Adventures in Mama-Land

I realize they probably weren’t thinking when they populated the “Country” drop-down box, and just threw in a standard list of options.  But really… I can’t be the only person surprised that there are no results. (there are a few in Karmiel, by the way… that’s what I was really looking for, before getting sidetracked.  :-))

…“Your child is extraordinary.” For almost twenty years, I have hoped and prayed and longed for slightly-above-average children.  Bright children, helpful children, menschlich children.  Just please, please don’t give me extraordinary children.  Nothing too high or too low; nothing that stands out.  I want my children to be the ones that, when I bump into their teachers in the grocery store the next year, won’t be able to place exactly who I am, beyond just “parent of former student.” When the big kids were not so big, I used to say to them all the time, “smart kids are a dime a dozen – I want you to be NICE kids.”  Nice.  Nice and average.  Isn’t that a wonderful thing to hope for? Of course, I failed right out of the starting gate.  Nobody who has ever taught YM or seen him in a classroom has ever forgotten.  I hope that doesn’t sound like a big brag; it feels awful.  Last month, we went to a wedding and I sat at a table where I kn...

My father used to sit and mutter “antisemitten” under his breath when somebody did something he didn’t like… and I’d think it was silly.  Of course the whole world aren’t antisemites.  Right??? So why does this city think it’s cool to single out the one group who has a Sabbath on which they don’t use the Internet or telephone?  Do Muslims use the phone on Fridays?  Do Christians use the phone on Sunday?  I think, for the most part, yes.  You’d think that then, as a lowest common denominator, especially in areas with a lot of Jewish families, they wouldn’t hold registration on a Saturday for Parks & Rec classes. You’d be wrong… sigh… If you’re Jewish and you live in Toronto, or you’re willing to fake either one, feel free to let your councillor know just how dumb and demeaning this is, to completely cut an entire ethnic group out of the citywide registration process.  Two city councillor email addresses are included below, in case one happens to...

What is going on ?!?  These days, it seems like “school time” has to be stolen furtively from “everything-else time.”  We are barely getting anything done because of catching up with all the million other urgent things that must get done NOW.  Okay, you might not think yesterday morning’s “me-only” Pilates class wasn’t urgent… but that’s only because you haven’t seen the shape of me lately.  Shudder. Let me just tell you, it is NOT the same to make up “class” time in the afternoon that we missed in the morning.  First thing in the morning, Naomi Rivka is complacent, attentive happy to sit in a chair.  I suspect many people are.  First thing in the afternoon – nope!  For one thing, by the afternoon, she is probably already in the middle of a million projects.  Even if it’s something as simple as a Barbie getting married, or a series of drawings she’s working hard on.  Just take me in front of a firing squad of unschoolers for steering h...

I was sitting wondering this in class tonight, probably when I ought to have been paying attention, but what else is new? Who’s going to use the language in 20 years?  Is it like learning Latin, a static, dead language, or, like Yiddish once was, a language reserved for chatting with old, stubborn people who refuse to go with the new ways (in the case of Yiddish, this was “learning English”… whereas in the case of deaf seniors, it is “not getting cochlear implants”). One of the best-known deaf kids (THE best-known?) thanks to her mother’s “Signing Time” DVDs, even Leah Coleman now has cochlear implants (actually, as of seven years ago – read the article; she makes many good and important points).  Her mother still recommends signing as part of the child’s communication toolbox, but not necessarily as the primary, first language of deaf children that advocates have worked so long and hard to have it acknowledge to be.  (She DOES strongly recommend giving children a la...

Gruesome 7am Parks and Rec registration… complete! And now, back to bed.

