Of meetings and ... meetings

For reasons that escape me at the moment, I'm on the board of my old synagogue - note the adjective. Old. As in the one I don't go to anymore because it's way too far to walk to on Shabbat. Of course, when I joined the board, I had no idea I was going to move out of the neighborhood. Our landlord asked us to leave and that was that .

Actually, "joining" the board is...um. I started attending board meetings because my husband was there, so it was sort of assumed, I think, that I was on it, so I was on this year's slate without asking, which is fine because I wanted to be on it anyway. For reasons I can't figure out now. Insanity, perhaps.

Tonight was especially bad. First thing is that my employer is also the synagogue treasurer, so she also attends board meetings. And a coworker I've nicknamed "annoying boy" (which my employer thinks is "sweet", as she has far more caustic nicknames for him) attends the meetings even though he's not a board member. So I had to deal with that. Then there is the Grande dame of the shul, a lovely lady of 96 who is getting more and more hard of hearing, and doesn't quite follow what's going on. Oh, and the secretary.

Now, that's something else. See, she and my husband ran for the position at the last general meeting. She won. That was seven or eight meetings ago. Tonight was the *second* time she's been to meetings since then. Jonathan has been taking the minutes, except for two meetings ago when I did it. I think the logic went that I'm his wife and I'm sort of a secretary. Or something. I took extremely detailed notes and my carpal tunnel hurt for weeks afterwards. She had to ask how to take the minutes tonight. *Sigh* She's a sweet woman, but.

So the night was full of frustration and long argument about raising the rabbi's salary that was eventually tabled.

And we got home at 10:40, and so lit our Chanukah candles late and I had to cook dinner.

A day in the life...

Minor background...several years ago, I developed hypersensitive skin. Basically, after a bacterial, a viral and a micoplasmic infection all in short order, plus whatever the hormones for infertility treatments had done, my immune system went into overdrive. I got hives from any amount of pressure. It was hell, and I was going nuts. What saved me were Allegra and Zyrtec. Over the years, things have improved. Two years ago, I stopped taking Allegra. Now I can skip a day of Zyrtec. In fact, the hives have downgraded to prickles about 24 hours after my last dose.

Every six months, for this reason, I visit my dermatologist. He's a very nice man even if he looks twelve, and we chat as he scratches my skin and inspects my moles, because I do get moles. I've had three moles removed. Then he gives me my prescription for Zyrtec and that's that.

The appointment was for 2:30. I got there at 2:20, which is a new record for me, given that I normally get there late. I sat there in the waiting room and waited and waited and waited. Two hours later, having finished my book (Anthony Bourdain's "A Cook's Tour", highly recommended) and read through the baby magazine, and done some work on the next snippet, my name finally gets called. He does apologize, we chat and he wants to inspect the mole he'd removed this past spring. That site was doing fine, but he was worried about an earlier mole, one someone else had done. It repigmented and darker than it had been.

It's gone now. I have stitches on my back. And a bandage. And tomorrow morning, my husband will once again be doing the peroxide and antibiotic routine. In two weeks, the stitches will be out, and the biopsy will be done. I'm not worried.

But.

Such was my day.