Story of the Day 9/ 8/ 2014

Everything was moving slowly, this morning.
I read the comics while drinking my coffee, and saw one that showed a sad-sack character tearing off the Sunday page from his calendar
and being faced with the new page saying "Moan-day".
I have no idea how prescient that will be.

I got to work about 15 minutes early.
That gave me enough time to set up my work area the way I like, to start on a second cup of coffee and to chat with Mary.

After a few minutes, my cell phone started ringing.
I excused myself from our conversation and picked up my phone.
It was my daughter, Sarah, calling me.

Sarah only calls if it is an emergency.
She doesn't call hoping that I will answer.
If I answer,
it won't do her any good, because she is deaf and can't talk or hear on the phone,
but it means that she can't wait any longer for me to notice my email or my texts,
because something needs my immediate attention.

A call from Sarah can mean her friend might need to go to the hospital,
or she has been in an accident, or her luggage has been lost.
It could be something less serious like asking what a friend whose hands have been numb for 3 days should do.
Which might actually be just as serious, except that, from the description I think he has developed carpal tunnel system from playing video games.
At any rate, a call from Sarah is never anything casual.

I check my texts.
There is one from her saying "Sykpe!!!!!" with a deliriously long line of exclamation marks.

You see, Sarah cannot speak on the phone, but we Skype regularly.

I was explaining this, yesterday, to my mother, who is 80 and does use a computer,
and has even heard the word "Skype" before, but wasn't quite sure what it was.
Skype is a phone call, but it has video
which means it is a very good phone service for Sarah, who can sign to me, and see what I have to say in return.
Skype is accessed via the Internet, not over a landline;
and we have it set up on the computer I use, at home.
It can really be accessed from any device that uses the Internet and that has a video camera.

The only problem is that I have a dumb phone.
A dumb phone is, obviously, not a smart phone.
So, I cannot use it to Skype.

I also do not have a computer at work,
nor to I carry a laptop or iPad or any other electronic device that could allow me to Skype with her.

I explain to Sarah where I am and that we need to text.

My daughter is in her second year at college.
She attends Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

RIT is in Rochester. It gets very cold in the winter and no one picks it for the weather.
It does, however, have pretty good services for its deaf students.
RIT has a large number of qualified interpreters, and they also provide note taking services.
You see, if you are deaf and watching the interpreter in order to follow the lecture,
your eyes and attention have to be on the interpreter, not staring at a page while you take notes.
Hearing people can listen with their ears while they use their eyes to do other things.
Deaf people can't.

So, RIT is known for having good services.
Except that they don't.
Or, at least, as of this morning, they do not.
You see, they have decided to cancel the interpreter and the note taking services for my daughter's Biology class.

I tell Sarah, via text, to ask her teacher to call the office of Access Services.
My reasoning s that they will pick up the phone and be helpful to the teacher, who also has an interest in having services in his classroom for his deaf students.

Sarah, however, lets me know that she is not actually in class, right now.
This class meets later.

I relax. We have some breathing room.

I tell her to email the office of Access Services .
I also ask her if there are any other deaf students in the class.
There are three.
I tell her to contact them and have them send similar missives.
Sarah, however, doesn't have their contact information or their full names, so she is on her own, for the moment.
She sends me a text of what her email says. I add a sentence.
Then I tell her not to worry.

Except, I am worried.

This is the third week of school.
Why did they suddenly decide not to allow these kids' services?

Many hours later, she calls me.
On my cell phone.

This time I am home, but I didn't hear the Skype beeping because my son, who is also deaf, turned off the volume.
He must have been worried that it would bother him.....

At least, this time, I can actually Skype with Sarah.

Sarah has, by now, received three different emails.
All from Access Services.

The first is from the person responsible for scheduling the note taking.
She sees that it was cancelled on my daughter's account, but it isn't cancelled.
She has no idea why Sarah's schedule says that.

The second email is from a different person who is in charge of the interpreter services.
Again, this person sees that on Sarah's schedule the interpreter has been cancelled,
but the interpreter was not cancelled and this is...confusing.

The last email is from an administrator.

Apparently, according to Sarah's schedule the interpreter and the note taking have both been cancelled.
But they are still intact as services for the other three students.
And no one from their office cancelled the services.

This person tells my daughter that there must be a computer bug- one that has affected only her account.

After all, it is Monday.
I just forgot to pay attention to my horoscope,
I mean, the comics.

Story of the Day 9/ 11/ 2014

Today's story is actually continuation of yesterday's story, which is how much of life goes.

I was sitting in the dining room, drawing.
I know, most people do not draw in their dining rom.
I do because I have a studio, complete with a drawing/drafting table, and a special chair to sit in when I use the table.
This sounds wonderful, but it isn't.
Because the chair is broken.
Broken as in, if you sit in it, you end up on the floor.
So, instead of getting the chair fixed, or buying new one,
I draw in the dining room.

To get back to where I started this story, I was sitting in the dining room, drawing, and I heard a commotion.

From the squirrels.

The same squirrels I keep regularly fed with squirrel crackers.
They can get noisy, sometimes. They will fight one another- sometimes for a cracker, and sometimes just because .
And they will sometimes make some vocal or other noises because I have not fed them, recently, or enough.
But this was more noise, much more noise than I had heard them make, previously.

I got up and went to the patio door.
I looked , and looked.
No squirrell in sight.

I heard it , again.

My ability to locate where a sound is coming from is poor , that is because I have a good ear and a bad ear.
The good ear can hear most conversational speech, as long as you do not try to speak softly.
My bad ear can hear you, if you are really loud or if I happen to be wearing my hearing aid.
Because my two ears do not work together, locating sound is...hard.
But I did.
And I was surprised.
The squirrel making the racket was trapped.

In the catch and release trap I had set for the chipmunks.

I went and got a heavily coated pair of gardening gloves, the kind I wear to trim rose bushes,
and a heavy pair of shoes,
and a broken solar light.
Well, the light is broken, but the post that it sat on and that anchored it to the ground was intact.

And I went out on the patio and put my shoe on top of the trap,
and used the solar light post to gently prod Mr. Squirrel in the butt,
so he would move to the back of the trap; and then I used the same post to open the door.

I have never seen a squirrel move that fast- not even when fighting another squirrel.
The poor guy was out of the trap and across the yard and up a tree as fast as...a very fast squirrel can go.

In all the time I've had those traps and have been setting them, which is all of this summer,
I had never before caught a squirrel in one of them.
I've caught 8 chipmunks, most of which I relocated to a nearby park;
and one that went to a farther park, though, because I had to go the other direction, that day.
And I trapped a baby bunny, who, unlike this squirrel seemed rather happy in the trap .
So happy that after leaving the door open for half an hour, he was still in it.
I finally bribed him out with a fresh strawberry and a fresh cherry.

But, then again, I have never before used squirrel food to bait the trap.

Another proof, for my children, that's what I bought at the grocery store.

Story of the Day 9/ 10/ 2014

You might not realize this, but the bag in the above picture is a bag of squirrel food.

I am not sure what planet my children grew up on...well, perhaps it was simply an omission in their education, but they didn't realize this very obvious fact.

I said to my son, " You see, cat food is for cats,
and dog treats are for dogs.
Since the store didn't' have separately labelled squirrel crackers,
I figured that the squirrels were supposed to be fed the generic 'animal' crackers."

My son thought moment, then agreed.

So did the squirrels.
They, in fact, are wild about the squirrel food and come back over and over, all day long.

Unfortunatley, because this is generic "animal" food, the chipmunks also seem to like it.
These are the same chipmunks that we have spent all summer trying to induce to enter the "catch and release" traps that I have
been generously baiting with birdseed and nuts.
But the chipmunks, apparently, like the squirrel food better.
They scurry around the squirrels, grabbing up the smaller pieces.
And looking at us, through the window.
I could swear that I heard one of them quietly saying , "Nah nah nah nah nah!"

So I've decided to bait the chipmunk catch and release traps with the squirrel food.

Story of The Day 7/ 30/ 2014

I have taken the girls to Kohl's. We have to buy bed pillows and, as always, see if there are any cool t-shirts.

I should say, I need to buy the bed pillows, and Sarah and Haley came for the t-shirst.

As we walk past a display for some bedding, a mother is chatting with her son who is perhaps 9 or 10, while a younger boy, perhaps 5 or 6 stares at us.
As we walk past, and I am almost close enough to the younger boy to bump him, (not totally my fault, there is a hefty display in the aisle) he whispers to his mother, "They are talking with their hands!"

That did not surprise me , we were - or, at least, the girls were.
And I could see how a youngster might think he should whisper that information,
even if his ability to whisper quietly isn't very well developed, yet.

But his next line, also spoken in a very loud whisper, makes me wonder,
He says, " They can't hear!"

So, kid, why are you whispering?

Story of the Day 7/ 8/ 2014

My "saying of the day", which came to me at 3:47 AM:

The problem with "grin and bear it" is that it is murder on my TMJ.

Story of the Day 7/ 17/ 2014

My son, Aaron, the deaf one who drank a lot of water to make sure he would wake up,
since the Holiday Inn didn't have a phone signaler/flasher for a wake up call,
nor did they have an alarm clock a deaf person could use,
arrived home and he, his sister, Sarah and Haley went down to Holliday Park to shoot several scenes for a video they are making.

