Frum in PA

...not. I left the chaos of NY thinking a new place, another place where I am relatively unknown, left alone that being shomer shabbos would become 2nd nature. It's become even more difficult and I blame the laziness, the constant physical and general disinterest in most things other than trying to get rest, trying to do things that become harder every day. Every day I get up around 7am, take care of cats, wash, daven and say tehillim. And that's the beginning and the end...as Naguib Mahfouz once wrote. I light shabbos candles, daven shabbos maariv, sing sholom aleichem because its the strongest link to my childhood memories of shabbos...sometimes eat, with the late shabbos, its too late to eat for me. I make tea...which means heating water, plopping a tea bag into a mug and doing everything wrong. Since I'm on disability now I had to find doctors here before I moved. So in the short 7 weeks I'm here, I've met with 5 doctors and am scheduled for a hip replacement. If the surgeon could replace one hip and both knees he would, but that too fast tracking, even for him. Its very very difficult finding a rhuematologist here. Like NY, this state is consolidating its health care system and one entity has consumed smaller hospitals, doctors are walking away either to go into private practice and deny the insurances they dont like or to join other practices. So I got referred to a real winner. If my NY rhuemi wasn't the angel she is, I would be off every rhuematoid med that has kept me in one piece since the mid-2000s. So my kids ask, yeah well how come you're so sick and retired early? Actually my dears had I understood the system better and had my employer been forthcoming about disability insurance which they refuse to discuss with employees except on a need-to-know-basis, I would have retired at least 2-3 years earlier as my bones were crunching, crackling and disintegrating from the endless subway stairs for 25+ years every day while carrying home work files and groceries because my income wasn't enough to afford anything but the Brooklyn dump I lived in. And my landlord kept telling me to call him, he would arrange to pick me up, return me to Brooklyn, they would have a basement for me to live in. They couldnt lower the rent on the apt over their office where I lived 19 years and they wouldnt paint or replace any appliances...I was quiet, paid on time, no matter who came and went, the rent got paid. So I am not being a model citizen for my kids, who are adults and able to make educated choices regarding religion...but they were all exposed to chassidus for many years, maybe it wasnt in a positive way, or its resented because of the divorce and my leaving...I dont know. But I find no one is interested in being Jewish except as a cultural identity, holidays mean sharing family meals. My father who married my shiksa mother was the same kind of Jew, heartbroken at being shunned. No one in the Jewish community has reached out to me except one woman who took me to a "kosher" dunkin donuts (really, kosher? and not a mashgiach in sight) (my post got cut, this is only half..if I can recall the rest I'll rewrite it another day...what a f*ck that is)