Story of the Day 5/ 26/ 2011 # 3

I had to go to the bathroom.

It was a 40-minute drive home, and it is very, very hard to drive when your legs are crossed, especially since my car has standard transmission.

So I handed Sarah my tote bag and my water bottle, and she, with long suffering patience, stood outside the ladies room at Conseco Fieldhouse.
Conseco is the sports arena where the NBA (National Basketball Association) and WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) games are played, where the circus performs, when it comes to town, where Glee will be performing, next week, and, since we are in Indiana, a heck of a lot of country/Western singers perform.


We had come for the Tip Off party for the WNBA season. The program was over, and since I’d had a large cup of coffee before we had left home, I was in the bathroom, and Sarah was standing outside the women’s room. You need to understand that Sarah has developed a cast iron bladder, which has, for several years, meant she has not needed to use a public restroom. While I find this to be admirable, I have not attained this level of fortitude. What this means is that Sarah is rather used to standing outside of restrooms waiting for me
While she was standing there in the dark hallway of the building, one of the younger players runs past her, does a double take, turns around and says, “Would you like a shoe?”

Sarah has her hands full, so she cannot speak, not that the player would understand her signing…so Sarah shrugs her shoulders.

Sarah later tells me, she is not a pervert who collects people’s clothing.
This pleases me, because I have done my best to not raise perverts.
Oddballs, yes- perverts, no.

The player takes her shoe and a marker, scrawls her name on the shoe and hands it to Sarah. Sarah contorts her laden hand to sign thank you, and the player enthusiastically signs that back to Sarah, several times, and then she leaves.
The player, not Sarah.
A moment later, I come out of the bathroom, and find Sarah standing there holding the bag and the bottle and a shoe.

Oh, and looking rather stunned.

When Sarah told Harriet about this, Harriet wanted to know how Sarah knew what the player had said.
“She was very easy to speech read”
Harriet remarked. “Boy, she would make a better interpreter than the one you have at school!”

Story of the Day 5/26/2011 #2

I received an email, this afternoon, after school had closed. It was from the head of special education at the high school.
She addressed it to “Cassis”.
One of my friends caught this new name and highlighted it.
I told her that I am sure Brenda has some other name that she uses for me, though, not in email.

Story of the Day 5/26/2011

I have grey hair,
This is good; no, this is excellent, because by now I should have pulled it all out in frustration.

We are having fun and games, only none of it is fun and none of it is games that I want to be playing with Sarah’s school. And today was another one of the games.

Try not to feel excluded, this is one of a series of stories I have not yet written, but I probably will…when I can do it without pulling out my grey hair.

At any rate, although I have not yet written it up as a series of stories, I have complained about it to friends, face-to-face, on email, and on Face book.

I was complaining about it, today, to a friend who knows the parties involved, and also has worked in the Deaf community and has interpreted, and is ethical. Yes, there are some of those. Actually, there are plenty of those, and they aren’t even in hiding, although you might think so, from some of my stories. Although, this was not actually about an interpreter, it was about the head of special education at the high school.

This was the last part of our exchange:


2:41pm
holy crap how do you keep from not slapping someone at the school?

i keep reminding myself that i won’t like jail.
so far, that has worked...not sure for how much longer, though.

Story of the Day 5/21/2011

I have decided to retire.
Prematurely.
I have just two more years, well, a tiny bit more, and I could retire on time, but I don’t think I can handle the stress, anymore.
The problem is that someone will need to take over my job.
I was thinking about how this might work.
I could place an ad in the newspaper.
Well, but the only people who would go to the newspaper to read a job advertisement would be my peers. Heck, half the newspapers have already folded. But I have no idea how to go about placing an ad, on-line.
On the other hand, the person would need to be about my age to have developed a thick enough skin to survive this job.

