apropos of anything

To all the new Georgia lawyers! More soon… celebrating is exhausting!

I’m listy today.

• To take a photography class. Anyone have suggestions for a good one in the Atlanta area? I’d like one that covers both digital and film.
• A volunteer buddy. If you’re interested, email me or leave a comment.
• NBC to move Scrubs to a timeslot that’s not directly across Grey’s Anatomy because I totally love Grey’s again this year. They must have moved Marti Noxon to Private Practice. (What does it say about me that every time I type her name I think “noxious”?)
• Time to make pies. This I blame on my recent Pushing Daisies mini-marathon.

And now I have to go research cookie recipes to make up for forgetting to go to Cisco’s wedding reception last Saturday night…

Waking up to the arrival of your cleaning service. Oops.

I wonder if it should tell me something that I do this so much.

I’m up in Tarrytown for work (meetings don’t actually start until tomorrow, but they’re being nice and not making me take a 6 a.m. flight), and while the Internet connection is flawless, I’m not really very surprised to discover my cell service is spotty at best. I can get a decent signal outside, but it’s too cold (and dark) to sit out there now, so I’m taking advantage of the uber-comfortable accomodations to channel surf, catch up on email, and of course, plan future menus.

Last night we decided spontaneously to eat in after a long day at Piedmont Park and the Macy’s One Day Sale. Aamir wanted soup, so I immediately thought of Nigella Lawson’s Easy Pea Soup, as featured on Running With Tweezers. It was the only one that sprang to mind where I could remember the entire ingredient list, plus it seemed really simple, and I didn’t think it would take too long. It didn’t, but it mostly tasted like pureed peas. Possibly I didn’t use enough balsamic vinegar.

Anyway, the point is, I know advance menu planning is kind of pointless when you’re having to figure out your grocery list on the fly in the Lenox Square parking lot, but last night’s pea soup debacle has me motivated to do it anyway. Since it’s fall, I really want to incorporate the butternut squash and caramelized onion galette somehow, but every time I look at that recipe I’m compelled to start color-blocking (leafy green salad, something red, something blue), and that inevitably trips me up.

Really must get past that.

Maybe the galette with a leafy green salad, some spinach soup with shrimp and avocado, and possibly some chicken? Of course, if it’s Sara Foster’s greek chicken, I’d get some red, and rice pilaf is white, and then a nice blueberry or blackberry dessert makes blue…

It’s a disease. I can’t help it.

Really must stop reading blogs. Sarah at Whoorl has me wanting to straighten my hair, and Jenny at Use Real Butter has me convinced that even I can make petit fours — chocolate covered petit fours at that!

Updated: And Deb from Smitten Kitchen? Is trying to bamboozle me into experimenting with pumpkin bread pudding. Wouldn’t some chopped raisins or walnuts, or maybe some caramalized bananas, go so nicely with that?

Hope it was wonderful…

…but to be honest, I miss Ramadan.

Check out the time on this post. I had planned to be up at this time, but not for the reason that I am, which is only compounding the frustration.

Earlier in the week I tried to pay my zakat, only to discover Islamic Relief, my charity of choice because it has a four-star rating on Charity Navigator and is fully cooperative with the U.S. government, doesn’t take American Express. In April, my old Visa got converted to an Amex by my credit card company, and since I’ve always been a one-card-only girl, I don’t have any other credit cards.

I know. I should have applied for a Visa or a MasterCard the day they converted me to an Amex.

I do have my Visa check card, though. And though it makes me uncomfortable to use it like a credit card, I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of mailing in a check, haunting the mailbox for the tax receipt, and then remembering where I filed the receipt come tax time. Doing it over the Internet is just so much easier.

So I used the check card. I wanted to break my zakat up into three payments (really, mistake number two), so I only charged $X on the first transaction. It cleared just fine. The next seven equivalent transactions were all declined.

Two and a half frustrating hours of talking to Wachovia later, I was told that it wasn’t Wachovia but Visa that was blocking my donation. They said Visa has flagged Islamic Relief as a “fraud site” and therefore wouldn’t allow me to charge anything to IRW on a Visa card.

