G-d particle countdown... [article link]

I've been reading up on this the past few days and the whole project seems incredibly ...exciting? ...dangerous? ...stupid. Nevertheless, I am VERY excited to see what happens, and I hope we don't blow up the planet in the interim. --Zoe

Countdown starts in quest to pierce secrets of Universe from PhysOrg.com

Particle physicists believe they will throw open a new frontier of knowledge on Wednesday when, 100 metres (325 feet) below ground, they switch on a mega-machine crafted to unveil the deepest mysteries of matter.

Media Ignores Massive Voter Purges by Republicans [article link]

I'm not exactly one to get involved in politics (well, I certainly am, but not in the context of one party blaming the other,) but I do believe in voting and rights to vote. It bothered me when there were allegations these past two elections that the polls were manipulated. It also bothered me that the presidential nominations for various states this year were also called into question regarding manipulation. Thus, I share with you the article snippet below. --Zoe

While the media focuses on the antics of McCain's chosen VP battleground states are purging their voter rolls. In Colorado, one fifth of all voter registrations were dropped. Florida is refusing to accept 85,000 new registrants -- overwhelmingly blacks. Ohio & Nevada are scrubbing tens of 1000s of voters who lost their homes.

read more | digg story

Letter to Senator re: Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac Activities

To all readers: I ask that you read the following and consider sending a similar (or the same) letter to your local senator.

Dear Senator,

I want to express my sincere disgust in the activities of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past months (and years) regarding the irresponsible and perhaps criminal activities and borderline unethical conduct regarding their most recent overstatement of their capital base.

As a citizen, a husband, and as a hard-working father, I am strongly AGAINST any form of bailing out of the two mortgage giants by the federal government. I believe this would put an undue burden on the taxpayer, and there is no reason why any of us should pay for the mismanagement by questionably criminal executives running those companies.

Further, I would strongly request a criminal investigation into the executives and those running both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and I would push for an indictment regarding their activities, the handling of the companies, and their questionable accounting methods.

Additionally, I would request that the accounting standards board also be reformed as I am of the belief that those making the decisions there are unethical and are in favor of those businesses who have broken the law, and that the recent decisions by the board fly in the face of sound accounting methods.

My opinion as a concerned citizen is that the country needs an education in ethics and corporate responsibility. While everybody is touting the poor homeowners who are in foreclosure, who are losing their homes, or those that won't be able to get mortgages if the two mortgage giants fold, we must acknowledge that laws have been broken by both the banks, the mortgage lenders AND the homeowners, regulators have not done their job, and that many of the homeowners are in homes that they got mortgages for based on lying on their mortgage application forms about their income, and by taking mortgages for pieces of property they clearly could not afford. There is no reason the government (and thus the taxpayer) should foot the bill for this kind of irresponsible and unethical conduct.

Thus, I ask that you 1) fight AGAINST the government taking over and/or helping the mortgage giants and let things run their course without government intervention; 2) I ask that you start a criminal investigation into the executives running the companies to hold them criminally responsible for the activities of their companies; and, 3) I ask that you push to reform the recent decisions of the accounting standards board and fight for reformation of the board to return to sound and ethical accounting standards.

Family Use of Car? Final answer -- Yes.

Okay, so I understand from what everybody was saying is that if something would happen then my wife's parents' insurance would cover it. If that is the case, then yes, I trust them 100%. Her father is a good driver, and I don't believe anything would happen -- it was the RISK of SOMEONE ELSE doing something to THEM (uninsured) that I was concerned about, and the insurance ramifications of such an occurrence.

To be specific, my fear was that if something happened, I know my wife's parents would do the right thing -- whether that would be using their insurance to repair damage done to the car or even offering to pay for repairs themselves. However, I *do* know that if for some reason something happened while they were driving the car and their insurance *didn't* cover any damages, then UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES would my wife let me take money from them and she would make us eat the losses. For that reason, I told my wife "absolutely not" regarding lending out the car.

Overall, my thoughts circled around financial risks of "what-ifs." If something happened to the car, at this point, we couldn't afford to repair or replace it (we barely can make the payments now), which means that I wouldn't be able to get to work and my job might end up in jeopardy. This is a risk I couldn't take. Yes, we have a piece-of-junk van that I just picked up from my dad's that is drivable -- for now. But! It 1) is a gas guzzler, 2) has 200,000 miles on it, 3) looks like a big box, 4) has no air conditioning, 5) the windows don't open, 6) the radio doesn't turn on, 7) is very dirty inside, 8) the rear door is broken and doesn't open, 9) will likely break down and go to the junkyard within the year. So, in short, I wasn't willing to take the risk of something happening to the Accord because if something happened to that car, I might have some problems getting to work.

In the end, her parents rented a car anyway and the fight kind of just went away. She was slightly upset that I didn't let her offer to use our car. If she asked me about it again, after reading your e-mails and knowing that their insurance would likely cover any damages, I'd say yes and just resort to "hoping and praying" that nothing went wrong.

Senator McCain - Honorable TV Ad

I don't think Senator McCain specified exactly what he was referring to, but he was talking about Obama becoming the first black democratic presidential nominee ever in U.S. history. I think that was very honorable of him to recognize Obama for his achievement. I listened to Obama's speech last night with fervor looking to be inspired with facts to back up the promises -- I still think I'm voting for McCain.

On another note, I almost fell over laughing when at the end of his speech, after the fireworks, the confetti misfired and covered the backdrop of his stage making it look more like a horror show rather than a presidential nomination acceptance speech.

Whether to lend my wife's parents our new car when they visit... I say absolutely not.

I just got into a "discussion" with my wife over letting her parents (who are flying in from CA tonight to visit for the weekend) use our new car. Upset that my wife's parents were going to spend money to rent a car, when my wife asked me whether we should offer to let them use our new car, I said absolutely not, because if something happens to the car when her parents are driving it, while they might have their own insurance which would cover their own injuries if something happened, the car is likely not insured against damages that occur while they are driving it.

My wife used the example to counter my argument that when we went to visit my mom in Colorado, I wanted to use my mom's car, and why would that be different? I told her it was different because my insurance covered only our own personal injuries and I didn't care if something happened to my mom's car -- I was just going to drive responsibly and let them take the risk because they're my parents. In the end, my mom wouldn't let us use it because she wasn't willing to take the risk of us damaging her leased car.

Then my wife exclaimed that when we go to CA to visit her parents, they let us use their piece-of-junk 4x4, and they don't care. I answered that if something happened to the 4x4, they wouldn't be so upset, so they were willing to take the risk. However, they would never let me drive (or even let me stand near) their new 2008 BMW because if something happened, they wouldn't be willing to take the risk of me damaging it.

I think the issue is about risk. Then my wife got upset at me that it's an issue of family, and that I am not letting them feel as if they are part of the family by not offering to let them to use our car. I told her that they could use the piece-of-junk van, but not the new Accord. She didn't like that answer.

What's your view of this situation?

Resolution -- Patience

Firstly, with all the responses, you should know that yesterday was quite traumatic for me. It bothers me deeply when something shakes me at such a deep level as throwing everything else [such as my marriage, my identity as a husband and a father, and my home] off balance. I didn't like getting angry, and I didn't like fighting with my wife. I have a strong shalom bayis mentality, and so it is rare that I'll do something that will shake my wife's confidence in me like losing my cool.

It should be known that from the few e-mails I received last night, friends told me that I made my wife sound as if she did absolutely nothing all day, every day. In a way, that is true, but not that she sits in front of the TV wasting time -- we don't even have a TV in our home. Rather, she spends her day playing with the baby, changing diapers, feeding the baby food, and doing a small chunk of housework, sometimes more than a few. My critique of her is and has always been that she spends way too much time doing things that questionably don't need to be done (such as spending several hours making a cake,) and almost zero time on things that are important. It's a time management issue along with a procrastination to do what needs to be done, and that is why it gets so frustrating when she says that she spent all day doing who-knows-what, and I look around and nothing is done. Maybe I'm just the idiot husband who is jealous that my wife doesn't have to work and that I come home each night and see that she has read half a novel [and she's a slow reader] when she claims she had no time to do anything around the house.

Anyway, this blog should not be about my wife. She's a loving woman and I care about her immensely. She has a good heart, and she means well. We both have faults (G-d knows I have mine) and so if I should expect her to tolerate my many many shortcomings, she should expect the same thing from me.

That being said, last night after being tired of being upset, I decided to "make nice" to her. I came in and I dropped all feelings of anger at the door. It's hard for me to express this, but I don't believe I was angry, but rather, I was merely upset that I had to fake anger to get through to her. Either way, whatever it was, I dropped it at the door, and I sucked it up. We spoke, and she told me that she didn't think that I handled the whole situation properly, and that I should have just told her again what I needed (even for the millionth time) without getting annoyed or visually upset. Being that she is a loving woman who does love me and wants to do good by me, she said eventually would have caught on and would have gotten to it. Instead, she did the laundry and made me not out of love, but feeling restricted and being told what to do, a hot button for her because nobody tells her what to do -- not even me.