The ad might read:

Wanted, person who has experience being pushed around, and can push back. Must expect to be lied to and to deal, on a regular basis, with of people who think it is part of their mission to break the law in an effort to harm children.
Applicant needs to be able to restraint him/herself from hitting, spitting, yelling four-letter words, and stabbing any of the said nasty people. It is also preferable that you do not know how to use a gun, just in case.
Applicant must have a lot of patience and an undying hope that things will improve. In other words, it will help to be a fool.


But I really can’t imagine I will be able to find anyone else to deal with the head of special education at my daughter’s high school.

Story of the Day 5/24/2011

Sarah has bee studying for finals.
This morning, she asked me what soliloquy was.

“That’s me.”
“Huh?” or some ASL equivalent of that as her response.
“You now how I walk around talking to myself? Saying everything that I am thinking or how I feel about things? That’s it.”
”Oh, okay.”

I wonder what her teacher will think of her answer to that question.

Story of the Day 5/ 22/ 2011

The theme for the day is poop. If you prefer, you can refer to it as crap, or shit or feces, if you really want to pretend to be proper.

At noon, to celebrate Lag B’Omer, we went to the Lubavitch picnic, behind the Jewish Community Center.
In keeping with tradition, they had a couple of really excellent salads, and watermelon, and hamburgers and chicken wings, and a thunderstorm.

Just like last year, we huddled under the picnic shelter and stared out at the teeming rain. Those of us who had arrived early enough to be seated and not get soaked before it started still managed to get soaked, because for about 15 minutes, there were strong wind gusts and the rain came in at a horizontal angle.
Oh well, who can argue with tradition?

And, just as always, my husband and I were enjoying speaking with our friends and our children had hit their limit of socializing and took my house key and walked home.

On the way home, they had a lovely conversation.
Sarah: Why didn’t you flush the toilet yesterday? I flushed for you, though.
(One minute later) Eh, it smelled so bad!
Aaron: No! My poop smells good like always!
Sarah: Um, I was talking about this spectacular tree, not your poop.
Aaron: I was talking about the tree too. The tree smells so good!

Then, at dinner, when everyone was pleasantly full, but feeling like they had behaved a bit too virtuously and now needed something chocolaty, I pulled out the dregs of what sweets we had and put them on the table.
Aaron and Larry were satisfied, but Sarah picked up the bag of Dove chocolate promises and exclaimed. “Ewwww, why did you have to buy the milk chocolate? They taste like crap!”
I replied, “ And how would you know what that tastes like?”
“Because I had some a long time ago.”
I stared at her for a moment. And then another moment.
Suddenly her eyes grew wide and she said, “I mean the milk chocolate. I tasted some of it a long time ago!”
“Remind me never to share my fork with you!”

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s theme will be.

Story of the Day 5/ 20/ 2011

My son was running a little late. He hurried over and gave me a hug and said good-bye. I looked at him in his shirt and tie and jacket and I thought, “Maybe, he will meet a nice Jewish girl who is color blind.”

Story of the Day 5/ 19/ 2011

Always listen to your mother.
Not my mother. I don’t mean my mother, I mean your mother, and if you are one of my kids: Listen to me!

My son, Aaron, to be specific, has been getting in touch with his Deaf (with a capitol d) identity. He has been wandering around the house, the neighborhood, and the grocery store without wearing his hearing aids. Since he is deaf (with a small d), this means that any conversation you direct towards him will be unnoticed. As a result, numerous people think he is ignoring them. And if you ask him a question, he may very well just give you one of his rather annoying dumb- puppy smiles. As a result of this, numerous people think he is stoned.

Despite the fact that he will not listen, I mean hear, no I mean listen, I have, as always, been handing out scads of mommy advice. Things like, “ Don’t forget to take the directions with you! “ , “Don’t forget your keys!”, “Use your seatbelt!”, “Remember to flush the toilet!”, “Take your necktie off before you take a nap!” and “ Don’t put liquid ink pens in your pocket!”

If you look at the pocket of one of his favorite shirts you will discover two things, first, he didn’t listen to me, and second, (which will be the same thing that he found out,) his mother was right.

