Else what's a heaven for?

The bar mitzvah was much better than expected. For starters, it only took 40 mins to get there from my parents' house, not the 1.5 hours my father predicted. It was really weird going to a bar mitzvah for a kid I barely knew existed: his parents got married shortly before my bat mitzvah, so it's of course impossible that they now have a 13yo kid. They had it in the backyard of the local Chabad house, which was a poor choice bc: a) it was humid and muddy, which meant that all the ladies' shoes kept slipping inexorably into the mud (even I wore stilettos, *le sigh*) and b) during the meal, all the food kinda slid towards the people on the downside of the hill. The bar mitzvah is part of the freaky side of the family: they all seem to wear too much black (sez the goth chick) and too much eyeshadow and all sort of look a little... funny. I'm kinda glad I was germy and couldn't kiss any of them.

The big family drama, though, was that not only is my favorite cousin getting married, but my siblings and I were not invited (even though my parents were) and his sister is getting married six months later. (The latter explains about half the former.) Aiyee! Why did everyone decide to get married this year??

Another weird thing about this get together: I don't understand how you can get your panties in a twist over keeping faux-kosher - but then skip out on the service to go talk 100 ft away to cousins you haven't seen in two years. Sna? I felt so sorry for the Chabad rabbi having to pray over that ruckus. Speaking of kashrut, the food was remarkable: it was all very kosher and very traditional and there was too much of it and all of it was a little off. The poached salmon tasted kinda like gefilte fish, the gefilte fish was kinda sweet, my cousin tells me the reason the chopped liver tasted wrong was that it was beef & chicken. The noodle kugel was awfully good though.

I've decided three year olds are the most adorable creatures on the planet. One of my cousins had her 3yo twins there. When I went to the bathroom, the rabbi's 3yo was there and was clearly having some trouble communicating that she wished to go potty but needed some assistance. Since there was no one else around to flutter at, I had to be useful. It was very weird: I can handle diapers, but potty help is something I've never done before.

And bc my life is just that weird, I'm going to take my corset and tails off to the medicine cabinet to look for cough suppressant. Toodles!