L'Shana Tovah

which means Happy New Year. Today is the first day of Rosh Hashonah, the two day celebration of the Jewish New Year.

Which I do not observe, but it did put me in a mind to tell you about my great-grandmother, who most certainly did observe. I don't think I've written about her before, but she was like a legend in my family. There was never a time I did not know about her, although she died six or seven years before I was born. I grew up knowing her as "Bubbe Pesha", but it wasn't until I was maybe twelve that I realized that Bubbe is the Yiddish word for grandma, and that her personal name was Pesha. What her last name was is part of the story.

So. Pesha Lapidus was born about 1850 into an Orthodox Jewish family that lived, we presume, in the area of Vilnius, in Lithuania, and in what we can also assume was poverty. Poverty is relative, though, and I think her fortunes went down over the course of her life there. She married at a typical age, but was soon divorced. I had always heard that the groom's family felt that she wasn't frumeh enough -- religious -- but it may be the other way around, that the groom was not observant enough for her. There were no children. She married again, to a man whose last name was Rabinovich, and with whom she was very, very happy and with whom she had six children. We are told that he was a good man and a wonderful husband. Sometime in perhaps the late 1880's, he became ill and died, as did her five youngest children. She was left a widow near 40, and with a child to support, her only remaining child, Yosef. So she did the logical thing: she married again. This time she picked, let's be frank, a loser named Avram Kapelovich. He had no interest whatsoever in supporting Pesha or Yosef; his only interest was in fathering a son, because it would be necessary to have a son to say the prayer for the dead (the Kaddush) when he died someday. So, making sure that Pesha was pregnant, he took off.

It was 1892, Pesha was pregnant and had an eight year old, and had nothing whatsoever, not even, when the time came, a place to give birth. According to Uncle Joe, who told me this story many years later, she was noticed by some women who lived in a nearby brothel, and they took her in so that she could have her baby indoors.

Avram got wind of the baby being born and showed up in time for the bris, the circumcision ceremony that takes place on a boy's eighth day of life. He named the baby Shimon Gudel; we don't know who the baby was named for. And then Avram took off again.

Pesha managed to keep her boys together and alive by selling dried fruits and nuts at a table in the marketplace. This gave her the money she needed to rent a corner of a basement room in an apartment house. Four families shared the basement, each in its own corner. There was some sort of furnace in the center of the room. Clothes for the boys were probably donations. The boys were able to go to cheder, the school where boys were sent to learn to read Hebrew and say their prayers, because it was the obligation of any Jewish community to pay the cheder fees for families too poor to pay their own.

Yosef, when he was old enough, was apprenticed in the leather-working trade (mostly shoes), which was very big in Vilnius. Shimon, when he was eight, was torn sobbing from his mother's arms by his father, who decided to take an interest in the boy's religious upbringing, and brought him along on his own meanderings around the countryside, saying prayers in exchange for a place to sleep and a bite to eat. When the food was short, or the barn was full, Shimon went to sleep hungry on a bench in the synagogue, with rats scurrying around the floor under him.

I've told this part of the story before, but it's Shimon's and not Pesha's. Suffice it to say that five years later she was all alone, her younger having gone off with his father and her elder having gone to make his way in America. One day at her stall in the marketplace, she noticed a small boy staring at her, and she tried to shoo him away, afraid that he was planning to steal from her. At last, through tears, he choked out "Mama, ich bin Shimon." (Mama, I'm Shimon.) She hadn't recognized him. He had written to his older brother in America and was told to go back to mama and wait for him to send a ship's ticket. Shimon lived with his mother again for several months; they were very happy to be back together. Neither of them ever saw Avram again.

Shimon Kapelovich left Vilnius and arrived at Ellis Island with a new name, written out for him by his brother and sent along with the ticket: Sam Robin. Yosef Rabinovich had already become Joe Robin. Sam, who realized that his brother had already done more for him than his own father ever had, was happy to take his brother's last name to replace his father's.

Tiny at 13, Sam promised Joe that he would be his slave for life, would do anything Joe asked of him, and would never ask Joe for another thing as long as they both lived. And then, as Uncle Joe told me, little Sam spent a year crying, longing for mama. He and Joe together worked until they brought their mother to live with them in America. Her name in English became Bessie Robin, but that name appears nowhere at all, except on her gravestone. She was Pesha Robin, as long as she lived.

This is picture of Sam and Pesha taken about 1910. He was 17, so she would have been around 60. And not a hint of gray, eh?



Just kidding. Pesha was an extremely observant Orthodox Jewish women, which means she wore a shetl, or wig, to cover her own hair, starting the day she was married. (Presumably, the first time she was married.) Orthodox women still observe this custom, although the wigs are better, or they cover their hair with a scarf. No man except their husbands may see their own hair, which is often cut short.

Over the years, Pesha lived either with Joe and his family or Sam and his family, which included my mother. Pesha had three grandchildren, all of whom were incredibly devoted to her. The interesting is that although Pesha and Sam were observant Orthodox Jews all of their lives, nobody else was. Uncle Joe knew all his prayers, but I never saw him say one; I think he was too cynical to be religious. Neither of Pesha's daughters-in-law were observant, nor were any of the grandchildren raised to be. My grandfather was quite devout, and observed the daily prayer rituals every day (which include morning and evening prayers for at least 30 minutes, wearing the tallis [prayer shawl] and tefillin [wooden boxes containing the scriptures which are strapped to the head and arm, like this) and all the prayers before and after eating and every other thing he did. He compromised when he needed to, and worked on Saturday during the Depression when it was the only job he could get.

Pesha, who did not speak English, btw, did not compromise. One of the stories about her is that she got up early one Saturday morning before anyone else was awake to go to services, but got lost. Within a few hours, the family had called the police, so New York's Finest was out looking for her, too. Hours later, a policeman found her in a neighborhood miles from home, and held open the door of his squadcar to give her a ride. But she shook her head, and did the "no-no-no" gesture with her finger, and said only "Shabbos," meaning the Sabbath. And the policeman walked her all the way home.

She was tiny, and she shrunk with age, so that she had maybe been four feet eight at her tallest. She was very impressed with her tall, strapping sons, who were maybe five foot three each.

In the years that she lived with either Sam's or Joe's family, she would keep house so that their wives could work. Uncle Joe had a successful store for years where Aunt Sarah helped out, and Grampa Sam had a series of unsuccessful stores where Grandma Ida pitched in; ultimately, they would both go back to the leather glovemaking industry in which they had trained and worked, until that finally petered out in the late 1950s. Anyway, Bubbe Pesha did not really know a life without work until she was quite old.

In her eighties, she became blind, no doubt from cataracts, which Uncle Joe developed, too. In her late eighties, it was decided that she would be more comfortable in a home for elderly Jewish women, where she was visited quite often by family. This is my mother and her father visiting Bubbe Pesha there.



I believe she was still wearing some kind of wig, although clearly not one for fashion, or maybe just a scarf. In the home, she would go from bed to bed each night, making sure that each of the women was covered. When she was 95, her first great-grandchild was born, my Colorado cousin. Bubbe Pesha died a year later at 96. When they saw the hair for the first time, my mother told me, most of it was still black.

Bubbe Pesha lived her life with one goal: to live the way God wanted her to. She did this by observing every ritual, every prayer, and by doing good deeds, what we call mitzvahs. When she had nothing, she would not pass a beggar in the street without giving something of the little she had. Grampa Sam was the same way. (And btw, when he got word sometime after 1920 that his father Avram had died in Europe, he dutifully said the Kaddush every day for a year, as a son is supposed to do.)

So, there.


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1867
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

And Another Thing

If you are a person who buys into the God thing -- and it's pretty clear by now that I'm on the fence -- then you know what else is really cool? That he made people with spare parts. And interchangeable parts! I mean, imagine the moment when the first doctor realized he could take an artery from a person's leg and use it to repair a damaged heart artery! Or when they did the first donor-to-recipient organ transplant. God is somewhere watching this and thinking "YES! They finally figured it out!"

And if you buy that, then it's pretty clear that God has given us the mental capacity to ultimately cure what's wrong with us, or at least a lot of it. Who's to say that the whole stem cell thing isn't his idea, because, you know, if everything comes from God, well, so do all the scientists' ideas and discoveries, too. Who are any of us to say that some of these things are okay with God and some aren't? None of us actually knows. So if you're taking stuff on faith, why not that?

I'm done now.

Ahem, moving on. The SCM is out again today, what a surprise. Not at all, actually, because I knew in advance, so, whatever. I got a lot done this morning of one kind or another, but this is a crazy week, no school for the next two days, so you kind of feel you don't want to get too involved in anything. I only had one class in today, but I set up the schedule for freshman orientation in a few weeks.

My other possible choice for the SCM's replacement emailed me this morning -- K had left her a message on Facebook -- and I emailed her back, but I haven't heard yet. I'm sure this is because she sent me her personal email address and she's at work all day, which was the right address to use if she's at work, because using your work email to talk about a new job is tacky. I'm sure she guessed right away why I wanted to hear from her. I'll check my work mail from home tomorrow and see if she's answered.

