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. 

Charlie's first brush with the long arm of the law

Last night I let Charlie get up to 25 mph. Then he got pulled over.

We were doing some stop-n-go work down the truck bay of an industrial park not too far from home. The idea in stop-n-go work is to get him to learn to stop without snapping my neck. I had him take the car up to 25 mph and then hit the brakes enough to stop quickly but without skidding (that skill will be learned later, when there's snow) and then to let up a little just before the actual stop so we don't turn into bobbleheads.

I guess it WOULD have looked pretty strange to an observer. I didn't notice the observer hiding amongst the trucks. But he sure noticed us. After watching for a little while, he pulled out, and I had Charlie sit still until we figured out where this car was going, hopefully out of the bay. Instead, it drove straight towards us, turned on an in-dash flashing red/blue light, and pulled off slightly to the driver's side.

Rent-A-Cop. And he's asking Charlie questions, but not getting out of his car.

I leaned over Charlie to answer him, but he couldn't hear me, so I had Charlie put the car in park, got out, and walked over to his window, since he still wasn't about to get out of the car. In the car was a little old man hunched over the steering wheel, and it looked like his neck was frozen to his shoulders--he had to turn his whole body in order to look at me. He asked if everything was okay, and I explained that Charlie had just gotten his learner's permit and we came out here to practice since he wasn't ready for road traffic yet. I was bracing myself to be told this was private property, we couldn't do that, get lost or we'll get the real cops....but all he did was nod and say, "Okay." He rolled up his window and went back to where he had been lurking before.

Charlie was shaking and sweating when I got back to the car. I think Chinese orphans are instilled with a deep-seated fear of the police--Charlie has never been comfortable around cops. We continued on with our practice session and eventually went home.

When we got back to the house, I told Rick Charlie had been pinched by a cop. Charlie immediately--and VERY vocally--denied it. Told Rick the whole story in rapid-fire sign that Rick couldn't begin to understand (my sign-to-voice professor would be proud of me for interpreting that one!) and finished up with, "And I DID NOT get arrested!!!"

More Math Woes

I thought my math woes were over once the school moved Charlie to that pre-algebra class back in January. After all, the qualified people are now doing the job that I started, right?

Big sigh.

Charlie is now in Algebra I. He came home after the first week of school with some homework sheets with really bad grades. Very upset because he isn't understanding it. A lot of it boiled down to English (he doesn't understand the directions at the top of each grouping of problems, so he does the wrong thing to the equations), but some of it boiled down to stuff that he just plain didn't know. For example, it blew me away to discover what he thought was the difference between even and odd numbers: He had simply memorized 2,4,6,8, etc. but never knew there was an actual RULE to it, that if a number could be divided by 2 and the answer is a whole number, not a decimal or fraction, then it is even. His face lit up when the light bulb went on.

Last Tuesday was Back to School Night for parents. It was a real struggle to get from Baltimore to Frederick after work in time for this thing that starts at 6, but I made it, sort of. When I met with his Algebra teacher and expressed my concerns, we decided that it would be appropriate for me to have a copy of Charlie's algebra book, and she will send me the assignments they are doing so that I can reinforce them at home. Our concern is that since he was switched in the middle of the year, he missed out on the second half of the year in the general math class he was moved out of, AND he missed out on the first half of the year in the pre-algebra class he had been moved into. So we also got for me a copy of the pre-algebra book from last year and decided that I would have to catch him up by working with him on the first half of the book on the weekends.

Y'all remember that math and I don't exactly get along, right?

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This past weekend, we spent HOURS re-doing failed homework (she accepts re-dos for credit), studying for a test he had coming up, and starting on some of what he missed out on when he switched classes last year. Hours and hours. Felt like forever.

On Monday after he left for school, nervous about the test, I shot off an e-mail to his algebra teacher (a hearing woman, as it happens), mentioning that he seemed to understand all the stuff if the directions for each grouping of sentences are signed to him, not leaving him to depend on the English just yet and that his IEP specifically states that testing is to be done in sign, not English, so that his English skills don't hold him back in other areas.

She e-mailed back that she would do whatever it took to support him and help him be successful, and that he had actually spent some time with her after school getting clarification on some things they had done. (I had encouraged him to do this, but wasn't sure he would.)

She got back to me this afternoon to let me know how the test went: He got a 96%!!!

I sat there crying when I read that. He worked so hard this weekend trying to prepare for that test, and got to see it pay off for him.

Looks like it's going to be a long, hard year for both of us. I guess I'd better quit whining now and just get 'er done.

I'm so proud of that kid.

"Hit The Building"

Y'all can't say you haven't been warned: STAY THE HELL OFF THE SIDEWALKS! Charlie got his learner's permit yesterday morning, so it's just not safe to be out there any more.

He tried about a month ago, and was crushed when he failed it the first time. He was very quiet as we got into the car, so I stayed quiet while I was driving so he could lick his wounds without interference (especially since I got lost on the way home from MVA and was trying to figure out where I was). I didn't realize that my silence was killing him until he blurted out, "You're mad that I failed, aren't you?" Oh, heavens, child--no!!

He felt slightly better when he found out his big brother had also failed it the first time, but that was still cold comfort. Charlie isn't used to failing at anything. He only missed by one question, but that's still one too many.

Personally, I think it did him good to miss it the first time. He's so good at so many things, that he is starting to think life is his bowl of cherries and he gets a little big-headed at times. This humbled him a little.

We did some more studying and testing, and got another appointment set up with MVA. This time he only missed two questions, which is a pass. But get this: The deaf guy misses the question on HAND SIGNALS!!! What's up with THAT???

While we were waiting for the test to be graded, he was so nervous he was just about biting his nails, and when he explained to the interpreter that he had already failed it once, she told him, "Oh, that's nothing--most of the deaf I interpret for these tests fail it four, five, or six times before they finally get it!" All of a sudden, he's thinking getting it right on the second shot isn't so bad, after all.

I think a big part of that problem is that most of the deaf kids grow up in homes where the parents either don't sign at all, or have very limited sign, so the kids get their driver's training in classroom situations and don't have a lot of help at home in the studying and sample testing. Charlie all but slept with that stupid driver's handbook, nagging at me every day that he was home to go over it with him. Over and over and over and over and over again. And the MVA has sample testing on the web that I would interpret for him over and over and over and over again. (It changes the questions a little each time.) So he had a lot more in-depth understanding and practice for that test than most deaf kids have by the time they get to MVA.

Anyway, tonight was his first lesson. I took him out to an industrial park and let him do some stop-n-go work. Then I decided he should learn where the front and back of the car are. (I drive a station wagon.) You should have seen his face when I had him approach the concrete wall of one of the truck bays and told him to hit the building. I've never seen such a look of shock on his face. I ended up demonstrating for him how I wanted him to keep backing up slowly, bit by bit, until the car touched the building, so he could see and feel how much space he had to work with. Then I made him do it over and over again (both forwards and backwards) until he was able to stop within a few inches of the wall without touching it. I think he did a pretty good job.

Curbs, not so much. But it was starting to get dark, and we were both hungry and tired, so it was time to call it quits. There'll be more time this weekend and many, many weekends to come to practice some more.

Be careful out there!!!