I will never make a cross-stitch.

For most of my life if I had guessed which was more likely: talking to a rabbit or talking to a rabbi, I probably would have guessed rabbit. 

Rabbits can’t even talk, I know this because in first grade we did a craft project where we made a puppet of our favorite animal and a sign with the sound they made, and my teacher said I couldn’t make a rabbit because they don’t make sound. 

“Rabbits don’t talk.” she said. 

“But they can scream.” I said. They can, they scream when threatened with death.

Hana Akiyama made this

First grade was a while ago and I’ve still never talked to a rabbit but a few weeks ago I was talking to a rabbi.

Rabbis love talking about life. The rabbi said life, is like a cross-stitch. On our side it may look messy, and we may not understand why things are the way they are. But the reason is that there is another side of the cross-stitch we can’t see, and on that side everything has a purpose and creates a beautiful picture.

I wasn’t that interested in the metaphor. Mostly because, to be honest, crafting metaphors have never done much for me. I appreciate a good hill metaphor any day, and I’m even pretty into laundry metaphors and airport security metaphors, but anything that compares my life to hot glue, sequins, beading, or needlework, just doesn’t really resonate. So I forgot about it completely until last week, when I was at the police department.

Chloe Giordano crafted this

At the beginning of summer I dropped my wallet somewhere in the forest, and considered it more gone than anything else I have ever lost. I lose socks and notebooks just like everyone else but this wallet was gone forever. To put it in crafting terms it was like… a very small piece of felt dropped in a shag rug? I really don’t love crafting metaphors. The wallet was gone. That’s the best way I can explain it.

So I replaced all of it and none of it was even that annoying. I got to learn more about how my bank works and got to visit the DMV, and got to talk with the woman who works at the DMV who told me that someone had broken in that morning and turned the thermostat to 85 degrees and turned all the faucets on. She wasn’t sure who did it. I had a few theories but she didn't think any of them were likely.

I told people that story for weeks, and if I hadn’t lost my wallet I never would have heard it. 

Then, months later, after I’d forgotten about the lost wallet and the new license and the DMV and the DMV sauna, I got a letter that the Portland Police Department had my wallet and I could come to a creepy warehouse and get it.

I didn’t think I would care too much about having my wallet back, since I’d essentially cloned it. But reaching through a weird metal security drawer and holding my wallet again changed everything. 

And suddenly I was incredibly into crafting metaphors, that cross-stitch one especially. Because this wallet had disappeared into thin air, and then months later, popped up in a different place good as new - there was even a $5 bill, a free drink coupon, and two forever stamps still in it. And there was only one explanation for it all:

I am living on the right side of the cross-stitch.

And now I can’t wait to talk to that rabbi because I know we will talk about life again, and cross-stitching will come up, and I can say I know exactly what you mean. I have tasted the other side of the cross-stitch and it tastes like a free drink from Sisters Coffee Shop, that the manager gave me because I was polite to other patrons, and I put that card in my wallet, which I dropped in the forest, and picked up in an evidence holding facility two months later. 

Life is one of my favorite things in the world and if life is what rabbis like talking about than I am into it. 

I would talk with a rabbit about it too if the opportunity presented itself.

Mazel Tov, whatever that means

The thing about Hebrew is everyone says it’s so easy because it’s completely phonetic.

There aren’t weird things in Hebrew like there are in English where tough and though don't rhyme, and you can read a red book but last week you read a book about reeds. English is a mess obviously but everyone’s like, oh, Hebrew’s so easy.

So you memorize all these little geometric swooshes and the sounds they make and there aren’t too many of them and then congratulations - you’ve just turned a lot of geometric swooshes into a foreign language because you still have no idea what these sounds mean. The fact that Hebrew is phonetic makes it as easy to read as a Icelandic electrician’s manual. Sure, I can sound it out fine but this Icelandic waffle maker is still broken.

I know Icelandic pancakes are a thing but I don't know about waffles. Bubble waffles are a thing in China, have you seen them?

Anyway, if you give me enough time I can read the words הָעוֹלָם and חטיף out loud but one means snack and one means universe and I don’t know which is which. My favorite Israeli snack in the universe is Bamba and it’s also the only Israeli snack I’ve ever had.

A lot of Hebrew, besides the word Bamba and the phrase “Mazel tov” just sounds like very friendly coughing to me, and I don’t know how to say “Help I’m coughing” but if you wrote it I would be able to sound it out, because it’s phonetic, it’s so easy to sound out.

Here's this blog post Google-Translated into Hebrew, good luck.

הדבר על עברית הוא שכולם אומר שזה כל כך קל, כי זה פונטית לחלוטין.

אין דברים מוזרים בעברית כמו שיש באנגלית שבו קשה ואף מבוטאות שונים לחלוטין, ואתה יכול לקרוא ספר אדום, אבל בשבוע שעבר שאתה קורא ספר על קנים. אנגלית היא בלגן ברור אבל כולם כמו, אה, של עברית כל כך קל.

אז לך לשנן את כל הקשקושים קטנים האלה ואת הצלילים שהם עושים ושאין יותר מדי מהם ואז מזל טוב, אתה פשוט הפך הרבה קשקושים לשפה זרה, כי עדיין אין לך מושג מה הקולות האלה אומר. העובדה שעברית היא הפונטי עושה את זה כקל לקריאה כמו במדריך של חשמלאי איסלנדי.

אני יכול לקרוא את המילים x ו-X בקול רם, אבל אחד אמצעי חטיף ואחד אומר שקרבה ואני לא יודע מי הוא מי. החטיף הישראלי האהוב עליי הוא במבה וזה גם החטיף הישראלי היחיד שאי פעם היה לי.