We all got the annual statements of our sick days today, so that we can check them and see if they're correct. I found a mistake on mine last year, and every day potentially counts for me, so I checked carefully. Turns out they did make one mistake, but so did I in my own record-keeping, so it all came out the same. I am carrying over 23 sick days, which is what's left of the ... um, counting ... roughly 411 I've been given over the years. Sheesh, not a great track record. Add to that this year's 10 plus this year's 3 personal days, and I've got 36 to work with, the equivalent of about seven weeks of school. I also have some extended leave days and some sick days less substitute pay that they haven't given in years, but they can't take away from oldtimers like me who got them under a previous contract. Anyway, let's all hope the word "surgery" doesn't come up at the gynecologist's office tomorrow. Why do I think it might? Have you met me?

New grammatical pet peeve: myself. Okay, it's not new, but it's been driving me batty lately. Even well-spoken people who should know better cannot figure out how to use this word. Or maybe it's that they can't figure out how to use the word "me" correctly, so they use "myself" instead. (That really is the problem.) Case in point. Last week, I heard the SCM, who is nothing if not pretentious in his use of language, explain to a student that when she was done with something she could "give it to myself or Mrs. Chai." Wait a minute ... no. No no no. This is how I hear myself most mis-used, when people are afraid to say "Report that to Mr. Jones and me" because they think "me" sounds stupid, so they say "Report that to Mr. Jones and myself," or worse, "to myself and Mr. Jones." Want to get it right? Take Mr. Jones out of the sentence for a minute. What sounds better? "Report that to myself" or "Report that to me." Me is a good word, people, but it's gotten a bad rap. Okay, we do not say "Me and you are going to the movies" because it's not correct. But when the "me" in question is the recipient of the action object in the sentence -- which we call the indirect object of the sentence -- me is the correct word to use, and if there are two indirect objects, the "me" comes second. Are we good?

(So what is "myself" for? It's a reflexive pronoun used for emphasis. "Whoever painted your house did a really good job." "I, myself, painted my house!" or "I did it myself!" You could just say "I painted my house" or "I did it", but the "myself" adds the emphasis.)

(I haven't particularly noticed this in diaries, btw, so it's not aimed at any of you out there. I keep hearing it in person and on TV. From lots and lots of people who really should know better.)

And as long as I'm rambling, let me add this: Can we please initiate a world-wide boycott of all food and medicine made in China until they get their shit together? Did we not create food safety laws in this country for a reason? Can we just decide that we're only importing food and drugs from countries with laws at least as strict as ours? Come on, guys! We do we go through all the trials and testing for new drugs if they're just going to made in China out of rat feces and poisonous chemicals?

WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1866
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Here We Go

I'm going to have to start with this, because I just read two articles in the last five minutes on more or less the same thing -- they're listed in my shared headlines box over there on the right if you're reading this entry today or tomorrow -- and I have to get it out.

There is religion and there is science. They are two separate things, but they are not incompatible. However, claiming that your religious belief -- whatever it is -- is science is not smart. It is ignorance, in the sense that you are ignoring something. Listen:

I worked with a man for several years who taught Anatomy and Advanced Placement Biology. He was an incredibly good teacher. I also knew him to be a very devout and faithful Catholic person, and I asked him once how he kept his religion and his science from contradicting each other. He smiled. He said that all the evidence of evolution was clear, and that scientists could study it and see it happening every day. There was no question about evolution or the age of the earth: these were scientific, proven facts. However, he continued, evolution is such a complex and beautiful process that it could only have come from the mind of God. How could anything else explain how evolution came to be? As for the story of creation in the Bible, he thought it was a beautiful story, and explained -- using terms that an earlier, unsophisticated society could understand -- exactly what had happened. Did God create the world in seven days? He smiled again. The word "day", he believed, was used in the story because it would have been difficult for people then to comprehend the amount of time that was really involved, and there were no words to explain it then. "Day", he felt, was a metaphor for what really happened, which was evolution as science describes it, and all because of God.

Makes sense to me.


Okay, on to life. Turns out I will only be working two days this week -- Monday and Thursday -- because we have Tuesday and Wednesday off, and I'm taking off Friday to take R for a medical test. (Not a big one -- I've had it twice this year -- but requires a driver, and perhaps a mommy to hover.) She's feeling much better, actually, and has a new theory, which I won't mention until we hear from the doctor, since all former theories have been WRONG.

I haven't spoken to my sister for a few days because she was away at a parents' weekend or something for Little K, and although I think she's home now, I tried a little while ago and there was no answer. But sometimes she just doesn't answer. On the other hand, I believe the bride and groom are due home from their honeymoon today, so she could be over there, too. Anyway, I'll try her again shortly.

So that's my story, folks. I slept much better so far this weekend, so I don't feel like I'm totally dragging. Always a nice thing.


WATCHING DOC HOLLYWOOD :: ENTRY #1865
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

I Want to Go To Sleeeeep NOOOOOOOWW

I'm not, of course; I'm staying up to watch the debate, or at least make sure I record it, because I can't imagine I'll be awake through the whole thing. I keep remembering the presidential debate in 1976. (Yes, I'm old.) Let me recap for you.

It was a debate between Jimmy Carter, who no one had pretty much ever heard of, and Gerald Ford, the incumbent president who had never been elected, but was considered a really nice guy by just about everyone. I was watching the debate alone in my room at th3e graduate students' dorm at Rutgers University. So it's rolling along, and there was some kind of question about Poland, and Soviet influence there, and Ford -- the president -- said something along the lines of "Poland is not under Soviet influence. It never has been. I don't think the people of Poland think they're living under Soviet influence."

It was a huge giant DUH. Jimmy Carter's jaw dropped; it took him a minute to come up with a response. I don't remember who was moderating, but he was speechless, too, and everyone in the audience just watched like it was a car wreck. I yanked open the door of my room and ran into the hallway, where every door was opening and suddenly people who never spoke to each other were all asking "Did you see that? Did you SEE that? Did you see THAT?"

It was a moment. Perhaps there will be such a one tonight. It was considered a significant event in Ford's loss to Carter in the election.

Anyway, moving on. I am just too tired; I hope I sleep tonight. Once Bill Maher's show is on, I should be good. I love that show, but it always puts me to sleep, and I record it, so after it's been on, if I wake up again I just start it over, and it runs in a loop all night, which is good for me. I'll actually watch the show tomorrow when I'm sitting up at my desk. Tonight should be a good one, too, right after the debate.

I just ate some baked fish that I had in the freezer, and I am still starving. I've got another piece in there, but I don't know. I really do need some gourmet chef from somewhere to get into the habit of stopping by my house every day around five with leftovers from all the classes he's taught that day. Yeah, that's the ticket. That would work.

My cousin sent me some more pictures from the wedding, so now I actually have a few of the bride and groom. Nice, since I didn't actually take any of them myself. There were other pictures, too, and my daughters, of course, look beautiful. I look, in a word, fat. In another word, old. Although now that I look at them again, I can't say I look especially disfigured in them, which is how I see myself in most pictures, so I guess that's good. And I don't think I actually was fat, I think that I turn my head a certain way when I'm being photographed to avoid the whole disfigured thing, and it makes my face look wider, somehow. Of course, the double chin doesn't enhance anything, but that's not fat, that's genetics; my mother had a double chin when she weighted 110 pounds. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1864
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Little of This, Little of That

First, I have no comments whatsoever on the economy or what's going on with that because I don't understand a word of it, other than it's bad and bad stuff is going on. I'm not thrilled by the whole McCain trying to put off the debate because it just looks to me like he needs more time to figure it out himself. And here's an odd word on the campaign: I have seen no commercials, not for McCain and not for Obama, and heaven knows it's not for lack of watching TV. I think it's strange. It's as if neither one of them feels the need to enter the New York City market yet. (Our broadcast TV is from NYC.) Maybe McCain figures it's not worth it because he's not winning here and Obama figures he's winning here anyway, so why waste the money? I don't know, I just think it's strange.

Speaking of which, here's the strange thing that just happened to me. (It's 11:00.) The SCM and I finally had our meeting with the principal this morning about lots of things, and it went very well and all, and he assured me that he has no intention of losing any professional staff this year or next, which means the SCM will be replaced with a real librarian. YAY! I told him -- the principal -- that I had two former students in mind, and he said I could let them know because the job is going to be posted any day now.

Well, one of them is easy to reach because she and K are friends on Facebook, but I expected finding the other one to be a challenge. All I knew was that she was working at a high school in the northern part of the county, and her maiden name. I knew she had kept her maiden name after she was married, but I think she told me once that once she had children, she had taken her husband's name and I didn't know that.

I googled a list of high schools in the county, which was arranged alphabetically by the towns they're in. The first one was in the northern part of the county, so I clicked, and worked my way through the school's website. The librarian there, it seems, is my girl, who never changed her name professionally, it would appear. It may yet turn out not to be her, but it looks like I found her right off the bat. I sent off a goofy email -- we knew each other well -- and we'll see what I get back. I owe her the right of first refusal, since she asked me a long time ago -- when my other candidate was still in my Girl Scout troop, probably -- to let her know if there was ever an opening here. She may be happy and settled where she is now and won't want to move, but she deserves to hear about it first. And I wouldn't want these two people to be competing against each other because I would want them both.

