Story of the Day 4/ 17/ 2013

This is actually an addendum to Story of the Day 3/ 15/ 2013- the story of toilet paper.

We were all eagerly awaiting an update from Ely.
What would happen when he stopped buying toilet paper for the house?
Since, all year, none of the other three residents had figured out that toilet paper had to be bought and put in the bathroom, but , instead, seemed to believe that the house elves magically replenished the supply, we could not quite guess what their response would be to that empty roller.

Ely, on Friday, April 12th, texted to tell me : " I kid you not, someone noticed we were low on toilet paper and bought a single roll of toilet paper. "

Both Ely and I were curious what the next thing to happen would be. Ely was not worried, after all, he had his own stash ( a roll hidden behind something in his room), and he was also headed out of town to visit friends, over the weekend.
What would be the state of things in the bathroom when he returned? Would someone have anted-up and purchased another single roll?

As things had it, while standing guard at the doorway to the staircase where his younger siblings were filming, I noticed the above installation.
I took two photos of it, and sent them to Ely, along with the message:

"Art installation. If your housemates were here, it would be disappearing one roll at a time."

Ely let me know that the single roll had run out.
But his roommates had replaced the single roll after it had run out.

With a box of tissues.

Hopefully, when this runs out, the napkins will be safe.
Since they are cloth.

Story of the Day 4/ 12/ 2013

My children are trying to fill a role in Sarah's upcoming video.
You might have noticed that a lot of the recent stories revolve around this topic.
That is because it is a big video- her senior theses film- and it is consuming high parts of our lives.
That and our family room, breakfast room, kitchen, garage....

The part they are trying to fill is that of a high school student. A girl.
She has to look innocent, and guilty.
Filling this role has involved a lot of strange things.
Asking friends for referrals. Stalking people on Facebook. Making obscene phone calls.

My kids and I all asked numerous friends to refer women who looked the right age to play high schooler and who had some acting experience, and were willing to work for imaginary peanuts.
Hey, peanuts are expensive!

We got plenty of referrals.
Most were of 25 year olds who looked, 25.
A few of them looked 24 or even 23.
One looked at least 35.

Why is there such a dearth of high school girls?
Well, there isn't, but they were all busy.

Either that or their mothers took one look at the filmmakers and said, "No"
Or, worse, heard Aaron calling on the phone and asking to speak with their daughters , and said, "No!"
That is because of the heavy breathing.
Although, as far as I know, that was only for the one phone call.
And he was breathing heavily because he had been exercising.
Heavily.
Just before making the call.
Although,not just before, since Sarah realized he was going to appear to be "creepy" and made him rest for ten minutes before calling- although, his breathing was still a little heavy , even then.
But, at least, significantly less creepy,

And stalking.

My kids would get a name of some girl who was a friend of some friend, or a coworker,and then, since no one had met the young lady, we would locate her on Facebook and carefully evaluate each picture.

"Well, maybe she looks younger in this one...."
"If we had her unstyle her hair, would she look a little younger?"
"Clothes? Maybe she would look younger in different clothes?"

You would be amazed how many dressed-up, make-upped-up, trying to look 30 years old pics people who are 25 post on their FB walls.
Not just the one profile picture, but in their albums and in their....
You see, I have also found out that all of these tech savvy youngsters have zero security on their FB accounts.
Zero.
I know the names of their boy friends and girl friends, if they like Papa John's pizza with mushrooms, and which bar they prefer......

I have to keep resisting that Jewish mother urge to send them a message saying " Change your FB security, I can see too much!!!!"
And why am I looking at their FB pages?

Because I have a FB account, and my daughter, the filmmaker, doesn't.

Because of that, I am better at locating people.
Although, usually i am trying to locate old friends who moved 17 times since college and ......Not trying to locate actors for a video.
But I have some FB locating skills because of this.
So, when given the name of a potential actress, by a friend or a friend of a friend, or by the guys who mow our lawn, my daughter asks me to get onto my FB account and look them up, so she can see if they might just fit the role.
And I can, at least for a brief moment, impress my children with my feeble internet skills.
Oh, they are 22, 23, 26? They went to which high school? I can get to them via a friend named........
etc.
This is especially helpful when their name is Debbie Stein. You do not want to know how many FB users have that name.
Actally, I have no idea, since that was just a name I made up, not wanting to use some of the ones we actually checked.

At any rate, my kids, after much FB perusing, decided that one suggested actress might, just might, look young enough.
And she also seemed animated, in her pics- a good sign for an actress, although, one that can fool you.

