This guy just won the lottery, and intends to start a Wiccan religious school. Seeing as how my wife* has a special ed practice, and when people start schools, they frequently forget that there are special education needs in their community, I’ve just given her a heads up on this.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
13 Years ago, on November 30, 1994, I stopped being single. I plighted my troth. I found a woman deluded enough to marry me.
Women everywhere mourned. No more could they see the possibility of these chiseled features, those come-hither eyes, that hair*….
Uhhh…never mind, and thank you God, for finding me a wonder with amazingly bad taste
*I wish that I had that much hair now. 
We had a belated* birthday party for Charlie today. Since Charlie has Aspergers, a relatively mild condition on the Autism spectrum, he goes to a special school, and so two of his classmates, who are also on the spectrum, showed up, Gabriel and Calvin, as did our neighbor’s kid (almost a member of the family) Jonathan, who is also on the spectrum.
It didn’t help that Calvin also appeared to be ED, so not only was he acting out in ways that tended to set off kids on the spectrum, he was setting off everyone there, including the parents.
Charlie melted down twice, and Jonathan almost melted once once, as did Debbie (Jonathan’s mom) and my wife. I was fortunately largely separated from this, because I was working on the cake and icing.
*When you were born the day before Rosh Hashanah, scheduling a birthday party becomes a rather difficult thing.
The Jewish day of atonement. Unless medically contraindicated, you are to fast* fast, and to meditate on where you have failed to measure up this year†, and how you might be better next year.
The fast went quite well for me. My feet bothered me more than my stomach.
Just before the fast, we ate a meal of home made chicken pot pie‡ which was rather nice.
Natalie, our 10 year old daughter actually fasted until about 2:30 in the afternoon, which was quite impressive.
We got together with some neighbors for a break the fast which was a lot of fun too/
*This means no food OR water for about 25½ hours. Judaism is not a religion for wimps.
†Were I to post the list here, it would overload your browser.
‡You do not want to start a day without water with something spicy.
Well Charlie, aka “the human metronome”, just got a belated birthday gift from his friend Jonathan, one of those simple electronic drum kits.*
Unfortunately, it was literally screwed into the cardboard box, and the drum sticks were kept in place with some rather tight wire ties.
I did what I was supposed to, using some shears to clip the wire ties, but in attempting to gain purchase, the shears slipped, and I punctured my left thumb. It bled for about ½ hour, though it was not particularly painful.
Whoever came up with these packaging schemes should be staked to an anthill by their tongue.
*No headphone jack, or MIDI port, or any such, but thankfully, Charlie is good about keeping the volume down.
Well, yesterday was a small SCA event* called Trial By Fire. It’s a cooking competition.
The idea is that people present dishes in a number of categories that are prepared on site under Pennsic War†, and to prepare them in a 4 hour period, along with accompanying documentation of their use in the years covered by the SCA‡.
Well, I went with two, or maybe two and a half recipes. The first was a chocolate recipe, which was translated from the 1631 Spanish treatise into English in 1652, called Chocolate, an Indian Drinke. Which has the oldest, at least the oldest that I could find, recorded chocolate recipe.
The second was a recipe for a meat pie from a history/cook book called A Drizzle of Honey: The Life and Recipes of Spain’s Secret Jews, which uses records of the inquisition, which frequently used food as evidence that people were secretly practiced Judaism.
I actually combined two recipes, one for sausage, and one for pie, because the filling for the pie combined meat and milk, and my deliberate use with my wife’s cookware would result in a serious case of acute heavy metal poisoning§.
I had done the sausage, though not the pie before, and I did a test run of the chocolate drink in our percolator about two weeks prior, so I thought that it would turn out OK, but I was unduly optimistic.
With the chocolate, I made a small but significant change at Trial by Fire, I toasted the cacao nibs before grinding, which made the cocoa butter flow out of the nibs, so when I packed it into the basket of the percolator, it created a wax-like structure that the hot water did not effectively penetrate, so I ended up with weakly flavored sweet water.
As to the pie, the the sausage was fine, as was the filling that was made from it, but due to time constraints and poor fire management, I attempted to fry them at too low a temperature, and they became oil sponges.
On the brighter side, my wife€, won best dessert with her sage fritters, which were quite yummy.
My recipes:
Chocolate Drinke
Grind everything up but the pepper and vanilla, which you mince, and put in a pot with about 12-16 cups of water (including the rose water) and boil until it is the color of Coffee with about 1 cream in it. One caveat, the author claims that among its health benefits is:
It vehemently Incites to Venus, and causeth Conception in women, hastens and facilitates their Delivery.
As such the I maintain no responsibility for romantic entanglements, pregnancies, general soreness of body parts, goofy smiles, or intemperate marriage.
