Story Of The Day

Story of the Day 1/ 21/ 2012

2012-01-27T04:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we received an invitation in the mail.

Since we are not especially popular or sociable people, this is an unusual occurrence.
Allright, let me rephrase that, I am not popular, and neither of us is sociable.

To be honest, my husband's favorite past time is to sit in the dining room and chuckle to himself.
He spends a lot of time sitting in the dining room. That is where he does his reading.
He has found that the chairs are neither hideously uncomfortable enough to preclude sitting on them for long periods of time, nor are they comfortable enough to fall asleep when he is doing his medical reading.

The chuckling, however, is not the result of either his medical reading nor his Torah studies, it is a product of his writing.
You see, my husband, like me , has a blog. The big difference is that his is a "real" blog and he is paid for it.
His is, also, indubitable more socially acceptable. And you d not even need to know him to have guessed that.
My husband writes columns for medical magazines. Some are for the actual magazines and some are for the blogs they have.

This next detail is something that you will not be able to guess unless you have already seen one of his columns.

You see, despite the fact that my husband is a brilliant and wonderful medical practitioner, his columns are not about the science of medicine, or about creating a better practice management setup. They are also not about the troublesome side effects his patients have as a result of the medications he prescribes.
This is good because if the columns were about those things, it would be a mite unsettling to hear him chuckling over them.
They are medical satire.

So my husband is a paid, professional blogger.
Another difference between us is that he writes many of his drafts out in long-hand, while I continue to mis-type my drafts. So his favorite thing to do is to sit in the dining room and chuckle to himself as he writes; and my favorite thing is to sit on the incredibly much more comfortable sofa in the family room and read.

At any rate, the idea of leaving our house to behave in a sociable manner is.....painful.
But we do.
On rare occasion.
For people we really like.

And this invitation was from someone we really like , or , more correctly, for someone we really like.
It is for the 80th birthday celebration of a dear friend I have known since I was a small child.

My husband read the card and remarked to me, " Wow, she has the same birthday that you do!"

A small detail that makes her one of the few people whose birthdays I recall with exactly zero struggle.

I responded," Yes, amazingly, that has been true for as many years as I have known her."

Story of the Day 1/ 19/ 2012

2012-01-22T20:37:00.000-08:00

My son has decided to give up his day job. Well, not really, because it is his night job, or his evening job or whatever.

Aaron used to have a regular gig doing stand-up comedy.
He was even funny.

He would tell a variety of jokes .

In the beginning, they were mostly about his experiences with the special education system, or with being deaf.
Later, he included a variety of jokes based on his job hunting experiences.

Then there was the long stream of more recent dirty jokes.
I wince somewhat , as I write this. I am, after all, his mother.

This is my cute baby boy we are discussing, the one who used to run around in his Batman pajamas.
Well, he still does run around in his Batman pajamas, except that , at 6' 2", he saunters.

When religion hit, I mean when he became more religious, he decided it was not a good thing for him to be telling dirty jokes.
Apparently, it was still okay for him to go to these bars , but the jokes were cleaned up.
I thought this was wonderful, after all, this is my baby boy we are discussing. I would like to pretend his sense of humor is still PG...or maybe PG-13, with a stricter parent than I am providing the rating standards.

Unfortunately, instead of going back to his deaf and jobless jokes, he decided that he was going to start telling puns.
Even I thought the dirty jokes were better.

Then, when he went off to yeshivah, in Israel, where his opportunities to do standup were...well, rather limited since he doesn't' speak Hebrew, he gave it up completely.

He has even convinced himself that he is no longer funny.
Actually, I think that happened when he started doing the puns, and , to be honest, that was NOT funny.

But I still can close my eyes and picture him doing standup.
Okay, I can't close my eyes and do that because I have to keep my eyes open to read the letters he sends me.

I recently received one , and the back page described his interactions at a party he was planning on attending:

" This Thursday , I am planning on going to B'Nei Brak for a Deaf Hanukkah Party! WOWZERS!
Don't worry, I'll probably just stand in a corner silently devouring as many jelly filed doughnuts I can lay my hands on.

If confronted by any socialsim ( talking, not politics) I'll smile and nod my head pretending I understand.

Considering how hard it is for me to understand Deaf people in American Sign Language, I don't' stand a chance in ISL (Isreali Sign Language).
Of course, I can say the Hebrew alphabet, but that isn't' very helpful if you don't' actually know any Hebrew words.
Don't worry! I had the ultimate response in ISL, "Baruch HaShem!" ( Praise God!)

A Deaf person can ask any question or make any comment and that's the response I can sign.

Example

Deaf Man: "How are you?"
Me: " Baruch HaShem!"

Deaf Man: "Are you enjoying the party?"
Me:"Baruch HaShem!"

Deaf Man: "So, where are you from?"
Me: "Baruch HaShem!"

Deaf Man: " Do you want to buy some drugs?"
Me: "Baruch HaShem!"

Deaf Man: "Oh, there's my wife. See you later!"
Me: "Baruch Hashem!"

Okay, I inserted the line about drugs.

Story of the Day 1/ 9 / 2012

2012-01-20T03:52:00.000-08:00

My son was enjoying another wonderful Shabbat meal.
He had been invited to eat with a family.
During the meal, the wife asked him, "Are you married?"
My son replied, " No, I am not."
"Well, would you be interested in a deaf girl?"
Fortunately, Aaron doest' have a bad image of deaf people. This is good for a couple of reasons, one of which is that he happens to be deaf. So he replied, " that would fine."

The woman spent a moment or two thinking about whom she could introduce to my son. Apparently, she wasn't very thrilled with the young ladies that came to her mind.
She added," But the deaf girls are all modern ." This being lower down on the acceptability scale than just regular orthodox. At least in her mind.
" What about a girl with a different problem?"

I can see it now, it will be great marriage. They can fix Aaron up with a nice orthodox ( G-d forbid modern !) young lady who is blind. She can speak, and he can sign. No communication would be just great, obviously: they wouldn't' understand if the other one was screaming at them.

Or maybe........

I told my husband about this over dinner.
"What problem?"
Okay, he didn't' say that, he actually said, "Well, what did Aaron tell her?"

Wow, I hadn't thought to ask that.

I emailed Aaron, "What did you say to her?"

I woud like to think that he was polite. I have spent a couple of decades trying to beat some politeness into each of my children, with some limited success. But, as the mother of two deaf children who have problems, especially Aaron, but not one of those problems happens to be the fact that they are deaf, I was kind of hoping he'd given her a very....."amusing" answer.

Aaron's response was:

hmmm...i don't think i really said anything.

it was more like a nod of the head and i kept eating food.

Now, the story is, already , strange enough, but my son just informed me in another email that the woman's husband- the man at whose house he was eating ...that man is deaf.

Since the wife isn't, I am wondering what her " problem" is.
Please let me know , if you figure this out.
I will not be holding my breath.

Story of the Day 1/ 15/ 2012

2012-01-18T04:29:00.000-08:00

Mice.

Yes, I was speaking with Aaron and the topic came up.
Again.

There are still mice in the dorm, despite the cats that some of the students have imported from the streets and alleys near the yeshivah, despite the $70 worth of fancy mouse traps that Aaron’s mother mailed off to Israel ( she is including postage costs in that hefty estimate), despite the two mouse traps that Aarons’ mother sent off with Rabbi Cowen when he went to visit his brother in Sfat, and which Aaron took the bus to collect. ( Okay, he also took the bus because when went to visit Rabbi Cowen’s brother, also known as Rabbi Cowen, he went to visit and to eat well.)

Despite all of these measures, (oh, and how could I have forgotten the Nike shoe-box catch and release trap? ).... Despite all these measures, the mice are still scampering happily around the yeshivah. And there have been complaints.

About the mice.

As it turns out, Aaron was not the only student bothered by the mice.

Nor was Aaron- the other Aaron, who is Aaron’s roommate- this Aaron being the one who was awakened by a mouse scampering over his face at 3 AM, the only other student bothered by the mice.

Other students, some of whom may have even had names other than Aaron, have been complaining. Not just catching cats and buying their own mousetraps, but complaining.

So, This Sunday, an exterminator arrived.

He went through the yeshivah, or at least through the dorm, and while in Aaron’s room, he told Aaron and Aaron that the traps were better positioned against the baseboard. You see, in addition to my son’s learning disability, the one where the word that is printed “ REEBOK” is read as the word “Nike”, my son was somehow unable to read the instructions that came with the mouse traps. Those being the instructions that tell you to place the traps by the baseboards, along the wall.

In addition to repositioning the mouse traps, the exterminator also spread rat poison throughout the dorm.

I am sure this is causing a bit of unease with the rabbi who made the catch and release trap from the" Nike" shoe box. To be honest, it is bothering me a bit, as well.

You see, there are two basic kinds of rat poison.

There is the kind that most people use.

The rats and mice eat it. It causes them to die.

The problem is that it causes them to go back to their nests and die.

And then it starts to smell.

Really bad.

Really, really bad.

Of course, eventually, the smell goes away.

The other kind causes the rats and mice to go out in search of water. In that case they tend to die out in search of water, outside, in a visible area, not inside the walls or the crawlspace or the…..and the smell Is not in the bedrooms and classrooms and cafeteria.

Unfortunately, this second kind of poison is not the kind that is usually used.

Aaron, after all, is deaf. That means his ears do not work.

He is , however, Jewish, and he has a very fine nose that does work.

I think my next box will contain a supply of nose plugs. For Aaron . And Aaron .

Story of the Day 1/ 8/ 2012

2012-01-16T06:17:00.001-08:00

It was the 6th phone call that got to me. Not the first nor the second nor the third......Of course, two of them were made necessary because I had been disconnected. From customer support. From Apple.

At the start of the first phone call, the woman speaking with me asked for my telephone number, in case we were disconnected.
We weren't.
She was even able to help me with the first part of the problem. but not with the second. She transferred me to someone who specializes in that kind of an issue. And that person transferred me to someone else who specialized in what he didn't specialize in.
That third guy, well he was the third person, but the second guy, told me to use iDVD. This is because we couldn't get the dvd to burn.
Okay, we could. We being Sarah. I am merely the person stuck making all of the phone calls.
That is because I can hear ,all-be-it poorly. Sarah cannot. She is profoundly deaf.
We have a videophone, and, theoretically, she can use it to call customer support, and then the person at technical support can act like a total idiot about using the relay interpreter.
But Sarah cannot do that because our videophone is not working . Well, it is working, but like many things that we touch, it works....sort of. We can get phone calls. We just can't make them.
Of course, we also cannot actually get any phone calls on the videophone unless you call us on the voice phone and ask us to turn the videophone on, or text us on one of the cell phones, or maybe even email us.
That is because Sarah is so popular that she gets 25-30 calls a day, from the same person, if we leave it on. So to avoid thinking violent thoughts, we leave it turned off.
Unless you use one of those other methods to contact us.
And don't worry, the person calling her doesn't' read my blog.
And Aaron isn’t here , right now, and , to be honest. Although he can speak on a telephone ( rather well, in fact) he s also deaf and usually he cannot hear very much on it.

Because of this, I am the one stuck making the phone calls to Technical Support, even though I struggle to hear some of the tech support people and even though I break out in hives if I get within 5 feet of the new computer.

And I have to explain to the tech support person that I will be inter petering for my kid, and they need to be a bit patient for this process.
As you can see, we are not popular. The tech support people were probably just transferring me around because they were freaked out by this whole process, which is why we really need to get the videophone fixed, so they can really get freaked out.

"What do you mean you are interpreting for someone using ASL, I can't see you, so how can you be doing that?"
So, the third tech support person- and this was still just the first phone call- told me to use iDVD. Which I tried to do.
Unfortunately, I tried to do this AFTER he had hung up.
It didn't' work.
We tried this and tried that and tried the other thing, because the guy from Apple said to do it.
And finally, frustrated, I called back.

"Oh, we just got an email about that a few days ago!" Said person number 5, during phone call number 2. ( Well, he was the fifth person altogether, but only the second one during the second call), "You have to use..." And he named a different program. Movie Gate? Video Gate? Something like that. Don't' expect my brain to retain this. Especially since neither of the two programs the guy told me to use worked.
Of course, it took another hour to figure that out.
It took downloading them, transferring the files, and trying to burn a workable dvd.

Phone call number three ....I was disconnected.

Phone call number four, the mechanized system, computerized system that was developed by a sadist refused to recognize my speech. Over and over and over. " If you mean P" press one". "If you mean B, press 2", But I didn't' mean either of those. I kept starting again and starting again and starting again.
I hung up, after about 6 times around.

Phone call number five. The guy again asked me for my contact phone number. This was good, because about 7 minutes into the conversation, or less, we were disconnected.
So I hung up, and sat and waited to be called back.
And waited.
And waited.

Maybe he doesn't hear well, either, and he wrote down the wrong number.
At any rate, it gradually dawned on me that I was not going to be called back, at least not during the next 100 days of the warranty.

Phone call number 6, and I have now totally lost track of how many people I have spoken to, but the guy I ended up being transferred to looked up my computer's serial number, and it turns out the computer isn't registered to me.
Gee, I know that.
I bought it. I paid for it.
My charge card was used.

But it is my kids'. Aaron's' and Sarah's. Aaron's because he needs a computer for college classes, and an iMac specifically for video editing, assuming he is going to do that again, at some point,( now that he is 6 months behind in captioning the one video),and Sarah who is trying to use it, right now, during break to do a project...that has to be mailed on Monday morning, tomorrow.
Okay, not really, it could also be mailed tomorrow afternoon.

And a program was purchased, at the same time, from Apple. Actually, a few were. Some sort of word program and another video editing program and one that burns dvds. Do not ask me about this- remember, I am not allowed within 5 feet of the computer unless I have a lot of Benadryl handy.

I explain that I paid for the computer, and I give my children's last name.

And, for the second time, I explain why he gets to speak to me. I am wondering if he wants me to mail him a copy of their audiograms.

"Deaf- you know, can't hear for shit, especially on the phone because it is hard to read your lips."

No.
It isn't registered to them, either.

I tell him I have the order information. I pull it up on my email account. I have saved all of those important things. That and a lot of spam, as well.
I read him the order number.
It is not my computer. It is not my kids' computer. His records do not match.
Of course, he cannot tell me WHOSE computer this is, but it is not ours.
Because it is not ours, he cannot speak to me, he cannot provide us with technical support. At least, he is very polite about this.

I get his email address at work.
This is hard.
I can't hear for shit, although, compared to my kids, my hearing is incredibly much like a super-power.

I tell him, after he has said his name a couple of times and spelled it that he needs to tell me a word for each letter, because I cannot figure out what letters he is saying. I can hear the "I and the "A", and a consonant. One consonant.
He is wondering what sort of a crazy lady he has on the phone. I tell him that in 40 years, when he is an old fart who has listened to too much loud music, he will understand.
I never listened to loud music, of course, but I have those popular genes- and not the kind that are blue.

He spells it again, giving me a word for each letter.
I send him a copy of the email from Apple that says that I and only I ordered and paid for the damned computer.
In the meanwhile, he is not supposed to help me figure out what to do with the computer, since it isn't mine, or my kids' and I have no right to be calling technical support for help.

But he will make an exception, this one time. Especially since the correct program is on the computer that we do not own.

At this point, we are several hours into calling Apple, the kids have run off, and it is little old me in front of the computer.
And I am NOT touching anything!

I tell him I am writing it all down on a piece of paper for them to follow, later, and to go slowly.

He does.

I write it down.

When Sarah gets home, about 29 minutes later, she stares at the paper.

It was written down carefully, but my handwriting is illegible to normal people, and to her, even though there is no chance that she is normal, be real, because she is my relative.

So I read it to her.
And she follows my poorly signed instructions.
And it works.
On the computer that apparently someone else owns.

Don’t worry, I thanked the guy.

He also said that he would get back to me, or that someone would, to get this straightened out. About who owns or doesn’t own the computer that I paid for and that is suiting here, and that I am typing on.
A
It is odd.
I mean, if someone buys something using credit card number- without my authorization- you know, like when someone stole my credit card number and bought 21 laptops, I did not end up paying for the goods. I made a report, and it was taken care of.

Actually, the credit card company called me, they were a tad suspicious as to why I would want 21 laptops from 21 different businesses ( one from each) shipped to a country in Africa. Because of this they opted to call me instead of just authorizing the payments.

But, in this case, I used the card, I bought the computer, it is sitting here, but Apple says it isn't ours, so we are not entitled to technical support ( and probably not to service under the warranty) , because we do not own it.
I doubt I can call the Apple Tech Support about that, but............

I suppose if I was being really mean, I would put Aaron or Sarah on the phone with them.

Story of the Day 1/ 13/ 2012

2012-01-13T09:24:00.001-08:00

Mice have been a topic of numerous Stories of the Day since my beloved little boy. Aaron, has been studying at the Ohr Somayach yeshivah in Jerusalem.

Apparently, at the yeshivah, mice are an endangered species, and instead of killing them, they are to be caught in the yeshivah's mouse trap and then released into the wild.
The wild is the area near the trash cans outside of the yeshivah.

The yeshivah has a very special trap made just for this propose. This trap also serves a second necessary purpose- which is especially important because it doesn't' work very well at trapping mice because the latch fails to be released most of the time.
this second purpose is to test for learning disabilities.
This is the trap that my son kept telling me, for several weeks, was made from a Nike shoebox.
Obviously, he ( my son, not the mouse) has an unusual kind of dyslexia.

As for the mouse update.......well, they still have some, but none have run over Aaron's or Aaron's ( his roommate also having the same first name) face the middle of the night.
There are also now some dorm cats that have been imported by some very resourceful students.
I didn't' have Aaron ask them if any mice had run over their faces in the middle of the night, but something obviously prompted them to import these cats from their previously feral positions on the streets of Jerusalem.

Story of the Day 1/ 10/ 2012

2012-01-12T05:07:00.000-08:00

Ely had driven off into the sunset, although, it was actually the sunrise, headed back to New York, and we were all missing him.

Unfortunately, we were not missing his phone recharger. I found what looked like it, about 12 hours after he had left.

We were also not missing his hat, or his gloves.

Fortunately, Binghamton has been having a balmy spell, and those were not as sorely needed as they usually are, at this time of year.

Being the wonderful mother that I am, ( and I keep repeating this phrase with frequency hoping that it will fool my children into believing that is one of the “Great Truths”) I packaged these things, and a nice shiny stainless steel water bottle up , stuck a label on it, and drove off to the post office.

As I was standing in line, I started thinking….and I couldn’t’ quite remember putting the phone charger into the box.

Had I or hadn’t I?

Relying on my memory is a bit like believing that “ read my lips” joke. Oh , wait, he didn’t mean it as a joke….

If you are under the age of …well, too young to remember the Republican National Convention of 1988, look it up. That is why God made Google, so you can look it up. That is another one of those “Great Truths”. At least, it is in my house.

So, to get back to the phone charger and whether or not I had put it in the box I was ready to mail….. I had no idea.

At least, I had not squandered gas on a wasted trip to the post office, since I was also there to mail those other important items: Sarah’s dvd…also a topic of numerous stories of the day, bound for the NTID/RIT competition, and the form and $60 filing fee for US Tax court, made necessary because my old employer didn’t send a corrected 1099 to the IRS, despite the email from them saying they had. Oh wait, maybe that is one of those other “Great Truths” about the check, I mean form, being in the mail…..

So, I sent the other important items off, and I drove home and looked around and, behold…..the phone charger was still sitting , unboxed, on the counter.

It must be waiting for Ely’s next visit.

But I will be a good mother, I will open up the box and put it INSIDE, retape it and take it off to the post office. Maybe even tomorrow.

If I remember.

Story of the Day 12/23/2011

2012-01-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

I recently had a friend over for tea. We spent the better part of an hour discussing doing laundry.

About hot water and cold water and enzymes that are in Tide with bleach alternative- which is wonderful at removing stains, but if you use hot water, then it doesn’t’ work, and how I am planning on making my own laundry detergent.

You see, I saw a video about it on YouTube. YouTube and Facebook, of course, are major sources for the news and for life skills.

At least for me.

So, you can make your own laundry detergent very inexpensively.

But the minor drawback is that you need two 5 gallon buckets for mixing it. And you need several hundred empty laundry jugs for storing it.

I am working on one of the 5 gallon buckets. That is because there was a terrific rebate on buying one filled with dry detergent. It ended up costing about $1.10 more than buying the bucket empty. And it came with all of that detergent.....

Of course, it may take me 6 months to use up that detergent. And another six to get another 5 gallon tub, and then another year to save the empty laundry detergent jugs. And…….

You might think that the only thing I learned while having tea with my friend was how long this is going to take me.

No, I actually realized something that is infinitely more valuable, although, I am also not sure what I will do with this information.

I have learned that I am a very boring friend.

Story of the day 12/ 31/ 2011

2011-12-31T16:40:00.000-08:00

We were sitting at the kitchen table, this evening, and the following conversation ensued:

( I ( Cassia ) am "MOM", Sarah is my beloved daughter who typed this up and put it on her Facebook status.......)

Mom: Hopefully 2013 will be a good year for us.
Sarah: Um.
Mom: Wait, what year will it be?
Sarah: 2012.
Mom: Oh right.

Story of the Day 12/24/2011

2011-12-30T04:58:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I only find out about things after the fact.
By accident.
Because someone else is told and I happen to be near enough to catch the info.

Apparently, on Thursday, Thursday being the day before Friday, and Friday being the day before today, my daughter had a basketball game.
I knew that.

She is a team manager and she gets to fold and unfold uniforms, hand out water bottles, take video and eat pizza.
She likes the last item best.

On Thursday, the team was getting ready to leave for Terre Haute. Terre Haute is a long , long drive on highway 70. It is about 90 minutes west of Indianapolis. After the school let out and before the team left, one of the mothers had brought food in, so the kids could have something to eat . No, not pizza, that was later.

Since school had let out a little earlier, and since Sarah had asked the interpreter to hang around a bit to make sure that Sarah had her questions answered in something a tad easier to communicate in than pantomime, the mom who had brought the food spotted this lady who was chatting with Sarah. Chatting as in signing.

She asked the woman, " Are you Sarah's wonderful mother?"

The interpreter, without missing beat, replied" No, I am Sarah's wonderful interpreter!"

Fortunately, since this is the regular , full time interpreter, the interpreter was right!

Story of the Day 12/ 22/ 2011

2011-12-27T05:34:00.000-08:00

This evening is the third night of Hanukkah.

We lit the candles, and then, as we do in our family, we exchange gifts.

We are cheap.

That is the nice way to say it. Certain children of ours have used much less flattering terms to describe how we do gifts.

Years ago, we set the $40 limit. The kids could pick out whatever they wanted for a total of $40. They could get a few smaller gifts, one large and one small, or one that cost the entire $40. But that was it.

Ely, in particular , didn’t like this.

It didn’t match up with how his friends’ families did things. There were no IPODS, the year they came out, or the year after that, which fell into the $40 or less category, and yet, many of his friends got one, as just one present of a slew.

Of course, we also managed to be the family that did not go to Hawaii, Disneyland or Europe for any of our vacations. That was another major disappointment in having us as parents.

And that $40 limit was for the kids.

Our limit for ourselves used to be $10.

When the kids got older, and the decade changed, we raised it, slightly. Nowadays, if one of the kids chooses a book that cost $43 before tax, we will usually say yes. Usually.

And , my husband and I decided that we would do better just buying what we want for ourselves and handing it to our spouse to wrap and give to us, and forget about that $10 limit.

As a result, we have started spending more and more, every year. This year, for example, my husband bought 3 CDs and a calendar for me to give to him. Can you imagine? Oh yes, and a book. I forgot about that.

I bought a jacket ( used) a brooch and a really nicely scented bar for soap from Trader Joes that I was being too cheap to buy for myself sans this good excuse. And I gave them to him to wrap for me, although, I told him he has to clean the jacket first, since the person who last owned it smoked. It is a dry clean only jacket, also, so that adds $1.99 to the cost…..

We also add a little bit- a few small surprises. This year, to add to what he handed me to wrap for him , I got him a $10 gift certificate for Half Price Books. Then I went back and got another one and put them in an envelope together and said “ for a hot date!” , so now he has to share it with me! And no, I am not worried he will read this before I give it to him because he doesn’t usually read my stories.

Tonight, it was just the two of us. Ely has not yet arrived from New York, Aaron is off in Israel, and Sarah went with the girls’ basketball team to Terre Haute. Terre Haute is a long drive west on route 70 , and she is not expected back until 11 PM.

So the two of us were lighting candles and exchanging gifts, and he hands me a small box , nicely wrapped. This is different from what I hand him, because I do not …well, I used to tell people, like teachers, when I gave them their gifts, that my kids had helped me to wrap the gifts. To prevent this from being a lie, I would have my kid hand me some tape. The problem is that the kids got older, and no self respecting ten year old would admit to doing anything that looked like something I have wrapped.

