Author Archives: Ilene

Three Things That Make A Difference

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“Are you Mrs. Bernstein’s daughter?”  The attending physician asked as I rush through the double doors of the emergency room. I see my mother a few feet behind him, yet he directs me into a corridor, away from her.    What he says next comes to me in sound bytes.   “He collapsed…” “We’ve been waiting for you to get here…” ”Efforts to resuscitate have been unsuccessful….” Resuscitate? I knew this moment was coming, but that didn’t mean I was prepared for it.  My stepdad Milton had been sick for a number of months.   When he died on January 14, … Continue reading →

Fifty Shades of Shades

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I have a confession to make, and it’s not pretty. I have a dysfunctional relationship with sunglasses. Actually, one could go as far as calling me the sunglass sadist. I break my sunglasses constantly.  And these aren’t little injuries. They fall off the console in my car and get stepped on. They get tossed in the bottom of my bag and crushed by my wallet or scratched by keys. They get run over. They get eaten by my dogs. I’ll put it to you this way. People who did something very bad in a past life come back as a … Continue reading →

One Word

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My word came to me pretty easily.  I blogged about it before, actually –but it was before the word and I were officially going steady. A number of bloggers talked about picking a word to focus on for the year.  For Christine, it was “Intention.”  For Alison, it was “Do.”   Their posts encouraged me to take a word and make it mine.   (Of course, the word is now Sharpie tattooed on my belly). In lieu of a new year’s resolution, I like the idea of using a word to guide us.  In yoga, we use mantras, sounds that … Continue reading →

Balls

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Noah trotted into our living room as if he had lived here for years.  Our ninth foster dog, a Lhasa Apso mix, arrived the end of November from a shelter in Camden, New Jersey.      He was adorable, as you can see. But there was much more to Noah than this irresistible face. It was Noah’s “other end” that intrigued me. As Noah spent his first night with us, sniffing around the premises, I couldn’t help but notice his enormous set of balls. His balls were so big, they kind of got in the way of his being able … Continue reading →

Finding The Fire

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The end of 2012 hit with a bang – but not the kind of bang I expected.  We were sick this week, the kids and I.  Like, “super sick.”  The little one spiked a fever so high on Christmas night, that I was ready to drive her to the ER, until the Motrin, tepid baths, and cool wash cloths lowered her temperature “just enough” that I knew she was out of danger.  My older girl followed suit the next day, and then I came down with a full blown version of whatever they had which sent me begging my doctor … Continue reading →

Coming Home

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Hello, blogosphere!  I’m back! I’d like to tell you that I have been away on an exotic vacation.  To the islands, to an ashram, an African Safari. But in actuality, I’ve been hustling around New Jersey, as a mild mannered administrative assistant/freelance writer/yoga teacher by day, and budding entrepreneur by night (more on the entrepreneur thing later).  There has not been as much silence or pausing or deep thinking as I would have liked.  I’ve been working it, if you know what I mean. I’ve been working it so much that I hardly missed my blog as much as I … Continue reading →

The Pause

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I went seeking truth, the meaning of life, a higher spiritual plane. I wasn’t all that concerned with “chaturanga arms,” or “warrior thighs” or any of the other accoutrements promised by westernized yoga practitioners.  I needed to get down to brass tacks. Why are we here?  Why am I here? And what is the purpose of all of this? I was at a midlife crossroads.  On a treadmill for years of getting by, doing OK, at certain times, being highly successful doing things that I did not love to do.  Things that fed my family but did not feed my … Continue reading →

The Giving Pledge

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My great grandmother Ida was an off-the-boat immigrant from Russia.  Like most families who came through Ellis Island in the early 1900’s, she had nothing when she got to the United States. She and my great grandfather made a life for themselves on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  It was a modest life, if that.  No matter how tight money was in my great grandmother’s house, Ida put a few coins in her Pushka (Yiddish for Charity Box) every Friday night for the poor.  Because even though my family had little, Ida was keenly aware that there were others … Continue reading →

Baking A Difference

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I’m a Jersey girl.  A Jersey Shore girl to be exact.  I grew up in the city of Long Branch and now live in a small town on the bay shore, not far from Sandy Hook.  While the storm didn’t destroy my house or my car or my first floor in its wrath, I have taken the damage it caused personally.  New Jersey is my home. It is the home of my family and my friends and my friends’ families and their friends. I know people who lost everything.  Not statistics.  Actual people. I know people who had to run … Continue reading →

My Life in Numbers

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I don’t get to Greta Funk’s blog as often as I’d like, so when I stumbled upon her “My Life in Numbers” link up via Kristen, I thought, well here’s my chance to say hello to Greta while revealing myself in this rather clever fashion. Greta seems to depend on coffee just as much as I do.  We have also dropped out of college the same number of times (2).  And while I finally did get a degree, Greta went ahead and got 2 of them!   Although, like Greta, I have not done that much with my major either (English).  … Continue reading →