Not Exactly Writer's Block

I haven't written in quite a while. It isn't that there's nothing to say, and it isn't quite writer's block either.

Recent events in my life include:
A trip to the emergency room which almost ended up with me being admitted for monitoring because I have hypertension and the doctors are worried about pre-eclampsia. I am monitoring blood pressure and protein at home. It's still fairly low risk, so that's ok.

I'm on bedrest for something called SPD, which is related to an over-production of elastin. Basically, the bedrest is to limit how much pain I'm in rather than to save the baby or something useful like that. Limiting pain is good. There's enough of it already.

Kinneret can say baba (byebye, and she waves), hello (when she picks up a phone), ball (when playing with a ball), mo (for more).
She touches her nose when asked where her nose is, and she touches her head when I sing "yadayim lemala, al harosh" (hands up, on your head).
She claps for "if you're happy and you know it"
She spins around when she likes music. She enjoys playing her xylophone, drawing on a magnadoodle thing, and keeping her toothbrush in her mouth for hours.
She knows how to climb into her stroller by herself, and sometimes will do so if we tell her we're going out. She climbed in by herself the other day when my nephew went to pick her up from her daycare.

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I was thinking about writing various posts about stuff going on at Orthonomics. It makes me mad to see people who have loads of kids that they can't support and then complain that people from the community aren't supporting them. If our financial situation doesn't improve, I can't imagine us having another baby after this one.

There was also a thread in the comments there where I suggested that a solution to the extremely high school tuition in the US might be to make aliya...

>>>Dave said...

Leaving financial issues out, I think the case can be made that widespread Aliyah is not in the interest of the Jewish people.

Historically speaking, what has preserved Jews as a people has been a widespread diaspora, so that when oppression arose in one area, there were still safe Jewis communities.

Had there not been a widespread Jewish Diaspora in the late Republic and early Empire, I doubt that Judaism would have survived the Bar Kochva rebellion.<<<

I've been biting my tongue to resist getting up on my soapbox to tell people that only through widespread aliya can we prevent the scary stuff that's in the works... A Shas spokesman told the press that of course Tzipi Livni won't be selling the country to the charedim. She's already selling it to the Arabs. (This in response to Livni saying she won't sell the country to the charedim.) It sounds like Jerusalem is already on the chopping block. Scary stuff.

At least Sir Peres isn't rushing to evacuate the West Bank.

I also tried to stay out of the whole US election debacle. I'm now just praying to be wrong about my predictions for Obama's America. Unfortunately, a few years ago, I prayed to be wrong about the Gaza expulsion. The situation in Ashkelon is precisely what I feared would happen. (Hat Tip: Joe Settler) It doesn't look like life in Sderot is improving much either.

Anyway, all of these little bits and pieces could be posts, I suppose, but I'm afraid that the beginning would be boring, the Kinneret stuff would be standard (and boring) parental bragging, and really, no one wants me to get up on a soapbox about the rest of it. So that's why I haven't been posting.