So, Larry hands me a nicely wrapped small box. Smaller than bread box, larger than a piece of jewelry. And light in weight.

And he says to me, “I was saving this for tonight, because Sarah isn’t home.”
And I thought, “ Is this a sex-toy? Edible underwear? A negligée?”

Well, the last time he got me something to wear to bed, it was flannel pajamas, and this didn’t weigh enough or take up enough room to be that. And I think that the image of me in a scant negligée or something like that might dampen any ardor, not increase it….so let’s forget about that.

And I couldn’t’ think of any sex toys that weighed this little, and ………

I opened it.

And it was what you see in the picture at the start of this story.

Of course, the first thing I saw were the large letters saying “First Check”. And I thought, “Does he think I am pregnant? I really do need to lose weight!”

Then I read the smaller print and realized it was a drug test.

And I thought, “Does he want to check Ely when Ely comes home?” I mean Ely occasionally has a drink, but not even his overly neurotic mother has suspected him of doing drugs. I mean, without a prescription.

I voiced my confusion.

“Open it,” replied my hubby.

He had reused the box, thinking it was a very funny package , for a bracelet.

It was.

And I will now save it and reuse it.

Although, maybe for something for one of the kids.

Story of the Day 12/17/2011

2011-12-25T15:26:00.000-08:00

On occasion, you realize that you have fallen in with the correct crowd. During services, this morning, sitting in the pew at synagogue with a friend on either side, we realized that we were all reading different magazines, and not the Chumash ( bible)…………although, at least they were all Jewish magazines from the lobby.

Story of the Day 12/ 06/ 2011

2011-12-23T04:54:00.001-08:00

Our son wrote is to let us know he was going to buy a pair of shoes. We had sent him off to Israel with two pairs, a pair of nice shoes, good enough to wear to synagogue on Shabbat , and a pair of sneakers.
The sneakers were forced upon him, by me. He thought he would be just fine with the one pair, but his evil mother thought that he might actually want to go somewhere and see something, like up to Masada or down to the ocean; and the nice dress shoes might be…wrong.
So, my husband and I were a bit surprised, but we thought that perhaps he wanted a pair of sandals, because while it is winter, and coat weather in Jerusalem, there are still warm beaches. Or perhaps he wanted some shoes appropriate for hiking, as there are several nice areas of Israel where those could be useful.
We didn’t hear anymore about it for a few days.
And then there was a phone call.
Not a phone call. The phone call.
He was upset.
Upset being too mild of a term.
He told me he would cut up his charge card.
He would starve himself, I mean stop buying brownies from the kiosk in the yeshivah, he would…..

“What is wrong?”
“He told me that he had spent about $260 on two pairs of shoes.
“What?!?!?”
This is the kid who doesn’t like to go clothes shopping, and who thinks we are being extravagant because we bought him 3 new white shirts at $10 each, before he left for Israel.
Is he on drugs?
I told him not to cut up the card and that we would talk with him on Sunday.

On Sunday, he called.
This interval had given my husband and me some time to prepare a whole list of questions, and to worry. I mean really worry.
This was obviously a sudden personality change…was it something serious?
Aaron has never even been willing to buy new shoes when the old ones looked like …shit.
My husband and I have this thing we refer to as PR- price resistance. It cuts in before $40, at least with shoes.
Personally, I have broken my $40 ceiling twice. Once, I spent $50 on a pair of shoes that my doctor recommended to help lessen the pain in my right knee. Thankfully, he was right, and the shoes have been worth that excessive amount. The other time was about 3 years ago, when I fell in love with a pair of fringed suede boots at Macy’s. I salivated over them for about 5 weeks. Finally, with a combination of a sale and a coupon I got them for $53.
I then gave them to Larry to give to me for Hanukkah.

My husband, who has similar PR when it comes to footwear, was as worried as I was.
So, with trepidation and a list of questions, we had anxiously awaited Aaron’s Sunday phone call.

“Why did you need new shoes?” was the first thing my husband asked.
And we were both surprised by the answer.

“My shoes didn’t fit. I think my feet grew.”
We can’t argue with that.

“Well, why did you buy such expensive shoes?”
“ I had already been to 4 other shoes stores. None of them carried shoes that were big enough for me. They have European shoes sizes here, 44 and 45, and they didn’t’ go up high enough to fit me; and this was the only store that had the extra large size.”
Aaron added, “And I didn’t know I was supposed to haggle.”

Well, he should have haggled, but the general rule is that you will get between 5 and 10%, sometimes a bit more if you are determined off from doing that, not a huge dent in an already huge bill - at least that si what my friend told me ….and his feet grew, and he was…big before he left
6’ 2”, we think.
And while you can get sandals and flip flops made in Israel, closed shoes are mostly imported and have VAT ( Vale Added Tax), so, all of the sudden the shoes didn’t seem so hideously expensive, considering the size of our little boy’s feet.

And if his feet grew, are growing , the rest of him is probably…

Which led me to ask another important question.
“Aaron, are your pants getting too short?”

Story of the Day 12/ 13/ 2011 #2

2011-12-21T03:51:00.000-08:00

My husband has been trying to poison us.

Okay. That isn't true. He hasn't been trying. On Purpose.
But he has been feeding us a steady died of dissolved toxins or whatever it is that is in black plastic.

On Shabbat and Yom Tov ( Sabbaths and holidays) we have a hot water tank- a coffee urn in which we have a lot of hot water to use for making cups of coffee, or tea, or instant oatmeal.
During the summer months, it is not such a big deal, but Indiana has cold, wet winters, when the sun isn't around and that cup of coffee starts becoming a bit of necessity.

So, every week, on Friday, or every day before the start of a holiday, my husband drags the hot water urn out of the closet under the stairs and fills it up and sets it out. And after the Sabbath or holiday is over, he empties what is left in it, and puts it away for another week.
Week after week, holiday after holiday.
I clean the bathrooms, and I bake the challahs ( bread) and I do a lot of the other things, but this is his job.

This is his job because the coffee urn holds 42 cups of hot water, and that makes it heavy to lift and move, and I happen to have arthritis in my hands.
So, week after week he does this. And then two weeks ago, for some reason, I was standing there when he emptied it, and I realized that the top of the hot water tank, which is plastic, is not "intact".
By this I mean that whole sections of plastic are missing- and what is there flakes off , if you touch it. And, apparently, it has been in this condition for a while,for months or maybe even a few years; and so, every Shabbat and holiday, while we are drinking our coffee and our tea we also happen to be drinking the plastic from the lid.

Forget about all of those BPA thingies that might be dissolving, unseen by you, from your water bottle, or your soup can and poisoning our family- this is a rather larger bit of plastic that we have been steadily imbibing for....

"Why in the fuck didn't' you tell me!" I said as I grabbed the now empty ( and therefore light in weight) urn from his hands and carried it to the back door, to be tossed.

Okay, he didn't notice.
Maybe.

And I spent much of the week, two weeks ago checking ads and reviews for hot water tanks.
And, last Friday, he set the damn thing up again.

"What are you doing?"

Well, he just couldn't' make it through Shabbat without that plastic poison-laced coffee....and I thought I was addicted to the stuff.

After Shabbat, I again took it and stuck it by the back door.
And I located a coffee urn that was a less than a 100 cup size and that did not have a plastic lid... but it was out of stock in all 4 of the stores that I called.

So, I kept looking.
On Thursday, I went to a store that had them in stock... but , not by the time I got into the store....... So, last week, come Shabbat,my husband filed up the canister of poison and...oh, no, he actually did listen to me, and left it by the back door, and had cold coffee on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, my hunt for a stainless steel poison-less urn continued, until, at last, I realized that Sam's Club had them. In town, local.

Only , there was one problem, we don't belong to Sam's club.

But we have friends that do!

I sent an email to one, and she offered to have her husband pick it up for me, since he is the frequent Sam's Club shopper in their family.

And, today, at 3:20 PM, he dropped off a magnificent, new-in-the-box coffee urn that does not had a carcinogenic top, I mean a plastic top.

But it was, in another way, dangerous.

You see, he had gone to Sam's Club on 86th street to shop, and he had walked down the aisle where the coffee urns are. All the way down the aisle.
And there on the aisle was one last coffee urn in its nice new box.
He took the box and put it into his shopping cart and started to take to the check out.

Only, before he even got halfway down the aisle, he was accosted by an enraged shopper who must still be on her Black Friday high ,or maybe low, since, apparently, she had not yet had an opportunity to use her pepper spray .

"What are you doing taking my coffee urn?"
Just because you got to it before I did does not mean it was yours!"

Luckily, he was bigger and stronger than she was, although not heavier, and he won the tussle.

Well, actually, the tussle was only verbal and it was one sided, as in she was the one tussling.

As I explained to his daughter, "Her daughter must have forgotten to sprinkle the woman's prozac on her breakfast cereal , this morning!"

And, this coming Shabbat, I can be grateful that we will be drinking coffee that was made with hot water and not plastic and is therefore not shortening our lifespans.

And I will also be grateful that the lady left both her pepper spray and her handgun at home and didn't' shoot my friend.
Ah, so many things to be grateful for!

My friend added that, at least," I wasn't worried about her having a gun because, thank God, I had mine. "

Story of the Day 12/13/2011

2011-12-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

Today was an excellent day.
I was able to say that before noon.
Of course, it was largely because I got to spend the morning with Cindie.

Cindie is the person my children refer to alternately as my partner in crime and my wife. Well, only Ely says that and he says that because he doesn't yet realize that we do not fight enough to be married. We just like to fight battles against the same creepy people and institutions.
I learned something, today, however, that may alter our relationship a bit.

All of these years , I have viewed Cidnie as the savvy one, the alert one in the relationship.
I am the one who is good at remembering the exact page number for a special ed regulation, and the date that something happened, and Cindie will be able to tell me who is lying, sleeping with the other teacher, doing drugs, or has just sexted someone from their desk, which is 4 rooms away and behind Cindie's back.
And I am the one who is always clueless about why people are doing things.

So after our morning conference, we went to the Indian restaurant- our fallback place that has vegetarian fare when Yatz doesn't have it's spinach mushroom étouffée. And when they do not have it, we view that situation as a personal attack on us.....sigh.

So, we arrived at the restaurant, which is in the village of Broad Ripple, a place on the northside of Indy that is filled with quaint hemp clotting , blue hair and body piercings, and health food stores , and which has a lot of annoying one way streets, people who like to jaywalk and people in SUVS that do not fit the lanes.

Cindie asked me if there was something wrong with how the "No Turn on Red" signs were posted, because people just don't' seem to notice them.

Now,I am the person who drives 25 miles per hour in the school zones, because the sign says "Speed limit" not " suggestion" or " approximation", and I was the one who had to let her in on the deep dark secret.

" Cindie, the signs are visible, they are just ignoring them."

Obviously, the stars must be misaligned, she should be the one explaining this to me....

Story of the Day 11/30/2011

2011-12-18T05:30:00.000-08:00

Aaron called , a few minutes ago.
He has used some of that wonderful Margolis-Greenbaum ingenuity.
Not the kind that Ely used when he totally destroy my food processor because he refused to look at the instructions nor even the picture on the box before assembling it to use it and managed to assemble it in such a way that it broke.
Nor the kind that Aaron's mother uses when she cooks dinner, which is why she doesn't' think to set the timer, even though we all know that she is an airhead and , as a result, dinner is often burnt.
No, the kind that actually accomplishes something.

Aaron has in his possession two mouse traps. He has the Nike shoe box trap that belongs to Rabbi S, the head of the dorm. And he has the sticky trap he bought from wherever it was he bought it.

I have to apologize, now, for the fact that the homemade trap from Rabbi S. is actually NOT made from a Nike shoebox. Aaron told me it was, but he somehow misread the logo or label or print. It is a Reebok shoe box.
You know, the words Reebok and Nike look lot alike.

Okay , okay, I will make him an eye doctor appointment, when he gets home.

Well, Aaron combined the two traps.
He has put the sticky trap inside the Reebox shoe box trap and he has discovered that the mouse, in it's attempts to free itself from the sticky trap, manages to move around enough to actually set off the Reebox trap.
And, it was at this moment that Aaron clarified for me something I had been suspicious of, but unwilling to ask. Rabbi S.'s kind and gentler mouse trap is a catch and release trap.
So, now Aaron has caught a mouse.
He went outside and downstairs to the trash cans and let it loose.
And then, he caught another mouse, and he did the same.

I have now figured out that both Rabbi S and my son are retarded.
Excuse me, that wasn't nice.....intellectually disadvantaged. Apparently it has never occurred to either of them that the mice are enjoying the nice peanut butter snacks and the little wriggling exercise and then wandering back home to make more little mice to inhabit the dorm.

I tried to explain this to my son.
Of course, since he didn't' realize that R-E-E-B-O-K spelled something other than Nike, I am not sure my words made an impact.
I decided it was better to pray that he traps I mailed to him arrive soon. Very soon.

In the moments after I hung up the phone from my son, I emailed my husband and suggested that we mail Aaron a $150 worth of real mouse traps. You know, the kind that work and that kill the mice.
You see, Aaron's mother is not one of those Kinder and Gentler mothers.
Not to mice.

Story of the Day 12/ 08/ 2011

2011-12-16T04:07:00.000-08:00

My son likes to daven with kavanah.
That means he likes to pray with feeling.

That is normally good and fine....even though, being a certified, pure-bred cynic, I find it had not to make wise cracks about it in front of him, or I would, except that I can always do it in a soft voice and he won't hear me.
The advantage, to me, of his being deaf.

Jewish people have a special prayer that is said at the end of a meal that included bread. Saying that prayer is referred to as benching. Yep, like the thing you sit on.
You bench.
It is a long prayer. Not long like three paragraphs, try more like 20 or 25.
If you do it correctly, it takes several minutes. This is a reason that kids who grow up in religious homes often will say, "I don't want any bread" at meal times, so they can get away with a a really short after meal prayer.
Of course, if you are pure-bred not cynical, like my son, you jump at the chance to eat bread so you have the opportunity to recite it.
Well, that and if you are 6' 2" and still a growing boy, you happen to jump at the chance to eat almost anything.....
As for the prayer ?
If you are a non-cynic, like my son, you also recite it slowly, or , at least, not in a hurry.

In fact, if you are " sincere", which Aaron ,is , you " get into it."
So , with fervor, Aaron benches.

At home, this has led to several instance s of my yelling to him from a different room, " Can you be quieter!"
Especially when I have a headache.
And if you want to know what i mean about fervor, you need to understand that I am hard of hearing, so the decibel level , from a couple of rooms away doesn't' usually get my attention......
And that is just one "problem" .
The other one is that he is deaf.
I might have mentioned that previously.
And this prayer is sung. Sung, like you know, to a tune. Or , in Aarons' case, to the approximation of a tune by a deaf kid who is benching with fervor.
I am getting a headache just thinking about it.

Today, Aaron sent me an email about how he spent last Shabbat.:

I ate very well this Shabbos. It was a very fun Shabbaton with lots of dancing and merriment.

All of this led me to ask him, today, via email,how well his benching has gone over at the yeshivah, since they eat and bench in the cafeteria.

He responded:

Remember when you told me not to Bench so loud after eating? Well I bench even louder when I'm here because Kavannah is fun. I haven't gotten any complaints but I'm pretty sure no one likes my singing because the cafeteria clears up really fast when I start benching.

my next email said:

HAHHAAHHAHA !! i love u! maybe the cafeteria crew missed out on the kavanah genes. u cd always ask someone u sit near if it is an issue. do u usually sit next to the same people???-love, fat mama

And Aaron replied:

No the cafeteria workers have to suffer as they listen to me while they clean up as everyone else runs for the exits. I don't usually sit next to the same people...everyone here is a nice Torah scholar. They aren't going to tell me that I have a bad singing voice...

I suggested he make a video of this , for me, or for YouTube. Although,not onShabbat.

Story of the Day 12/ 11/ 2011

2011-12-14T03:57:00.001-08:00

So back to the IRS.
Except that, of course, they never went away.

It turns out, after our wonderful lawyer, Bill, sent my ex-employer a second letter- a letter that said, “Ahem, I wrote to you a month ago and…..” only in much more eloquent and threatening language, that someone still does work for First Steps who is capable of responding.
Even if only inadequately.

First Steps says that they did indeed send a corrected W2. And they have attached a copy- only they have attached a copy with the important payer and payee numbers blacked out. This is the corrected W2 that the IRS says they have not received, and which they will not accept from me in this blackened out Xeroxed state.

I asked the lady on the other end of the phone if they would accept it. This was lady number three, and there was a guy in there, also, from this particular hour-long attempt to speak with someone. The last attempt was much longer, so I consider this to have been a small miracle.
“We do not usually accept forms without the numbers on them, but I will not say that we absolutely would not. It would depend on the other documents.”

The other documents are an email from First Steps, and copies of the two letters our lawyer wrote to them.

First Steps, along with the information on the corrected W2 (actually a 1099-misc) with the identifying numbers blacked out , has informed me that the two checks that they sent to me, only they were most certainly not sent to me, were unsuccessfully deposited.

Gee, that really makes me feel better.
Not.

Story of the Day 12/ 03/ 2011

2011-12-12T05:06:00.001-08:00

The stars are misaligned.

I have been saying that line to various people for over a week, now, although, the start of this episode stretches back before that.
When I say this, about the stars, I get odd looks from most people.
But not from all.
One woman corrected me, "the planets are out of line." Apparently a specific planet.
Regardless, I am blaming the stars and the planets for the series of upsets I am currently living through.

One of these is the IRS.
I explained to a student of mine who is in high school and too young to really understand what I meat, " The IRS induces this feeling of nausea in even honest people. I have done nothing wrong ,and I am sweating thinking about dealing with them. Just ask your parents!"

Last spring, we received a notice from the IRS.
All right, it wasn't really last spring, it was late winter which may be more thematically appropriate.
We were in arrears.
We had somehow managed to not declare a bit over $9,000 of income for medical services.
Initially, we assumed it was just another W2 error.

My husband has worked for the same business for 18 years.
In those 18 years, there have been a few occasions when the business has filed a W2 that was inaccurate. So far, they have always let us know fairly promptly. But one, year, they did not let us know until after we had actually finished filing our tax return, and I had to refile it with the corrected W2.
So, I initially thought this was the problem. But from 2009? That didn't make sense.
Then, after reading the hefty batch of papers the IRS had sent us, I realized that the error was in my not reporting a bit over $9,000 I had earned from my job with First Steps.
First Steps is the agency I subcontracted with
for a few years. But I did not subcontract with them during 209, and received absolutely no money from them, that year.
Medical payment? I worked doing parent education for families with children with disabilities. I did this for children who were too young to attend school- babies. My medical equipment consisted of a lot of toys and doing a developmental evaluation on most of the kids every 3 months.
And I quit the job ( although I loved the families and the babies) because I hated working for the State. The State was absolutely inhumane in the way it treated some of the families, and I would write and call and email to try to help a family and get nowhere because no one in the First Steps’ administration would accept any responsibility.

The straw that broke my back - and caused me to quit was the fact that worker in another county managed to not file a form and a baby was cut from services- no physical therapy, no occupational therapy, no speech therapy, nothing for many ,many months. this was a baby who had been born crack addicted and had all sorts of needs that were only going to worsen without any intervention, but no one would accept responsibility to file that dad-blasted form, and I wasn't authorized to do it.
I spent 7 months driving out to visit with the family every week as an unpaid, unauthorized provider. I did this because I couldn't live with them having no access to help from our agency. I did this knowing I would never be paid, and that my skills were far too limited to provide the level of help they needed, but it was all I could do. Well, that and make regular calls and send letters and emails to people who should have done something to help.
My resignation from the agency was because of that child and how she was mistreated.

So, now I have a statement from the IRS that I have been paid money that I wasn't paid during a year I did not work for the agency.

I waited until a weekday morning, and I called the agency. I explained the situation to the young woman on the other end of the telephone. She checked her records and stated that they had paid me two checks in 2009. One in November and one in December, each for a little more than $4.500. I told her that they had most certainly not paid me ( and , in fact, I had never received a monthly payment for such a high amount from them ) . She insisted that they had. She also insisted that I had been sent a W2 form for that money. Another thing I had not received.

So, I did what I always do in such an odd situation, I emailed our friendly neighborhood lawyer for help.
Not everyone has such a fallback guy, especially not one like ours. He is intelligent and nice. Heck , he is even a dapper dresser. If he were single, we would have to fix him up with relative, but he is happily married.

I also knew to call him because I had called him for help the last time I had to deal with this same agency.
That was a couple of years ago, when they were in arrears in terms of paying me. Several thousands of dollars in arrears that were a result of a huge number of really stupid people who kept saying it was the computer. But since it takes people to run computers and computers only work as well as the people running them.....
After 18 months of stress, Bill was able to get the missing money from their pocket into my pocket.
It only cost him about 200 hours of stress and a lot of antacids, but he did it!
This, of course, was after the more than 12 months and 600 hours of stress and prescription antacids I had suffered in trying to get paid before I contacted him, so you can see that he is incredibly more efficient than I am.

I emailed Bill and explained the problem, and he asked me some intelligent questions and told me to drop off the papers.
Then he wrote a truly brilliant letter and we sat back and waited for First Steps to respond.
And waited.
And waited.
And I think, in the end, he did something like contact the attorney general's office and was assured that the agency would correct the information that the IRS had, because, lo and behold, they had not paid me anything during 2009. So I was not imagining it.
What relief.

Then, 8 months later, in late October, I receive another huge packet in the mail, from the IRS, stating that the interest and fees are now accumulating, that I am still in disregard of their notice to pay them, and , of course, no corrected W2 indformation was sent to them.

So, I again emailed Bill.
Who sent a letter off to First Steps.

And did not get response.

And he sent another letter off, about a month after the first.
In the meanwhile, as the calendar days get ripped from the desk calendar, I start sweating a bit, since I have about a month and a half left to file for a hearing to contest the delinquent taxes and fines on money I was never paid.

There are a couple of punch lines to this.

The first one, which is totally accurate, is that, in synagogue today, I turned around in my seat and told the lady sitting behind me that when I grow up, I want to be Bill.
She gave me a raised eyebrow look ( she actually does that quite well.) And I explained that he is both intelligent and nice. She didn't' fully appreciate the comment because she hasn't read the letters that he sent to First Steps.
If I was the lady at First Steps who was receiving them, I would be peeing my pants.
And he really is nice.
If you have ever watched the movie Harvey, you will be familiar with one of James Stewart's lines, late in the film, "Years ago, my mother used to say to me, she'd say: 'In this world, Elwood,' she always used to call me Elwood. 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh, so smart or oh, so pleasant.' Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you can quote me." - Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart)

But Bill has managed to be both.

The second punch line, is that I actually suspect that I have been victim of identity theft.
In order for a bill to be paid to me by First Steps, they would have to receive an invoice with three numbers for approval. The two numbers would by my provider number and my agency ID number ( neither of which are my social security number) and the number of a service coordinator approving the service. Then, if they made a payment, I should have received the checks, and the W2 form would have been sent at the start of the next year and I should have received that.
I received no checks and no W2 form for that year.
The checks were cashed ( I was told that when I insisted they had paid me nothing that year). And this was during year I did no work for them. If it had been an excess payment during year I worked for the, I would have received the W2 form and immediately contacted them about the error. If I did not work for them, and they sent W2 form, I would know something was wrong. So this implies that someone had access to the numbers, both of mine and that of a device coordinator, and also changed my address, so no W2 form was not mailed here to give away the deception.

Or it could just have been a mistake. But if it was a mistake, why were two checks made out to me, but , obviously, given to someone else, cashed and ....?

And if they, after Bill's initial contacts with them, agreed to correct it but then didn't......

At any rate, I have the guy in the white hat on my side, so I am feeling a bit stressed, but only a bit.

Story of the Day 11/29/2011 #2

2011-12-08T04:00:00.001-08:00

My son emailed me that he had caught another mouse.

I sent my son an email. I asked him :
" I hope the mouse did not escape, this time."

My son responded:

" i let him out on a sidewalk. and yesterday morning I caught a small lizard in my room. i also let him outside. i think i might be living in a zoo."

I let him know that i was not worried about the lizard, and that a mouse infested dorm didn't qualify as a zoo, no matter how many odd and poorly behaved students there were.

Story of the Day 11/28/2011.

2011-12-06T04:08:00.000-08:00

Aaron caught a mouse.

Please note, I did not say that the mouse trap that the rabbi provided him with or the one that he bought caught the mouse, although both were involved.

Aaron was in the room when the dear little rodent became stuck in the sticky trap.
Aaron may be a slow learner, but he already knows that it was going to be just a minute or two before the creepy little rodent, I mean" dear little mouse" unstuck itself, so he threw the trap, with the mouse still attached, into the Nike box trap that belongs to the rabbi who is in charge of the dorm.
Then, he carefully carried the entire thing downstairs and outside and set the mouse free.

