Dear Santastein,
The GIJoe doll last year was super amusing. Good one. But seriously, this year could my Man please be present in my stocking? Yeah, i know i'm jew-flavour but i like doing the stocking. Be happy, im buying into your red&white version of christmas. So - back to business. I'd like for him to be an amalgamation of Oz in Buffy (perhaps he could also maybe look like, or actually BE seth green?) - he of the black nail polish, monosyllabicness and guitar strumming - George in Grey's Anatomy (messy, bumbling, sensitive, witty, wounded) Jack Johnson (for the lyrics and the woman-loving. Pesach in Hawaii? yes please) and lastly - Ray Lamontagne, he of the raspy voice - "..battered, bitter and beseiged, devastated and uncomprehending.." . C'est possible?

"Its so easy to get caught up in your own experiences," LaMontagne says. "They can seem so important. But there are billions and billions of other experiences going on. I guess the album is just me trying to look at things beyond myself, wondering what it is to be alive and what it's all about. I do get into my own experiences — I put the blinders on, in that sense, just dealing with my own life events. But then I try to open the blinders back up again, at the end."

The thing with shidduchim is, that I dont actually want to be one. I dont want to be someone else's success story, someones secure place in heaven. I want to meet someone in a Borders. We'll be browsing the same aisle, I think. He'll notice the pile of pseudo-intellectual books I'm carrying around with me and think "Interesting choices.. wow, good hair!"

The alternative, being set up, is often too grim to contemplate. It's disheartening, and increasingly humiliating. Not for me, seeing as I'm opting out of that whole scene, but for friends of mine who are going through it. People (and by 'people' i fully intend to imply frum women wearing sheitels) should be banned entirely from setting singletons up on the basis of "well she's frum, and he's frum, and they both have jobs". I am woman, hear me SHRIEK. Who does that?! London may be stagnant, but surely we can do better than that!

There are so many reasons to move, to get on the plane, to pack up my books, to leave behind the theatre and good shopping and afternoon tea and scones, best friends and seeing my nephews every Friday. But i want to have my own little ones! I want to find someone. And i need to move to even think about it. I'm imagining being able to go to the kotel whenever i want... will i go often enough, knowing it's just a bus ride away?

So much to think about, to worry about, be excited about. Will I survive this move?!

1 month tomorrow - 4 weeks tomorrow - 1 month tomorrow, I am MOVING TO ISRAEL!

Tomorrow I turn 25. I will have lived, come tomorrow, for a quarter of a century. I was reading an article recently about being born in the 90's. Growing up in a time of relative normalcy, when recording onto video was a novelty. There were no iPods, or HDtv. But I also didnt know about Jazz, or contemporary American literature. I hadnt discovered Ray Lamontagne until last week. Life moves, continously. It just seems like the wave is moving so fast. 5 minutes ago I was 18, running around Israel like it was my playground. Now I've graduated, have been working for a year of my Working Life, and am about to move back to that playground forever. Except on bad days, that playground seems like it's just exploding buses, rude, frustrated people, and a life of no money and continuous, heated political discussion. I know it's not, and I fully understand how much more it is than those things, but today's a bad day.
25, man..
On the eve of every birthday, I tend to look back and think "I'll never be 24 again." But this year I'm going to try and think, "dude, 25 is going to be a fabulous year". And mean it!

I think I'll head to bed, listen to a little Jack Johnson. And no Dido. Definetely no Dido.

Turk: "Yo JD where's my Dido cd?"
JD: " If my heart could sing, this is what it would sound like" - Hands cd back
- Scrubs