One thing I’d like to ask everybody in my family, but have never gotten up the whatever to ask is:  am I the only one as inflexible as a Hummel doll??? Long ago, one summer when I was 12, I took dance classes at the JCC – I’m talking about all day, every day.  Well, maybe not ALL day, and it was only for a month.  But it was a LOT of dance classes, like 5 or 6 a day.  I got strong and fast and I was (believe it or not) a skinny kid anyway.  (Honest - I looked seriously weird in a leotard because my elbows were too pointy and my knees too knobbly…) I was, by any measure, healthy and fit, and I loved feeling my little muscles.  And when it was time for stretching, I DID the stretches, darn it, almost hard enough to hurt. But almost every day, at the same JCC, my Bubby used to come to “make exercise” and swim.  (It was always “make” exercise – no amount of “how was your exercise, Bubby?” could get her to just use “exercise” as a verb.) Somet...

I’m not going to generalize about deaf people based on only having met a few, but I’ve noticed… well, some deaf people don’t have wonderful spelling.  And spelling is important to me – it’s something I notice. One of the handouts that was given to our class early on mentioned that reading in English is an area where many deaf people are at a disadvantage, because ASL is NOT English, is not coded English, is not in any way related to English. (it’s actually becoming less related to English with the deprecation of “initial” signs, like the D handshape in DAY, or the L at the mouth for LUNCH – apparently being phased out in favour of the less-Anglocentric FOOD-NOON) So native speakers of ASL are at a disadvantage when it comes to English.  I’ve known it for a while, but somewhat dismissed it, because after all, anyone can learn English… right?  Especially when they’re surrounded by it as Deaf people are in the US and Canada!  Well, dummy me – not if they can’t H...

I’m sure you know that shining moment when everybody in the class is staring in your direction, open-mouthed?  When the teacher, a mad bald, white-bearded, pot-bellied tiny deaf man, is gesticulating frantically in your direction as if you were Einstein himself? We all get that from time to time, right??? So what did I do to deserve it in my signing class tonight? He does this thing where he goes around the circle and points to each student and you have negative three seconds to sign a word:  in this case, it was occupations.  And this was our THIRD time around, so we’d exhausted all the easy possibilities. I had already signed “doctor” and “bank teller” (it had been done, so I had to guess again) and “security guard” and frankly, I was sniffly from allergies, feeling LOUSY.  So when it came back to me and every profession anyone had ever heard of had been taken, I lazily stuck the sign for ANIMAL in front of the sign for DOCTOR .  Two basic signs any...

As a homeschooling parent, there is so much I CAN do and DO do on a regular basis that it’s discouraging when I come up against one of my failings. Yes, failings .  (family members, especially younger siblings:  this is not true; I am lying, I am omnipotent, I am making this up, and therefore stop reading right now) Here’s one:  I absolutely cannot, in any way, make up a story. I just can’t! In one of my signing classes, the teacher was trying to get us to sign more fluently by making us draw three random “story cards” and then using classifiers (descriptive hand movements that don’t correspond to exact word-signs) to tell a story based on the pictures we’d drawn. Well, I failed miserably, and would have failed in any language, even English.  One of my “stories” involved an elf who found a key and a baby and a bag and there was a lot of random arm-waving but it was basically a STUPID story that culminated in the elf OPENING A DOOR! Don’t get me wrong:...

TONIGHT WAS MY FIRST SIGN CLASS IN THE NEW YEAR. . I LEARNED A LOT - - YAY!!! !!! Yes, after two cancelled sessions (summer and fall), my ASL 1D class is going ahead full-steam!  Only 11 students, and although I feel rusty, I wasn’t utterly pathetic.  It is the weird gnome-like teacher I had last time, but somehow, I’m so grateful that the class is running, at last, that I was happy to see him.  Wish I knew enough ASL to remind him that he owes me $5 from last year, though…!

