Story of the Day 8/ 8/ 2012

Today, we are being treated to a story by a guest author, my daughter Sarah:

August 8, 2012

Today in Psychology class, I was a little bit groggy and sleepy. It is hard to be awake at 7:25 in the morning. The teacher said that we were going to play an exciting game that was called, “A Walk Through the Woods.” The rule was that we needed to answer every question that teacher asked by writing it down on our scrap papers.

The teacher said, “OK. Now, you’re walking through the woods and you’re bringing someone with you and who will that person be?”

I stared at my interpreter, deep in thought. I wondered, Who? But I couldn’t think of anyone in particular. Then I randomly thought about squirrels. A lot of squirrels since they live in the woods, so I wrote down, squirrels.

At the end of the game, the teacher explained that the person we wrote down was the most important person in our life right now.

I felt hot and sheepish; squirrels are not people and they were merely a random thought from inside my head, on which I did not intend to have a crush.

At least, this time, the teacher wasn’t collecting our scrap papers…

Though, I kind of wish that she had.

Story of the Day 8/ 6/ 2012 - #2

When Ely was a freshman in high school, he had a teacher who handed out cards.
The students were supposed to write down a bit of information about themselves.
There were the typical questions, name, etc. etc. contact information, etc. etc. parent's names, parents' occupations.

All went well, until after school when he realized he had missed his moment to write down, for mother's occupation, "draws naked people".
He spent the next three years of high school hoping, in vain, that another teacher would provide the opportunity.

Well, today was Sarah's first day of her senior year of high school.
At least, if you do not count summer school, where she disposed of those required Economics and Government classes.

And, today, a teacher handed out a paper upon which she asked the students to put down a bit of information about themselves.
There were the typical questions, name, etc. etc. contact information, etc. etc. parent's names, parents' occupations.

Sarah was operating at a bit of an advantage over her brother.
First of all, she is a senior, so she's had three more years during which she was able to develop her sarcasm.
She also knows about Ely's experience.

So Sarah put down, for mother's occupation, "nude artist."

When she told me this, after school, today, I hesitated....
I told Sarah, "The teacher might misunderstand this to mean that I am nude when I do my art."

Then I realized that Sarah had actually one-upped Ely's plans.

Now, Sarah and I will be waiting to see if her teacher asks for clarification.

Story of the Day 7/ 20/ 2012

This is a short Story of the Day.
Okay, a relatively short Story of the Day.

It is short because we are safely in Binghamton.

We arrived her by way of rental car, after being dropped off at the airport.
The airport in Rochester. Not LaGuardia.

You see, by the time we arrived in Rochester, it was almost time for the awards ceremony. Almost time meaning that taking the time to pick up our rental car would have been....a bad idea.
Instead, we were picked up by a black town car. No not by a black Town Car. Also, not by a blue van pretending to be a black Town Car, but by a Mustang. Sarah and I recognized it because it had a horse emblem on the front. We saw numerous cars - but when we saw the horse emblem, it occurred to both of us, sleep deprived as we were, that this emblem probably was the emblem for a Mustang.

What can I say, this trip has been a learning experience.

The driver of the Mustang had never seen us before, but, apparently, two women standing by the curb at the arrivals pick up area and looking like they had spent a long, sweaty, and body cavity search filled trip getting to Syracuse were hard to miss.

We were taken to RIT with no strange detours, and the air-conditioning was working just fine.

We managed to find some vegetarian food to eat, and proceeded to enjoy the awards ceremony and the chance to sit someplace without worrying about where we were supposed to be headed, in a few hours.
Neither of us was really very concerned when they showed Sarah's video, and forgot to turn on the sound.
As I said, the air-conditioning was working and we were not stranded anywhere, so it was fine.

After being dropped back at the airport, we picked up our rental car with only few minor annoyances. Like the guy at the desk who added extra charges and tried to sneak them past me.
Fortunately, I read contracts before I sign them,
and I noticed that the $218 car rental was no longer $218.

I asked, " Why is this not the same amount I was assured I would get when I made the reservation?"

"Oh, that charge is for the roadside assistance. You don't' want to be stranded if the car breaks down."

" I have AAA, and I brought my card with me."

"And this is for the insurance."

"I have car insurance."

" But it has a deductible."

" I know, take it off."

"But you want to be fully covered."

"Take it off."

We went through this a few more times.
Amazingly, at the end, it cost me $218.

Then it was off to Binghamton with the borrowed GPS and a Trip Tik from AAA. ( the same one whose card was in my wallet.)
This was a rare instance when the AAA Trip Tik came in handy. The GPS was wrong.
Now I know why I paid for that membership.
I bet you thought it was because one of our cars is a 1993 and another is a 1997.