When he finished, Aaron walked back upstairs to his room.

I have ascertained from this description that this entire exercise has been arranged by the rabbi., the rabbi of the kinder and gentler mouse trap, to keep the creepy little rodents, I mean the "dear little mice" well fed by the students, and to provide the students with exercise , keeping them jumping up and running downstairs to "free' the mice, instead of spending their time just sitting at their desks studying.

I gently explained to Aaron, in my response to the email in which he told me how he had brilliantly caught and released the rodent, that the rodent was going to immediately make it's way back to it's nest, only that now it was a well-fed rodent and had the energy to make more little rodents.

Sigh.

I hope the package of mouse traps I sent him gets there soon.

photo for Story of the Day 11/23/2011

2011-12-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

the rosemary Xmas tree after removing the Xmas decorations

Story of the Day 11/ 23/ 2011

2011-12-01T04:28:00.000-08:00

I had just finished my shopping at Trader Joe's.
Trader Joe's is the home of many good things, including breakfast cereal and organic chocolate bars.
They also, every year have these very special Xmas trees, and every year, I look at them with longing, but do not buy them because there are Xmas trees .
And I am Jewish.
My longing has nothing to do with a lust for Xmas decorations or for the scent of pine- to which I happen to be allergic.
It has to do with food.
You see, the trees that Trader Joe's carries are rosemary trees. They are rosemary plants that have been trimmed to Christmas tree shape and have been decorated with Xmas wrap and decorations. and I love the taste of Rosemary in different dishes.
And the smell of it!

Every year for the past 4 years, I have looked longingly at the small rosemary Xmas trees, and have not bought one.
So, today, when I was checking out , and I saw them ( they were on the other side of the door where one walks out to one's car- and very visible, because the area is walled by clear glass,) I looked and sighed, and looked again as I walked out the door, and then turned around, with my grocery sack filled with breakfast cereal and chocolate bars and walked back into the store, and started to look over the trees.

A young lady was standing right beside them, and when I took a momentary look up and away from the trees, I realized that it was someone I know, Talia. Talia and her family attend the same synagogue that my family attends, and she is in the same hebrew class as my daughter Sarah , at North Central High School. After discussing some of the things that one can do with rosemary ( apparently , Talia is a cook), I also said hello to her mother, and I explained that I was going to give into temptation and buy ...an Xmas tree.

I explained, rather sheepishly, that I was back in Trader Joe's after having checked out and left, because I had been enticed by the Xmas trees. i mean by the rosemary. I also explained that the huge number of organic chocolate bars that were visible in my grocery bag were for Aaron.
I was sending a box with heavy duty mouse traps, and since it was going to be $9 to send just the traps, I was going to spring for the small flat-rate box and throw in some chocolate. chocolate for Aaron, not for the mouse.Or mice. Or meeces.

"You are sending him mouse traps?"

Apparently, most people do not pay to airmail mouse traps to their children who live overseas.

I explained how the room was overrun with mice, and how the yeshivah had this one old trap that didn't' seem to do a very good job.
Poor Talia, her face scrunched up in a look of disgust and she exclaimed" Oh no, I am planning ongoing there for a semester of college!"
"Wait," I cried, " Hebrew University is not overrun by mice. Aaron is at a very odd yeshivah that has one mouse trap for the whole darned place and the rabbi in charge of the dorms has some sort of strange " kinder and gentler " attitude about the mice, so they have multiplied in a very Biblical sense. I am sure Hebrew University is not at all like that. You can ask..." and I named a girl who recently spent an entire school year there.
The color returned to Talia's face.

I asked what they were doing for the imminent Thanksgiving holiday, and Talia's mother told me that they were headed up to South Bend.

"South Bend, I didn't realize that you were from SouthBend!" I explained. "Aaron's' roommate at the yeshivah in Israel is also from Southbend. Maybe you know the family!"

Okay, I am grasping at straws in the game called "Jewish geography". This is a game that is several generations old, say, about 100 or so, at least. It is played by trying to figure out if someone knows someone that your cousin knows because they were roommates with your cousin's husbands's 4th cousin twice removed, who also is from the same continent.
On the other hand, South Bend is not all that huge (108,000 residents ,give or take a few thousand- this is according to Google) and has less than 4,000 Jews.
I know it has less than 4,000 Jews because Indiana has about 14,000 Jews ( give or take a thousand) and 9,500- 10,000 live in Indianapolis, and there are some scattered in various other pars of the state, like Evansville, where my cousins live, and Richmond, where my other cousins live, and I can't think of the place that my other cousin's kid lives, but you've got the idea. There are simply not enough Jews left in the state for it to have a full 4,000. So, it is possible they know this guy or his family....which is exactly how Jewish geography works.

"His name is Aaron," I said, " and his mother works for a Dr. Birnbam."

Talia's eyes grew wide and she said something like, "Oh Mom, it's got to be him!"
To which her mother, Sharon , said, "Oh no, it isn't."
"But , Mom, who else could it be?"
"But he isn't the same age."
"Well, Aaron's' roommate, Aaron is a bit older, he was at Hebrew University." I replied.
"And the army?" said Sharon.
Bingo.
5 points! I was now ahead by 5 points in the game!

" He is my nephew!" Sharon exclaimed.
Okay, now she was ahead by about 90 points. Or maybe an even hundred.

"Your nephew?"
"Well, my cousin's son, but we are very close and he is like a nephew to me!" No, only 90 points.
Wow. This is such a small world that my knees felt a bit weak. And all of this over buying an Xmas tree at Trader Joe's.

I then shared with them the story of their cousin's son's face to face encounter with one of the mice. And assured them that I was mailing the mouse traps out as soon as possible.

In the meanwhile, they can share the mouse stories with their cousin in SouthBend, and pretend they have some sort of karmic cosmic connection that enabled them to have this inside knowledge.
Which, after all, is what Jewish geography is all about!

Story of the Day 11/ 22/ 2011

2011-11-30T04:18:00.000-08:00

My son is being plagued by mice.
Or his yeshivah is.

I had long suspected that this was not a lone mouse prowling his room.
I was right.
This mouse has friends.

Aaron, having given up on the rabbi's homemade mouse trap, went and bought some sticky traps.

At first, he was not successful.

The mouse or mice or meeeces would come and eat the peanut butter, get somewhat stuck, roll around a bit and escape , leaving behind tufts of mouse hair.
Aaron , after watching one of theses rodents struggle and escape realized he would have to act quickly and grab up the mouse and trap and toss it into a bag.

The next time it happened, he pounced.
Plop went the mouse and the trap into a plastic bag.
Aaron was making his way to the trash cans when the mouse, athletic little rodent that he was, worked his way free from the trap And from the plastic bag that Aaron had not closed very well.
And the mouse ran right all over Aaron, or, at least, over a part of him, and back into the dorm.

His mother, of course, freaked out.

"That fucking thing could have bitten you!!" I screamed at Aaron over the internet.

Hey, he is deaf, it is no less effective than screaming at him when he is in the same room.

Okay, I lied.
If he is in the same room, he can see my face turning red with rage.
Aso, he can see the venom I am spewing as I yell " the fucking rodent!" . So maybe it is spittle and not venom, but you get the idea.
Part of me was also screaming at Aaron who has set himself up to get bitten by that same fucking little rodent.
Hey, you would also label him such if he was threatening your little, six foot two baby!

I told Aaron to have brick handy and bash the fucking little rodent's head in, the next time it gets stuck.

So much for kinder and gentler.

I also emailed my Kinder and Gentler husband- ( who is not as Kind and Gentle as the rabbi of the dorms, because my husband has never concerned himself with how I dispose of the mice that occasionally come into our garage, but who is Kind and Gentle enough that it is my job do dispose of any mice ) that he needs to email the Kinder and Gentler keeper of rodents, i mean the dorm rabbi, and tell him that mice are a real health hazard.

I gave him that job because everyone knows that you don't listen to women because we are soft spoken squeamish,and can't deal l with these things.

I will remember that the next time my husband or one of my sons calls me to deal with a spider, a wasp or a mouse.

Story of the Day 11/ 20/ 2011 #2

2011-11-29T02:01:00.000-08:00

Aaron called.
It was wonderful to hear his voice and to be able to ask him directly if he is getting enough to eat. After all, he is a growing boy.
I wonder if the yeshivah has one of those wall charts so that he can let us know if and when he tops 6'3"?

We were also able to get an update on the mouse.
You might notice that I am speaking as if there was only one mouse. The truth is , I am sure there are more, but there is , still, only the one mouse trap for the yeshivah.

Aaron described the mouse trap.
After having him describe it, I am even more concerned.

No, it does not have a picture of the King of England on it. It is not that old.
At least, not unless they made Nike's back then.
I say this because it is ,apparently,a homemade mouse trap which the rabbi in charge of the dorms fashioned out of a Nike shoe box.

After Aaron had waited his turn in line to get it, he baited it with pistachio halvah.
The mouse, or mice, apparently are great gourmands and this did not entice them.
His next attempt was with some crackers.
The mouse, or mice, also turned their little noses up at the crackers.
Finally, Aaron had to go and buy what we use at home, peanut butter ( which is a luxury item in Israel) , and he baited the trap with that.

It turns out that our local Indiana mice are not nearly as well fed as the yeshivah mice are, and the yeshivah mice turned their noses up at the peanut butter.

After that rejection, and the face to face encounter his roommate, Aaron, had with the mouse, at 3 AM, this morning, Aaron spoke with the rabbi to ask if it would be allowable under Jewish law to buy the sticky traps.

The rabbi hemmed and hawed a little bit, but finally allowed that it would be permissible, since the mice were creating problems.
I wonder if he would have hemmed and hawed as long if the mouse had run up on his face, last night?

At any rate, Aaron is now off to buy sticky traps, and I am awaiting a photo of the Nike mouse trap which Aaron is under orders to email to me.

Story of the Day 11/20/2011

2011-11-28T03:59:00.001-08:00

This is the mouse update.
The current mouse update.
Unfortunately, there will probably be more....
The previous mouse update was that after waiting in a line that stretched down the hall ( figuratively) , it was finally, last week, Aaron's turn to use the yeshivah's mouse trap.

Since they are very economical, and they keep reusing this one mouse trap, and they only have this one mouse trap, which is why Aaron had to wait his turn to use it, I envision it as one of those mighty traps from the 1940's, from when the British were treating "Palestine" as their colony , although, one that even they didn't really want to keep because it had too many Jews in it. Okay, they did want to keep it, which is even odder because not only did they not like them thar Jews, there was no oil.
But back to the mouse trap.
Did I mention that there is one? One as in only one?
Sorry, I am still trying to get over that fact. It may take me a few more years.

So, this one mouse trap which is handed out to kids, in turn...I am trying to visualize it. Maybe this vintage trap even has a lovely little picture of the king on it. The King of England, you know, Elizabeth's dad.

I can imagine this. A nice portrait( maybe a side view) of the king, now with bits of dark brown from the flecks of generations of mouse blood staining it.
And now Aaron finally had his turn with the mouse trap, and he baited it with peanut butter which he had especially purchased for this purpose from the supermarket, and he waited, and he waited, and he waited.

And the mouse didn't bite.

Okay, he did bite. He ate the peanut butter and didn't' set off the trap.
This was after the same picky mouse didn't go for the pistachio halvah or the cheese crackers.
So, he and his roommate decided that it might just take a little longer, they left the trap in place ( with some more peanut butter as bait) and went to sleep.

Until the mouse, feeling ever so frisky, decided to go exploring up and over his roommate's face.

I asked Aaron if his roommate had " shrieked like girl", the thing that Aaron took pride in not doing when he first came face to face (thankfully, in a less literal sense) with the mouse.

"How would I know?" He replied.
Good point. Aaron is deaf and he doesn't' sleep with his hearing aids on.
And this is the kid that can't be woken up by a generic smoke detector.

His roommate was, however, thankful that he had been wearing his hoodie.

I thought about this...why would he care? It is much worse to have a mouse crawl over your face than in your hair and then down the back of your shirt and...oh wait, no it isn't!

At any rate, so much of the kinder and gentler yeshivah students.
Despite the pleadings of the dormitory rabbi to not use those dreaded sticky traps that catch but do not kill, Aaron and his roommate, Aaron, or shodul I call them Aaron 1 and Aaron 2? At any rate, they are headed out to wherever it is to buy some of those mean and nasty sticky traps.

Story of the Day 11/3/2011

2011-11-27T06:13:00.001-08:00

Ely has been working part time position through Americorps . This position is with the Health department and is to encourage people to not smoke.
Today, Ely and orphelia went to a "Workshop for Engaging Elected Officials in Conversations About the Need for Smoking Prevention and Cessation Program Funding Without Lobbying".
Lunch was pulled pork sandwiches. I am not exactly sure how or why you would want to pull pork, but both Ely and I are glad that he packed his lunch.

Unfortunately, the speaker was not only uninspiring, he was boring- very, very boring.

So, Ely decided to take a smoking break and call me.

Story of the Day 11/ 18/ 2011 #2

2011-11-25T06:08:00.001-08:00

After waiting for two weeks, it is finally my son's turn to use the yeshivah's mouse trap.
This is not the kinder and gentler mouse trap, this is an actual "the metal bar snaps down and kills the damned rodent" kind of mouse trap.
Aaron had to wait until the other student was done catching his mouse.
Now, it is Aaron's turn.
He baited it with pistachio halvah.
The mouse wasn't interested.
He baited it with cheese crackers.
The mouse wasn't interested.
He baited it with peanut butter.
He went to the grocery store for this purpose, to buy peanut butter to bait the trap.
This is what I use , at home, except that our mice are picky, so I have to put a couple of chocolate chips from Trader Joe's on the peanut butter.
Of course, I have to go to Trader Joe's and buy the chocolate chips especially for this.
Oddly, we never seem to have any left in the house on the occasion that we get a mouse in the gragae. I wonder why that is?

Despite the fact that they come in a nice sized bag, and it usually takes two chocolate chips to catch the mouse that has decided our garage is warmer or drier than the outside.

I didn't ask Aaron if he used chocolate, I am assuming that the Israeli mice will be happy enough just to get peanut butter either that or the chocolate didn't' last long enough to make it into the trap.

I also was a bit surprised because the last time I was in Israel, you had to look a lot to buy peanut butter, which was a bit of a luxury.
Since Jimmy Carter , indubitably the best known of all the peanut farmers....well, maybe if we exclude his brother ,has fallen more out of favor since then, i am, actually, surprised that the stores still carry any.

Sicne he has been waiting while for his turn to use the trap, I decided to do a little math. There are a few hundred students in the yeshivah. His next door neighbor also has a mouse.
Let us assume that they are actually different mice. It is probably not fair to assume that every room is so blessed as to have its own mouse, though, so let us assume ( and this is a very low guesstimate) there are 40 mice for the entire yeshivah and one trap.
I calculate that this is a losing proposition.
There si no way they can trap even 10 mice, by sharing one trap, without having an ever growing mouse population.

So, what should they do?
They could buy some more traps.
Perhaps, however, that is not economical.

There is a solution that would not tax the yeshivah's resources.
They could get a cat.
Now, I wil assume you ae an American and are reading this.
In America, cats are loved and cared for. They have toys and special cat foods formulated for glossy coats and acid reflux.
they have cat psychologists, to take care of their anxieties and bipolar disorder.
Israeli cats are not like American cats.
This is because in israel, except for the rare , oddball, and there are a few, no one likes cats.
Cats are essentially treated as vermin. They live on the streets and fend for them selves and no one buys them toys or drugs or even cat food.
If one comes up to you when you are sitting at an outdoor cafe, you throw a bottle at it, or kick at it to make it go away.
As a result, the cats are hungry; and like most hungry stalking animals, they are incredibly good hunters and scavengers.
And they are more than happy to eat as many mice as the yeshivah has.
The only problem is that they are, because ether are used to being run off, almost as hard to catch as a rat...whoops, I mean a mouse.
In the meanwhile, however, we shall see how this mouse trap is working out, now that it has been baited with peanut butter.

Story of the day 11/15/2011

2011-11-24T06:12:00.000-08:00

Sarah had a basketball game.
Actually, she had two, Varsity and Junior Varsity.
No, she did not play. She is a team manager and she had to set up and run the video camera and tear down.
My job was to drop her off and pick her up and I would like you to know that I did a very good job of it.
I managed to not get lost and only about 14 drivers passed me or honked because i was driving 41 mph is a 40 mph zone.
For some reason, they think that if I actually pay attention to the speed limit, I am doing something wrong. Since it was rather dark out, and the roads have a lot of potholes, I really don't' get this. But anyway, I picked up Ms. Sraah and we were drove home.

As we came around the curve on our street, and our street is relatively a long one, we saw cars parked along the edge of the street.
Not only is the street rather long, it starts with the 400s and goes until the 800s, but there are no curbs or sidewalks or anything urban like that. This is because it used to be a suburb.

Actually, our neighborhood was the first "open" suburb in Indianapolis. open, for those of you who are too young to remember things like this, meant that they allowed degenerates like Jews and blacks buy homes. You know, people like my family.

In the 1980's, Indianapolis had an identity crisis and decided to annex a bunch of suburbs so that it could pretend it was a lot larger than it really is. It wanted to be a "big" city.
So, they annexed out area, but didn't give us nice things like curbs, sidewalks, sewers or streetlights.
They also don't plow our street in the winter, but that is another story.

The lack of curbs means that people park up a bit on the grass, and the lack of street lights means that out neighborhood association pays for a grand total of one in the middle of our longish street, so that when you are driving home and see some dark shapes, a few cars on the side of the road and a figure standing there, you had to practically be upon them to realize, as we did this evening, that the person standing close to the street and close to the start of our yard, is one of the teenage boys who lives there ( in the house just east of ours), and the two cars before our driveway and the one just past it were police cars. None of which had their lights flashing, and none of which had their occupants out on the lawn with the young man, and none of which, as we found out a moment later, were in our house; but were, apparently busy with the neighbor's home.

Since there was no gunfire and no blood, we will wait patiently to see what the newspaper says about this, tomorrow.

Story of the Day 10/30 2011

2011-11-23T03:55:00.000-08:00

( This is the first of the "Aaron arrives in Israel" stories. They are being posted out of order which means they resemble a lot of my life.... Aaron left Indianapolis on11/29 and arrived in Israel in the late afternoon of 11/30)

Aaron called me at 1:35 PM.
From Israel.

It was a lousy connection. I know that because I had trouble hearing him.
He also had trouble hearing me, but that doesn't prove anything, since he is deaf.

I asked him if he had gotten a cell phone, because his calling me took me by surprise.
He said "No".
He was using the office phone in the yeshiva.
At first, I thought, "How nice, they let him use it to let me know he has arrived safely."

Then I thought, " Nah, they force each of the kids to call home when they get there, because each of those kids has a real-live-bona-fide Jewish mother, and if the kids don't call us, we will start calling the yeshivah every 15 minutes until we are assured the "baby" is safe, sound and being fed."

I was even more certain of it when he told me he was now off to dinner.
I am sure the yeshivah has them call right before a meal so the kid mentions he will be eating, so that we aren't also worrying about that.

Can you imagine if they have 600 Jewish students - which equals 600 Jewish mothers- which equals at least 1,200 hysterical phone calls over just the first 3 days of school.......
And , no, I have no idea how many students they have, I just pulled that out of a hat.

Actually, my son said something like, " I have to go now to go eat dinner and try to make some friends."

Story of the Day 10/29/2011

2011-11-21T19:35:00.000-08:00

I came home , last night, from the wedding, to find that Aaron had made some strategic changes to what had been packed. He had added three more pairs of underwear. And had decided to take the larger backpack, and not the Power Rangers one he had originally selected, and cough drops. No, the cough drops were this morning.

I noticed that he had no shirts in his suitcase
Again? Didn’t’ we do this/ this is worse than de ja vue- this is, “am I fucking losing my mind?’ And I am lying, slightly. There was one shirt packed into the suitcase. One.

“Aaron, where are your white shirts !?” I screamed at him, from 4 feet away.
He is deaf, so I have an excuse for screaming. Not for wringing his neck, but for screaming.

“ They are there.”
I look and he is pointing at a pile on his bed. Nota pile of folded shirts, a pile of …..shirts.

I tell him to fold them and put them in the suitcase.
I grab one and start folding. I put it in the suitcase. I grab another, and see he has folded his shirt, the one he has placed atop the one I folded, and folded isn’t quite the right word. Wadded would be more appropriate a description.
I pick it up and tell him, “I will fold them!” And there was no motherly warmth in my voice.
It was now about midnight, and he would be flying out in….well, after not having gotten enough sleep. And the fucking suitcase had been packed….with all the shirts neatly folded, very, very, very recently.

And I look at his small black carryon. The one he will be checking.
He has not just switched which backpack to put into it, he has added some books.
I try to zip the suitcase. It won’t zip.

It has to zip. He is using this carryon as a carryon until he gets to JFK, then he will put his siddurim ( prayer books) his teffilin, and a pair of socks and underwear into the backpack and use that as a carry on for El AL.

I rearrange everything.
It still wont’ zip.
I rearrange everything a 3rd and a 4th time, but it won’t zip.

I take out two of the books.
I rearrange again.
Closer, but while I am rearranging, I feel something sharp in the backpack. I open up the top, zipped compartment. I find a package of hearing aid batteries, and a nail scissors.

I open up the next compartment, and an overpowering odor of pot, maryjane, marijuana, that shit hits me.

“Aaron, do you want to have your ass hauled off the plane and your body cavities searched? I am sure it will make very good stand up material- AFTER you recover!”
I toss the aromatic backpack into a corner of the room and grab the Power Rangers backpack and put it into the carryon.

I have him stand on the bathroom scale. Then he lifts up the larger suitcase. It s under 50 lbs. barely.
I have him lift up the carryon, it is 27 lbs.
Success!

We go to sleep.
This morning, well, the same morning, but at a slightly less un-godly hour, we shoved him and his suitcases into the car.

After driving for about 35 minutes, parking the car in the overpriced garage and struggling with the self-check in kiosk which refused to acknowledge that Aaron was still breathing, or , at least, that he had a right to the ticket that cost us over a grand, we managed to wave good-bye him, and feel somewhat certain that he might actually make it to Jerusalem, intact and un-molested by security.

Story of the Day 10/ 24/ 2011 #2

2011-11-21T03:15:00.000-08:00

Last week, my friend had a conference. It wasn't her conference, it was for her son.
For one of her sons. She has a collection of them.

The conference came at the end of a long hard week and she was getting her bunch of boys ready to get out the door.
They all had socks, and breakfast and a reminder to brush their teeth.
Backpacks? Jackets?

Then her middle son came up to her at the kitchen table where she was getting together her papers and purse and other detritus and asked for his morning medication. His ADHD pill.

She looked at the table.
And looked again.

Her other son's pill was there, and hers. Only she had taken hers.
only she hadn't .
She had taken his.

She quickly got another pill out for him.

The morning passed quickly.
She was very energetic. Hyper, even. And felt happy.

She told me that she might just mix the pills up again, if she is having bad day.

Story of the Day 11/8/2011

2011-11-20T07:14:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, there was a substitute teacher for Sarah's two-period afternoon class.

Something was little " off", but it was hard to determine what it was.
Sarah's interpreter had some difficulty communicating with the substitute, but the interaction was very minimal, because Sarah's group was working on a project.
Today, The regularly scheduled teacher was back.
He pulled the interpreter aside and asked her an odd question. He wanted to know if the sub had slept during the afternoon class.
The interpreter was, understandably, surprised.

The teacher has two classes during the morning and , yesterday, the same sub covered both of those for him .
The students in the morning classes had reported to him that this sub put her head down on the desk and spent the class time sleeping.
He wanted to check with Sarah's interpreter, because, unlike his other classes where there are no other adults in the classroom, the interpreter is an adult, and a credible witness.

Sadly, she had nothing that she could tell him.She told him that , in all honesty, she wasn't sure because Sarah's group spent most of the time working in a different room on a video they are making.

His students in his morning classes must have realized that he didn't' think they were entirely credible, however, and , while they may not be, they were certainly creative.
Independently, students in each class decided to document the sub's naps by taking photos of her.

I am sure the photos are now available onYoutube, in case she wants to add them to her resume.

Story of the Day 11/7/2011

2011-11-18T04:18:00.000-08:00

My son has mice.
Or, at least , a mouse.
He discovered a mouse in his dorm room at the yeshivah, and , he assured me that while he was scared, he managed to not " scream like a girl."

Since I am a girl and the person in our family who is responsible for trapping and disposing of spiders, mice and other fun things, since none of the mass seem to be up to it, I gave him an look that would have caused most poisonous flora to wither. Of course, since the look was being sent over the telephone, he missed the point of it.

His roommate, the other Aaron from Indiana, who happens to have averted interest in this mouse, since the room it likes is also his bedroom, took my Aaron to the supermarket.
They searched and they searched but were unable to find a mouse trap.

