Hear that popping noise? That’s the sound of my life traveling at the speed of light — we’ve arrived back from a lovely visit to the old hometown of Fairfax, CA, where the Yenta family was treated to a delightful Shabbos meal with our former redwood-luvin’ congregation, Gan Halev, and I got to fulfill my annual booty-shaking duties in the festival parade as part of the West African Dance & Drum Ensemble. Big sweaty fun for this Jewish African cowgirl!

Now that I’m back home in Slowvannah (as El Yenta Man likes to call this fair city, currently scented with magnolia blossoms and the sulphur belches of the nearby paper plant) you might think I’d be settling down to another summer of blogging by the beach, but after almost eight years as a work/kvetch-at-home mother, things are about to change. Some might call it a job opportunity, I call it a miracle with benefits: I’ve been hired as the full-time editor for the Savannah edition of Skirt magazine, a sassy women’s monthly that I’ve been a huge fan of for years. Any mag that combines feminism with fashion is my bag, baby, and I think it’s a good match. Check out the mission statement:

Skirt is all about women…their work, play, families, creativity, style, health and wealth, bodies and souls. Skirt is an attitude…spirited, independent, outspoken, serious, playful and irreverent, sometimes controversial, always passionate

If someone asked me to describe myself in three adjectives, I’d have to pick from those. Like I said, a good match. Of course it’s not a Jewish publication per se, though y’all must check out Judy Gruen’s tantalizing essay about the smells of Shabbat in this month’s issue. So in spite of taking on the role of working mother (really, is there any other kind?) I promise to keep up with my Yenta duties of trashing the cliché of Jewish mothers and generally pissing people off (I can’t stop writing this blog now; too many of my Jewish neighbors are reading it!) Posting will remain slow for the next coupla weeks as I dial into my new professional responsibilites, but I hope to have things up to speed soon. Thanks stickin’ with me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, tomorrow’s my first day in the office and I’ve got to find something to wear. I don’t think my blogging uniform of a holey Manischewitz shirt (a T-shirt of the Week freebie from way back in the day, one of the fabulous perks of this gig), paint-stained capris, mismatched hair clips and a pair of plastic sandals (shh! don’t tell my mother!) I bought in Hawaii twelve years ago ain’t gonna cut it…