Sausage Pie
To make the Sausage:
Spice Mixture
Place the lamb in a medium bowl. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.
Grind all of the spice mixture, except for the caraway and pine nuts ingredients together in a grinder or mortar. Add the spice mixture, including the caraway and pine nuts to the lamb and mix thoroughly.
Allow the flavors to meld for two hours.
To make the filling:
Finely chop two onions, and sweat in a skillet until just translucent with a pinch of kosher salt, then add the sausage, and cook until done (about 3-4 minutes) stirring to keep a consistency of a Sloppy Joe.
To make the pie dough:
Bring the 1/3 cup water, oil, and salt to a boil in a medium pan. Remove from heat.
When the liquid is tepid, add the flour all at once to the water mixture. Stir until all is well mixed.
Place an egg-size lump of dough on a lightly floured bread board. With a rolling pin, shape it into a 1/3 inch thick oval.
Place 1 tablespoon of meat mixture onto a piece of dough. Fold and pinch the fold to seal the pie.
Fry the pies in a skillet with about 2 tbsp of oil.
*Truth be told, it’s not an official SCA event, and as SCA, Inc. has no connection to, or liability arising from, this event.
†Basically, imagine camping conditions, where there is no electricity, but water from a garden hose.
‡About 450 C.E. to 1650 C.E.
§My wife would shoot me.
€Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Went to Atlantia Coronation. Basically, this is an SCA thing, historical reenactment set in medieval times.
We all had fun, and were very well fed. It was held at a boy scout camp about 40 miles west of DC.
The worst thing that happened was that one Natalie’s dulcimer strings snapped while tuning (Cheap dulcimer).
I also strapped on my stupid had and got some getting hit over the head lessons1. Got a doozy of a bruise on my leg, a wrap shot to the leg. The Bruise pattern shows that it was a quite well executed shot.
I need to get into bloody shape…I was puffing like a buffalo.
My wife entered her stump work2 in the arts competition, and while she did not win, she got some useful and constructive criticism.
1This is simulated medieval combat using armor and wooden weapons swung at full force.
2A sort of textured embroidery done various thicknesses of threads, beads and/or sequins…Also called raised work.
My mother-in-law visited this weekend, and my Wife* had to drop her off at the train station this morning. She took Charlie with them, since his school does not start for a week, and I had to get Natalie on the bus to school.
She was hard to get started in the morning, and when the bus was a bit late (about 15 minutes), she got a bit weepy about the prospect of being late for school on her first day, but once the bus showed up, she was all smiles, though she had a legitimate complaint about the weight of her knapsack.
I was never that eager to go to school, nor that concerned about being on time.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
My daughter had a concert this evening at her very frum1 summer camp.
It’s a girls only camp, and a female only concert, because it’s not tznius2 for women to sing for men not their relatives3.
This meant that it was guys night out for Charlie and me. So we got Pizza, and since the local Kosher place (there are at least 2 Kosher pizzerias in Ballmur4.
As luck would have it, they have introduced a Sicilian5 pizza, so Charlie and I shared one, half extra cheese, and half had mushroom and felafel6. It was his first exposture to deep dish pizza. I had to explain to him that its shape was because it was baked in a (square) pan.
We hung out, and chatted about this and that…The sort of things that an 8 year olds mind turns to…like microbiology7.
After gorging ourselves, we went to the bookstore and he looked at the fiction (didn’t find anything), and I looked at the aircraft magazines (I didn’t find anything either).
Last night, we went to the local school playground with Charlie’s brand spanking new Estes® rocket.
We had tried to launch a few days earlier, and had gotten only fizzles, because the batteries were dubious.
This time it launched, and the parachute deployed. Charlie was very happy about this.
Unfortunately, I got the winds aloft wrong, and it drifted across the playground, over the school, and got hung up in a tree about 80 feet in the air.
It was my fault, I chose the location, so I’ll be replacing the rocket for Charlie (he spent his hard earned allowance on the first one), and Charlie was a very good sport about all of this.
Next time, I think we go to Hannah Moore Mark, which has a lot more space, and I check the winds better.
When one has children, it is not uncommon for one to find one’s self saying unexpected things.
You have those things you swore you would never say, like “I’m the Daddy, that’s why“, and “Because I said so.“
You then have those things you never, ever, imagined you would say, like, “It’s not buffet time at the Wildebeest“.
Finally, occasionally, and you get that rare chance to say something that you’ve always wanted to say.
This happened today. I was driving with the family in the mini-van (I can’t believe I own a f$%#ing mini-van), and I was whistling to myself (the 1812 Overture, I think), and Natalie asked me how to whistle.
I, replied, “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.“
Made my day.
So does any opportunity to say, “I’m an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!”
My wife was dropping my son off at his science camp. It’s a week long science camp in Howard County, which is all we need, as Charlie will be back at Forbush next week.
