I blinked and it’s 2013!

Here’s hoping all of you had a comfy transition into the post-Mayan era. (If you’d like to read my musings on the Mayan UnApocalypse as well as my aversion to New Year’s Resolutions, I invite you to check out this and this over at the day job.)

After some deep downtime, the Yenta Family must now kick it into high gear. We’ve got a little over five weeks until the boy’s bar mitzvah, and the list of things that aren’t done is giving me an ulcer. If I didn’t have Mindy of M. Nash Events helping me keep track of the many hundreds of details, I’d have cancelled the whole thing by now and demanded that we elope the whole simcha to Vegas. (Oooh oooh! Yo Yenta’s Express Bar Mitzvah Tavern and Tabernacle! Now that’s a business idea!)

Really, Mindy’s been so amazing. I used to think event planners were for real housewives and politicians, but without her decor ideas and gentle reminders to make a song list for the DJ, we’d be sipping Manischewitz in a bald room to Pandora come Shabbos Mishpatim. (Speaking of the boy’s torah portion, remind me to remind him to write his speech already!)

She’s really helped me to stay grounded through all the menu planning and the rabbi meetings and the guest list finagling. She’s also reigned me in from insane budget decisions (guess what, son? We’re renting a white tiger for your bar mitzvah, but sorry, we drained your college fund!) I can’t help dreaming big now that there’s the fabulous new glossy drool book Mazel Magazine to live up to. (Please do not let Yenta Boy see the custom sneakers!)

I feel OK that things are coming together. I hope it’ll be a fun simcha without being too schmaltzy, that the meaning of the day will shine as bright as the boy’s fancy new suit. Every night, I read a little bit of Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin’s book, Putting God on the Guest List, to remind us why we’re doing this in the first place. Just thinking about the fact that El Yenta Man and I have raised our little boy to the point that he’s old enough and smart enough to stand on the bima and read trope (the little squiggly lines on the Torah scroll) gets me all ferklempt. I’m not even going to attempt mascara on the Big Day.

In the meantime, we still have to figure out party favors. I dunno, do you think Mindy will approve of this t-shirt from KosherHam? Me neither.