Adulting?

 Well I’ve been officially accepted to a masters program at HU. After 6.25 years of higher education. I’d like to thank everyone who made this possible, mainly G-d, because I’m pretty sure there was some divine intervention involved here. Also my parents for being so supportive, and keeping me fed and laundered for way more years than any adult should expect. Also for allowing me to loot, pillage, and plunder the kitchen every time I come home, even now that I’m out of the house and pretending to be a real adult.

Being an adult is hard. Do you ever feel like you’ve hit your limit on being responsible for the day? Like, you’ve gone to work, cleaned the apartment, done the laundry, and then... you get the electric bill in the mail, and it just sends you over the edge. It’s the metaphorical straw that broke the camel’s back. This happens to me sometimes. I get really dramatic about it too. I’m like, no, I refuse!!! F*** you electric company, I’ve adulted enough today! I’m going to eat a bowl of ice cream for dinner and watch cat videos all evening in my pajamas.

So now, being a real adult and all, I will be in school full time and working 3 jobs. Just like all successful adults. In case you’re wondering about all those jobs, I shall elaborate. 1) still working at the lab. This is my main job and part of my degree, which is a research based degree. 2) Still working with the older woman, helping her with “technological” things- like answering emails, buying books online, and printing documents from her printer. 3) The newest of my jobs is with an organization that hosts shabbat meals, mostly Friday nights, for groups from out of the country. Jews, non-Jews- anyone who wants to experience an authentic shabbat meal. I basically do the waitressing part of the meals, the setting up beforehand, the serving of the food (catered by the industrial area outside of Ma’ale Adumim), and the clearing up afterwards. As surprising as this might sound, I’m enjoying this job quite a lot more than I thought I would. It certainly has a few perks- flexibility (I sign up on the weeks I want to work), leftovers (cooking for one is quite a pain. It’s either an omelet for dinner, or an actual meal which will end up being eaten every day for the next week), and not having to find Friday night meal plans (which were usually just me posting my pleas for food and company on Facebook Thursday night in the hopes that someone would take pity on me). The most surprising thing about the job (considering I’m not exactly what one would call a “people person”) is the sociological aspect of the job. I get to observe from the background all these groups of people from all over the world, and the families hosting them. I have so far worked with a group of respected authors and artists from the US (non-Jewish), a group of women from the Jewish Federation (incidentally they were from the NJ chapter) with a few lone soldiers in attendance (the women LOVED that), a group of international students from the Moody Bible Institute (they had LOTS of questions for the hosts- about everything from shabbat observance, to Jews’ view on the Holy Trinity, to Judaism’s take on women and feminism), an extended Jewish family from Atlanta in Israel for a bar mitzvah (they gave me their card after the meal saying that they run an organization that gives grants and funding to groups researching brain cancer), and groups of mixed families from the US, Italy, China, France, and Belgium who got matched up for a shabbat meal (Jewish and non-Jewish, with different levels of religious observance in all religions). I have no idea where they find these groups of people, or where these groups of people find us, but there are many of these meals going on all over Jerusalem on any given Friday night.

I actually have my former roommate to thank for the job. He called me up one day and asked if I was interested in making some extra money. The offer sounded a bit suspicious, so I asked him if it involved the global drug trade or organ trafficking. He responded, “no, of course not! Don’t be ridiculous. It’s actually prostitution.”

In other news, I’m taking 2 years worth of vacation intermittently over the course of 3 weeks. In fact it may be more like 5 years worth of vacation. My parents and I just got back from a two and a half day stint in Akko. Next week I’ll be in Eilat for 3 days for a work conference (ok, so that’s not EXACTLY a vacation considering our schedule is lectures and poster sessions from 9am to 8pm every day), and perhaps a few days in Tel Aviv with my sister and her family who will be arriving in Israel when I’m in Eilat. Tina and David decided that flying with a 3 year old and a 2 month old would be a bucket of laughs, but I guess you take what you can get. In any case, it saves me from having to take an actual vacation and flying to the States.

The bottom line is that Johnny’s going to be sad and probably destroy the furniture while I’m gone. But that’s life with Johnny.