This sad end to his nice shirt happened a couple of days ago, but “Listen to your mother!” seems to have been the theme of the day, today.

I was standing in the line at the pharmacy counter in Wal-Mart. I was there to buy drugs.
I had driven over to the east side of town to visit with my cousin and take her out for shopping and lunch. Since her favorite store is Wal-Mart, we were at Wal-Mart. And while Kathy was off picking out toothpaste and deodorant I was trying to buy drugs- Sudafed, although the generic type. There are two kinds of people who stand on line at the pharmacy to buy Sudafed on a regular basis, people who like meth and people who have congested sinuses.
I like to think that I can pass as one of the latter, since I still have my own teeth.

I had managed to make my way to being next in line, and while I was standing behind a young man in black jeans, the young man reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, and something shiny and gold fell out of his pocket and onto the floor. While he quickly picked up his foil wrapped condom, I could hear a voice in the back of my head saying, “You should have listened to your mother! Keep your condoms in your wallet!”
Then I realized that he had listened to his mother, because he was using them, or at least planning on using them.

When we were leaving the store, we passed right by the same young man who was standing with his girlfriend in the checkout line; and the woman right behind the girlfriend yelped, “Don’t put that in your mouth! You don’t’ know where it has been!”
And, for a moment, I wondered if she was the young man’s girlfriend’s mother, but she was really just saying it to a child who was standing between them.

Story of the Day 5/14/ 2011

This morning, at synagogue, while we were sitting and ignoring services, Sarah was reciting her litany of concerns.

She became very intense and told me, “I don’t want to go to any open houses!”
I must have given her a blank look, because my daughter, who could never be confused with being a social butterfly, continued, “You know, when my friends have their graduation open houses.”

I blinked hard and then I answered, “But, Sarah, that isn’t for 2 more years! Could you please wait at least another year before we have to start worrying about that?!”

Story of the Day 5/13/2011 #3

Kara came to visit.
Kara is a bonus niece.
She is Ely’s bestfriend. They met in middle school and immediately bonded.
Obviously, Kara is weird.
And Kara also bonded with us, so that she comes and visits, when she is in town, even if Ely isn’t. She likes us. Like I said, she is weird.

This afternoon, when she was here, she was describing the last time she flew . For some reason, airport security picked her for the full body scan.
Since Kara weighs about 85 lbs sopping wet and looks like an eager 12 year old who would love to help you wash the dishes, but just happens to be a little too tall to be 12, you have to wonder how they select the people they choose to scan. The only sort of threat that I can visualize Kara representing is that she might offer to bake cookies when I am on a diet.

At any rate, she told us that they had her stand on a pad and stand here and stand there , while some person in another room reviewed the scan and made sure no explosive devices were hidden in any of her body cavities.
When I interpreted what she was saying, Sarah exclaimed, “Eeeewww!” Which was exactly my thought about this.

Then Kara demonstrated the position she had to assume for the body scan. Her feet had to be exactly so far apart, and she had to stand up straight, and they even told her the exact way to put her hands over her head, and how the fingers needed to be aligned.

The picture above is Kara in the position they asked her to assume..

We have decided that the security personnel either know absolutely no sign language, or they know it, and this is the position they have women take. I can’t wait to see what they have men do.

Kara is signing, “vagina”.

Story of the Day 5/13/2011 #2

In addition to learning to cook and clean bathrooms for his future wife, my 20-year-old son is doing his own laundry.

While he likes pink and looks fairly good in it, his previously white shirts were not a nice uniform pink but rather a splotchy design of red, light pink, dark pink and not quite white, after he had laundered them. So, after doing this to every white shirt that he owned, he finally learned to separate the darks from the lights. This doesn't mean that he has learned to iron or any of the finer points like... dare I say it... ”hand washing”, but he is generally quite capable of looking and smelling presentable, if a tad wrinkled.

