All Shul'd Out

Still pretty tired. I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night as Mr. King of the Castle (aka our cat)

woke me up this morning like a fuzzy alarm clock right at 0800hrs looking for breakfast. I'm not sure what time I fell asleep. It must have been after 0200hrs? My sleep isn't great, even with the Imovane. It basically keeps me down but I still need ear plugs as I've become a very light sleeper and if the room isn't dark enough, I will require a sleep shade. How glamourous, I know. And no, I don't have satin pyjamas to go with. But once I'm up, I'm up. I may buy an hour or so with my Clobazam, a weak benzo used as a seizure adjunct but because my dose is so low, it doesn't really do much in the way of having any sort of sedating effect.

Anyway, at least I don't have to go anywhere today! The last couple of days were just mad!

So yes, as the topic states, I had my first two, yes, two trips to shul (aka synagogue) on Friday night and Saturday morning respectively. My partner wanted me to go to her family one on Friday night so that my first experience would be a good one. A couple of reasons for this--that I soon found out.

First, her shul was nicer than the one we went to on Saturday morning (haha.) Second, the Friday night services were a lot shorter than the Saturday morning services. Oh my. A lot. We were there for almost three hours. Even my partner was wanting to die. Okay, maybe that's a little extreme but you get the picture. I'm speaking purely euphemistically here and no one really wanted their life to end--just the service.

And it wasn't for the celebration of Hanukkah that we were going. It's not really considered a High Holiday so I was told that the shul wasn't really busy (on Friday night anyway--the Saturday one, we didn't know much about as my partner had never been to that shul.) No, we went as a member of my partner's family was being honoured for their 50th wedding anniversary with something called an "Alia." It means "to rise up" and essentially your are called to read from the Torah. And there was a lunch afterwards.

It was simultaneously interesting and boring. I mean, the majority of it was in Hebrew so I couldn't follow or understand anything. There were books with English translation but the first part of the service was all singing and if you read my prior post, you will know that I don't sing in any religious service, English or not! There was a portion of Torah lesson in English but it was really long on Saturday. Wow. Granted, it's not my first service in another language. I went to a friend's father's funeral who is Coptic Orthodox. That was in Arabic and quite intriguing--in an odd sort of way.

Anyway, it's over now. I probably won't be going back to shul for a while haha.

But the best part is, I scored a couple of kipa's! These are also known as skullcaps, yarmulke's. We had joked with my partner's mother that I had wanted one after participating in so many holidays already (my partner doesn't even wear one, neither does her mother!)...I just like them--I'm silly. Well, in shul's everywhere, they always have "freebies" or "loaners." So if you don't have one, you just take one from this sort of communal box.

Well, after her mother finding out I wanted one, she was even going to go to the expense of having one made with my name embroidered in Hebrew--I mean, the whole nine yards. Yes, we think the woman really does want me to convert. I suppose it could be worse as she couldn't like me at all? Anyway, that plan fell through so now was my chance! (Aside: Ironically I used to have some that I stole from a hospital shul during my first hospitalization but the tales from that are definitely for another day!)

The ones at the first shul were just your "basic black" and simple--nothing special but on the Saturday, after the excruciatingly long service, I found another one, wool in the Sephardic style. They're bigger and sort of "boxier." They look like this:





So, maybe it was kind of bad to take it but hey, after sitting there for that long, I figured I earned it! Not to mention, since I'm half Pakistani, it actually kind of suits me better *grin* Not that my partner's Mom knows anything about that, or my psych/neuro profile...no, we're breaking her in gently. It was bad enough for her to learn that her daughter was actually gay...

Okay, time to put away some groceries and "stuff"...guess I won't be a complete "lady of leisure" today haha.