Throwing Away Pharaoh, Wishes for Happy New Year, and Help from Julie

"I threw away Pharoah," Curious Girl said to me at 6:15 a.m. on Tuesday, after informing me that the sun was PINK! and wondering was it wakeup time just yet. "You threw away Pharoah?" I said, somewhat groggily. "Yes, I threw away Pharoah, because he's so mean. I threw him away," and she gestured emphatically.

"You mean, in your head, in your imagination, you threw him away so you wouldn't have to think about him?" She looked at me with that sort of exasperated pity that four-year olds have much of for parents who don't follow their mental leaps. "No. For real. With the baby birdseed."

Ah yes, the baby birdseed. Tashlich.
which we did this year after the family service for Rosh Hashanah, using birdseed at the pond on the property. We'd talked all together about some things we might like to toss away: meltdowns, lack of patience, grumpiness. But CG took a different tack, and threw away someone mean, someone scary. Not a bad way to start the year, just tossing out the bad.

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Some bloggy maintenance, from Julie, who always knows her stuff: any bloglines readers should reformat the feeds you've subscribed to http://granolacrunchy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full. That should keep you up to date--which assumes, of course, that there are posts here to be up to date on. Being a good department chair is making me a not-so-good blogger, but believe me, I've tons of posts brewing in my head. My big challenge as chair: keeping time to write (both academic stuff and blog stuff). And my current wonder about blogger beta: why won't my expandable posts work anymore? I miss them. And you probably miss them too, since I can go on a bit. The folds are nice.

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Back to the new year: I found the camera! (the first version of this post had no photo). I forgot to take the picture until we'd eaten half the loaf, so you have to imagine a full circle. But it sort of looked like Phantom's. I also can't find Phantom's post in which she photographed her beautiful Rosh Hashana challah--but as you can see, ours was similar, only covered in sprinkled colored sugar and cookie sprinkles. Curious Girl wanted to take challah to school to share with her friends, and when I said they could dip it in honey for a sweet new year wish, she wanted to put chocolate chips in it. "That's my good idea, to make a sweet year," she said. I wasn't sure chips in bread dough would work out, so we did the sprinkles on top. It was pretty tasty, but not so pretty after the first three days. We talked about why it was braided round (the year goes round and round, I was trying to tell her), and when I said, "can you tell when one year ends and another starts?" she said "I can!" How, I wondered. "Because we make round challah." (this was, I have to point out, the very first year of round challah, but it became an insta-year-detecting tradition). Very funny.

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So I'm late in wishing anyone celebrating a new-ish year a sweet one, but good wishes are never out of style, right? So good new year to you and yours; happy October to you and yours. Here's to a fall full of words for us all: I'm liking my new job, but I'm missing my blogs. So a call to renew some habits is quite timely for me.