Mini Zine Mission: Accomplished!

Mini Zine March 2024 has proven to be a great success and it’s not even over yet.

It’s the first time I participate in this challenge, so I’m very proud of myself to have completed the limited series of mini zines about languages that I planned on making this month. That is seven mini zines of around 16-24 pages each.

What I’m really proud of is that I decorated the zines and the pages all by hand. I designed the cover also by hand and used regular color crayons for that purpose so they all came out nice and colorful.

In some of the zines. I used pictures I printed from Google, but most of the drawings and decorations, I made by hand. So that was a new skill I taught myself because I never used such decorations for my zine pages before. I usually use backgrounds I print from Google or from flyers I collect around town. Sometimes I use Washi tape for decorations as well. But this time, I decided to challenge myself and draw stuff by hand. Sometimes the drawings fit the theme of the respective zine, sometimes they didn’t, but either way, I used them simply as decorations to make the zines more aesthetically appealing.

The covers were also a challenge for me. I attempted to use different fonts for the name of the series (“Speaking in Tongues”) and the second name of each issue. But all these fonts were once again made by hand. At times, I looked up funky fonts on Google, and copied the letters by hand, decorated it with the color crayons and organized it on the cover with a color background I drew.

Seeing the final product come together was so satisfying, I decided to use that same method for some of my future zines too.

After I finished the last issue, I was happy, but also felt a sense of loss because I had no more zines to work on. And the fact that I got a chance to use my zine room for its original purpose was so exciting, and now that I won’t need to use it anymore until International Zine Month was rather sad.

I’m considering making an ongoing zine that I will type on typewriter and decorate by hand with color crayons, and only work on it in my zine room. That way, anytime I finish a zine, I won’t feel that same sense of loss because I’ll still have my ongoing zine to work on!

These last days of Mini Zine March will be used for printing the zines and sending them to my zine friends and anyone who might be interested in checking out this series in all its hard-copy glory. Later on, I’ll also add it to my Ko-Fi shop so people can download it in PDF format as well.

Now here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Speaking in Tongues
Issue 1 – Intro
Issue 2 – Hadaß Badaß
Issue 3 – Maudite Marde
Issue 4 – Ich liebe Deutsch!
Issue 5 – Enunciate It
Issue 6 – Broken Tongues
Issue 7 – I Dream in Tongues

Peace, love and zine challenges kick ass!

Speak Zine to Me

At long last, I started working on a zine.

It’s been a while since I considered writing a zine about languages, but I just recently started putting some words down on paper. I found out I had a lot to say about it but I’m not really up for making a long and text-heavy zine about languages, so I figured I could divide all the text I wrote into different sections and make a limited series of mini-zines on the subject.

Then I thought, Hey, Mini-Zine March is coming up, and although I never participate in it, maybe this year will be different, and this mini-zine collection will be a chance for me to take part in it for the first time!

I also think I’m not going to plan my month and write a list of prompts for every day or week or bunch of days. I think I’ll just play it by feel, write a zine whenever it works out, lay it out in the office or in my zine room at home, take my time and take it easy.

I’m super excited for it and I really hope it works out! Wish me luck!

Peace, love and German is still my favorite language!

For Better or Best

In my last post, I wrote about the Year Compass.

So I did indeed fill it out and it really did help me put things in perspective and plan my year ahead in a practical and realistic way that would help me reach my goals for this year.

I feel inspired and dedicated to improve my quality of life. Here are some of the things I would like to achieve or change:

