Story of the Day 10/ 5/ 2012

My daughter has been patiently waiting to get her Psychology paper back.

Sarah handed it in, a couple of weeks ago.
Most students are either eager or dreading it, because it will have this thing called a "grade" on the top of it.

This is not, however, the reason for Sarah's angst.

Sarah, unlike many high school students, has a tendency to choose the project that is the biggest, and most challenging.
Not just in her favorite class, not just in the class she does best in, not in order to pull up grade. She does it because she is Sarah and the idea of doing anything less is ..."boring".

As a result, whenever there is a project or a paper, she will have the entire house torn up.
We will need to make 14 trips to different craft stores or thrift shops.
She will need to get some strange text from a library no one has ever heard of ( the library, that s. And this library will be a 4 1/2 hour drive because it will not participate in interlibrary-loan); and she will need me to pay $49.95 a month, so that she can access tutorials on some strange computer program.

So far, at least, she has not needed to learn Croatian, wrestle an alligator, or fly to Brazil.
She is saving those projects for college.

At any rate, when she was assigned the paper for her AP Psychology class, she decided, amongst other things, that she would write her paper in dialect.
Southern, black dialect.

Now, for another student, perhaps, this would not be a major undertaking, but Sarah is deaf. Deaf as in doesn't hear and doesn't speak and has never heard.
She has not heard any of that elevator music, she hasn't heard the crowds cheering at the basketball games; she hasn't heard the fire alarms at her school, and she has never heard this particular dialect she has chosen to use for her paper...nor any other dialect, for that matter.

I said to her, rather incredulously, "But, how are you going to be able to do this? You have never heard that dialect."

Sarah looked at me completely non-plussed, and responded, "What difference does it make? I have never heard any dialects, I have never heard English, but I have to write my paper using that."

She has a point.

But she is, at the same time, wondering how her teacher will respond to this rather creative touch.

Story of the Day 10/ 7/ 2012

Tonight starts another two day Jewish holiday.

Jewish holidays come in two varieties- ones where we eat nothing and fast all day, and ones where we overeat.
This holiday is the latter.

I have been cooking.

It is chilly outside. The days are getting shorter.
I am not making a lot of cold salads, but am thinking fall types of foods.
I am making burekas, and challah, and salmon with honey /mustard/pecan sauce. I am roasting eggplant, and making a butternut squash.

I bought whipped cream and am planning on making a special dessert.
I told Sarah, "I will make pumpkin crunch cake."

Pumpkin crunch cake is one of my family's favorites. The recipe was a friend's.
She used to make it using yellow cake mix.
Obviosuly, she is a friend, or was a friend.
She died 19 years ago.
But at any rate, a friend and not a relative.

That is because, in my family, if it isn't chocolate, it isn't worth the calories.

So, I have made a small alteration to her recipe.
I substitute a dark chocolate cake mix for the yellow cake mix.
I top the pumpkin custard with the chocolate cake mix with butter melted over it.
The butter crusts the top of it- and mixes with the pecans on the very top.
The lower part of the cake mix- which is added dry on top of the pumpkin custard- mixes slightly into the top of the pumpkin and makes a brownie top- a crusted brownie top.
It is delicious.

So, I was opening the can of pumpkin, and discovered, while looking for the cake mix, that I do not, in fact, have a chocolate cake mix.....

I ask my husband, "Will it be all right with you if I use a yellow cake mix?"
It is almost 3 PM. The holiday starts in a few hours and I still have a lot to do.

He smiles and tells me, "That will be fine."

I go upstairs to where Sarah is watching football on TV.
Her response is, "NO! It has to be chocolate!"

Her tired, old mother, I mean me-myself and I- look at her and sigh.
An unheard sigh, of course, since she is deaf.

I go back on downstairs and ask my husband, if he would please, pretty please, run out to the store and get a chocolate cake mix.
I explain that Sarah has decreed it needs to be chocolate.

My husband says he will go.

Then he smiles at me and says, "Oh good, I wasn't going to eat any if it wasn't chocolate."

Story of the Day 10/ 13/ 2012

A little boy said, "Hi, I'm Yoel," to my daughter, the other day, and she told her brother, Aaron, that "It's cool that Yoel can sign."