I drove them over and left them there.
Except that I didn't,
because after walking them down a slope to a grassy area, Aaron pulled the camera from the camera bag
and realized he had left the camera's battery back at the house.

And he wasn't sure where.

So, Aaron and I trudged back up the slope and drove home.
Luckily, he found it relatively quickly and I dropped him back at the park.

After the second trip to the park, I arrived home in plenty of time to drive my father-in-law ,
who has been living with us, to the senior citizen lunch at the Jewish Community Center.
Then I washed about 347 dishes ( many left from making props) and waited.

And waited.

At around 2:45 PM, I got a text from Sarah.
They are packing up and I should come get them.
Oh, And Aaron's phone is dead.

It went into the water.
With Aaron.
Apparently, Aaron had a little mishap when they were filming and fell into the river.

Twice.

Story of the Day 7/ 16/ 2014

Aaron has his very first paid stand up gig.
Aaron does stand up comedy.
He drives all over tranation to do it. We liven Indianapolis and he has been to Dayton, Ohio and Lima, Ohio
and Cincinnati and Chicago and some other place in Illinois and....

This gig is for 15 minutes.
He is an opener for the headliner. It pays $50 .
Ad it is in Lima , Ohio.

Since he drives a Honday Civic, a 1997 Honda Civic, it does actually pay for the gas.
But, of course, he had to find someone to cover his shift at the theater, and it doesn't cover the lost wages.

As always, being a nervous Jewish mother, I told him to text me when he got there, and then when he leaves,
so I can stay awake worrying until he gets home.
You see, if he texts me before he leaves it makes it much better, because I do not start worrying too soon.

Well, he texted me , at about 11:15 PM.

He had been offered a room at the hotel- a Holiday Inn.
The headliner hadn't wanted it and Aaron was tired and.....

But, he has a project, tomorrow, and needs to be home by 11 AM.
And he didn't bring his alarm clock

Aaron is deaf, so the regular alarm clock in the hotel room, and the phone , if he requests a wake up call, will not be able to wake him.
I tell him to ask the front desk for the equipment they are supposed to have available when a deaf person stays at their hotel.
He asks, but they have no idea where it would be.
If they actually have it.

The woman at the desk tells him that there already is a flashing light on the phone.
You know, the little one that tells you there is a message.

Aaron decides it is not worth explaining to her that is not the same as a phone signal/flasher to alert a deaf person to a call.

And it is certainly not enough to wake someone with a wake up call.


But, he tells me, he has a strategy.
He will drink a lot of water before going to bed.

Story of the Day 7/ 14/ 2014

My mother-in-law was buried, a bit over three weeks ago, in New york, in her family's plot.
There is a large stone over the plot with the last name of her parents, Spielman,
and a smaller stone for each parent that lies closer to the ground and has their individual information on it.

A bit more than week ago, I called the company that makes the headstones and asked them to send a photo of these, and of the plot as a whole, to me.
My father-in-law is trying to decide what to do for his wife's headstone;
and he wanted the photos to show to the rabbi , so he could get his advice.

When I spoke with Rosemary, at the headstone company, I gave her my email address and also that of my husband,
so that , even if one was wrong, it would get to us.
A few days went by,
then a week,
then another couple of days....
so, I called, again, today.

And Rosemary told me that she would send the photo and the cost estimate out by the end of today.
Which she did.

I received four pages from her.
A cover letter, two pages of pricing and the photograph.

My husband also received it.

At dinner, this evening, he thanked me for forwarding it to him.

"Oh, I didn't forward it, I gave the women both of our email addresses, just to make sure we got it."

There was a long silence.

My husband's eyebrows went up.

Rather sheepishly, he confided to me that he had written me a sweet email, complete with endearments ,for forwarding him the email.
Except, he didn't.

He hit "REPLY" and sent it...not to me , but to Rosemary.

So, somewhere in New York, Rosemary will be getting an email telling her what a sweet wife she is.
Signed with love, by my husband.

Hopefully, she wil take it the right way.

Story of the Day 8/ 7/ 2014

I have a friend.
I pause now, so that people who know me from work can gasp or choke or whatever the appropriate reaction is.
At work, I am paid to be bitchy.
And I am VERY good at my job.

But this woman does not know me from work, which is probably why she is my friend.

Anyhow, she is a very nice young woman who happens to be a Girl Scout Leader.
This is despite the fact that she doesn't have a daughter in the Girl Scouts.
In fact, she doesn't' have a daughter.
Or a son.

She was asked to be a Girl Scout leader for a troop of girls from an "underprivileged" neighborhood.
"Underprivileged" is another way of saying poor.

Poor is probably an understatement, in terms of some of the girls in her troop.

At any rate, the girls earned some certificates , I think from cookie sales.
I am not sure because I didn't ask.
That is great.
Except, in order to redeem them, they need to go on the internet to a site that requires a charge card and a small fee.

The fee is very reasonable.
If you have an extra $5.
They don't.

They also tend to come from families that do not have a charge card , or one that is not maxed out.

And my friend does not have a charge card.
Which surprised me.

Not that she has tons of extra cash hanging around, but because it is kind of the norm, in America, to have several.

But she doesn't.
And, she explained why.
She managed, in college , to end up with a lot of debt.
And she has been digging herself out of debt, and part of how she has done it ( she ha sheen digging out for 4 years, now, and she is young) is by NOT having a charge card.

It is admirable that she is working on this , but it is also a problem because she needs to have these certificates redeemed.

Which is where I come in.

I have a charge card.
I even have an account with the company through which they are being redeemed.

So, this is the third or fourth evening she has asked me to do this.

Let me explain, I am not paying the few dollars, well I am, but I am being reimbursed.
I do not want you to think I am being generous with anything other than my time and the use of a card.
She managed to get the small amount of money to do this from donations .

But, I am doing the "redeeming" for her.

EXCEPT, it isn't working.
Apparently, I have redeemed too many or something like that, and now it isn't working for me.
And this is not a company that I can call and explain why I am doing this for girl number 4 or 6 or whatever number she is.

And it is 11:41 PM.
So, tomorrow, I will ask another friend if she would be willing to use her charge card for a good cause.

Obviously, not someone from work.......

Story of the Day 7/ 9/ 2014

This is a Story of the Day that is really part of what is starting to feel like a never-ending-saga.

My mother-in-law, my husband's mother, died 3 weeks ago.

That is not the saga, it is part of the background to the saga.

On Sunday evening, she complimented her husband ( my father-in-law) on the meatloaf he had made.
On Monday,she awoke in pain.
After hours in the emergency room, many hours,
they performed surgery.
My husband got on a very early flight on Tuesday and made it to the hospital, Tuesday morning.
He and his father sat with his mother , who was sedated, but had survived the surgery.
Late that evening, my husband went back to his hotel room. And just around midnight, she died.

Now, my in-laws were not ( understatement of the year) outgoing.
They had no friends,at least not in years.
My father-in-law is friendly with a couple of people who live in other apartments in the building, but he doesn't know their names, has never been in their apartments nor have they been in his.
He does, however, say a few words to them in the laundry room or the elevator.

My in-laws had also not been on speaking terms with any relatives in the New York area in over 9 years;
and if you don't count their daughter, who died last October, then you can refigured that number
to over 3 decades.
They did not belong to a synagogue or anything else.
So, after the funeral, graveside with 3 people,four, if you count the rabbi,
my husband decided that he and his fathers should come back here to sit shiva.
And his father should also move here , to Indiana.

Even his father agreed.

This is slightly....startling,
since my husband Larry, had tried for a few years to get them to consider moving here.
But when they had one another, that wasn't quite as isolating as it was for his father to be out there all alone.
So, on Thursday, the day after the funeral, they flew here.

That was almost 3 weeks ago.

For my father-in-law, one of the things that he has missed the most while living with us is getting a daily newspaper.

That is where our saga begins.

You see, after Sarah went off to college, last fall, we stopped our newspaper subscription.
We had been getting the daily paper ever since, in 5th grade, Sarah became interested in reading the sports section.

That might seem like an expensive way to feed a child's interest, but, as my mother is wont to say,
"buying the kids something that they will read is cheaper than tutoring."

In an attempt to staunch the flow of blood- I mean money, now that all three of our children were in college-
we stopped the subscription, right after Sarah left for college.
Instead, larry and I would read our news on-line.
He preferring The New York Times, and I preferring The Washington Post.

But, Larry's father is of a different generation and reading on-line doesn't' fit well with his morning cup of coffee.
So, I went on-line and ordered a subscription for daily delivery of the Indianapolis Star.

The Indianapolis Star is our local paper and they were running a very nice, on-line, deal.
3 month for the price of one, which, in this case, is $26.

I ordered the paper on June 23rd.
On-line.
And I was told it would start coming on the 24th.

Except that it didn't.
And it didn't show up on the 25th.
So, I checked and they said that it would now be starting on the 26th.

In the meanwhile, my son, Aaron, was running out, every morning to get a copy of the newspaper for his grandfather.

Well, the 26th came and went, and no newspaper.
And the 27th, and the 28th.


It is now July 9th.
And guess what?
It still hasn't shown up on our driveway, not even in the ditch near the driveway,
not even smack dab in the center of our not busy street.