So now things seem to be back to normal. I will work harder on picking up the slack rather than getting upset for things that aren't done. She probably is working overtime and over-hard, and I know our lovable son is a handful because he is always going somewhere he shouldn't, or picking up something he shouldn't, or standing on top of something he shouldn't be, demanding love and attention and giving the same in return.

BIG FIGHT

The comments on my various posts by Shoshi have been disturbing and have put me on edge (maybe that's a good thing.) I feel painted as the evil, selfish husband who nags his wife to death with his unending tirades. Hold on to your seat belts, I have one more, and this one is probably big.

I believe my responsibilities as a husband consist of the following things: minyan, work, caring/helpful husband/father. This morning I blew the word "caring" out of the water.

My wife and I have been discussing what is important for her to have done in the house: mother, maintain clean home, clothes, food. After tripping over clean clothes she has not yet gone through for over a week now and being annoyed that I have to fight with her to get the laundry done so that I can have clean undergarments and shirts to wear to work, I stumbled to minyan wearing the same pants I wore yesterday.

Looking the rabbi in the eye this morning from across the room, I could tell he was wondering why I was late *again*. I wished he knew how difficult it is in my life to have things in order and I wish he knew how disorderly everything is in my life. I wanted to cry.

I came home, entered the house and saw that the kitchen light was on. I was happy about this because my wife and I had a fight yesterday after her not waking up for the umpteenth time to make lunch, one of her responsibilities (don't ask me why, that's just the way it has been -- on that note, I have suggested to her a million times that it would be easier on her if she only made lunch once a week, such as on a Sunday, and then just make a number of portions.) Knowing that she had a midwife appointment, I decided to surprise her by moving the baby's car seat into the other car without her having to ask me; I did this quietly so that when she would ask me, it would already be done. When I came back into the house, I noticed that the kitchen was empty. She wasn't even awake.

A bit confused, but slightly annoyed, I wondered to myself why she only reacts to a fight and ignores everything I say otherwise. I gathered my things for work, and without eating breakfast, I wanted to just leave. She woke up and came out of the bedroom with the baby, took one look at me, and noticed that I was upset again. I left without saying a word, without breakfast, and again, without her making me lunch. I slammed the door on the way out for the first time in our marriage.

Waiting for her call to remind me not to take the good car because of her appointment, I heard nothing from her. Now even more upset that she didn't even remember her own appointment, I drove to work. She called a few minutes later, but I didn't answer, thinking, "you treat me as if I am single, I'll let you figure out for yourself which car I took and whether I moved the car seat." A few seconds later, I gave in and called her back just in case it was important and just in case she needed something, and she picked up in a cute voice saying, "you're not allowed to leave the house without saying goodbye."

[I HATE BEING ANGRY, yet I hate even more being angry over the SAME PROBLEMS EVERY DAY. Whether it's the cleaning, the laundry, the food (or the lack thereof), I have spoken to my Rabbi many times telling him I just want to take over these things because I hate waiting for her to do them. He has told me that "this would be a very bad idea for the sole reason that you will resent her for not doing them and thus it will cause a shalom-bayis issue between you." You have no idea how many times I have wanted to TAKE OVER these responsibilities of hers, but I have held back so many times and have waited for her to do her part.]

Sitting in the car fuming from anger, I drove to work. When I got close to work, I called her calmly to ask her if she even knew why I was upset at her. She knew, but then did not take responsibility for her not doing what she was supposed to do and instead, she turned it on me that its ugly for me to be angry at her. This really annoyed me.

I raised my voice (with a loud pleading voice rather than a shouting or yelling voice) and I told her that I HATE being angry. I hate seeing the same things not done every day, and I hate having the same fights with her every day. I wanted to tell her that it was her fault I was angry but let's be real -- I was choosing to be angry because while it sapped my energy and hurt my heart and my chest and made me cry to do so, I felt it was the only thing that she responds to. At that point, she started nit-picking defenses, and I got annoyed at her again. "She's not even listening," I thought. I tell her five things that are not done, and she focuses the argument on the one thing she did yesterday when the point is the FIVE things that GENERALLY ARE NOT DONE EVER.

During the fight, I realized that she was getting upset and/or hurt which meant that for once, she was not just shutting down and putting up a wall the way she usually does when I say something critical to her, but that what I was saying was actually getting through. At that point, fearing a tear, I backed off and ended the conversation.

So that was our fight. It should be noted that the content of our fight was not over the laundry or the food or the lunch or the cleaning, etc., it was over her not taking an active role in our life together and treating life as if it were a vacation while shirking her responsibilities. Case in point, I was upset at her for not taking the initiative on so many areas of our life that she promised that she would and that I was relying on her to take the initiative, such as in the areas of 1) her finding a job, 2) her doing research on real estate and foreclosures for us to buy our first investment home, 3) things that we agreed that we would do together (e.g. she wanted to take the introduction to computer science online courses with me), and I am finding that I am doing them alone, and 4) taking the initiative on things that should be done to move our family forward, such as writing a check to pay the parking ticket she got a few weeks ago and that I've been hounding her to pay, etc.

At this point I honestly don't know what to do. I hate being angry, yet I hate living my life the way it is. I really want to do the laundry and all the other chores on my own without her, but then what point is there to being married? I MEAN, WE EACH HAVE OUR OWN RESPONSIBILITIES, AND IT WOULD BE HURTFUL TO OUR MARRIAGE FOR ME TO STEP ON HER TOES AND TO TAKE AWAY HER RESPONSIBILITIES BECAUSE I WOULD HATE HER FOR LETTING ME TAKE THEM FROM HER. LIFE IS NOT A FREE-FOR-ALL, AND I FEEL AS IF SHE DOESN'T DO HER PART. IN OUR MANY CONVERSATIONS, THERE WERE THINGS THAT WE BOTH SAID WERE IMPORTANT FOR THE OTHER TO DO (RESPONSIBILITIES), AND I AM DOING ALL OF MINE AND SHE IS BARELY DOING MANY OF HERS AND I FEEL THIS IS NOT FAIR.

When I come home from work every evening exhausted, I don't sit down in front of a TV and veg out. Instead, I spend time with my wife and my son, I talk to them, I play with them, and I often help her put him to sleep, spending close to 20 minutes holding my son's hand before he falls asleep. At that point, aside from doing some minor chores or helping my wife out with something, I feel that my day is over BECAUSE I HAVE FULFILLED MY RESPONSIBILITIES. I feel that I have earned the right to sit down with a book or to open my textbooks and start doing schoolwork or learning something.

If you think I am selfish for this and for wanting her to have finished her part of the bargain by doing her responsibilities, I think you are wrong. There is nothing I want more than to sit down with her lovingly and to pay attention to her and love her for the rest of the evening, and I usually do turning a blind-eye towards the things that have not been done. But after a while, some things can just no longer be ignored.

"Do you hate your wife/life?"

Meir, that was an interesting question. "Do you hate your wife/life?" Obviously, the answer is an emphatic NO.

My understanding about love and hate when it comes to my wife (who is my partner in life) is that love or hate is determined based on the CHARACTER of the person you are loving or hating. When I dated my wife (albeit briefly per the shidduch model as opposed to to the secular dating model), my four-part criteria for marriage was 1) whether she is a good person, 2) whether she has a good heart, 3) whether she has good or selfish intentions, and 4) whether she would be a good mother / wife.

My wife is a loving, caring woman who while she obviously has her flaws (as I certainly do too,) is a good person with a good heart and a good character. Her intentions are for the most part good. She is an excellent mother, and she tries her hardest to be a good wife. Where I take issue with her is her organization skills and her openness to dealing with my criticisms, even when they are constructive (which they usually are first and it upsets me that I feel that she responds better to anger and fights rather than loving suggestions.) I have strong expectations for how a family should run (clean house, things in order) and while I believe in a relatively high maintenance household, she does not share that high maintenance attitude and is more lax and chill about things which frustrates me and is the root of most of our problems. We are the "odd couple," me being Felix and her being Oscar, and most of our fights come from this point.

The problems arise from the fact that I try to be understanding about her mentality and I give her a lot of slack but that doesn't change my expectations or my willingness to live in a dirty, unorganized, or messy home. I won't and I cannot live in a messy home and I know that many people are comfortable or happy in this environment, but not me. I absolutely will NOT live in a home like this and I will make problems and even pick a fight if and when this escalates past my level of acceptible discomfort. My wife tries her hardest to keep everything clean and to have everything done, but I suspect that she doesn't yet have the organization skills to maintain the house in this condition. I also suspect that she wastes time daily on facebook and on other websites when she should be running the household and taking care of things that will move our family forward rather than cause us to slide backwards. So yes, this is a big weakness on her part, but then again, look at me now -- I am writing this when I should be working and so I will have to stay extra hours to make up for the time I am wasting now writing this blog entry.