Back to sweetness, light and trivia!  If you’re curious about who we are and what we eat, please scroll to the end.  I’ll put it back up front next time!  I’m just feeling grumpy right now.  So if you’re curious, scroll. It’s still Monday, dammit, and we need to eat.  Just the bare bones this week.  I’m having a terrible week, and it’s only Monday. Thunderstorms every day, so no bbq. Monday:  No menu planned, and I had my signing class, so Ted made pita pizzas and frozen french fries; I microwaved a tin of mushroom soup.  Some kind of all-time low, that’s for sure. Tuesday:  Garlic, kale & white bean soup – to use some of the kale that is doing so fabulously in a container outside the door.  Bread?  Bake bread?  Maybe, maybe… to use some of the dough to make Wednesday’s supper.  Hmm… Wednesday:  Hamburgers baked inside buns – looks bloody , tastes fantastic! Wednesday (Vegan Vursday!):    Sti...

Dennis Prager! Oooh, I’m so excited, and it’s just down the street from me, too! Closer than my own shul, even! His talk on Friday night is “How to fix non-Orthodox Judaism,” which is unbelievably intriguing to me. I mean, if it could be FIXED, maybe I could join in again, right? Of course, I’m being tongue-in-cheek. Because it all depends what you mean by FIXED. Nevertheless, I’m intrigued, and I think my mother, who’s just been taking a course on denominational Judaism (taught by Conservative rabbis) might be interested as well. And Ted, who happily joins me on any and all Prager-related errands. (So far, Ted & I have been to hear him more than any other speaker, including local speakers… I believe it’s five times, but perhaps only 4: Pride of Israel, Leah Posluns; hmm… I forget where else we’ve heard him. Suffice to say, we’d go hear him in a bar, mosque, church, anywhere as long as he was at the front of the room!) Slightly less interesting is his Shabbos mo...

The person – one person, sitting across from me.  Who is a nice person, a very nice person.  A smiling, friendly person, more so than me.  I think she wants to learn ASL so she can go teach deaf people in underprivileged places and not at all for blurry unfocused reasons like me.  AND she is so driven to learn, she repeats every sign she sees, over and over, entirely seriously, and looks so sad when she forgets one. Just so you know.  She’s nice, and she’s good at signing, and she’s going to take whatever she learns and do good in the world.  Just to establish her character... and mine in contrast, because SHE is the person I most want to strangle in all the world when I am sitting across from her most Monday evenings. Why? Because as the teacher signs to the class, this lovely fellow student TALKS right along. Like I said, she’s good.  So the teacher will sign something like - “My car is grey and has four wheels and I love to drive it very...

Yesterday was spring; today, deep, deep winter.  My ASL class is cancelled.  Blah.

Came across this dvar Torah by Chief Rabbi of England Lord Jonathan Sacks (text and audio available at that link) while looking for my regular parsha audio show with Rabbi Phil Chernofsky at IsraelNationalRadio.com. ( here are many, MANY back “issues” of Phil Chernofsky’s Torah Tidbits Audio shows, in case you’re interested… he’s always lively and easy to follow, and sometimes fascinating) Anyway, I particularly enjoyed what Rabbi Sacks had to say because it ties together a few thoughts that I was having following this reading (also by Rabbi Sacks) that we had to do for a learning group that got together last motzaei Shabbos.  The one we had to read was over twelve pages long, and that’s with very tight margins (but very illuminating and erudite, I promise!)… while this dvar Torah, on the other hand, is an easy eight minute listen / read. And I love it because  he points out that Torah and science aren’t here to contradict one another… and that sometimes believe in scie...

Noticed this message on the side of a pack of Whoppers last night.  Well, I thought it was hilarious and ate the whole thing… because it’s diet, right? Today was officially “Taking Care of Business Day”. Massively didn’t want to go to aerobics class, especially on the subway, but it turned out the subway actually got me there early.  And then got me both up to the health-card office and down to the drivers’-license office similarly super-fast.  So much for putting down the TTC; it was lovely… relaxing, too.  I brought a book along and just read like crazy.  I should really drive less often.  I love riding subways and buses SOoo much.  I forget between times, but that is how I spent a good huge chunk of my life, and I do miss it.  The quiet, the weird kind of solitude when you’re surrounded by people who don’t care about you at all. With kids, well, it is much less relaxing.  And there are so many variables that I don’t like to n...