Tuesday, September 18, 2012

34th time's the charm.

As my dear friend Salihah would say, I made my 34th revolution around the sun last week. I didn't blog on that day because A) I had kind of a crappy day and B) I don't celebrate birthdays so posting about it would just frustrate people who wanted to wish me well and I only like frustrating people sometimes and those times are usually when I'm in a good mood and want to mess with some heads.

Please don't ever do this to your child.

Anywhoodles, I'm older and that's that.




I don't really care about age in general and I have never been one of those people who gets all freaked out at milestone birthdays, sitting around crying into a pint of Ben and Jerry's at 30, wondering why I haven't been skydiving yet. However I am single (ok, divorced) and looking to remarry and hopefully have children. These facts have led me to start acting less like Phyllis Diller and more like Liz Lemon lately.


Will I ever find a non-crazy, non-married, non-57-year-old-mustachioed-Pakistani-uncle to spend the rest of my life with? I know, I know, I just ended that sentence with a preposition. But that's what happens when you start to turn a little bit desperate. Grammar goes out the window and you start considering brothers whose profile taglines go like this: URthe1ment4me2luv.

Perhaps I've shared too much. Please don't stop reading my blog—I need you now more than ever!

ISLAM
I took an AlMaghrib class last weekend called Torch Bearers on some of Islam's most influential and inspiring scholars. Not all are well-known, and that's kind of the point of the class. It's not all about fame and notoriety. It's about the contributions made in the cause of Allah. Of course I don't have my notes with me to share the names and interesting info about them, but I'm also at work here so I should wrap this up quickly so I don't go over my break allotment. I'll make you a deal. I'll put together an awesome post about the scholars we studied within the next 72 hours or I won't be able to watch Netflix for a whole week. That should motivate me!

One thing I can share now—I got my first ijazah! No, it's not a weird form of henna tattoo or anything like that. An ijazah is a certificate of proof that a person learned a particular piece of knowledge or gained proficiency in a subject matter in person from his/her teacher. We learned a short hadeeth (saying of the Prophet Muhammad ) and our instructor personally signed an ijazah for each one of us. I'll take a pic of it at home later, but it's pretty cool to see the chain of narration going all the way back to the Prophet ﷺ and including three of the scholars we studied. I don't know how "official" it really is—it might be the Islamic equivalent of those little plastic badges kids get when they visit the police station—but it's still cool and I have one!


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EXERCISE
I didn't say this before, but the real reason I will never lament my birthday is that I love fall. Everyone's always griping about how fall means winter is coming and they just can't bear the thought of sub-zero temperatures again, but I really don't mind. If I ever had to move somewhere like Southern California where the seasons never change and everyone is roller skating to school in December or whatever I think I would die of boredom.

To celebrate fall's official and imminent arrival next week, I took a walk over my lunch break today. (I'm writing this during my 15-minute break in case you're keeping track.) The first leg of my journey was a little depressing because I work on an industrial street lined with duder shops (if you need to buy some corrugated cardboard, or your car needs body work, or there's something you need welded, you're in business).

Where the street ends in a roundabout is where a pretty nice park begins. I walked through it and imagined all of the physical activities I could take part in during fall's gloriously cool months. Volleyball, soccer, swinging ... and then I realized it was time to find an outdoor aerobic activity to get my blood pumping. I would love to get some ideas from you as to what I could do. It would be great if some ladies wanted to get together and shoot some hoops or learn broom ball with me, so team sports aren't out of the question.

Please comment with some out-of-the-box ideas and I will try to get some kind of quasi-organized-fall-league-Saturday-sports-thingy going!

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