Aaron then went to the man in charge of the dorm and explained the unwanted guest issue.
The rabbi told him that he would get him a mouse trap that would trap the mouse alive and not kill it.

Ever since my son told me about this I have been trying to envision this trap and exactly what the rabbi meant.
Perhaps this is a kinder and gentler yeshivah and they do not want to kill or maim small creatures and they catch their mice and then take them outside and release them.
I am having hard time believing that this is possible, because this kinder and gentler yeshivah happens to serve meat every single night for dinner.

So, I thought what else would they do with this live rodent.....they could release it right outside the back door of their closest rival yeshivah......but that doesn't' seem very " kosher".
They could use the captured rodents for the science experiments and see if they run the mazes faster for Chinese food or for pizza.
If they are Jewish mice it will be Chinese food. Unless the pizza has chocolate on it.
But since they have neither science nor psychology classes, that seems unlikely.

Fortunately, I am not at all concerned that they are planning to cook them up for diner, no matter how expensive meat is in Israel, because rodents are not kosher.

I can see that this might became an interesting topic of conversation about the cultural differences in how mice are treated by Americans and Israelis.

Of course, the there possibility that the rabbi did not explain himself very well and the trap is one of those sticky things, where the mouse is trapped , but still alive, and then the lucky winner of the "I have trapped a mouse " prize gets to either bash its little head in with a brick, or toss the live trapped mouse into the trash can, where it will either starve or suffocate....or if the trash is compacted......

Meanwhile, a very small box can be sent to Israel for only $13.95. I wonder how many mouse traps I can fit into one of them?

Story of the Day 11/5/2011

2011-11-16T04:11:00.000-08:00

My friend Susan has three boys . Her life is simplified, at least for the moment, because they are all the same size.

Part of this is due to the fact that two of them are twins.

Susan, a few weeks ago, was sorting laundry and realized that if anyone of them was in a car accident, she would die of shame because their underwear was raggedy. So Susan went out to the store and bought two new packages of 6 pairs of underwear in the correct size, came home, threw out all the old raggedy pairs, and put the nice new underwear in her sons' bureaus.

That was over two weeks ago.

Now in case you are not Jewish or in case you are Jewish and live in a very dark forest and have lost your calendar and all contact with the outside world, two weeks ago was a three day Jewish holiday, that means 3 days of not doing laundry which usually actually translates into 4 days of not doing laundry due to the long list of other things that you have to do to get ready for the holiday.

So, when the holiday was over, Susan was faced with folding and sorting the 4 days worth of laundry that her husband had done; and when she was done sorting and folding, and folding and sorting, she called all three of her sons downstairs and lined them up and showed them an interesting fact.

“You see I have all of these socks ( and she pointed to a large pile) and all of these pants( and she pointed to a similarly large pile) but I only seem to have one pair of underwear. “ Which did not seem to make a very large pile. ” Can you explain this to me.?”

Daniel ,her youngest was the first to answer. This may indicate that he is the brightest, or it may indicate that he is more practiced at defending himself, at any rate he replied, “I have changed my underwear!’

“ Once?” responded his mother with a voice that indicated ......well, that the answer was somehow lacking.

The Bubba , with a voice that declared sudden realization of an amazing fact, “You’ve been hoarding our socks!!"

There was a moment of silence. The silence was due to Susan being stunned by this analysis and by Avi , who was still thinking .

Avi then said, “Yes, Mom, why have you been hoarding our socks?”

Story of the day 11/4/2011 #3

2011-11-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

Aaron is in Israel.

It has been somewhat of shock to him.
We sent him off with the requisite amount of underwear, all of it clean, and 5 months worth of hearing batteries and his special vibrating alarm clock.

Israels' electrical system operates on a different voltage than ours, so I also sent him with a plug adaptor and a strip with 4 outlets, so he could plug in his various devices.
The first evening, Aaron looked at what I had given him and gave up. He later, wen he called me, told me that i had sent him with the wrong thing,because the black strip doesn't plug into the wall.
I said, " the black strip plugs into the white adaptor. The white things is the adaptor, the black strip just gives you more outlets."

That evening, and I heard about this in his next phone call home, Aaron plugged in the white adaptor. then he plugged his alarm clock into it.
And the lights went out.
His roommate, who incidentally, is named Aaron and is also from Indiana, went down the hall and switched the circuit breaker and came back.

Aaron again tried plugging in his alarm clock.
This time the lights did not go out.
But the alarm clock did not go on.
I asked him if the other Aaron from Indiana was nice. he said, "Yes, he is very nice, and he is also nice enough to wake me up , every morning, since I do not have a (working) alarm clock."

At dinner, on Thursday, or lunch on Friday or whatever meal it was, this time change is making it a little tough on me, a young man came up to aaron and asked him if he was ready to go.
"Go where?'

"You know, the program we talked about."
"We didn't' talk about any program."

"You are Aaron, aren't you?" The young man asks as he stares at my son's ears...I mean hearing aids.
Which, of course , Aaron was.
I mean he was Aaron, he wasn't a pair of hearing aids, although, he was wearing them.
Aaron was also wearing hearing aids, which the other Aaron , who was going somewhere, wears.
And this student had only spoken with the other Aaron on the phone or by text, and thought he had found him, because, after all, how many students in the yeshivah would be wearing hearing aids. and, of course, he was named Aaron......
So , now, Aaron is on the look out for another kid with hearing aids, named Aaron, so he can ask him what he is doing for an alarm clock and if he is also from Indiana.

Story of the Day 11/ 4/ 2011 #2

2011-11-13T06:34:00.000-08:00

Sarah was standing in the hallway with Erin.
Sarah is the only Deaf student in the school, but a few of her friends can sign to some degree.

Erin asked Sarah, "I thought that in Deaf culture, it is rude to stare at people when they are signing."
"It is", said Sarah.
"Wow, it sucks that everybody still stare at you."
Sarah replied, "Nah, it is ok because I'm the holy one."

In ASL this is a pun- it ( holy) is the same as signing "unique".

Story of the day 11/4/2011 #1

2011-11-13T06:22:00.001-08:00

Sarah arrived home from school, early. Earlier than I expected.
She told me, "I got a ride from Lisa."
Sarah paused, "From Lisa and Erin. Lisa was driving."
They are sisters, and they share a car, so I was glad to know that Lisa had not forgotten and left Erin at school.
"We were on Springmill, and Lisa asked me the name of the street to turn on. I told her, it is a very short street, I don't think it has a name."
It did, it does, they found it, and I do not think that Sarah will ever forget the name of the street.

Story of the Day 11/ 2/2011 #2

2011-11-11T04:24:00.000-08:00

Sarah has a friend who visits her in her study hall, in the Learning Center.
Dana, the same friend from yesterday's Story of the Day.

Sarah, now that it was 10th period and her classes were done for the day, was feeling rather light-hearted.
She put her hands out in front of her and flexed the fingers.

Dana asked, "What are you doing?"
"I am playing air -piano," Sarah replied, and then she very dramatically tossed her thick curls and went into a very spirited rendition of someone really pounding those ivories.
"You are very WEIRD!"exclaimed Dane.
A moment later, she added, "It is just like the movie- The Adams family!'

Sarah had to think a minute. "Oh, the hand that plays the piano! Yeah!"
"That is a really weird family!" said Dana.
"No, they are not weird. They are normal." came Sarah's reply.
"Oh yes they are very weird!" insisted Dana.
"They are just like my family!" Sarah proudly proclaimed.

Dana drew back and her face took on a somewhat horrified countenance, "I don't ever want to meet your family."

I hate to tell Dana, but I think we are probably a lot weirder than the Addams family, except that we don't have a hand that plays the piano. Although, we do have a deaf kid who does. As long as it is an air-piano.

Story of the Day 11/ 2 / 2011

2011-11-10T03:59:00.001-08:00

Dinner was an array of somewhat healthy vegetarian fare.

Somewhat healthy because the bacon on the back lettuce and tomato sandwiches was Morningstar soy bacon, but it still had it's share of fat, as did the mayonnaise, as did the dressing on the sale, which had it in the form of an entire avocado mashed up and mixed in with the garlic and lemon juice to make the dressing.
A lot of fat, but preferring to believe that it's as mostly heart-healthy fat, and therefore somehow virtuous, I decided that a small after dinner treat would not be undeserved.

My husband and my daughter, Sarah, were also finishing up the food on their plates, and I signed, "I hear something, I hear something calling my name. It is the chocolate. It is calling 'Cassia, Cassia, come get me."

My husband smiled.
He signed, "Funny, I am hearing something also, but I think it is the chocolate cake calling to me."

"Funny, I don't hear anything," signed Sarah, who is deaf.

Story of the Day 11/1/2011

2011-11-09T04:11:00.000-08:00

Sarah and Dana were speaking in the Learning Center. The Learning center is a "serious" version of study hall. It is Sarah's 10th period non-class, and Dana, who is eager to learn more ASL, comes to it from the Library and practices signing with Sarah, every day.

Dana and Sarah were signing away and Dana was laughing. Loudly.
Apparently Dana has a loud laugh.

One of the Learning Center staff came over and made it clear to the interpreter that the laughing had to stop because this was the Learning Center and the girls were obviously not working.

The interpreter told her that the girls were, indeed, working. Sarah was teaching Dana ASL.
The woman said, "That is not true, I can see that they are having fun!"
"Well," countered the interpreter, "they are having fun!"
The woman stalked off.

Dana wondered why the woman addressed all of this to the interpreter.
"Because she thinks you are Deaf." Sarah replied.
"Why would she think that?"
"Well, people always think my mom is deaf when we are signing to one another in the store, and then, if they need to say something to her they start waving their arms around. And when my mom starts talking to them and asks them what they are trying to say, they stand there and look stunned."
"They do?"

Not only do they do that, but as I told Sarah, when she related this story to me, years ago, when Aaron was 5 and 6 and 7, he loved to talk. This was the very same deaf boy that the Deaf School refused to provide speech therapy for because, according to them, he was too deaf to benefit from it and learn spoken English and I had to accept that.
The problem is that Aaron didn't accept it. He loved to talk. Using Spoken English.
The problem was that he is deaf and at that age his speech reading skills and his auditory skills with his hearing aids were not quite good enough to let him follow a conversation in Spoken English. At least not an intelligent one.
What we usually ended up doing is that I would sign to him and he would speak, in English, to me.
This caused lot of confusion. not for us, but for other people.

Numerous times, we would be at a store or the library and someone would come over and say to Aaron, "Can you tell your mother...." or " Can you ask your mother..."
When he was the one who couldn't hear.

Story of the Day 10/27/2011

2011-11-08T03:50:00.000-08:00

Sarah's English class is Film - American Films and Literature. They have a textbook that could choke a pony. Not a horse, that would be her pre-calculus textbook. But this one is not lightweight and the teacher requires them to take copius notes.
Sarah has spent the afternoon taking notes on a section called "Tone".
There is implicit and explicit tone.
There are a lot of politics involved.
Things can be "campy" or presented from two different viewpoints.
Sometimes, the musical score helps you to decipher what the tone is.

For example, according to the textbook, "Music is a common way to establish a movie's tone. A music track consisting of rock 'roll will be very different in tone from a picture that's accompanied by Mozart or Ray Charles...."
Additionally, "voice-overs can be ironic". Or a narrator's voice can convey tone, like the "thug" narrating A Clockwork Orange.

I can tell that this might be a rather hard chapter for Sarah, or, at least the application of it.
What if the teacher wants them to determine the tone of a movie taking this into account?

Acording to the book, in Blue Velvet, a scene in which the character is presented visually as angelic, talking about ideal things and her hair lit as to create a halo effect, we are to understand the fact that her naiveté is being mocked because of the background organ music.

I mentioned the obstacles of understanding this to Sarah.
She replied that she knows the difference between Mozart and Rock 'n Roll.

"You do? What is the difference?"
"One is louder than the other."

Story of the Day 10/25/2011

2011-11-07T03:49:00.000-08:00

Today was very educational.
For Sarah.

Her interpreter is away, and the school had arranged for a substitute interpreter.
That interpreter contacted the school, on Monday and let them know that she could not come.
So the school got a sub interpreter for the sub interpreter.
This morning, early this morning, very early this morning, that interpreter called the resource teacher and explained that he could not make it.
So, Sarah arrived at school today and found out there was no interpreter.
Sarah's first class is pre-calculus. Like most math classes, most of the important things are taught by being demonstrated step by step on the board.
For this class, her resource teacher who has some basic signing skills , but is not smiled enough to interpret a lecture, was able to "terp it". After the first period was done, Sarah spent the rest of the morning in the resource room.
Then Sarah went to lunch.

After lunch Sarah has Animation and Film production. It is a two period class ( lasts for almost 2 full hours) and they are in the middle of doing group projects.
Well, that is not exactly right, Everyone else is in the middle of doing a group project. Sarah is in the middle of doing two group projects, and trying not to let anyone know it.

At any rate, the resource teacher came along and sort of termed what she could for both of the groups.

Oh, gee, gosh, I forgot to ask Sarah if she explained to the resource teacher about how she managed to be in two different groups. And how she is keeping everyone, at least for the moment, from finding out about it.

The one group is going well.

The other group is not.
It is not going at all.
It as stalled out because of the reason that Sarah left it. Unsuccessfully.

And today, the resource teacher got to experience all of the charm, first hand.
Today, the Jeffrey-Dahmer-Wanna-Be was being...himself.
He kept trying to take over the group and have it do some rather nasty deeply horrifying project.
And Josh, one of the other boys in the group, was managing very icily to keep telling him, "No."
Of course, all the back and forth created no forward motion, but I am, from what Sarah described to me, very impressed by how Josh handled himself. "No" repeatedly at intervals, firmly and appropriately.
At this age, I would probably have shrunk back into the furniture and winced a. A lot.

Then the JDWB elected to get...aggressive. And obnoxious. And kept burping right into Josh's face.
While Josh kept telling him not to.
And, then, Mr. JDWB started relating all about another one of his idols. Jack the Ripper. And admiring the fact that he had managed to slaughter a large number of people.

Since this was the only class that Sarah attended in its entirety, today, (other than her first period class), and since it was a full two periods, this made up the bulk of what she learned, today.
As I said, it was very educational.
Your tax dollars at work.

I suspect it was rather educational for her resource teacher, as well.

Story of the Day 10/24/2011

2011-11-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

Today's story started a week ago.

A week ago, on Wednesday, Sarah's Animation and Film teacher tod the students to divide up into groups to do project. They were to make a 1 minute trailer for a film.
Sarah got into group with two guys and they started brainstorming.
On Thursday, the JDwannaBe came to class, he had been absent, Wednesday,and he eagerly joined the group sarah was in.
At the next free moment, Sarah sidled up to the teacher and asked if she could change groups.
This was not work on a trailer for a cartoon or a comedy or a romance, this was work on a trailer for a horror film, with the guy who wants to grow up and become the next Jeffrey Dahmer.

The teacher asked her why she wanted to switch groups. She explain that this guy had just joined the one she was in. The teacher winced and gave her his approval.

So, on Wednesday she worked with the new group.
On Wednesday, last week, which was her last day at school that week, due to her being absent for Jewish holidays on Thursday and Friday, she was working with group number two, and one of the kids from group number one came up and asked if she was going to help them with the editing. That group was diving up the work. Sarah figured that she was faster and better at editing than the other kids in the group and that it would not involve interacting with JDWB, so she said, "Okay."
So, now she was working in both groups.
Today, she went back to school and, as it turned out, the first grow didn't manage to get anything videotaped, last week, on Thursday or Friday, so one of the normal guys asked sarah if she would do a couple of things in front of the camera. Apparently, they hadn't figured out that she was actually working with the other group she was sitting with.
Sarah realized they really needed the help and went and worked with them. Then she came back and worked with the second group. Also on camera.

I have always wanted to have twins. Well, not twin Elys....I would have pulled all of my hair out and wasted away from lack of sleep, but twins of any of the others. And now I have them, sort of. Sarah has decided to be two people. Sarah of group one and Sarah of group two.
But, now she will actually be on the trailers for both groups.

She is worried that when the class views them, the kids in group one will see her in the trailer for group two and the kids from group two will see her in the trailer for group one, and she will get in trouble.
And the teacher will not like it,
and.....
although, no one can say she is lazy.

Story of the Day 10/20/2011

2011-11-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

My friend Susan has quite a collection of kids.
Four of them, but, at times, it feels like many more. Especially when they are picking on one another. Or picking on her.
Apparently, one of their favorite things to annoy one another and to annoy their mother is to poke.
Index finger, poking and poking and poking.
Susan, after being the object of this attention by her daughter said, “When you are a parent and your child does this to you, I want you to call me.”
Sarah he daughter, looked right at her and said, “My child wont’ do that.”
“And why not?”
“Because I will slap him.”

Susan, a couple of decades older and wiser said, “we’ll see.”

Then, one of her son’s started doing it.

“Just wait until your child does that to you!” Susan said to him.
“ I am not having any children. I am going to be one of those bachelor guys who lives down the street,” replied Avi.

And after a pause, he added, “ I am going to have cats.”
”Cats? How many cats?
”28”
“Then you are going to be the crazy bachelor guy who lives down the street.”

Susan told me this story while we were praying. I mean during services, I mean while we were supposed to be praying, or maybe listening to the Torah being read or something like that.
If you haven’t figured it out, I have been a bad influence on Susan.
Susan was not the sort of kid who got into a lot of trouble when she was in school for doing things like reading a novel during math class, or forgetting the teacher was lecturing and standing on her desk and trying to see if her finger would fit into the space of the ice cube tray florescence light cover.
She was the sort of kid who probably got straight A’s and nice comments on her reports cards like “ a pleasure to have in class”.
She even looks innocent.
Of course, that was before she had me as her friend and found out that ADD is contagious.
Hopefully, she at least thinks this is more fun.

So, she told me this during services, and then after services, I had to share the 23 cat story.
I would have shared it during services, but it was really my husband’s story, so , I told him to tell it, after services when we were eating lunch.
Most synagogues have Kiddush- a light snack- after morning services on Saturday.
Our synagogue happens to have its priorities straight.
We have lunch.

Many years ago, when I had quite a lot less grey hair and my husband was clean-shaven, we lived in Zanesville, Ohio
No, this is not a joke.
We lived there and he had, in his practice, a patient who had 23 cats.
This same patient was also very hard of hearing.
My husband would yell things at him like” How have you been doing?”
And he would yell back, “ What did you say, Doc?”

My husband related this to me, as an amusing anecdote of his work experiences, and then, one day, I found out who the patient was.
You see, my husband told me those two things, but never shared the name of the patient, or what his health needs were, or even how old he was or his race. Gosh, he didn’t even tell me if he was a Republican or Democrat, but since it was Zanesville and our re-elect John Glenn sign kept disappearing from our yard and had to be replaced on an almost daily basis, I figured he probably was a Republican.
I wasn’t basing this on the high mortality rate of our yard signs, based on the fact that the only other John Glenn signs in the city were the one across the street from us, and the one in front of a house one block from us.
We Democrats were a very endangered species, in that neck of the woods.

There was actually a second part to this story.
Yeah, the story I seem to have wandered away from.
The 23 cat part.
This guy was ill , one time, and Larry’s nurse was a very sweet and kind, and Midwestern, and she went and got his prescriptions filled and then stopped at his house to drop them off.
Apparently, she had to knock and ring and knock and ring, because his hearing, I mean his not hearing, extended to knocking and to doorbells.
Eventually, he realized someone was at the door and opened it.
And the blast of “ cat” hit her, when he opened to door, and she almost passed out.

At any rate, his identity was uncovered, one day, when we went to one of the two grocery stores on the north side of Zanesville.
Zanesville is laid out as a very tall and narrow rectangle, so if you live on the north side, that means, as far as you were concerned, back then, that there were only two grocery stores, well, and a meat market.
Since we were vegetarians, at that time, we’ll call it an even two grocery stores.
I assume there was a place to buy groceries on the Southside of town, but since I only ever went down there when I had gotten lost….
So, there we were at the grocery store, and this guy noticed my husband and made his way over to us, and to the shopping cart my husband was pushing. My husband said, “Hello” and pointed to our extremely hyperactive 2 year old seated in the shopping cart he was pushing and introduced our daughter.
By shouting.
The man then shouted back, “What did you say, Doc?”

But that is not the important part of the story; the important part was what it means to be the old bachelor guy with 28, not just 23 cats.
Not just the crazy bachelor guy down the street,
But the crazy, smelly bachelor guy down the street.

Story of the Day 10/16/2011 #2

2011-10-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

Sarah and I made a trip to the grocery store.

We had to.

Despite the fact that the refrigerator and freezer are stuffed to the gills with food- potato kugel, Greek onion and cheese pies, tiramisu, carrot soufflé- there is nothing to eat.

For lunch.

Tomorrow.

At school.

In other words, we were out of bread to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

So we bought bread, and three apples.

We had apples, but they weren’t perfectly fresh, so Sarah picked some out to take with her for her lunch, and we were standing in the checkout line.

Sarah signed, “ I know the cashier”, and “ I know the cashier in the next line, also.”

This is a hazard now that Sarah attends a large public school in our area. We run into people that she has seen at school.

Back when Sarah attended the Deaf School, a school whose high school had about 100 students drawn from all over the state, the incidence of running into someone she knew from school at the local grocery store was almost zilch. It happened, once a year. Now it happens every single time we go.

When she first transferred, and she first started seeing people she recognized, our forays to the store became stealth mode operations. We would have to keep our heads down as we browsed the aisles for mayonnaise, and pick the checkout line closest to the exit, and try to avoid being seen.

I can’t blame Sarah. She has inherited socially awkward genes from both sides of the family.

Fortunately, now that she has been at the public school for over a year and a half, she can tolerate being seen and noticed.

And, , for the most part, she is safe, because she s Deaf and they can’t actually do anything as mundane as talk to her.

At least not and expect a response.

And since I sign when I am with her ( uh, if you haven’t figured this out, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for me to talk, since she couldn’t hear me) , these school contacts usually assume that I am also deaf, so they don’t speak to me, either.

So, I am sheltered by her .

And, while we were standing in line, I told her how much I appreciated it.

You see, there is something about this chubby, middle-aged, sloppily attired woman that attracts a certain type of guy, every time I go grocery shopping.

No, they are not trying to pick me up.

Apparently, I look motherly, or at least not dangerous, and all of these guys who are recently widowed or divorced and thrust into the “ I have to cook dinner” mode come up to me and ask me all sorts of rather detailed questions.

Like, “ This is salmon. I’ve had salmon before and I like it. My wife used to cook it. How do I cook it?”

Of course, there are many ways to cook salmon, so I have to ask how they had it, before.
This usually elicits a response along the lines of, “Um, it was cooked.”

Which is good, but not especially helpful. So I usually give a general description of oven temperature and time and what to do to keep it moist, and then offer one or two tips on seasoning it.

And then there is the inevitable second question, which is usually, “ Can I cook a potato in the pan with it?”

With it?

“ No, and the potato takes longer, microwave it and just heat it up to be warm when your salmon is ready.”

At least I am a little helpful with this kind of a question, but the “ how do I make a pork chop?” is a bit beyond my kosher cooking skills.

At any rate, when I go grocery shopping with Sarah, I suddenly become, by association, “deaf”, and therefore no one comes up and asks me anything. This could be because they don’t’ know any sign language, but it could also be, as Sarah and I have noticed, that most people think Deaf people bite.

Well, at least we figure that is why they walk very wide around us, and hesitate to get into the checkout lien behind us, even if the other line is quite a bit longer.

The really sad thing about this, not the aversion to those “ Deafies” who bite, but the steady stream of recipe-deprived guys ( and it really does happen often), and which is somehow obscured by something about my appearance,

is that I can’t cook for shit.

Story of the Day 10/16/2011 #3

2011-10-28T05:05:00.000-07:00

Sarah was complaining to me that she would not be able to set up the closed captiosn to watch the DVD she needs to watch for class.
She has to do a “film review” as a project for her English class, so her kind and wonderful mother went to Blockbuster and rented a copy of the DVD for her.
Captioned.

I know it is captioned. I called Blockbuster and made the man working there go over and get it from the shelf and read the back panel and he said it was captioned.
And the DVD box says it is captioned.
I neurotically checked to make doubly sure before checking it out.

Of course, it could be like Up. Up is captioned. In French and Spanish.
Apparently, the company that makes it doesn’t like Deaf people who read English.

Since, after opening it, you can only exchange it for another copy of the same DVD, it happened to be a very expensive joke on Deaf people by that company.

Oddly, we didn’t think it was funny.

So, remembering this episode in the annals of “accessibility” and ”captioning”, I asked Sarah if there was something wrong with the captioning.

“No,” she replied, “it is the remote. It is lost.”
”Well, look for it!” came the not-very-amused reply from her kind and wonderful mother.
“I did. I have been looking for it and looking for it. It has been lost for 8 months.”

