I'm thankful for...

First I want to continue the previous gender role commentary-- something I was talking about with my dad and other, very skeptical family members. How can you expect the software to not be sexist when the hardware naturally is. Women alone can give birth, can breastfeed. God created people with natural differences... and these differences lead people to assume certain roles. When a baby cries it is not crying for daddy, its crying for milk, mommy's milk. So it makes some kind of sense that women would naturally make themselves available to care for the children. Meanwhile, men naturally build more muscle than women, which would make them naturally geared toward leaving the home for the harsh wide world and hunt the buffalo for dinner or whatever. Now we've evolved as a society from that, maybe even made changes to the software that allows the women to leave the home and do the modern equivalent of hunting the buffalo (hehe, both grocery shopping and making the money) and can even do weird things like paternity leave, but maybe there is nothing wrong with recognizing that people are, by their genetic makeup, going to fall into certain gender roles because certain things are more naturally built in. I don't presume to say that my life goes against nature, or that stay at home dads are flawed. But I do mean to say that maybe judaism isn't that off. Especially since these things are not required, they are simply recognized. Would it be better if judaism expected the women who raise 9 children to show up at temple for shacharit... expecting them to leave the kids home sleeping and forget breakfast and cleaning and nursing just to better serve god? No, because the home is the future, those 9 kids are the future, and a religion should at the very least not prey on its own ability to continue. And at the same time if you do show up you won't be turned away, you can participate more than is required and you can make your husband cook dinner. Gender roles... Theyre more like guidelines then actual rules hehe.

Aanyways, what else is up? Went home for thanksgiving. Saw the family and Rami. Had a great family Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings. But the real excitement is the weekend. My parents left for Orlando around 4 on friday, after we saw the new James Bond movie. And I must say I do enjoy the addition of an airplane chase and strafing to the usual menu of car chase and gunfire. Then Rami and I went to Shabbat dinner with his family, then we drove up to orlando. Along the way we stopped at the light show in Quietwaters park, and I got a really yummy steak and shake milkshake and *GASP* we ate in the car! Then the next morning we deep fried a couple turkey breasts for lunch while tailgating. Then the game.... we lost, miserably. But Rami got a super fancy press pass and so he got to shoot the game from the sidelines-- and he got 2 pictures of it published in the paper monday. And another pic from the game in today's Central Florida Future.

Then this week we started our discipline specific training, and we had our first test yesterday, followed by a whole lecture on what to look for when OJTing next time, which we will do in a couple weeks, after the new year though.
And tonight I called a little girls night.... 3 girls from work and one of the guy's wife came over. I asked everyone to bring a food or drink but people made more than one as did I. We had margaritas and wine and all kinds of snacks and sat around talking. Then the husband of the one girl and 2 guys from work that he was out with were bored so they came over, probably to eat our food which was totally fine cuz we had sooo much leftover. So it was quite fun. I was mostly cleaned up, have one pan left to wash when i cut my finger open on the blender blade and it was bleeding alot so I had to bandaid it and call it a night. Now I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend and getting some much needed sleep. Going home, with the early morning kitchen noise and wild tailgate parties doesn't really make it easy to get sleep. Especially when the weekend starts with a 4:30 wakeup call for an early OJT shift.

And since its midnight here, I think im gonna turn in.

Oh but what am I thankful for? God, and religion, and a chance to figure out my faith. Family, and friends, and a wonderful boyfriend. And for my awesome job and great coworkers Things are looking up. And its only 9 days til Rami comes to visit for a WHOLE week. And 11 days til New Hampshire. And 25 days til New Years. And hopefully less than a year til I'm certified!