When we arrived in Binghamton, Ely fed us. Food, real , food. Good tasting even.
And we slept in beds that we didn't have to check, first, for bedbugs.
And we got to take showers and change clothes.
And we even got to sleep without being attached by cords to multiple armed, I mean alarmed cell phones.

And , come this morning, we even resembled human beings.

The result of this being that it would have been a lot harder for the lady who picked us up at the airport in Rochester to identify so easily.

In the meanwhile, I have told Sarah that I would be happy if she enters the contest, again, this coming year.

But if she wins, can we please stay home......

Story of the Day 8/ 6/ 2012

This story takes place at the Indian Blood Center on North Meridian Street.
That is where Larry and Aaron went to give blood , this morning.

I went also, but apparently, I just went to drink coffee and eat cookies because they decided I was just a tad too anemic and apparently I need to go eat some dead animals...or chug some iron pills over the next couple of days, and then go back and try again.

When I go back, I will donate blood and Aaron will eat the cookies.
Though, he ate enough for two visits, as it was.

Hopefully, they actually don't mind that he ate at least three meals worth of cookies. He ate several packages of Famous Amos, only two of Grandma's ( they weren't nearly as good) a few Oreo packages and he drank some Sierra Mist.

He is a growing boy.

Also, they took a double unit from him and from Larry so he has a lot of blood to replenish.

On the way home in the car, Aaron asked me if I had someone's phone number.
"No, I have his wife's phone number. She is a friend of mine. I don't have his, but we are friends on FaceBook."

This is a status that didn't exist a few years ago, but, nowadays, people seem to know what I mean.

"Do you know him?"
Like I said, they know what I mean, because it is quite possible to have a "friend" , in this way, whom they have never met.

" Yes. I know both of them.
"I know his wife better, though, She is a Bitchy mother just like I am."
Believe me, I meant this as quiet a compliment, since they are the parents of two Deaf kids, and that is how I describe parents who are good advocates for their children .

My son responded, " I didn't hear you."

I am used to this. he is deaf and using hearing aids in the car means you are trying to figure out what someone is saying over the car and road noise.
"I said that she is ..."

"Stop!"

In other words, he is just trying to pretend his mother only uses nice language.

Too bad, he really isn't fooling anyone.

Story of the Day 7/ 19/ 2012 - part 2

We are at the airport.
Again.

LaGuardia, where we are hoping to embark on a slightly less adventurous leg of our trip.

We have successfully been strip searched.
Okay, not really, but we were patted down ..and by patted down I do mean very thoroughly, enough that if I was someone else I might have been embarrassed. Certainly, the only person who normally touches me in those places is my husband.

We are patted down because the tall deaf teenager with the auburn curls and her chubby middle aged mother with the flowered dress and 3 containers of high spf sunscreen seem suspicious.
But they don't find any drugs.
Other than the three bags (quart sized) of our allergy and my arthritis medications.

I buy coffee.
I buy Sarah breakfast.
I pay some cash, because the breakfast vouchers won't do it.
The milk is bad.
Sarah can't drink it.
I buy a bottle of orange juice and an orange.
That uses up one of the lunch vouchers. Of course, we are hoping to be out of here before lunchtime.

We make our way to our gate.
It is busy. Lots of passengers with tickets and lots of passengers on stand by.
We sit farther away at some laptop and tablet desks, and spread our food out on the mini desk.
There are two women next to us, each at her own little desk.
They are chatting.
They say hello.
One is a young woman from Florida. She is on her way to visit her fiancé in Maine before he ships out.
He is in the military.
She has an airline blanket over her shoulders. She has spent last night at the airport. Luckily, she was in a part that had working air-conditioning.
I give her the other lunch voucher and warn her that everything costs a fortune.
She has already eaten her emergency rations.
I tell Sarah this, and she is stunned that seemingly normal person would do the same thing that her obviously abnormal mother would do.

She tells us that she has deaf cousins, two of them and she knows a tiny bit of sign language, but she is too embarrassed to use it with Sarah.

She is hungry and goes off with the voucher in hand.. She has left her carryon with us and the other lady. We seem to look more trustworthy to her than we to the airport security people.

On the other hand, she is under slept.

She is back in a few minutes.
She has gotten for herself a croissant and a cup of coffee with the voucher and comes back and eats it at the mini desk.
I give her the orange, when she gets back. A croissant isn't enough.

The other lady is from Maine and headed home.
She looks at Sarah and asks me if we have ever been to Maine. She think Sarah looks familiar.
I tell her we have not.
Maybe Sarah has a doppleganger there. Apparently, a deaf one.
Either that or this women is even more underslept than the rest of us.