I also got to teach my first class this year, which felt like ahhhhhhh....... , yeah, that's right, so that was good. Not that I had any concerns, but I was looking forward to it.

5:00

Home, and already had dinner, actually, because I was really really hungry. So.

I got email back and it was indeed my delightful student from twenty years back. We emailed back a forth a few times, exchanging what we knew about some of her classmates from back then. And she is very well situated where she is now, near where she lives, just got tenure, they're paying for classes she's taking. So she's off the list. K is in class now, but when she gets home, we'll talk about my other option. K doesn't have her email address, but can leave her a message on Facebook, so I'm thinking she could leave it Sunday night so the girl -- okay, I know, woman -- can get in touch with me at school on Monday, if she's so inclined. I mean, really, I could drive the six or seven blocks to her house right now, and if she doesn't still live there, ask her mother to have her call me, but that seems over the top a bit. I mean, the SCM isn't even leaving until the end of January.

(He said it was odd for him to be sitting in the room as the principal and I discussed his replacement. I'm sure. Get over it.)

So K is in class, and the Hubs is having dinner with a former boss, and my house, to be blunt, is a shit-hole. This was one of my mother's expressions, that when her house didn't meet her standard for cleanliness, it was a shit-hole. Here's what that meant to her: she hadn't vacuumed or dusted within the current calendar week, and the dining room table had papers and things all over it that she needed to put away. That's it. Other than the table, there was no clutter in this house. (Except, of course, in my room when I was a kid.) There was no laundry basket on the living room couch for two weeks because no one felt like bringing it down to the basement. There was no pile of clean dishes in the drainboard waiting to be put away. (My father refused to have a drainboard in the house for this very reason. You ate, you washed, you dried, you put away.) There was no trash in the kitchen waiting to be taken out because you know there's room for just one more thing, and then maybe someone else will take it out. (My father took it out every night while my sister and I were washing the dishes, so that would have been, say, 5:50.) There were no crumbs in the toaster oven because, seriously, neither Shirl nor Jack would have stood for such a thing. My house, on the other hand, is indeed a shit-hole. I just made an appointment for some cleaning people to come. I am seriously not up to doing this myself. I mean, I never wanted to before, but now that I wouldn't mind it as much, I just can't. Bending over to tie my shoes leaves me short of breath. Scrubbing the tiles in the shower are certainly out.

This feels like it has been the longest week ever, but it has also been the only full week of school I've had so far, and will have for another two weeks. No school next Tuesday and Wednesday, and the following Thursday, for the Jewish holidays, which I do not observe, so for me, they're just days off. I've already made numerous appointments, as I do.

It was chilly today, definitely an end to summer weather. It was only in the low sixties, but no sun. We're supposed to be in for a couple of days of rain now. Not that I'm looking forward to it, but my car could use a rinsing off.



WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1863
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Where Was I?

I just noticed that I didn't post yesterday. I have no idea why, or what else I might have been doing. Huh.

I stopped at Whole Foods before to get some chicken, and I also got something called "Yucca Fries." I looked it up when I got home; it said that although the yucca plant is sometimes eaten (parts of it, anyway), usually, when you see yucca as food, it's really yuca, which is what tapioca comes from. So I ate it. It was really good. Medical report to follow.

I am not actually reading tonight (although I put a new book title down there), but earlier today I finished this teen science-fiction/dystopia book that I started reading while I was on hall duty Monday: Unwind, by Neal Shusterman. The premise is that in the future, following a war between the Life Army and the Choice Brigade, a compromise is reached and passed into law: human life begins at conception and there are no abortions. However, when a child reaches 13, his parents may choose to have him "unwound"; that is, they make a choice and their child is taken away to lead a "divided" life, in which all of his parts -- organs, everything -- are used as replacement parts for other people. Kind of like a retroactive abortion, but technically still alive, just split up into parts scattered around the world. When the kid reaches 18, he's safe. An interesting and thought-provoking book.

Yesterday's news was that K went to the school where she'll be student teaching and everything looked good, the teacher she'll be working with seemed terrific to her. Good news, since that tends to be a kind of make-or-break thing. The kid's taking her "Methods of Teaching" class this semester, which is the biggie, and it seems to be getting really excited about going out and doing it. Nice to see for an old veteran like me.

Funny, we do discuss various aspects of teaching, lesson planning, philosophies involved, and so on, and I sometimes think that she's a little surprised that I know what I know. It's that old prejudice that school librarians aren't really teachers, and she should know better and probably does, but when I discuss pros and cons of certain very specific techniques with her, it's as if she didn't think I would know that because I'm not a classroom teacher. It's like being Rodney Dangerfield, y'know: I don't get no respect. I think when I retire, I'll just tell people that I was a librarian, and not a school librarian, and maybe then they'll know what I do. Did.

Anyway. I'm all full of chicken and yucca fries, and I have to go wash out my little lunchbox for tomorrow.

WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1862
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Who Knew?

I used to watch baseball a lot, back in the day, and I think that going to a baseball game in person, especially for the first time, is a kind of transcendent experience. I have also thought for a long time that baseball should be the sport that women most enjoy watching, because the men are built like normal men and are wearing these adorable fitted outfits (unlike say, football and basketball, where the men are endomorphs, and football and hockey, where they have to wear so much padding just not to die that you can't even see the man underneath. And basketball, since they went to those goofy baggy uniforms, is useless.)

Anyway, I have not watched baseball much in recent years, except for the occasional sports segment on the morning news, but today, since they were talking about the last game at Yankee Stadium last night, they showed a bit more than the upper half of a player with his stats underneath; they showed whole people walking, running, hitting. They were wearing pants! Not leggings, but pants! When the hell did that happen? It looked sooooo weird. Not bad, necessarily, but very very strange.

Okay, onto other things. Birthday Sunday yesterday, yada yada yada, it's over, we're home. We are now suspecting possible gall bladder involvement in R's mysterious pain; she's supposed to call a gastroenterologist today. But here's what I've got to say today on the subject of R.

She is a relatively private person, in which regard she takes after her father. She is not sharing any more personal details than she cares to share just at this time. She's been this way since she was a kid. As a result, when she was a freshman in high school and got her first boyfriend, I had a very embarrassing experience: I had dropped off R and her friend L someplace, and was driving L's mother home in the car. And she said to me, "So, R has a boyfriend! He's a senior! How do you feel about that?" and I, at that time, knew nothing about it. Because R, although she didn't tell me, told her best friend L, who told her mother everything. After which I made R swear that if she had a boyfriend, she at least had to tell me about it, so I wasn't blindsided by someone else telling me first. Which she has done. I don't get much information, but she tells me.

So, okay, a few weeks ago, she told me she was going out with someone on a Saturday night. I was very cool, said something like, "Oh, well, have a good time," and let it go. Over the next few days or so, I gleaned these tidbits of information: he works where she works, he is 30, he lives in New Jersey, he has lots of single male friends (useful for sister purposes), and I heard his first name. And R said something like, "I expect you'll be hearing more about him."

Last Sunday, when we were in the hospital waiting to find out that she didn't have appendicitis, he was one of the people she was texting with back and forth, which I found out after it was going on for a few hours. She said he was being "very supportive." I also found out his last name.

Cut to the chase. We got home from Birthday Sunday around 8:45 last night, and about a half hour later, my sister called. (A call from my sister after 9:00 is a sure sign of death, at least traditionally.) I answered with "What's wrong?" and she said nothing, and then said "R IS IN A RELATIONSHIP?!!?" Well. I hadn't told her anything at all yet, because I barely know anything, and it seemed to be at the stage of so far being a date and some texting, so all I could do was sputter "What? How do you know?" Well, this is how she knows:

Because R, who hasn't told mommy that she's in a relationship, put it on her Facebook page. Who reads her Facebook page, other than everyone she ever knew? Wonderful Niece's husband, who noticed it Sunday morning, told his wife, who called her mother, who called me ... you got it.

So, she's in a relationship. Cool. And now, for the very first time, I actually am going to think about who would have to be invited to a wedding, because I just went to a wedding and it's on my mind and she's 27 and he's 30, so you know, it could happen. I'm not going out and booking a hall, but it could happen.

Update

So I wrote all that stuff first thing this morning at work and now it's about 11:15, and the kid and I have been emailing. First, she told me this is the first day in a week she didn''t wake up in intense pain, so that's real good, and also she has a doctor's appointment for Wednesday. Then we got into the whole last night's phone call, etc., and she finally admitted cautiously that yeah, she guesses she's in a relationship.

YAY!


WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1861
READING: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Movies and Me and the Meme

There's a great movie meme going around, and I've been wanting to do it, but trying to come up with a definitive list of my favorite ten movies makes my brain hurt. So I'm going to share ten memorable movie-going experiences, since that seems to be part of it, too. These are all in the theatre movies, although of course I've seen some on TV in the years since. I may have shared some of these stories in the past. And I've got eleven.