This afternoon, he asked me, since he was running low on time, if it was all right to dry the darks and lights together. After telling him, “yes!”, I hear an anguished scream echoing from the bowels of the laundry room.
I yelled, “A pen, did you run a pen through the laundry?”
Okay, he hasn’t quite gotten the “check all the pockets before laundering” bit down, yet.


But, no, it wasn’t a pen.
Aaron, with a look that reminded me of a small boy whose dog had just died, held out his hand. In it were two very wet hearing aids.

I suppose this means that Sarah will have to interpret for him at synagogue, tomorrow.

Story of the Day 5/ 13/ 2011

In Biology class, Sarah and her two lab partners were chatting as they worked dissecting their fetal pig.

One of the girls told her, “All day long, this song keeps going through my head. I just can’t get it out of my head.”
Sarah replied, “That’s never happened to me, before.”

The girl continued to work on the lab and Sarah gestured to her, “and….and….” while the interpreter started laughing.

Finally, look of comprehension came over the girl and she said, “Oh…...”

Story of the Day 5/11/2011

When I arrived home, yesterday evening, my husband asked me if I had been on a major shopping spree.

During the almost 12 hours I spent locked up as a juror (okay, I am exaggerating, I wasn’t locked up while they had us fill out paperwork and explained about cheap parking lots), someone had gone out and used our Discover card to buy several laptops, and other expensive items.

Actually, I should have queried him about it, since they were using his name, but I had missed the slew of phone calls from companies calling to verify the purchases.
However, I have not missed them, entirely. This morning, I have already received three calls, each about another laptop purchase.

The last phone call was from a very pleasant woman at Toshiba. I didn’t even know that they sold laptops.
Well, they do.
She let me know that the order was from outside the country. The IP address that the person ordering connected from is in Ghana.

Our charge cards get around a heck of a lot more than we do.

I forgot to ask her if the laptop was supposed to be shipped to Ghana.

Anyhow, this helpful lady told me to go on-line and check my credit report and make sure no new charge cards had been opened. Of course, since the perpetrators have been using my husband’s name, I had to commit my own type of identity theft and pretend I was him to check his credit history. Hopefully, he will not report me to the authorities. I had enough of our local court system, yesterday.

On the other hand, if he does, it will probably get me out of serving jury duty, in the future.

Story of the Day 5/10/2011

At 7:23 PM, I texted Sarah: “I’m FREE!”

I had been held in a small over heated room down at the City-County building for hours.
They let the guy who had been arrested and convicted of public indecency go.
They did keep the woman with the public intoxication charge.
And they kept me, because I am a slightly overweight, middle-aged mother who is currently unemployed and therefore likely to be a very liberal juror.

One young woman was actually excited to be there. She said that all of her friends had been called down to do jury duty, and year after year she had never received a summons; and had felt “ left out”. So when she finally did she felt as if she was finally part of the “in crowd.” The rest of us looked at her as if she was nuts.
Of course, well before 7:20 PM she looked back at that cheerful attitude she’d come in with and cringed at her younger, more naïve self.

I spent 11 and half hours down at the courthouse.
Of course, not all of it was for the trial. Some was in the assembly room being given information on where to park inexpensively. Of course, that information would have been a lot more useful 30 minutes earlier, when I parked in a more expensive lot. And we were told where the bathrooms were and how to line up in the order in which we were called. They must think that none of us ever attended kindergarten. I want you to know that we all showed great skill in the lining up part of the day. And some of the time was spent being questioned by the prosecuting attorneys and the defense attorney as to the nature of the crimes for which we and out close family members had been arrested ,and if we or they had been convicted ,or in which we or they had been victims. Oh yes, and if we felt the system had treated us fairly.

Then we were asked if we had read about or watched the news and heard about this case, which happened over 2 years ago, but no one actually remembered anything specific.