So in short, yes, I love my wife. As for my life, I value the fact that I have a caring wife who is a good person and who I love dearly. I also cherish the fact that I have a cute and loving child who she is raising into a wonderful little boy, and that we have a second on the way. I am relieved and happy that I have a job that pays our bills and contributes to paying down debt (albeit slowly), and that we have our health and are living a semi-comfortable lifestyle.

What I do not like is the fact that I often feel physically dirty after being in our house, and that my clothes and other parts of my life are not in order. I hate the fact that I am 40 pounds overweight, and I hate the fact that my busy disorganized life does not give me the time or the money to pursue any of my interests. I hate the fact that my wife and I are over $160,000 in school loan debt, and I hate the fact that my job barely pays my bills and that it minimally pays down my debt and that there is barely anything left over for the comforts in life. I hate the fact that I always feel poor, and I hate the fact that EVERYTHING is getting more expensive and that our cost of living only increases and this bugs me to no end, especially because I am trying my hardest to conserve. I also hate the fact that I worked so hard for a law degree and that I have not been given the chance to use it, yet I still have to make my blood payments towards those loans every month. Most of all, I hate the fact that it will take at least 4-5 years to get out of this mess at a minimum, and then we will be left with only $100,000 in federal loans which we can pay the minimum at 3.125% for the next 20 years (even though our payments keep increasing and will continue to increase until we pay it off based on our current payment plan.)

So you see, I love my life, and I hate my life. The most important thing is that I [for the most part] wake up every morning, I go to shul and pray, I spend some time with my wife and my son before I go to work, I work hard, and in the evenings I try to rest (even though this almost never happens.) I am taking steps to remedy the "no technical science degree" issue by taking classes online which will get me into a degree program which will take me a few years to complete. At the minimum, I am happy this plan is in motion. Lastly, my wife and I are working together to build an orderly house, and we each are working on bettering ourselves both physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. I wish there would be a quick fix for our problems, but they all take time, care, and effort which we are giving them.

Wife, you STOLE my evening.

I want the world to know that I am angry at my wife, and I feel that she has stolen yet another evening from me, and this time I want it back.

Because our landlord has failed to fix the central air conditioning in our not-so-humble apartment, I went back home this weekend to my dad's house to pick up wall-unit air conditioners (and a beat-up old minivan so that my wife can have a car so that she won't be secluded in the house while I take the car to work each day.)

Well, as usual, today around the end of a grueling day at work, an hour or so before five o'clock pm, I receive a phone call from her asking me when I'll be home. By her voice alone, I crumble and I give up plans that I really want to go to the gym and I say "I'm coming home directly at 5pm" and she is happy.

I come home, and today for the first time we have a guest in the home -- my wife had a neighbor stop by (they are both pregnant and so they will be going shopping tomorrow together). A few minutes after the neighbor left (now around 7pm,) her father called me up urging that I go to Mincha/Maariv minyan at 7:30pm. I can't say no, so I go. 8:30pm rolls by and I am back at home, and again, my wife is struggling with the baby to put him asleep and he just doesn't want to. "It's probably too hot" I think, and so she puts him into her bed in our air conditioned room and I wait for her to come out and at least say hello to me.

Minutes turn into hours, and I'm STILL waiting for her to come out. I make my presence known by walking into the bedroom so that my wife can see that I exist, but its dark in there and I don't want to wake the baby. I sit by the dining room table burning DVDs and ordering books for the 8 credits of computer science classes that I am taking in the fall online so that I can get a technical science degree (to get a job as a patent attorney), and I wait for my wife to come out, but she doesn't come. I sit by the couch waiting for my wife, and I fall asleep. I wake up sweaty at 1am realizing that I fell asleep again waiting for my wife.

I am so ANGRY and SAD and LONELY because I feel neglected by my wife. I feel as if she has taken on the role of being a mother, but she has forgotten that she is ALSO MY WIFE, a role she has long neglected. Not only that, but I feel stupid that I give up each and every evening running home to her only to have ZERO interaction from her because she goes to sleep without telling me only to have me waiting all night for her. I think to myself, "why don't I be a bit selfish and NOT run home each night? Why don't I just go to the gym as my health NEEDS me to and be a good husband an hour later?" No. Stupid me runs home each evening thinking that this one will be different, only to be disappointed again.

Wife, I feel as if you stole yet another evening from me, and I want it back. I had plans for us to sit by the table and talk about our day, to reflect on our experiences, and to plan for our future, and you stole that from me. I wanted you to put the baby to sleep and to come out and spend your evening with me. I wanted us to watch a movie; to play a game; to do anything, as long as it is together, and AGAIN, my night has been spent alone. Had I known this, I would have made plans without you. Had I know this, I would have done something else. I wouldn't have sat by the dining room table waiting for you as the minutes and hours passed by. I wouldn't have busied myself watching the clock for you to come out of the bedroom, but you didn't.

I want my evening back. You stole it from me. Thief.

'Extreme Makover' home in foreclosure.

I just read the 'Extreme Makeover' house faces foreclosure article where the owners of the home [who had $450K donated to them to build it] SQUANDERED that money in using the equity in the home for a loan for a new business.

It drives me crazy when people act irresponsibly, especially when it is with money that is not theirs. In my opinion, a person whose house was on the 'Extreme Makover' show obviously showed why their lives were so bad and why horrible things happened to them, blah blah blah. So in an act of kindness, money is spent on their behalf to build them the home of their dreams. Then we cry in happiness when the home is revealed, only to see that they STOLE THAT MONEY SPENT ON THE HOUSE (the equity in the home that was there solely as a result of the improvements) for their own benefit?

You might say to me (among other things, such as "have a heart Zoe") that it was admirable that they decided to start a business with the new equity in their home. While I tend to agree, I don't think that it is smart to use the equity in one's home to start a business. In fact, I think it's risky and irresponsible.

Further, that money was DONATED to them. THEY HAD NO RIGHT TO USE IT FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE THAN FOR THE PURPOSE THE MONEY WAS INTENDED. ABC should sue them to get the money back.

My message to the homeowners / thieves -- "Poo-poo on you for mishandling your finances. You should have known better."

Goals going bust...

First of all, to everybody -- I'm floored that you are even reading my blog. I thought all my readers dropped off the face of the Earth because I stopped posting regularly. It feels good that you are still reading.

As for goals, the truth is that they all are in conflict. A religious person needs to learn Torah, not watch movies or read the newspaper at night. He also has to wake up in the morning for minyan, not oversleep because he was up until 2am-3am reading up on real estate investing or stock trading.

The coursework to get a CS or BSEE degree will take me away from my family -- that is a fact, but a sad sad sad fact. It will be something I will need to figure out to minimize the damage because I'm barely emotionally home to start with, even when I am physically in the house because I have my mind on all the other responsibilities and goals I need to take care of.

Weight loss needs to happen after work because minyan ends at 7:30am and I have a 1.5 hour commute and must be in the office at 9am, but at the cost of sacrificing an hour or so of time with my wife who dearly needs me in the evenings, so I usually come home instead of working out so that she can rest while I play with the baby and put him to sleep so that I can spend quality time with my wife. So the weight loss often is placed on the back-burner.

Debt reduction (e.g. paying back law school loans) is a deathly slow process on my salary, and I don't know how to deal with this one except to keep working extra hours and to badger my wife to minimize her spending, even though she is very reasonable in her spending to start with.

This is my life. This is a mess.

Time passing too quickly at work and I don't know what I was doing!

There we go... another work day has passed and I don't know where it went. I was working, but I was having difficulty focusing. I don't think I was excessively trading stocks though -- at least not enough to stump my work performance.

I was a bit foggy today. In the afternoon, I did work on my financial statement to figure out why we can barely pay our bills by the end of the month, but I can't see that taking more than an hour or so of my afternoon.

The hard part is -- I need to bill for my time! But, what did I do with my day? I don't have the slightest idea! Now it is almost 7pm, and I am still in the office, still having gotten absolutely no work done.

Do you know that I did the same thing on Friday? But, to justify my time, I worked for FIVE hours straight on SUNDAY and I DIDN'T BILL FOR IT -- yes, I took that time away from my wife and my son who deserved my being there and instead I worked -- just to justify billing five hours of work on Friday.

This could turn into a problem. I think it already has. I'm not sure whether I'm bored or unhappy or uninterested in my work, but this needs to stop!

"I pretend..."

You know, it has been so many months since I have written on this blog, and even so many more since I used to write on it regularly. Since then, the "Zoe Strickman" character has become my username on web sites which I don't want people to know my real identity for privacy reasons (and for reasons of not wanting to get marketed to.)

You should know that while the last post was that my wife and I were fighting over Purim, that was a set of isolated events where the issue was that my wife felt that I wasn't taking care of her, but one event gone wrong can shake a foundation, even of a marriage. My fear at that point was of losing her, especially since there was a moment where she turned "off" and getting through to her was utterly difficult because she formed a preconceived view of me as a person and she thought she knew me. One strong lesson is that you never know someone. You know the person they show you they are.

