It has been hanging there, by three legs—by two legs—by one leg and now it has tumbled out of the airplane. I am still walking to the store. Whistle, whistle. I do a little skip.

Miles above me, whirring through the air, is this giant black paino, gaining speed as it goes. Free-falling. I am thinking about the good thing that has happened today, thinking about it. How nice I feel. How glad I am today. You'd think I would look up at the whirring sound, and maybe cars honk at me to look up, but I am oblivious, content, and proud. I step right into the path, and the piano flattens me into a pancake.

Better keep my eyes up. Better be vigilant, particularly on those good days. Any good day not marked by worry and vigilance will be met with tragedy. It exhausts me even to write it.

Secular me? Ha."

What, Me Worry?

I am a worrier. Not to be confused with a warrior, which I'm realizing lately is the complete opposite. I've always sort of embraced my worry as part of the culture in which I was raised. In my family, you showed how much you cared with the frequency and volume of your oys, and with the number of check-in phone calls you made, and with the number of times you felt somebody's keppellah who said he felt a little chilly. Worrying always made me feel very Jewish (which I like) and very close to my mom (which is also nice).

Recently (around the time he told the Hitler joke that I so thoroughly enjoyed), my boyfriend told me his mom is a worrier, and she will figure he's dead if he doesn't call back for a couple days. I'm like, homie, you don't know from worry! You get a couple of days before she calls the morgue; I get a couple 15 minutes. He also said his mom was very relieved to find out I was a worrier too, because she felt happy to share the burden of her worry over her son who lives in another state. She asked, would I come over if he was sick to take care of him? And I'm thinking, do you know how much Emergen-C I can fit in my Mazda3 hatchback?!

Anyway, I can learn from the blue-eyed guy, who can be rather zen when he wants to be, and who does a lot of yoga, and who doesn't really worry or brood like I do. (Did I mention he got hit by a truck a few years ago?! A TRUCK! Hit! On Pico Boulevard! And he was unconscious in the ambulance! And then kind of got over it and moved on after he got released from the hospital, and now doesn't worry about getting hit by another truck, which I now worry about because he told me that story, like, exactly one time.) (Hit by a truck, oy oy oy!!)

I watch myself set these worry traps for myself and get caught in them. (This is particularly tricky for me since I work at home; it's a lot of time alone with my snowballingly funky head space when I get in a rut.) I watch myself pick at a molehill (albeit, maybe, a kind of substantial molehill) until it becomes an unclimbable mountain. Until I'm like, I've read Into Thin Air, I know how this ends.

But the fact of the matter is (and I know this from dutifully reading my DailyOm): it ends however you want it to end. The only thing to fear is fear itself, and what not. So you know, it's a matter of self discipline (which I know I have, since I get through all those "Brand New Booty" classes at the gym--ouch!), and pulling back a bit from the worry, and maybe changing my mindset about worry being kind of a cool, productive, Jewish community-building thing.

Nu? Discuss.

I Can Help You Help Your Hair If You Let Me

I'm not saying my hair is the best thing in the world, but 1) it's pretty good, and 2) it took a long time (regrettably, long past my awkward adolescence) and a lot of money and wasted products to figure out how to make it do what it does. So I'm writing this as a service for any wayward ethnic girl who might Google "manage Jewish hair" or "products for Jewish hair" or "tame nasty frizz," and for Capella, who asked. Look, I'm not a genius, but I know something about this.

Re: products. You need exactly two products, and one of them must be mousse (I use John Frieda Frizz-Ease, which recently changed its packaging. It's hardly more than $4 at Target). You should use two open hands full for long hair, and you should not be daunted by how big of a pile this seems to be (and is).

N.B.: Don't be daunted when the guy doing your balyage* at Bumble & Bumble in the Meatpacking District says to you, "Mousse? Ew, I thought they stopped making that in the 80's." Also do not be daunted the first time your boyfriend sees you do the mousse thing and says, "Wow. That's enough mousse for...a moose."

Travelers further note that the no-liquids-over-three-ounces-on-planes rule is kind of like racial profiling against Jewish women too, because it is very hard to find mousse in travel sizes, and it cannot be transplanted to a smaller container because it is generally aerosol. If you find travel size mousse at any time, buy lots of them and store them for your exclusive use on planes so you're not forced to check luggage on a short trip. Oh, and regarding aerosol mousse: much better than nonaeorosol.

