First day of Chanukah! Umm, no I'm not Jewish. I'm not even religiously inclined anymore. But for some odd reason I'm still Jewishly oriented despite the preponderence of gentile blood in my veins. I've considered conversion, even recently. But then I had to sit down and ponder exactly what the point would be. I mean, we're talking about an ancient, 4,000 year old religion based on a patriarchal god and the people who wrote down what they thought he told them. I don't even particularly believe in god any longer, at least not in the conventional sense of a god with a personality who's interested in humans. So why the heady attraction to Judaism? Danged if I know, but there is something about it that feels like coming home, it *feels* familiar. Isn't that irrational? At any rate, I celebrate Chanukah, menorah and all.

Tangents: I figured out a way (at last!) to deal with my long hair without shaving my head. Long hair is nice. It's sexy. Men like it. I like it...sometimes... It can be fun to play with and braid and swish around and pin up...at times. Mostly it's such a pain I spend inordinate amounts of time trying to restrain these strands that keep sweeping down into my field of vision, getting in my way, and generally feeling uncontrollable and messy. The notion of hacking it all off and spiking what was left became more attractive by the day- my 11 month old offspring delights in waking me up by tearing handfuls of it out of my scalp, and clutching fistfuls of it throughout the day. But- today I discovered a solution. Twist it all up inside a hat or cap. Easy. No hairpins scratching my scalp. No ponytails loosening up and having to be redone over and over and over. No hair straggling into my eyes. Just a nice, neat little hat. Yes. This is sublime. Perhaps Amish women with their little black bonnets are onto something after all.