An hour later, we are boarding the plane and I have texted the man who was supposed to pick us up in Rochetser.
Yesterday.
And who is busy, today, but locating someone who will.
Hopefully, they will not be driving black Lincoln Town car that is really a blue minivan.

Story of the Day 7/ 19/ 2012 #1

The cell phones woke me.
Phones.

After yesterday's smooth leg of our trip, I set my phone alarm, and Sarah's phone alarm and slept with them. On the bed. Next to me, but not actually tied to my body.
I must still have been feeling optimistic.

And I was up and dressed by the time the desk clerk called with the wake-up call.
This was my back-up plan, because, after yesterday, I figured I needed as many back-up plans as possible, and maybe some 4-leaf clovers and a few rabbit's feet. And my neurotic plans turned out to be a good thing, since his call was just late enough that we might not have made it out of the hotel on time.
But at least he remembered.

I figured this was a good sign.
Of course, by now I was rather desperate for anything that I could possibly interpret as a good sign.

Sarah and I shoved our things back into our bags.
By now our things included some rather smelly clothes from yesterday's adventures; and I left a small tip for whomever cleaned the room .
We hauled our butts down to the lobby.
But not before calling the car service. The one that had picked us up from the airport, yesterday, in the black Lincoln town car that was disguised as a blue van.

We checked out and waited by the curb, and , lo and behold, a car that had been black and might have once been a Lincoln town car arrived to take us to the airport.
The air-conditioning didn't work, which wasn't a big deal, since it hadn't yet gotten up to 85, yet; but it wouldn't have mattered, anyhow, since the windows were all broken in the mostly down position, giving us a very effective cooling, on the way to the airport and , thankfully, diverting some of the driver's cigarette smoke to the outside of the car.

She ( the chain smoking driver) dropped us off at the departures area for Delta and we got in line.
And it was quite a line.

When we got into it there must have been at least 400 people in it.
The line wrapped around and around and back and forth and this was only 6:45 AM.
Of course, the line was also swollen out of proportion by the scads of people who were praying to get on with standby tickets from yesterday's cancelled flights.

By the time we worked our way to the front of that part of the line- the part where you show your ticket and your picture ID, not the part where you have your shoes, belt buckle and bags X-rayed and your shampoo measured, weighed and analyzed to make sure the bottle is not over 3 ounces ( and to make sure that you did not commit the cardinal sin of using a gallon bag instead of a quart plastic bag to zip it up in....) well, I can't say it was getting late, because, to be honest, they kept us moving at a decent rate.
Or, at least, the line kept moving at a decent rate, until they got to us.

Our normal protocol ( and, yes, I hesitate to use a pronoun for people in my family in conjunction with the adjective " normal") when going through lines is that I shove Sarah in front of me.
She goes first.
This is because if I go first I am done and gone and she is still standing there waiting for me to interpret for her.
Oddly, this doesn't' work very well.

So, she goes in front of me and hands her boarding pass and her driver's license ( the learner's permit variety) to the man. He looks at the pass and her license and says, "Your name?'
I have added a question mark, but his voice didn't really denote a question.
On the one hand, this seems rather lazy, but, on the other hand, he had been saying those two words over and over to the 400 plus people in front of us...and those were the ones that hadn't gone through the line before we had arrived at the airport.

I signed his question to Sarah and she fingerspelled 'S-A-R-A-H" and I voiced it for her.

"What's that?"
Came the slightly perturbed voice of the man who was still looking at his papers.

I signed his response to Sarah , who replied back to him, "What's that?"
with a slightly different inflection, which I tried to convey as I voiced it for her.

"What's that?"
His voice now had some emotion to it, and was ...confused, at least a little bit.

I conveyed this to Sarah, who again responded, "What's that?"

The man, still not looking up, and with maybe some added irritation in his voice said, What's that?"

To which again, Sarah replied, and I voiced for her, "What's that?" Although, Sarah's response , at this point, was rather relaxed.
She is used to dealing with the intellectually disadvantaged.

Again, the man asks, "What's that?"
I am getting a bit tired of signing the same thing over and over, but I do. That is, after all, my job.

And again....I voice the same reply for Sarah.

This time, he asks his question, and is more than bit perturbed.
And while Sarah is replying with her same calm "What's that?" he looks up.
He catches her signing it and my voicing for her.
And he freezes.

For a moment.

Then his shoulders go back,his eyes go wide in a very uncomfortable way, and he tentatively hands Sarah's boarding pass and ID back to her, looking as if he has realized he is dealing with a rather large and trainer-less grizzly bear.

Sarah and I walk past him and to the next line where we will have our shoes, bags, and hearing aids xrayed.