In the meanwhile, I have called the newspaper's subscription department 5 times.
That is slightly misleading.
I called on 4 different days, but , once, I was disconnected, which is why it was 5 times.

I have also emailed them 5 or 6 times.
I could check, but that is the smallest part of the story or , at least, it was until today.

The first time I called, well, the second, because of getting disconnected,
I was told that the paper would come on Monday, or Tuesday at the latest.
That was a Monday or Tuesday a week agao.

Then I called and was told that someone made that up,
and the new person went and took all of my information, again.
She was setting up so that we would no, finally, get paper delivery.

Then I called and was told they really couldn't do anything because it was an on-line order,
and it needs to be forwarded from that place.
Then I called and asked to speak with a supervisor.

Guess what?
They didn't let me speak with a supervisor,
but the woman did take all of my information, again, and said she would "escalate" it.

In the meanwhile, except for the very first call I made ( when I was disconnected),
I emailed the Indy Star , as well as calling.
And this also got me nowhere.

Today, this morning, I finally got what almost seems like an intelligent response.
It even apologized for the delay in responding to my email...
of course, I am wondering which one of my emails, but, at least, they acknowledge having received one.

But, as I read down the message the intelligence of it seemed to evaporate.
They need my house number and my phone number, because they do not have it.
I have given it to them on-line and on the phone 4 times.
It was included in the emails I sent.

This is what the message read:


Dear Valued Subscriber,
Thank you for contacting The Indianapolis Star. Your #1 news source in Central Indiana.

We appreciate your business and would like to help any way we can.

However, we need additional information before we can process your request. If you would be so kind as to reply with your house number, street address and telephone number, it would be much appreciated. It is our goal to make sure we are meeting the needs of our subscribers.

Once I receive your account information, I can better determine what course of action we need to take. I apologize for the delay in a response to your email.





I am being nice and not including the staff member's name.
Although, considering what happened next, I am not sure why I should be nice.



My response to this guy was to copy the original email notification I had received , after subscribing on-line, on July 23rd.
That notification ( sent to this same email address) happens to include my name, address, phone number and charge account information.
It also says that delivery was supposed to start on June 24th, but hey, let us not be picky.



It also has the year I was born and my blood type.
Okay, it did not have my blood type, but there was , clearly, no way that he could really say they did not have my information.



The email I was sent on June 23rd also had the rate for the paper- the one I had agreed to.



Well, in response to my email, reminding them that they have all of that, not just reminding them but copying and pasting the email they sent me with all of that information, I got a rather prompt response from another of their inept employees.



This time, they man says that there is no record of it ( except the official email from them?? Or does he not consider that a record. And what happened to all of the calls I made and gave the same information over and over)- okay, so he says there is no record of it,
BUT he is entering the information and signing me up for daily newspaper delivery and charging me $312 payable for the year, now.



Excuse me...when did my agreeing to a $26 charge became my agreeing to a $312 charge ...
and how is it that they have my full charge card information, all of the sudden, when they have no record of my subscribing?



I sent a rather short - both in length and in temper- response back asking how he could charge me for a different amount than I had agreed to be charged.



I suspect that I will not receive another prompt response;
I suspect that I will be back to multiple phone calls and unanswered emails.



I also do not actually expect the newspaper to show up at the end of my driveway.
I have been promised a number of start dates, all of which came and went without the arrival of even one newspaper.


I am , however, about to call my charge card company and tell them that I do not authorize ANY payments to the Indianapolis Star.



As for my father-in-law,
either my son will be occasionally getting him a newspaper, or we will find some out of town paper that will mail him a copy.
Yes, it might arrive a week late, but, so far, that sounds a few weeks better than the local paper seems to be able to do.

Story of the Day 7/ 7/ 2014

My son, Ely, is on vacation.

When I go on vacation, I take part of the day and sleep late or go to the bookstore.
Ely and his fiancé, who have neither children nor elderly in-laws to tend to, do things like fly to Arizona.
Okay, it is not entirely a vacation, they are visiting relatives, his fiancé's and our own.

They started their vacation by visiting his fiancé's family. A nice get together for the Fourth of July weekend.
Ely is the lone Jew amidst this' rather large family of religious Mormons.
Not that Ely is a "practicing" Jew, but....

On his very first morning with the family, one of the sister-in-laws asked, "You are Jewish?"

Ely experienced a moment of discomfort. After all, his fiancé had already broken that " bad " news to his family..or had there been some misunderstanding or was someone left out of the loop?

But it turns out that the sister-in-law was hoping for a positive response, since then she could inquire how to spell a Jewish word she needed to finish her crossword puzzle.

"L'Chaim".

Story of the Day 7/ 4/ 2014

We are a bit antiquated.
We have not managed to keep up with the technological revolution, despite owning cell phones, computers, laptops and an ancient gamecube.
In other words, we do not sit glued to our screens while we eat our separate meals,
instead, at dinnertime, and on weekends for lunch, and on holidays- which are like weekends,
we all sit down at the table, together, to eat.
There are plates, and napkins, and silverware.

There are glasses with ice water.
There is bread.
Usually.

On Friday, I bake bread.
Occasionally, I will bake it on another day as well, but I bake a couple of loaves of bread, every Friday, as part of preparing for Shabbat.
We enjoy it a great deal, on Friday evening. And on Saturday.
But, after a couple of days, no one will touch the "old bread".
They have been spoiled by having fresh bread, and by day 3 they consider it totally rank and devoid of charm.
All except my husband who has questionable tastes.
Obviously, since he married me.

My husband will soldier on, eating the 4 day old, and 5 day old and 6 day old bread, as the rest of us wince.
And sometimes I have made more bread than usual, or people have eaten less than usual,
and the old bread is hanging around past day 5.
Then, when he isn't looking, I will feed it to the squirrels.

It is summer, now.
You might have guessed that, because it is July 4th- Independence Day.
And, since it is a holiday, we all sat down to eat lunch together.
And my husband pulled out the 7 day old bread, the bread I had baked exactly a week ago.

He tears off a piece and eats some.
He puts the rest of the piece on his plate.
Then, he turn the bread over- the part of the loaf that is still in the bread box.
There is a spot of what is most indubitably mold on the bottom.
No surprise, really.
The bread is a week old.
And it is summer and it has been hot and humid
and the bread has been kept, when not having parts taken off it to eat, in a sealed box.

I tell him" Throw it out!"
Well, I didn't say that,
actually, I said " throw it to the squirrels!!"
After all, it was only small bit of mold.

My husband puts the bread into the box and sets it aside,
hopefully, to toss it out to the squirrels, later.
Then he picks up the piece that is on his plate,
and he eats it.

"Ewww!"
I can't help myself.
I mean, it is not as if we do not have enough food in the house to feed a small army- food that does not have mold growing on it.

My son, seated accross from me, adds,
"I would think it was funny, if I did not also think it was gross."

Story of the Day 6/ 24/ 2014

My son is in the midst of an internship. It is paid, too, although no one, not him and not the place he is working know for how much. He has been told that he will be given a sum at the end of the summer.
I am hoping that this is a pleasant surprise.

Of course, since last year's internship was not paid, any amount will be a pleasant surprise. (Last years internship suggested he would be paid out of a grant they were awaiting reimbursement on. It later came out that they had been waiting since 1993.)

I ask him, at least once a week, how it is going.
So far, all of the reports have been good.
They treat him nicely, it is a friendly work environment, and he has figured where to park his bicycle.

Today, however, I got a more interesting report than usual.
Today, he tells me, was spent in a meeting, a long meeting about plumbing.
In this case, plumbing means toilets.

The university is putting a new system in place at the sports dome.
They are collecting rainwater that falls on the roof and filtering it twice, then using this water to flush the toilets.
It is a move towards lessening environmental impact of combined sewer overflows that happen when it rains. This causes raw sewage to drain into the lake (which was once the most polluted in North America.)

The interesting part of this meeting was that they were concerned that people, (students, staff, visitors) might mistake the water for drinking water,
so they have decided to dye it purple.

My son spent the rest of the meeting unable to get his mind off of the fact that if anyone was so mistaken as to think they should drink water from the toilet bowl, the fact that it had not been treated by the municipal water company was the least of their problems.

Story of the Day 6/ 22/ 2014

My mother-in-law, my husband mother's, has died.

On Sunday evening , she was fine.
She ate dinner and complimented my father-in-law on the delicious meatloaf.
My mother-in-law had not been ill, but she was frail;
and over the last couple of years, my father-in-law had taken on more of the household chores, the cooking, the laundry, the dishwashing, that require standing.

So, she enjoyed the dinner her husband had made.
That was Sunday evening.

But Monday, she woke with severe abdominal pain and asked him to call the doctor.
The doctor said he should call 911.

Many hours and tests later, she was taken in for emergency surgery.

My husband flew out.
We live in Indiana and they live in New York; so he flew out
and he spent Tuesday with his father, at her bedside in the hospital.

Close to midnight, she died.
After the funeral, they came back here for shiva.
Shiva is the Jewish mourning ritual.
The immediate relatives, parents, siblings, spouses and children, stay in the house for the week and people come to visit them.
They come to cheer up the mourners, to listen to them, and to eat.
Hey, we are Jewish, eating is always on the list, except for Yom Kippur and a few other fast days.