1. Around the World in 80 Days - This was released in 1956, but I think I saw it a year later when it was re-released, so I was four. The family was away on vacation at a hotel in the Catskills (mountains in New York state where there are a lot of resorts) and we all went to see this one rainy Sunday afternoon. All through the movie, I kept telling Shirl that I was sick, and she kept shushing me. When we got back to our room, I had a fever of 104, and spent the rest of the vacation in bed.

2. Old Yeller - 1957 - Jack took me to see this at the Queen Anne Theatre in Ridgefield Park. I remember going and seeing the movie, but I don't remember seeing the end, and I've never watched it again. What I remember most about the day is having to pee and Jack having to take me into the men's room.

3. Sleeping Beauty - 1959 - The first Disney movie I remember seeing in a theatre, also at the Queen Anne. I was 6; I went with my friend Lori, who was 4, and her father. When the wicked queen turned into the dragon, I was scared to pieces, and was very jealous of Lori who climbed right up into her dad's lap, but I was on my own.

4. Sink the Bismarck! - 1960 - Also at the Queen Anne, which years later became a porn theatre. Anyway, this is my first memory of going to a movie without my parents. My sister took me, along with a friend her age and his younger sister. I was 7, so I'm sure I went with the Sibs alone before, but this is the first memory I have of it. A year later, we moved to Bizarro Town, and I started going to the Saturday afternoon movies with just friends right away.

5. My Fair Lady - 1964 - When this first came out, it was being shown in a very fancy theatre in New York City, like a Broadway play, and OldFriend's parents got tickets for opening week. We had to dress up, and wear white gloves and black maryjanes and the whole thing. I remember seeing limos dropping people off at the front, and Mr. O. (as we called OldFriend's dad) bought us each a hardcover program all about the movie.

6. A Hard Day's Night - 1964 - It was in the summer; Lori and I and her cousin Donna, who lived with them every summer, went every day to the town day camp, which was really somebody babysitting groups of kids at the town pool; we all hated it. Anyway, we came home one afternoon and were informed by Shirl and Doris (Lori's mom) that they were taking us to see A Hard Day's Night at the Paramus drive-in! And may I add !!!!!!!!!!!!! The three of us started screaming and did not stop until the movie was over, even though it rained through most of it. It was sublime.

7. Romeo and Juliet - 1967 - My high school best friend and I ordered tickets and went into the city to see this on a school vacation right after it opened. The theatre was right next to the Plaza Hotel. The entire audience was composed of 14 to 16 year old girls; we all sighed and sobbed in complete unison, and were all delighted at the sight of Leonard Whiting's exquisite behind.

8. Easy Rider - 1969 - The Warner, in Ridgwood. It was Christmas Day, the same high school friend and I were literally the only two people in the theatre. Just before the movie started, the Star Spangled Banner started to play. This was extremely surreal, and we looked around in the dark for some kind of explanation, but finally we just stood up and waited until it was over and then watched the subversive movie.

9. Deliverance and A Clockwork Orange - 1975 - WORST DOUBLE FEATURE OF ALL TIME, CASE CLOSED. The Hubs and I saw this on a date at the Oakland Duplex. I had my hands over my eyes through both movies.

10. Star Wars - 1977 - At the Warner in Paramus on Rte. 4. I had just started teaching in February, and one of the kids who hung out in the library told me about this incredible movie, which was already getting lots of hype, but he was telling me how it looked like an action film but was really about the classic struggle between good and bad, and all the mythic archetypes in it, so one Sunday morning, the Hubs and I went to see it. Well of course the place was full of screaming kids and we walked out of there thinking "Eh." When we saw it again, we got it. Also, when it was re-released a year or so later, I took eldest nephew to see it at the Paramus drive-in, his first movie ever.

11. Close Encounters of the Third Kind - 1977 - Somewhere in Paramus with the Hubs. I totally loved this movie. On the way home, I kept my eyes on the sky, as if I was looking for the mother ship to land in New Jersey.

WATCHING YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN :: ENTRY #1860
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

Still Crazy After ...

I changed my career today. You'll never believe what I did.

I spent the whole day being a *gasp* librarian.

I catalogued stuff. I checked out books. I helped kids with computer issues. I worked on the new signs that finally came in. I even fixed the damn laminating machine.

In other words, three weeks into the school year, I actually got to start doing the work I was hired to do, the work I'm paid for.

I really have to see if I can unload this I.D. card thing for next year. I'm working on it.



In other news, let's see. I'm having a fairly political day again, and I'd like to share something with you, but with some comments on it as well. R never forwards me Internet stuff, but today she sent me this article. Go ahead and read it. I'll wait.

la di da di da la di da di da ... what's the name of that song?

Okay, now, the odds are you are having some sort of response to this, and that's what I want to talk about. When I read this, I wrote back to her "When did I write this?" because bingo, she was the kid who went to Europe and South America with the Scouts, not to mention taking her own trip to Australia as an adult and going to graduate school in Wales, and yes, she performed in plays -- Shakespeare -- when she was stage manager of the drama club, and yes, she has seen her own plays produced. She works for a very large non-profit that is educational in nature. She happens also to be a beautiful girl -- so others have told me -- and we have done our best to raise her to have many experiences. (She has also done extensive camping and hiking, and I don't mean with tents and latrines, I mean with a sleeping bag, a backpack, and a little shovel. She did the longest trail at Philmont; if there are Boy Scouts among you, you know what that is.)

All right, so that was my reaction, and I wasn't naive enough to think it would be everybody's, but when I read the comments, I was blown away. Many comments were supportive, as mine would have been, but some were just mean and vicious. Here's one (#15, excerpted):

You should have bought her a shotgun and gone out shooting with her. It would have broadened her cultural horizons, taught her some cultural tolerance, and rounded her out enough to understand how the other half lives.

Ya know, maybe a good moose hunt, and getting her hands bloody actually processing the meat rather than buying it pre-packaged in the store, would have taught her to be a little less pretentious and self-righteous.

Tell me, why does this thought follow the first? Why must it be that "getting her hands bloody" is necessarily good for her? How would this "broaden her cultural horizons" and "understand how the other half lives" unless the other half is the just-killed animal? I'm not saying hunting is wrong for people who do it, or teach their children to do it; it's just another one of the possible choices people make for their lives. Where in the original "letter" did it indicate that the daughter was pretentious or self-righteous? I must have missed that part. Here's another one (#29, also excerpted, because it rambles like hell, although I left some of it in):

it seems you have trained her to live off the donations of others, seeking attention and self esteem, while sneering down at the "common people." good show.

many kids do not have the sort of spoiling parents she was blessed with-some actually have to get jobs.

but that sort of thing often interferes with a path of suckering others into believing up is down, and left is right.

when my kids were small, they used to demand to go up gold mining in the sierra. they got out of the city, and they could partake in the magic of gold flakes, never before seen by man, appearing in their pans. they also learned how much worthless sand and gravel one had to shovel through to find those few tiny nuggets, and that stood them in good stead later in life.

they learned about buzz worms, poison oak, berries off the vine, how chinese coins could wind up on a hillside in the foothills, fossils, geology, earth history, people history, weather predicting, cooking over an open fire, etc.

even barbecueing fresh rattlesnake they skinned and cleaned on their own.

and these are the stories their own children demand in return. my 6 year old grandson gets wide eyed. "wow, mom! you did that when you were my age? i wanna go do that, too!"

so far, he has not expressed any interest in being a faceless member of the mob that makes up mass movements. he learns personal responsibility instead, and paying for one's own mistakes. he likes the poetry of robert service.

my kids missed the dark musty museums with a thousand flavors of dead christs, and monuments to inbred, intolerant rulers with hereditary blood diseases. they missed out on the dogma that the common folk are just worthless peasants to be directed by their betters, the stringpullers and their media lackies.

they suffer under the delusion that one can pull oneself up by their own bootstraps, working harder and smarter to create, rather than working dad's network of connections(which their dad never saw the point of assembling).

but they did learn to appease their own curiousity, with libraries, and a hunger for knowledge and books, and the refusal to accept the pat statements of others, without checking it out for themselves..

they're not real big on tv, either. so sorry.

they often miss tuning in for their programming as well, being too busy living life, instead of watching others fake it.

So do we all agree, at least, that this guy is nuts?

I think his whole panning-for-gold thing is charming, and a lovely experience and set of memories for his children. (Except for the rattlesnake thing, but that's just me.) We happened to choose to give our children a different set of experiences that they will never forget. (We were once trapped in the Lincoln Memorial during an unbelievable storm, and if you think sitting in a marble cave with Abraham Lincoln and his wonderful words for an hour with lightning every few minutes is something you can forget, think again.) I don't understand at all what's wrong with museums; can someone explain that to me? And I happen to enjoy Robert W. Service and Shakespeare; they're hardly mutually exclusive. And my kids worked plenty, from an early age.

Here's the upshot: I'm not criticizing any of Palin's life or family choices; she has hers and I have mine. I definitely do not like the polarization in the country that seems to be occurring because of this. But the bottom line is that her life choices, fine as they are, do not qualify her to be president of the freaking United States of America. She happens to be lacking the particular qualifications for this.