Her kind and wonderful mother did a motherly-type thing and stuck her hand into the crack between the sofa seat cushion and the sides and backs of the sofa.
“Is this it?”

I cannot describe the look on Sarah’s face as she took it from me.
Did I forget to mention that her kind and wonderful mother is also brilliant?

She asked. “Where do you find it?”

”In a place that tells me my kids did not do a very good job when they were supposed tpo be cleaning this room for Passover.”

Story of the Day 10/17/2011

2011-10-26T17:55:00.000-07:00

Last night, before going to bed, my husband told me that Cindie was right.
Cindie is a friend of mine who several years ago described me as “ your husband’s one act of rebellion.”

I probably should explain that when people know one of us and then meet the other, the typical response is, “That is your husband/wife?” with a voice filled with..disbelief.
In fact, sometimes a person actually knows both of us, but doesn’t’ realize that we are a couple . This isn’t all that odd. After all, when we married I allowed Larry to retain his maiden name, so the fact that he has kept his last name, despite being marred to me, means that there is no reason anyone would assume he is my husband.
At any rate it is even more fascinating, sometimes, to see the reactions of people who have know each of us, individually, and ten finds out that we are married. Happily, even.

Many years ago, when we were dating. Dating as in not even engaged. We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in New York, and as part of the experience, there was the requisite fortune cookie. Larry opened up his cookie, read the fortune and then tucked it into his wallet, where it stayed for many years. It said “ your mate will be your balance wheel.”

Of course, I am several inches shorter than he is, but I do weigh about the same, so that could be what it meant.
Of course, it could also mean that he would have characteristics that I don’t’ have and vice versa.
For example, he has a memory.
He is organized.
He has will power.
He reads directions.
He knows his right hand from his left.

Please note that you can say all of the above about me as well, but only if you insert the words “ does not” into each sentence.

There is more.

Larry knows where his keys are.
He knows what today’s date is.
He knows what the year is.
He probably remembers where we put the children.

Hey, they get up and move!

He doesn’t walk into doorways.
He wears matching socks.
He remembers to brush his hair in the morning.
He does not use crude and rude language.
He has social skills.
He does not leave piles of papers, clean clothes, unopened mail, books, hairbrushes and shoes all over and then have no idea where anything has gotten to.
He knows how to use silverware.

Now, we can start a list of what I bring to the marriage.

I can wash dishes.
Of course, we have a dishwasher.
I can clean toilets.
Of course we have Aaron.
I can cook.
Not well.
But I can if it came precooked and frozen, or in a can. Although, I do sometimes burn things.
Maybe every other day.
Or a little more often than that.

I suppose this looks a might uneven.
But, I have one great and wonderful advantage.
I got him out of New York.

Of course, at the time, he didn’t think it was an advantage.

When we got married, we had a hard time.
The hard time was caused by his parents.
Actually, they were giving him a hard time.
They didn’t give me a hard time because they didn’t talk to me.

It started a few days after we got married.

We were married on a Thursday.
The 4th of July.
That is also a story, but I will save it for another day.

On Sunday, Larry called his parents.

He used to do this on a pretty much daily basis, but he had seen them on Thursday. At the wedding.
And Friday, I think we were busy. And Saturday was Shabbat , so no phone calls. So he called them on Sunday.

Their first question for him was “ Have you come to your senses, yet?” They wanted to know if he was ready for an annulment.

They eventually got used to the fact that we were married.

Not that year, though.

After the 4th of July, the next big holiday was Rosh Hashanah.

They invited him.

They also invited him for Thanksgiving.
Not me.

They didn’t invite him for Passover, but that was because they don’t keep kosher so they knew he couldn’t come.

As time went by, things not only didn’t improve, they went south. So far south they became arctic.

As a result, we moved.
To Cincinnati.
Cincinnati had a conveniently located ( far from New York) fellowship program.

So… Larry ended up outside of New York.

It was quite an adjustment.
Three months after leaving the Big Apple, we were driving home from the grocery store in our small car and Larry turns to me and says, “I could never go back to living in New York.”

And his comment had nothing to do with his parents, either.
I think it had something to do with people being polite, drivers that actively were trying to avoid hitting pedestrians, and maybe, just maybe, the fact that not all of the stairwells at work smelled like urine.
It was also rather nice not being awoken to the sounds of teenagers torching cars on the street below our apartment, but maybe that was just me enjoying that little detail.

Years early, his sister had predicted this, even though I am not sure she understood what she was predicting.
She had told him that he wasn’t made for New York, that he just didn’t move quickly or aggressively enough and he was some sort of closet Midwesterner.

Now, I am not crazy enough to think that we have managed to stay married for over 26 years based on the fact that I got him out of New York.
Yes, he owes me something for that, but, at this point, he would be perfectly capable of finding a different abode, outside of New York, sans annoying wife.

We have managed to stay married because of the children.

You see, for years, ever since Ely was old enough to scream, which was at birth- in fact we were repeatedly told that he was the loudest baby in the nursery of the very large and busy metropolitan hospital- I have repeated the following phrase, “If you ever leave me, you have to take the children!”

Oh, I do have two things I do well. I can draw naked people and I can paint Xmas balls.

Story of the Day 10/ 9/ 2011 #3

2011-10-16T07:25:00.001-07:00

I realized that this year, putting up the sukkah was much easier and less stressful than it was, last year and the year before that. This is because Aaron was here to help us.

Last year, it was just me and my long-suffering husband, Larry.
This year, there were no close calls or fears that Larry would take a tumble from the ladder onto the hard cement slab of the patio.

This is not because Larry is awkward or clumsy.
It is because instead of being at the mercy of my ADD-impacted ability to hold the ladder steady while he climbs up and down, Aaron held the ladder for him.

Story of the Day 10/9/2011

2011-10-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

We were putting up our succah. We being Larry, Aaron and I, and Larry started telling Aaron about the time a patient gave him sefer torah-a torah scroll.
Well, not exactly.

Larry practices medicine on the south side of Indianapolis. The south side has been populated by wave after wave of immigrants. At one time, the wave was Jewish.
When this woman was young, there were still Jews living on the south side. ( More than 2 or 3). And there was a house fire. The family was Jewish, and they left behind a lot of things in the burnt out house, when they left. This woman, and her brother found a scroll that was left behind in a closet.

The woman realized that this was something that shouldn’t just be thrown in the trash, but she wasn’t sure what to do with it. So for 50 or so years, it has been sitting in her closet.

That doesn’t mean that she never tried to do anything with it, though.

Apparently, a few years ago, she thought she could call somewhere and get information about what she should do. She called Shapiro’s.

Shapiro’s is a restaurant on the South side. When all the Jews assimilated enough to be able to afford to move north, and the next wave of immigrants moved in, the restaurant somehow didn’t’ move with et Jews. It stayed, and became a regional fixture.
It is such a regional fixture, as well as being the only thing Jewish in the entire south side other than cemeteries, that it really was the only place this woman knew of.
So she called.

Well, Shapiro’s has a Jewish name, and they serve “Jewish food, like corned beef sandwiches and lox on bagels, real rare ethnic fare on the south side, but they are neither kosher nor very Jewish, at this point, and they had no idea what she should do with the scroll.

So it sat in her closet a while longer.

And then she had arthritis.

Well, actually, I don’t know if she had orhas arthritis. My husband mostly sees patients with arthritis, since that is his specialty, but the only information he gave me about the woman pertained to the torah and how she got it and how she came to mention it to him. For all I know she was seeing him for her diabetes, because he also has patients who do that. Oh, and I can guess that she is at least 60 and probably a good 70 years old, because the Jews have been gone from the southside for 50 or 60 years.

At any rate, she was seeing my husband who is a rheumatologist, for something, and she quickly identified him as being Jewish.

Not from his New York accent.

Not by his nose or his last name, both of which do give a clue.

Not even by his beard, but most likely because he happens to wear a kippah.

There are plenty of people with New York accents, distinctive noses, beards and even possibly Jewish sounding names who were not Jewish. But outside of a friend of the family in synagogue for a Bar Mitzvah, only rarely does one encounter someone who is not Jewish wearing a kippah or yarmulke or skullcap.
…Unless it is crimson and they are a cardinal or white and it is the pope, but they don’t usually have New York accents. Not usually.
And the probability of running into one of them on the southside of Indianapolis is actually even smaller than the probability of running into a real live Jew, although, not by a lot.

So, she brought the problem to him. What should she do with this torah scroll?

In fact, after a couple of visits, she LITERALLY brought the problem to him.
She brought the scroll to his office.

He took a look at it and said, “This isn’t a Torah scroll.”

He carefully opened a bit of it up to read the lettering. I say carefully, because the heat from the fire had damaged the parchment to the point where it was rather like matzah- and liable to start cracking. And he said, “You see, it says here ‘Vayahe bemay ahashverosh…”

She replied, “You know very well I can’t read that!”
Which he did know, but he couldn’t resist the urge to tease her.

He did explain, though, that this wasn’t in fact a torah scroll, it was a scroll of the book of Esther.
And the lady, relieved, gave it to him to deal with.
She wasn’t relieved that it wasn’t a Torah scroll, she was relieved that she could finally had it over to someone and get it out of her closet.

Of course, now it is in my husband’s closet, where it has been for 14 months, waiting for him to do something with it.

Story of the Day 10/8/2011

2011-10-11T03:44:00.001-07:00

Kindles are not Jew friendly.

I don’t mean just Kindle-brand Kindles. I mean electronic books.
This is because we have these things called Shabbat, holidays, etc, when we are not allowed to use them. No electronics, no phone, no computer, no Kindle. So, if your only reading material is a Kindle…..

I realized this early on, and have been telling people for ages that this is why I do not wish to invest in a Kindle. Of course, I really just don’t want to spend the money, but Sabbaths and holidays and the like are my only large blocks of reading time, so why invest in one of those when I could only use it for the few minutes here and there that do not really lend themselves to reading more than the newspaper or a magazine?
It is really nice having an excuse for being cheap.

Of course, despite the anti-Semitic stereotypes, many of my Jewish friends are not all that cheap and have tossed their stacks of dusty books and learned to snuggle up with their Kindles, and one of these friends, last night, at services, after realizing she was going to have nothing to read during the middle of the day, asked to borrow a book.
You know, one of those old fashioned paper and ink things that pre-date Kindles.

Actually, she didn’t ask, at first. Rather she was casting rather hungry looks at the book my daughter had brought with her to synagogue- and I do not mean hungry as a double –entendre, because Yom Kippur had barely started and eating paper hadn’t yet started to seem like a good idea.

I meant hungry as in, “ all I have is a Kindle, what will I read, since it is forbidden!”

Any book. Something with pages and no pixels.

My daughter was reading a book by Alexander McCall Smith, not a title from his most popular series, but one from another series he wrote.

I am not sure exactly how Kindle owners browse.

Okay, I have a vague idea, because I too buy things from Amazon and they let you peek at some pages, before buying, to make sure the book is worth the sight unseen $16, but it is not anything that really compares to browsing through the stacks of books at the bookstore, sitting in the coffee area for 20 minutes while you decide which of the cartload of books you will drag home, and ….so I am not sure how such readers ever really get exposed to all of the great options you find in the stacks at a traditional book store.
At any rate, my friend had never even heard of the series by McCall Smith.

In fact, the first time my friend saw this author’s name was on my daughter’s book, yesterday evening.
“Is it any good?” she asked.
“Yes, but not as good as another series he wrote.” So, today, I brought a copy of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency for her to read. You know, one of those paper and ink- Jew friendly things called a book.

Story of the day 10/6/2011

2011-10-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

I was in Kroger’s, the grocery store near my daughter’s high school,. I was trying to find the brown rice. Not the instant 5-minute whatever, but the brown rice that no one has reconstituted.
And I had to use my phone to send a text message.
As a result, I learned something very important, although I did not manage to find the brown rice.

My phone likes to auto correct terp.
It prefers it be spelled “ twerp.”

Story of the Day 10/5/2011

2011-10-09T05:39:00.000-07:00

The interpreter cancelled. Well, she was only the backup interpreter, so I am not sure it is completely accurate to say that she cancelled. But she cancelled. And since she was my only hope, after around 19 calls and emails to different terps…. You see she was the backup interpreter, except there is no one scheduled for her to back up….

In case you have missed my previous ramblings, I am in dire need of an interpreter for Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur being this Saturday. This Saturday being 3 days away, and since I turn my phone and computer off on Friday evening….

In addition to biting off all of my fingernails, I have now called all of the interpreters that the Deaf people who are coming feel are good. Well, all of the ones that we know of.

I was scrounging around for more names and sending multiple emails “Do you know…? Would they be okay?”
I was asking friends for recommendations.
I even had a moment of brilliance and thought of a terp who is very good, and whom this family likes, but we just hadn’t come up with his name on the original list.
Excitedly, I fired off an email.
I was in luck, either he has a smart phone permanently turned on and attached to his hand, or it was his lunch hour.
Unfortunately, that was as far as my luck went, he already has a job scheduled for Saturday.
I thought of another terp.

I carefully worded my email, “What about….. Some people like him, but some people don’t.”
Within minutes, the reply came back, “NO! NO! NO!”
Well, I guess I will not be calling or emailing him.

He does terp well, it is just his personality that is an issue.

I would now start biting off my toenails, as well, but I am not that limber.

A friend emailed me “I'm at a loss. Maybe you should infiltrate the Jehova's Witnesses and learn how they make so many interpreters! “

We Jews do have a dearth of interpreters, and I might consider doing this, but I don’t’ think there is enough time left. I am also not sure if he means that I should kidnap one of their interpreters, or convert them to Judaism, and I feel rather ill equipped for either alternative, although I could try.
At least the kidnapping.

Another friend wondered how long it would take for her to become fluent enough to do this. Since she doesn’t sign at all, I told her to forget it.
But it was a kind offer!

But he did start me thinking.
Maybe we could use Aaron. My deaf son.
After all, he attends services twice a day. He knows all of the daily and Shabbat prayers, the only ones that would be unfamiliar to him would be the ones that are specific to Yom Kippur- some hymns and poems- neither of which hold much interest for the Deaf participants. Nothing personal, but this things do not translate well. Especially because they are based on repetition. Many, many repetitions of the same lines. For Deaf people, that is like nails on a blackboard, not that they would understand that comparison.

And he is personable. No, “NO! NO! NO!’s” would be proffered by anyone, well, other thank his younger sister. But she is, after all, his younger sister.

The only problem is that despite ASL being his first language, he doesn’t sign well enough.
We would probably do better sending my friend who offered for ASL lessons….

Story of the Day 10/4/2011

2011-10-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

Aaron is lying down for his first nap of the day.

I am supposed to be someplace else, but I am stuck at home being itchy and red and puffy.
That is because I have hives. I have all sorts of fun allergies.

So here I was when Aaron came home and decided to take his first nap of the day. This is the post-morning-services-before-yeshivah-class nap.
Later, he will take a post morning classes nap. Then, if he is lucky, he will get in a pre-dinner nap.
But only if he is lucky.

He got a blanket and set up a pillow and lay down on the sofa in the family room.
I asked him if he wanted me to wake him.
He told me, “No, I will leave my hearing aid on so that I can hear the clock.”
We have a clock that strikes the half hour and counts off the hour.
I told him, “That is smart, because I will forget to wake you.”

It is definitely safer for him to leave his one hearing aid on, even though he is deaf, and “listen” for the clock.
At least I know my shortcomings.

Story of the Day 10/3/2011 #2

2011-10-05T03:42:00.001-07:00

This morning was special. Instead of trudging off to morning services at The Place Across the Street ( this being the official name for the place across the street), Aaron headed off to morning services at our synagogue, Etz Chaim.

This is special because we don’t usually have a daily morning service at Etz if it is not Shabbat, or a holy day or Sunday- and Sunday is a recent instigation by our new, young, enthusiastic rabbi.

And today was Monday.
The reason for services on a Monday morning that isn’t a holy day being that it is a friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah. Not the Bar Mitzvah where he gets up and make a speech and people throw candy and we all eat a huge lunch, this is the day he first puts on teffilin.

Teffilin is a Hebrew word. In English it is this REALLY weird word that no normal person has any idea how to pronounce or spell. So if you happen to know how to pronounce or spell it, you are definitely not normal.
The English is phylacteries.
I am weird, but even I had to look up how to spell it.

Now that you know the word, I do not recommend using this word in casual conversation, either, because the only thing you will impress people with will be your weirdness. Besides which, the only people who use this word in casual conversation call them teffilin.

I am also not going to go into a long explanation about teffilin, but I will say that the first time a boy ( or girl) puts them on is a really important event and Aaron was looking forward to it…partly because there was a nice breakfast, following services, hosted by the parents.

After service, and during breakfast, Aaron sat with a rabbi who attends our synagogue and with his two sons.
As Aaron said to me, “His sons are really cute,”
They are.

The older son, who is probably 3, but may be pushing 4, expressed surprise when Aaron said the bracha (blessing) over bread before eating.
His father said, “All Jewish people say brachot (blessings).”
“I am not Jewish.” Came the reply from the little boy.

“Yes, you are Jewish.”

“No, I am not. I am a fireman.”

His father calmly explained, “You can be Jewish and be a fireman.”

A moment later, the little boy asked my son what his name was.
“My name is Aaron. What is your name?”

“Fireman.”

I can’t wait to find out what his brother’s name is.

Story of the Day 10/3/2011

2011-10-04T03:49:00.000-07:00

It is Monday, the Monday before Yom Kippur.
On the very slim chance, that you have no idea what Yom Kippur is, it is Not the most important holiday for Jews. That happens to be Shabbat. However, it is the most solemnly observed one.

There are two holidays that non-religious Jews observe. Passover- even if the entire observance consists of having a box of matzoh with their pork chops, and Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur is substantially more solemn and serious. And not only because you do not eat matzoh with your pork chops or with anything else on Yom Kippur, since you are fasting.
So, Yom Kippur is substantially more solemn and serious, and stressful.
And it is especially stressful for me.

That is because, in addition to having to look into my soul and examine my sins, errors and omissions of the past year- which, sadly I haven’t done because I am an ethically lazy slob – I need to find an interpreter for synagogue.

This particular issue rears its head every damned year.
On good years, I find one.
On bad years, I am stuck doing a very lousy job translating ( it isn’t really interpreting because I have to read the English side of the prayer book to know what the rabbi and hazan and other readers are rapidly intoning, in order to sort of render it into ASL or whatever it is I manage to sloppily sign.)

Those years are the worst.

But even on years that I find an interpreter and can sit and relax through the service ( and I assure you, after finding that interpreter , I am much more relaxed than the average fasting Jew, because they didn’t have to find an interpreter ), I am stressed out for weeks in advance as I call and email and IM terp after interpreter after interpreter to try to find a live body that is not comatose and actually knows ASL.

I always start out a bit foolishly, I mean optimistically, with a list of 5 or 6 names of reliable, good interpreters. But as I get to the bottom of the list, and as the time rushes past, I start worrying and worrying.

First I call or text back the family or families or lone person who has requested the interpreter.
Do they have any other names I could call? A terp they had at a doctor’s appointment 4 years ago? An interpreter they ran into at Wal-Mart and who signed well enough to consider? A terp who their 15th cousin twice removed once mentioned ……anything.

Eventually, I start cornering not just the Deaf people coming to services for their list of okay terps, but any other Deaf person I can find who signs ASL for possible names of terps.

And then there are the actual contacts. With the terps, that is.

A timid, “Well, I really am not qualified” is answered by my frenetic “ Yes you are, you are alive and you can sign!”

And then,” But I have never interpreted anything Jewish before”
“ But you have never actively been a member of the Nazi party, right?”

“ I feel I wouldn’t be able to do a good job since it will be so unfamiliar.”
“That is okay, you are breathing, aren’t you?”
“ And I am unfamiliar with the vocabulary,”
” Are you still breathing? Breathing is good!”

In fact at this point, it is the only requirement.

Okay, and not being a member of the Nazi party.

I should also add that in addition to breathing, behaving professionally is important……

Several years ago, we hired an interpreter who was actually recommended highly to us .
After services, I was helping to clean up and put away things, and a couple came back into the building to let me know that the interpreter had cornered them in the parking lot and tried to convince them to come to her church so they could be “ saved”.
I later heard she had said the same thing to another Deaf attendee, but that person didn’t let me know until later.
Somehow, this didn’t really hit me as being very professional behavior.

At any rate, as desperate as I have gotten, some years, I haven’t called her for a repeat performance.

However, if you have the names of any other terps who are still breathing……..*

· Reality note- I actually run all names of interpreters past the Deaf people who are coming, so they can veto anyone who was recommended by someone else. This is hard to explain to people who do not know ASL, but an interpreter who is perfectly clear to one Deaf person may be terribly hard to understand for another deaf person.
· Meanwhile, that same vetoed terp may be exactly who the next Deaf person coming to the next Shabbat or holiday service thinks is perfect.

Story of the Day 9/ 28/ 2011

2011-10-02T08:05:00.000-07:00

It is almost Rosh Hashanah – the Jewish New Year, and I am being inundated with bras.
And they are not even my own.
I have a cousin who lives in a rest home and she needs bras.
I went to visit her , yesterday, and the director pulled me aside and let me know that my cousin only had two bras and they were both worn out.
Since I had taken her shopping and bought her bras- more than two, 6 months ago, and a few others last fall, and I started to wonder what had happened, and then I realized that she had moved, recently and perhaps a box had gone astray.

I took my cousin out to the only store in her area that has bras, Wal-Mart, and we looked and looked and looked, and only found two black lace bras that were her size.
I promised my cousin that I would look for some bras to send her from Indianapolis- since Indianapolis has more than one store that carries bras.

So, today, since I was driving pasta different store, I went in, and they happened to have two more bras in her size. Also black lace.
I went to pay for them and the woman looked at the boxes she was ringing up, and then she looked at me, and she asked if I was dressing up as something interesting for Halloween.
I wasn’t, but since I am, smallish, at least relatively small busted, and wearing khakis and a plaid shirt and since these were black lace bras in size 54 DD, I can understand her question.

But there is the other bra. The one I have volunteered to sew.

As you know, my son, Aaron- yes the one with the hearing aids and the pink bathrobe, likes to do stand up comedy.
One of his regular joints- I mean venues, is a comedy club/bar in Carmel, a fancy city north of Indianapolis.
Carmel is the sort of city that is having some trouble convincing themselves that there has been a downturn in the economy and that there might possibly be a need to cut some of the budget from their multi-multi million dolor arts center or civic center or whatever it is.
At any rate, the place, the comedy club, not Carmel, has a burlesque night. All of the performers are expected to wear……ummmmmm bra like things.
And Aaron doesn’t’ want to miss a chance to perform.
So, I might be sewing a bra for him.

In the meanwhile, he is going to ask the rabbi if it is all right to do this, in his new , sober, tell no dirty jokes, religious phase.
Ahem, sorry, maybe it is not a phase.
I told him he could tell the rabbi he will wear super dark sunglasses to perform and since the place is dimly lit, he would not see anything risqué- or at least not any more risqué than himself in a bra.

Addendum:
Aaron has decided not to ask the rabbi about this.
I think this is a very good decision.

I was also mistaken, he is thinking about doing this in a different comedy club than his usually place……

Story of the Day 9/26/2011

2011-09-28T03:53:00.000-07:00

I was reading the newspaper.
Not the comics, I hadn’t gotten that far. I was on page 3 of the front section, and Aaron was standing over me, which is easy to do, even if we are both standing, since he is 10 inches taller than I am.
But in this case I was sitting, so he was looming. Looming over me. And reading something out loud. And I am doing my best to ignore him so that I can finish reading my article.
Then he asks me to cut it out for him.
What?

“I want you to cut it out for me, so I can save it. Because it is good for my self esteem!”

The ad says, “ You may think that hearing aids are still clunky, embarrassing objects that shout to the world, ‘Hey everybody! Something’s wrong with me!’”

And this is displayed in rather large letters, since the ad takes up more than half the page.

I look at my deaf son, and think, “ That isn’t what is wrong with you.”
But I didn’t’ say it.
After all, he wants this for self-esteem purposes.

Story of the Day 9/ 23/ 2011 #2

2011-09-27T03:19:00.000-07:00

Theoretically we are sending Aaron off to Israel in just over a month.
This is very theoretical.

First, we have to get him packed.
This may not seem like a first to you, but that is because you have not recently experienced international air travel.

Aaron is allowed 50 lbs as his luggage.
His one piece of oversized luggage unpacked, empty weighs about 7 lbs.
Into this bag we need to fit a second pair of shoes, a set of sheets and towels, a flashing smoke alarm, a vibrating alarm clock, a case of hearing aid batteries, his allergy medicine, his hearing aid dehumidifier and care kit, his FM system for his hearing aids, lots of pants, and shirts, and pajamas, and undershirts and socks.

