Going for the Brown!

Charlie's brown belt test.  He passed with flying colors, but only one color mattered to him:  Brown!!

On top of that, he also won the outstanding achievement trophy. 

But wait, there's more!  There was even a funny background story happening behind the scenes.  

We found out a couple of weeks before the exam that Charlie's regular interpreter would be on vacation and not able to interpret the test.  Usually she and I do that together--she interprets the bulk of it as the primary interpreter, and I'll stand at the back as secondary to count and interpret whatever is being said when Charlie is facing the back of the room instead of the front.  

Charlie flat-out refused to have a substitute for the primary interpreter and said he wanted me to do it, which is fine, I'm quite capable at this point.  So what we cooked up was that his regular terp would request a sub, and we would put the sub in the secondary position, doing what I usually do.  

Comes the night of the exam, and I got there about 15 minutes early, and the head instructor informs me the other terp is there already.  Once we located him, he introduced himself by first name, and he was very nervous about the fact that they would be using Korean terminology that he wasn't familiar with.  I reassured him that all he had to do was keep count (and the numbers didn't even matter so much as the rhythm so that Charlie knew when to do the next move), and that I would sign everything being said even when Charlie wasn't facing me so that the guy could just copy-sign me.  Told him it would be the easiest 2-hour assignment of his life.  He gave a weak, nervous grin and got in position where we wanted him. 

His signing was great, and he did a fine job at what we wanted him to do.  

Once the exam was over, and the candidates were sitting there waiting for the judges to finish deciding what belts each person would be awarded, the guy said I looked familiar and asked if I did a lot of community interpreting.  I told him I was just a student and was starting practicum next week, and he grinned and said he was really impressed at how I handled the test, and then he introduced himself by both first and last names and said that he was the Senior Manager at __________ (a local interpreting agency).  

My jaw just hit the floor - I had tried to get a screening interview with that agency back before Christmas, and it never came about despite many e-mail communications between me and the office staff.  When I mentioned that, he said, "I'll take care of that."  

The next morning, there was an e-mail waiting for me with a list of times to pick from for a screening interview, and he is also offering to give me some mentoring hours on team assignments with him personally for my practicum requirements.  I told him I felt a little silly for having such a senior interpreter there and sticking him in the corner and just having him count and copy-sign, but that on further reflection, I honestly didn't think I would change a thing, since Charlie was nervous about the thought of having a terp who hadn't worked with him previously and didn't know the terminology--and ultimately, Charlie is the client.  The guy said not to worry, he wouldn't have changed a thing about how I handled that assignment.  (Whew!)

God is good.  At just the point when I'm a little worried about the company I work for part-time and how much longer that job will last, God dumps this right in my lap to help me prepare for my new part-time profession.  Yay, God!!

And Yay, Charlie, too!!  He looks good in brown, don't ya think?

The Prince and Princess - Prom 2010

Last week Charlie and I went to pick up his tux for prom. I nearly cried when I saw him in it. My baby has grown up already, and he looked like he was ready for his wedding. Sniff, sniff, sob, sob...

His grin was as big as Texas, and you could tell he was having a flashback to the past.  I'm betting he never dreamed while growing up in the orphanage that his life would turn out like this, that he would someday be wearing a tux and going to a formal dance. 

So Thursday night arrived, and I drove out to Frederick to do the picture thing. When I arrived, his girlfriend wasn't there yet, but Charlie happily spent the next half hour dragging me from this group to that, having his picture taken with just about every kid in the courtyard. (And there were a LOT of kids in the courtyard!)

Then Harmony showed up. It was like the parting of the Red Sea. The crowd just kind of melted back to allow her through. She was stunning, absolutely exquisite.  When they all got done gaping, they mobbed her.

I had never met her in person before, just chatted with her for a couple of seconds on the videophone. She was just as sweet as she could be. And Charlie is obviously smitten, as you can see from his grin in the photos. I think the boy has pretty good taste in women!

After we got the picture-taking over with, Charlie fell in with a group of kids headed for the van that would whisk them all away to the prom. But after getting a few blocks down the sidewalk, he suddenly broke ranks, and came back to me, and said, "I'll see you later. Thanks! I love you."

It stunned me a little. We usually have to remind Charlie to thank someone for something, and although he will sometimes initiate hugs now, he isn't usually the one to say "I love you." Usually he will sign it back to me if I say it first. So I couldn't help but cry while I was watching him leave with his little princess, right?

They were the cutest couple at the prom. I swear it!  Would I lie to you?

Name in Lights

Charlie landed a spot in his high-school play "Dracula."  It was a really good production, all deaf actors with a team of six voice actors positioned at the back of the theater on microphones to interpret for the sign-impaired. 