1. Eating healthier: Since I already started cutting down on my meat intake, that’s already a step in the right direction. I decided that this year, I should also cut down on chocolate and chips. I mean, not completely because if I have to stop eating chocolate, I rather die. But instead, I use these foods as rewards for success in my other achievements. I also started buying treats and snacks that might be a little healthier than the ones I do eat – like instead of a chocolate bar, have a banana- and chocolate-flavored oatmeal bar. Instead of regular potato chips, have the ones that are based on other root veggies like beets and sweet potato. I also started looking into more recipes with lentils. Since I don’t eat meat, lentils is the next best thing as a healthy replacement. I recently made a very decent batch of Mujaddara (yes, I had to look it up on Google to figure out the spelling) and was so proud of myself, it was definitely worth a chocolaty reward!
2. Exercising for better posture: I found a nice 10-minute workout on YouTube by Emi Wong to help me improve my question-mark-shaped back. I do it every day now and am pretty happy with it. I would definitely want to add more exercises later on (like stretching, abs, legs, etc.) but for now, I really enjoy my 10 minutes. I also want to get back to swimming, but as I may have mentioned before, winter is not the best time for that, and I’m still waiting to get back to my regular work hours so that I can be sure I can actually afford a membership for the pool.
3. Learning a new skill: I was thinking about continuing my German studies on Duolingo, or researching how to compost in Israel, but then I came up with the best idea. I want to improve my handwriting! OK, so it’s not really learning a new skill because I know how to write. Duh! But it is an improvement on one. That counts too. I watched a few YouTube videos with tips on how to improve my penmanship – especially necessary for my zine-making – and printed some worksheets. I will practice this technique for the upcoming year. I’m very excited about this!
4. Reduce my time on social media: I find this is so important for my mental health. Stupidity and hate on social media runs rampant and I am in no mood for their shit anymore. How to achieve this? Go analog and write a damn zine! Zines are definitely in my plans this year, and they always are.
5. Write more in my journal: That’s also an effort to improve my mental health. I actually wrote that instead of writing on WordPress, pick up my journal instead. And I have done that for the past several days and wrote more or less what this post says. So this is just an update for my online friends. But yes, I brought out my collection of Washi tapes and also bought a few more sticky decorations for planners and journals on Etsy, all of this in an effort to inspire me in my journal writing efforts.
6. The biggie – Improving my sleeping patterns: This one is the most difficult, but if successful, the most rewarding challenge for me this year. I got my body so used to sleeping during the day that I didn’t realize how much time I waste by sleeping so much! And I’m always so fucking tired. I don’t sleep enough during the night because I have to wake up at 5:30 every morning (any later and I’ll be running late for work and my kid will be late for school). I’m considering going to sleep earlier the night before, but that’s also pretty impossible because these later hours are the only time I have to spend with my husband after my kid is in bed. We sit around, watch TV, eat snacks, usually a platter of fruits or veggies… And spending time with my husband, who I don’t see all day, is necessary for both of us. But I can change it a little bit, like going to sleep at 22:00 instead of 23:00. And not napping during the day definitely helps me with that.

OK, so this is my update for now.

Back to my journal!

Peace, love and hazelnut-flavored oatmeal milk

Due North 2024

I just watched the latest Happy Mail Monday video by the awesome and amazing Silver Nyx. I try to watch every new one when it becomes available because it really makes me happy and inspired and all the wonderful stuff to start the week (or in my case, continue the week because mine starts on Sunday, but whatever).

This week, the video did not disappoint, and aside from the pretty zines that were showcased, Nyx mentioned the website Year Compass. I never heard of it before, but when I went to check it out, it really intrigued me and I decided to give it a shot.

Year Compass is a booklet that helps you put your past year in perspective and plan for the next year. In past years I sometimes wrote a recap of the year that ends, and a list of resolutions for the one that follows. As opposed to this open-ended way of doing things, the Year Compass focusses on specific elements in an interesting and introspective way. The tone is positive and relaxed. It encourages productivity without being overwhelming. For me, I really like the fact that it inspires me to look deeper – what is it I really want for myself this year?

Since October, things have been painful, depressing, dark and doomy… and scary! Plenty scary. But maybe the New Year will bring about better times, or at least uneventful times, a little quiet, a little joy, a little easy on the old brain tissue, and most of all, peace. And maybe the Year Compass can help me find my mental north, and make it clear where I am going and where I want to go and how to get there.

If you’re also looking to find your north for this new year, check out Year Compass. It might help you out, even if just a little.

Peace, love and ease up and ease in

A Dog is Forever

Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I come across many posts from Jerusalem Loves Animals – this is the organization that we adopted Diamond from. They always post pictures of their dogs who are looking for homes, including their stories, how old they are, how long they were in the shelter, the foster homes they went to, what kind of dogs they are (playful, loving, challenging, docile, energetic, etc.).

