Brillo pad in hand, I dig into the crusty steel of the now-empty dining room salad bar. Leaning to reach the underbelly of a flourescent light, I realize--haHA! I have done it, the unthinkable! I am IN the sneezeguard. And no one is going to stop me!
Two days of working in the main dining room were blissful.
Scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub
eat
Scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub scrub
eat
Ari Adlan and I spent hours perfecting a technique to wash the small oval windows that center the swinging doors.
abdication of responsibility and ambition
waking up way too early

exiting into the hot sun shortly after lunch
manual labor in exchange for housing, in a communal dining room
it felt great
i was on kibbutz

Tuesday was Lag Ba'omer, and my beach bonfire KUMZITS went deleriously well. On no budget whatsoever. Bonfire. The sweet smack of frigid saltwater. Shaving my beard and finding my naked face again. Drums. Guitar. Kosher smores. The smokey honey of fire-cooked potatoes, onions, garlic, and apples (each individually foilwrapped). Lying down with old friends and new acquantances to stare at the sky. Dancing wildly. Shaking some ass.
Hod L'Hod. Sareet, who had driven up from New Jersey to celebrate her birthday, explained it. The omer correlates with mystical spherot--seven weeks of seven days each, corresponding to the unique pairings of each of the seven mystical spherot. Lag Ba'omer is Hod L'Hod. Thankfulness to Thankfulness. The beauty of being able to be thankful, to appreciate the awesomeness of any moment--a priviledge and a gift unanswerable.

I miss home. But much of home isn't even well localized any more. Many JDS friends have already scattered themselves across the globe. But perhaps this is just a way of calming my angst at not having plans to return to Chevy Chase for the first time.