Is she just a regular old Joe (so to speak), just like common folk, and didn't go to some high-falutin' Harvard or Yale? Yeah, she is. Forgive me. I want my president to have gone to Harvard or Yale, if that's an option; there's a reason that they're considered two of the top universities in the world. Having a president who is proud of her ignorance and just-plain-folkiness is not an asset, it's a liability. Even that idiot Bush went to Yale, if you recall, and Annapolis isn't exactly a joke school, either. Damn. Don't we want our president to be the best he or she can possibly be? How stupid would we all have to be if we didn't? Isn't this how Warren G. Harding got elected? Look how that turned out. (Not well.) Who are we going to elect next time, Carrot Top?

And now, to quote one of my favorite all time just-plain-folk, "Ah has spoken." (Be sure to let me know in my comments if you know who was known for saying that!)


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1859
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

Hey.

Nothing whatsoever going on here, no idea why I'm even writing, but it's what I do, more or less, now, so here I am. Nothing at all in the way of new, R still not tip-top, but okay, K at class, the Hubs and I went out for dinner, that's about it.

I am sick to death of I.D. cards. I got to do some cataloging today and it felt like Christmas. My career, if that's what it is, has certainly taken an odd turn or two.

I am fine, though, not bummed at all, just, as always, tired. I downloaded Backgammon for the iPhone last night, so now I have a new obsession to keep me busy. The Hubs and I used to play backgammon a lot years and years ago, but I when I started up the program last night, I didn't even remember what to do. Then I did, and I beat the computer more times than it beat me. Is it possible there's one game in existence I'm actually good at? Hard to believe. The last game of any kind I was good at was kickball in sixth grade. My triumphs are few and far between.

Okay, couch time. And backgammon time. And sleepy time.


WATCHING THE FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1858
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

Another Day

Is it just me, or are days just not ending anymore?

So I went to the viewing of the Chum's mom this morning, which was not sad, so much, because she was, first of all, 87, and about to decline sharply, but this way, she had a really good night and died unexpectedly the next morning. And the Chum, I think, hasn't quite gotten it yet, if that means anything. For now, she's been very consumed by the details of organizing things, and will be for the next few weeks, but at some point, the stoic falls away, y' know?

I did see E there, whom I don't see anywhere nearly enough, but we both know nothing has changed between us. I said to her husband, if I hadn't seen her for ten years, and I ran into her on the street, I would know that I could immediately tell her the deepest part of my heart in the first second, and she nodded, because that's the way we have always been. More on that in a minute.

In other news, the SCM remains and I have got to put on my big girl panties and deal and not get pissed off all the time because He.Is.Not.Worth.It.

The Hubs is home from his travels, finally, a long trip. It's been a long week, what with one thing or another.

R went to work today, still has the pain, but she is her father's child, after all, so it's to be expected.

Okay, back to the other thing. You know, I have often felt isolated in my life, someone with few friends. It's true that I rarely socialize in any kind of traditional way. But I have come to realize, and I was thinking about this earlier today, that I really do have several wonderful 3D friends. My sister, of course, and OldFriend, and E and Chum and the Colleague. It's true that I no longer have any of these people close to me at work where I can talk to them during the day; I used to have lunch and a break every day with E and the Chum, and worked ten feet from the Colleague. Now I have the Other Chai, who is a very longtime close acquaintance, if that means anything; there are few very important things I would tell her, as I would all those others. But having those others in my life is really a special gift, even if I don't seem them all often. (I haven't seen OldFriend in person for maybe five years, but we talk on the phone often.) Anyway, I was thinking, so I wrote it. Which reminds me how lucky I am to have you guys, too.

Aww.


WATCHING THE FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1857
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

What a Weird Day

2:00

Okay, so I talked to R at 10:00 this morning and she sounded just awful, had just arrived at her doctor's office. Talked to her at 10:40 and she sounded much, much better. This doctor is sure it's not a bladder infection, but thinks it might be an ovarian cyst, so I'm taking her for an ultrasound at 3:15. That means I have to leave the library when the bell rings at the end of 8th period, 2:35, instead of keeping it open until 3:05, as usual.

So before I went to the school office to tell them I had to go at 2:35, I asked the SCM if there was a chance he might be able to stay. He thought about it, and then told me his life story, and the upshot, of course, was No. I knew he wouldn't do it, but I thought I'd cover as many bases as I could before I went and got permission to leave when I needed to. I was out yesterday, so he closed the library at 2:35 then too. He also told me this morning that in addition to the full week he's taking off around the Rosh Hashonah holiday in two weeks, he's taking the Friday and Monday following Yom Kippur, which falls on a Thursday. Isn't that nice for him? Let me quote from his original email that he sent me in July to tell me that he was retiring:

I hope that I can help in a transition during the first half of the year.

He is "helping" by doing nothing at all. The only project he had to do for the first few weeks of school was get that section of shelving that the architects messed up back in order. I would see him go over there sometimes; I guess he shuffled around 20 or 30 books a day on carts. When he was out last Thursday and I was out Friday, I gave the job to the substitute, and she finished it before the end of the second day. It's like I'd be better off with no one here, except for the needing coverage to go the bathroom thing.

I am really just done with him. We have had a very nice, cordial relationship for the most part over the last ... 18 years or so, and now he's just checked out already. He is not a team player, unless he is the whole team. And his team has already relocated to Vermont, at least in spirit.

He did teach a class today, and he does his other menial mindless chores, like put paper in the printers and the photocopier. Otherwise, I haven't seen him get up to help anyone or put himself out in any way. Nice. I can't wait to see how he is for freshman library orientation in a few weeks. (He's tentatively scheduled it so as not to interfere with the days he's taking off.)

6:00

My sister reminded me that I knew the SCM was going to be like this and I need to just get over it, because I can't change it and this is the way it is. She's right, of course. Que sera, sera.

The ultrasound tech seemed to think that R's ovaries looked just fine, but the doctor will have the report on Thursday. So clearly, no one is seeing imminent danger here. When I got home from school and saw her, she actually looked fine and good. She said that once the fever went away yesterday, she's felt much better, although she still has the pain, but it's bearable. She's hoping to go to work tomorrow.

What else can I tell you? I am tired to the core of my bones. I just had a nice big omelet with good stuff in it for dinner, and all I need now is to lie down and fall asleep for the night. The Hubs is, as we speak, landing in Chicago, where he will stay overnight and catch an early morning flight home tomorrow. I don't know yet what time he'll actually appear in New Jersey, but I'll talk to him later.

Okay. My clothes are laid out for tomorrow, not the usual jeans, but black Chico's stuff since I'm off to a funeral at 9 AM. I haven't packed my lunch, but I know what I'm taking, so that's easy. I hope I sleep better tonight. I really haven't had a full night of good sleep since school started.


WATCHING THE FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1857
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

And In the Next Reel ...

In the life-continues-to-be-interesting vein, after we had our pizza yesterday, having vowed not to leave the house again all day, K and I had to go take R to the hospital. (She's okay.) She had been having pain which got worse all day, and a fever which continued to go up, so we went and took her to the hospital which is right at the end of her street because, you know, appendicitis happens.

It was hours before the doctor assured us that appendicitis was not happening to her, at least not last night. But we were in the Emergency Room for some time, they did all the tests, and then sent her home with an antibiotic for a bladder infection. In the meantime, the Hubs is in Minneapolis and extremely not happy that he is not in the hospital with us where he should be. Many cell phone calls went back and forth, today too. Anyway, they sent her home, we stopped and got the prescription filled, and then K stayed over with her for the night so she wouldn't be alone. I had already called out of work for today, figuring that she was having surgery any minute, but I didn't get to sleep until after two, so I slept until nine and then went back and hung out and then drove K home. We are all shot. R says she still has the pain, but not as bad, but feels very washed out. Which is what the antibiotic will do to you, too.

So that was my Sunday. I am sooo tired, but okay. It's a characteristic of my gene pool to be calm in an emergency -- an excellent gene to have, btw -- so I would have been fine even without my current level of happy pills. No one was better in an emergency than my father, although the Hubs runs a close second.

Looks like I'm finally going to have to go back to work tomorrow. And then be out for a couple of hours Wednesday morning for that funeral I need to go to, the Chum's mother. Maybe next week I'll see if I can go a whole five days in a row.


WATCHING THE SIMPSONS :: ENTRY #1856
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

When Last We Left the Purple Chai ...

When did I post last? It feels like years ago! This has been a very long weekend, but a very good one, and this is absolutely my first chance to write, although I've been able to keep up on reading you all. Okay, here goes.

Thursday night, the rehearsal dinner. Other than this event being hosted by the groom's father, this was very pleasant. The groom's father, you may recall, is my sister's first husband and one of Satan's minions on earth. When he gave a little speech, and said how wonderful it was to watch his son grow from a boy into a man, I almost leaped out of my chair and screamed "Yeah, except for the four years you couldn't be bothered to call him on the phone ONCE!" but I was good. On the other hand, my sister's current husband and I totally bonded over our hate hate hate for this person pretending to have been a father. So that was nice. Wonderful Niece's husband got up and said a few words and he is very very funny and good with words and has excellent comic timing, so she picked herself a good one, and that was fun.