And then the 7 of us, 6 jurors and an alternate, got to spend a lot of time I the jurors’ room. Apparently, most of the juror’s rooms have their own bathrooms, but this was the throwback room, and it didn’t. And it was small, and it was hot. And we were offered drinks, and then they realized , after offering, that they only had water. Tap water. And it got to a point that we were knocking on the door with more frequency than absolutely necessary and asking to be let out ( and escorted to) the bathroom because it meant a few minutes out of the over heated, cramped room.
At around 3 PM, a comment was made about stripping down . Yes, it was that hot.
At around 5:40 PM, one juror had hit her limit and asked to be excused from jury duty. She had to take someone to work and she had enough of the room’s décor and the fragrance of 7 people packed into a little overheated room for hours.

She was taken out by the bailiff to speak with the judge, and deposited back with us about 10 minutes later. He told her, “Too bad!”

At about 7:08 PM they asked us if we wanted them to send out for dinner, and that it would take about 45 minutes for the dinner order to arrive. At this point we were actually all a bit sick to our stomachs since the fare had been some candy bars and chips from the canteen downstairs ( that had closed by dinner time) and this health food mixed with eth overly warm room was not….appetizing.

A quick glace at everyone and we demurred. After all, we thought it was a very clear-cut case, which you would probably not have guessed from all the time we spent sitting in the juror’s room.

And you probably would not have guessed from the fact that all of us felt that the two main characters were not the sterling truthful witnesses we would have preferred.

You see, we spent all that time in the jurors’ room because we kept being sent to it during the trial, for 30 minutes to an hour at a time, while the judge listened to arguments about what evidence we could and could not hear or see. And we would sit in the juror’s room, whose walls were not all that well insulted, and play tic-tac-toe, do crossword puzzles, and kind of overhear the 911 CD that we ended up not being allowed to hear. Although, we just heard it as the phone ringing and indistinct voices, through the wall, not the actual spoken words of the multiple 911 calls.

And we all wanted to hear what the guy in the army fatigues had to say, but neither the defense nor the prosecution called him as a witness.

When we were finally sent to the jurors’ room to deliberate the evidence and determine a verdict, we all felt pretty much the same way about everything we had heard. We just had to figure out what the meaning of all the different levels and terms were, so we could decide which applied. So, when the offer of dinner came, about 8 minutes after we had been sent back to deliberate, none of us felt we were anywhere near 45 minutes away from a decision.

We all learned a great deal from this experience: wear a tank top under your other clothes, and shorts, and bring one of those personal fans. And a conviction for public indecency might not be such a bad idea.

Story of the Day 5/6/2011 #3

In English class, Sarah usually learns English or, at least, something related to English.

In English class, Lia and Dee learn ASL. They sit across from Sarah- there is a center area that is empty- well, unless the teacher is pacing there, and the girls sit in chairs that are on the other side of this open area and face Sarah.

On a regular basis, Lia asks Sarah the same question, “How do you say….” Of course, it really isn’t the same question, because the last word changes, but since the first four words are always the same, Sarah has gotten to be pretty darn good at speech reading them and usually has some idea what the next word is.

Lia said, “How do you say ‘I like’?”

So, Sarah signed the words, and she then held up her hand and spread out all five fingers and pointed to the middle one to show Lia, which one was used to make the sign for “like”.
And Lia held up her hand and displayed her middle finger and nodded her head, indicating “This one, right?”

Only Sarah got a strange look on her face, and burst out laughing; and then Lia took a look at what she was doing and realized that she was giving the finger, rather blatantly, to Sarah.

That was not part of the English, whoops, I meant ASL lesson.

Story of the Day 5/6/2011 #2

In Indiana, students are required to pass a couple of assessment tests to earn a high school diploma. Students that do not pass all of the subjects get a “certificate of attendance” which is very useful when applying to be a greeter at Wal-Mart.

The exam used to be one multi-day test that was given to students at the end of 10th grade. There was an English section and a math section. You could pass both or neither or one. If you failed either section, you had several opportunities to take it again- and your school had to provide some specialized instruction on how to take the test…I mean to get your skills up to speed so that you could pass.