I have so many shadows looming around me that I pretend they are not there. I pretend to be a good employee, a conscientious husband, an attentive father, a supportive friend, and a loving but relatively distant son and brother. Yes, Zoe is a MAN's name if you didn't figure it out from the profile image.

But then the question becomes -- who is the real me? I'm not talking real identity here, I'm talking about who is me under the skin when you strip away all the layers of junk, habits, and current events. Truthfully, after all this time, I really don't know.

I wake up every morning, I go to minyan with a Rabbi I utterly respect (but who thinks I'm a slacker,) I come home and have breakfast and coffee with my loving wife and growing child, and then I tear myself out of the house away from my son who is so sad to see me go and my wife and I embark on my one hour daily commute to the office (where in the car on the way to work, I listen to audio tapes to further my personal development and to podcasts to listen to the latest pre-recorded news because real radio is time-wasting junk.) I spend the day doing just enough work not to get my brain fried (but it usually happens anyway) or fired, I trade stocks without people knowing it, I log my time of actual work done (often fewer than the many hours I spent sitting at my monitor zoning out or wasting time), and then I decide whether to go to the gym on the way home. When I get home, I greet my exhausted wife and my playful child, I sit down in a quasi-messy house for a quick meal that was thrown together for my satisfaction and I ignore the mess and the things that were not done in my absence that should have been done while I was at work. I then either put our child to bed or my wife does, my wife and I have scant conversations, and then she goes off to bed. I remain at my computer listening to Gary Kaltbaum on a radio podcast, I read books and educate myself on topics such as investing, the stock market, real estate markets, career and financial advancement, and if I have the motivation, I learn a bissel ("a bit of") Torah. If there is time or energy, I'll watch the latest movie that arrived from NetFlix and then between 12am - 1:30am, I'll sneak into bed hoping that my wife doesn't realize how late I was awake. I wake up 5:30am (really 6am with snoozing) to my wife and my son who I have long woken up, and I repeat the process again.

I often ask myself what is really going on? The truth is that I have a wonderful hard-working wife (whose priorities in running a home differ from mine), a beautiful son, a good community, and a good job. The other reality is that I am one step away from being fired from not having the desire or the focus to make the best of my job, and I am utterly bored with life and everything that it has become. Even watching movies has lost the soul it once had. Speaking of soul, I have lost mine too.

My visions in life have been destroyed from the bad experiences when I reached for the stars and fell on my head. I have become cynical, angry, depressed, and unwilling to take risks and yet I express my risk-taking gambling need in the stock market often gaining and losing money. And all the time while I am down, caged, and forced to be responsible rather than to follow my dreams or to move forward on life-changing goals, I take one cautious step after the next, proceeding to the desired goal.

Although, I must admit that my life goals right now are...

1) to keep myself as religious as I should be;
2) to advance in my knowledge, education, and coursework to lead to the goal of working in a law firm or in a company AS A PATENT ATTORNEY acquiring [through coursework] an electrical engineering or computer science degree, all the while moving forward in my current job into a licensing attorney position (which is fine with me) -- yes, I am advancing in TWO concurrent career paths;
3) to lose what now needs to be upwards of 40 lbs (yes, I've gained some weight since my marriage);
4) to get out of debt and to set up myself and my family for financial independence through passive income and elimination of my over $130K of debts (actually $85K consolidated federal, $49K private law school loans); and
5) to be at my best so that my family can feel loved and taken care of,

...I must admit that I am having a VERY difficult time in each and EVERY ONE of these goals, especially because our basic costs, lifestyle (meaning time allocation) and spending patterns leave me little time, energy, and money to be successful at these goals. But, that never stopped me from stopping.

So there's my life as I see it in a nutshell.

Fears of marriage falling apart -- after the Purim events.

The Purim weekend ended gracefully with me returning to shul and davening Mincha and Mariv and catching a ride home. We ended the evening with me not doing any work as we planned to (that I needed to). Instead, I spent the night exclusively speaking to my wife and paying attention to my wife and her needs. She appreciated that.

This morning, I woke up on time for Minyan. When I got home, my wife and I spoke the night before about how important it is for us to do some research and decide whether we would like to sell our new car (which isn't serving our needs) and to buy two older used cars so that my wife can have freedom to move around because right now she is confined to being stuck in the house all day when I am working during the week or that she can only go places on foot.

So I was doing nothing personal and I was focusing my efforts on doing the research to find the proper car for us; she was reading a mommy magazine. She sent the baby over to me and for around fifteen minutes (she will say it was only ten or five which I disagree with), I was playing hard with the baby -- lifting him up in the air, biting at his feet, laughing with him, etc. When the playing was over and I returned to work, still interested in me and what I was doing, our son started grabbing at the laptop that was near me, and I asked my wife to please take him so that he doesn't break my laptop by breaking off the keys on the keyboard. She refused and said, "he wants to play with you -- let him until he's finished." Seconds later, he broke off a key from my laptop and I got annoyed at my wife. She was surprised that I was upset at her, but I was because I asked her many times to keep him away from my computer because I was doing this research for BOTH of us, namely for HER. I told her that this wasn't fun and I wasn't having fun or playing games on the computer. So I stood up from the couch and moved over to the dining room table to continue the work and to look up how to re-attach the key that our son ripped off onto the keyboard. My wife was throwing noisy toys in my direction and distracting me trying to get the attention of the baby. When she went to feed him a few feet away from me, she was singing songs and was making loud noise and I couldn't focus so I took the computer into the bedroom. Within a minute or so from exhaustion, I fell asleep on the bed.

I awoke to find my wife dressed and not talking to me. She was leaving with the baby, and while she pretended to not be angry, I could tell from her voice that she was angry. I asked her if she would like me to join her, and she didn't quite answer a yes or a no, so I waited to hear more from her, but she took the baby and left.

Reflecting on everything that has happened, I feel that there is a problem here and that my wife is not communicating her feelings to me. I feel that she is expecting me to be a mindreader and I am not one.

Further, I feel that each of us has our responsibilities, and when she is making her calculations as to what mine are, she is expanding hers out of proportion making them great and minimizing mine. I feel she minimizes the fact that I work during the week, and that I cumulatively drive over two hours each day to and from work which is quite exhausting. I believe she minimizes the fact that I often run errands for her and for us on the way to or from work often adding hours to my weekly commute. I think she minimizes the fact that I wake up significantly before she does every morning before work and that I attend a minyan which often takes over an hour each morning. I also run to shower and do my daily activities before each minyan at 6:25am which means I am up and about around five-something each morning. Then in the evenings, while she may deny this, as soon as I get home, I spend usually under an hour focusing all my energy on her and the baby before getting to taking care of the bills and the things that need to get done, often over the computer. Further, often during the week, before I get home, I drag myself to minyanim for Mincha and Maariv, and once a week I have a Gemara chevrusa -- all of which are exhausting events. These are my weekly duties and what I believe should be expected of me. On top of these, I work hard to be a good husband, to pay attention to my wife and my son, and to pick up where she falls behind in chores (again, something that goes unnoticed and she would deny).

My expectations of her are that she take care of the baby which I know is a colossal responsibility, and that she maintains the cleanliness of the house, does the laundry, and makes sure there is food cooked for all three of us. That's not much when it comes to space on a page, but I know it is very time consuming.

Anyway, she just walked in with Slurpee, and she got me one too even though she is angry at me. Why did she get me a Slurpee? She *is* angry at me "for isolating myself the whole day" (her own words) when in reality I fell asleep from exhaustion which is no crime. I am feeling angry at her for not expressing herself and for hurting our relationship. She has no right to play with our relationship as if it is something to be manipulated.

Fears of marriage falling apart -- recounting the Purim event.

I suppose my blog is pretty much like my real life... eventless. I do what I am supposed to do, and that takes up much of my life. ...Minyanim, Torah learning, spending time with my wife and my family, work, etc. There's not much time left for excitement.

One thing that has been troubling me recently is that my wife is a bit on edge. While being slightly stressed out is one thing, and losing one's temper is another thing, she does neither. She pretends to be very cool, then today she takes the baby and walks out on me again. This freaks me out and I have spoken to her about it before and she denies its existence.

My biggest fear is that my marriage will fall apart and that I won't be able to stop it. I suppose because it happened to a close friend of mine and because it happened to my parents, I am sensitized to signs of it. I have told my wife on many occasions that I am not a mindreader and that she needs to communicate her feelings to me but she disagrees and feels that I should know how she's feeling when she is feeling it.

