teachers

I have the greatest respect and admiration for teachers and consider them highly undervalued and under paid. Still , now and then I just want to beat one to a pulp. My S finally motivates himself to study and study his math until he masters it. He walks into and out of the test feeling confident. When we get it back we discover , that yes, he did learn the subject and got almost all of the answers correct. However, the evil, should be retired, math teacher lowers his grade two full grades because he didn't show his work! No wait, he did show his work, just not as much as she wanted him to. Does this women have any concept of how hard it is to 1) get a teenage boy to care about his work and 2)to then do something concrete and effective about it? Nice way to send him the message that trying is useless because I'll just find a way to screw you over anyway. So now, I have to e mail her (done), then when she refuses to do anything about it yell, cry and plead my way through the school administration. All of which will probably amount to nothing. I am already frustrated and I haven't even started the ordeal yet. It is so unfair to this kid. While he may bring some (lots?) of stuff on him all by himself in this case he did the right thing and is getting no positive reinforcement. Ugh!

collection update

Remember those collection idiots? Finally tracked down the credit card company they claimed gave them the debt info. After being transferred 8 times and leaving various messages I reach a live human being. The credit card woman assured me that that card was closed over a year ago and that I didn't owe a thing on it. No shit. The nice woman said she would call over there and straighten them all out. Cool. 45 minutes later guess who calls? Collections morons again. So I now have to dive back into voice mail hell. Ugh! Am I too old to run away to Europe and live off my waitressing tips?

Rosh H

OK, Rosh Hashanah was great. My D came home from college with 5 girlfriends . It was so much fun to spend dinner with such intelligent, interesting, funny women. I really like her friends and the fact that they are all so different from each other really makes a great evening. I hated having to get up from the conversation to serve and clean. Of course the credit all goes to my Mom who refuses to consider take in and makes the kugel, matza balls, brisket all from scratch. She is quite unhappy that no one else in the family ( translation: me) knows how to do any of this. For some reason she does not believe in her own immortality. We all blissfully ignore this notion confident that she will be here forever ensuring we are all well fed.

concerts

Last night I went to the Weezer concert. I love Weezer and they did not disappoint at all. They were amazing and played almost everything I wanted to hear. Still the whole night was definitely an odd experience. It was the first time I was at the same concert as one of my kids , excluding when they were of the age that they could only go with me. Running into my son in the aisles and lobby in between sets was both very fun and very weird. I'm sure he felt the same way ( at least about the weird part) . Now I haven't been to a concert in quite a long time. The last one was a move on.org fundraiser with REM and springsteen. At that concert lots, if not most, of the people were my age or close to it. Not so at Weezer. 99% were between 15 and 22 which I am not. Walking into the very crowded, smoky place was an odd sensation- like walking into the wrong party . If you've ever gone to one of those huge banquet halls and wandered into the wrong wedding or bar mitzvah you know what I mean. It all seems familiar and yet you know you just don't belong. Luckily no one pointed or laughed or attempted to humiliate us in anyway. Perhaps Weezer fans are polite or maybe just too stoned to notice us.

Some things haven't changed about concerts. Everyone still stands for much too much time forcing you to choose between aching legs or not seeing anything. Standing in front of me is the tallest person in the world. Standing behind me is a kid so far gone he keeps calling out for songs they have already played. What's new is the effect of phone technology. At least half the people spend the entire concert holding up their phones to filming video and snap pictures. The other half spend the concert texting everyone they know. Of course I thought this was annoying but pretty soon I was madly texting my son as well. So all in all, a great night.