More recently, that test was divided up into parts- and they have added a science section. Now, the parts are called “ ECAs” for End of Course Assessment. The idea was that if students took the tests right after finishing the course it covered (Algebra for math, 10th grade English for English, Biology for science) it might help more students to pass than testing some kids the year before they take that course, and other kids a year after they finished and no longer remember the exact formulae to find the area of a trapezoid pyramid.

The tests are long. Each ECA is given over two days—section 1, on the first day, and section 2 on the second day. And they change the school schedule so that the students have longer class periods to take them. AND the teachers teach how to take these tests (practicing writing essays on assorted subject, reviewing formulas, repeating vocabulary terms) for a couple of weeks, in advance. And then the kids take the tests.


This week, Sarah took her English ECA. She took part 1 the first day, and she took part 2 the second day.

The first day, when she was done, she did as she had been instructed and raised her hand and waited for a staff member to come over, make sure the exam was completed, and then the staff person would click the button to submit the student’s score and have it sent to the company that grades it. So, the staff member came over, looked at her work, and clicked the button, and waited. And waited, and waited. After 15 minutes, he called over an administrator. The administrator said, “Oh, the computer is slow.” So they waited, and waited, and waited some more. Finally, the administrator called someone from the IT department.

When the IT guy showed up, he looked at the computer and turned it off.

Sarah was upset.
This didn’t seem like the most intelligent thing to do, turning the computer off before there was any indication that the information had been saved, but the adults told her that it would show up as completed, tomorrow, and there was no problem.

Except that “tomorrow” (which was today), when she completed section 2 and the staff member clicked the button, the computer message came back that section 2 had been completed, but section 1 had not been done.

The man then asked Sarah if she had been absent, yesterday, when the first part was given.
“No, don’t you remember, you had a problem with my test, yesterday?”

He remembered.

In the end, Sarah was told that they would contact the company that does the ECA exams for the state and they would recover the missing information.

However, Sarah knew better. I knew better, and I am sure that you know better.

So, next week, Sarah will be taking the first part of the ECA, again.

Neither of us find this reassuring.

Story of the Day 5/6/2011

Aaron has great plans to go off and study in Israel for a semester or a year or however long it takes him to miss my cooking, which might be at least a decade.
He has even contacted a program that he thought looked interesting..
This program is even respectable, no wild eyed cult groupies, no strange leaders who live in compounds with armed guards ad a strange assortment of underage females, no interesting substances being bandied around to help them get in the mood for their religious contemplation.
Some of the faculty even know how to tie a tie.
And, to top it off, Stacie’s son went there, a year ago, and had a wonderful time. And he even came back in one piece and is in a decent college and dating a nice girl, so what could be bad?

Well, Aaron is deaf. Or, if you want to discuss his functionality, he is hard of hearng, and everyone knows that people like that bite And if they haven’t gotten all their shots…..
In other words, there is the possibility that the people who run et program will be scared off by his hearing aids.

So, a few weeks ago, Aaron emailed them at their Jerusalem campus and let them know that he was interested in applying , that he has hearing loss and he asked if they had any experience with deaf or hard of hearing students.

And then he waited for a response, and waited, and waited.
And when the response came, it was from a faculty member who will be visiting the United States. In face he will be in Chicago and thought it would be good to conduct a telephone interview with Aaron, at that time.

My husband thought this was a good sign! I know this because he told me this over lunch.

Except that this telephone interview is being scheduled with a deaf kid whose business cards read: Aaron M-G
Text me, don’t call,
I am deaf!”

And I have a feeling that this is an indication that they do not, in fact, have any previous experience having a deaf or hard of hearing student.

Story of the Day 5/4/2011

My friend Harriet, opened her door. She did this because someone had knocked on it which is how these things usually work.

A woman who lives in the neighborhood was at her door and told her, with concern , that she had come to pay a shiva call. This means that she had come to visit Harriet and to cheer her up, or just listen to her.
She was doing this because Harriet’s father had died.

Well, Harriet’s father had died, only not recently. I think about 18 years ago.