With every post I read, my heart gets decimated. I always wish I had a bigger house and more time on my hands so that I could adopt another dog, or two or three or all of them. The stories that kill me the most are the ones of dogs who get adopted by a family who didn’t know what to expect and had no prior experience in owning and raising dogs. And these dogs always return to the shelter for the most ridiculous reasons. Like the other day, I read a story of a dog who was returned to the shelter because he had an accident at home. This family should have been told that dogs do not know how to use the bathroom and if you don’t take them out, they will do their business inside the house. That’s like giving up a baby because they soiled their diaper. Yes, that’s what they do, and it’s what dogs do, too.

During the holiday season, I hear of a lot more dogs who go to shelters because the family who received the dog as a Christmas present were not ready for the challenges that come with having a dog as a pet. It’s not a goldfish. Especially when the dog is a puppy. Even on the posts from Jerusalem Loves Animals, whenever they post about a puppy for adoption, they specifically say “Anyone who is interested in adopting will need to know what having a puppy means.” Unfortunately not everybody does.

People say that having a puppy is like having a baby, and that’s absolutely true. There are many reasons for that:

1. A puppy requires 24/7 care. If you leave the house for hours at a time (like going to work or going out of town), you either need to take the puppy with you or have a doggysitter come in to take care of the dog, walk him, feed him, play with him, spend time with him, clean up after him, etc. You can’t leave the puppy alone just like you wouldn’t leave your baby alone.
2. A puppy needs proper training. Puppies act out, play naughty, nip and chew things and destroy property because they have a surplus of energy and don’t know any better. You can’t possibly expect a baby to teach itself anything anymore than you can expect the dog to train itself. Spending time with the dog and training it with positive reinforcement is imperative for any puppy and it will also grow up to be a loyal, obedient, friendly and loving companion.
3. Puppies need to be toilet trained. Toilet training a puppy is probably the most challenging part of raising a dog. The younger the dog, the harder it is. A puppy needs to be crated for that purpose. The dog needs to get used to sleeping and eating in a crate, and spending the entire night in the crate. A dog’s natural instinct is to not poop and pee where it eats or sleeps, so when the puppy is in its crate and suddenly needs to go, it will cry and bark to be let out of the place where it eats and sleeps. And yes, this will happen during the night too. Just like having a baby, you will need to get up in the middle of the night several times, to take the dog out. The older it gets, the dog eventually learns that the only place he can go is outside.
4. Older dogs have accidents too. If they eat something that doesn’t agree with them or they get some sort of stomach virus, they will poop around the house. When that happens, you don’t take the dog back to the shelter. You take it to the vet. And you clean up after it. If you can wipe your baby’s bum when you change their diaper, and change your kid’s pee-soaked sheets when they have an accident in bed, you can sure as fuck clean up after your dog. That includes picking up after them when they poop outside. It’s common decency.
5. Dogs get sick. Dogs are living beings. Living beings get sick sometimes. The vet is expensive but necessary. You will not let your baby suffer when they get sick. Same thing goes for your dog. For better or for worse, they are now a part of your family, and you need to treat them as such.
6. Dogs get dirty. And they also dirty up the house. Sometimes they play in the mud, they track dirt around the house when they come back from being outside, they shed A LOT, fur will get on everything. Can you honestly say that babies are clean freaks? Babies get food all over their face and hair and clothes and the floor, they draw on the walls, they tear up books and photo albums, and they will bring a bunch of germs and lice home with them when they come back from daycare and share it with the entire family. If you can handle that, you can handle a dog. Also, dogs are smelly. But believe me when I say that dogs think you stink too because they have a better sense of smell than you.

Sadly, people still adopt puppies thinking “Oh, they’re so cute and fluffy,” and assume it will be like having a cute little doll sitting quietly around the house looking pretty. If that’s what you want, buy a doll. Having a dog, and especially a puppy, is a major sacrifice. If are ready and willing to handle all the hardships, you will reap all the amazing rewards that come with having a dog. That’s another thing that is like having a baby. It’s difficult, but so worth it. But you need to be ready for that.

If I had the means to adopt another dog, I would definitely go for it. But having a dog is not for everybody. So this holiday season, please, please, please do not give a puppy as a present to anyone who does not know the challenges and requirements for taking care of a dog.

And also – adopt, don’t shop.

