Fessin’ Up

OK, I have a confession to make.

A couple of weeks ago when I put treppenwitz into reruns (ostensibly because I was on vacation)… I wasn’t really on vacation. I was writing as usual, and tossing the results into 'the vault'.

However, I was on vacation over the past two weeks… and really had every intention of posting fairly regularly during that time from my supply of unpublished stuff that was squirreled away in ‘the vault’.

This little deception begs two questions:

1. Why the deception?
2. If I had stuff squirreled away… why haven’t I published for almost a week?

Good questions both!

First, I intentionally lied for the simple reason that I have no idea who the majority of my readers are. Unlike bloggers/journalers who write anonymously, I have made little attempt at anonymity. Therefore, I didn’t want to broadcast to the entire civilized world that we were leaving our house unattended for two weeks. After the break-in we had a few months ago, I wasn’t taking any chances.

The second question has a couple of unrelated answers.

The easiest answer to question '2' is that several otherwise wonderful entries died on the vine. By this I mean that by the time they would have been published… world or personal events occurred which made the original subject matter irrelevant. Any columnist who writes for publication days, or even weeks, in advance can sympathize with this phenomenon. It sucks, but if you aren’t always publishing freshly baked stuff, you risk having to toss out the occasional batch of perfectly good words.

The more involved answer to question '2' stems from the fact that I was distracted for a little while by the odd coincidence of my elderly father and my infant son occupying beds (well my son was technically in a crib) 30 feet apart from one another in the same emergency room… both with freakishly high fevers. The outcome on both counts was just fine… but I’ll admit to being a little scared as I ran some late night laps around the ER of a Cape Cod Hospital. For several days afterwards, I stayed away from the computer and spent a lot of time fussing over these two important people in my life.

More on this little drama in one of my next entries.

Anyway, we are back in Israel and settling (as always, a very poor choice of words) into familiar routines.

The kids are getting ready to start school in the morning, Zahava is creating lesson plans for the graphic design class she is teaching this year, and I’m… back at work.