That's the number of days to go until Ian's Bar Mitzvah. I still can't wrap my mind around this upcoming milestone. I remember every bit of mine like it was yesterday and now, I've got a son about to become a bar mitzvah. Holy smokes!
187 days from now is going to be here before we know it. We are approaching Thanksgiving and you blink, it will be January 2018. I have a master to-do list of all the items that need to be taken care of, and then small to-do lists broken out by months on when to do them. I've been made fun of because of all I am trying to get done as early as possible. The more I feel I can accomplish now, the better I sleep at night. I've become obsessed, really. And I see no plans of stopping until it is May 13th. I am planning to take Monday, May 14th off from work and sleep the whole day.
I never intended to get caught up on all the traditional things that go into a bar mitzvah (programs, slide show, personalized kippah, centerpieces, party, entertainment, hotel room blocks, etc), but our original plan of doing a destination bar mitzvah in St. Thomas never really took off. Jeff, Ian and I fell in love with the idea of just going away and having the service in this really beautiful, very ancient synagogue, located in the Virgin Islands. I especially loved the part of not getting caught up in having to plan and execute a gazillion different things. The thought was, if you wanted to come, we'd love to have you, but we really wouldn't be expecting you to make the trip. We knew the immediate family would go; it would be an intimate gathering and no crazy fuss. For several reasons too long to go into here suffice to say we scrapped that idea and decided to keep it local.
Ha! So now we've gone in the complete opposite direction and this evening event on Saturday night is growing bigger by the week. It's going to be spectacular (we've got a very fun and awesome theme), and I am really excited. Ian is putting in the hard work studying and this party (dare I use my most favorite word "Extravaganza!") later that day will be very special and joyous as we celebrate. I don't do anything halfway and I'm all in. I've gone from one end of the spectrum to wanting to do the bare minimum and just show up, to already logging many hours of effort, planning, and worry on making this entire day a success.
It's funny, I am finding out a lot about myself that I probably already knew and its just become more apparent on this much bigger scale of planning needed, more than probably anything else we've done (other than our wedding). I have reconfirmed that my mind doesn't stop, ever! Subconsciously I am always thinking and can't let it go. For example, even after I invest more than 12 hours putting together a slide show and feel really great about it, I let it go for a week and find that in my sleep I am continually working on tweaking it. A week later, I give it another 1.5 hours and have turned it into a masterpiece in my opinion. I am so, so proud of it. Fortunately I have now viewed it more than a dozen times and no longer tear up watching it. So there's that.
I'm making progress on my to-do list and am now working on December and January's items. I'm still hoping for lots of snow days this winter to move things along. I've only got 187 days and there is a lot to do!
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