Alhamdulillah!! Alhamdulillah! Alhamdulillah!

I have a new job. I start Monday. It's a nice change of pace, a step in a new direction, and I am really looking forward to where I will go. I'll be working within walking distance from home, during the day, and most day's I'll be off at 3:15.

I'm going to be working as an instructor in a local public school (Bea's old school actually, and what will be Ingrid's new school when she starts kindergarten next year), in their ABA program. Most of the kids I'll be working with are autistic and non-verbal. There will be 5 or more children, ages 3 to 9.

It's not the job I thought was my dream job, but it has some exciting opportunities. More training in ABA (which may lead me back to pursuing a Master's in Psychology), tiny commute, mom's hours, the joy of sleeping in my own bed 7 nights a week, and rewarding, challenging work.

I was unemployed a little more than two weeks. I haven't even received my unemployment benefit checks yet, and I see this job being a nice big fat step in the up direction.

That's a few alhamdulillahs right there.

Just as I was starting to settle into a routine of being a stay at home mom, I decided to devote some of that spare time to do volunteer stuff. I'm trying to organize a Food Not Bombs chapter in Greenfield. More to come with that.

Get your terms right!

I've had a post/essay brewing for months, and I may never actually get it finished, but I'll let you in on a little secret: I have a collection of face veils that I've worn only in the house and while LARPing. I'm all for covering my hair, but I'm not really moved to cover my face for modesty's sake, or for religious purposes. Ironically, in the essay that I can't seem to write, I wanted to talk about how my Vampire LARP character is actually moved to, but quite conflicted about face-veiling. Maybe it's a self-identity vampire thing. I digress.

Anyway, to each her own, and masha'Allah when a Muslimah chooses to wear the niqaab. Go back and read that sentence carefully, even if you don't know what "masha'Allah" means. Okay, did you get it, that word in italic? There is no compulsion in Islam. Says so in the Qu'ran, Chapter 2 (al-Baqarah), verse 256.

Did you hear that, Mr. Sarkozy, Taiban, et al. who want to decide for others what we do to express our faith?

Speaking of France, and their hijab-banning practices, if Sarkozy wants to ban the "burka", then sure, why not? It's not really an Islamic item of clothing. But if you look at the photo in the preceding link, the veiled sister is wearing a niqaab. So what the heck does Sarkozy want to ban? Methinks he means the face veil--the niqaab. Well, we have a problem then. Pixie at "I Love Hishma" just wrote a very compelling essay on said problem here. If you ban the niqaab, why not ban wearing crucifixes, bandanas, thigh high boots, long skirts, gas masks, surgical masks and scrubs in general, bathrobes, earmuffs...I apologize for taking that down a road of absurdity.

On the other hand, I, too, am left to wonder if Sarkozy intends to ban public nudity, too. I doubt it, (and I'm being mean and catty and snarky here), but I bet his wife would protest that. Some of us like to be naked in the privacy of our own homes, and reserve showing our bodies to people who really matter, and that's our choice. There's that word again. Is it a symptom of power-drunkeness that one must make decisions for others? That's a dumb question, isn't it?

A 30 year old song mystery solved (mostly)!

I was between 8 and 11 years old. My dance teacher Cindy lent me an album so I could choreograph a dance. I don't remember a single song on that album, save one. It was a group children's choir singing a haunting but joyful melody, and the children's voices sounded like little haunted but joyful mice. I didn't understand the lyrics (because come to find out today, they were in Greek). I was between 8 and 11 years old. I didn't have the foresight to write down the name of my favorite song, and the Internet didn't yet exist, and hence there was no need to search millions of resources with a few keystrokes, so really, why bother?

I've kicked myself for nearly 30 years because I had no way to find the album or the song, and I loved that song. The melody waxed and waned in my head for that whole time.

Today, I ate a croissant and drank Earl Grey in Mocha Maya's cafe in Shelburne Falls, occasionally paying attention to the interesting mix of songs playing. The out of the blue, that song, that melody of 30 years ago piped in on a piano's keys! At first I thought it was melodic coincidence, the melody is very traditional and has inspired many songs throughout the ages. So at first I thought it was just a fluke, kind of like how you can sing the words to any Emily Dickinson song to "The Yellow Rose of Texas". (Try this one, it's terribly fun and funny.)

It was the song!! The long lost song. I ran up to the woman at the counter and asked, "what was that song?" She led me to the computer. She had no idea. It was a random Pandora selection, but the information was still on the screen, and she wrote it down for me: "George Winston, Night Part Three: Minstrels."

I looked it up on my iPod Touch and found the liner notes to the album. "Night Part Three" was an adaptation of "St. Basil's Hymn", aka "The Kalanta of the New Year". I've since found several versions, none of which are the original mouse child chorus I heard all those years ago, and I have the chords, so I can pluck away at it on my autoharp.

So I guess the Internet just proved its worth.

[expletive], [expletive], [expletive]!!!!!

I'm one of the glorious casualties of the "downturn of the economy". Apparently people are not having elective medical tests done, and are just sucking up their sleep disorders and not getting sleep studies. So I've been laid off.

There's more to the story, because people love to tell their "How I got laid off" stories, and few companies do it "right" or "well", but right now, since I'm on a job search, I'll have to save it for later.

I did, however, have an inkling my job was on the line soon enough to apply to a few jobs before I got sacked. I'm looking forward to what's in store. Mostly.