Peace, love and my lovely Diamond

Chasing Away the Darkness

I’m slowly getting back into the zine loop.

I think.

I hope.

The first thing I did as an effort to ease myself back into it was to complete the Picabook photo album I design every year. Ever since my daughter was born, pictures of her just keep piling up, and all of them are digital. And I’m not a fan of looking through digital pictures. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you just pick out a physical photo album and flip through it for your own pleasure. So every year, I would put together all of my daughter’s pictures from the past year and design the photo album online. Once it’s done, I send it in for publishing.

So, yes it’s true. It’s not a zine by any means, but the feeling of completing the album and seeing it come together on paper is similar to the feeling I get when I complete a zine – the satisfying feeling of accomplishment. Also, it’s gorgeous! I use the cutest clipart and backgrounds and designs and it looks marvelous. Definitely worthy of flipping through with pleasure.

The second thing I did was inspired by Silver Nyx’s latest Happy Mail Monday video. In many of her videos, she mentions a zinester called Billy the Bunny who creates the newsletter Desert Sun and publishes it every month, without fail. I commented on the video that I really admire zinesters who are consistent at printing their material, and that although I was just as consistent back when I started making zines (Fallopian Falafel), I could never do that now. Even my own newsletter, The Daily H, which was never meant to be daily in the first place, I’m having trouble writing. I said that this newsletter is supposed to be light and witty, and since my life has been awful in the recent months, I can’t write anything light or witty.

But then, I got inspired to give it a shot. Since I skipped ZineWriMo, I decided to write a new issue of The Daily H during this month of December instead of November, and try to give it a positive twist. And I did it!

Here is the first page of the new issue, number 5. Hot off the presses, just like fresh sufgies out of the deep-frying pan. This issue is all about my attempts of finding positivity in the negativity, just in time for Hanukkah, during which we use light to fight off the darkness.

Drop me a line if you want a copy. I give these sweet published sufgies out for free!

I hope that the new year brings about more positive things and further inspiration for me to write an actual zine. It’s about time!

Peace, love and powdered sugar

Kein Fleisch

This post is about food and before I get started I need to say this:

I really hate the preachers. You know who I’m talking about. Those vegans who will talk your ears off about the health benefits of vegan food versus the health hazards of animal products, or how the meat/dairy industry is torturing animals, or how “humane” kosher butchering is total bullshit, or how you’re practically eating corpses…

I don’t understand how it is that in a community of feminists, fat-positive people, people who have most likely struggled with eating disorders and body image issues, there are those people who don’t shy away from shaming others about the food that they eat. Imagine a girl who has been struggling with anorexia, finally working on her illness and manages to eat a piece of schnitzel. Telling her she’s eating the corpse of a tortured chicken will put her right back in square one. And you don’t know what a person is struggling with. If cheese and pizza and ice cream is their source of comfort food, the inhumane treatment of animals in dairy farms in the last thing they need to hear. Let people enjoy the food they eat and shut your fucking face.

Same thing goes for the carnivores who make fun of vegans. If tofu and legumes happens to be these people’s comfort food or main source of nutrition, that’s their choice and you should also shut your face.

With that said, I would like to let all of you know that I have decided to come out of the pantry and become vegetarian. This is not for any kind of ideological reasons but straight-up because my stomach has finally informed me that it can no longer digest meat. Every time I eat meat, I get crippling stomach aches and tortured visits to the toilet.

Back in Madrid and also on my trip to Eilat, I ate nothing but salads, dairy products, eggs and fish, and I felt perfectly fine. So it’s also worth mentioning that I will never become vegan because if it wasn’t for dairy products, eggs and fish, I’d probably be dead. As a general rule, I don’t like to eat at all (more on that below). But I especially don’t like any of the substitute foods that vegans eat. I don’t like legumes, I don’t like tofu, I absolutely despise nuts and anything that has nuts in it, I hate any kind of veganized foods like vegan pizza, vegan ice cream, vegan cake, I can just taste the “vegan” in it and it disgusts me. So vegetarian it is.

And yes, I really do not like eating at all. I think it’s a waste of fucking time. First the cooking, then the dishes, then eating, then more dishes, then going to the bathroom… I can think of much better things to do with my time than eating. And eating meat makes me fleischig, so it’s an even bigger waste of time before I can get my dairy grindage.