Story of the Day 7/ 18/ 2012 - part 3

Vouchers in hand we made our way to the right and down the hall and out of the secured perimeter of the departing flights and to the baggage claim.
We went to the area where the car services do their pickups and the man there told me they couldn't accept the voucher from the airline.

He told me to go to the airline's service desk behind the baggage carousels.

Sarah and I went and stood in line behind a slew of passengers who were here at LaGuardia, but whose luggage was not.
These were mostly other passengers who had not planned on spending more than a few hours in the airport awaiting their connecting flights; and many were now on their cells phones trying to arrange for a hotel while their clean underwear and their toothbrushes were in the underbelly of a jet or perched atop a truck whose crew was taking three hour coffee break between unloading the plane and loading the baggage onto the carousel.

When we got to the front of the line, the lady called a car service that would accept the voucher and wrote the number for it on the voucher for tomorrow morning's trip back to the airport, so we could get back in time for our flight.
Then she told us where to wait and too look for a black Lincoln Towncar withan emblem on the side saying "B....."
She told us it would be here in 5-10 minutes.
She did all of this without my having to resort to the AARP magazine tactics....

Sarah and I went outside and stood on the cement meridian and waited.
And waited.
We didn't waste our time. We carefully scanned a number of the car service vehicles that came by and learned what a Lincoln Town car looks like, so that we would recognize one.

And we waited.

About 30 minutes later, Sarah and I discussed going back inside to speak with the lady.
We discussed this because I had tried to call the car service, and was unable to hear the guy on their end of the line.
If it was a guy.
Maybe it was a girl. maybe it was a recording. Maybe it was music.
It was not a busy signal. I know that much.

Luckily, in another ten minutes, it became unnecessary for us to go in and ask her about the car service.
That is because she came outside to us.
The driver couldn't find us.
Also, he was driving a blue van.
As it turns out, we were looking for a black Lincoln Town car, and he was looking for us in the wrong location, even though he had been told to meet us outside of Delta's baggage pickup.

So, after 59 minutes of standing on the cement, we were in a vehicle and headed to the Flushing Hotel.
Which is in Flushing.
In China Town.

We figured this out because all of the signs were in Chinese.
Some of them had subtitles.
In English.

The hotel did.

Sarah and I were thrilled.

This, at least, was definitely a sight cooler than the airport terminal.
We went into the hotel whose lobby was minuscule in the way that only New York City hotel lobbies are, but clean.
As we waited our turn at the desk, numerous Chinese speaking guests walked in and out of the hotel with shopping bags.
Sarah and I were also fairly certain they were Chinese and not Chinese-American.
That had nothing to do with the language they were speaking, it had to do with the fact that three of them were able to walk abreast through the lobby.
This a feat that three super sized American tourists could not have accomplished.
Probably not two, either.

Meanwhile, I had texted Ely and Aaron that we are at the hotel.

Unfortunatly, I got their hopes up a bit prematurely.

The desk clerk looked at our vouchers and said she did not have reservations for us.

The airline's red coat lady had called, asked if they had a room, and then hung up upon hearing the word "yes". She hadn't actually reserved it.
Meanwhile, the hotel was getting sent people from other cancelled flights.
She checked.
They had a room.
But then she realized that the vouchers did not have a value.
We were not her first airline casualties of the evening, and the others, including one from Delta, had arrived with vouchers with a dollar value.
She calls the number I have for Delta.
She is put on hold.
Sarah sits in a chair. Small but comfortable.
Especially since the air-conditioning is working.
I stand by the young lady in my airport fragrance. This is an odor I have developed after 4 1/2 hours in the un-ariconditioned terminal, and an additional hour standing outside on the cement on a hot summer evening.

I go sit down.
Time passes.
After about 25 minutes, she gives up with being on hold. We confer. We come up with another number.
She calls it.
This time the hold is more like 10 minutes.
She reads off our voucher numbers.
They will send someone over with new vouchers in 5 minutes.
Five minutes pass.
Ten minutes pass.
Twenty minutes pass.
I give her my charge card and she xeroxes the un-dollar-amounted vouchers for me.
We will get a room no matter what, at this point.
That is becasue I have my daughter sitting on the small but comfortable chair in the air-conditioned hotel lobby, and I suspect we will not be welcome if she has to sit and sleep on it all night.
And I can't see dragging her back to the un-airconditioned terminal at this hour.

Then, a young woman- young by my middle aged standards, shows up.
She is another airline casualty.
And she has our vouchers, as well as her own.

She is practically in tears.
She was on a flight from Sweden that got in early this morning, then they cancelled her afternoon flight home. She is so sleep deprived that apparently her crying in the terminal earned a bit of compassion from the airline and they have sent her to the hotel to get some sleep.
A room is cleaned up for her.

