Resisting sleep and counting down the days until yontif

Resistance is futile, say the Borg of Star Trek.

I beg to differ.  I should have been asleep hours ago.  Instead I went shopping with my sister, overate, and read another chapter of the book I borrowed from the library.  It's called Mazel, by Rebecca Goldstein, and is very interesting thus far.  I like the stylistic quirks and the heimish quality.

Heimish, by the way, basically means "homey."  I never lived in a shtetl and I have never even been to Eastern Europe.  But I grew up at my Alte Bubby's feet with the stories of Antonifka and Rovna, with tea with sugar and lemon.  I could almost taste the warm milk fresh from the cow, and I feared the pogroms as if I too had hidden in the sewers.  And when I was five years old and terrified out of my mind that the Nazis were going to snatch me from my bed?  Only my beloved Alte Bubby, zichrona li'vracha (may her memory be a blessing), could console me.  So yes, I read this book and think about her and oh, do I miss her.  She was so beautiful -- regal like a queen until the very end.  She kept her hair a honey-gold color and she polished her nails a deep mauve.  And I can still smell the Ponds lotion she rubbed on her hands.  Her fingers were thick.  She was shtark, mine baleibte Bubby.  Those were not idle hands.  There was always a roast in the oven, or a lokshen kugel (ours was a pareve recipe), and on the stove a chicken soup of course.  And for dessert she would make the special comish cookies.

...and now we have entered the final countdown.  That's right!  ONE MORE NIGHT of my favorite hospital is all that stands between me and Israel.  I can almost taste the falafel.  Or the sambusek.  Or the -- goodness, why is all the good food thousands of miles away?  But mostly I am excited to be away from the hospital.  I love helping patients but I just feel so incompetent, and I hate that feeling.  I wish I could actually be the doctor I want to be.  So it will be nice to have a break from being public idiot #1.

Anyway, that's it for now.  Will post more when I am actually coherent.