Frum N' Flipping

We are bumping along in the airport shuttle bus, my hand luggage clutched on my knee.  “I’m so glad we are flying EL AL” I say happily. “The way to the states was such a nightmare with Iberia” (who knew it takes 30 hours to fly from Tel Aviv to Madrid?) TCO just nods. Men are like that. “Next time we are flying ELAL both ways. I can’t handle a connecting flight again. Besides, their service is so much better.” Famous last words. If life was a movie, dramatic music would have been playing in the background at this point                                _________ “Flying has really changed” I say to TCO, pulling out a folded pieced of paper from my purse. “Remember when you had to go to the travel agent and he’d give you a little plastic pouch with tickets that were blue ink booklets?” Little did I know that I would soon be longing for those days. Oh, sweet 90s. _________ We h...

My friend is getting married next week. She's the last of the "chevra" to cross over to the dark side. It's her shower.We are sitting around a table piled high with wrapped up pots and pans and peelers. "I want you all to give me advice now", she says ."One tip for a good marriage from each of you" I suppose being the last to marry has its advantages. Not only do we know to give her already toiveled dishes, but apparantly we also can share advice. Well they can. I'm still a rookie. One by one they mention giving to your husband and caring about him and encouraging him and all those other good traits "It's important to still leave time for yourself" I say when it's my turn "Just because you enjoy being together doesn't mean you won't sometimes need your own space, your own time for the things you like to do" The others look at me like they pity TCO, like I'm a selfish wife. I blush. Who knows, ...

I found this post in my Ipod. It was written "735 days ago". That's back when I was single, skeptical of ever finding the right guy through a Shidduch date, and meeting quite a few of my online readers. You read my blog. You like it, that's why you carry on reading it. You want to meet me. You have this picture of me in your head. You expect me to be vibrant and energetic. You expect me to be bubbly and charismatic. You expect me to be  like my writing.  I'm not. I'm quiet,  I speak softly. Often I don't speak at all, because I'm still thinking. You either expect me to be rebellious and critical of society (based on some of my posts), or you think I'm flipped out, like my name( which was chosen by mistake, but that's another story). I'm neither. I'm just another frum girl. The type you wouldn't look at twice if you passed in the street. I do have some  criticism of society, but so do most people, they just don't bother...

Will this last forever? I'm estatic, elated. I straighten my shaitel, half skip, half run.  I'm on the way home to my husband. I'm married, really married! And I have the most wonderful husband in the whole wide world. Life feels like a dream. It's too good to be true. When did this happen, when did everything change, drastically and amazingly?  I'm scared I'll wake up. Newlywed bliss; an enchanted fairytale that the two of you are living in. Everything’s wonderful, everything’s perfect. You're married!  I wondered how it would end, when the happiness would dissipate. Sheer amazingness couldn't last, they told me. "How are you?" My long married friends asked "I'm so happy!" I said "Yeah, newlyweds…" "Don't you feel the same?"  I asked them I didn't understand. Why should the happiness end, if you're supposed to be loving each other more and more, not less and less. ...

I’m free. I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to listen to anyone, I don’t have to care what anyone thinks of me. (Except for TCO, but then we agree on most things, so that works.) I savor it. My short period of freedom. I’m not in school, ducking into a store when I see a teacher or a classmate in the distance, anyone who will report my long jeans skirt, strictly forbidden by my Israeli Bais Yaacov. I’m not in Seminary, I can’t get kicked out for speaking a boy. (Not that I ever did.) Best of all – I’m not in Shidduchim.  I can go to a wedding with no makeup, I can be unfriendly to annoying yentas, I can even make shocking and controversial statements comparing the Shidduch scene to an auction. We live in a mixed, non Charedi, neighborhood.  I could do cartwheels in the street and nobody would care. I wear a baggy old skirt and glasses to the supermarket. I never go to anywhere just to “meet people”.  When I try to decide if my outfit is tznius, I on...