Over Purim, I made a few mistakes which in my mind were not mistakes (and I still believe they aren't) but to her, she felt I was not taking care of her. Before the holiday, I asked around (we are new to the community) and learned that there would be 1) a Purim party (from a conversation a few weeks earlier from one of the community members), and 2) that there would be two Megillah readings -- first for the general public and second for those that missed the first one. I did this research before the holiday to make sure that if my wife misses the first one because the baby starts crying, etc., that if she'll have to take him out, she'll have a chance to hear the Megillah on the second round while I take care of the baby. I even spoke to her about this and my findings. When we got to shul, there was only one Megillah reading, no party, and no food (I was surprised that there was no food because the shul usually has lots of food for the various weekly Kiddush, so I was sure they would at least put some of that out, but they didn't.) I was surprised and she was livid. I asked the Rabbi when the second Megillah reading would be, and he said that he's making one for his wife and a few women at his house, so I felt good that my wife would be able to attend that. My wife was upset by that and her reasons were understood to me. Either way, when we got back to the house, she got out of the car and in anger and without saying goodbye, she walked off to the Rabbi's house and left me with the baby, whom I then put to sleep, heated up food, and waited for my wife's return.

The next day was the Purim seudah which we were invited to the Rabbi's house for the meal. I was sure that the other community members would also be there so that we can farbreng and drink to fulfill one of the Mitzvahs of Purim. When we got there the only people that were in attendance other than us were old people and slightly-crazy people (it doesn't matter to me that they weren't religious). I made the best of it and later when we spoke about it, my wife told me that in Chabad communities, only rejects who don't have a place to go end up at the Chabad Rabbi's house.

That night was Shabbos, and I arranged for us to be invited over to my friend and chevrusa's house. The company there was good and the people were our age. One of the guests was my friend's neighbor who he had befriended and was trying to convince him to start putting on Tefillin every day. While I usually have stayed far away from the Mivtzoim effort of bringing Jews closer to performing the commandments (Mitzvahs), this time after a few drinks, I joined in. Earlier when I noticed that our son had went to the bathroom, I alerted my wife about it and she said she didn't want to change the diaper. I asked if we need to do anything and she said no and resumed the meal. I was thinking that maybe we should leave, but if my wife was okay with it, so was I. Keeping an eye on my wife for some time longer, I saw that my son was playing with the toys or that my wife was holding him, but either way, conversation was happening amongst the women and my wife was a part of that so I didn't mind resuming conversation on the men's side. I engaged the guy in what my wife describes as being a 1.5 hour discussion on why he should be putting on Tefillin, and among other conversations which included laughing and even crying from laughter in conversations that permeated the whole room, my wife was livid later because I didn't read her mind that we should leave. We left with everyone else when the meal ended and while I was glowing that we had such an "atom-bomb" kind of conversation that surely changed this man's life, she was upset that I wasn't paying attention to her during this last conversation and that I should have sensed that she wanted to go home.

The second Shabbos meal by day was by another friend of mine (all of the people we go to are people who I befriended because my wife has not made much of an effort to be part of the community or to make friends) where my wife had a good time. The people were our age, and our son got a chance to play with people his own age. Everything went wonderfully and I believe my wife even could have made a friend.

...I will continue this story in the next post.

Yeshiva Transformations into Frumkeit

This morning, a co-worker asked me about an article in the Wall Street Journal by Ben Harris entitled "Jewish Year Abroad" (cite: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120425090627701855.html). Attached below was my answer.

Dear Seth,

There are a few levels to understanding this article and what it speaks about.

Topic 1: Going to Israel (or any other yeshiva/rabbinical college) and coming back totally a different person, sometimes a better person, other times brainwashed.

Secular students who enter a yeshiva are highly influenced by those rabbis living the religious life, and they often want to emulate them. This brings a large responsibility on the part of the rabbis to teach them Judaism and to distinguish basic practice from the group's addition to Jewish practice (generally referred to customs (or "minhagim") which various groups add to beautify the observance of the commandments; often these customs have their roots in the mystical or kabbalistic traditions, but if misunderstood can lead to a deviance away from Judaism itself). The problem here is that the rabbis do not distinguish basic Jewish practice and observance of the laws with customs, which lead to individuals alienating those other Jewish observant persons around them with their strange ritual practices (e.g. holding a cup of wine from the bottom instead of the top, or overfilling a cup of wine to the point that it spills a bit -- these are customs which have much meaning, but are often misunderstood and are found to be offensive by those who are not aware of these traditions.)

There is also the idea of what is good and what is evil, and often a yeshiva student learns this, but the Rabbis do not teach them how to understand what that means and how to apply it to the world around them. For example, the secular world is often referred to as not recognizing the Creator, and the idea of separating oneself from the Creator or not doing the will of the Creator is called evil. However, this doesn't mean to live in a mountaintop and separate one's self from society. In fact, it has nothing to do with how a person is to act within society. A yeshiva student often understands this incorrectly and distances himself from society causing problems for himself and those around him. However, if he learned more, he would learn that it is a commandment to live within society and to have a job (called "derech eretz") and to live IN this world and IN society so that he will be able to do the commandments, much of which require one to be in society to perform them. Unfortunately, Rabbis forget to teach this and they don't realize that the students are taking everything they are saying literally and so the problem becomes that the Rabbis don't teach students how to use the information they learn.


Topic 2: Coming back from Yeshiva and changing their behavior (e.g. not kissing relatives of the opposite sex).
Often a yeshiva student returns from rabbinical school armed with the laws of Judaism, and this is a good thing. Unfortunately, the general level of observance of the Jewish population (often Judaism is passed from generation to generation in today's world -- in the last 60 years -- without any yeshiva or formal religious education; this is a problem with modern times where parents send their children to public schools and to secular colleges and never send them to yeshiva, or at a minimum, not even to "hebrew school (e.g. Sunday school)" -- and so, these children of the former generation grew up without education and are lacking in their Jewish observance. Then, when their kids "rebel" and go to a yeshiva after high school or college, and when their kids become religious/observant on their own, this is often seen as an affront to the parents who believe they are doing enough, even though they are consistently breaking Jewish laws regularly because of their lack of religious education. Hence, they start screaming about "Jewish unity" and how "these religious people" are separating themselves from the community, etc. when in fact, it is the parents who are lacking in their basic Jewish observance.


My own experience:
This is the jist of it. But as you can see from my own life, my parents grew up secular and some time after college, I became observant and went to a yeshiva for around two years (meaning that I literally lived in a dorm at the Yeshiva and I spent my day, generally 6am until 10pm learning about Judaism and its customs.) Of course, I made a strong effort to not alienate any of my family while this process of becoming religious was happening, and that being said, I did step on a few people's toes, especially before I figured out the what was Jewish law versus what was custom versus what is practiced as a stringency, but is by no means required to be followed (a separate conversation that caused me much angst figuring out what was what). I always kissed my grandmother and my mother, but after yeshiva, not my aunt or my cousins because it is permissible to have physical (not sexual) contact with those of the opposite sex who are your immediate family including grandparents and grandkids, children under the age of maturity, but not those outside these individuals. Over time, you'll see that there are other observances which deviate slightly from the secular-normal (e.g. not working on the Sabbath, eating only certain kosher-certified foods, not being secluded/alone after hours with unmarried women, etc.) but most of them are not even noticeable to the person who is unaware of their existence.

Apology for inconsistant blogging.

By the way, I am sorry to those who think that I abandoned this blog. I haven't; it's just difficult to write every day, especially when there is so little time in the day. Please check back from time to time. I will be sure to post more regularly.

Chassidishe Hechures.

During our four week stay outside of NY, my wife and I made sure to pick up food in Crown Heights each time we drove into the city. My friend asked me what was wrong with the food where we were, and why I didn't just buy the kosher meat over there.

Here was my answer:

There are other kinds of meats available, but the issue is hechure. There is a stam kosher hechure where many people wouldn't eat that kind of meat because of the chumras in shechita (type of knife used, who the shochet is, etc. -- it's not only what kind of animal is being slaughtered, but it is also the shechita that makes something kosher or not (or today, questionably) kosher).

Also, some won't readily eat meat from shochets from various sects (think Meal Mart, or remember the Lubavich beatings by the Satmars a few years back, and how as a result the Rebbes said not to eat the other's meat), and vice versa.

Others will eat any meat, even Hebrew National.

If you're Lubavich, there are certain things that you are expected to hold by (e.g. cholov yisroel, etc); having an increased hechure with meat is one of them (e.g. there are two types of hechures on Empire Chicken; those with one kind (I think it's just stam OU), and Empire Chickens with KAJ -- we'll eat the meat with the KAJ hechure, but not with just the other.

I think that's the jist of it -- Lubavichers generally eat meat with chassidishe hechures. That's why it's sometimes difficult when we go out to (e.g.) Doughies. Some of the dishes on the menu are used with one kind of meat, and others are made with other hechured meat. After asking around a few times, I learned to know which hechures were which.

And just think -- there are people that are way more strict on this than I am, and only eat meat not from certain hechures like I do, but only from shocheits they trust.