Aaron said, "No, his name is Yael."

Sarah responded, "No, it is Yoel."

Aaron insisted, "No, his name is Yael."

She repeated this story to me, and then she remarked about her brother, "He doesn't hear very well!"

I looked at my deaf daughter, who seemed to be quite serious, and shook my head and said, "He is deaf. Of course, he doesn't hear very well."

It was my daughter's turn to shake her head at me, "Yoel was signing."

Story of the Day 10/ 16/ 2012

"Sarah is a nerd! She's a nerd!"
My son was being very loud. In sign language.

He had just found out that Sarah does not have to go to school, on Wednesday, until 4th period. That is because the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors will be taking tests (PSAT and PLAN) and she is a senior and done with all of that.

The school has forms that are available in the front office for seniors to use to state where they will be, so that they can be excused until 4th period.
School starts at 7:25 AM. This means that seniors will not need to get to school until 10:25 Am. If you are a teenager, that sounds like a wonderful bonanza of either sleep or video gaming.

But, just to irk her brother (okay, not really just for that reason) Sarah has decided to go to school at 7:25, anyhow, so she can work on a project.
Not a project that is due anytime soon, either.
She is working ahead.
Way ahead.
The project is due December 14th.
That is two months from now.

Aaron isn't done, "She is the world's biggest nerd!"

I looked at him and said, "Thank God!"

"Because she isn't' lazy like me?" he asked.

Do I really need to answer that?

Story of the Day 9/ 30/ 2012

My husband writes.
I mean really writes, not a half-baked blog of oddball stories like I write. Okay, the blog is not half-baked, I am ...and so are the stories.
But back to my husband.

He writes real stuff.
Real as in published.

There was the book he co-authored with a friend.
And there are the magazines or journals or whatever they are called.
He used to write regularly for The Lancet, which is definitely a journal.
Now he writes a monthly satire column that is in two magazines or journals or something like that.
One of them is Rheumatology News and I have managed to forget the name of the other one. Internal Medicine something or another.
Maybe I will be a an exemplary spouse and look it up, right now.
Wait, if I was an exemplary spouse, I would have remembered without needing to look it up, so I can forget about trying to pretend I am exemplary.

Okay, maybe I will be a passable spouse and look it up, now.


Ah, Internal Medicine News !

But that isn't all.
He write a blog.
A PAID blog.

Yes, they pay him to write for a blog.
You can keep repeating it several times more, if it will help you to process it. I have noticed that I get the most stunned reactions from others who, like me, slave away at an unpaid blog...
I mean, there really are people out there who get paid to do this?

In case you want to verify that I am not pulling your leg, this will connect you to one of his articles for one of the magazines:

http://www.rheumatologynews.com/index.php?id=8821&cHash=071010&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=92378

and the blog:
http://www.rheumatologynews.com/views/inside-rheum/blog/the-golden-goniometer/bff5eabd2f6eaba48d80fc58c4c91381.html

But now to get to the story.

My husband , while he greatly enjoys writing and gets paid to write, doesn't get paid enough to pay the mortage or even for the gasoline for our Honda Civics, so he has to moonlight as a practicing rheumatologist.

Monday through Friday you can find him working in a medical office seeing patents who would rather be out dancing or skiing or even just reading a book, but have found themselves consulting him because they have arthritis, or gout, or lupus, or some other not-so-fun condition.

Recently, my husband was seeing a new patient.
The patient had just moved to Indianapolis and had previously been seen at the Mayo Clinic.

When the patient asked her physician at the clinic for a referral, she was given the names of two rheumatologists in Indianapolis.
One of the names was my husband's.

As she told to my husband, she chose him because the doctor then said, "Oh, I read all of his articles!"

My husband realized that the patient must think that he is involved in important research or something along those lines; and he had a moment of internal struggle before deciding to not clarify this for her.

Story of the Day 9/ 28/ 2012

There was one period left. Tenth period.
My daughter, Sarah, has a study hall of that period of the day.
The interpreter and she were headed to the study hall and the interpreter decided to detour to go to the bathroom.
Sarah got to study hall and took seat.