The second product you will need to use in conjunction is something very tacky; I use KMS Paste (about $20 for five ounces; the cheapest place to get it is on BeautyDeals.net, and I try to buy five at a time--about a year's supply--to keep the price including shipping really low). You want to use about four to five pumps of Paste, or about four fingers full if you are scooping from a squat jar of some kind.

Now. To VERY WET hair, apply the mousse first. Then emulsify the the tacky Paste-like product by rubbing it through your palms together (like in prayer position). Comb both through together.

Then, you want to curl each section of your hair around your finger for a ringlety look. I know this sounds like a lot of effort, but once you get used to it, it's really very quick. I do my entire head of hair in five minutes, or 10 if I'm really going somewhere special. Another great thing about this method is that it keeps the top curls the same approximate shape and quality as the ones on the bottom (anyone reading this far knows what I mean).

As for blow drying, I try to avoid it altogether. I let my hair air dry all the time, unless it's the dead of winter (although I live in California now, and it was 90+ today in L.A., so that hardly matters), or unless I must go somewhere quickly and I don't have the time to let it dry naturally (which, since all that product slows drying time, might be close to three hours or more to be bone dry). Then, you must only use a diffuser, and afterward, you should apply some sleekening-type serum (I like Joico or Ecru), which is far better than the sprays they make that allege the same result.

Don'ts: Do not ever brush or comb your hair when it's dry, for god's sake. Do not let the person at the salon tell you she knows what you need for your hair, beyond what you have read in this post--no matter how fancy or compelling the salon or the salon girl. She does not, and it will only cost you money and storage space. Don't think you can sleep on your curls, and have them be OK tomorrow. (I'm sorry.) Some people say the built-up grease is a useful anti-frizz tool, but the pillow just flattens everything out irreparably, in my experience. And, to directly respond to Capella: Don't try to fight your curly hair. If you straighten it, you will just look like a curly-haired Jewish girl trying to straighten her hair. Maybe do it for the occasional, er, occasion, but then only do it professionally at a place that knows about hair like yours. I'm serious about this--you are not fooling anyone when you straighten your hair. And curly hair is not juvenile and cutesy! It can really be quite sophisticated.

If this post brings relief to even one ethnic curly-haired girl out there, I will feel rewarded. (I've figured out I wasn't destined to cure cancer, but I've at least got to do some good.)

Oh, and if anyone has any fun styling tips for post-drying, post-finger-twirled curly hair--anything that's not my tired-ass low-side-bun-with-tendrilly-bits--I would be grateful for your input.

Good luck, and godspeed.


*If you are a curly-haired girl still getting foil highlights, you must stop at once and do balyage (hand-painted highlights) instead. It doesn't give you that regimented, striped, I-live-in-the-valley-in-1994 look, and it looks very natural and sun-kissed indeed. I haven't done it for five months, and there are no roots, just a natural I-haven't-been-in-the-sun-because-it-was-winter look. Perfect for curly hair.

If Your Mother Knew You Were Scaling That Building, Oy

My blue-eyed guy was cracking me up last night. He goes, "I'm going to tell you a joke I saw in a movie on the plane. I wouldn't have understood it at all, except that I'm dating you. It goes like this. Two Jews were sent to assassinate Hitler. They get intelligence about where he's going to be at 12:30, so they go there with their rifles and wait for him. 12:30, no Hitler. 12:45, No Hitler. Now it's 1, 1:30, no sign of Hitler. One says to the other, 'Oy, I hope nothing happened to him.'" Yes, dating me would help anyone understand that joke. Look, I worry, OK? So call me, let me know you're fine, and meanwhile drive safely, for god's sake use your turn signals for once, and don't take any unnecessary risks.

Earlier this week I saw a news clip of some British or French daredevil free-climbing the highest building in Dubai or somewhere. And I had to giggle, thinking about how that flies in the face of every salient Jewish value. Values like planning for the future, securing the wellbeing of posterity to the extent posible, being generally careful and unnecessary-risk averse. The view must be somthin from up there, but I'll never know.