What worries me is that his drama coach says that he is "perfect in his role."  No, Charlie was not Dracula.  He played Renfield, the mentally deranged lunatic in the asylum.  Perfect?  Ummm......


He had fun, though.  He isn't sure if he'll go back to acting again in another production or not.  This seems to be just one of those things he had to try just to be able to say he had the experience. 


The local Frederick newspaper sent a reporter to do a review of the play, and Charlie got special mention as being one of her favorite characters.  Here's a quote of her mention of him:


Mr. Renfield was another favorite. I loved when he walked out on-stage and was a living and literally nuttier Animal, from Jim Henson’s Muppets. The hair was just perfect. I won’t say more because I don’t want to give too much away about him.


I guess, since she mentioned his hair, I have to put a picture of it on here, huh?

Almost free ice cream

Da boyz looked at me like I was nutso when I  brought a couple of big bowls of snow in the house.  They had never heard of snow ice cream.  Less than two minutes later, I was setting bowls of wonderfully flavored and textured ice cream in front of them. 

They were both very skeptical.  They each stuck a finger in, scooped up a tiny bit, and touched it to the tip of their tongues.

The next thing I knew, the bowls were empty, and the oldest is asking me to show him how it's done, he wants more. 

I talked him through doing it himself, and he had another big bowl. 

This, as far as I'm concerned, is the only good thing about snow.  Unlimited amounts of ice cream, practically free.  (Have you priced ice cream lately???)

So, do I get THANKS from my progeny for making them such a delectable treat?  HELL NO!!!  The youngest one finishes licking the bowl and goes downstairs to watch a movie, and the oldest declares, "I simply can't believe you let me live to 22 years of age and never made this for me before...." 

It's time to kick that one out, isn't it???

"I'm Not Eating That..."

Quite some time ago, a blog I subscribe to had instructions on how to make your own laundry detergent.  It looked simple, so I decided that once I finished my mega-sized box of Tide that I had just gotten at BJ's, I would give this a try. 

The day has finally come, and I have made the laundry detergent.  The hardest part was finding the ingredients.  Mine weren't as cheap as what the guy who wrote the recipe managed to buy his for, but it still only came to $12 for enough ingredients to make many, many buckets of laundry detergent, which is a heckuva lot cheaper than my mega-size (and mega-$) box of Tide.

The first step is to cut or grate up little pieces of a bar of soap and boil them into a soup in a pot of boiling water.  I was nearly through this step when Charlie arrived home from school.  When he came in the kitchen, he saw me at the stove and got a quizzical look on his face.  (That's because me at the kitchen stove is a rare occurrence these days.)  He sniffed and came closer and looked at my pot of simmering green "soup" and looked up at me in consternation.  His look alone asked, "What the hell is THAT?" 

So I signed, "Dinner!  Ready to eat?"

He looked back down at it, gulped, and shook his head "NO."  It was emphatic enough to mean "NO WAY."  Maybe even "NO WAY IN HELL."  The next look he gave me clearly said, "Man, you guys eat some strange stuff in this country."  Sign language is so eloquent, and sometimes Deaf people don't even have to pick up their hands to express a whole sentence, y'know.

Great relief on his face when I explained what it really was and that Tide and I are through. 

Oh, and for those who are curious about the recipe, rather than copy it, I will provide you a link to the blog where I got it.  The guy who wrote this did a wonderful job of documenting exactly how to do it, pictures and all, so why re-create the wheel? 

Click here to learn how to make your own laundry soap.

But don't try to feed it to your kids. 

Shot to the heart

I'm sitting in the living room, messing around on the laptop, and Rick (my oldest) is watching some TV show on his computer over in the office.  I hear a very out-of-tune rendition of the song "Mandy" coming from that general direction, and I look up at him across the half-wall with a quizzical look, and said, "That's an old Barry Manilow song."

"I know," he says.  "The main character in this is a vampire and he likes that song 'cause he was actually ALIVE when it came out."

Long silence.

I was alive when that song came out...

40/3=x???

Charlie got hired to help a lady rake leaves.  He was there for 3 hours.  When I went to pick him up, he proudly pulled out an envelope that contained $40 and showed it to me.  This seemed like the perfect time to do some real-life math.  (Charlie has trouble with word problems and scenario type math.) 

"So if you worked for 3 hours and earned $40, how much did you make per hour?"

He gives me a strange look.  "I don't have the calculator with me." 

"You don't NEED a calculator.  This is simple math; you can do it in your head."

He sits and thinks for a minute, and then he leans forward and starts WRITING IN THE DUST on the dashboard of the car....and still got the wrong answer.

So my question is, does this make a stronger statement about his failure to master word problems, or my failure to clean the car? 

The equation is still there, by the way.