I’m sitting at my desk, and I get a phone call, it’s from my wife.
She says, “Hi Honey!”, and then we both say in unison, “I’m Lost”.
I am Mapquest for She who must be obeyed.
Today, I’ve spent over an hour with my wife on the phone. My parents are in DC, so my wife and kids had lunch with them.
They had a lot of fun.
But……
It was her first time driving in Washington, DC alone EVER.
So, on the way in, and on the way out, she was calling me on her cell, and I was Map Questing (actually, Yahoo, since they have an address book) furiously. She’s on her way home.
I’m getting kosher Chinese takeout, David Chu’s…Yum!!!!
My son’s school had a talent show today. There were class, and some individual or group performances.
Charlie did a drum bit with a friend. They used plastic buckets and a metal pot.
Once again, Charlie kept the beat, while his friend kind of just wailed on them. His ability to keep the beat while distracted, the two boys were on opposite sides of the row of buckets and pots playing at the same time, is bloody amazing.
His class presentation was a kind of “skeleton dance”, with his class in black clothes with skeleton paper cutouts attached. The lights were turned off, and they were limned with black light, which was a nice effect for a few bucks of paper and cloth.
On the downside, another class did a dance number to the Villiage People’s YMCA (Which is still going through my head Aieeeeeeee!!!!!)
They then had a slide show to Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All, and since I didn’t want to crack, and start chanting Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li, I left to return to work.
I was going shopping tonite. My wife, my son Charlie, my daughter Natalie, and I were all in the store together.
The kids were a little bit hyper, and this was being magnified as it bounced back and forth between them, like an echo chamber.
Natalie’s birthday is coming up, and so we were getting cupcakes for a little party in her class.
Our already hyper 9 year old ran, grabbed the cupcakes, and put them in the shopping cart.
Then she grabbed the cupcakes, and ran back and put them back, to see if she could find something better.
She eventually ended up back at the cart, empty handed.
When reminded that we needed something for her party, she headed off at a sprint, back to the cupcakes.
I turned to my wife, and said, she reminds me of a hummingbird on crystal meth.
Sometimes, kids are exhausting.
I never figured that she’d play the GOOD cop in a meeting with school administrators.
My wife is a dear sweet lady. She is also a Special Ed consultant with a practice, SEDRA where she supplies Educational Evaluations, Classroom Observations, Advocacy, IEP Process Workshops, In-School Tutoring for Individuals with Special Needs, and Service Referral.
She spent half of her childhood in the Bronx, and one of her clients affectionately referred to her as a “Pit bull”.
Both of our children are on IEPs, but did not need a lawyer for our eldest, a turning 10 years old in a week girl, Natalie, for the past 3 years. We found Mark Martin for her.
Natalie has a visual perception and motor planning disorder, that results in dyslexia and dysgraphia (her hand writing is worse than mine, which means that her handwriting is the worst ever).
Our lawyer for our son, 7 and a half year old Charlie, Wayne Steedman said that it would be best if we went with another lawyer for Natalie, because having to focus on more than one child at a time tends to diffuse the lawyer’s effort.
Well, lawyers are sharks or piranhas. Wayne is more of a shark. Mark is more of a piranha.
Both are far more pleasant than one would imagine when they are YOUR carnivorous fish.
The shark glides, silently and unnoticed, until it strikes, while the piranha is a flurry of teeth, reducing a cow to bones in under a minute (why is it that they always use a cow as the unit of measure of ferocious appetites?)
While Natalie’s school, Timber Grove Elementary is a good school, it has a profoundly negative attitude towards special ed kids.
I think that it’s primarily a function of the Principal, who has been nicknamed “The Scorpion”.
There are a disproportionate number of children, who are either at special schools run by the county, or in private placements paid for by the county who are in this school’s zone.
This seems to be particularly noteworthy with regards to the male special ed students.
Considering all the costs involved in private placements, I wonder if the principal has a picture of the superintendent getting freaky with a goat.
At Natalie’s meeting, the occupational therapist (kind of a misnomer, it’s about things like writing, tying shoes, and other fine motor operations) had a report suggesting that Natalie’s services be pulled. The first time any of our side saw it was at the meeting.
I was conferencing in via phone, but even I could tell that Mark Martin, esq., was not amused.
I think that the OT might end up with a diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder after Mark was through with her.
It put the fear of god into the rest of IEP team, so while we do not have OT goals yet, we will be doing a follow-up meeting to take care of that, it looks like Natalie will get the services she needs.
I’m not leaving, but I got a 73. The current score required is 67.
My wife might get a higher score, she has a Masters, I have a bachelors, even though I have more earning power. She’s a teacher, I’m an engineer.
Then again, if the sh%$ hits the fan, I can go to Israel under the law of return.