My posting remains lackluster, and in an effort to inspire myself, I have broken down and decided to find, of all things A THEME (gasp). In taking the advice of, well, everyone ever, I’ll continue to write what I know (also because my attempts at writing anything else turn out rather dreadfully).

My theme is generally “getting by in america”. This morning I was listening to Barbara Kingsolver on The Ethics of Eating. I have been a fan of Kingsolver’s since I read The Bean Trees in middle school, and one of her essays “Lily’s Chickens” has inspired me in many of the ways I have chosen to live my life over the past few years. The interview I was listening to elaborated on the essay; Kingsolver recently wrote a book about the year she spent with her family living primarily off of food they grew and harvested themselves.

I long for a life in which I can sustain myself and remain a member of a small and closely knit community. My dreams are simple, a house, a family, and some land on which I can grow my own food. Why does my dream feel so desperately unattainable? Well, for starters, I live in a country where a significant amount of the population will inexplicably (to me) vote for a man who believes that people who make less than $5 million a year are middle class.

I make a little less than twice the minimum wage, and I have no children. I live in a city with overwhelming poverty, and yet some of the highest rental rates in the country.

So this is my new blog. Maybe someone out there is interested in the challenges of getting by in America (the success of Nickel and Dimed indicates that someone must find the topic compelling), while remaining thoughtful, and without becoming whiney. Perhaps some people out there can relate, and hopefully some people out there have tips.

It’s dreary out today. After cleaning throughout the weekend basically the entire house, and my bedroom, look pretty good. My desk though… it seems like no matter how often I clean my desk it is dirty and cluttered again within hours. I wish I could stop getting junk mail. Actually… there is a way to do it, through a website. Somehow that just seems too labor intensive at the moment.

I’ve been looking at pictures of babies on the internet, which is really not such an awesome idea. They are cute and adorable and they make me want to have a home and a family all my own. All of which seems far too far away at this point.

Still… my favorite photographers are married or engaged, my favorite bloggers are married with families, my favorite webcomic author just got engaged. I am allowed to lurk through these people’s lives through their blogs and flickr streams, and I can’t help but wish that I had something interesting to show or say as well.

Things that are giving me small panics at the moment:
-Applying for grad school for fall 08 (perhaps if I write about it in this most public forum I will actually do it)
-Studying for the GRE
-my $.50 raise

Things that make me happy:
-Dan and I are approaching 8 months
-My new house
-Dodger sleeping curled up next to me most nights over the last two weeks

DSC_0030.JPG, originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I had a really strange dream last night, and it has been haunting me all day. It creeps in on the outskirts of my conscious thought as soon as I get really involved in my work. That weird dream deja vu, knowing that it was just a dream, but remembering it the way I remember something that happened when I was very young.

Sleeping has been weird for me lately. Monday morning I woke up at 3 am convinced I had done some sort of debilitating injury to my right arm in my sleep. And I’ve been having a lot of weird dreams.

If I were still in Denver I could go talk to one of the counselors and she would say “Oh, the house in your dream represents transition” or another would say “how did you feel when you woke up? However you felt, think about what’s making you feel that way in your waking life and that’s what your dream was about”.

In the meantime I think I’m gonna try to stay awake and get my work done.

DSC_0054.JPG, originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

At the end of July I posted about a friend of my brother’s who was seriously injured while participating in a cross country bicycle trip to benefit Habitat for Humanity.

Dan was involved with a cello group, Low Strung, and I downloaded their music from itunes just after the accident, listened to it obsessively for about a week and was then distracted by something else, as it tends to go.

Low Strung’s cover of “Fix You” just came on my ipod during a round of well “chosen” shuffles, prompting me to look once more at Dan’s father’s blog. Reading his account of their recent days has brought tears to my eyes.

I can’t imagine what it must be like for a parent to be in such a situation. One moment you have an energetic, thoughtful, talented, smart young adult, someone to whom you’ve devoted your mind, body, soul and life. And the next moment you’re just hoping that the body which was once small enough to fit inside of yours will keep on doing what it has done so effortlessly for 21 years.

It is frightening beyond belief.

I have been teaching Hebrew to fifth graders as a part time job since September, and one of the core parts of what they need to learn is the Jewish prayers. We have spent a lot of time talking about the prayers, about why they pray, why it is important to pray, and the ways they express their thanks are different from how the prayers they are learning.

I have heard a lot of
“I’m thankful for my family”
“I’m thankful for my parents”
“I’m thankful for my education”

In this moment, I am thankful for my body, my mind, for the people who I love and for the people who love me. I am thankful for the simple ability to be aware of all of these things, and I am thankful for the ability to feel this confusion, this sorrow, and this hope. I am grateful for the universe and the god that has created a sequence of events which have lead to my ability to experience all of these things.