The $3.78 Telescope

Today on the way home from traffic court, I stopped at CVS. I had called for an Rx refill on Sunday and figured that the staff had probably gotten around to filling it by now since I'd said that I would pick it up this past Sunday at 2:30 pm.

While zipping through the store I got pulled toward a clearance shelf. There was a Vivitar telescope that had a $14.99 price tag, with a placard on the shelf saying that everything here was 75% off.

So I got a niftly little (actually not little, now that it's out of the box and all the parts are assembled) telescope for Steve and Thea to check out the sky.

Of course it's cloudy tonight so no stargazing. . . .yet.

My Day in Court

Back on March 13, Micah and I picked up Thea from school and we were driving home along Prospect Street. As I turned from Prospect onto Rivereside Drive East there was a police car behind me, and as I turned onto Route 27, he put on his lights and pulled me over.

This was the first time I really had no clue as to what I could have done; my first thought was did I not come to a complete stop at that first stop sign, but I did not feel particularly inclined to self-incriminate.

The officer's reason was that I was going 38 mph in a 25 mph zone, which I really and truly doubt. The stretch of Prospect I was on was between two stop signs, I would almost have had to put the gas pedal to the floor to get to that speed before having to put the brakes on to stop again. As the children don't seem to be suffering from whiplash-type injuries, I don't think that's what happened.

What really and truly got me aggravated was that he followed me for more than 1/2 mile before pulling me over, so instead of the nice, safe, not very busy Riverside Drive East, I am sitting on the tiny shoulder of Route 27 at the beginning of rush hour. No way was I going to ask to get out of the car to see the radar device, I prefer not to be squashed like a bug on a windshield in front of my children.

Before he pulled out into traffic to allow me to get back on to Route 27 safely without someone barrelling out of Princeton at 45+ mph parking up my tailpipe, he said "you don't have to go to court. . . ." I don't know why that would have made any difference to him, but that statement bothered me as well.

So today I went to the Princeton Municipal Building at 9 am for the court date. It was a bit of drama and social engineering, attornies representing clients were the first to be able to speak with the prosecuter, then those of us representing ourselves were dealt with - all of this was irrespective of the order in which we signed in earlier that morning. Attornies first, unrepresented peons next, some people just are a bit higher on the pecking order obviously.

The drama was watching a man who had numerous speeding tickets, citations for illegal turns, etc. AND who had also been cited three times for not having children in proper child car seats. He got verbally drubbed, picked up and thumped a few more times by the judge (as well he should.) I think part of her 'creative solution' of having him arrange with the township police department to be taught how to properly install child safety seats would have been to make him got to St. Peter's Children's Hospital's neuro-intensive care to see the consequences of head injuries in children. But he just got walloped with an enormous monetary fine, 15 days license suspension and the requirement to show the court proof of having gone to the police department for the child safety seat lesson.

There was one deaf person appearing before the court with a sign language interpreter, and since the guy spoke very clearly in response to some of the questions being signed to him, I was curious as to the cause of his hearing impairment. I also happy that Micah is in an auditory-oral program. If he is ever in court, he won't be waiting for an interpreter (who got lost on the way to this appearance), he'll be able to speak for himself.

The bottom line for me is that the violation was reduced to no points, which can be done twice in one's lifetime, so I paid the fine and went home. My butt was only slightly numb from sitting for two hours or more even though I was the sixth person to sign in that morning.

And I still don't think I was doing 38 in a 25 zone.

My BAHA Rant

Micah's bone-conduction hearing aids are relatively simple devices. There is a rolling dial that adjusts the volume (amount of vibration conducted into his skull), a very tiny switch that adjusts to accomodate for a noisier background or to accomodate an FM system, but usually the tiny switch should be left on "1" . If it gets switched to the "E" setting for use with an FM system and no FM is connected to the BAHA, you feel no vibrations transmitted when you speak.

None of this is rocket science. I cannot program a VCR, but I can manage two BAHAs.

So today Micah gets off the bus with his hearing aids in the ZipLoc bag because it's raining and the bus driver and aide understand that the BAHAs do not get wet. Period. This is good.

But Micah loves his BAHAs - he now will shriek that he wants "helps you hear" put on immediately when he gets inside or into the car if the BAHAs are off. He is absolutely insistent, and this is also good. So today I transferred him from the school bus into my car, the minute that I buckled in, he wanted his BAHAs on. So I pulled out the ZipLoc bag and dialed the volume up from "O" to "2" and felt no vibration from one of the BAHAs when I was talking to Micah. Steve said that one of the batteries was a little iffy that morning, in the middle of the green zone, so I just assumed that it was time to replace it when we got back home. One was better than none, and it would just need to be taken off when we got out of the car to go get Thea from school because it was still raining.

There have been a few times when he's come home from school with one or the other BAHAs tiny switch on "E" which means that he's not getting anything from that BAHA; I've written several notes to remind staff that the switches should also be rechecked after naps when the volume is being dialed up. Not rocket science.

Today's snafu is difficult to pinpoint who is at fault since the bus staff could've taken it off or the school staff, but the whole idea that no one seems to be checking the tiny switch starting to annoy me. Why make a small child work that much harder to hear when all it takes is a little diligence to check out the equipment?

Another Weekend Update

. . .of nothing much in the way of excitement to blog about. This week was a recovery week from being away last weekend - getting all the laundry done, getting back into some shred of a routine, and seeing Steve's family.

We went to see Monsters vs. Aliens, all four of us. Thea actually knew a few of the characters through friends at school who've already been to see the film, and it was definitely more interesting than "Hotel for Dogs" so she managed to make it through the movie without the previously heard "Mama, I'm bored. . . ."