I know by posting this letter I will not only reveal to my friend my identity (because I'm pretty sure she is a reader of this blog), but I might stir some controversy. People might ask, "why cause a separation within the Jewish people? shouldn't we all just be unified as one people?" My answer is yes, we should, but the difficult part of being unified in Judaism is that there are some groups that don't believe in Jewish law and still assert that their food is still kosher, and there are other groups that go to the other extreme and won't eat food which has a lesser degree of kashrut. Hence, it will be almost impossible for everyone to eat the same food unless the higher standards become the norm, because I don't think asking a Jew to lessen his level of kashrut is a realistic, moral, or a workable solution. Hence, we judge each piece of food by its hechure.

Signed the lease with our landlord.

I figured that after all that writing and worrying about the lease, the least you deserved was an update on how things went. Its so easy to write a blog when things are bad, but when they go your way, blogging becomes difficult.

On the way to meeting my landlord, I called my Rabbi to ask him for his advice. He suggested that taking a consulting posture would probably the most effective way to handle him. Ask him what he agrees to and what he doesn't agree to, and after each answer, write it down on a piece of paper. Then, if things aren't the way you want them, you can decide not to sign yet.

I sat down with the landlord, who, with his family present, was acting like the boss
(Sefardi thing). I went through *his* lease line by line (which was obviously written by an evil lawyer). To my surprise, for some reason he thought what was in the evil lease was the law of New York because his lawyer told him, "do not cross *anything* out." Later on (as you'll see), it occurred to me that the lawyer never said not to put anything *in*.

So we negotiated line by line, and as he agreed to things (or disagreed to things) we wrote down what he said. In the end, after everything was said and done, I felt that the lease terms as agreed to by the landlord were fair, and we were willing to be flexible and give in to certain things in return for getting the security of a lease with an option to renew.

I said, "We are ready to agree to what we have discussed. Now let us write what we agreed to into the lease." When I started crossing things out that the landlord agreed to in our prior conversation minutes earlier, he started flipping out. "No! Don't cross it out!"

When I explained to him that the lease does not reflect our agreement, he said, "no! it's in there what we agreed." I thought to myself, "...is he an idiot?!? The lease says the opposite of what he agreed to!" So I started writing things into the lease in VERY EASY LANGUAGE.

My logic was that if the printed lease said something like, "Tenant is not allowed to have guests; if the tenant has a guest, tenant will pay landlord $50 per guest per occurrence" and I wrote in at the bottom of that clause "Tenant is allowed to have guests AT NO CHARGE," then if the matter ever went to court, obviously the written-in statement is what would be enforced because 1) it was obvious that what was written in was written in after the printed terms, and 2) that the written-in terms was what was agreed to when the lease was signed, even if they conflict with the printed terms.

So that was the jist of our entire lease. "Tenant is not allowed to have guests... TENANT IS ALLOWED TO HAVE GUESTS," "Tenant pays for all utilities... TENANT PAYS ONLY FOR ELECTRIC, GAS, AND 1/2 OF WATER, LANDLORD PAYS THE REST OF THE UTILITIES," and so on.

After a while, the landlord got tired of me writing things in and he started accusing me of changing the lease which was meant to protect him, and he told me "either sign the lease or move out." At that point, most of the issues were resolved, and we limited our liability to the Security Deposit even if we trashed the place and moved out early (which we would never do). While the lease made it VERY EASY for us to lose the security deposit, we decided that this was a risk we were willing to take, because the lease as it was with the changes was much more fair than it was when we began.

I went into a side room with my wife, and we agreed that the way the lease was, it was acceptable and we were willing to sign it as it was. So we signed the lease and gave the security deposit and the last month's rent.

So now we live here. My wife was so excited, and so was I. I am glad this issue is finally resolved, because it weighed heavily on my shoulders each day and took much emotional energy leaving me tired and lifeless. Thank G-d I worked hard on this issue, we stuck hard to our guns, and we were flexible when we needed to be fair.

Additional Lease Terms

Dear Readers,

I am sitting down tonight with the landlord to review the terms of the lease. While we agreed to go over his version of the lease, there were provisions that would be difficult to carve up and cut out. So, to simplify things, I wrote up the following lease addendum myself which covers all of the terms we want the landlord to agree to and supersedes conflicting provisions in the lease. That way, we can just sit down, agree to the Addendum (below), and sign his lease and move on.

(By the way, everything in here with the exception of the Washer/Dryer which we left out are things the landlord already agreed to, but I want it in writing. I think this is fair and is a good way to go about things, how about you?

ADDITIONAL TERMS TO LEASE

The following paragraphs, if agreed to by the landlord, will become part of the lease and will rule over any terms in conflict with these paragraphs.

LENGTH OF LEASE:
The lease will be a one-year lease with the Tenant’s option to renew lease for 3 years under the terms of this lease. The lease will not automatically renew and will become a month-to-month lease unless the Tenant gives notice to the Landlord each year that they intend to renew lease for another year.

If Tenant accidentally does not renew the lease and the time for renewal passes, if both Tenant and Landlord still want to renew the lease, they may do so at will.


PURPOSE OF SECURITY DEPOSIT:
Both Landlord and Tenant understand that the purpose of a Security Deposit is:

1) To compensate Landlord in case Tenant damages property belonging to Landlord from misuse (Security Deposit may not withheld because of damages from normal wear and tear and daily use of the property), and

2) To compensate Landlord for rent losses sustained if Tenant terminates contract and moves out of apartment without Landlord’s permission. Landlord has a duty to mitigate damages (a responsibility to make a reasonable attempt (through FOR RENT signs, classified ads, word of mouth, etc.)) to re-rent the apartment. Damages for early termination are limited to the Security Deposit.


SECURITY DEPOSIT VERSUS “LAST MONTH’S RENT”
“Last Month’s Rent” is separate and unrelated to the security deposit. It is ONLY to be used for paying the Tenant’s last month’s rent prior to moving out and must be returned if not used.

Tenant requests landlord’s permission to pay last month’s rent upon renewal of lease for second year.


APPLICATION OF SECURITY DEPOSIT TO LAST MONTH’S RENT.
If within 30 days of Lease’s termination (or within 60 days if Last Month’s Rent has been deposited with Landlord), if Landlord trusts that no damage has been done to the apartment, Tenant may request that the Security Deposit be applied in lieu of the last month’s rent. At that point, Landlord has the right to inspect premises to make sure no damage has been done that would require use of the Security Deposit funds.


PROCESS OF WITHHOLDING SECURITY DEPOSIT
Should any damage occur that warrants withholding money from Security Deposit, Landlord will give written notice to Tenant containing the description of the damage, the Landlord’s cost to repair, and the approximate date of occurrence of damage. Tenant will have the right to dispute Landlord’s claim. At the end of the lease term before the Tenant moves out, damages will be added up to determine how much of the Security Deposit will be returned to Tenant.


UTILITIES AT END OF TERM
Tenant agrees to pay for: Electricity, Gas, and ½ of the Water costs for the apartment Tenant is occupying for the full length of time Tenant is occupying apartment.

Tenant agrees to place Electricity and Gas in Tenant’s name, and Tenant shall solely be responsible for costs of electricity and gas for said apartment while Tenant is in possession of the apartment.

Tenant agrees to cancel Electricity and Gas within one month of leaving the apartment, and agrees to pay Electricity and Gas bills in full prior to leaving apartment.

If the water bill is not available when the Tenant moves out, Tenant agrees to place a deposit to cover Tenant’s estimated half of the water bill, which shall be calculated based on the prior three (3) water bills.


INTERMINGLING OF FUNDS
Security Deposit and Last Month’s Rent must be separated from all of Landlord’s personal funds. It is understood that both the Security Deposit and the Last Month’s Rent remains property of the Tenant and not the Landlord, and Landlord may not use either for his own personal reasons.

Landlord may use Last Month’s Rent for personal reasons once rent for the last month becomes due.


PARKING SPACE
Landlord grants Tenant the use of one parking space behind the house.


ACCESS TO BASEMENT LAUNDRY ROOM
Landlord grants Tenant access to the laundry room through the stairway connected to Tenant’s apartment.


LANDLORD ACCESS TO APARTMENT
Landlord will give tenant 24 hours before entering apartment to give tenant time to respond to request. Landlord entry under this lease is for repair purposes only.

Landlord may enter apartment WITHOUT 24 HOUR NOTICE for emergency purposes only, or with consent of Tenant.


KEYS
If Tenant is unable to secure working keys for the apartment, Landlord will promptly provide copies of the keys or will replace the lock.


INSURANCE
Tenant has the option whether or not to purchase insurance for the home, and to control how and if insurance proceeds are to be used. If Landlord wishes to obtain insurance, he may. Failure to obtain insurance will not breach this lease.


REPAIRS
If Tenant damages property owned by Landlord by misuse or intentional destruction, Tenant will be responsible for the costs to repair damaged property, and Landlord may sue tenant for damages and/or make a claim to withhold said amount from the Security Deposit. Damages to the property and/or broken items due to the normal wear and tear, daily use, and or non-misuse of the Tenant will be promptly repaired and paid for by the Landlord.


GUESTS
Tenant may have guests (and even overnight guests) so long as the guests are not living in the apartment as their home. Tenant may not split the rent with anyone other than those occupying the apartment per the terms of this lease, and may not sublet or have others move in without the Landlord’s written permission.


