Please excuse my absence of late. It’s all a bit “steroids on crack” around here. I have been somewhat busy. Mostly busy shopping.

This coming week is Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year). This is our calendar’s big event, and we have to be ready. There’s a lot of praying to do. A lot of eating to do. A lot of entertaining to do. And everyone is supposed to have new clothes, because it’s a new year, fresh start. It’s an important spiritual occasion, and we have to look the part.

So I have been buying. Buying new shirts for the boys, replenishing cleaning products as we run low in preparing the house, boxes of wine to serve. And meat. Lots of meat. The two days of Rosh Hashanah are holy, like our sabbath, which means no popping out to the shops if we’ve run out of something. Because Rosh Hashanah is Thursday and Friday this year it goes straight into the Sabbath, which means THREE DAYS. So of course we all start stocking piling like there’s a famine. And not just food….candles, foil, glad wrap, nappies, wipes…..anything that it would be cataclysmic if I were to run out of. If Baby N were to run out of the amount of nappies I now have in 3 days, he would need hospitalisation, not more nappies.

I have not stopped to actually plan my menus of course because NO TIME. So I am just buying food, lots and lots of food. And hopefully I will fashion it into some banquets.

In past years I have done things like this:

This year I’m setting my personal bar a little lower. As in I’ve bought some tubs of apple sorbet.

Baby N has had a cold of course. He is a hypochondriac baby, so it’s basically Man-flu. I can only get things done when he sleeps. He’s up to the coughing stage so he keeps waking himself up coughing. Oh, the fun we have.

And just for more fun, tomorrow is First Born’s 11th birthday. This coming Saturday is J’s 9th birthday. Due preparations need to be made (and accordingly I have two birthday parties to plan but that is on hold for now). Presents need to be purchased and wrapped. (Note to self : must get cards and wrapping paper today!!).

It’s manic. Manic. Not just Monday, every day.

All for good reasons, of course (apart from the cold) but still there’s an air of general panic through the smile on my face.

So bare with me…..I will be back. And hopefully absence is making your heart grow fonder.

To those for whom it is applicable, Shana Tova! To everyone else, Happy September.

XOXO Shopping Girl

p.s. This has been written walking behind Baby N, as he wreaks general havoc, playing with powerpoints, pulling down baby safety gates, filling his nappy repeatedly (maybe 3 boxes ISN’T enough), pulling all lego creations off shelves, and the nose…..the streaming nose…..aaagghh gotta go – he’s found a large packet of loom bands. Oh. Too late.