The other day at my drawing class, we got into a conversation about food. I told my teacher that I don’t like to eat, but I still do.

“So what you mean is, you eat just to stay alive,” he said. And I couldn’t have said it better myself.

When cooking and dishes is not an issue, I might enjoy food a little more. On my side of the family, being full Moroccans, my family loves to eat, and there is a good amount of vegan and vegetarian members in my family. So I will probably have no trouble finding my veggie grub at my family’s table.

On my husband’s side, there are no vegans and no vegetarians. Being a family of Moroccans and Kurds, they are also major foodies and avid meat-eaters. Veggie grub does make an appearance on the dinner table but it’s worth mentioning that I will probably be unable to resist my mother-in-law’s kubbeh or chicken soup. So on the occasions when she makes these, I will partake – but no more than once a week or two – and suffer the digestive consequences should they arise.

I guess that makes me an almost-vegetarian.

Peace, love and eat the meat, hahaha!

When Your Favorite Month Sucks

While October is generally my favorite month of the year, this year it sucked so fucking hard that my jaw aches just trying to imagine sucking so hard.

The first week was ok, I guess. My birthday was nice. We went to see a horror movie which is always a treat. The rest of the week was chol hamoed Sukkot, so there was the Rally, which I can’t really talk about because it was in a secret location, but it was pretty nice too. On October 5, we took a 30-minute plane ride to Eilat for the weekend, and Eilat is always fun, and it was, until Saturday when all hell broke loose.

That Saturday, October 7, we woke up in the morning planning to go to the beach one last time before catching the plane back home. But as we all know, shit started going down and by that point, our will to do anything at all just collapsed.

Since that day, things went from bad to worse. When we got back to Jerusalem, we had to stay at home. On the week of October 8 and the week of October 15, schools stayed closed. Our office also stayed closed. I had to try and keep my daughter busy as she was bored beyond belief. And I was also trying my best to keep her from stumbling upon any reports and videos about the war that are not intended for young audiences.

The following week, that is the week of October 22, we got word that the schools will open again on Monday. While all the parents were freaking out about sending their kids to school (and rightly so. It’s fucking terrifying out there), I was looking forward to getting back to some semblance of a routine, and going back to work.

As luck would have it, the morning of October 23, enter the last installment of shit to be delivered this month. Before dropping my daughter off at school, my husband dropped me off at the bus station. It’s probably a temporary station because of all the construction going on around this area, so they didn’t build a proper sidewalk, and instead just placed a long block of concrete to separate it from the street. I missed that block, placed my foot on it at a wrong angle, twisted my ankle and slammed to the floor. I injured my right knee and my left ankle so that both my legs were in pain and I was limping like a complete invalid.

The whole day, I was depressed and kept flashing back to the time I broke my elbow, remembering all the shit I had to go through until it healed – two surgeries, implantation of a platinum plate, about eight months of physical therapy, permanent injury I feel until today… I burst out crying thinking what if I have to go through all that again, and this time with BOTH my legs.

That evening, my husband took me to the emergency clinic where they found I had no break (and what a relief that was, thank the Goddess), but they still bandaged my ankle and my knee. They offered me some painkillers but I refused, remembering full-well what these painkillers do to me (i.e. extreme dizziness and nausea) and preferring to take the pain like a woman with a healthy pair of ovaries instead.

I’m still in pain and the bandages are still on. I remove them only when I shower or go to sleep. I have trouble standing myself up and sitting back down. My ankle is still swollen, but less than before. I have nice black bruises on either sides of my heel. My right knee is doing better but I still can’t put much weight on it when I bend it. I can walk but slowly and with a pronounced limp. I wear only my right shoe because the bandage on my left foot is too thick and none of my shoes fit over it.

So as you can imagine, with the wonderful fucking hell of a month that October was, I got no zines done as I had planned. Feeling the way I did, the only thing I wanted to do was to escape. So I spent most of my month reading Stephen King. I all but devoured his new book Holly, which my husband bought me for my birthday. Then, with all the references to the Hodges trilogy, I decided to go back and reread all three books. I finished Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers, and am now nearing the end of the third installment, End of Watch. I just might go on to read the other two books that feature Holly Gibney – the novel The Outsider and the short story If It Bleeds.