NOTICE WHEN AWAY FROM APARTMENT
Tenant will NOT give Landlord notice when Tenant is away from the apartment for any amount of time.


ATTORNEYS FEES AND NOTICES
At no point does Tenant waive any rights of notice regarding any legal process between the Landlord and the Tenant. Further, Tenant does not agree to pay any legal fees or attorneys fees should a dispute arise.

This is the simplest way I could write this, and the best I could do. Comments?

-Zoe

"Tea can make the bad feelings go away."

By the way, you should know that my wife and I made up about an hour into the fight. My wife didn't realize that she hurt my feelings, and wounded them even more when she mocked me when I tried to tell her how I felt.

However, a few minutes later, she apologized, and she told me that she appreciated everything I did and all the work I did, and that there were even certain issues she would like me to fight for on our behalf. Namely, the term of the lease must consistently reflect the 3-year option to renew; the penalty for breaking the lease must be limited to the security deposit; and, the last month's rent is not a security deposit, but a rent deposit.

An hour later, she again asked me if I was feeling down about the whole lease thing, and I told her that there weren't any feelings that were still hurt, but I was still having lingering feelings of hurt. I told her that she hurt me pretty deep and that I believed that we resolved everything, but that my feelings were still down from the initial hurt which doesn't go away just because the cause of the hurt has been resolved. She said, "Tea makes it all better, want some?" and I said, "yes, please."

So yes, I feel better about it all, and I am a bit more calm about the whole situation. I can't stop my wife from wanting to live in this apartment, and I can't protect her (us) from sneaky landlords when she won't stand behind me on it. However, I do believe she will be happy here, and I do know that she likes this home very much and me putting the table together and putting the Mezuzahs up (although in my mind, I did it for temporary reasons) made her view the house more as a home that she really wants to live in. So, I'm giving her what she wants, and tomorrow, unless the landlord is unreasonable about the terms of the lease or he pulls another one of his tricks, I'll sign the lease and start our lives in our new home.

Wife told me to accept defeat.

I feel betrayed by my wife. All this time, I have thought about nothing other than how to protect us and the terms of the lease that my wife expressed that were so important to her. This afternoon, our landlord walked in with his family and told us that the lease I suggested we sign was not acceptable. He slammed it down on the table and said that he’s the landlord, he’s the boss, and whatever he says is what we have to agree to, or we could move out. Knowing that my wife told me that morning that she would really like to stay and that she doesn’t want to move again, I decided to be a bit softer and to save us from moving out.

We spoke about the lease, and how important it is for the terms of the lease to match our agreement. We arranged to look at the second version of the lease that they gave us (still a one-sided lease, but not as extreme as the first) and to sit down with them tomorrow and perhaps to sign it.

The interesting outcome is that my point of view of the landlords changed because I understood the family dynamics for the first time. The father is in charge. The son likes to think he’s in charge, and the father has a difficult time controlling him. The mother is the typical Israeli. It was interesting to me to see the son speak in front of the father and to interrupt his father – perhaps the way I interrupt mine. At the time, I only paid attention to what the father said, but after reflecting on it, I realized that I identified with the son because I often have a difficult time respecting my father the way I am supposed to. One interesting outcome is that at one point, the father got annoyed at his son for interrupting him and negotiating for him and he said to his son, “I’m here. Let me talk.”

All in all, the conversation went well. By the end of it, my wife was seduced into thinking that they were good people and she had forgotten everything they had done to us until now. Further, I was also convinced, but I still wanted to be careful by making sure that the lease properly reflects what we want it to say. One thing that I felt was resolved, however, was that at least we know now who is in charge of the lease terms and the decisions; the father.

So I spent the rest of the day shopping with my wife. I wanted to get some tools and nails to put up the Mezuzahs on the house, because even if we were leaving within the month, Jewish Law says, “he who has fringes (Tzitzis) on his Tallis, Tefillin on his arm and on his head, and a Mezuzah on his doors is protected by the Holy One, blessed be He.” I had the first two of those requirements, but so far the mezuzahs were not yet unpacked or put up on our doors. I thought that maybe because we had no mezuzahs up (even though they are not required until we live here for 30 days) this was the reason we were having all these problems in life; namely, that there was no mezuzah protecting us during our travels. So I went to pick up a new toolkit with a hammer, a wrench, and some nails. Unfortunately, the nails that I used to put in the Mezuzah cases were poor quality and my hammer broke the plastic cases for the Mezuzah where the screw is supposed to go. So while they look unsightly, at least they are up.

Anyway, with the new tools, I put together my grandmother’s dining room table (may her soul rest in peace in Gan Eden) and I sat there going over the lease for our discussion with the landlord tomorrow. After discussing my findings with my wife, I found her to be unexcited about my arguments. She felt that I was nit-picking the lease to death and that I was lawyering the whole thing to death. She said that she was tired of fighting the landlords and that she just wanted to give in to their requests. She said that if we broke any term of the landlord’s lease, she’s fine with the landlord keeping the security deposit. She said she was fine moving out and risking the landlord keeping the security deposit for himself. She said she was fine with giving the last month’s rent just to make peace with the landlord and get the lease signed. In short, she gave in to EVERYTHING we have been fighting for daily for almost a month now. In short, she told me that she just wants to live here and that she wants to give in to all of the landlord’s terms. I felt betrayed because all this time I was under the impression that I was fighting for us, and tonight I find out that I was fighting for a cause she didn’t believe in.

I feel that I wasted so much time on this issue for the protection of myself and my family, and now she doesn’t even want me to fight for what we were originally promised. She would rather just have the apartment as it is and risk losing the security deposit. This is the eve of tomorrow’s meeting with the landlord. As far as things stand, and as far as I understand, she just wants me to give in to everything and sign the lease. I feel so defeated.

Discussion with Landlord about lease terms.

I had a meeting with our landlord yesterday after Shabbos. Naturally, we were prepared for the meeting, but we were unprepared for what happened.

As of Friday, after the no-show of the landlord the evening before (and after countless phone calls and requests for him to call us back), I called my wife on the phone and told her that we should make the decision to move out at the end of the month, or as soon as possible, because even if we did get a lease eventually, the landlord would be an absentee landlord, wouldn't fix anything if it broke, and probably wouldn't adhere to the lease terms anyway. So we firmly made a decision that unless the landlord comes through and addresses our issues to our liking, we are deciding to find another place and to move out at the end of the month.

So the landlord showed up after Shabbos, and we sat down to discuss the issues that have come up over the past month with his wife and his kids. He told us that we should ignore everything his wife and his kids say about the rental and its limitations, because he is the boss, he is the owner, and whatever he says is the law. I respected his mentality because it was consistent with the Sefardi ancestry of which he is part of. He also told me that he is a believer in whatever the siddur that was sitting on my table says and then he went on to tell me what a good person he is and how honest he is.

We proceeded to discuss the issues -- the term of the lease, the security deposit, the washer and dryer, repairs that are needed, and he seemed to be friendly to all of them.

Hearing this, I decided to take out the neutral lease that I downloaded from the internet (as opposed to the unfair one-sided lease that his son gave us), and I proceeded to fill in the details and make minor changes to reflect what we would agree to and what we would not agree to.

The changes I made to the lease were items that I felt the lease was unclear about or was improperly written, such as [inter alia]:

1. Location of premises: Instead of writing, "Tenant is leasing XXXX Crown Street, Brooklyn NY 11225 (just an example, not actual address)," I wrote "Tenant is leasing XXXX Crown Street, 2nd Floor with stairway access to laundry room" because I didn't want the landlord one day to lock the stairway door to the basement and say, "sorry, if you want to use your own washer and dryer, you will have to walk outside, walk around the block, and enter the laundry room through the garage access." This is not a likely occurrence, but given the past actions of the landlord, we don't trust that they *wouldn't* do this, and so I felt that it was important to be as specific as possible when describing what we were renting.

2. "Tenant shall not sublet the apartment without written permission from the Landlord." I added in ink, "...landlord shall not unreasonably withhold consent" meaning that if for some reason we needed to sublet and we did our work and found good tenants, the landlord cannot unreasonably reject the new tenants. If there is a reasonable reason for rejection (e.g. they don't trust them, or they have bad credit, etc.) that is understandable, but b'kitzur, I didn't want to give the landlords the ability to stick it to us if we wanted to sublet. By the way, we have no intention of subletting.

3. "Tenant agrees to return property to the landlord in as good condition as property was given to tenant, normal wear and tear *excepted*." As soon as I read that, I saw the word "excepted" was misspelled, and it should have read "expected." So I crossed out the word and replaced it with the correct spelling.

4. Attorneys fees. Being an attorney, we plan on being very honest and good tenants. If we end up in litigation with the landlord, it will be because they did something immoral or illegal, or because they violated the lease terms, not us. The lease originally wrote that "if there are any disputes, Tenant agrees to pay all costs and attorneys fees to litigate the issue." I am not agreeing to this, so I crossed this out.

