Yes!

HSPA (which we pronounce hespa) is over, for now, for which we are all grateful. That would be the High School Proficiency Assessment, which New Jersey students must pass to graduate from high school. I'd like to say that's it's over until next year, but actually it's only over until next week, when those who couldn't wake up on time for three days in a row this week will take the make-ups. Which were going to be given in the library -- and I didn't even blow a gasket -- but then got moved to a classroom. So for me, no more HSPAs for a year.

It was 45 degrees when I left school today, and this tune started up in my head: It's summatime summatime sum- sum- summatime! because, you know, in comparison, 45 degrees is great weather. It's supposed to be almost 60 on Saturday, so I guess I can go out in shorts and flip-flops. As if I ever left the house in shorts and flip-flops.

This was a nice short week, it seemed. I guess that's what happens when it starts with a snow day.

My wonderful therapist has set me partially free; she thinks I don't need to come in every week any more. Gloriosky, I'm cured! Or something; mostly she thinks that I'm dealing pretty well with all my medical and physical crap, which was my reason for going to her to begin with. And I am, pretty much. For now, I'll be going every other week, but she says she'll keep my time open, so I can go in between, if I want to.

I need to dream about my mother tonight, because I'm trying to remember something that she would know, and I need to ask her. (No, it doesn't really work like that.) Here's what it is. I was talking today to one of our younger teachers, who is teaching a unit on the Holocaust and genocide. I was explaining to her that I don't generally watch Holocaust movies (like Schindler's List, for example, or Life is Beautiful) or read books about the Holocaust, because I think that education is important so that no one ever forgets, but that I am in no danger of forgetting, so I don't have to see that stuff. She seemed to think this was very strange, but I explained that when I was a child, it was kind of common for other kids to have parents or grandparents who were Holocaust survivors, and that my father had helped liberate a camp, and so this was a very tangible thing that I grew up with, not history. Then I remembered our next door neighbors when we lived in the apartment, before we moved to B-Town. The kids were a boy a year younger than my sister (Stanley) and a girl a year younger than I, who was my friend (Sherry.) Their mother (Ruth) and their father, whose name I could not remember, were camp survivors. (It took me all day, but I remembered that his name was Steve.) Anyway, anybody could see that Ruth had numbers tattooed on her arm, although Steve did not. My parents explained that this meant that Steve had been in a labor camp, where he was expected to work until he died, so that it wasn't important to keep track of him. Ruth, however, was assigned a number and kept track of. They had both been put in the camps as teenagers. When I was older, my mother told me that Ruth had been taken when she was twelve or thirteen, along with her identical twin sister. If you know about the Holocaust, then you know it was not a good place to be a twin. Both of them were subjected to medical experiments; the twin did not survive. Anyway, I knew them to be lovely people, devoted parents. Stanley was obnoxious, although Sherry was very sweet and pretty. The thing is: I CANNOT REMEMBER THEIR LAST NAME AND IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. My mother would know. My sister doesn't remember, either, and IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. All I can think of is Weinberg, but seriously, I'm sure I would remember if our next door neighbors both before and after we moved were all named Weinberg, and I know for a fact that our neighbors in B-Town were. That would have amused me, even at eight years old.

Okay, so. I now need to take my allergy meds because I am breaking out in itchies all over. Such is my lot in life.


KEITH OLBERMAN :: ENTRY #2002
READING: The Alchemyst by Michael Scott