Stephen King, man. The only thing in this month that did not disappoint. Fucking brilliant author.

October is supposed to be a spooky month. But it’s supposed to be spooky fun. Instead, it was terrifying and awful. November will probably be just as awful. Tomorrow, November 1, ZineWriMo begins. When the prompts were posted, I was still too sad and depressed to be happy about it. I still don’t know if tomorrow my mood will improve enough for me to be able to do any of the prompts. Doesn’t seem likely. I mean, put yourself in my shoes (or rather in my right shoe – the only one that fits), and try to function like a normal human being when sirens keep going off all around you, and running to the shelter is not an option because both of your legs are fucked up, so you waddle to the shelter as fast as your fucked up legs will allow and hope that no rocket falls on your head before you get there. Now, keeping that in mind, try to get inspired about ZineWriMo. Pretty impossible, right? Well, there you go.

Peace, love and you know what, no. No peace, no love. GIVE THEM HELL!!

Iron Swords

Those who know me know that, as a general rule, I never write about Israeli politics or the Conflict.

But shit is going down and emotions happen. And maybe I should talk about it, at least a little. We’re all sad, we’re all on edge, we don’t know when or where the next rocket will fall or when the next siren will sound. We don’t know if we’ll see our kidnapped loved ones again. And we have no idea when this will ever end.

I’ve been reading posts and watching videos soaking with polarized emotions – ranging from heartbreak to hopefulness to utter unabated rage. I’m an angry person by nature and sometimes my emotions get the best of me, and the monster comes out. So as a result, after all the tears have been shed, nothing is left but rage. And it’s not just rage at our enemies, but rage at the world as whole who don’t know Shit One about Israel and think they have the right to pass judgement on our actions and how we choose to respond to acts of terror that threaten our very existence. If you’re one of those people, my rage is directed at you. Kindly get a brain and fuck off.

As a Libra, it totally fucks me up as the peacemaker I’m expected to be. Peace seems to be the furthest thing from reality right now. It will solve nothing. As I told my friend Henry from Brazil, we live in between ceasefires. But it never really ceases.

We received many guidance letters on how to present the situation to children to avoid panic or trauma. How to explain the sirens to them, how to remain calm while heading to or staying in the shelter, how to keep them away from news on TV or newspapers, how to have a semblance of a routine to keep them balanced. I’m still trying to keep it together. Not for myself, but only for my kid, although I don’t know if that’s even necessary. So far, nothing especially traumatic happened to us, so none of these regulations applied for us yet. When the siren rings, it’s relatively far from our neighborhood so it’s not as loud as it gets in the center of town. My kid seems to be handling the situation pretty well. She’s rather apathetic about the whole deal and simply happy to be spending quality time with her mother at home. The other day, we didn’t even hear the siren, but we did hear explosions in the distance. I turned in that direction and said “What was that?” knowing full-well what it was. But my daughter completely blew my mind when she said in the most nonchalant way: “It’s the explosions of the war,” and went on playing with her playdoh set. No panic, no sobbing, no fear, nothing.

When we were in Tel Aviv this past Saturday, on our way back home from Eilat, we were outside the airport waiting for the shuttle bus when pretty loud explosion went off further away from us. We didn’t even hear the siren if there even was one, and once the blasts were heard, everyone winced and drew away in unison, then scattered to seek shelter. My kid noticed nothing and heard nothing. I don’t know if it’s selective hearing or whatever, but she was completely oblivious to what had just happened. While I was clearly panicking and trying to decide if we should head to the shelter and where it even is, my kid turns to me and says: “Mommy, I’m hungry. When do we get to eat?” or “Mommy, I want a burger!” or “Mommy, when do we get home?” (patience is not her strong suit). But no shaking, no crying and no “Mommy, I’m scared,” or anything like that.

Sometimes I feel like shaking her awake and screaming into her face that we are in mortal danger, but of course I won’t do that unless I want to thoroughly traumatize the poor kid. But if she’s not showing any feelings, I would actually like to know if it’s because she doesn’t completely understand what is going on, or if she actually does understand and this is her way of coping with it. Is any of this healthy? I don’t fucking know. But I think that keeping her away from the news on TV or on social media is a always a good idea. The news are what gets the emotions stirring, so it’s best to keep it to a minimum.