In the meanwhile, Ely has texted me that there is good food in Chinatown and we need to go out and get some.
I look out on the street.
It is late. Everything has closed and the street is dark.
I text him back that I do not think that even great food is worth it, if we have to stumble around on unlit streets to find it.

And, after all, I have the emergency rations.

We all go to our rooms.

Ours is a little bit bigger than one of our bathrooms at home.
It looks clean, but I have heard numerous stories about hotels and bed bugs.
With concern, I lift the covers. Sarah looks at me to ask what I am doing and I explain.
I pull back the sheets. I check under the mattress.
It looks safe.

And the toilet works.

So does the shower. It even has hot water and Sarah and I work on becoming less fragrant.
Okay, I was the fragrant one. She was still tolerable.

And we sleep.

With both cell phones set to alarm.
And instructions to the front desk to wake us with a call.

I am not sure, at this point, what will be necessary to do that, although, as it happens, the first cell phone does the trick.



The drive from Indianapolis to Rochester is about 13 hours including potty-breaks and two gasoline purchases. Longer if we eat.
And I would have gotten more sleep. Even if I was the only one driving.
Oh well.


Sarah and I get dressed and prepare to spend another day playing airport roulette.

Story of the Day 7/ 18/ 2012 - part 2

We land in New York at LaGuardia airport.
We have a slight layover; 40 minutes, before the flight for Rochester boards.

Sarah notices that many of the people in the terminal are sweaty- the backs of their shirts are soaked.
She says, "The air conditioning isn't working."
I think she is wrong. It feels okay to me after the heat of the tunnel.

There is a plane to Houston that is supposed to board at the same gate, before our flight, but it is delayed getting in.
We wait.
As the time approaches for our flight, the Houston flight still hasn't boarded and they post a one hour delay for our flight.

By now, I have realized that Sarah is right, the air-conditioning is not working.
There is air movement, a fan or something, but it is more than a little warm.
Not compared to the 100 degrees of Indiana, more like 90.
This is because it is slightly milder in New York. I know this because the pilot announced that the temperature was only 99 degrees, just before we landed.
I figure we will both take nice showers when we get to Rochester.

We sit and we wait.

I buy a salad for Sarah, who is hungry.
No, she didn't like the provisions I packed in case we were stranded somewhere.

That is okay, it is early. I would start panicking if we had to start using our emergency provisions this early in the trip.
I go back and buy myself a banana.

We wait some more in the sweaty terminal.

And some more.

I text the guy who is meeting us in Rochetsre, so that he knows that we will be late.

They cancel the flight to Houston.

It starts raining.
Maybe it starts raining before they cancel it.
I can't remember.

The Houstron travelers line up at the desk to get different flights.
Some of them are offered to be bused over to JFK for a later flight.
Slowly, the line dissipates.

Then they cancel our flight.

They make an announcement
I cannot make out what they said. I go ask a woman.
A line forms at the desk.
I get in the line.
They tell people to use their smart phones and laptops and they can " jump" the line by rescheduling that way.
Some of the people stand in line and do that. Others use the 800 number to call.
The line is long, so that makes sense.
For them.

I have a dumb phone and no iPad or tablet or laptop, and I cannot hear well on my cell phone, especially in a terminal that is not at all quiet, so there is no point in my trying to call the 800 number.
I text the guy in Rochester.
The woman behind me is on her tablet checking things out and telling me what is full and what is available.

Two women traveling together at the front of the line are given seats on a later flight. They leave the line.
Three minutes later, that flight is also cancelled.
A few minutes after that, they have cancelled all flights to Rochester from LaGuaradia.
The woman behind me locates a flight from JFK. So does the guy in Rochester, he texts me about it.
Ten or fifteen minutes later, the line a is a little shorter, and that flight has been filled.
They start rescheduling people for a late night flight from JFK.

It is raining hard. There is lightning and thunder.
There are announcements about other flights being cancelled.
Soon, all flights from LaGuardia are cancelled.

All of them for the rest of the evening.

People start leaving.
They figure they can do some of this from home.


The people left are the desperate ones, the ones who either reallyy need to get to Rochester, like the two women in front of me who have business appointments, and the woman behind me with the iPad/tablet thing.
She has a conference. She needs to get there. She is trying all sorts of things.
She starts asking people if they want to rent car with her and split the drive.
The other desperate people are the ones who do not live in New York. They live in Maine and Florida..and Indiana.

