Saturday, August 30, 2014

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.


Monday, August 11, 2014

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.

Thursday, August 7, 2014

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.......





Monday, August 4, 2014

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.