Micah actually managed to sit for about a half hour, maybe slightly longer. Until the popcorn and Coke ran out , at least. Then he got a case of wanderlust and had to try out various other seats, until I was ready to dig my old scuba diving weight belt to anchor his butt to one spot.

Today the kids and I went to visit their grandmother. Thank goodness for GPS because Steve's "it's easy just exit here, go there, turn here" directions which failed to include the really useful "stay in the middle lane" type details. Good practice, since we'll be going to Hackensack for Micah's CT scan.

And there's a weird sort of symmetry to having to make a trip to Hackensack to get something for Micah. In 2007, just a couple of weeks before our trip to China I had to make a Saturday morning run to the USCIS office there to be re-fingerprinted for our adoption paperwork. Back in the days before GPS (or my owning one, at least), going to find a hole-the-wall, utterly nondescript storefront office.

I'm crossing fingers that we can get the CT done during the spring break week, then get an appointment with the ENT surgeon to find out if atresia repair is possible and which ear will be first.

I've gotten semi-hooked into watching "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" on HBO. Sort of makes me wish I'd read Alexander McCall Smith's book first. "True Blood" is back in mid-June, one month after the ninth book in the series is published. It's going to be a good summer.

Next weekend is Easter - and I've already got the stuff for Thea's and Micah's baskets. We're into the more pagan and chocolate-fueled aspects of the holiday, and will probably be one of the few families having matzoh ball soup after the Easter egg hunt. Thea and I make a mean matzoh ball soup.

600 Hits in Six Months, Etc.

I've said I love the little counter widget that keeps track of visits to the blog. Yesterday six months and one day after I installed it, the number hit 600. Which is relatively tiny compared to some of the blogs I read, but most of what I write is very snore-worthy and intended for a niche market of family and close friends - my guess is that at least half, maybe more, of the visits are my husband, which seems to save him the time of actually engaging in conversation though what he does with that saved time remains a mystery to me.

I love the ten little foreign flags on the Feedjit map, too. Canada, France, Portugal, Greece, Qatar, Kazakhstan, India, Viet Nam, China, Philippines. Still hoping for that hit from Germany or Spain, but I will be patient.

Yesterday was also my mother's birthday. Forgot to send a card, but I did mail her one of the invitations to the party which arrived yesterday, so I'm not completely horrible.

The hideous behemoth (aka the minivan) arrived Wednesday night while I was at the PTA meeting for Thea's school. Oh joy. I have no intention of driving it until the first weekend in May when we go to Oma's; my mother is thrilled that she can bring a friend along to the NLH Spring Festival.

Evil Children

Today was going to be such a good day. A house to myself, errands unencumbered by a little man who thinks that every stuffed animal and Beanie Baby in every store is meant to be his, some time on the laptop getting patient letters re: labs and x-ray results ready to send.

A triptych of annoyances over a relatively short time:


The children came home from school. Thea had to sit on my chair in the living room and then proceed to point out that someone used a ballpoint pen to draw a very large circle on the cushion. Lining up the usual suspects, Micah denied committing this heinous act, saying "only draw on PAY-per. . ." with fierce conviction. Since his artistic talent these days are circles of varying sizes, I remained totally unconvinced of this professed innocence. Fortunately after putting various ballpoint pens through the dryer in 2004, I had hairspray on hand managed to get quite a bit of the mark out.

Micah is now restricted to the kitchen as far as pens go. Which was where he was when Thea wanted to cut paper. So both had scissors (Micah still in the kitchen, if you are on pen restrictions, scissor privileges are even more limited.)

Thea came into the kitchen to ask if she could cut up a magazine "with people on it" from the coffee table. This could have meant my nursing magazines (automatic yes), catalogs (ditto) or a few other things that I would prefer not to have sliced up. This very polite question would have been the right thing to do, if she hadn't already cut half of the cover off of my barely-read April 2009 copy of Washingtonian magazine. And when I saw that she'd already cut it and was a little annoyed with her, she had the gall to tell me that she did it because I didn't tell her not to do it fast enough.

We'd made some popcorn after school for a snack, and Thea hadn't finished it and put the bowl on the counter. She wanted to dump it in the trash but I asked her to ask her father if he'd want it later. Then when I stuck my head out into the living room to see what the answer was I find both she and Steve munching away, as dinner sits ready to serve on the stove and me needing to get on the road to the PTA-ish meeting at Thea's school. I could have clubbed them both over their heads but took the less violent path of yelling my lungs out at them. They deserved it.

Bad day to forget to take the blood pressure medicine.

The End of the Hope of Cool

I have always been a nerd, but a nerd with the hope of one day, achieving some small degree of cool - even if that turns out to be racing stripes on my walker. A shred of optimism in my otherwise cynical and sarcastic heart.

Today that hope is on life support, and likely by tonight, the plug will be pulled.

The subtitle of today's post should be: Enter the Minivan.

A Toyota Sienna. Seven seats, which should increase our schlepping-people power by a factor of almost two.

This past weekend on the way down to Mom's, Siennas were all I saw on I-95, it was like they were on some sort of southern migratory pathway. It was the universe's way of conking me over the head and telling me that my biggest nightmare is about to come true.

We are going to become one of 'those people.' Surburbanites, soccer parents. There were two things I told Steve while we were dating: I will not change my surname when married and I will NEVER drive a minivan.

This will be Steve's car, FYI. Not that a Honda CRV is a huge step up the ladder toward cool, but small steps are better than no steps.

And I still use the name I was born with. So all is not lost, yet.