The teacher wasn't there.
There was a sub.

A man, who started talking and talking and talking.
And Sarah kept a careful eye on him.
Which is about all you can do if you cannot hear what he is saying.

A few minutes later, the interpreter came in and sat down.
And while she is not as old, grey and creaky as I am, she doesn't look like she could possibly be a high school student.
The sub looked at her...and looked at her...and asked, "What are you doing here?"

She replied, "I am the interpreter."

"The interpreter for what?"

"For the Deaf student."

The sub looked a bit startled and then he asked, "Where is the Deaf student?"

The interpreter pointed, and Sarah's friend, who sits next to her, patted Sarah's shoulder, just in case the interpreter's gesture wasn't clear enough.

If you have known me and my children for a few years, or have read my blog for that length of time, you will be cringing. That is because this is related to a few other stories.
A number of years ago, when my son, Aaron, who is also deaf, was in middle school, he had an unpleasant run in with a sub teacher.
As a result of what happened, the school instituted a policy that there would be a "cover letter" or "sub teacher form" that the substitute teachers would get for special education students. That way they would not physically assault or punish deaf students they thought were ignoring them by not responding when the sub teacher spoke to their backs.
Little things like that.

When it was time for Aaron to move to the high school, I inquired if we needed to make sure this protection followed him.
I was, at that time, assured by the administration that following what had happened, the form was actually already in place at the high school.

Except, as we found out, over time and incidents, it often wasn't.

So, of course, as my daughter is telling me this I am thinking that I will now need to contact the school and complain and ask why the form wasn't in place.
Again.

Except that, except for his initial surprise, this sub went a bit in the other direction.
After realizing there was deaf student, sitting there, in his room, he gave the other students a lecture about how he likes deaf people.
Because they are attentive.
They pay attention.
They listen.
Although, obviously, not with their ears.
There is a bit more.
Apparently deaf people are also nice.

This was certainly a much better response than Sarah or Aaron have received in the past...although it might also rank up there with "black people are better dancers," or "Asian students are better at math", but, considering our other experiences, we will take it.
Gladly.



(See previous story- Story of the Day 11/11/2010 http://storyoftehday.blogspot.com/2010/11/story-of-day-11112010.html I believe that the others are not on this blog.)

Story of the Day 9/ 24/ 2012 #2

I am not going to jail!

I feel like throwing off my clothes and running out into the yard and yelling "Yahoo!!!"
Except that it is not very warm outside. In fact, there was some frost on the cars, this morning.
And, I don't feel like going to jail.

I also need to find some nice, flowery note cards so that I can write a letter, a thank you note, really, to my lawyer, and to the lady at the IRS.
The one who decided that, yes, I was a victim of identity theft, and , yes, most probably from someone who worked for or still works for my previous employer and used my personal identification to get checks from my previous employer for which I then owed taxes...
and which I didn't' find out about until the taxes were already quite overdue and penalties and late fees and interest and the cost of pink soap were all piling up...
because that nasty person who stole my identity to get money from the agency also had my mailing address changed, so the 1099 went somewhere else....and I never saw it, or knew about it.
Until that letter from the IRS.
About the overdue taxes, and penalties and late fees and interest and .......

So I need to write to the lady from the IRS, who acknowledged that I didn't' actually get that almost $10,000 in question, in the first place.
And to my lawyer.

Because through all of this, of course, I had to deal with my ex-employer.
The one who insisted they had mailed me those checks.
And insisted that they had sent me the 1099 from that year....even if to a different address.
And then refused to send me a corrected 1099, when it was finally brought to their attention the the checks they were sure they sent to me...went somewhere else.
After I called, and called, and wrote and wrote.

And then, in desperation, harassed my lawyer, the same one who had to file a lawsuit to get my back pay from this same noble agency,
which, in case you were not already sure by now, is part of the government.

And so my lawyer got a turn at calling and being ignored, and writing, and being ignored, and writing again, and being ignored....
and, finally, writing and getting an answer.

After all of this, perhaps you can understand my desire to throw off my clothes and run outside yelling and scattering rose petals.

But, also, my restraint in not doing it, since I don't' want to jeopardize my un-jailed state.