On the 4th Night of Hanukah

On the 4th night of Hanukah, the canter’s wife sent me a Farmville Christmas gift.  As did Sig Other’s kosher friend, Dan.  He won’t eat a meal in my house without checking first to make sure it vaguely adheres to the basics of kashrut.  And yet his Goyish farming alter-avatar-ego sent me a green wrapped gift to put under the tree I’m ignoring on my abandoned farm.  He has a tree on his farm as well.  But its hidden behind the barn so his son won't see.  Sig Other’s mother sent three brightly wrapped presents.  This is sort of less bad because she falls into the slightly more ambivalent category of immigrant agnostic.  All told, there are twelve gifts waiting to be accepted in my Farmville inbox.  And I’m ignoring them all.  I’ve not gone to check on my farm in days and it takes every ounce of will power in my exhausted, depleted body to NOT check on my trees, my animals, my sweet little snow covered cottage.  Poor Christian farm.  Poor abandoned, wilting, ignored Christian farm. 

I find it particularly challenging to ignore my farm this evening – I’ve tucked myself in before 9pm having survived and in fact triumphed with the success of last night’s Hanukah celebration.  Happy, adorable children stuffed themselves with gelt and donuts and ran themselves silly around a house filled with friends and gifts.  Child Two reigned supreme over an aggressive game of dreidel.  Sig Other presided beautifully over the lighting of the candles.  And I reveled in the joy of catching up with friends I see too little and love so much.  But now its done and I’m snuggled into bed with farting Beta Dog and my lovely AirBook and its all I can do to NOT go check on my farm. 

But on this fourth night of Hanukah, I will resist the urge to harvest, will resist the urge to plow and plant and will instead turn my energy to something more productive.  I will go catch up with my favorite news sites, catch up on friends’ blogs, perhaps even catch up on much needed sleep.  But I will miss my farm and my fellow farmers.  And so I take this opportunity to thank my Farmville neighbors for their gifts, which will remain unaccepted and unopened.  Happy Hanukah, former fellow farmers.  And a very merry Jewmas to you as well.