Who was it who said “If you don’t read the news, you’re uninformed. If you do read the news, you’re misinformed”? So I decided to go for the cleaner of the two. As long as she knows that siren=drop everything and run to the shelter, I think we’ll be fine. As for everything else, ignorance is bliss. I don’t want her to feel scared. I don’t want her to know about the kids who were killed or were kidnapped. I don’t want her to feel the rage that I feel right now.

As for the terror-supporters worldwide, reckon the force that is the Eternal Jew. People have tried to destroy us for generations and failed miserably. We’re indestructible. Keep that in mind.

Peace, love and Am Israel Chai.

Have Fun, No Stress, Just Zines!

Zinetober is approaching and I don’t have much time to do any serious planning because the holidays get in the middle of everything. The holidays are like my dog, who likes to play carpet in the most inconvenient place in the house, and we have to plan our route around her. Similarly, we have to plan our plans around the holidays, lest we trip over them.

At first, I was thinking of making a nice and detailed prompts list, general enough so that I can share it with people who might want to participate and they can use that prompts list as a guide.

But the holidays are taking carpet-mode this year, so serious planning is out. Instead, I decided to not stress myself out and make my own prompts list, similar to what I did on IZM when the official prompts list was late. Selfish, I know, but hey, you say selfish, I say self-care. So there.

And since the following month of November is a bastard of a packed month for me every year, what with ZineWriMo and my daughter’s birthday and the Picabook photo album I am running so behind on this year, I need to make sure my Zinetober is one that fits me just right, so that I don’t go crazy and burn the fuck out.

Stress is the last thing I want for this month. I spoke to silver Nyx about this about a week ago and shared with her the mantra I made a design for earlier on: “Have fun, no stress, just zines!” I should put that at the very top of my Zinetober prompts list!

*Applying it as title for this post*

Also, I decided to use the “bunches of days” prompts format and wrote a separate prompt for every week of October. It could work well if I want to write weekly round-up posts as I usually do for such months. It also works well because October 1 is a Sunday – in Israel, the first day of the week. In Hebrew, we literally call it the “First Day” (and yes, the rest are the Second Day, the Third day, and so on). So yeah – the first day of the week and the first day of the month, is the first day of Zinetober! Perfection!

All the zines I’m planning on might turn out to be mini-zines or not, depending on my level of energy. So here are my make-like-a-Libra, no-stress, just-zines, don’t-go-crazy, have-a-fucking-blast-but-don’t-burn-out plans for Zinetober:

October 1 to 7: The week of Chol Hamoed Sukkot, when I’ll be spending lots of quality time with my kid at home should be the perfect time to work on Ima Badass issue 2! Review my last seven years as a parent. Include an interview with my kid, and add a short “Eden Says” section with wise quotes I collected from my kid.

October 8 to 14: This is the week following my trip to Eilat with my husband and my kid. So clearly, write a zine about my trip to Eilat, including pictures, stories, an account of my kid’s first time on a plane, and all the good stuff.

October 15 to 21: Since October is my birthday month, I was thinking of writing a zine that lists one thing I learned in each year of my life. This is a zine idea I got from one of Silver Nyx’s blog posts. Since I’m turning 41, I don’t know how no-stress this zine will be. That’s a lot of fucking years!

October 22 to 28: InterZine! This will be a zine incorporating some more of Silver Nyx’s zine ideas, mostly to do with the internet. It will include stuff like random article surfing on Wikipedia, play around with online generators, and save the date for one 24-hour day without internet – that is no phone, no WhatsApp, no photos, no music, no TV (when our internet is down, our TV doesn’t work), go-full-on-Amish mode. If I could, I would have made it a week with no internet, but like, I still need to go to work.

October 29-31: Quickie Mini – a short round-up of Zinetober and my plans for ZineWriMo.

What about you? Will you be participating in Zinetober? If so, what are your plans? For prompt ideas, you can totally check out Instagram for other zinesters who take part in this challenge and maybe they won’t be as selfish as me!

Peace, love and happy new year 5784!