So, they are here, and my father-in-law is understandably depressed having just lost his wife of 62 years.

Being depressed, he makes mention, every few hours, of wanting to join her.

This is a bit upsetting for my husband and my son, but I actually think it is pretty normal.
I think that many people feel that way when they lose the person with whom they have spent so much of their life,
but they do not always say it out loud.

In my father-in-law's case, however, he went so far as to ask my husband what would happen
if he took all of his almost full bottles of prescription medicines at one time.

My husband told me this a few hours after his father had asked him that question.

I said to my husband, " I hope you told him that it would give him terrible diarrhea!"

He did not.

My husband told his father it would case terrible constipation.
Apparently, that is even a bigger threat to an 88 year old man.

My husband is so brilliant!

Story of the Day 6/ 15/ 2014

My kid asked me if her textbook had come.
We ordered it almost 2 weeks ago.

Her calculus text ( ordered at the same time) came, and the companion book- and she has been working away at the problems, but her Biology textbook seems to be coming via a slow boat from China.
I went into my Amazon account to see if there was a tracking number for the package.
There wasn't. Instead, there was a mysterious message. The message said that the order had been "Cancelled."

It was cancelled?
I didn't cancel it, and I clicked for the explanation and there wasn't one.

Normally, when there is a problem, I have received an email from Amazon telling me that the item is now " out of print" or "out of stock."
Eventually, the money either gets refunded to my card or , if I am very lucky, they have cancelled it before the charge went through and there is no waiting for a month to have it credited to our account.

When I get a notice that something is cancelled, assuming it something we actually need,
like a textbook for one of my kids' classes or a Mother's Day gift,
I go back and find the same or almost the same item and make a new order.

But, that didn't happen, this time.

It didn't happen because I didn't get a notice that the order had been cancelled.
So now, when wit is needed, we dint' have it.

There was also no information on my account that indicated it had been cencelled right after the order was made, or , perhaps, early this morning.
I am far from perfect, so far that I cringed and thought, " I must have overlooked that email."
So I checked my inbox.
Nothing.

I checked my junk /spam box.
Nothing.

I had this idea I might have accidentally deleted it, so I checked the deleted file.
Nothing.

Apparently, I was supposed to know that it had been canceled because of my very well developed telepathy.
Only I don't' have that, either.

I spent a long time looking for another copy.
The copy we had ordered had been $30, for a new, somewhat dinged copy, with an intact access code.

If you have not been a college student during the last decade, or have a kid making their way through college, you might not know what an access code is.
It is a code that comes with the textbook.
It allows the student to access things like homework and quizzes, online. And to then submit them electronically.
Some professors do not like that and request the old fashioned stuff- an email.
Or the really really old fashioned stuff,
like the work on a memory stick or even, gasp, printed out.
Yes, on real paper.

But most math and science classes use an access code systems.

So, I have spent quite a while looking at various textbooks- the same textbook we had ordered, but different copies frm different vendors.

I am cheap, so I started with the used textbooks.

Many of them, not most, not half, not a quarter,
but since there were 1,186 used copies, a large number were actually listed as " New" but slightly damaged , or had shelf wear or something of the sort.
And they all were priced much cheaper than the new copies.
So, I started sending messages and asking each of the sellers if the access kit/code was unused.

You see, the code can only be used by one student, so, while you can sell your used textbook, you cannot sell the code , once you have used it.

Why would this be a concern with a book listed as " New"?
Because , as one seller emailed me back , " I don't' know, it looks new, but I bought it with a group of other books from a storage unit."
Or , another seller who told me that the book was new , " but the access kit had been opened"
And another who told me that the access code was missing.

So, I went to the copies listed as new for quite a bit more money, and started sending messages to those sellers.
Again, the first response stated that " the access kit looks as if it has been opened."

Frustration .
Then, back to the computer, after dinner, trying to get this book.

I also decided to contact Amazon.
I sent them a message that I felt this was dismal customer service, not to have let me know the order was cancelled.
Was I supposed to wait and wait while my kid didn't have a textbook for her class, thinking it was coming any day now?

A while later, Amazon's customer service emailed me .
They let me know that they were sorry I was disappointed, but they HAD emailed me that the order was cancelled.
They gave me the date of the email.


I had already checked, but I went back again and rechecked my inbox, my junk/spam folder, my deleted folder.
Nothing.
Absolutley nothing on that date or the day after.
I checked the later date since, occasionally, an email will be held up. Something I have never exactly figured out.
What makes an email occasionally take half a day to arrive? I would probably have to go to graduate school to figure that one out...

Irritated to have been lied to, I contacted Amazon, again.
I requested a phone call, since I had a very bad review of their service.

Amazingly, they called me less than minute later.

Brook took my name and my email address, and then she disconnected me.
I waited, but she did not call me back.
And she obviously had my number, since she had called me.

Back to the website; again, I requested a call.

This time Cocco called. I told her that I was very irritated.
I was irritated because I had been lied to and hung up on, and I told her the whole long story.
She was apologetic.
She checked, they had sent the email. Oh, wait, maybe they hadn't.
I could have told her that.
Oh, wait, I did.

She wants to know what they can do to help. can they locate a copy for me?
"No!"
I explain about the access code.

It is not good enough to get book, even with a "new" book you need the code or you have just wasted your time and money .
I had to explain what the access code was, and why new copies would be missing it.
In fact, I told her, there was a small business, a little enterprise in just selling the codes.
Only, it wasn't all that little.

She brightened up upon hearing this.
She told me that, in that case, Amazon probably sold them and she could locate that for me.
I had to burst her enthusiastic bubble by explaining it was a business that usually represented a kind of theft and I did most definitely NOT want to buy an access ceode without a book.
Yes, some were valid, not products of theft, but since I couldn't' know for sure, and a lot were, I did not want to support that "industry".

And, as for getting a textbook, I only wanted one with the code; and her locating copy was useless without knowing if the access code was intact.

She looked over the emails I had been sending through her system asking sellers if they had the access code to go with the book.
She was amazed.
I'd had a host of replies to my inquiries from the sellers of "new" books that these texts no longer had intact access codes, or that they didn't know.
I explained to her the few ways that I know by which the codes can get separated from new books.
I explained how you even had to be careful buying copy a new from a reputable bookstore.
Students had been known to buy the book and return it , still new, the next day- just missing the access code, or with the access kit opened and the code used or about to be used.

It makes me long for paper workbooks.

It does not make me long for Amazon.

At the end of the evening, I am still upset about the email they hadn't sent.
I told her that if they had said, "Oh gosh, we goofed and didn't send an email letting you know it was cancelled!" I would have understood that.
I also understood that sometimes things are sold that do not exist- they have been actually already sold or removed from stock for some other reasons, and that is life.

I told her that I normally check Amazon out first when looking for things like this to buy, but I think that i will not be doing this.
I also told her that I will be writing story about this for my blog in the hopes that,
by the time I have reached the end of writing it,
the incident will seem humorous.

Except it still doesn't.

Story of the Day 6/ 6/ 2014

My son, Aaron, who is deaf, has struggled to find employment.
Part of it is his fault. He is a college drop out.
Except, that, at the moment, he has dropped back in, part time.

But part of it is that one of the first things that any potential employer sees, when they look at my son, is that he is 6'3" and has two huge hearing aids.
Okay, they are not huge. They are normal sized, but they seem to attract a huge number of stares.

As a result, he has spent a lot of time going in and filling out job applications over and over and over, and finally, being hired by a place to which he had applied numerous times.
His being hired only happened AFTER they hired someone who knew him from his previous job;
and after this new hire had told the manager that Aaron really could do the job.
The job which pays minimum wage and involves sweeping up popcorn with a broom and tearing off the ends of tickets.

And ,don't think that what my son has gone through to get a part-time job that happens to pay minimum wage...or did until he got that 15 cents per hour raise....is unusual. When you are deaf or hard or hearing, life can be interesting, especially the part of it that involves looking for a job.

My son has a fried who is deaf, like he is. Deaf as in uses hearing aids and speaks well, but doesn't always understand everyone using spoken English.
So, this other young man, today, told my son that he had just had a job interview.

When he applied for this job and was told he would be interviewed, this young man told them he was deaf and needed an interpreter.
He showed up and the person interviewing him told him to sit in the chair across from the interviewer's desk, and then the interpreter sat next to him.
Him being the deaf guy who had requested the interpreter.

Immediately, this young man knew there was a problem.
How was he supposed to watch the interpreters signing, and how would she see his responses,if she was facing the interviewer and not him?
It got worse.
The interviewer spoke, and the interpreter turned to the deaf young man and whispered what the interviewer had said, whispered right into his hearing aid.

I am assuming that he was not offered the job.

I am also assuming that the interviewer and the "interpreter" felt they had done a good job in accommodating this guys needs.
I am no longer feeling quite as sorry for my son.

In comparison.

Story opt the Day 5/ 29/ 2014

I am worried about my insurance company.
Well, not mine, I certainly don't own it, or even a part of it, but the one that provides health insurance to our family courtesy of my husband's employer.

I am not complaining. Oh no, I realize what a nice thing it is to have the health insurance as a benefit of the job- one that does not even require us to pay in an amount every month, or wouldn't except that we do pay a nominal amount for the addition of very insufficient dental coverage.

