My tent or yours?

I walked into work this morning wearing the same outfit I had on at last night's bar mitzvah of a co-worker's son.

"Sharmy! (shortened Arabic slang for "slut") You didn't come home last night, eh?" they all teased me at the reception desk.

I have a work-related "event" tonight and didn't want to deal with finding another semi-fancy outfit, so I made the mistake of deciding to wear what I wore last night.

My colleagues were soothing to me later on when they offered me some Belgian chocolates.

"We didn't invite so & so to come down to take a few. Now they're none left."

"That's fine" I muttered. "And besides, those people aren't as depressed as we are. We NEED those chocolates"

"BevaDAI" ("exactly"), they concurred.

Why was I so down? I just had a friend call me up sobbing on the phone. She's miserable. I told her to call Hubby who is also miserable and who has more patience for talking on the phone than I have.

"It's not tznius (modest) to call up your husband to complain about things" she told me.

Jeez, while I understand and respect her boundaries, I can't even fucking GIVE Hubby away, can I??

I had come back from a wonderful weekend in the Jerusalem Forest where they had a Celebration of Light festival. Old hippies, young hippies, religious and secular, and a handful of Arabs for added spice were there. Eliyahu had no success in bringing in 12 West Bank Palestinians because the army decided that there will be a closure every weekend. It used to be just on Jewish holidays, but they've extended their closures. Now it will be even more difficult for us to meet.

And I forgot about the real world where there are Cavemen Hubbys, horrible children, weddings to plan, dresses to buy for these weddings, fundraising letters to finance this wedding to send out, etc. and I just ate when I was hungry, listened to amazing musicians by the bonfire on Friday night, until I couldn't keep my eyes open, was woken up by jackals howling sometime in the wee hours, did laughter yoga, danced the dance of the Hebrew letters, listened to healers, shared our food, hugged and got hugged back, prayed in a circle and everything was blissful. Until Hubby picked me up later that afternoon.

I introduced him to one of the long-bearded Orthodox Jewish men there, who was quite a character.

"Your wife and I had a great time last night. You weren't there, my wife wasn't there. We had a blast."

What a wonderful introduction this was.

"Yes, this is EXACTLY what he wants to hear!" I glared at this long-bearded Caveman. We had been grooving to the music on Friday night by the bonfire and reminiscing about the Beatles and how spiritual George Harrison was and how he was at Woodstock in 1969 because he was 19 years old and how I wasn't there because I was only 13 years old. Then we parted ways. But he made it sound more whoop-de-doo than that. Oy Vey. I tried explaining to Hubby that where my tent was situated, in between a million other tents, you can hear when someone unzips their tent to get in. You can hear someone belch. You can hear them fart. I don't think anybody was "doing it" in their tent, because you would have heard it.

Back home, my kids complained that I smelled like a campfire. I didn't care. And like a true blue hippie, I didn't shower until the next morning.....