adeptusrpg

It's what happens with school but it's also what happened with Laila on her visit to the grandparents this weekend. They kept her an extra day (through Monday at 10:30 a.m.), and she initially had some energy when she came home, but eventually fell asleep on the couch and later took a long nap in her room. I'm at the office today, but sashagee told me that Laila is also being cuddly and taking a nap today. We've kept her home from school both days, which I'm not happy about since she's been missing a lot of school lately, but when she has a fever of 38.3°C and snot is streaming from her nose and she just wants to sleep, we can't exactly send her to school. Hopefully she feels better tomorrow.

The rest of the weekend went much better, though. We were originally going to drive Laila out to the grandparents on Friday after work, give back their car (which we've had for a couple months now), but last week we were invited to a birthday party of one of Laila's classmates, so on Friday we lit the Shabbat candles and spent the night in:

( Picture )
...and then Saturday morning we went out in the fortunately not-raining weather to the Lincoln Park Zoo and wandered a bit until we found the birthday boy. This took some doing, because none of us--including the birthday family--knew that the zoo was having a Spooky Family Event, so there were hundreds of people around in costume, tables of zoo employees passing out candy, carnival rides, the works. We went from exhibit to exhibit, watching the lions who were out sunning themselves in the unseasonably-warm weather, the kids went into a big bouncy obstacle course, they ran all around the children's garden, and we rode the train for a bit when the party was over. Laila hung back a bit, but she wasn't the only kid who did, so I didn't feel too bad. Some of those kids definitely had a ton of energy.

We drove out to the suburbs, dropped off the car and Laila, went out to a lunch date--I got the poke, sashagee got a brie burger--got some dessert and then hopped on the train. All of that meant we got home close to 5 p.m., almost in time for the party we were going to, so I finished up my exercise while sashagee sat down for a bit, we packed up the grandma's potato soup that we were bringing, and called a Lyft to head to spacedragon's soup party!

This all started from a Discord thread that spiraled out into dozens of soup jokes and memes, and eventually spiraled out into a bunch of people wanting to eat soup. We arrived a little later after the initial soup consumption, but there was still some lentil soup (made by confuciousdragon) and vegan arroz caldo (made by become_unglu3d--the chicken version had already been eaten) as well as French bread and tomato soup bread (think zucchini bread but tomato soup based), so I took a bunch of lentil soup and bread and stood around the kitchen table chatting with people about Witch Watch and soup. Despite being full, a bunch of people came back to sample sashagee's grandma's potato soup (potatoes, milk, carrots, green onions), and we ended up staying until midnight when everyone finally ran out of energy and went home.

The next day sashagee wasn't feeling well, so other than a quick shopping trip out to the Middle Eastern Grocery Store to restock on pita and halvah and pickles we didn't do anything. And then Monday, Laila came back sick. And so we come full circle.

Alright, workday's over, time to pick up the last CSA box of the year.

I don't think I wrote about this a while back when it happened, but sashagee and I were talking about it recently. There's a song I used to sing to Laila every single night called בשם השם B'shem Hashem--here's a video from the Plague Years of our synagogue singing it--and for years sashagee had no idea what it meant, it was just me singing in Hebrew and she thought it was some kind of lullaby. So when I told her the actual words:

בשם השם אלוקי ישראל
מימיני מיכאל ומשמאלי גבריאל
ומלפני אוריאל ומאחורי רפאל
ועל ראשי שכינת אל
B'sheim Hashem elokei yisrael,
mimini Michael umismoli Gavriel,
Umilfanai Uriel umeachorai Rafael,
v'al roshi v'al roshi shechinat el
"In the name of G-d, the G-d of Israel,
On my right hand Michael, on my left hand Gabriel,
Before me Uriel, and behind me Raphael,
And over my head, the presence of G-d"

that it's basically a prayer for protection, hoping that the archangels will surround and protect Laila while she sleeps, she told me about a dream she had about a pillar of fire hovering above Laila while she was in her crib--some obviously Biblical imagery--before she knew what I was singing about, and got very excited and told me about her dream when I explained the lyrics to her.

Laila hasn't asked about this yet, but I'll make sure to mention all this when she does.