I am , however, worried.

You see, one of my kids saw a physician in December, and then in January, at St. Vincent's hospital.
Not in the hospital, but in their professional building.
The insurance company was a bit slow in paying, but , in April, they apparently did, because I received two different statements , one for each of the appointments, stating that there was no longer a balance due.

That is what I received from my insurance company.

I found out, when Laura, from the physician's office called me, yesterday that they had received two very different statements.
They had received statements from our insurance company that we didn't have coverage.
She was calling to see if I had a different insurance company I wanted them to send a bill to, or if I was going to pay the balance.
The balance being everything except for the copay amounts they got from me when we were in the office.

I located the folder where I keep the medical bills, and pulled out the statements.
I read her what they said and then I got her email address and took a photo of each page, well, two photos of each to be safe; and sent them to her.

I have a feeling that this is what we refer to , in our family, as a " start of a Story of the Day."

Story of the Day 5/ 20/ 2014

My daughter has been working on a final project for a class she is in, this semester.
It is a group project, and there are two other students in the group.
Sarah was very excited to be working with them. They are a little bit older and she thought they seemed like very interesting people.
But, as she has learnt, perhaps a little too interesting.
At least one of them is.

They had a work meeting to discuss the project, and the one young man showed up late.
Late but not very, very late.
And drunk.
Happy, but drunk. Very, very drunk.

Then, on the day they were supposed to film, this being video project, he show up .
At all.
And he was supposed to bring along the video camera they needed to film the project.

Nor did he respond to the 27 texts they frantically sent him.

I told Sarah, "You should have realized that you could not depend upon him, when he showed up for the work meeting drunk."

This is when, in telling me this, that I realized I had the first part of the story wrong.
It was not just one of the two men who was a bit too interesting, it was both of them.
You see, the guy who showed up drug to the work meeting DID show up to do the project.
It was the OTHER young man who did not show up. Drunk or otherwise.

As a result, Sarah and the other student - the one who had been drunk. but is, at least for the moment, sober -
are now frantically scrambling to put together backup projects to hand in, this Thursday.

Sarah, though, first had to finsih her paper for her history class; so today, she has started on the new project.
A 30 page script.
As a result of this last minute rush to complete the project, I am being texted, right and left.
Sarah is checking out ideas, asking the names of codes, etc.

She is also trying to use idioms correctly.
English is Sarah's second language and she has a very good vocabulary, but she sometimes, because she is Deaf and she has never heard English spoken, will slightly misuse an idiom.
She also likes to use references for which she has no reference.
Like references to music, which she has never heard.
Many people who are deaf have enough residual hearing to hear and appreciate some music.
Sarah does not.
She can hear a hand grenade.
Not that she ever has.

Twice, over the many years we have gone to professional basketball games, she has "heard" the crowd. Both times because her chest vibrated from the level of sound.
As far as her ears went, it was still silent.

So, she is writing away, frantically, and putting in references.
And she decided she wanted to use a band's name in it.
The band called " Rock and Roll."
I had to inform her that was not the name of a band, but she was sure it was.
She hears them referred to fairly frequently.
"No", I told her, "It is a genre of music."
Genre, like fiction, drama, mystery.
"Oh.
I am not sure if it had ever occurred to her, before, that there were different kinds of music.....

But she has, now,remembered the name of another band that she can use.
The name of a band that is actually a band, "The Rolling Stones".

And she has come away from this project having learnt something.
That she can rely on the drunk guy more than upon the one who is sober.
Okay, maybe not, but it was the only moral I could get to fit the story.

Story of the Day 5/ 13/ 2014 #2

My older brother has three children.
The last time I saw them was when his youngest was 5.
She is no longer 5.

I speak with my brother often, and I often get to speak to his wife and children, on the phone.
I speak to them, sometimes more than once a week, but actually seeing them doesn't happen.
We have busy lives and his is led in California, and mine in Indiana.
As a result, his kids grow and change and I beg for pictures.
And I beg.
And I beg.

He sent some.
Three.
The most recently sent one was when his oldest daughter was about 5.
She is now in high school.

That doesn't mean that I haven't seen any photos of them. I have the photos I took the different times I have seen them.
The most recent time being when the youngest , Laura, was 5.
This is certainly more recent than when his oldest was 5. Unlike his eldest, his youngest is not yet in high school, she is only in 5th grade.
So, as you might have guessed, I am left guessing what his children look like.

Until today, when everything changed.

My mother is visiting ( from New York). I see her quite a bit more frequently than I see my brother and his family.
New York is closer. Slightly
And because of my mother, I have now seen photos - lots and lots of photos of my brother and his family from as recently as last year.
Last year, my mother spent a month with them
On vacation.
In Vietnam.

Now, my mom has not been out here , to Indiana, to visit us in years. Soon, it will be seven years. Whoops. make that eight years.
That doesn't mean I haven't seen her.
First of all, she is much better than my brother at sending photos.
Also, we have travelled and seen my mother, in New York, where she lives, but also in St. Louis and other spots where other family lives.

So we see her more frequently, in real life and in photos.
But not my brother and his family.
And when my mother sees my brother and his family at least once a year, I usually beg for photos of them, which she does not send.
Apparently, whatever the disease my brother has regarding photos of his family, it is contagious.
But, as I mentioned, she does send me photos of herself.

I really can't complain that she goes out to visit my brother and his family much more frequently. Espiecially since doing so means that they take her off to a month long tour of a foreign country.
While my idea of treating her to a nice vacation, when she comes to visit us ( like now), is to drive her to visit a cousin in a small town and to go shopping at WalMart.
You can clearly see how my vacation-spot offerings pale in comparison.
Sigh.
Maybe this is also why my brother prefers to visit other places/relatives.

And on the all -expenses-paid-for by my brother and his wife vacation in Vietnam, last summer, my mother took lots and lots of photos.
Of three very gorgeous , very much larger than I remember them kids.
No, she did not send them to me, even though I asked for them, last year.
And I asked several times.
Although, she has sent me , since that trip, at least half a dozen photos of herself.
And a video.

But, my mother, who will be 80 in a few months, has acquired a laptop.
And on this visit, she brought it.
So I have seen photos.
Recent photos of my brother and his family.

And they are gorgeous,
And a lot bigger.
A lot.

Now, if I can figure out how to get some of them off of her laptop....

Story of the Day 5/14/ 2014

My mother and my son, Aaron, the middle child, drove off, before noon.
They are on their way to St. Louis to enjoy my nephew's graduation from college.
As I pointed out to Aaron, "You see, some people actually GRADUATE from college." It was just one of many minor hints I have dropped, over the past....few years.
At any rate, they pulled out , headed in the right direction.

Earlier, this morning, my son proudly announced that he had made a packing list. This is something that I have traditionally made and given to my children, so they can do their own packing. In the case of my oldest child, Ely, he has long since mastered this skill and makes his own packing list. I think he may have mastered it about 10 years ago.
My son, Aaron, however, seems to a bit of a slow learner, and this is one of his first attempts.

He read it to me.
I said, " You forgot deodorant."
I thought a moment.
"And pajamas."

He added them to the list.
I asked him to see it, to double check. I find visuals work best for me, I am a bit too ADD to be sure what I heard 57 seconds ago.
I look down the list.
Underwear.
Socks.
Shirts.
toothbrush and toothpaste.
I do not see a comb listed, but he hasn't used one of those in years.
Not since he discovered the "buzz cut".

Hearing aid batteries.
Alarm clock.

I smile. I think of my sister and her household being awoken, tomorrow morning, and Friday morning, and Sunday morning, and Monday morning by this special alarm clock we purchased that is able to wake my deaf son.
I imagine their relief when he pulls out of the parking spot in front of the house to head back here.

There were a number of other things, but it looked good.
Despite his original omission of deodorant and pajamas.
This is a huge improvement from when he packed for Israel and forgot to take any shirts.
I hand the list back to him and go back to my work.

Later, after an early lunch, they drive off.
I come back into the house, my arms a tad sore from waving like a maniac, and notice that sitting on the kitchen counter,
in a plastic travel bag,
is my son's toothbrush.

Story of the Day 5/ 13/ 2014

My mother has been visiting. She lives in Brooklyn which is part of another country.
It is a country of cement and tall buildings and lots of accents. Accents that are not simply country twangs.
And while she has been here, we have been doing things that are exotic to her

This morning, we drove to visit my cousin, Kathy.
Kathy is the daughter of my mom's cousin, who died a number of years ago.
Kathy lives in a group residence and , when I visit, always has a list of things that she needs to get.
When I go, I take her out, we get the things on her list, and we have lunch out at a restaurant of her choosing.
Of course, she always chooses the same place.
Subway.
She chooses this after naming other places she would like to go.
naming the places, and then deciding on Subway means , obviously, that sit is a considered choice.
She also always has exactly the same sandwich with the same chips and the same drink.
After looking at the choices.

Kathy lives in a small town where there are about a dozen restaurants, but there is only one store that sells clothing and shoes is the WalMart.
As a result, that is where we tend to go.
I am not a huge fan of the corporation, but it does let us buy her things like bras and sneakers without having to drive to another city.