Friday. We got to the hotel a little before 3:00. (R drove, which was nice for me.) We checked into our rooms, finished dressing, and we were good to go. Pictures started at 3:30, and really, the only people who were there on time were the groom and my two girls and I. Pictures went on for an eternity, in part because this bride and groom have four sets of parents between them. Satan Dad's wife tried to pin the boutiniere on the groom and I wanted to claw her eyes out. (My sister hadn't arrived yet.)

It was raining when we left the hotel for the wedding. The Hubs arrived just in time to join us in the limo ride over there. (All the guests staying at the hotel were ferried back and forth in limos. More on that later.) We waited around until everyone arrived, including all our various cousins who came -- there are not many of them -- and then we were seated for the ceremony.

Well. You have read before that this groom is the nephew I call Good Guy. He is, and he is very well matched in his choice of bride, whom I shall now call KG. KG, who is an aide with autistic children, is this kind of person: she went to a shelter once to get a cat, and they showed her three: an adorable kitten, a beautiful adult cat, and an older cat with a lot of health issues. Guess which one she took? It's just the way she is.

Anyway, they wrote their own vows, which were absolutely special and wonderful and beautiful. They had actually been legally married that morning at the town hall, and had a friend conduct the ceremony at the public wedding. The ceremony began with him pointing out certain candles that were lit, and said that these were in memory of the couple's loved ones who couldn't be there. This was extremely touching. My parents were mentioned, of course, but also my cousin Peter who died two years ago, and whose wife had flown in to be at the wedding. We were all very moved.

It was altogether a very lovely wedding, but very lavish. It was not my taste, but it was very well done. The bride has only a brother, and her mother, whose current husband is quite wealthy, wanted the biggest, fanciest wedding she could make for her daughter. And it was. There was a nine-piece band, which I've never even seen at a wedding before. The band was excellent, but painfully loud, not just to me. Otherwise, all was good, and there were no bad words spoken between anyone. I hope I never have to see Satan Dad or his evil wife again as long as I live.

So. We didn't get back to the hotel until maybe 1:00f; the Hubs chose to drive home and not stay over, but called me when he got home so I knew he'd made it. (A lot of twisty, dark roads. For LA: it was in Piermont.) Then we got up and had a big buffet breakfast at the hotel, so, finally, time to have some conversation with my cousins where I could hear them! The Florida contingent was leaving right after breakfast to fly home, but the others were staying for one more night.

I got home to my house around 1:00 Saturday afternoon and slept until 5:00. At which point we all went back to my sister's for more family time. Which was, in a word, excellent.

Here's a crazy thing. I had offered to drive Peter's wife, as well as the Colorado cousins, to the airport today. But the Hubs had to leave this morning on a business trip to Minneapolis at the same time, so he just drove them all, then left his car in long term parking, and by now, I assume, they are all where they belong. (Well, the Hubs belongs here, but he's in Minneapolis, which I know because I spoke to him.) He was just wonderful and social and helpful this whole week. Apparently, wonders never do cease.

My tummy behaved the whole weekend. And K and I just decided not to cook tonight and to order a pizza instead. Doesn't get much better than this.

WATCHING PROJECT RUNWAY :: ENTRY #1855
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

And the Whirlwind Begins

Okay. Didn't write last night because I didn't get back from the Crohn's support group until 9:30, by which time K thought I'd probably just fallen asleep somewhere. But it was good, I'm glad I went, I'll go next month.

Tonight is Back to School Night, which I am missing because I'm sitting here all dolled up -- not really -- for my nephew's rehearsal dinner tonight, but of course, the SCM called in sick today because no way he was going to one more BTS Night. When I got to school this morning, I asked the secretary who assigns the substitutes how it looked for me, and she said she had someone, but she'd need to put her elsewhere period 8. I said, "No, I need someone periods 6, 7, and 8." She said well, she wasn't sure, so I said, Hey, no problem, just let me know now if I won't have a sub period 8, because that's when I'll go home.

I had the best sub (excepting K), Eleanor, who subbed for me longterm when I was out after my brain surgery and has always been our favorite sub, but for the last few years she's been looking after grandchildren during the day; now they're all in school. Yay! She's a buddy and a pal, and we had a great day, and she got a lot of that messed up shelving straightened out (because she doesn't need to be taught, just told what has to be done.)

I will probably not write tomorrow, since I'll be in wedding mode all day, more or less. I started thinking before about what I would say if they stick a video camera in my face at the reception, and let me tell you, I will gush and I will cry, because I just love this boy so much. (Okay, he's 30, not a boy.) But he is so special to me, and I will tell them all the story about how I dreamed his face before he was born and then carried him in my arms in the car on the way home from the hospital and knew it was the baby I'd seen in my dream.


Ach, bad news. Just got a phone call from the Chum; her mother died in Florida this morning. Thank god, though, it was before her real suffering set in; she had a good night last night and went quietly this morning. She was 87. A good lady.


Okay, then. Can't get my sister on the phone. Is she coming for me at five? Am I meeting her at her house? Will they forget to pick me up? It's even money on that one.

WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1854
READING: The Professor and the Madman by ??

Everybody Wave!

And say hi to Mary Ellen!

(Hey -- I've been spending the last week making I.D. cards for kids with names from Mars, let alone every member country of the United Nations, not to mention your odd Savannah Goldberg and the like, and I would just like to say: Grace and Mary. Are there two more lovely and classic names for little girls than that? I think not.)

Speaking of birthdays, today is that day each year that the Hubs catches up to me and is my age for a few months. It's a race to see what's going to get here first today: him home from work, or UPS with the DVDs of Homicide we ordered (one from the girls, one from me.) It's about 5:40 now, so it's truly anybody's guess. How embarrassing for him to come in the back door and for me to have to leave in mid birthday kiss to answer the bell at the front door to get the delivery.

As the big wedding approaches on Friday, I'm growing more and more -- oh, I don't know what it is -- about this whole thing. I'm not truly anxious about it, it just seems like so many parts of it were inconveniently planned. And I also realize that since this isn't one of my own children's weddings, I should just shut up. But here, get this. The wedding itself is happening in a lovely place right on the Hudson River in New York, north of New York City. It is not also a hotel, so the bridal party and many others are staying in a hotel that is about six miles away, and there will be shuttles and limos, so we are told, so that anybody who wants to drink at the wedding can go right ahead and not have to worry about driving. All well and good. Now. The bride told me the other day that family pictures are at 3:30 on Friday, and really, I was touched to be included, since none of us are in the actual wedding party. I figured that would give us plenty of time to get to the hotel, dress and do hair and make-up there. I checked today; the check-in time at the hotel is 3:00. Hmm. Anyway, I've got my sister looking into the various time aspects of all this. The Hubs can't come early at all; he's coming from work, as I assume many of the guests are. R and I each took a personal day to have the time to get ready. I just don't know what's going on, which is probably what's making me feel like ... okay, like I don't know what's going on.

JJ, eldest nephew is in already from California. I talked to him on the phone before, and really, it did my heart good. My sister's sons are as close as I come to sons of my own; they are their sister are truly children of my heart. JJ asked if I could give him a quiet phone call tonight after the Hubs is home and had his dinner so that he can come over and say happy birthday in person.

I had the strangest day at work, not just all the I.D. cards, but no actual lunch period, since I was doing cards during both of the available times. I had my lunch at my desk at 10:30, and then I did the craziest thing: I went into our little stock room and lay myself down on the floor, my head on my backpack with my lunchbox in it, and just let my whole body relax while I played some mellow tunes on the iPhone. It totally recharged me, or at least, allowed me to keep my back upright for another several hours.

Okay, I'm going to go check the front porch again.

WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1853
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Catching Up

Oy. I know it's just after six o'clock, but I need to go to sleep. I think I made nearly 200 I.D. cards today. Thank god the kids are so nice.

So my cousin did arrive Sunday night and, per usual, I was left out of the information loop, because that's what always happens. My sister was supposed to call me and tell me that they got in, and what time breakfast was in the morning, and when I finally called her at ten, she said "Come on over! Everybody's here!" Yeah, swell. But I went over with K, and even the Hubs dropped in from his walk, which was a little unexpected and made me happy, and then last night, both of the girls and I went over for dinner. I can't be too angry at the Sibs because she's under a whole lot of pressure this week, with people in the house and all, and my cousin is like a whirlwind that only touches down occasionally, and after all, it is the Sibs' son who's getting married on Friday. So we're okay. I'd like to think that I might be a higher priority for my cousin, but she does what she does and fits everybody in where she can; I guess I just didn't fit into a bigger time slot this visit.

But really, if I could have a dream come true -- other than that lottery thing -- what would it be? R may have met a guy she seems to like, so that's number 1, and Wonderful Niece claims to have met the perfect guy for K, which is number 2, but the backup for number 2 is that R's guy says he has a lot of single friends. Hoo-eee! I hate to get my hopes up, but I swear, this morning I had a dream that I was cleaning the house because the guy's parents were coming over to meet us, as in, what you do immediately following your children's engagement. But it's not like I'm eager or anything.