Anyway, in short, I made these and other changes in front of him and then I told him to have his lawyer check over the lease for fairness and to get back to us. The landlord was shocked and scared and offended by what I marked up, because he felt that I was being unfair and was changing the lease to make it fair to me and unfair to him. I assured him that I was being upfront and that there was nothing sneaky about what I did, and I am totally open to discussing and/or negotiating the changes I made to the lease because I am very flexible about it. I just wanted the lease to reflect the nature of our deal, that's it. If he doesn't like a term I inserted, I am totally open to removing it. He left annoyed and he said, "I'm going to have my lawyer look at this." I told him to please feel free to have the lawyer call me if s/he has any questions.

Later, when I asked my wife about her opinion about what happened, she told me that he and his family have been playing games with us since we moved in, causing us stress and emotional pain unnecessarily by changing terms and taking away things they promised to us. The fact that I was a lawyer and that I was making changes to the face of the lease document made him nervous, and she was glad that he got nervous. At least now he got some of his own medicine and he should learn that it is not right to do that to other people.

I explained to her that I was being as open and fair as possible. As a lawyer, we have an ethical duty of fully disclosing anything we do because we have an advantage over regular folk, especially when it comes to legal terms and reading into and writing contracts. I could have easily written those changes into the document and I could have printed the document out *with* the changes (as his son did to me with the original lease), however I felt that was dishonest, and any changes to the lease template should be made openly and honestly so that we can talk about the terms and come to an understanding and an agreement. I didn't want to trick him into signing a lease with various terms; I wanted him to know what he was signing so that I could hold him to it if there ever was a dispute between us.

In sum, I am no longer stressed about the whole situation. I am ready to move out of this place, and I am ready to tell the landlord that we are no longer interested in the apartment and that we are planning to move out as soon as we find an apartment or house acceptable to move into. The hindrance here is that my wife (and I) really like the apartment and its location within the community, and I want to avoid the ordeal of hiring a U-Haul, packing everything up all over again (we haven't unpacked yet because we knew there were issues with the landlord, but nevertheless we have unpacked a good number of boxes just to find items needed for daily use) and moving all over again with a new set of negotiations and a new lease negotiation, etc. Plus, unlike the last time we moved, now I am employed and so any moving will have to be on a Sunday, which will cut into the only day I have available to rest from the work week. All this being said, the landlord *is* a problem, and they have caused us much stress, and we don't expect them to cause us any fewer problems in the future. Lastly, we expect problems from them regarding the security deposit when we move out, and I am not so sure I want to enter into an agreement knowing down the like the landlord is likely to breach that agreement upon us leaving.

Letter to friend about what is happening with us.

Sam & Joy,

I took a job outside New York City which started on Jan 3rd, and so we moved to Crown Heights. We’re not so far away, except we’re having landlord issues (he keeps changing the terms on us and won’t sign a lease) and so we might need to find another apartment. Last week (my first week on the job) I almost got fired for taking off early on Friday afternoon for Shabbos. With the new job and all my free time sucked away, it’s difficult to take care of everything, especially with one car and pressures from work to be the super-worker and not ever taking lunch because they are looking at me negatively from the Shabbos issue.

My wife, my son, and I do appear to be cocooning a bit, but that is because she is stuck at home without a car or internet, I am stuck at work with the car but no time, and our son is as cute as ever growing into a little boy who is starting to make talking sounds. My work is over an hour away from the house, but this was the best Jewish community with reasonable rent within driving distance, so to schlep my wife and our son with me to work just to give her the car for a few hours (driving home and back will take close to 3 hours of driving alone) is a big hassle for everybody.

We’re not unpacked, and we have no washer or dryer. We have no telephone service at the house (landlord won’t release their phone line to us), and no internet (now I’m using a weak wi-fi signal to connect, albeit the connection is SLOW). So we’re kind of in a tough place right now, but this is the best place we’ve ever been yet. We just have to let things figure themselves out with time.

We’ll resurface soon and will invite you guys over to our house (wherever we end up living) soon, or we’ll go over there soon. I’m just trying to figure out the details because things are difficult now from so many angles.

How are you doing?

Zoe

Lease Term Dealbreakers.

Okay, here are the terms of the lease that we agreed to when we gave our first month's rent and agreed to rent the apartment. The rent we are paying is higher than the norm, but that is because we were promised some benefits that were recently taken away by the landlord's adult children.

Firstly, the landlords agreed to rent the apartment as an annual lease with us (tennant) having the option to renew the lease for 3-5 years. After we moved in, the landlord's wife came over and said that we can't stay here longer than a year.

Next, when we agreed to pay security, they also wanted us to pay the last month's rent as well. We were okay with that for a 3-5 year lease, but now that they changed the deal to a one-year lease, we are not willing to agree to pay last month's rent for a one-year lease. This wasn't the deal, especially because we have every intention of applying the security to the last month's rent (and we have nothing wrong with telling them that. All that would happen is that 30 days before the lease is over, we would invite the landlords over for a walk-through inspection. If they find no damage which would make them apply a claim against our security, we would apply the security to the last month's rent. If they find damage, then we wouldn't apply the security and we would resolve their damage claim.)

Additionally, we are nervous to even give a security deposit to them in the first place because (with good reason and many examples) we are convinced that they have every intent on trying to keep the security deposit at the end of the lease term, regardless of whether we cause any damage to the property. Nevertheless, we are still willing to give the security deposit.

Next, when they showed us the house, we were told there was a working washing machine and dryer that we were to have exclusive access to. When her son moved out, he took the washing machine with him, leaving us a broken washing machine. Oh, and the dryer is now broken too. When we approached the son about it, he said, "we never provide washing machines nor do we provide dryers to tenants as a rule. Whatever my parents said was wrong and we are not providing this." Both myself and my wife believe that having a W/D was an essential part of the apartment; we would never have rented it without one.

Lastly, there are repairs that must be made before the house becomes bearable. Firstly, we have only one key to the apartment, and the door lock is so old that when we made copies of keys (twice), they did not work. Sharing a key with my wife (where both of us go out during the day, me to work and her shopping) will be highly convenient. Secondly, the top lock (which is required for safety because our door is accessed from outside which isn't the safest neighborhood in the world) has no key. The landlord's son told us to buy a replacement lock and he'll replace it; we purchased the lock, but for days now he hasn't replaced it. Same deal with the showerhead -- there was none. They told me to purchase a replacement, and I did, but it's sitting there with the lock. Additionally, the landlord broke our halogen light bulb when he touched it, and has not replaced it even though we have a replacement bulb.

All of these things might seem like little things, but to us they were dealbreakers. And the fact that the landlord is *still* a no-show shows us the kind of respect he has for us. After all this waiting, it looks to me that I will have a conversation tonight where we will decide that at the end of the month, we will be moving out of this apartment for good.

Landlord giving us lease issues.

My wife and I are sitting here in our unlit living room waiting for the real landlord to show up and negotiate a lease with us... It has almost been two weeks, and we have still not unpacked because we have felt uneasy in our new home because our landlords, as nice as they appear to be, keep acting all innocent and then keep doing things that are totally sledgehammer sneaky. The latest event was our lease.

Since we moved in (and even since we initially negotiated the rent for the apartment), we have been asking almost daily for the lease. The landlords have been hoo-ha'ing and playing dumb about not having the lease. ...then yesterday, the landlord's daughter shows up with the most nasty, one-sided, evil lease agreement that I have ever seen, with 42 clauses in it which by breathing puts us in danger of being in breach and losing all of our deposits and getting forcibly ejected from the premises. My Rabbi thinks that they gave us this lease with the knowledge and intention that we *don't* sign it and that we will leave. Alternatively, if we did sign it, by living a regular daily life, we would be guaranteed to breech and would almost certainly expose ourselves to being sued and losing all of our possessions.

So I pulled down a standard New York Residential Lease which is a simple lease based on the laws of New York, and I set up an appointment with the landlord for him to come over at 9pm (that was five minutes ago) to discuss the lease terms and to sign the lease. The landlord was a no-show. Instead, his daughter came over again asking about the lease she gave me yesterday. I told her the lease was one-sided and was not acceptable, and that we would not sign it. She happily said, "Oh, well I have another lease at my house." I walked over with her and she gave me a slightly more friendly, but still one-sided lease. I'm waiting now, however, for her father to come over so that we can talk about the lease, landlord to tenant. Apparently, she didn't know that her father was coming over. Or, maybe it was her father that sent her over in the first place.

Either way, again, the landlord is a no-show, and we're not signing the lease until certain pre-agreed essential terms are placed in the lease, and the daughter has neglected to insert them, even after we stressed that they must be in the lease.

So in short, this is a tough situation. The daughter of the landlord plays such a sweet innocent role, but then she has sharp teeth and has a strong bite by trying to convince us to sign an unacceptable lease. I'll go over the terms in the next e-mail.