They cannot just go home.
There is a rush to sites on the internet to book hotel rooms. A rush by the people who can easily afford a room in New York City, that is.
A family standing near me has a long conference about how many rooms they will need. There are 7 or 8 of them. They are also not sure how to get to the different hotels from here. New York is a big city with 5 boroughs.
How far away is Brooklyn? What about East Rockaway?

I start thinking about buses.
How would we get to Port Authority from here? How many hours would a bus to Rochester take. It is 4 hours to Binghamton. Another 4 to Rochester? Maybe quite a bit more since it might not be direct...and how many hours till it would leave?

The flights for tomorrow are filling up.
Two people traveling together are separated. One gets a ticket for a flight tomorrow morning, the other for a flight tomorrow evening.
Suddenly, all of the flights tomorrow are sold out.
So are the hotels.
This is because all flights from JFK have also been cancelled. All of them.

I get to the front of the line.
The woman offers me two tickets on a fight Friday morning.
The awards ceremony is tomorrow, at lunch time.
Tomorrow is Thursday.
Friday is a day late.
I text the guy in Rochetser.
Is it worth it for us to even fly there?
Then I realize it is, because we are also going to drive to Binghamton to annoy Ely.
I mean, to visit Ely.

I rememebr this article I read in a bathroom paper.
When the AARP magazine comes, my husband leaves it in the bathroom. He figures it is not worth any more time than that.
I, meanwhile, always end up grabbing it and reading it, so it ends up by the sofa in the living room.
It is like this game we play- you know who was the last person to spot it by which room it is in.

Also, I should explain that it is possible I did not read about this in an AARP magazine.
It could have been one of the 700 other things that come to our mailbox each month, but I am pretty are it was that one...on the other hand, since I am often wrong....

At least I do remember that there was an article about what to do if you are on a flight that gets cancelled.
So, I ask, "What about a hotel room and vouchers for meals?"
"This is weather related. We do not compensate if it is weather related."

She has been telling everyone who asks this. I have heard it said, as well, by the guy to her right who is handling his own line of stranded passengers.

I stand there.
She asks again if I want the Friday flight.
I tell her that I have to think about it. I explain that it is a long time to stay at the airport with my daughter and that I need to text the guy in Rochetser.
And I stand there and text him.

She asks me to move to the side so she can deal with the next person.
I turn around and sign what is going on to Sarah, who is still in the sweaty seat she has been sitting in for a couple of hours.
I move about 5 feet away.
I wait for the text from Rochester.
I also text my son, so he knows what is happening.

I go back to the woman, who has just finished with another passenger.
I ask about earlier flights from another airport. Earlier than Friday.
She says there is one tomorrow morning from JFK.
I ask if they will provide shuttle service. I know to ask this because the woman behind me , when she was looking everything up on the tablet thingy told me that the cab between the two airports was $80.
The airline lady tells me, "No". I wil need to pay for a cab.
I tell her, "That won't work."
I stand there.
She asks me, again, to move.
I move 5 feet away.

In another 5 minutes, I come back over.
She is not quite done with the next person.
I ask her if they can put us on a rolling standby starting with tomorrow morning.
She says, "No." They already have too many people on standby.
I explain to Sarah what is happening.
I do this by again signing to her across the waiting room.
This lady watches me signing to her, yet again.

I move away for another 5 minutes, then come back. I have not moved very far, any of these times.
Now I come back and ask her another flight related question.
I cannot understand what she is saying.
I've had to ask her, several times, to repeat herself. People are talking in line, there are overhead announcements, and I cannot hear well.

I pull out my hearing aid. It has a few different settings and by now, my ear hurts and I can't remember what setting it is on because my brain has overloaded from all of the sound. Sound- background sound and overhead announcements that I cannot figure out, and thunder.
All this noise is making it hard to hear with my hearing aid.
She looks at my squealing hearing aid.
This time the woman tells me to go sit down. She will get a red coat to help me.
I have no idea what she means. It is only later that I realize she has said "red coat". At the time, I cannot make the sounds I hear make any sense.


She tells me it will be about 20 minutes.
I go and sit down next to Sarah.
In the sweaty seat in the hot terminal that is now starting to cool off a little because of the rain.
It might be down to 82, by now.
And we wait.
And wait.
About 40 minutes later, I go back up to the desk.

There is woman there in a red coat.
All of the sudden, I realize what the first lady said. "Eh oah" was "red coat".

I ask her what I need to do.
She tells me she is working on it
She has us seats on a flight .
Tomorrow morning.
From LaGuradia.
The one that was full over an hour ago.
She is working on getting us a hotel room.
Several minutes later, she hands me vouchers.
$6 for dinner.
Since this is New York, and the airport, that means a large soda and a piece of fruit, maybe. But at this moment that sounds good
Even though I do not drink soda
And a vocuher for the hotel, and one for car service.