I fell into a Seals and Crofts mood mood the other day, and listened to a bunch of their stuff on headphones, and oh how I love that stuff! One song particularly got me; I've posted the lyrics below. I saw them in concert once and they were wonderful.

Okay, waiting for the kid to call. Maybe she has big news to tell me! (Just kidding. They've been on one date.)


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1853
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

It Was A Dark and Stormy Afternoon

I just did a quick look back over my archives, and I can't believe that I have never told you this story. Maybe I have, and I just can't find it. It's a family classic, and the conditions of today make it a perfect choice.

Background: I have, in essence, six cousins. The two first cousins on my father's side disappeared from my life when I was nine or so, because my father and his sister had a disagreement and never spoke again. I have seen them a few times as adults, but I really have no relationship with them. I have two -- let's call them second cousins -- brothers, whose mother was my mother's first cousin (and my father's second cousin, a long story I know I have told before.) The older of these brothers died two years ago; we will see the younger one and his wife next week at my nephew's wedding. My mother's brother had two daughters, my first cousins, who grew up in California. The older, however, became like a third sister to me and the Sibs, was very close to my parents, and is arriving from Colorado with her husband later today.

We are having some nasty weather today, the storm that accompanies a hurricane -- Hannah -- but not the hurricane itself. (We do get the occasional hurricane here.) It's nasty rain and wind, which is what I presume has delayed my cousin's flight. And thereby hangs a tale.

This cousin, the oldest of all of us, is a brilliant woman. She is a retired school librarian, but has three or four master's degrees in various things that interest her, Russian History, Pop Culture, other stuff. She has traveled around the world, even alone, and has done it with a broken ankle. Nothing stops her; she loves the world around her and will do anything that she wants to do. Her sister, who is a year younger than my sister, is an altogether different story.

Cousin P was "sickly" as a small child (I think she had allergies) and was horribly pampered and catered to by her parents. Her big sister developed independence, but P lived at home until her late twenties or early thirties and literally did not know how to boil water. Her mother prepared everything she ate and did her laundry and cleaned her room. P went to college for 12 years or so because she kept changing her major. (She's book smart, too, but world smart ...) Finally, she became a nurse, which requires a brain, certainly.

One evening, her parents left her alone at dinner time for the very first time. Her mother had bought a TV dinner so that P could make her own meal. Her parents came home to find the fire department on their lawn. The funny thing is that the instructions on the TV dinner box are very clear, but it doesn't actually say anywhere to take the tray out of the box. (Maybe it does now.) She was maybe 30 when this happened.

A few years later, her parents moved to a senior citizens community about an hour outside of Los Angeles, and P got an apartment. Actually, she rented a room in someone else's apartment. She had no furniture, except a bed, so she kept all her clothes in boxes for years. She had a job, working three or four days a week. She dated a lot, and had several marriage proposals, but didn't feel that any of them were right for her.

In 1988, when her older sister was coming east to visit us for a week, P decided to come too. Well, okay. The other three of us are very close and have a lot in common, P not so much. I remember one afternoon sitting in my sister's living room, while all our various children ran circles around us, and P commenting on how much she admired us all, because she didn't understand how anybody could have a full time job and still get things done that you needed to do, like buy food and do laundry, and here the three of us were doing it while raising children! How could such a thing be possible! Uh, okay. She herself slept late every day, took hours to get ready to go out, could shop until she dropped, and then had to come home and take a three hour nap. No wonder she couldn't get anything done.

The end of her week came, and it was time to go home. Her sister was staying another few days. My father drove P to Newark Airport, many hours before her flight, as she had requested, because you know, she has to find stuff, and settle in, and so on. He came home around 3:00 or so in the afternoon, and within the hour, a freak storm blew in, the offshoot of a hurricane, like we have today. It was pouring rain and windy. P called her sister, who was at my house, from the airport: her flight was canceled. What should she do?

Well. We heard the one side of the conversation, and even my children, who were then 7 and 4, thought it was funny. It went something like this:

"Look for the Customer Service Desk."

"It's a desk with the sign Customer Service over it."

"Look for a sky cap to help with your bags."

"A man pushing a luggage cart."

"He's wearing a hat that says "Sky Cap" on it."

"Tell them you need a hotel room."

"Just for tonight."

"Tell them you need to re-book your flight for tomorrow."

"Show them your ticket."

And so on. It could not have been more ridiculous. And then we went out to IHOP in the storm and had pancakes. Came home to more phone calls, but P was in a hotel, and re-booked for the next afternoon. She could have had a morning flight, but didn't think she could get ready in time.

My father was horrified. He had to go get her! Her parents had entrusted P to his care! And we said "Daddy! She's forty years old!" So he didn't go.

Next day? The morning flight took off as scheduled. And then the storm rolled back in and the afternoon flight was canceled, and the game was on again. But she felt empowered this time, and enjoyed her second night in the hotel at Newark Airport. And went home the next day. And continued to feel so empowered with her new ability to look after herself that she moved to Oregon, where she had some friends, and has lived there ever since. Her mother lives there now too, in assisted living near P. P is still a flake, still can't work a full week. She has a house full of dogs and cats, one of whom -- a cat, I think -- doesn't get a long with any of the others, so the cat sleeps alone in the master bedroom. P sleeps on the couch with any number of the others.

When I spoke last night to Sister-Cousin, I mentioned that we would be having bad weather today, and I hoped that she would be okay if for some reason she got stuck at Newark Airport. We both had a good chuckle over that one.

So there you go. I guess every family's got one. P is ours.

WATCHING HOUSE :: ENTRY #1852
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

No Politics?

Really, how long did you think I could hold out on that? (Look out; it's a long one.)

Actually, I was inspired by two others today, The Empress, and Rob over at Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords. Both of them wrote such clear explanations of how they feel on the issue at hand, both without diatribe or rancor. I thought I might try to explain some things on my own, hoping to keep in the same vein.

The Empress linked to another site, one that simply says Sarah Palin Doesn't Speak For Me. And I thought, really, that's all I want to say. I don't want to say anything mean-spirited. I just want to say that Sarah Palin Doesn't Speak For Me, and what that means.

First, I need to give you some background, and you may think this is crazy, although some of you will not. Just as a conservative Christian faith is simply reality for many people, this is my reality. Let me share it with you, although I have certainly shared much of it before.

My grandparents came to this country roughly 100 years ago. Two of them came from horrible poverty, one in a big-city ghetto and the other from a rural area. My other two grandparents were raised in only modest poverty, because they both had fathers who could read. They all came to this country for the opportunity it afforded for everybody. They were not illegal immigrants, because there were few immigration laws at that time; if the laws that were passed only ten years later had been in effect, none of them would have been allowed to come here.

They all worked very hard, at first, all of them in various garment factories. One grandfather worked himself up to decent middle class, and his family did all right, even through the Depression. My other grandfather remained a day laborer in New York City, and was never able to save a dime his entire life. He worked for everything he had, and he worked hard. The very first thing I learned about politics, I learned from him. I remember walking somewhere with him, holding his hand above my head, so I was very small, and him telling me that had it not been for Franklin Roosevelt, he and grandma would now be living in a poorhouse.

My father, as I have said many times, served quite honorably in World War II, in Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. He earned a Bronze Star for bravery. It changed his life and it changed who he was. But he was always the most honest, ethical person I knew.

I was born in 1953. There was never, ever a time in my life that I did not know that not so long before I was born, a terrible man named Hitler had tried to kill all people like me: all people who were Jewish. I did not grow up in fear of anti-Semitism, because I grew up in America, where all people are equal and all people are safe. (I know that isn't always the way it turns out, but I was raised to believe that it's the ideal and it should be.) But I have always known that I was born a member of a group of people who have been persecuted for thousands of years. It gives you an interesting sense of always being followed, somehow.

You know I am not religious, and my husband is not Jewish. But we are both very spiritual. I'm just saying.

Sarah Palin does not speak for me. As far as I'm concerned, her family and personal life are irrelevant and off limits. Her views are not. Even though I know that there are many people who do agree with her, which is fine, of course, I have other concerns. But first, some of the issues.

Sarah Palin believes in Creationism. Still, fine by me, her beliefs are her own. She believes that Creationism should be taught in public schools. No. Creationism is a religious belief that does not belong in public schools. It is not my religious belief; why should I or my children be taught it? It has validity as a religious belief, but it is not science. Science is something else.

Sarah Palin supports the war in Iraq. Once again, fine for her. To me, this war is a travesty, a trumped up cover for the real war, which is for Haliburton and its ilk to gain control of Iraqi oil. To make rich people richer. I absolutely honor the service of every single man or woman who puts on the uniform of our country. I despair that they are being so ill-used by a government that sees them as nothing but cannon fodder, numbers of troops on a page. There is no such thing as an acceptable level of casualties. The loss of a single one of our service people in that war is an atrocity.