This is good, because otherwise Harriet would have done the only possible thing a normal neurotic Jewish daughter would do in this situation, and frantically have called her father or her mother to make sure her father really wasn’t dead and that they had forgotten to tell her.

Of course, in Harriet’s case, since he mother died before her father, I am not sure whom she would have called, but since her father’s health was not in question, as it rarely is once a person is dead, she was spared having to make this frantic phone call.

In the meanwhile, my advice to her is that if other kind neighbors show up at her door, don’t turn them away if they happen to be carrying some really good food- which is another staple of shiva calls.

Story of the Day 5/3/2011

I thought he was joking.
I mean, after all, he is a comedian.
And sometimes he is even funny.
And he posted it on my wall on FaceBook, after a whole mess of other funny and not-quite-funny comments posted by a host of friends and family.

It all started because of my post:

I would like to publicly thank Lynne Lieberman for Aaron Margolis-Greenbaum's safe arrival in St Louis. this was made possible by her kind and brilliant gift of a GPS. If not for his Aunt Lynne, he would be wandering somewhere in the area of either Arkansas or South Dakota.

So about 10 comments down, Aaron posts this:
Unfortunately having a GPS doesn't make me any less prone to terrible driving and accidents...smile

And, of course, I assumed he was joking, I mean, after all, he did type “ smile” at the end.
But then I got this email which he had sent to both me and my long-suffering better half:
Thanks! I miss you too!

I really embarassed myself today when picking up Becca from school. To let a minivan get by me I backed up without looking and hit a car. There was no damage so the people didn't care, but it was still terribly embarassing for me. I also hit a tire on the highway which caused some plastic to rip and hang from the bottom of the car. I'm sorry Dad!

I love you guys a lot and I'll be coming home Thursday!

Love,

Aaron

Now, you might wonder about the three declarations of love. No, that is not Aaron trying to ingratiate himself with his volatile , riled parents, that is Aaron’s normal way of communicating. Actually, he might have inadvertently dropped one of two from what would have been a missive of this length.

But what I am wondering about is the “plastic” hanging from the bottom of the car.
The last time I knew, there was no plastic on the bottom of the car to hang. Is this part of the back seat that is now exposed and hanging down? Is this part of a body bag that Aaron mistook for a tire and ran over on the high way, or is this something even harder to explain?
Tune in for the next installment.

Oh, and if you speak with Lynne, tell her that next time she needs to buy him the GPS that comes with full-body armor and driver’s lessons.

Story of the Day 5/2/2011

My daughter posted on FB “Ahhhhhhhh noooooooooo! No LST for May."

After posting this, she had a terrible thought, “Mom, people will think I meant drugs!”
It took me a moment, “No, Sarah, LST is late start Tuesday. LSD is the drug.”

Sarah was very relieved.

Story of the Day 4/28/2011

So, I happen to have a couple of deaf kids.
They are not a matched set. There is Aaron who wears hearing aids and tries to pass. And there is Sarah who would be offended if someone thought she was hearing.
Okay, I am lying, Aaron stopped trying to pass several months ago, when he was getting in touch with his inner deaf-identity. But I am an old mother, and I am still living in the dark ages, so I still talk to him, including in the car when he hears me even less well with his bionic ears. I mean hearing aids.

Of course, he started it. He asked me when our house fire was. “1996?”
“Yes, October 30th, 1996.”
“October 38th?”
I told him that being deaf was not an excuse to think that October could have 38 days.
He replied, “Not even in a leap year?”

Then Sarah came home, and announced that she has plans for this evening.
She wants to attend the orchestral performance at her high school.
She wants to go and watch. I mean, she didn’t say that, but since none of the instruments is as loud as a grenade, she certainly isn’t going to go to listen.

I think I need a Tylenol. The extra strength kind.

During dinner, she asked me, “ Am I right that orchestral music has no words?”
“Yes.”
“But then how can people enjoy it?”
I replied, “That is a very Deaf question.”


Forget about the Tylenol, I am going for the Advil bottle.