She gives me directions to get to where we can get the car service.

I thank her.
Then I walk over and thank the first lady, who just wants to see me out of here.

You see, the article in the AARP magazine said to...not leave. Just stay there.

Story of the Day 7/ 18/ 2012 part 1

Today is the day that we travel to Rochester. Sarah and I.

Sarah won a small cash prize in a film competition, and the prize also happened to include two plane tickets and a night's stay in a hotel so that she and a parent or guardian can attend the awards ceremony.

We packed carefully.
Very carefully.
I am one of those neurotic mothers who makes a "packing list" and gives it to my child, and then I add these little instructions like, "Don't forget to pack an extra pair of underwear!" and "Don't forget to pack an extra pair of socks!" and "Don't forget a sweater!" Even though it has barely been under 100 degrees in recent memory.
Well, you never know.
And I pack snacks that cause my daughter to roll her eyes, because, of course, there are no places to buy food on the way to New York, and we might starve.
Not.
And I pack a deck of cards and two books and 5 pens because, well, you never know.
By the time I am done, my carry on bag weighs 147 lbs and contains enough provisions to get us through being marooned for 3 weeks on a desert island.
But I, at least, am calmer.

I have printed out our itinerary.
I have cash and charge cards and my AAA card, and AAA maps and a GPS and a lot of kleenex.
We need the AAA card, and the maps.
In Rochester, where the awards ceremony is, we wil be renting car.
You see, we are using this trip as an excuse to go and annoy Ely.
I mean to visit my son, Ely and annoy him.
I mean to visit my son Ely and have a wonderful time, and hopefully, NOT annoy him.
Too much.

The awards ceremony is tomorrow.
We will arrive in Rochester at about 5:35 PM, spend the night in a hotel, attend the awards ceremony, tomorrow, at lunch time, and then take off in the rental car for Binghamton.
Binghamton is about 3 hours and 15 minutes from Rochester.
Don't worry, I have also packed my wrist splints, my glucosamine and extra assorted arthritis medications for the drive.

The first part of our trip is bumpy.
There is air turbulence.

We are on a fully loaded plane with bunch of Ball State students headed to the east.
The real east, not just Philadelphia or Boston.
They will spend their first night in Thailand and then travel to Malaysia. It is a field work trip.
Apparently, that means it is a field trip for which you get either college credit or an inflated grade. I am not sure which.
I know all of this because the woman in the seat in front of me is quizzing the student sitting next to her.

I would think more kindly about this learning experience, except that I can also easily hear the conversation going on behind me.
It si a conversation between two of the young women going on the field trip I mean field work trip.

The one behind me makes an occasional comment. The conversation is largely being carried on by the 20 something in the seat behind Sarah. She is loud enough that turning off my hearing aid doesn't help.
During the 2 hour and 7 minute flight I learn all kinds of things.
Her friend (not the one she is sitting with) is getting married. "Gosh, everyone is getting married. But that friend is having the world's most hideously awful juvenile wedding. Can you believe it? She is letting people bring their kids to her wedding."
And she has decided to make it family-friendly and have paper tablecloths and crayons to keep people amused.
"And Oh My God! (which is the second most used phrase by this young lady. The first being "and like...") She is going to have, can you believe it? paper flowers. You know those origami things. Have you ever heard of anything so juvenile?"

Apparently juvenile is the worst word this young lady knows, and she keeps repeating it in a drawn-out, disgusted tone.

And,"Oh My God, do you believe that she had to go wedding dress shopping with her?" And she wanted to get this really nice lace dress, but, of course, her "friend" sitting behind us told her that the nice dress didn't go with such a juvenile wedding. Of course, she emphasized that she didn't say it that way, she said it didn't match the theme.
And, on top of that, there were 7 bridesmaids, but only 5 groomsmen. And you need to have the same number of groomsmen as bridesmaids. What was wrong with that couple, don't they understand anything?
Apparently, the friend sitting behind us does understand that this simply is NOT done.
And she made sure to explain to them about that, because you can't have a girl walk down the aisle by herself or with another girl. It isn't "balanced" and "it just doesn't look right", and the whole thing is going to be so awful and unbalanced, and "doesn't she know any better?"
And they still won't draft two other guys! Can you believe that they just won't listen to this "friend"?
She certainly can't believe it.....

And, on top of that, "Oh My God, she didn't even pick out elegant bridesmaid dresses, she picked out a color and told all the bridesmaids to go pick out a dress they liked in that color, and this is going to look so incredibly rag-tag!"

And then there is this guy the "friend" behind us is dating.
He is the brother of someone or another who was stupid enough to fix him up this this young woman.