Sarah Palin is opposed to abortion; again, fine for her, and for anyone who invites her to be part of such a decision. It is not fine for me. My sense is not that a woman has a right to control her own body; it's an old phrase that to me is just not that clear. I believe that every woman has a right to her own mind and thoughts and beliefs, and as a result of that, a right to choose. Sarah Palin's daughter has made a choice. What if at some future time, one of my daughters has a choice to make, and abortion is illegal? Will she die in the process of an illegal abortion, just because her beliefs are not the same as Sarah Palin's? Why does her daughter get to choose but my daughter doesn't?

Sarah Palin is opposed to gay marriage. Once again, her feelings are fine for her, but what business does she have in anyone else's bedroom? What difference does it make to her who marries whom? What is it about traditional inter-sex marriage that makes it so in need of defense? I'm telling you, I would way rather live next door to a lovely gay couple than to the goofball neighbors we have now who never talk to us, or the previous family who spoke no English and who hurried out of sight when I said hello. If she's not gay, what on earth does it have to do with her?

Sarah Palin has "flirted" with the idea of Alaska seceding from the Union; that is, becoming its own country independent of the United States.

It's untrue that Palin has no foreign policy experience, anyway. In fact, she appears to have seriously flirted with the idea of trying to turn Alaska into a foreign country. How many vice presidential candidates can put that on their resumes?

Over the years, Palin has actively courted the Alaska Independence Party, or AIP, an organization that supports Alaskan secession from the U.S. To be clear, we're not necessarily talking about friendly secession either: As the AIP's founder, Joe Vogler, told an interviewer in 1991: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government. ... And I won't be buried under their damn flag." From The L.A. Times.

The party of Abraham Lincoln, friends, the president who died as a martyr to the Constitution, that little document that makes us what we are, who lived and died for the cause of keeping the Union whole, the United States one country, indivisible. That's what it means in that pesky old pledge, you know: indivisible. Out country cannot be divided. We stand together. Alaska became a state when I was in kindergarten; I remember the celebrations and the hoopla. Secede? I support the Constitution, and I'd like to have a president who does, too, especially since that's what they promise when they take the oath of office. Having a president who isn't too sure doesn't cut it for me.

Sarah Palin is in favor of banning books in libraries that don't coincide with her personal beliefs. From Time Magazine:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

I have spent a career devoted to free access to information. How does she dare to presume what others have a right to see, to read, to know? Would she ban the Koran from libraries, lest anything learn anything about Islam? Would she ban Mein Kampf, lest anyone learn what the monster Hitler said in his own words, to be exposed for the bile they are?

Well then. Sarah Palin does not speak for me. She is opposed to many things -- okay, not everything -- that I have built a lifetime standing for. That much is certainly clear.

So what?

Should John McCain win -- and I'm not even touching that one, not now anyway -- I don't expect them to give her much to do, except show up when and where they want her to. Who cares. Should John McCain win and then die, which isn't so far-fetched, then we have a problem.

A good president not only represents his -- I'm using the generic male pronouns here -- and his party's beliefs, he represents all Americans. Sarah Palin not only does not speak for me, she cannot represent me. If she were to become President, I would surely feel like an outcast, an undesirable in the country my grandparents came to with hope in their hearts, the country for which my father put his life on the line. There could be no clearer message to me: you are not wanted here. Your spiritual beliefs are not valid. Your respect for others is not respected. Your professional dedication is a liability.

And you, Jew, are not wanted here.

I am not saying that Sarah Palin is an anti-Semite, as such; I have never heard any indication of that at all and I'm not saying that. I do believe that there are those in the Christian right -- and I'm not talking about all Christians, of course, or even all conservative Christians, I'm talking about a vocal element within that group -- that sees Jews, as well as others, as superfluous members of this society, those whose beliefs are insignificant. Otherwise, why would it be so important to force their beliefs on others? Why aren't my beliefs just as good as yours?

It is said that many of these same people support Israel, which I know to be true. I believe that this is because Jesus is expected to return one day to the Holy Land, and that his arrival in Arab-held lands would not be a good thing. (Y'all remember the Crusades, right?) And anyway, when the end comes, Jews and others who don’t accept Jesus ... “are toast.” (From The L.A. Times.)

Do I have a real reason to be afraid? I don't know, but there are people who have been following me for thousands of years, remember, just as if I have a target on my back. Remember too that just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean people aren't out to get you.

Sarah Palin does not speak for me because in her vision of what this country is, there is no place for me, no place for gay-loving, book-cherishing, abortion-choosing, Constitution-revering Jewish me. Do I have a real reason to be afraid? I'm pretty sure I do.


WATCHING SVU :: ENTRY #1851
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Reporting From the Front

First, reminder to self: NO POLITICS NO POLITICS NO POLITICS. But I will repeat what I said the other day. I am astonished that intelligent people of good faith can look at the same stuff -- or in this case, political candidates -- and have such absolutely different reactions. And now, repeat: NO POLITICS NO POLITICS NO POLITICS.

Deep breath.

It's about a quarter to twelve and I have an unexpected lull. I have so far today done two freshman classes of I.D. cards, and about the equivalent of a class-size worth of replacement cards for upperclassmen. So far, all the kids have been very polite and pleasant and often amusing. I have already seen the obligatory Most Obsessed Member of the Freshman Class, as well as The Quirkiest Member of the Freshman Class. The Obsessed One handed in his homework to the teacher whose class was here for the pictures, waited until he saw his teacher check off his name in both attendance and collected homework, sat down, and when the teacher asked "Now do I have everyone's work?", jumped up again to make sure he was checked off. The Quirky One carried a bottle of water in his hand, had another bottled clipped to his belt loop, and had three more in an outside pocket of his backpack. So.

It's going very well. I'm tired, but not like I was. (And today I'm on my feet all day.) But I slept this morning until the alarm (!!), so that was like getting an extra hour or two of sleep for me.

Next class coming in. More to follow.

Home.

In the afternoon classes, I met The Vain Girl ("Do I have to have my picture taken? OMIGOD! How does my hair look?") and The Socially Stupid Girl, who was so busy chatting with the others in line that when I said "Look right at the camera and hold still," she scrunched up her nose and looked at her friends and said "What?" Which led to my explaining to her that I was taking a still photograph, and had she ever had her picture taken before? She said "What?" After which every other kid in line giggled (understandably) when it was their turn and I said "Look right at the camera and hold still." I giggled with them.

After school was a horse of a different color, maybe 50 kids, maybe more, in to get cards done, with me all alone. Someone will be emailed in the morning.

Ah well. The day is over and it was waaay better than the last two, exhaustion wise. I'm not unhappy or stressed. I just have to keep reminding myself: NO POLITICS NO POLITICS NO POLITICS.


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1850
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

OMG

I am incredibly, horribly exhausted. Physically exhausted, not even really sleepy. I canceled my nail appointment after school today and came home and collapsed on the couch for over two hours.

I have the sneaking suspicion that my body is trying to tell me something.

But work is fine, except for the exhaustion and stuff. At one point today, I needed to open a box that was on the floor and I began to kneel down on my right knee and about eight inches from the floor, my knee said "NONONONONO YOU CAN'T DO THAT ANYMORE!" and I creaked myself upright. At one point after a trip to the ladies' room downstairs, I gave up and walked all the way down the hall and took the elevator up, even though the stairs were right there and the library is right above the ladies' room.

I do hope I begin to adjust to this on some level.

The SCM was in today, and all is pretty much what I figured. He's taking off whenever he wants to, which I expected. In the last week of September, we have Tuesday and Wednesday off for Rosh Hashonah; he's taking the previous Friday and that Monday, so he'll get a whole week off. Because, you know, his vacation home is so far away! It's all the way in Vermont! And probably his diamond shoes are too tight!

And that's all the news that's fit to print. Once again, will the people I need to talk to just call me already so I can make my lunch and pass out? Please?


WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1849
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Looong Day

As expected, I woke up around five and then drifted in and out for an hour or so, got up around 6.10. So that's going on 14 hours. I have not been continuously upright for this many hours since June. My back is screaming at me, "What, are you KIDDING?"

It was a fine day, other than the fatigue aspect. Did what I needed to do, saw folk. The SCM actually called in sick today, so, still no news on what's going on with him and retirement plans. My first question to him tomorrow, assuming he actually shows up, has got to be "Just exactly how many sick days do you have?" Second question: "And are you taking them all between now and February?"

R left work early today to see a dermatologist -- mine -- because she had developed this odd mark on her face, which has now faded, and she picked a doctor near her off a list and went last week and no one showed up at the office. She and another patient just sat there, waiting, and no doctor, not even a receptionist, appeared. So I told her I'd feel a lot better if she just saw my doctor, who is very, very good. So she took the train her to B-Town and K picked her up, after which we went to the Red Lobster, aka the only restaurant you can eat in if you're on W8 Watchers (don't talk to me about Applebee's), and then we drove her home. (It was just sun damage, btw, not serious.)

I needed to make a quick call to the Sibs and then the Colleague (who is much better), but the C got another call and has to call me back. But I just want to go to sleep! Okay, I want to put my cute little lunch together and then go to sleep.

But first, change the channel. The new 90210 just came in, and I will watch a lot of crap, but I will not watch that.


WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1848
READING: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson