The Week in Preview

Is October almost halfway over already? Sometimes time crawls by on its hands and knees like a dehydrated person seeking rehydration pills from a crabby pharmacist in a horrid chain pharmacy. Other times, it passes me by like all those assholes who refuse to stop their cars at red lights.

Sorry, I got carried away for a moment there. The point is that October is almost over and that means that this upcoming weekend is my brother-in-law's wedding. In terms of how that affects the hilarious stories that I strive to write for CUSS, I am happy to announce that the whole mispucha (the entire gang, i.e. - my whole family) will be trekking out east for the celebration. Yes, everyone - Mom, Dad, Bubbe, Granny, Sister, and Sister's Husband. (And of course cousin Rebecca will be there too, although she only has to take the train down from her school in Westchester County.) There is no doubt in my mind that stories will be generated. I'll build the anticipation by pointing out that Bubbe has been looking forward to meeting my 13 lb. pet rabbit Tycho for five years, and that she used to raise and cook rabbits when she was a girl in the Old Country.

This week I also hope to complete my second draft of my book, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track. (I finished the first draft last Wednesday and wound up my pen-and-paper revisions on Friday.) I'm fairly happy with what I've got. The goal is to write something that is fun, amusing, and informatively inspiring, and I think I did a good job with that. Things need to be prettied up, though, before I have to turn it into the publisher on Nov. 1, which will be here before I know it.

To prove how quickly time flies, on Monday morning I'll be going to the grand opening ribbon cutting of an affordable housing development with a child care center. It seems like just yesterday that I had a job in which I provided a small grant for the child care portion, then stood with my friend Maria in a treeless empty lot on a 110 degree day while politicians spent 10 minutes each talking about how their speeches will be short because it is so hot out during the groundbreaking ceremony. Things have changed so quickly. It's amazing.