anticlimactic

[gilana]

So thanks to all the encouraging comments on my synagogue experience, I went back this Friday armed with tissues and prepared to try to get through the extreme emotionalism and try to read what I could without getting too upset.

We got to the first pray-on-your-own part, and I started reading the Hebrew as best I could--loud enough so that I could hear myself and not worrying about how I sounded to anyone else. And instead of getting tense and nervous and bursting into tears, I was just fine. I read what I could in the time before the next prayer, and it was pretty slow (but better than when I'm all tense about it) but the usual emotion that plagues me was just...gone. It was very odd. I've never been able to let go of anything that quickly before. It was pretty amazing. So thanks to everyone for the support -- it really did make a difference.

In other news, just got back from seeing the Flying Karamazov Bros with hawkegirl and her two eldest (and the very youngest, I suppose). Lots of fun, and always a joy to spend time with them.

I have a blank wall in my room and a ton of pictures to put up, but I can't decide how to arrange them. Anyone want to lend a hand?

Comments

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'm good at that sort of thing. Do you just want me and 1 kidlet or both?

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

FKB, w00t! I am so bummed I missed out.

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

Go you! Glad that you found a community that you like that is so supportive! :-) I also really value the shul... it's a great place unto itself, even more with the wonderous outreach of chanaleh, Unifier of Jewish Geekdom, in bringing so many of my worlds together.

I was also sorry to hear that I missed the FKBs, but then again, I was busy enough to have to miss the Hebrew Hammer, sigh, oh well.

-- lender of the sukkah in storage (yeah, not the most creative way to identify myself, but hopefully the most distinctive!)

(Oh, and is it okay if I "friend" you? I keep forgetting to ask you when I see you in person...)

[gilana]

Aha! I've been wondering who tapuz was, figured I must know you! I just added you to my friends list, please do feel free to add me!

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

yup! now you know me irl and in lj-world...
added you back, now off to work I go!

congratulations!

[dpolicar]

I am reminded of a particularly humiliating experience in my early teens, when well-meaning members of the congregation cajoled me into leading some fragment of some holiday's mairiv service.
It wasn't entirely foolish of them... I was regularly leading the latter half of Sabbath shacharit at the time, so they plausibly assumed I could read at speed and was more or less familiar with the liturgy... but actually I'd memorized the pieces I led and knew very little outside of that.
So I ended up stumbling and stammering through it with no grace, no melody, no real notion of what I was supposed to read out loud and what everyone was supposed to mumble silently, and visibly startled when the congregation would join in.
I recall it lasting for hours, which I suspect is an artifact of memory, and my not being sure whether it would be more embarassing to just sit back down and admit defeat or to muddle through what was left of it.

Not sure why I tell the story here, except that your story resonates with it, and I am vicariously enjoying your resonating lack of embarassment as somehow redeeming my own youthful misadventure. So, thanks!

Oh, unrelatedly -- I will wait the requisite 19 days before congratulating you on becoming an aunt again, but I'd like to congratulate you now on your prophetic talent.
Either that, or I'd like to point out that "December 23, 2003: I'm an aunt again! Alana Esther Reid is as lovely as her sister." on your website is a typo.
You decide.