I took one look at the pile on his bed and yelped-, “Aaron, we have to buy you new underwear!”

“Why? There is nothing wrong with these.”

Except that the elastic on them was visibly worn out from 15 feet away in a not very well lit room.

In addition to the one piece of luggage, Aaron can bring a carry on that must fit a certain group of size restrictions. Since he will be flying on two airlines- American and El AL, we need to pay careful attention to both.

His carry-on is already spoken for. He will have, his cell phone, his laptop, his tefillin, and a clean pair of underwear for emergencies. He will also have several books, all of which weigh too much to be put in the checked luggage.

I have made a list of several essential items that he needs to take that we need to buy.

Underwear,
Underwear,
Underwear,
A smaller shrek doll.

Story of the Day 9/22/2011

2011-09-26T03:43:00.000-07:00

I am trying to have a website for my real life.
This isn’t my real life. I mean it is, sometimes rather tragically so, but I am not a writer, I am a pornographer.
I mean, not a pornographer, but an artist.
Unfortunately, since I live in Indiana, the distinction is lost amongst numerous members of the public,
I am not joking. A couple of years ago, a law was passed that required the Art Museum and several college book stores to register as “adult entertainment” businesses, because they sold pornography. You know, picture books with illustrations of naked people, like Michelangelo’s sculpture of David.

The law was suspended or whatever it is they did to it after it was passed, when they realized that this would also apply to Wal-Mart and Target- because they sell Anne Geddes and knock-off Anne Geddes date books, note cards, calendars.
Never mess with Wal-Mart!

Actually, I am not sure it got that far. I mean it was passed, and it was suspended, but I am not sure that they had figured out that the sentimental naked baby stuff might also fall into the broadly defined “porno” category they had created.

But I do.

I draw naked people. People who are comfortable taking off there clothes in a room full of people who are comfortable with them taking off their clothes and then staring at the naked person for 25 minutes while cursing and fuming and chewing on the ends of their pencils trying to get the line or the shading just right. And occasionally singing along to the songs on the music system. Or , like me, talking to themselves.

So I was sitting at the computer, yesterday afternoon, trying to set up a website for my artwork, and Sarah comes home.
She takes a look at what I have spent the last 3 ½ hours struggling with and signs, “That is awful. That is really awful!”
Sadly, she was not telling me anything that I didn’t know.

And Ely emailed me, this morning, and said, “can you make it so that instead of scrolling down to see more images, people can click through (forward and back)? That might look a little nicer.

Also, you might want to change the colors of the background to complement your work a little better, so they don't appear white/washed out.

Finally, if you can get rid of the "sitemap" button on the left side, you don't need it.”

It only took me about 14 minutes to figure out what the sitemap button was. But I can’t figure out what to do with it- how to get rid of it.

I still haven’t figured out any of the rest of it, but I did manage to shrink the size of the images down to a more…viewable size.

And I didn’t include Sarah’s final comment to me, “Don’t worry, I will help you when I have some free time.”

Thank you, God!!!! I mean, kids!

( waiting to be improved : https://sites.google.com/site/acassiamargolis/home )

Story of the Day 9/20/2011 #2

2011-09-25T05:25:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at the computer, and Sarah was sitting in the dining room and opening her mail. I hear a “What?” and a “No Way!” in her distinctive deaf voice, and I rush over to see what had elicited such a response.

She was holding a letter and a look of horror was on her face.
Luckily, I was wrong and it wasn’t a look of horror, although, it could have passed as one. It was really a look of confusion.
Sarah was…dumbstruck. And I mean that with all of its weird little secondary meanings- except, obviously, the deaf had spoken, so maybe I didn’t.

The letter was from the principal of her high school.

It informed her that she had been named student of the month
In physics.
By the physics teacher whose class she just dropped.
Because she was flunking it.
Okay, she wasn’t flunking it, but she was struggling….

And she didn’t drop it; she transferred to another section, taught by a different teacher.

The teacher she’d had, the one who named her for the award, was very nice, but he lectured at a rate that makes my speech look like I have a severe thyroid deficiency.
He speaks so quickly that neither the typist nor the interpreter could even try to keep up.
In fact, the entire time that the speech to text woman was using the mask to speak into, Sarah was petrified that the woman would suffer a heart attack from trying to keep up with the teacher.
The teacher would be lecturing and lecturing, and the speech-to-text lady would be gasping for breath and her face would have turned bright red.
This is the same lady that Sarah said appears to be about my age- so we know she is some sort of a haggard old coot who has one foot in the grave, and this, of course, upped Sarah’s concerns about her suffering a heart attack.

Meanwhile, the interpreter would be furiously signing away at such a rate that the interpreter had no idea what she was signing or if she was making sentences, and the interpreter herself described what she was doing as “gibberish”.

And still the teacher would keep on talking,

So Sarah sat in class, day after day, unable to get the lecture information.

After 4 weeks of this, and an actual D on a test (this from a girl who had straight As, last semester), and in order to spare the speech-to-text lady and the interpreter nervous breakdowns, the school allowed Sarah to transfer to the other section.

Well, they certainly didn’t allow her to transfer so that she would know what was being taught in class, since that has never before been a concern of theirs.
Oh, wait, maybe that is why they let her transfer, I keep forgetting that BH has been deposed and it is a kinder and gentler administration.

How could I have forgotten?

But, at any rate, two nervous breakdowns and a potential heart attack were averted, and, a week ago, Sarah was moved to the other section.

We are assuming that this award was set in motion before she changed sections, while she was still firmly ensconced in that class and flunking.
Which is why Sarah asked me how it was possible that she had been named for this in a class….

The only thing I can think of is that her D on the test may have been the highest grade in the class.

Story of the Day 9/20/2011

2011-09-23T14:18:00.001-07:00

I was having lunch with a friend.
I do have a few of those, and on occasion, I even fake being sociable and have lunch with one of them.

Rarely, but it does happen.
And today I even managed to remember to use my napkin.

During lunch, she told me about the time that she went to have her hair cut and styled, and her 4 or 5-year-old son was in tow.

She is a dark-haired brunette and her son is a shining golden, towheaded blonde.
And he is blonde enough that, yes, her really does deserve the excessive adjectives.

The hairstylist remarked to her “Wow, where did your son’s blonde hair come from?”

”I have no idea,” my friend replied.
And then she realized that the rather awkward way in which this was received by the hairstylist meant that the hairstylist took this to mean that my friend must sleep around an awful lot, in order to not be sure.

And while my friend really does have no idea where her son’s blonde hair comes from, it is not because she….um, fill in the euphemism here, please…but because she has never met either of his biological parents.

Anyhow, as a result of her sharing this story with me, I got to learn two new words today, in sign language, for sleeping around (that being the more polite of the two).

I love learning new words.

Story of the Day 9/19/2011 #3

2011-09-22T06:28:00.000-07:00

My son, Aaron, had a list of things he was supposed to do, today, while I was out.
He was supposed to call the dentist and make an appointment before he leaves for Israel.
He was supposed to call the Jewish Federation and find out if he could get some scholarship funds for his stay at the yeshivah in Israel.
And he was supposed to make a packing list for his trip to Israel.

You might have noticed a theme.

At any rate, I returned home, late this afternoon, to find Aaron taking nap number 2 or 3, for the day.
When he awoke, he showed me his packing list.
It wasn’t bad, as long as he didn’t plan on making any friends. He had forgotten to pack deodorant, or, at least, to put it on the list.
And he had called the dentist’s office, but no one answered. They have odd hours, especially since our dentist is away, right now, doing his tour of duty- he is in the Army Reserve, but due back very soon.
So, Aaron will call again, tomorrow.

And Aaron remembered to call the Federation. And he spoke with a very lovely person that we know from synagogue.
And he gave her his email address
He thinks.
Except, he realizes that maybe he is not sure how to spell his email address and he might possibly have given her someone else’s email address, but since she said she will email him, he will see if he gets an email from her tomorrow, and if not, he will call and explain to her that he can’t actually spell his email address.

I am certain, that if he has to do this, she will be rather concerned for this kid who will be traveling to Israel on his own. That and she will be wondering about what kind of a yeshivah he will be attending. And, perhaps, she will think that we are cruel to be sending our poor, not very bright child off on his own.

I will admit to having some interesting thoughts about all of this as he explained to me that he wasn’t sure how to spell his email address- which is composed of his first name and a word from a 4th or 5th grade spelling list.

One of my thoughts was that I hoped no one at the yeshivah will expect him to know which month follows September, or the alphabet, in order, or…….
And that I had better take a permanent marker and put his name in all of his clothes, and our home phone number, in case he gets lost.

Story of the Day 9/19/2011

2011-09-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

My son came home from synagogue, from morning services. I was sitting at the computer, not quite ready to run out to work, because it is still only 8:05 AM.

He asked me if I have a conference at Sarah’s school.
He told me that he hoped I didn’t.

Then he apologized and said I looked very nice.
In fact, I look much nicer in the shirt than he used to.

Story of the Day 9/16/2011

2011-09-19T04:53:00.000-07:00

I am the proud new owner of kitchen counters.
Or maybe the proud owner of new kitchen counters, or maybe something else.
At any rate, after 15 years of abuse, and there was a lot of abuse by Ely as he learned to cook and insisted that he had no need for things like cutting boards, I have fancy-shmancy countertop to go in my not very fancy-shmancy kitchen.

The guys arrived only 2 days and 1 hour late, this morning, and it was still morning, so it wasn’t 2 days and 2 hours late, and they worked and worked and griped and worked, in several different languages.
The griping that is.

They may have also worked in several different languages but since the only words I knew that they used in some of those languages were….colorful, I will assume that was griping.

They came in, they went out, they came in, they went out, less of them came in.
Now they were down to 2 languages, one was English.
I know because I recognized ALL of the expletives.

They went out.

They came in.

You can repeat this scenario at least 8 more times. At least.
I need to sweep and mop, and do it a few more times.

Hey, coming and going that much tracks in a lot of dirt!

And then the plumbing guy and his helper showed up and started to work on the sink.
I suppose it does have to be reattached to do this thing called dirty dishes.
Of course, I wouldn’t know since that is Aaron’s job, but let us assume…..

And when they were done,(not the plumbers, because they had just started, but the countertop crew of two,) the one who looked like he isn’t old enough to drink handed me a copy of the invoice.

I had gotten a copy of the invoice when I paid the deposit, and don’t need extra copies of things, since I am a paper-saving-pack-rat who really does not mean ill towards earth’s forests; so I told him, thanks, but I had already gotten the invoice from the office.

And they went out,
but they didn’t’ come back in.

And, about 2 minutes after they went out, I finally realized that they were not coming back in again.
And I hadn’t paid them.

Oh crap- and I only said that in one language.

They thought I meant that I had paid…and I hadn’t, I had just gotten the invoice…..

So I immediately called the phone number on the bottom of the top of the invoice- to have them paged or called or texted to come back to get paid…and it rang, and it rang, and it rang, and then the fax machine answered.

Oh double crap.

So I called the phone number one line up from the fax number(at the bottom of the top of the invoice).

And this time, the phone was picked up promptly by Betsy.
And I explained about the miscommunication.
And , after hanging up with me, she called them.

And then she called me back, and said they didn’t want to come back, because they were at lunch.

And she can’t take my charge card number over the phone.

And even though the plumber is on their invoice, and he is still here, he doesn’t actually work for them and I can’t pay him...and….

Well, someone will have to come back, or wait until next week, because they are not open on Sunday, and soon it will be Shabbat.

But in the meanwhile, I have fancy-shmancy countertops.

And I feel like an idiot.

Story of the Day 9/ 14/ 2011

2011-09-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

My son came home rather late, late enough that it is questionably still the 14th.

He was out at Morty’s- a comedy bar in Carmel, Indiana doing a standup gig.
He came home and told me that he was glad he has stopped telling sexually explicit jokes.

Okay, he didn’t call them “sexually explicit”, he called them dirty.

Why?
Because that is what all the other comedians were telling.
His telling “clean” jokes made him stand out from the crowd.

Of course, there is a limit to how many knock-knock jokes the audience wanted to hear.
That and his series of puns….really bad puns.
Okay, they were not knock-knock jokes.
But there were some puns.

He also told me that he struggles with following polite etiquette procedures with other comedians.

This is because it is very hard to congratulate them and shake hands when they have just finished telling a series of masturbation jokes.

Story of the Day 9/12/2011- An Addendum to 9/9

2011-09-18T07:10:00.000-07:00

I have a meeting with my daughter’s resource teacher.
I am going to explain to her about videos and caption..

I am a little worried she might put her head down on the table and cry.

I have the easy job.

After I explain it to her, she will get to go speak with Sarah’s Hebrew teacher, and explain to him that the captions need to be in English, or maybe even in Hebrew. Just not in Korean.

Story of the Day 9/11/2011 #2

2011-09-16T04:08:00.000-07:00

My brother works for Wal-Mart.

This caused consternation among some members of the family, when he first let us know that was where he would be working.
Some of us like to think that a couple of college degrees should be worth more than wearing one of those blue “vests” and pushing shopping carts. But, hey, work is work and the economy sucks.

And he is actually employed at their corporate headquarters- a fact that looks much more promising when you introduce yourself to eligible young ladies.

I should explain that I am referring to my younger brother. My older brother is happily married. I have no idea how many years now, but long enough that his middle school aged daughter was born well after anyone had to count the months back to figure out if she was “ premature”.
At any rate, my older brother doesn’t have to worry about eligible ladies. My younger brother, a bachelor, does.

So, there he is, living and working in beautiful Rogers, Arkansas. Apparently, it is a good place to work, and possibly a nice, settled sort of place to raise a family.
But what do you when you are young and single?… Well, apparently, my brother has been doing things like attending monster truck rallies.
This may be fine where you come from, but it is not something we can readily mention at synagogue. Okay, maybe we can at our synagogue, but since he is not looking to hook up with a girl from our synagogue….. (and I didn’t’ mean “ hook up” that way!)

And where oh where is he going to meet a nice young lady?
Apparently, everyone there works at Wal-Mart, so I suppose it will have to be at work.

My husband is actually rather taken with this idea.
After all, he met me at work.
In the cafeteria.

He also thinks that he knows just what the wedding invitations should say,
“ Look what I got at Wal-Mart”. Either that or “Save money, Live better.”

Story of the Day 9/9/2011

2011-09-15T04:12:00.001-07:00

the second part of the Story of the Day from 9/2 (#4)

I need to make two things perfectly clear before you read the actual story.

First of all, I am neither making any of this up, nor exaggerating it- although I do not expect you to believe either of those assertions.

Second, the teacher involved happens to be a wonderful, kind person. He is even a good teacher. He is, just like most of us, maybe not totally “with it” about everything. So, please do not judge him based on this thing, because it really would be unfair.

And now for the story:

At dinner, my daughter announced, “Oh, have I got a Story of the Day for you!”

Some days, hearing this, well, seeing this, since she signs, makes me break out in a cold sweat over what awful thing must have befallen my child, that day, but since Sarah said this to me with a smile on her face, I had no such trepidation.
She then told me about her Hebrew class.

Once again, her Hebrew teacher had a video to show.
A video of a Hebrew song.
He had found it on Youtube and he excitedly told Sarah that it was captioned.

Then he told her, “But you can’t read it!”

Sarah’s face showed her confusion over this.

So her teacher explained, “You can’t read it because it is in Korean!”

He started the video playing, and the choral group sang, and sang, and sang.

And there were no captions.

He told Sarah “Wait….wait!”

And, there, on the bottom of the screen, the printed message scrolled across and then no more captions, until, a bit later, the same printed message scrolled across a second time.

And Sarah didn’t have the heart to break it to the teacher that, although she cannot read Korean, she believes (because of the format) that what was actually scrolling across the bottom of the screen was not captions for the song, it was a weather alert/update.

Story of the Day 9/8/2011

2011-09-14T04:04:00.000-07:00

( background stories from 8/17 and 8/24)

I had a wonderful email , this afternoon, from Cindie.
Cindie, who is my partner in crime, had spent the better part of the morning with me at a case conference.

Better as in quality not quantity.

After one of those, you might think that the two of us would be out drinking in a bar, but, unlike the multitudinous conferences we have been suffering through for months, this one was actually pleasant.
Pleasant- and , yes, you can quote me.

And , no, we had neither been drinking nor smoking pot prior to the start of the conference, so that is not why we thought it was pleasant. At least, I don’t remember doing that…..

It was pleasant because of the absence of Darth Vader. Whoops sorry, I meant BH.

So, I was surprised when I received the following email from Cindie:

How did we get so lucky not to have her??

Her being BH.

When I saw the email I thought, “Shit, what have I not been telling her?”
Since I lead my life rather publicly ( doesn’t blogging everything that happens count as publicly?) and I email or call Cindie an average of twice a day, how could I have somehow not told her the big news?

You see, after the BH fiasco,
- and I am accepting suggestions for a good , catchy name for the item that finally drew BH’s unprofessional and unethical behavior to the attention of her boss -

after the BH fiasco, her boss, Dr. F told me that in order to re-establish credibility BH would no longer be the person running the show- I mean the case conferences. In other words, she could no longer refuse to discuss items on the agenda, call Sarah a liar, prevent the staff from bringing up any problems, not provide assessments and services, etc.

Well, gee, somehow I had managed to not tell this bit of news to Cindie- which elicited the next two email responses from her:

Wait. What???? Is she not allowed to come to your cc any more???

And
No!!! You told me none of that!!

Oh gosh, now I suspect I will have to find someone else to help me bury the bodies in the backyard…I mean go drinking with…I mean….or hope she accepts this very belated explanation of what has happened- that BH has been deposed as the queen ( read: tyrant) of the case conferences and peace and common sense will reign!

Although, we didn’t do a very good job of keeping the peace, today, since one innocent remark on the part of the interpreter, set us off laughing- to the puzzled looks of most of the rest of the group- well, and the pained expression of the TOR( the resource teacher) who was tethered to BH during what went on.

But that is a story for another day.

In the meanwhile, I had better quickly explain all to Cindie, or I might have to go hunting for another buddy to help me bury the bodies……figural bodies, of course.

Story of the day 9/7/2011 #2

2011-09-13T03:50:00.001-07:00

In English class, this morning, just before they were dismissed by the bell, Sarah had a moment of glee.
Unfortunately, it was short lived.

The teacher was explaining about what the students had to do for homework to wrap up the chapter on which they were working.
Sarah was watching the speech to text and the teacher’s words were: “ Chapter for Christians”.
Which, of course, would mean that Sarah wouldn’t need to do it, since she is Jewish, but then she realized that this was just another error of the fancy speech to text system they are using.
Sigh.

Story of the Day 9/7/2011

2011-09-12T04:46:00.001-07:00

It was 3:50 PM and my daughter’s bus went streaking past our house and on down the street.

Oh no….I knew what that meant, from the incident during the first week of school. A sub driver.

A sub driver is bad enough if you are on a tight schedule and you are waiting for child number three to arrive home so that you can all rush out the door to the piano lessons or soccer practice or even the dentist- who feels rather sad being in last place on this list.
But, when you child is deaf- as in deaf and doesn’t’ hear and doesn’t’ talk, and the bus driver misses the stop, you have to hope that the bus driver actually stops at the next stop, which is only 2 blocks away. In the rain.
Because your daughter cannot yell out, “Hey, you missed my stop!”, but has to make her way to the front of the moving bus, and get the bus driver’s eye, and try to gesture to him or her what ahs happened- which translates into” the bus will already be at the next stop , so she might as well just get off there.”

But, to my surprise, less than 2 minutes later, my daughter comes walking through the door. She has mysteriously materialized. Maybe the bus driver backed the bus up, just for her?

No, it turns out that he bus driver missed a stop before our house. Although not by a lot, because that kid isn’t deaf and did yell out, “Hey, you missed my stop!” So, the driver stopped a couple of houses late about 2 blocks before our house. And before getting off, the kid pointed at Sarah and told the driver something to the effect that her stop was next. So, Sarah made her way up to the front of the bus and the driver looked at her expectantly, and then horrified, when she gestured that she couldn’t’ hear or talk. Horrified, even though she has never been known to bite anyone.

That I know of.

So with her up near him, he drove down our street, keeping one eye on the road and one eye on her or at least ready for her to gesture to him- which isn’t as dangerous as it might seem because there tends to be almost no traffic on our long rambling street, and she, worried he would both drive past her stop and have a nervous breakdown as he kept one eye on the road and one eye on her and worried about being bitten, gestured for him to drop her off a couple of houses early.

When he stopped the bus, Sarah gave him a “thumbs up” and a big smile, and he gave her what can best be described as the look of a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding semi.

So, when I spotted the bus speeding past our house, it was the very relieved driver hustling out of here as fast as possible and away from the dangerous deaf kid…….

Story of the Day 9/5/2011 - Addendum

2011-09-11T10:03:00.001-07:00

This is the photo that Ely sent me to send with the holiday letter.

Story of the Day 9/5/2011

2011-09-11T05:21:00.001-07:00

It is that time of year, again.
My husband and children cringe at every email I send them, at every suggestion.
I am trying to get our holiday letter- the one that goes out with the Rosh Hashanah cards to the out of town friends and family- together.
That and a photo.

When the children were little- littler than I am- that kind of little, I wrote the letter, showed it to my husband, he tweaked it a bit, and it was ready to send.
That and a cute picture of the three children smiling.

Then they got bigger.
It was hard to get them to do more than grimace for the photo.
They started to tell me not to mention things in the holiday letter.
They rolled their eyes.
Then they started making faces for the holiday photos. Not the pleasant kind.
One year, I told them to each write their own paragraph and get it to me.
My husband did.
Period.
It was a very short holiday letter.

The next year, I wrote a letter and told them that unless they got corrections/re-writes back to me in a timely fashion, I was sending it “ as is”. Oddly, this got a much better response than the year before. Of course, I stacked the odds in my favor by filling it with all sorts of things I knew they did not want shared.

Of course, that still leaves us with the problem of the photo.

Heck, I can’t even get all three of them I the same state!

So, it looks like it may be two photos. One of two of them, and one of the kid that isn’t in the photo with the other two.
I have been going through pictures and so have they, and Ely sends me the photo of him that he likes the best……

I immediately emailed him back, “ Please, we don’t want to scare any small children!”

To which Ely replied, “ Why, is our holiday letter now supposed to be G rated?”

Story of the Day 9/3/2011

2011-09-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

I was sitting I synagogue, this morning, which makes me sound a lot more religious than I am.

That is because I wasn’t sitting in the sanctuary, where the service was being held, I was sitting on a bench in the “book room” with my friend Shawn and we were schmoozing.
Shmoozing is when you talk about all sorts of things, which in this case had simply gotten started because one of us had asked the other how things were going.
And I was wearing these G-d awful, uncomfortable shoes, so I couldn’t even stand for the 2 minutes it should have taken, I had to sit. Shawn, being polite had to sit, and once we were sitting, we really started schmoozing.
So anything that happened after this point was the fault of those G-d awful, uncomfortable shoes.

Shawn is one of the Carmel contingent.
Carmel is this fancy shmancy suburban enclave north of Indianapolis. I live in Indianapolis,, That is why I refer to Carmel as fancy shmancy.
In sign language, the sign for Carmel is the handshape for the letter C in the motion for “stuck up”.
Shawn is not stuck up, but she is definitely a lot of levels up from my abysmally low level of fancy and sophisticated, and that is on top of being gorgeous. I don’t mean me being gorgeous, I mean her being gorgeous.
In fact, she is the sort of gorgeous where heads turn when she walks into the room.
As Carol once said, “half the men at our synagogue are in love with her.” The other half being either gay or legally blind.

I would hate her, except that she also happens to be nice. Drat.

At any rate, we were sitting in the book area and SR came in and exclaimed to Shawn that he hadn’t seen her in a while and he thought that maybe she had gone over to the “Dark Side”.

Shawn asked, “And what is the Dark Side?”

“You know, Christians.”
Shawn replied, “I don’t consider that the Dark Side.”

And I added, “I thought you meant she had started going to the synagogue across the street.”

As he started to leave, Shawn added, “Or maybe you thought I was sleeping with a black guy.”

To which he had no reply.

Possibly, because Shawn is black.

Story of the Day 9/2/2011 #4

2011-09-08T06:34:00.000-07:00

Sarah has two language classes, at the high school. She has her unofficial ASL class, in the hallway during lunch period, and she has Hebrew class…oh yes, and she also has her other foreign language class, English.

The first two of these language classes seemed to be connected.

Today, her Hebrew teacher asked her if she was familiar with a song. He gave her the title. She had never heard of it. He was sure she was wrong.

“But you must be familiar with this song!”
“I don’t really listen to any music.”

“But you must know this song!” He argued that she’d had a Bat Mitzvah, and she had been to other Bar and Bat Mitzvah and certainly it had been played at them!

“No, sorry,” Sarah explained, “I have no idea what they played at the other Bar and Bat Mitzvah parties, because I never heard what they played.”