My mother hadn't seen Kathy in years.
This is what happens. Everyone started out in Ohio, and then scattered, and it is almost an accident that Kathy and I live in the same state.
Forty years ago, some of my aunts and uncles attend college in Indiana, but they have long since left.
On my mom's side of the family, Kathy and I are the only Hoosiers.

My mother grew up in the midwest- in Ohio.
She attended college there and spent the years that she was married to my father in a mid-sized Midwestern city.
Mid-sized by midwestern standards.
Where she now lives , it would be a rather small suburb.

And Indiana is a very different place than where she now lives- where she has lived for many years.
The 4 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom homes on half acre lots in my neighborhood sell for substantially less than the very cramped ,2 bedroom apartments in hers.
Our cars sprawl in our driveway.
And we can go to sleep with our windows open, unlocked, unalarmed.
Well, we could , if it wasn't raining.
We have a large garden. An area for vegetables, and several beds of flowers, a pear tree, and ...well, no partridge, but we do have a bird box on the post by the patio.
My mother's garden is on her third floor fire-escape.

So, to my mother, who lives in Brooklyn, ours is an exotic land.

And we have been doing really exotic things, like driving to the small town in which Kathy lives, and going to Wal-Mart.

I had no idea that Wal-Mart was considered exotic.
I mean, they have them in Binghamton, and Syracse and Rochester, and all of those are in New York....but those are "upstate" New York, and my mother, who spent a week at a minority caucus in her state's capitol, told me of people from " the city" who rented cars and drove off to visit Wal-Mart on this rare chance that they had, while in upstate New York.

So, while Kathy's list was small, my mother did an extra tour of the place- remarking on the inexpensive bed linens, and the dinner plates, and the soap dispensers.

But, in the end, she did her real shopping at the dollar store.
A soap dispenser.
For a dollar.
An unbelievable bargain in the country from which she hails.

Story of teh Day 7/ 2/ 2013 #2

Sarah and I have a list of chores for the day.
One of them is to stop at the Apple store in the fancy northeast side mall. A place that normally causes us to break out in hives, but Sarah is approaching the start of college and there is this big item necessity, a laptop, that we will need to purchase.

Now, it might be fine and dandy for most people to look and pick things like this out on the internet, but we have questions.
We have the kinds of questions that caused Sarah to email a professor to ask what they recommended, which laptops would work well with the programs they would need to use for civil engineering.
And we have questions bout her hobbies; will such a laptop support moviemaking?
And we have questions about screen size.
So, going and bothering a real live person, now that she is fairly certain she wants a Mac, is the next step.

But that is stop number 2.

Stop number one is the Good Earth.
If you are not from Indianapolis, you will think this is the title of a book ( one that I actually enjoyed, even though it was assigned reading in high school.)
In fact, however, if you live in Indianapolis, it is the natural foods store. Not "a", "the".

Whole Foods is the sanitized, yuppie version and Trader Joes is a slightly less pretentious and more than slightly better priced "Whole Foods"- so , yes, I would also describe it as a yuppie version.
The Good Earth is the place where you go if you really want organic peanut butter and red lentils and to buy your spices and grains weighed out into bags.
And The Good Earth is in Broad Ripple, so it has been shoved down to our second stop, and the Apple Store has been shoved down to our third stop because .....Yats is there.

And Yats has several excellent vegetarian and vegan meals that are...beyond excellent.

So, I called , this morning, at 10:35.
You can't call before 10:30 and be sure that they know what they are cooking.
I asked, "Are you having the spinach mushroom etoufee' , today?"
And the young man who hard answered said, "Yes, we will.'

And , as I always do, when I get that answer, I replied, "I love you!"

Usually, that gets a "Thanks"
I am sure they hear this kind of thing often from their grateful fan base, but they always manage to be polite about it.

Today, however, he responded, "I love you more!"

But he is wrong, as I said, " I doubt that is possible!"
After all, my love is magnified by my hunger.

Story of the Day 5/ 9/ 2014

Last week was the "drop off" for entries to the Hoosier Salon's 90th Annual Exhibition.
On Friday ( there were 2 drop off days, assigned by last name), I drove over with Vandra and we left our pieces at a very impressive mansion on Kessler.

This week, on Wednesday, was the jurying. A list of accepted works was to be posted. Well, not what was accepted, but the names of the artists and how many of their works made it into the show.
You can only enter up to 2, so it would be the list of names and the number 1 or 2 beside each name.

I didn't really bother to check until Thursday.
No reason looking for bad news.
I also nee dot explain that part of why I checked, on Thursday, was because I was headed off to draw at Herron, and there is someone who is absolutely insufferable when she gets something in. And she is often somewhat nasty to people who do not.
She has, on occasion, been especially nasty to a good friend of mine who is a sweet person.

Anyhow I wanted to steel myself , if necessary, for the evening's conversation.
I was pleased to see she had not gotten anything in.
Of course, my name was also not on the list.

So, Thursday was quiet.
I congratulated a friend who got a piece accepted to the show. Her husband didn't- a surprise , since he is an excellent painter.
The person I dislike was very quiet. Didn't even mention the exhibit.

So, today, after art, Vandra and I drove over to the impressive mansion to pick up our rejected pieces.

The woman who runs the gallery - the administrator, not one of the judges, and a very nice lady- pulled me aside and started apologizing.
I've had that happen, before.
Usually it is about how nice my work is , but you know how "they" do not like things that show nipples or ( gasp) pubic hair.
Hearing this over and over again, I am always tempted reply, "Well, I will have to tell all of the models to shave, and , perhaps, wax."
But I don't.
At least, not yet.

This time, what she said was somewhat unexpected, even though the drawing I had entered had a very blatantly exposed nipple ( although, no pubic hair...because of the pose, not because of a wax job.)

Apparently, it was an oversight.

My name was left off the list and they did accept the nipple.
I mean, the drawing.

Story of teh Day 4/ 4/ 2014 - Part 2

When I last wrote, I had been rendered unable to sleep due to the comforting- I mean very UN-comforting letter from the State of Indiana.

Being unable to sleep has certain benefits.
It gives you a chance to have another slice of the chocolate cake in the refrigerator.
Before someone else finishes it.
It allows you to reconsider every major thing you have done in the last quarter century.
If your memory is better than mine, you can make that half-century.
And it allows you to formulate your response to the IRS. ( Or whatever the state level tax people are called.)



Dear Sir/ Ma’am,

Yesterday, we received a notice from your department that there was an inconsistency in our tax return- it did not agree with your figures. According to you, we now owe over $xxxxx in taxes.

The item you say we incorrectly took, as a credit, is the money withheld from L’s paycheck by his employer to pay state income tax. The amount we took as a credit is the amount shown on his W2. We have enclosed a copy of the W2. We are not concerned that it was entered on the wrong line since it was automatically downloaded and entered by TurboTax, and having them do those things is what makes paying the $49 for the program worth it.

There are 3 possible reasons that your calculations and ours do not match:

1. You did not credit us for the money paid to the state by his employer.
2. You or his employer mistakenly applied the money paid to someone else, possibly because of an error by the state or by the employer in the social security number.
3. L’s employer deducted the money from his pay, but did not send it on to the State.

None of these situations has been caused by an error or omission on our part, and we have submitted our tax returns using the information given to us by L’s employer.

Sincerely,
a disgruntled taxpayer****


Okay, I did not sign it that way, but I was tempted.

Story of the day 4/ 4/ 2014

It is 12:06 AM.
Friday morning, although, it is only technically morning, since the sun won't rise for many hours.
I have been to bed.
The problem is that it didn't last very long, my being in bed.

I got home from work at about 10:46 PM.
I checked my email and my cell phone.
I had to check my cell phone because I had accidentally left it at home when I went off to work.
This was especially stupid of me because I drive home alone at night and it is nice to have that little bit of security- a cell phone to use in case of a flat tire or some other mishap.

At any rate, I checked it and found my cousin had called 3 times in 20 minutes.
And had not left a message.
There were no texts.
In other words, I hadn't missed much.
My email was similarly not stressful. A couple of short emails from friends.

So, I started going through my regular bedtime routine.
I took my pills, the stuff that keeps my joints from making loud creaking noises and the pink pills that keep me from having an asthma attack.
I checked to see if the laundery I had thrown into the machine before I left the house was done, or if it was still damp.
Then I went to get ready for bed, to brush my teeth and to put on my cookie monster pajamas.
Okay, I lied. I am actually wearing plaid, tonight, because cookie monster is in the dryer.

That is when I found it.
The unpleasant note that my husband had left me.

My husband is not unpleasant.
The note was.

I need to exlain.
My husband and I are those two ships that pass in the night, except, we are usually in two cars passing as he pulls in from work and I head out.
We do this twice a week, because that is how our Tuesday and Thrsday schedules work.
As a result, our communications on those days are largely via notes left on the bathroom mirror.
Often they say things like, "Do you want me to set the alarm for 7:15 or 7:30?"
Because I carpool, but not every day, there is often some confusion as to how early i need to leave the house, and the 15 minute adjustment is reflected in this.

Or it will say, " Dinner was delicious."
When it says that, I either have to worry that he needs me to do a favor for him,
or he is eating something that came frozen-ready-made.

Sometiems it will say that our son called, or some other thing that he or I missed.

But , tonight's note was unpleasant.