So, we got her number, and Aaron, with some slightly dampened heavy breathing, called her.
She was interested.
He asked for her email address to send her the script.
You see, I am the one with the FB account.
And Aaron is the one who can talk on the phone.
Sarah could have a FB account, but since she hears nothing, and doesn't speak, Aaron, who hears, to some limited degree, with the use of a hearing aid, and speaks, even if with heavy breathing, gets that job.
He gets it because it is less embarrassing to have your brother with the heavy breathing call than to have your mother making phone calls for you.

Not that Sarah couldn't call...even though she cannot hear or talk, you see, she could.
There is this wonderful thing called a videophone.
We have one.
Sarah could call the girl with that.
Of course, the girl probably doesn't have a videophone, but there is this other wonderful thing called relay service.
Sarah could call them, give them a phone number for the young lady, and they would call and interpret between the two of them, being the voice for Sarah.
However, past experience has taught us that this can be even creepier than Aaron with his heavy breathing, because having some middle aged guy call up and announce "Hi , this is Sarah calling" tends to freak hearing people out more than a potentially lascivious call from a heavy breather.

I have no idea why.

At any rate, after Aaron had successfully called this young lady and gotten her to divulge her email address, Sarah sent a copy of the script and a note as to which pages the role was on.

And, the next morning, the email was back in Sarah's inbox and marked undeliverable.
We weren't sure if it was because the young lady's mailbox wouldn't' accept the script as an attachment, or because the email address was somehow "wrong."

After deciding the problems was probably the second one, Aaron made another call.
He asked the woman, "Is your email address... and he carefully spelled it out.

"No"

As it turns out, my son had missed hearing an "h" in the address.
For which, my deaf son, who was using a cell phone, was very apologetic.
The young lady may have thought he had been inattentive, on the first call.
Aaron was very apologetic to her, and afterwards, to me and to Sarah, for messing that detail up.
I meanwhile, was laughing that he thought he should need to apologize for that.

As Sarah will tell you, it is still better than having your mother make phone calls for you.

Story of the Day 4/ 9/ 2013

My son had to call a girl.
I mean a young woman.
She is even Jewish.
Unfortunately, despite the heavy breathing, it wasn't that exciting.
You see, it wasn't for a date.

And the heavy breathing really didn't have anything to do with her.
It had to do with the fact that my son had been exercising.
A dozen pull ups, some push ups, some other stuff, and then repeat.
He does not get this desire to exercise from my side of the family.

Aaron and Sarah had just decided to give the young woman a call to see if she would be able to act in Sarah's film.
This left Aaron needing to make a call, since he can at least fake talking on the phone.
But it was Sarah who told him he couldn't call, not yet.

Aaron didn't understand why.

So Sarah had to explain to him that his rapid, heavy breathing, on a phone call to someone he had never met, was likely to creep her out.
As Sarah said, "I am deaf, but even I know that!"

Guest Story of the Day 4/ 7/ 2013

Guest Story of the Day by Cynthia Harp

I worked as a very minor character in a film today. The filmmakers are deaf. This does not present the problems you would think -- it presents others.

Filmmaker A, whom I will call Sarah, does not pay much attention to my comments, because she has known how hideous my signing is. Unless obscenity is called for (and when is it not, really?) or some very basic reproductive information. Then I am your woman. Sarah has known I am either very stupid or communicatively challenged (or both), so she smiles and nods a lot.

Aaron , AKA Filmmaker B, is deaf but seemingly psychic (how does he know what we are talking about when we are speaking softly and looking away?), so he is very capable of understanding my contributions.

However, Aaron is terminally kind. It used to get in the way. Now it is merely amusing. After our first hideous take, comprised of mistaken dialogue, awkward body movements and inattention, Aaron said, “That was...good.” He would make a great therapeutic director of recovering or non-recovering actors. “That was great,” he would say, theoretically, “...just try not to pass out before the scene ends next time. At least not during your line.”

So Max did his first line and added the second to it. It really disrupted the rhythm of the scene. Aaron said, 'That's ok...but can you try to just, you know, separate them a little bit? And Max said, "Is this you, yelling at me?" Max only knew this was a correction, albeit a nearly imperceptible one, because he had known Aaron so long. This is as rough as it gets

Is it possible that deaf people are extra quiet? Griffin spent the morning in the basement. He came up as Sarah and Aaron were about to leave. Now, his time was spent in the basement with the dog, who was specifically put there so she would not interfere with the filming and also not run away while we repeatedly opened and closed the door for said scene. (What part of the door do most people use to knock? Eddie reaches for the uppermost part he can reach. Is that typical? But I digress...) Griffin was truly surprised when he came upstairs and Aaron, Sarah and Eddie were there filming. They had been there for 45 minutes. He was pleased and surprised to see all three, even though he had never met Eddie. Truly, Aaron and Sarah have such sunny demeanors, it almost does not matter who else is there. Almost.