His sister must really not like him. Or something.

Anyhow, she starts complaining, I mean talking, about him.
Apparently, while she was working at a camp, he offered to drive down and visit.
To take her someplace in the nearby town for dinner.

She told him "No." Sheesh, she only has a few free days and she has friends there and she wants to spend her time with them.
And this guy doesn't get the idea, so he calls her every week. Three times, can you imagine that! And he expects her to make time to see him, when she has friends she is doing things with. And then, camp was over, and he hasn't called about coming and visiting her.
Can you imagine?

"Oh My God", and then there is her friend with the kid, and her friend lets the kid go out places, like to the store with them, and the kid is not wearing an outfit that matches! Can you imagine wanting to be seen with someone whose kid's outfit isn't coordinated.

I, meanwhile, am wondering if the young woman she is telling all of this to is either wearing ear plugs or is planning on putting some ground glass in this girl's Pepsi. Okay, maybe just a very powerful laxative.
It could be a very long field trip for whomever has to share a room with her.

Story of the The Day 7/ 17/ 2012

I have often wondered about parents who would get their teenagers credit cards.
Why would you send a teen off to a mall or anywhere, for that matter, with the ability to do mega financial damage?

However, tomorrow, I am planning on heading straight out to the bank to get one for my teenager.
Why?
She had to buy an outfit.
An outfit meaning something other than blue jeans and a t-shirt. Something "appropriate" to wear to an awards ceremony.

It was painful.
It was especially painful because she walked through the stores (all four of them) and never picked up one shirt.

The pants were not a big problem.
Black.
We can handle black pants.
The only problem was that the first store didn't have them in her size.
Fortunately, the second one did.
But she walked up and down the aisles and didn't pick up one shirt.
Well, except for a pullover that she thought might be nice for school.
I, meanwhile, kept puling out anything I thought would do and that she might not find too offensive.

Except that she did.
I mean , how offensive can a plain black shirt be? Or a white one? Or one with stripes?

Very, if your mother is holding it.

It is a bit like the pants.

At the second store, a store at which Sarah has never bought anything, previously, I asked her if she wanted to try on the pair of pants she was considering buying.
The pants were the store's brand and not the Levi 511 kind she usually buys, so I , at least, was nervous about how they would fit.

"No."

"Are you sure you don't want to try them on?"
"No, they will fit."
"But if they don't fit, we don't have time to come back here and exchange them."
"No."

93.2 seconds later (which is a tad more than minute and a half), a clerk asked Sarah, "Do you want to try those on?"
"Yes."

(Sarah, later, said she only agreed to try her pants on because she knew her mother would nag her if she did not. )

Which bank do you think could get that credit card to us the fastest?

Story of the Day 7/ 5/ 2012

Sarah's interpreter met Sarah's interpreter.

This is what Sarah's interpreter told her, at school, this morning.
"I met your 13th interpreter."

Sarah had to think and think and think and think.
And, still, she was stumped.

Since Sarah has been at the public high school for 2 1/2 years, now, she's had a long list of interpreters.

Some have been truly awful.
Some have been scary.
Some have been bad.
Some have been so-so.
Some have been good.
And a few have been excellent.
Sadly, the last two categories were the most sparsely populated.

So Sarah was tring to figure out which interpreter was number 13.....

As Sarah's current interpreter described how the two interpreters met, Sarah realized which one it was.

Then, Sarah's interpreter, her current interpreter, who is fortunately one of the excellent ones said, "When she told me that she was #13, I said, 'I am interpreter #34. Ha!'"
Interpreter #13 was...startled.
She must have thought she had one of the high numbers.

I suppose that put a lot of things into perspective.

Story of the Day 8/ 2/ 2012

"Hey , Mom, do you want to go to Costco before Shabbat?"

"No."

My son is driving.
My car.

We have just left his car at the repair place to see if we can afford to get the air-conditioning fixed. and the front lift, and the hatchback window.

"Are you sure you don't' want to go to Costco? I mean, we could go today and then you wouldn't' have to go tomorrow."

"No.!"

I am screaming.
It isn't' helping.

He makes a right turn to get off Michigan Road and get us back towards home.

He asks me something else.
Twice.

He cannot figure out what I am screaming at him.

I am screaming because he doesn't have hearing aids on.

He doesn't' understand me.
Well, he doesn't' hear me.
I sign.
Then I sign more frantically.

I am telling him to keep his eyes on the road.

I also tell him he needs to wear his hearing aids in the car if he wants to have a conversation, because I don't' want to get killed.

"But, Mom, a conversation is where I talk and you listen!"

Gee, I didn't' realize.

But, then, why was he asking me questions?