It was unpleasant because, today, we had a piece of mail .
From the State of Indiana.
From the Department of Revenue of the State of Indiana.
About our state income tax.

I filed, some weeks ago, for our refund.

They did get it.
But they do not like it.
They didn't like our tax return.
Apparently, they reviewed it and found that we had inappropriately claimed a credit that we did not deserve.
As a result, we owe the state several thousands of dollars.
Payable in the next two weeks.

They are willing to accept a charge card.

I read the details.
I check each line that they have reviewed.
I fnd the error.
They say it is Schedule 5.
We have, according to them, no credits from Schedule 5, despite the fact that we claimed them.

I did our taxes.
In other words, I have messed up, somehow.
Although, for such a large mount?
Even I am not that stupid.

I go back to the computer in my not-cookie-monster pajamas.

I open up the tax file.
Fortunatly, I still remember the password.

I locate Schedule 5.
Scheduel 5 is the information taken directly from my husband's W2 form.
I didn't even type it in, Turbo Tax downloaded that info from the internet.

It is not some error I have made, it is information from his employer.
But, according to the State of Indiana , my husband did not have state income taxe withheld from his pay. Either that or it was withheld, but not given over to the state.
I am not totally sure what to think.

My first thought is that we ned to xerox his W2, and submit it with an appeal.
Obviously, some idiot at the State misread his W2 form.

But then I start to wonder if his employer didn't actually send the withheld money to the State.
I mean, it could have been embezzled- stolen.
This seems like a rather neurotic thought except that the last time we had an unpleasant series of letters from the tax people ( that time being the federal ones) it was because someone where I work
- well, where I had previously worked-
had used my identy to steal money and claim I had earned it and owed taxes on it.

We have also, about 17 years ago, been the victims of actual embezzlement.
Also perpetrated by someone from work.
So, I am neurotic, but not without reason.

I wrote out a note to my husband explaining where the "error" was,
and what we needed to do about xeroxing the W2;
and I taped it up on the bathroom mirror next to the note my husband had left for me.
And I went to bed.

I lay down.
I put my head on the pillow, and closed my eyes.

That was about 15 minutes ago.
15 very long minutes of wondering what will happen , next.

Story of the Day 4/ 13/ 2014

Passover is coming.
I know it because my house smells like bleach, and that weird smell from when I run the self clean cycle on the oven.
There are also scads of things pulled from cabinets or being put into them.

I can also tell because Sarah has texted me from Wegmans.
Sarah is at college in Rochester, New York. She lives in a dorm.

During the school, year she survives by eating vegetarian and salad bar selections from the cafeteria, and by having stockpile of Cheerios and Madras Lentil packets in her dorm room.

But with Passover coming, she cannot eat anything from the cafeterias, not even the lettuce from the salad bar, so she is scrambling.

There is a convenience store in the basement of the dorms. They had some grape juice and some matzoh, and macaroons.
They also have apples.

Okay, that is a start, just not a very good one, so she has grabbed her roommate to serve as a pack mule (hey, one kid can only carry so much), and they have taken the bus to Wegmans, which is the local grocery store.

The first text is a sad one.
Wegmans is out of Temp Tee.
This would be a bigger tragedy, except that Sarah is Jewish, and she started panicking about food about 2 weeks ago, and bought a few at that foray to Wegmans.
She would have bought more, but the expiration date had her panicked that the Temp Tee would spoil before the middle of the Passover holiday.

I texted her to check out the Philadelphia cream cheese.
Temp Tee is this much fancier, whipped and kosher for Passover item that we love, but Philadelphia will do, if you cannot get Temp Tee. Philadelphia brand cream cheese comes , regular year, with no certification for Passover, but starting about a week before the holiday, specially marked packages of it start showing up in all of the refrigerator cases in the various grocery stores. God Bless Kraft!

Another text, she has found it , but it isn’t marked kosher for Passover.

Since I am doing my Passover shopping, as well, I hurry to the refrigerator aisle at Marsh.
I locate the Passover Philadelphia cream cheese, and text her where the heksher ( kosher mark) is for Passover.
This year it is hidden on the side of the box, although, larger than it was, last year.
She finds it.

Then she texts me and asks what kasha is.
Kasha is what people who do not know how to say my name call me.
I am not joking.
I also do not usually bother to correct them.
They think I am a food.
Oh well.

It is also this really weird thing that Ashkenazic Jews make and serve mixed in with bow tie noodles.
It is rather disgusting, except to them. They seem to like it.
While I am not totally sure what it is I know it is chametz- it is a grain product and not okay for Passover, even if the store employees have stuck it in the Passover section.
I text back to her that it is not okay for Passover.

I do not explain that some people call me that.
Sarah is deaf, it would make no sense to her.

Several texts later, my cell phone falls silent, and I figure she is doing better.
I go home.
Much later, we Skype and Sarah tells me what happened at the store.
After she checked out.

Sarah and her roommate were outside the store at the bench waiting for the bus. Sarah was rearranging her groceries, moving things from bag to backpack. She pulls out the spaghetti sauce- and it goes flying up and out of her hands.

It misses hitting a man, but explodes onto the cement.

Sarah is aghast. She is a bit embarrassed, and she is also crushed.
That was her one jar of spaghetti sauce- meant to last her all of Passover.
She starts to pick up some of the larger pieces of glass.

A man comes over and talks to her. She gestures thats she is deaf.
He tells her to leave it; he will get someone to clean it up.
A man in uniform comes out and starts to clean it up.
A third man, in a nice shirt and tie, who also works for the store, comes out. He tells Sarah not to pick up the glass; they will take care of it.
He explains where she can wash her hands.
Other customers see the red stain and steer clear.
The man, with the tie, picks up the label – the piece of glass with the label from the sauce and goes back into the store.

Sarah’s roommate spots a man they know, a teacher at the college, headed into the store. He is with his son who is wearing an orange baseball cap. She wants to get their attention, but Sarah tells her they are too far away. Sarah tells her just to let the guy know they saw him at the store- him and his son with the orange cap.

Two women come over they are dressed nicely. One is white and one is black and they are in their 40’s.
They ask the girls, in ASL, if they are coming to the program, tomorrow.
The Program?
It is something about Jesus.
Sarah smiles and takes the invitation. She explains to me that saying "No" would have started them off on a roll, and she would prefer to avoid it.
While we are Skyping, she shows me the invitation, which is a tad comical.
It announces that "Yes, even those Deafies can be saved", they have an interpreter just for them!

I am not kidding.

At any rate, as the women turn to leave one of them remarks that she saw them talking about boys.
She winks at them.
They were, about the teacher’s son and the orange cap, but, obviously, not in the wink-wink way that the woman meant.
Obviously, her comprehension of sign language leaves a bit to be desired.

Then, from across the parking lot, the father of the boy with the orange cap spots them- waves big and comes over and says “Hi!"

And just after that, the man with the tie, reappears.
He has looked and looked and can’t find the brand of sauce that Sarah broke.

Sarah gestures for a pad of paper. She writes down that it was from the Passover section.
He puts his palm to his forehead- “Oh!”
He runs back into the store, finds the Passover sauce and brings her a jar.

Sarah is a mite embarrassed, after all, her clumsiness broke it, but she is happy to have the jar, so that she will not starve.

Well, whatever it is that happens when you do not have a jar of spaghetti sauce on Passover.

Story of the Day 3/ 25/ 2014

So, My saga of the phone bill continues.
The T-Mobile bill, to be exact.

Today, I received notice that our bill is overdue and we are about to have a $20 fee imposed upon us.
The notice, of course, came in the form of a text.

This is the same form in which T-Mobile has been informing me of all sorts of fanciful things, like the month they erroneously dunned my charge card for over $1000.

Come to think of it, they still have my $1,000. The same money that they were supposed to refund to me.
But haven't.
I know this, because I asked my husband to check, on line.

So, they have a thousand dollars that they took from our charge card to pay a bill of $119.
They were supposed to refund us the money.
They didn't.
And now they are claiming our bill is overdue and they want to charge us another $20.

Of course, I call them.
They did refund the money.
"You did not."
They check.
Oh , gee, they didn't.
Their refund to us bounced.

It bounced?
How can a refund bounce? A refund to a charge card......

It bounced.

If my check to them had bounced, they would charge me $30.
Because their refund to me bounced, they are charging me $20 as a late fee.

What?

The woman agreed that it didn't look like it made sense, but it did.
She tried to explain it to me.
She wanted me to pay an extra $239 with my charge card to avoid the $20 late charge, and to avoid having our service discontinued.
And I could wait for the bounced $1,000 of ours that they had already been paid to be refunded to us.

For some strange reason , this did not sound good to me.
Even though the woman thought it made good sense.

I told her that I would pay .
After the refund was made, and after I saw it on my charge card account.

At this point, she offered to put a ten day hold on our account.
We would not be assessed the late fee, nor have our service cut off.
And our refund would appear on our credit card statement.
And then we could call in and authorize another charge on our card.

This sounded reasonable.

Almost.

In the meanwhile, they still have our $1,000.

Nothing from them is likely to sound very reasonable until they refund it.

Story of the Day 3/17/2014

This story started about 5 week sago.
I could check for the exact date, if you would like.
Personally, I do better when the details are less fresh in my mind. There is less to be angry about.

It started with a text.