I’m perplexed. If it’s a fraud site, how did my first charge go through? How are all the other charges going through? IRW only accepts three credit cards, so surely there are other people out there donating with a Visa card. In fact, before April, all my donations to IRW were on my Visa.

(I did get fraud-alerted last year, but only after I’d made all my donations, and that was somewhat understandable as it’s not my normal spending pattern.)

More importantly, WHO flags a CHARITY as a fraud site?

I kind of have to wonder if the Wachovia fraud department just got tired of me calling them. I think I might try again tomorrow to see if it goes through then; if it doesn’t, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Anybody have suggestions for good Islamic charities that aren’t in trouble with the government, won’t get in trouble with the government, and transfer a high percentage of their donations to their recipients? (I think IRW is at 98%, which I find impressive.)

I will say, though the experience of continuously calling Wachovia and being told I’m getting cleared only to still be declined was… not my favorite, the Wachovia customer service team was exceptional. I never had to wait long to talk to someone, and that someone was always courteous, helpful, and understanding. It was a customer service experience unlike any other I’ve ever had. Even the fraud department was polite and helpful, although I still think their resolution to my problem is circumspect.

A kid sat on me during prayer tonight.

He was probably about Alex’s age. I went down for sujood, and he leaned up against my left shoulder. Finding it to his liking, he sat down. And then, when I got up, he looked at me, deeply affronted, as though to say, “Lady, I was comfortable there. What do you think you’re doing?”

Obviously, I should have known better.

From the October 2nd speech by Barack Obama:

In the 21st century, we cannot stand up before the world and say that there’s one set of rules for America and another for everyone else. To lead the world, we must lead by example.

Also from the October 2nd speech by Barack Obama:

Here’s what I’ll say as President: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.

Which is nice and all, but really, I’d like a world where there is no need for nuclear weapons.

I suppose I should be fair and go read/watch speeches by Hillary and Edwards and all the other candidates, but they don’t send them so conveniently to my inbox as Obama does. Plus, I still can’t get over Hillary’s cardboardness (remember why people voted for W. in 2004? because he was the guy they could see themselves having a beer with) or Edwards’s aura of sleaziness (must look up that CNN.com promo picture where he looks like he’d kiss your baby while picking your pocket).

I brought my mother the tea she requested, and as I handed it to her, the woman sitting next to her said hello.

“She always asks about you,” my mother said.

“Yes,” her friend agreed, “I always ask about you, but you never come talk to me.”

I wanted to say, well, I don’t go talk to a lot of people. I’ve mostly given up doing the rounds these days, so I only go see those of my mother’s friends that I particularly like, the ones who have always gone out of their way to treat me as they treat their own children. But there’s no nice way to say that, and in any case, she wasn’t done.

“It’s because you think you have all that money now that you don’t talk to me,” she continued, laughing as though she’d said something side-splittingly hilarious. “But one day you’ll learn money isn’t everything!”

I was completely floored.

If there was one way I would never have characterized myself, it would be as someone who was stuck-up about money. I do have a job now, Alhumdulillah, and I am glad to have it. I do not think I spend my earnings cavalierly, and I certainly don’t think I’ve ever really had any public discussions about my salary except when one of my mother’s friends brings it up, and then I usually smile, nod, and change the subject as quickly as possible because what I earn is nobody’s business but mine and my boss’s.

I wanted to say, the reason I don’t come talk to you is actually because you say things like this. Because you think whether I’m married is your personal business. Because when I was a kid you would let your bratty children wreak havoc on our house and our toys and then laugh when we asked you to make them stop. The reason I don’t come talk to you is because you don’t understand what it means to have an inside voice.

(For what it’s worth, the bratty children are now remarkably mature and well-adjusted. I wonder how it happened.)

But it’s Ramadan, and a Lailatul Qadr night to boot, and I wasn’t about to throw it all away over her. Plus, “the retribution for injury is an equal injury, but those who forgive the injury and make reconciliation will be rewarded by God,” right? So I smiled politely and said nothing, and then at the next convenient opportunity, made my escape.

It still rankles, what she said, mostly because I’m worried that maybe it’s true and I just don’t see it. I certainly don’t intend to do it, but maybe there’s something anyway.

As John Cage would say, I’m troubled.