For the Sin of Envy

It’s been two weeks since my last confession. I mean my last blog confession. It’s only been one day since my confessions in synagogue on the Day of Atonement for the sin of…

…slander, and for the sin of gossip.
…for the sin of selfishness.
…for the sin of indulging evil thoughts, and for the sin of lust.
…for the sin of not hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and for the sin of being poor in spirit.
...for the sin of speaking foolish words, and for the sin of not controlling my tongue.
…for the sin of being proud and for the sin of lacking zeal.
…for the sin of not being quick to forgive, and for the sin of holding resentments.
…and for the sin of eating a peanut butter Balance Bar on the fast day so that I could file a story on deadline without fainting…

…and miscellaneous others. By the way, for high holidays services, we joined the congregation of the synagogue led by the cantor who married my sister earlier this summer. And it was such a rich, song-dominated, warm experience that evoked my eleven years of Jewish summer camp in Malibu—one of the great blessings of my childhood and adolescence—more vividly then anything else since.

(Something else evoked summer camp recently too: At the Abbot-Kinney Cool Kid festival, we ran into a fab girl who had been a fellow camper back in those days, who I always thought was like the best, funniest, most outgoing version of me on a good hair day. And she’s still as awesome as all that, so it was such a kick to see her.)

Anyway, I was moved to confess here again when I got delivered to my inbox today a Snapfish photo album containing pictures of a minutes-old child belonging to an old flame. By all rights, he shouldn’t even know how to reach me. But he still does, and here’s why.

To start from the beginning: In college, I spent a couple months dating (well, it was more like “hanging out,” since as close as anyone came to going on proper dates in Berkeley was having a face-size hummus sandwich at Intermezzo or sitting on Sproul Plaza and listening to the drum circle and talking smack about how passersby reeked of patchouli.) a fellow film student who I’d really started to like, by the time a mutual friend told me he’d had a girlfriend the whole time. Naturally it should have been over, severed cleanly, right at the moment I’d paged him 4-1-1 (ha!) to confirm that it was true. But it lingered on as things do, until it got really ugly, and we’d hiked up to the Big C one night, and he was distraught and told me up on that hill he’d have to tell her the truth, and when we came down, he went straight to her house, if I recall, and did just that. It was high drama, and she was beside herself, and moved away or something, and the details are sketchy, but he followed her out of town, and I didn’t have contact with him for years. Until.

It was winter in New York two years ago and I was cold and I was trolling Friendster, and there he was, married, with a baby. I wrote him to say it was nice to see him settled and happy. Within two emails it came out that he loved his daughter very much—a beautiful biracial girl with wild, light curly hair, huge eyes, and a Christmas birthday—but his marriage was a disaster.

He’d gotten that girl from our college years to take him back—and then he’d gone and married her.

I’ll have to skim over a couple months spent rapt by the weird sham of an electronic affair I’d had with him after we got back in touch, because I’m not proud of it. But I was lonesome, and I envied him his life: He drove his sensible sedan back to his family in his warm condo every night. And he envied me my life: single, totally unencumbered, responsible only to myself, spent money on shoe sales and not diapers, went to parties in New York for a living (never mind that I rented a frigid apartment where I lived alone and never had enough heat or hot water or enough electricity to run my space heater without blowing the fuse, and then when I invariably did, having to pray to god that my super was in town so he could unlock the gate in the sidewalk and flip the fuse box down there so the lights would come on again). It was a perfect storm of mutual jealousies and intense history.

I asked him one day why he married that girl, with whom he fought all the time, and who didn’t seem to make him happy, and who he didn’t seem to make happy, and who hadn't made him happy enough seven years earlier to keep him from cheating. “I just wanted so badly to win,” he said, about the years he spent monomaniacally trying to get her back. “I lost track of what it was I was fighting for.”

This weekend his wife delivered their second child, a son. They’d decided to try for another child when they had a period of upswing in their relationship in the winter. He doubts now that it was a good decision, but he will be a good father, I’m sure. Insofar as you can be a good father to a child while failing to communicate honestly with his mother.

From my reconnection with him, I've really learned the lesson about the grass not being greener on the other side. But an even more valuable one is the one about making sure you know good and well what you're fighting for before you dedicate your life to that pursuit—because you just might get what you fought for.