It could be Griffin recognized Eddie from his previous work in Margolis-Greenbaum productions. He was wearing white face in that film. But that is not something Griffin tends to notice.

Sarah and Aaron thanked us for our time and headed for the door. I asked when they were going to film the scene with Alice, our dog. Another day, is what Aaron told us Sarah told him. It could have been “Hell, no!” but Aaron would never say that.

Story of the Day 4/ 5/ 2013

My son, Aaron, the very tall one who has not managed to move out of our basement, is trying to move out of our basement, or , at least, trying to not have to ask us every time he needs $1 for the vending machine.

He is enrolled at one of the local colleges in an EMT (Emergency Medical technician) training program.
This is the second program he has enrolled in.
The first was last summer, he enrolled to start classes in October, just after the Jewish holidays ended.

He was very excited when he found that program. It was the only one he found, last fall, that he would not automatically fail.
You see, in order to pass the course, you cannot be absent more than a specific number of days or you will miss the required number of hours of training. And, being Jewish and religious, missing classes for the Jewish holidays in the fall automatically put him over the limit for all the other programs.
But, my son found this program in Southport, just one city south of Indianapolis, that started after the last holiday.

He was excited.
He ordered the text book from the internet and started reading it in advance.
And the Friday before classes started, he clicked on the class link and found out that they had just added two mandatory practice sessions. On Saturdays.
He quickly shot off an email to the teacher. Was there any way to do those on another day?
"No," came the response, "And they are required."
So, the morning of the first day of the class, my son dropped it.

This semester, he found a course at one college that he would need to miss two classes for Passover, but , because of the schedule, only two classes; and that was just inside the limit to not be failed. As a result , he signed up and started class, and if he gets the flu, he will just have to go in and share it with everyone.
He already had his textbook, and he had been working on getting his stethoscope.
Which has been an ordeal.
Normally, you order a stethoscope. There are several which are totally fine for the generic EMT. The priciest of those is about $45.
But my son is not generic.
He is deaf.
There are two stethoscopes hat he can use. Both show a digital display of the information- no hearing required.
The least expensive is more than $500.
It has been ordered and will be here , soon.
He also needs navy pants.
He has one pair.
And black shoes, which required a trip to the store.
And, last month, he spent 8 hours in a hospital emergency room observing.
Except, there were no emergencies, on that day, so he ate a banana and drank some milk.


And , this morning, he headed off to the Fire Department to ride along on the ambulance for another 8 hours of observation.

Today, unlike his experience in the Emergency Room, was a busy one.
Before he had been there 4 hours, they had been called out for two "runs".
Aaron was riding in the back. Facing sideways.
He thought he was doing okay on the way out, but on the way back ........things weren't as good.
After that trip, they sat around the station for a while. He had a chance to recover.
Then , it was another trip out, and on the way back, Aaron sat in the back facing backwards.
His instructor, a woman, may have noticed something was wrong, even before he threw up on her shoes.

Okay, I added that.
He managed to not throw up on her shoes, which, if you have Meniere's disease, as Aaron does, which comes with some vertigo and a definite tendency towards motion sickness, you know how impressive his not throwing up on her shoes was.
Aaron is usually fine in cars.
As long as he doesn't' bring along a novel to read.
So, it had never occurred to us that facing sideways and backwards and reading all of the instruments would be...a problem.

He said to the woman who was supervising him, "And I ordered a really expensive stethoscope!"

She told him not too be too downhearted.
After all, he could always work as an EMT in the Emergency Room.

Story of the Day 3/ 3/ 2013

I have a FaceBook account.
For a while I was the only one in the family who had one. Well, not really, but since my husband never checks his, it was as if I was the only one in the family to have an account.
My children had accounts. they gave them up . They told me it was a waste of time.
They are right, but I am not nearly as well disciplined as they are.
Either that or I get much more enjoyment from wasting time than they do.

Gradually, though, my son, Aaron, was corrupted back to Facebook.
It had to do with his stand up comedy. He found it rather hard to invite people to shows if he had no way to invite them.

This evening, my daughter exclaimed with surprise"Ely ( my older son) is back on Facebook!"
"I know," I told Sarah, "He was having hard time keeping in touch with his friends."

"Oh, , I don't have that problem."

There was a pause, and I answered for her.

"That's right, " I told her, "you don't' have any friends."
"That's right." She replied.

Then she grinned and continued, "That is not what I was going to say, I was going to say that I text them."