הרבה עברית, מלבד המילה במבה ואת הביטוי "מזל טוב" פשוט נשמע כמו שיעול נחמד אליי, ואני לא יודע איך להגיד "עזרה אני משתעל" אבל אם אתה כתב את זה אני יוכל נשמע את זה, כי זה הפונטי, זה כל כך קל נשמע בחוץ.

It looks like I'm feeding bamba to giraffes but it's just a giraffe חטיף.

My right ear is worth two hundred dollars

I started taking an All About Judaism class and last week was on mysticism.

Usually I like the class a lot, and I take a lot of notes. But in mysticism none of the words were spellable, all I wrote down was “shebeeti” and “sheriti” and now I’m not even sure if those are two different words or two attempts at spelling the same word. The class was still useful though, because to be honest before the class I thought I wasn’t into mysticism, and after just two hours, I KNEW I wasn’t into mysticism. 

We spent the last part meditating. She explained that the most common side effect of meditation is weight gain because your bones become dense with love. Then before we had a chance to ask questions about that, she told us to close our eyes, and to imagine God’s name on our bodies. It’s not the first tattoo I’d choose, but it’s way easier to spell than shebeeti so I was game.

Sometimes, lately, to be honest, I feel bad about my body. I guess it’s just proof I’m a girl, but lately to be more positive and more masculine I’ve been trying to think of things I do like about it and the complete list includes my eyebrows, my thumbs especially my left thumb, all ten of my fingernails, a birthmark on my right arm that looks like a division symbol ÷, and my left ear. That’s plenty of skin space for a name. I closed my eyes.

“We’re writing God’s name with honey,” she announced. “It’s a pile of honey, it’s landing on your head and dripping into your scalp.”

Obviously this was horrible news.

“The honey is back behind your eyes. It’s the most gold honey in the world. Now imagine it filling your lungs. Slowly. It’s viscous, this honey. So incredibly viscous and it’s filling all of your lungs.”

The woman sitting behind me started choking.

I learned about the word viscous in seventh grade, at an after-hours science lecture. My middle school would invite scientists in various fields to come talk in the cafeteria once a month, and if you went and listened and took notes you got extra credit. I never missed one. Not because I loved science but because science is one of those subjects that can suddenly take a turn at any moment. Everything’s going fine, you’re learning about ecosystems and cells and gravity and then HEY! here are mols, velocity, centripetal force, and you’re going to need all the extra credit you can get.

For the last ten years I’ve used the word viscous to try and make myself sound smarter but I knew that now it was just going to remind me of this woman choking and the feeling of my hair being incredibly sticky.

Now the honey was moving in between the muscles in our calves. The woman behind me continued to cough up negative energy into the air, which at this point was probably thick with flies.

When our socks were completely saturated we got to open our eyes and see who was still awake, and write down anything we wanted. We didn’t get to weigh ourselves before and after to see how much love we gained but I'm sure it was substantial.

Thinking about honey isn’t really my jam. Instead I like to imagine I’m in a plane, in the window seat, and we're taking off from LAX. It’s just huge in every direction, ocean and city and mountains and sky and I imagine that whatever is stressing me out is the size of a contact lens. Or a sequin, or an earring back. That makes the bad thing seems unbelievably small, so small I can’t even see it and I get distracted and start looking for shadows of whales in the ocean.

It works great when I’m stressed about a woman chocking to death in my All About Judaism class, or when I’m stressed about how mols work, or how shy I am, or how unfortunate-looking my ankles are, but it doesn’t work as well when there's a spider in my shower or I need to pay my utility bill.

Portland General Electric doesn’t accept a human body full of honey as payment, even though by my calculations a bodyful of honey is probably worth about $105. That’s if you just replaced your blood with honey, not the rest of you. Organic honey, not raw, adult male body, before meditation. Ask in the comments if you have any more questions about how I got this number.

Here is today can also make you feel better, if it's easy to make you feel better.

I also found the word "maymonetize" in my notebook, which I think is my spelling of Maimonides.

here are the facts

You asked so here it is: the all-inclusive list of everything I know about kosher dietary rules, and even a few things I don't know.

Anything from a pig is bad news.

Don't eat soup with bugs in it, but you can take the bugs out and then eat it if you want. Same goes for spiders. No rattlesnakes. Fish are fine. Fish with weird skeletons or armor are not fine. Tarantulas are a no-go.

Cheese has cow stomachs in it and marshmallows have horse feet in them and lots of other foods have strange parts of animals in them you didn't know about.

You can't boil a lamb in his mother's blood or milk or something I always thought was literal but it's not, it's a way of saying not to eat meat and dairy at the same time, which sounds gross at first but people do it all the time when they're eating cheeseburgers or cheese chicken or turkey ice cream or turkey yogurt. You can eat salmon yogurt because salmon isn't a meat. You can eat eggs at the same time as meat as long as it isn't pig meat and you don't cook the eggs in butter. You can eat a lemon ice for dessert after eating some non-pig non-bug meat because lemon ice doesn't have dairy, unless you like eating lemon ice with melted butter on it, like people do with popcorn. You could put an egg on top if you didn't have taste buds or shame. Eggs are not a meat or a dairy, they don't fall into the blood and milk description in any way. If you're not hungry for eggs right now you're crazy.

If you have two heads you can possibly eat dairy in one mouth and meat in one mouth, depending on where you are conjoined.

You can eat meat while wearing ice-cream flavored chapstick, but you can't eat actual ice cream for three hours after, or a certain number of hours that depends on what country you live in and whether you're lactose intolerant. I wouldn't recommend eating the actual chapstick, I don't know if it has anything to do with kashrut but it might just make you sick.

Don't eat owls. End of list.