Again, he insisted that she must know this song.
Again, she said, “I don’t’ really listen to music.”
Listen to music? She f***ing can’t hear any music.

The teacher still didn’t get it. He asked her if she knew who Bob Dylan was.
She did.
“Well,” the teacher explained, “He was Jewish and he sang it.” And the teacher played a video of Bob Dylan (from Youtube) singing the song. And then he played one of Danny Kaye, signing the song.
The teacher apologized to Sarah, there were no captions, and did she want a power point display of the words?

”No.”

Oddly, not seeing the words captioned on it in no way lessened her enjoyment of listening to the music.
Which she couldn’t’ hear.

Like I said, this and her ASL class seem to be connected. At least, today.

Story of the Day 9/2/2011 #3

2011-09-08T03:53:00.000-07:00

Sarah was sitting in the cafeteria in the half of the lunch period that is reserved for eating lunch and not for the ASL class.
She was sitting and eating, and then she realized that everyone, and I do mean everyone, had turned suddenly to stare to her right. Sarah turned and looked and realized that one of the “special needs” students had a bad moment and had thrown his lunch tray against one of the columns. It must have made quite a loud crash, but, of course, Sarah was the only student unable to hear it.

In case you were wondering, this is not a normal, everyday occurrence at her " new" school. At the small school that Sarah used to attend, where the high school had about 100 students, as compared to this school’s 3,500, there would be incidents when students would overturn entire tables. Of course, at Sarah’s previous school there were a number of kids who had major secondary disabilities- some of which were either caused by or contributed to by the fact that they had been left mostly language-less when they were young. As a result, they sometimes had no good ways to express frustration. At any rate, Sarah realized it was just a tray, and no one had been hit or hurt by it, and she went back to eating her apple.

A few minutes later, after her apple was nothing more than a core, she got up to leave.
As she walked out of the cafeteria, her well developed peripheral vision – something that tends to be incredibly well developed in the deaf because they rely on it for many things- told her that now everyone in the cafeteria was staring at her…as she walked out of the room.

She related this to me, after she came home. And she asked, “Why, today, did everyone stare” at her?

Well, I asked, “Had anyone else gotten up in the few minutes since that boy threw his tray?”

Suddenly, Sarah realized that no one had. In a cafeteria that is usually busy and where people are always getting up and down, the incident had shocked people into not doing anything like getting up and walking through the area in which the boy had thrown the tray…only Sarah, out of the 700 students in the cafeteria, had not been affected in this way, and what the kids were staring at was this brave person who was going to be the first person who walk through the “combat zone.”

She’d better be careful or she will develop a reputation as a “tough” kid.

Story of the Day 9/ 2/ 2011 #2

2011-09-07T05:21:00.001-07:00

Sarah was in ASL class- the sign language class she has after lunch.
Oh wait, North Central High School doesn’t offer any ASL classes? But this was her ASL class. The one she “teaches”.
You see, every day, half way through the lunch period, a group of girls who have hurried through what is already a rather abbreviated lunch period, sit together in the hall and learn new signs and practice the ones they know.
One girl has been at this for over a semester, and she often has to “interpret” things for some of the newer “ students”.

Today, one of the newer students, Kate, asked Sarah, “You read Braille, right?”

Sarah, who has heard things like this, before, was not nearly as startled as Erin, the young lady doing the “interpreting.”

“What? What? She is able to see just fine!” spurted Erin. “Deaf people can see to read!”

Kate was taken aback…. “Oh, uh, sorry, I got confused between deaf and blind people….”

This is not something Sarah, nor I, nor Sarah’s deaf brother, nor my husband has not “heard” before. Several times, my husband and I have been asked, when Sarah and Aaron were young, if they would need to learn Braille to be able to read.
But my all time favorite moment of confusion over what “deafness” could possibly mean was when a very kind older man gave Aaron and Sarah presents that he had specially ordered for the, so that they would be able to tell what time it was. He had bought special “ talking watches” for them.

Story of the Day 9/ 2/ 2011

2011-09-06T05:49:00.000-07:00

I received an urgent email today.
I mean, it was marked urgent. No, it was marked “ URGENT”.

Since it was from the new rabbi at our synagogue I had a moment of concern. Perhaps one of our octo or nonagenarian members had fallen and broken a hip and was in the hospital and needed an immediate delivery of food for Shabbat. Or, G-d forbid, had died and there was a need to let people know, before Shabbat, that there would be a funeral on Sunday-
although, since there will be a healthy minyan ( quorum) at synagogue tomorrow,(lured, not by the internal religious need to connect through services but through the deep inner need to partake of the excellent food , afterwards,) an announcement of that sort could wait.

Or maybe some family was traveling through and was stranded because of a cancelled plane or a flat tire, and needed a place to stay, and could we find room for a family of 9, needing a crib and a high chair and a wheelchair ramp and ……

Okay, I do tend to worry a bit much.

Anyhow, I opened up the missive.
It was a reminder that this Sunday, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend , is the Annual Etz Chaim ( synagogue) cook out and it will be followed by a special “movie”.

This was urgent?

I emailed the rabbi.
Maybe I was missing some vital piece of information.

Hey, even I know I am an airhead.

Moments later, a reply was sitting in my inbox.

“sometimes you need to go through a person's stomach to get to their soul.”

I am still not sure I get the “URGENT part, but I must admit, our community’s rather….passive and lukewarm “rush” to religious programs might be getting a much needed “boost”. We also, obviously, have not seemed to have cooled his enthusiasm…now we will just have to see if he is a good cook.

Story of the Day 8/30/2011

2011-09-05T06:27:00.000-07:00

Last night was Back-to-school night. Back –to-school-night is when the parents of the kids who are passing show up, so that they can find out what the rules are in their kids’ classes and what is going on, get a copy of the teacher hand outs and the teacher’s email address; and the parents whose kids are on the honor roll can introduce themselves to the teachers by saying” I am so-an-so’s mother/father” and it is usually both parents and the forst one says, “I am so-and-so’s father” and the second one says “ I am so-and-so’s mother” although, on rare occasion the order is reversed, and then they stand there and glare at the teacher with over-amplified smiles waiting to be told how wonderful their kid is; and the parents of the kids who are having some self-esteem issues or struggling a bit show up and hope the teacher says one nice thing or that they can figure out which evil parent has the son or daughter who is bullying their child or maybe even find the parent of the one kid who is being very friendly to theirs; and the parents of the kids who are in special ed can show up and try to figure out why their kids are having trouble with a specific class; and the parents of the kids with heavy duty special needs come in to try to figure out what their kids have been telling them about school, or to thank a teacher for making an extra effort, or even just to visualize what the class would look like with their child sitting in it.

On occasion, you see nice things- things that inspire, like the parents who have been divorced who are going from class to class and sitting together so they can talk about what their kid needs, or a parent who obviously came straight from a hard day at work and who is taking copious notes about what their kid can do for extra credit and what class their kid needs so that their kid can go to college, and be the first person in their family to do so. Or when there are two parents and a student (when students are not really supposed to be there) and maybe a little brother or sister, and the student is going with the parents from class to class and patiently interpreting everything, so that the parents will know what the teacher has said- and the parents are not only not discouraged by the language barrier, but the kid is not ashamed.

And I fall into a couple of the categories, if you want to know.

I am the parent who really wanted to see who in the heck was the Jdahmr wanna be’s parent(s), and also wanted to tell a teacher that Sarah was really happy he hadn’t excused her for a project, yesterday, that had to do with sound- rather, he set it up so that she could actually do it. And, I wanted to see where Sarah sat, in a couple of classes, and what some of these teachers were like, from her funky descriptions.

Of course, when Aaron was in school there, I had to pray his teachers found him amusing and didn’t want to have us string him from the chandelier by his thumbs for constantly disrupting the class with comments he thought were funny…. Going around as Sarah’s mother is infinitely easier.

Sorry, Aaron.

And I learned a few things, too. Which is what parents are supposed to do, at Back-to-school-night.

I learned that the Lesbian was a thespian.

I have no idea if she is also a lesbian or not, and if she is corrupt, corrupted or corrupting or not , but I did learn the vocabulary word that Sarah missed learning. “Thespian”. Okay.
But I still have no idea how that ties in with cybersex, or with Hamas in Detroit.

I also found out that Sarah can’t read Hebrew.
This was news to me, since Sarah has been able to read Hebrew for a while.
The teacher, however, carefully explained that he had transliterations just for Sarah, in his class. Just for her because she can’t read the Hebrew.

Of course, why a transliteration ( phonetics) would help a deaf kid who cannot hear or speak, or why he thinks it could….
No, Sarah can read the Hebrew. She needs the transliterations because of Megan.

When Megan was the interpreter, more than a year ago, she was given a paper to study over the summer .
She had all summer to learn the Hebrew alphabet.
Actually, she didn’t even need to learn it, she just had to learn the Israeli Sign Language fingerspelling handshapes. And, since 80% of them match up to the ASL handshapes for the alphabet, and make the same sounds, it would have been very easy.
This would have also meant that Megan wouldn’t’ need to understand any of the Hebrew being used in the classroom, she could just sound out what Sarah spelled to her on the occasion that he teacher wanted a “verbal response from Sarah..
Except that Megan immediately lost the paper, and didn’t bother to ask for another copy.

Of course, it was summer- but she was at school every day of both summer sessions, that summer, since she was interpreting for Sarah, so she could have easily asked for another copy.
But she didn’t.
And the first day of Hebrew class, there was a problem, because Sarah was all set and ready to read the Hebrew off to her , and Megan hadn’t prepared. So Megan told the teacher that Sarah needed it all transliterated- written out in “English” phonetics, so she – Sarah, the deaf kid, could read the Hebrew.

Now, after she left, which was into the second quarter, there was a string of sub interpreters who were not going to be able to walk in that day and use the Hebrew fingerspelling, but Megan had set it up so that the teacher thought Sarah couldn’t read the Hebrew without it- not that it was to help the interpreter- and he has persisted in that belief , ever since.

And he has made a point of telling her classmates that she needs it, a couple of times a week, ever since then.

And he made a point of telling the parents this at Back-to-school-night.
It is an accommodation he is making for the poor-dumb-deaf-kid who can’t read Hebrew. When, in reality, he is making it for the unprofessional, dumb ex-interpreter who was simply covering up the fact that she was lazy.

Megan- the gift that keeps on giving.

And as for the Jdahmr wanna be’s parents? They didn’t come. Which was okay, because I am not sure if I would feel sorry for them or if they would spook me as he has spooked Sarah , and I am not sure I really want to find out.

Story of the Day 8/ 26/ 2011 #3- not a story, just an addendum of things

2011-09-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

According to the daily reports I have been receiving from Sarah, the speech to text has been a bit better. It was almost good for one class, this past week. Of course, the next day, the clarity of what it typed up was mud…or worse.

For example, in one of Sarah’s classes, she was taught about cremation.

Of course, since that class is with the J-D-W-B (JdahmrWanaBe*) student, she thought, at first, that maybe they were actually talking about cremation. Fortunately, the interpreter is good, so Sarah realized that the correct vocabulary word was “claymation”, but it did wake her up.

That student, the J-D-W-B, has impacted a lot of what Sarah gets and doesn’t get in her classes.

He has so revolted the woman in charge of the speech-to-text service, that she will not repeat his words into the microphone, nor type them. In this case, unfortunately, the interpreter is good, and Sarah still has to “hear” them.

* Which is as close as we can get to his name without google sending people looking for stuff about him to this site

Story of the Day 8/26/2011 #2

2011-09-04T13:54:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there are several people at North Central High School who think that Sarah can talk

Sarah is often treated to people who believe she can speech read what they are saying, and sometimes she can, but I promise you that she cannot talk. At least, not with her voice.

This evening, Sarah asked me why people think she can. She demonstrated how, when they ask her questions, she mouths what the words are. She can do that, she can move her lips and face around to mimic what the Hearing people do to communicate; she just can’t do the sound part of it.

I thought a moment.
I asked, “Sarah, is this happening in the cafeteria?”
Sarah was astounded at my deductive skills. She said I should get a Sherlock Holmes badge.
I will have to see which cereal box has them.
Okay, I am joking about the badge.
But she was amazed.

I explained, “It is loud in the cafeteria. It is so loud that the Hearing people would not be able to hear your voice if you were actually using it. Well, at least, not unless you were screaming. So, they think you are using it, and, like everything else, they just can’t hear it above the din.”

Of course, for Sarah, the cafeteria is totally quiet.

Sarah is enjoying the fact that she can keep them fooled, at least until they run into her outside of lunchtime.

Story of the Day 8/ 26/2011

2011-09-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in Hebrew class, Mr. Cohen asked Sarah what was new- as in new and in the news.
She said, “I don’t know of anything.”
So, he went and asked the next student.

Apparently, he asks this question with some frequency, and Sarah never has anything to add. I wouldn’t have known this; in fact, I knew nothing at all about it until Sarah told me of this custom, yesterday afternoon. The reason she told me is that, afterwards, the teacher asked her to make sure to have something to tell, tomorrow. Tomorrow being today.

So Sarah gave me an assignment, I was to find something interesting in the morning newspaper for her to share.

Oh, Sarah reads the newspaper, every day. Actually, that is why we subscribe. Long ago, I figured that any time my kids expressed an interest in reading something, I would buy it.
This might sound spendthrift, but it is really quite the opposite.
Very few deaf adults read well. The average deaf high school graduate reads at below a 4th grade level.
I figured that books, magazines, newspapers and comic books were a lot cheaper (and therefore a better investment) than tutoring.
So far, I have been right. Both Aaron and Sarah read at an adult level.
At any rate, Sarah reads the newspaper, every day. But what she reads, which is why we subscribe, is the sports section.

I bet you thought we only got it so that I could read the comics and do the puzzles, but I really only look at that as a fringe benefit. Like the bubble gum you get with the baseball cards, although the bubble gum was so inedible that even the baseball cards ceased including it.

At any rate, after I have read the comics, I actually read the rest of the paper.

Okay, I am lying.

I actually read the comics last. That is because I need to work up to the best part. I read the front section of national and international news, first, and then the metro and state section, and then the obituaries, and then, and only then, the comics.
Except that this is Indiana, so the front section is also almost entirely local news.
On the rare occasion that I find something interesting, I hand it to Sarah, so basically, she was just asking me to make sure that I found something interesting, this morning.

The problem is that there wasn’t. Oh, there is the hurricane, but that was talked about yesterday. And no little additional details about the grocery stores being emptied is going to make quite the right impression since it is “old” news.
But, then, I realized that here was a fascinating piece of news that none of her classmates nor her teacher would already have heard about. You see, the BBC, which is famous for its news broadcasts, just fired Leslie Grange.
They fired her for embellishing and fabricating the news. Apparently, when the earthquake rocked Japan and they had a leaking nuclear reactor, instead of just conveying the facts, Ms. Grange told of how radioactive zombies were roaming the area around the nuclear plant. And that Rebecca Brooks (and I have no idea who that is) raped a monkey, and a variety of other interesting “news” items.

And why have none of her classmates nor her teacher heard a word about this? Because it only affected Deaf viewers of the BBC. You see, Leslie Grange is an interpreter who has been interpreting the BBC news for 7 years. She is shown in the lower corner of their broadcasts interpreting what the newscasters say into BSL – British Sign Language.

Apparently, she started revising the news about 6 months ago. Deaf viewers sent in complaints, but, because they were deaf, no one at he BBC paid any attention to them and didn’t’ investigate.

When it was finally discovered and Ms. Grange was fired, she had this to say:

“I would like to apologise to everyone in the deaf community,” Grange told reporters today, “though when I had Cameron tell Obama “your statesmen-like profile leaves my willy plump” – well, frankly I don’t think that is so very far from the truth.”

Source: http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2011/08/17/bbc-sign-language-interpreter-sacked-for-changing-the-news/

Sarah has decided to tell about this without mentioning anyone’s willy.

Story of the Day 8/24/2011 #2

2011-09-03T20:40:00.001-07:00

Today, in music class, the teacher offered to provide Sarah with copies of the song lyrics. Perhaps even having them projected in real-time, although, since the speech to text system isn’t working very well, that could be dangerous.

Sarah was a bit surprised. You see, she hadn’t signed up for a music class.

It turns out that she is in one, or, at least, in a musical one. Apparently, the physics teacher plays music in the background during class.

She assured him that he needed give her the lyrics or have them provided in real-time, since it will not affect her grade or what she does or doesn’t learn with regard to physics.

She didn’t tell him that, if he hadn’t mentioned this, she could have sat in class, all year, and never known there was any music in the background.

I wish her teachers would be so accommodating for the things she really does need to access the classroom information.

The theme for the Stories of the Day, today, seems to be related to music and lyrics.
Since the two children currently at home are both deaf, and each of them has provided me with one, it definitely is alluding to their being some mysterious musical karma surrounding today.

Story of the Day 8/ 24/ 2011

2011-09-02T05:48:00.001-07:00

My son is working on his next rap song.
He said to me, “Sexy and prestige rhyme.”

I had to stop for a moment to take a deep breath. “Um, Aaron, they don’t.”

“Yes they do!”

“Aaron, you are deaf. Maybe they rhyme to a deaf person, but they do not rhyme if you are hearing.”

I don’t think my words made an impact.
I can still hear him repeating the words over and over with different intonation- getting them to rhyme.

Story of the Day 8/ 17/ 2011 – Addendum

2011-09-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

Story of the Day 8/ 17/ 2011 – Addendum

I’ve had several emails from people who absolutely couldn’t believe that BH, the administrator in charge of Special Education at my daughter’s school ( North Central High School) could possibly have tried to do what I said she did, in the Story of the Day from 8/17/2011.

Well, she did.
I tried to scan the report that she presented to me as the “Assessment” that was required to have been completed, but was stymied because I couldn’t figure out how to upload the scan to this blog….but that is why G-d invented the digital camera, so, instead, I took a lovely photo of the first page, and if you read the 2nd paragraph , you can see where it says that no assessment was done. The recommendations, which I have not completely photographed (because they include a second page), tell how to do an assessment.

I also took a photo of the email from the TOR/teacher of record- special education teacher telling me to come in and have the “Assessment” reviewed.

This is why I have the phrase “ Real life is stranger than any fiction I could compose.” Under the title of my Blog.

Story of the Day 8/ 23 2011 #2

2011-09-01T06:12:00.001-07:00

Sarah’s mission in life is to teach sign language. She didn’t choose it, but there is this plethora of over-eager Hearing people who seek her out- sometimes individually and sometimes in groups.

I have explained to her that this is the penalty of being the only deaf student in a large public high school, and at a time when a popular TV show, Switched at Birth, has brought attention to deafness and sign language via a “hot” young actor. Sarah, who knows him, will argue about the “hot” part, but she actually has hearing friends who think that. I have told Sarah not to roll her eyes too loudly.

So, Sarah was out there among the natives, today, and one of them approached her to show her the 4 signs that someone else had taught her. There was the sign for work, and the one for hot chocolate, and the one for…except that every single one of them was a vulgar sign.

While the excited youngster was demonstrating her sign vocabulary for Sarah, Sarah’s interpreter was cringing. Sarah, however, was not. She has learned these signs and many worse ones from previous interpreters who also thought they were just normal educational vocabulary or proper terms. I don’t mean that she learned these signs from them, but she was exposed to the true extent of idiocy- and in the case of the interpreters, from people who were supposed to know the correct signs. In this case, it was from a kid who had, obviously, been hoodwinked by someone who is not very nice.

This happened right at the start of Sarah’s Animation/ Film Production class.

Later, during the same class, another student came up, also excited to share the few sign language words she had learned from somewhere. Amazingly, these were also …not the right words. And again, the interpreter cringed , while Sarah just gave the student the correct signs for what the girl thought she had been saying.
And this was all just during one class.

I give the interpreter a few more weeks, and she will be used to this.

Story of the Day 8/16/2011 #2

2011-08-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

(another out of sequence story...apologies!)

What was I saying?
About the dearth of stories?

So, there I was innocently sitting in Herron and drawing a naked person, and my telephone starts vibrating.
And I have 4 new text messages, all from Sarah.
She has turned red and orange, and her skin is burning and can I immediately leave drawing and drive home? Only, not too quickly, because she doesn’t want me to crash.
3 Benadryl, 1 Advil and a lot of hydrocortisone later, it is 11:22 PM and I am typing this up and wondering if she will still be creatively colored for her first day back to school, tomorrow……

I can see her filing out the first form of the day in homeroom:

Name Sarah L. Margolis- Greenb ( the rest won’t fit)
Age: 17
Race: red and orange

Okay, that isn’t’ an option under race. And, I actually have already filled out the forms. For race I checked “ other” and wrote in “ human”.
And I worry about people who claim to belong to a different one.

Story of the Day 8/23/2011

2011-08-30T12:05:00.001-07:00

Remember the Jeffrey Dahmer- wanna-be?

Sadly, so do I, and so does Sarah.

And, apparently, so did another student.
We know this because a parent complained to the school about the incident.
And that parent was not me.

Which made me realize two things.
#1- I should have complained.
And
#2- There is another parent out there who is willing to call the school.

Hallelujah!

Story of the Day 8 / 19/ 2011

2011-08-30T04:22:00.001-07:00

I need to remember to braid a garlic necklace and prepare a crucifix for Sarah to take to school on Monday.
Wait! We are Jewish, so what do I substitute for the crucifix? Some matzoh balls?
And I should probably make matching necklaces for the interpreter and the typist.

Sarah had texted me, before she arrived home that something creepy had happened at school, today.

Immediately, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Unfortunately, we’ve had a few too many experiences with the words creepy and school being joined.

Since Dave, the old interpreter, is the old interpreter, and what’s his face from ISD is unlikely to ever again be hired at a school, I wasn’t sure what the source of creepy was…but I didn’t have to wait long to find out.

Yesterday evening, Sarah had homework. She had to prepare a one-minute speech about herself to be presented in third person. This same assignment was given to all of her peers in her animation and film production class.

One at a time, the students got up to give their speeches. Some were depressing.
I take that back. There are 18 students in the class. According to Sarah, 12 of them sounded depressed, and since this is the good interpreter, Sarah believes she was getting a very accurate rendering of what they were saying and how they were saying it. So, forget “some”, most of them seemed depressed.

One student had been badly bullied and eager to graduate early so that he could escape from this place of bad memories, another was anxious- not about giving his speech, just about life.
One girl was so animated and excited that she stood out from the crowd.
But not for long.
That is because one young man got up and spoke about serial killers, and pedophilia and how he admired them- and how he especially admired JDahmr. ( After some testing, I found that this is the closest I can get to the guy’s actual name without this blog showing up when someone does a google search on him.) You see, JDahmer had apparently combined the “best” of both.

Admired.
Admired as in these were his heroes and he wanted to be like them.

Heck, maybe I should send in the crucifix after all. It couldn’t hurt.

Story of the Day 8/18/2011 #2

2011-08-29T05:14:00.001-07:00

“Nature abhors a vacuum.”
Not only was this written by a nice Jewish boy, (even though, during his lifetime, he was excommunicated,) it has many ramifications in our day-to-day lives. Maybe not in yours, but definitely in ours. Ours being mine and Sarah’s.

When Sarah’s high school finally hired a good interpreter, it left a hole- a big gaping hole, which had previously been filled by the numerous absurdities, many of them rude, which were “taught” to her by a succession of really lousy interpreters.

In order to fill this hole, nature used the hand of BH (see the 8/17 story) to substitute for the hand of God, which would have been infinitely more benevolent and has provided Sarah with a new source of outstanding educational moments.

Today Sarah was taught, “They have done cybersex and graphing goose,” which might have been a very appropriate topic in a different class. I didn’t know you could graph a goose. Oh and she was also taught, “ha ha ahead high popup” and “Hamas dakiurius money money landed in Detroit but fell down.”

I told Sarah I was glad she was so entertained during class, but that I would actually prefer that she use her memorization skills for the actual lecture information- assuming she got it, since, obviously, at that moment she was watching the speech-to-text.

I wonder if she will get an A if she puts these down as answers on the next quiz?

Story of the Day 8/18/2011

2011-08-29T04:40:00.000-07:00

(apologies- a few stories will be posted out of order. there was a backlog...a long one, for permission and corrections.)

Sarah came home from school yesterday.
That was a little bit in doubt, when her bus still hadn’t left the school 22 minutes after the kids had boarded it, at the end of the day, and even more in doubt after the bus driver took a long rambling route home and then the bus driver managed to miss my daughter’s stop.
Of course, it was a substitute driver, so we have better hopes for today. But, of course, this was complicated by the fact that my daughter wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do when the driver went right past her stop.

She raised her arm, and then she realized the driver wasn’t looking in her direction,(thank G-d, since that would have meant looking 180 degrees away from the road- or at least the road in front of the bus.) And she couldn’t’ exactly do what the other students do, in similar situations, since she can’t easily shout out” Hey, you just passed my stop!” Since she is deaf and can’t speak those words, none-the-less shout them,

Fortunately, the driver did end up stopping not all that far from where she needed to be (home, which is where the heart and the bathroom are), and she did arrive home, albeit, at a rather late hour.

