So much for my commitment to daily practice, spiritual or otherwise! Forgive me; it's been a week since I blogged. Why is it so difficult to adhere to a commitment like this? Is it the "daily" part of it? And then the sense that if I miss one entry and then another, my subsequent entries have to be that much longer or impressive or funny or profound? So that ups the ante even more. "The perfect is the enemy of the good." Voltaire said that (I looked it up on the Internet), and it's true. Our quest for perfection doesn't necessarily move us forward; it often stops us (miserably) in our tracks.

Last night in the car, as I drove home with my kids from a USY (youth group) meeting, I was bemoaning my failure to blog. "Don't be so hard on yourself, Mom" my children told me. "Life just got in the way." They're right. Life did get in the way this past week. Big time. So many crises and calls and meetings and errands and chores and school starting and the holidays coming and then, to top it off, moths in the cabinets.

Yes, moths in the cabinets. Not harmful or poisonous (I looked that one up too!), but disturbing nonetheless. School was about to start (and hence the need to pack school lunches),so I had gone shopping with my daughter to restock the house with healthy, appealing snacks and ingredients.

And then I opened the pantry cabinet, only to find tiny moths flying out at us. These aren't the first moths we've seen, of course. But here they were, settled down comfortably in the pantry, just as I was about to put away all the back-to-school lunch food. It was more than I could bear. The sight of them sent me over the edge. Thus began my battle with the moths. It had become urgent. And personal.

Meanwhile, of course, more serious issues claimed my attention: sick congregants and financial pressures and family stuff and shul renovations ("Oh no, the crew packed up all the prayerbooks and talleisim! Which box are they in?") But most of those challenges had no easy resolutions (except the packed-up prayerbooks; we found those.) With the moths, on the other hand, I could fight and likely emerge victorious. Even if it meant losing sleep. Or not keeping up with my blog.

Last night, even though it was late, I logged onto the WiiFit. I had lost weight since a week ago! Despite my lousy week, my missteps, my moth obsession. The WiiFit, like my kids, was encouraging. "Good work," it told me. Not perfect, surely, but good enough.