Many stories start with texts, but a lot of them are not re-tellable.

This one is.

Barely.

We have a cell phone plan. When I grew up, there was no such thing.
No cell phone plan, no cell phones except in Maxwell Smart's shoe.
If you have no idea who Maxwell Smart is, you obviously do not pre-date cell phones.
As for Maxwell Smart's shoe phone, that must have ended up causing lot of butt-dialing. I mean foot dialing, but the writers for the show didn't deal with cell phones in their real lives, so buttt dialing had yet to be discovered.
But back to our cell phone plan.

We have 5 of them. Five cell phones and one plan.
We've had the same service provider for years. I think since 1998, which makes us almost unheard of.
Customer loyalty went out before cell phone plans were invented.
Back in 1998, we had one cell phone- my husband's. He used it for work, for when he was on call.
Back in the Deark Ages of 1998, I thought that perhaps, some day, I would have a cell phone, but I had no way of envisioning every 2 year old in the country with a fully armed...whoops, APPed smart phone addictedly playing Angry Birds or whatever that age range is into.

Now we have 5 fully functioning phones on our plan with this very same company.
It is not that we love this company so much that we do not want to be lured away.
In fact, there are moments we despise this company.
There are moments when saying "T-Mobile" is tantamount to uttering a swear word.
We've had no end of problems with them, although, the problems seem to come at 2 year intervals, allowing us to be lulled into thinking that the company has improved.
Until the next big problem.

Since the last big problem had been about 26 months ago, I should have been prepared.
But I wasn't.

I got a text.
I get one , every month, letting me know that our checking account has been raided to pay for our monthly service plan of $119 dollars.
Okay, actually, letting me know that our charge card has been dinged for that amount.
That is a lot of money, although, for 5 phone with unlimited talk and text ( the text part being the important part, since most of our kids don't hear) it is not a bad deal.

But, this time, the text was a little different.

Someone had added a zero before the decimal point.

T-Mobil had apparently taken over $1,000 from our checking account.

Two phone calls later, I was told that they had erred.
They had even figured out how they had made the mistake and were very sorry, and that the charge card account had not yet been charged.
And this would be corrected before the amount was actually deducted.

Except that it wasn't.
It wasn't corrected- a fact I found out about a few weeks later.

Another two phone calls later, they admitted that a mistake had been made.

Yes, the same phrase as when I had originally called them.
But this was not for the first mistake, this phrase was uttered in response ego the second mistake.
And, while they could not put the money back into our checking account, or send us the difference, they would gladly credit it to our account.
Not to our charge card account, the one we had to pay the $1,030 to NOW or risk fees and interest, but to our T-Mobile account.

The woman from T-Mobile explained that it would be nice for us to have that balance. We wouldn't' have to pay any T-Mobile bills for a while.

I snidely commented that I did not feel that they were entitled to hold onto close to $1000 of our money for that many months without paying us interest and a fee for the inconvenience.

This elicited silence.
And then the response that they could not help me.

This did not sit well with me.
I asked the woman if she would be happy if they held onto her money for that long.
This did not get a response.

I asked to speak with supervisor, a manager, someone who was old enough to have to pay their own charge card bills.

After a bit more struggle to get them to understand why I did not think that they should just hold onto our money, it was determined that hey could actually refund the difference to our charge card.
despite the fact that they had previously told me that this would be impossible.

of course, we used to think that 2 years olds having their own cell phones was impossible.

Meanwhile, I am waiting, and cringing, for my next text from T-Mobile.

Story of the Day 3/ 15/ 2014

Idiocy.

Today, one of the local rabbis came up to my son and asked him to interpret for the program they are having , tomorrow. There is a deaf family coming, and they have neglected to get an interpreter.

I should not say that they didn't try.
They did.

They called or contacted one interpreter.

That one interpreter is from a list of about one dozen that my husband gave him. Names, email addresses, cell phone numbers. I suppose my husband did neglect to give him the make and model and year number for their cars.....

Then, today, he asked my son- who is not an interpreter, but who knows ASL , if he could interpret.

This is my son, who is deaf.

Idiocy.

Story of the Day 3/ 5/ 2014

I can sleep , at night.

That is because I have finished doing our taxes.
Our is a very plural term.
I do my husband's and mine- we file jointly. It kind of goes with being married, at least, if you are like us and not wealthy .
And I do the forms and file them for our two youngest children.
I do not do it for my oldest; his fiancé does.
I liked the fiancé quite a bit, when I met him.
And I have decided that I like him a whole lot more, now that I know he can do taxes.
This might end up being very beneficial relationship....if I can sucker him into doing the rest of the family's......

But back to the current year.

I finished doing our taxes, and I e-filed them. the federal part, because that was free.
I did not e-file the 4 state forms .
Please explain why I would pay $20 ( okay, $19.95) each to file forms when the refund ranges between $0 and $7?
That is somewhat like spending $14 on gasoline to drive to the store that is halfway across the city because the canned cream of corn, and only the canned cream of corn, is 10 cents cheaper.

But Turbo Tax thinks that I should.
Not drive to buy the cheaper canned cream of corn, which I don't' eat.
But to pay to file my state taxes.
They asked me that several times.

And they also asked if I wanted their $45 service for each, in case we are audited by the IRS.

Okay, my husband and I might find that painful.
We have, in the past, when I was the victim of identity theft.
But I can't imagine the IRS is at all interested in auditing my daughter, whose income, last year, was a whopping $47.
Or my son, whose was $7.25 an hour, for part-time work.
I forget his total earnings, but he is too poor to bother with, if you are the IRS.

I had a few moments of vacillating. Should I pay this fee for this for mine? ( mine being the joint filing for my husband and me.)

We have been contacted by the IRS.
Repeated letters and notices.
This is from when my identity was stollen by someone at my previous employer.
And the person who stole my identity used it to get money from them, money which I didn't know about and for which I was later assessed for not having paid taxes.
This was when the IRS contacted me. A series of not very friendly missives.

I thought about what TurboTx offers.
They would deal directly with the IRS.
This sounded very good , until I thought about it.
Because, gee, that wasn't the problem.
The problem was my ex-employer.

It required letters from a lawyer to get corrected a 1099.
Actually, not a corrected one, because they never sent that, but an uncorrected one.
The one they mailed to whatever the new address was that they had for me- the one provided by their person who used my Social security number to steal.

That person had the 1099 sent to some other address, delaying when their scheme would be found out.
And confusing me, further, since I was being held accountable for something I had no idea had happened.

In fact, the judge for the tax hearing- the IRS judge- was nice and helpful ..... kind of ruining my previously held image of what the IRS is like.
And Turbo Tax probably would not have taken my case that far.
They would not even have contacted my ex-employer to get a 1099- one that stated how much was stolen using my identity, and then corrected one to give to the IRS.
Those things don't' seem to fit under what they provide for the $45 fee.
All they would do was take calls from the IRS, which was the only easy part of what happened.

So, I decided to lead a risky life and did not pay the $45.
You know, me and my wild lifestyle.

Tomorrow, I might even wear mis-matched socks.

Story of the Day 1/ 30/ 2014

At a bit past two in the afternoon, the phone rang.

I answered it, correctly this time. I said, "Good afternoon!"
I have this sad tendency to say , "Good morning" up until close to dinner time, so I , at least, was impressed by my acumen.

There was a pause.
Of course, what went through my mind was " robo-call." But I was wrong.
A slightly confused sounding man asked," Is this a residence?"

"Yes."

"I am conducting a survey for St. Vincent's Hospital. May I please speak with Sarah Green?"

"This is her mother. You have her name wrong. Would you care to try again?"
I was not so much being intransigent as being careful. The hospital ought to have her name right. Maybe this wasn't really them.

He starts to spell it.
They have given him a truncated form of the last name- very truncated, but it is the kind of thing that a computer will do, or a senseless person. And he had simply tried to say what was left of it that was sayable.....

I explain that her last name has been truncated, but that he is looking for my daughter, however, "She can't speak with you."

I explain that Sarah is Deaf. Deaf as in doesn't speak on the phone, but that I could provide an alternate method of communication for her.
( I , of course, was thinking of email or texting via cell phone- those wonderful technological miracles of the last century.)
I tell him that she is at college, and in class , right now, but should be available later.

There is a moment of silence.
He replies, somewhat shaken, " I will just mark that as she has moved."

"She hasn't moved, this is her permanent address. Would you like an alternate way to contact her?"

He didn't.
He has lost all desire to ask her any survey questions.
Her being deaf is too much for him to deal with. He says goodbye and hangs up.

Now, I understand that this guy is a poorly paid, untrained person calling for a business that does surveys, but he just made the hospital come off as a snotty place that has zero regard for their Deaf patients.
Apparently, these Deaf patients are not even worth contacting for a survey to find out how their experience was.

Considering the fact that the Deaf often are treated worse by hospitals and medical offices in terms of being treated as if they are an annoyance for requiring an interpreter, or being told "Can't you bring relative with you to do that?" or being provided with interpreters who are less than well trained, and then the patient is not sure if the doctor is speaking down to them ( adding insult to injury), I would think that they could at least try to get their opinion on a survey.

I wasn't the patient, but , if they opt to ask me I will tell them that they failed whatever test this was.
A big fat zero, since they didn't even try.







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