And when she came home, after using the aforementioned bathroom, she told me numerous stories from her very busy day.
She told me all about the Lesbian Corruption- which we have still not figured out, and about cybersex and graphing goose.

Story of the Day 8/17/2011 #3

2011-08-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

So, Sarah had an otherworldly experience, today.
Not with the interpreter, not with drugs, not even with dee-jaying for the student radio station, which she hasn’t actually done, she has only thought about.

Sarah had this experience because, today, at school, her Resource teacher- this is the special education teacher who is “in charge” of Sarah, spent several minutes stressing how everything had to be accessible for Sarah.

Apparently, she even gave a bit of a lecture about the importance of this to the two people in charge of the speech to text system, which might account for why the young man was so nervous and the woman was so flustered. You see, it probably wasn’t at all related to the Lesbian corruption.

Since this is the same resource teacher who seemed to think that Sarah being taught about how to measure the surface area of body parts was good access, Sarah thinks that the original resource teacher may have been abducted by aliens and replaced with one who looks the same, but has a very different outlook.

Story of the Day 8/17/2011 #2

2011-08-28T12:04:00.001-07:00

After lunch, Sarah’s first class is animation and Film Production.
It is a two period class that is taught at the J. Everret Light Career Center. JEL serves a number of school districts and offers business classes, car repair classes, dental technician classes and a variety of other programs. A few years ago, Aaron, Sarah’s older brother, also took a class at JEL. He took Radio and Television Production. That class is no longer offered, since radio technology has gone the way of the Edsel and all those 45s- which contrary to what people under 20 years of age believe are not guns.

There are 17 other students in the class and they will be working on a variety of projects, this semester.

The teacher assured them that there will be ample opportunities to earn extra credit. They can earn this extra credit by staying after school and dee-jaying for the school’s radio station.

Sarah thinks this might be a very fun way to earn extra credit. At first she thought, “I wonder how they will feel about my signing into the microphone?” and then, her second thought was, “I could sign very, very dramatically, and then the interpreter will have to match her voice/presentation to it!” Sarah thought this might be a lot of fun.

The interpreter, however, might not.

Story of the Day 8/17/2011

2011-08-28T08:31:00.001-07:00

Today was Sarah’s first day back to school- the first day of the fall semester.
She is now a junior, an eleventh grader, and some of her classes are a bit more complicated and advanced and sophisticated, and I suspect that may be part of why she came home, today, and told me about a rather confusing thing she was taught in one of her classes.

The topic was “Lesbian corruption”.
When she told me that, I thought, “Do they mean what/who is corrupting lesbians or what are lesbians corrupting or...” and I really had to wonder for a moment.
And then Sarah explained to me that she learned this phrase because of the new speech to text system the school has put in place.

You see, not only was today the first day that Sarah had the benefit of the wonderful new interpreter, it is also Sarah’s first day benefiting from a wonderful new technology called speech to text.
If you have never been exposed to it, it is having what is spoken in the classroom by the teacher and the students- the lectures, the discussions, the questions and answers- typed up and displayed on a monitor (usually a television monitor or a computer screen) for the deaf student to read what is being said. It is a lot like closed captioning on the television. It makes the words that are spoken accessible to people who cannot hear them.

This is a wonderful technology. It is helpful for students like Sarah, who are Deaf and use ASL, but it is even more helpful to students who are deaf or hard or hearing and do not know sign language, or are learning it, but are not yet fluent enough to follow an interpreter.

Now Sarah has an interpreter, and she is fluent in sign language, so why would she need this?

Well, in case you have not been reading the stories of the past 18 months, Sarah has had a series of truly unskilled interpreters. For three semesters and two summer sessions, she has spent the vast majority of the time at the mercy of interpreters who didn’t know enough ASL to know the numbers or how to sign “triangle” or even how to introduce themselves and give their own names.

There have been intervals, some lasting half a day, some lasting a bit longer, when Sarah had good interpreters, and there have even been a few occasions when she had incredibly good interpreters, but for the bulk of the time, she has sat in class and had almost no idea what was being said- what the teacher was teaching, what the class was discussing, and who was making drug deals.

Hopefully that last bit didn’t happen, but how would she know?

As the months dragged on, Sarah’s obnoxious mother (me) started requesting in meeting after meeting and case conference after case conference that the school provide speech to text services. And month after month at each and every meeting and case conference at which Sarah’s obnoxious mother kept requesting the service be considered, the school’s administrator, Mrs. BH, refused to discuss it. Of course, she didn’t exactly refuse, she would determine the agenda, and place it towards the end, and then end the meeting by saying, “Well, we are out of time, we will have to discuss this, next time.” I am not joking. And since Sarah’s obnoxious mother and her very wonderful RPR (special education advocate) had no authority to alter the agenda or force BH to stay in the room for 5 more minutes, the months dragged on with Sarah having no access to the classroom education.

Eventually, Sarah’s obnoxious mother utilized the brains of a very intelligent friend and was advised to present a signed and dated request to BH. So, at the next case conference in January of 2011, I did just that, well, not during the case conference, because, once again, I had requested the speech to text services be put on the agenda, and BH played the old. “Oh gee, sorry, we ran out of time.” At which point I handed the signed request to her.

She was not thrilled.

She was also not especially thrilled when I notified her that I was requesting to have the results of the assessment reviewed with me prior to the case conference. You are now allowed to say, “Huh?” Well, when I put in the signed request, the school had 60 school calendar days to do the assessment and have a conference to review the findings/recommendations of the assessment. Of course, my requesting that the results be reviewed with me prior to the case conference meant they had a few less days to get this done. Of course, since the 60 days would be up on April 14th or April 15th or maybe April 18th (it became bit hard to figure out because of a combination of snow days and make up for snow days) that meant they really only had and entire 2 ½ months to set this up.

And as that hard to determine deadline approached, I had to email the school several times to try to get a case conference date set up…and, even with my nagging the best the school seemed to be able to do was to slightly miss the deadline.

And when I asked about when they were actually going to meet with me to review the assessment (which, as far as I knew had not yet taken place and this was already the first week of April), I was finally given the option of meeting with them on April 14th- a very lovely Thursday morning.

I will admit that when they finally emailed me and gave me a date to have the assessment reviewed, I was thrilled. I wasn’t sure exactly how they had managed to get it done, since it is rather hard to do an assessment of the educational needs without anyone ever visiting Sarah’s classroom (which as far as Sarah and I knew, had not occurred, at least not while Sarah was in the classroom), I figured that progress was finally being made.

But I was wrong.

I showed up at North Central High School a few minutes early and was taken into the conference room by BH. She handed me a copy of the report and then she said, “I’d like to review the recommendations with you.”
I stopped her and said that I would prefer to read the report, first. Since it seemed to be all of two pages, and fronts only, no backs, I figured that this would not be an issue. I was wrong. BH said that there was no need to read it, since we could just got right to the recommendations.
I insisted that I wanted to read the report, first. BH expressed her displeasure, but I started to read it, anyhow.

After reading the first three paragraphs and quickly scanning the rest, I looked up at he rand I said, “This isn’t an assessment.”

BH told me I was wrong and that it was an assessment.

I said, that it wasn’t. And she again insisted that it was.
I then read the paragraph to her, where it stated that no assessment was done.
I suspected that this particular detail was why she was so insistent that I not read the report. I could be wrong, but…

By then we had been joined by Sarah’s TOR (Teacher of Record) - who is her resource teacher- the teacher who is responsible for her special education needs being met.

Since she was the person who had sent me the email to attend this review of an assessment that she must have known had never been done, my estimation of her ethics, her credibility and her interest in providing my daughter’s need be met went down. Very far down.

That did not happen with my estimation of any of BH’s character traits, since this was simply the most blatant in a series of rather unprofessional things that she had been involved in regarding my daughter.

Needless to say, she was also totally unfazed by this minor blip- the blip being that I was now aware that she had decided to try to not do the assessment she was required to have done (federal special education legislation, not some simple minor thing like the local public school’s policy) and that I should accept that. I say this because her next statement was, that we should now look at the recommendations of the “assessment”.

So, BH and EP (the TOR) started discussing how to do that.

What is that? I mean what were the recommendations? That an assessment be done. The same assessment I had requested be done that we were supposedly currently reviewing and having a case conference regarding. Next week.

Needless to say, that case conference was now cancelled.

I had read the “assessment” that wasn’t, and I saw that it had been written by Crossroads, I asked BH, “When did you request this assessment be done?”
Somehow, I had this odd idea that maybe the reason no assessment had been done was that Brenda had managed to wait until April 1st to request it, Crossroads told her they couldn’t and she hadn’t enough time to get a real assessment done.

BH replied to me that she had contacted Crossroads at the start of February. Then she revised her remark and said that it might have been the second week of February.

I thought a moment, and then I asked, “And when did they inform you that they couldn’t do the assessment?”

Brenda turns to the second page of the report and tells me that the date was right there “April 13th” and that is when Crossroads informed her that they could not do the assessment.

It was April 14th and she said she had contacted Crossroads the second week of February and they were only letting her know YESTERDAY that they couldn’t do the assessment? I have used Crossroads for a variety of services and referred people to it for a variety of things for more than 17 years and I have never know them to be anything less than professional, and responsible and timely. Something smelled…bad.

As BH and EP jabbered on about how they were going to set up to do an assessment, I told them that I was not going to sit there and have my time wasted, and I left.

That afternoon, I called Crossroads and left a message for the man who had written the report. He called me back, less than half an hour later and answered several questions for me in a very friendly and open way, which was consistent with my previous experiences with that agency.
BH had contacted him, at the earliest, at the end of March. He explained that he had to do some research and find out what speech to text services were and what would be involved in doing an assessment and it was a while until he got back to her- an entire 2 or possibly 3 days. No, not any longer than that. And he was apologetic about how long that had taken him!

I asked him, “Why then did you wait until yesterday to write a report about it?”

He explained to me that the report had nothing to do with BH asking him about doing the assessment and that he would never have written that in response to her request.
At this point I was confused and I asked him, “then why did you write this report?”

He explained that BH had contacted him on Monday- on April 11th. She frantically requested to meet with him as soon as possible to generate some kind of report- and the report was not a result of her asking him to do an assessment, it was simply a result of the meeting they had on Wednesday where the topic was “how could an assessment be done”– which is why it was written on Wednesday, so that Brenda had some sort of “fake” assessment to give to me, the next day.

And I had left BH and EP discussing how (from this report) the two of them could now set up and do this assessment all by themselves. Isn’t that reassuring?

So, I called Dr. F. Dr. F is the director of Special Education for our local school system. That means she is BH’s boss. Dr. F is not always easy to work with, but unlike Brenda, she is ethical and professional. I had a suspicion she was not going to be terribly happy to find out that this had been done by her “system”.
I had to leave three phone messages. That is because the time limit on the messages and my “I forgot to mention that” way of doing things turned it into a sequence of lovely calls. Oh yes, and I had asked the gentleman at Crossroads if he would mind speaking with Dr. F and explaining to her what he had explained to me.

Incidentally, I keep asking myself what in the heck I did in a previous life to deserve to have to deal with some of these people.

Which after Dr. F investigated this and was, in fact, not thrilled, I do not need to do, anymore. Well, I did for a short period of time, but since it was going to literally be impossible for the school to reestablish any credibility, if they expected me to deal with BH as the administrator, she was, at least for us, history. I do wish to express sympathy, however, for the myriad of other students and parents who still need to deal with her.

As for EP, we are still stuck dealing with her. And, to be honest, Sarah and I both feel conflicted about this, although for somewhat different reasons.

On the one hand, I used to believe that EP really cared about her students and about doing a good job, but the fact that she would participate in this fabrication that prevented Sarah from receiving a service that would be beneficial to her in a timely way, that EP would actively lie to a parent, and that she has, over the 18 months that Sarah has been at this high school, mostly not been supportive of Sarah and her needs makes me wonder who I the heck EP is. Was she too scared of BH (her boss) to do anything other than go along with this? Why didn’t she go over BH’s head and let Dr. F know that this dishonesty was being perpetrated?

At what point did this weird game become more important than her student?

And Sarah has sat through meetings where she has been accused of lying when she has said that she couldn’t understand the interpreter- and EP has not only not backed her up, but has done the opposite. And when Sarah has needed supports, Elisa was on the front lines of denying them. And when Sarah said she was struggling and not getting information in the classroom, information the other kids were getting from the lectures, and said how hard she had to work to try to figure it out, after getting home, EP backed up BH when BH said Sarah was lying. So Sarah is hurting from that.

I think we are both having a hard time understanding EP. I know I feel a mixture of distrust and confusion.

At any rate, so there it was, mid April and there was no assessment and BH was now ready to do it by herself- or her and EP as the dynamic duo.

Oddly, Dr. F had a feeling that I would not find this reassuring and that it most certainly, at this point, could not be considered a credible evaluation if either of them were involved in doing it, so, at that late date, the school actually did contact an outside agency to do a real assessment.

So, when the assessment for this service was finally completed, and the evaluator determined that this would be a good service for her for most of her classes, we rejoiced.

Sarah and I rejoiced.

BH (and this was towards the end of her regency over Sarah), however, tried to figure out, how she could provide less of this service than was recommended, delay providing it, even though it was determined in the case conference that it should start as soon as possible and even tried to say that Sarah should not have the interpreter, if she was getting this service. As for the last item, even though the interpreter, at that time, was basically worthless (or worse), the school found it was stuck having to provide both services since the reason for the speech-to-text was to supplement the information from the interpreter- not to replace it.

The reality, though, was that Sarah and I both looked at it as the rescue from Sarah having to figure out what the interpreter was mangling.

Time passed, and the school decided that they were not going to simply provide the old standard CART service they had provided in previous years to a different student (CART being a system where a typist sat in the classroom and typed up what was said)- but rather they were purchasing a system where the teacher would speak into a microphone and a fancy computer program would then render what was said into text.

Of course, in case you hadn’t guessed, although there was an initial outlay of money for this system, the reason the school was interested in it was that they figured they would not need to pay someone to sit and type hour after hour. Buy the program, buy the equipment, spend a few thousand dollars, and that was it.

The person who made this decision was none other than the very wise administrator who happens to have some serious ethics issues. Yep, BH.

Of course, BH failed to do any research regarding this wonderful system the school purchased. All she seemed to see was a relatively small outlay at the beginning and then no additional outlay for an extra body to sit and type hour after hour, day after day, for two more years. I know this because when the school described this great system BH had ordered, it was explained to me that each teacher would train using it for a short period during the time right before school started, and then they would each be ready to forge ahead and use it from the very first day, this fall semester. This was, of course, one of the justifications for why they were not providing it immediately or even in time for the review for final exams, as the case conference committee had determined would have been beneficial for Sarah. How could they? They ordered system wouldn’t even have arrived yet.

So how did I know that BH had failed to research this program that she ordered?
I know this because I spent about 1 week emailing the company that makes the program and asking a couple of people who have used it about the program, and after my little bit of spare time research, I had grave misgivings about this working in the classroom.

First of all, at it’s best it is 90% accurate. And that 90% is with no typos or other “human” errors. It is straight vocabulary errors. So, instead of “dissecting a fetal pig”, you could be “dicing a fetid prick” - which, of course, is no more crude than measuring the surface area of a vagina… And that is not an exaggeration, because the 90% is in general conversation with no specialized or academic vocabulary. And “dissecting fetal pigs” is entirely specialized academic vocabulary. Of course, you can up the specialized academic vocabulary recognition by purchasing an additional program for each class. One for Biology 1, one for Algebra 2…and then you MIGHT get back up past 60% accuracy. Might. That is because it is made for one user. One user at a time, that is. So, the teacher can use the microphone- but not the students.

So to get back up to that sterling 90% accuracy, the teacher has to be the only one using it.

This means that the teacher has now become responsible for re-stating every single thing each student says, not just during questions and answers give and take, but also during group discussions- in other words, the teacher is now tethered to Sarah as a parrot fort anyone with whom she is working on a lab, a discussion group, a ….you get the idea.
And if you have a sub teacher or a cold, you can completely forget about accuracy.

All of the sudden, (although well after the system had been paid for and had arrived) the school realized they had to hire someone to speak into the microphone- a live body. Oh, and to type. Type? Wasn’t the idea to avoid a typist? Yes, but, you see, the inaccuracy rate renders large sections of the lecture and discussion incomprehensible, so someone has to either sit down and correct it all later (and they had better have a good idea what was said) which means that Sarah would not have benefit from this service during class, or they can have the person who is speaking into the microphone sit and correct it as the computer program spits out the mistakes- I mean the text.

Which is what happened.

The school, now realizing that this was going to require live bodies who were trained to use the equipment and the programs, hired and trained three different people, this summer. Which was an additional expense. And they had it working somewhat well, until today.

Today being the first day back to school.
Hey, isn’t this where the story started?

During pre-calculus class, the young man who was doing this practically had a nervous breakdown. Instead of the 90% accuracy he had been working towards, it was probably at 20-30%. He became so frustrated that he ended up pushing away the microphone, and just typing up what was said. He survived two classes, and aged several years.

Later in the day, he was replaced by a woman who is about my age (I haven’t met them, the descriptions of them are from Sarah- so the poor woman must be a haggard old bat, if Sarah compared her to me)- who started correcting, and correcting, and correcting, and at one point when (and only God knows what was actually said by the teacher) the program spit out “Lesbian corruption”, the woman quickly shifted in her seat to block the screen with her body so the other students (not Sarah who had already read it) wouldn’t be exposed to that particular lesson.

When Sarah came home and told me how she’d been taught about Lesbian corruption, all I could respond was….“Gee, it certainly goes with what some of the previous interpreters have been teaching you!”

Fortunately, also starting today was the good interpreter (just in case you had forgotten that detail) so Sarah didn’t spend an entire day or even an entire class learning about whatever that topic was, or about how to measure the surface area of any body parts. And, as for the poor woman who had to body block that lesson, she was supposed to also provide the speech to text service for Sarah’s last class (Physics), but Sarah told her it was okay to not do that today. She didn’t want the poor woman to have a nervous breakdown.

Of course, since I had actually reached the conclusion after my “research”, months ago, that this system might work exactly as it worked today I put in a request that the service be evaluated for how it was working, 3 weeks after school started, which is now three weeks from today…Evaluated and discussed at another case conference.

Okay, I lied, slightly. Even after my research, I thought it would work quite a bit better than it did, today.

Hey, but tomorrow is another day!

Story of the Day 8/16/2011

2011-08-17T18:09:00.000-07:00

There have been no stories.

I was warned about this.

Saturday, in synagogue- and no, we were not talking during the services (although, we do an awful lot of that), this was after services while we were eating lunch, Susan said to me “What are you going to do, you won’t have any stories?”

You see, as of last week, the incredibly lousy interpreter is gone and instead of my daughter’s school just hiring another lousy interpreter, or even a slew of them, one after another, day after day, a miracle has occurred, and they hired a good interpreter.
Not only is she good, she is normal. I mean, she is moral and ethical and professional, and she even knows the correct sign for triangle.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, one of the really wonderful (not) interpreters, during math class, spent the entire lecture explaining to my daughter how to measure the surface area of triangles and right triangles and…. except, instead of using the correct sign for triangle, she kept signing “vagina”.

But since this new interpreter actually has a normal vocabulary, and ethics, and she can even understand my daughter, and she has ethics, did I forget to mention that she has ethics? I mean the good kind? I may be suffering from a dearth of stories.

Of course, as I said to Harriet, one of my other children will probably rise to the occasion and fill in the empty spaces…unfortunately.

Story of the Day 8/ 8/ 2011

2011-08-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

This evening starts the Jewish holiday of Tishe B’Av. It is one of those holidays that is almost impossible to explain to a non-Jew, especially a western one. Let it suffice for now to say that it is a solemn day, a day of mourning when we fast and abstain from pleasurable things.
Additionally, there is a short period of time leading up to it that is also solemn and introspective.
That is why it was rather odd to find myself, today, explaining some things from the New Testament- from the Christian religion to my daughter.

Today happened to be registration day at her school- North Central High School.

Years ago, this meant standing in lines for hours doing all of the business parts of registering your children. You had to pay the book rental and other fees, sign emergency forms, fill out health forms for the school, etc. Nowadays, since you can pre-register on-line and do most of the things that way, it entails standing in a line to get a slip of paper to have your photo taken for the yearbook, standing in a second line to get your school schedule, bus schedule and assignment book, and possibly wasting some time buying an overpriced sweatshirt or a parking pass.

A process that used to take at least 90 minutes has been reduced to ten, and that is if you arrive when it is busy.

Everything was going very smoothly. I had not managed to embarrass my daughter, she had managed to avoid running into more than 4 people that she knew, and we were about to leave the building, when she looked at the front of her new assignment book.

The front of the assignment book has been decorated with the visages of the principal and the 3 assistant principals riding horses and bearing weapons, just like heroic knights.

At least, I think they must have meant it to be heroic- the problem is that the only thing that I could think of, when I looked at it, was the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And then I had to explain the reference to my daughter.

This has created a bit of a conundrum for her- and she does like that word because now she will need to decide which each of them represents.

.

Story of the Day, What is today? 8/4/2011

2011-08-04T14:36:00.001-07:00

I looked at my daughter and I said, “Next week is your birthday and you will be 18.”

She gave me a quizzical look and said, “No, I will be 17!” And I could see that she was rather worried, either about my sanity or about my math skills.

I replied, “No, Sarah, you will be 18 or maybe even 20. You see, a week like we have just had ages you I mean, REALLY ages you.”

She thought for a moment, and she said, “Maybe 50.”

Story of the Day 7/31/2011

2011-08-03T12:11:00.001-07:00

Our synagogue has a new rabbi.
He is energetic and cheerful.
Hopefully, we will not sabotage that, too soon.

As part of his energetic , optimistic, cheerful 1st week here, he set up for morning services, this morning. Sunday. Not Saturday, which means people having to roll out of their pajamas and hike on over to synagogue. Okay, it is Etz Chaim, they can come in their pajamas.
Anyhow, about 6 minutes after services started, I get a phone call from the rabbi. Can I send Larry over? Aaron is there, but Larry went off to the earlier morning service at the other synagogue across the street.
Well, Larry wasn’t back yet, but I said I would send him on over to make minyan. A minyan is a “quorum”. For traditional Jews that means 10 men over the age of 13 which is a necessity in order to do the full prayer service..

Not surprisingly, few minutes later, Larry comes home and I send him off to synagogue.
Larry comes home about 50 minutes later. He tells me that he had expected to arrive and be the tenth man, and have the others give him a relieved” finally!” look.
But that isn’t what happened.
As it turned out, Larry was only number 9.

After searching high and low for another live body, Jeff, one of the young and energetic members of the congregation ( we haven’t killed his spirit , yet, so maybe there is hope for the rabbi!), called the younger of the two Lubavitch rabbis who live in town. This one comes, sometimes, on Shabbat for services and is friendly, even on a bad day.

Jeff calls him up and says, “Say, have you had the opportunity of fulfilling the mitzvah of putting on teffilin today?”

If you are not Jewish, you will totally miss this. Sorry.

Story of the Day 7/30/2011

2011-08-02T18:59:00.001-07:00

I received a letter in the mail. From IU high school.
Remember that midterm exam that Sarah took? The one that took two trips down to IUPUI’s testing Center? Well, Sarah certainly remembers it.
Very well.
Very, very well.

The letter was from IU high school. They have a policy that, for the very first exam you take in your first IU high school course, you can do a retake. I think they reason that because the format will be new to many students, and for some it will be their first high school exam, the students will do relatively poorly and this retake will help to absorb the impact of that discomfort from the unfamiliar.

Well, I think that Sarah had more than the normal share of discomfort, and she also tested very low on it, lower than is normal for her. She received an 82%. She indubitably would have done better if she were more comfortable. Instead of doing what she should have and going through and solving the problems and then double checking, she rapidly did the test, and didn't double check, and left the room mostly just glad, not to be done with the test, but to be out of that office.
The test was suppose to take 90 minutes. Sarah is entitled to extra time – an extra 45 minutes, according to her IEP- well, they don’t specify the minutes, just that she can have time and a half - not pay, actual time.
She was done in less than 40 minutes, and she would have been done several minutes sooner, except there was a little calculator problem.
And she didn't breathe easily until she left that room.

So I opened up the envelope, and in it was a letter and a form from IU high school that I could submit so that she could re-take the exam.
And I thought, “Are they fucking nuts? We are not going back there an extra time!”
After we have recovered, maybe I will frame the letter.

In the meanwhile, in preparation for our trip down to the IUPUI Testing Center, on Thursday, for her final exam, I am thinking of carefully braiding some garlic necklaces and arming up with some crucifixes.