Haiti. Haiti Haiti Haiti Haiti ouch Haiti. G kindly suggested to me yesterday morning that I avoid looking at the front pages of either of our newspapers. So I didn’t. Until I did. But thank God I managed to hide them from the kids. I don’t even want to think about what would happen to RS if she saw any of those headlines, let alone images. For my part, I think I’ve hit my emotional saturation point, so I’m not feeling much about this. I suppose that makes me a heartless witch, albeit a heartless witch whose husband has been urging the shul to get involved, donate, etc. to the best of their ability. What can you do.
Filling out questionnaires is bogus. Everyone knows it. I remember learning it in my high school psychology class, but you can tell from the questions. There’s no way to answer these things I had to answer for R. You have to choose “Almost always”, “Often”, “Sometimes”, or “Never”. What they’re missing is “Rarely” and “Frequently” and “It depends where she is” and “She’s too young for that” and all sorts of other fine shades of gray. But I had to pick from the choices they gave, so I did, but you know what? It’s made up! This information is useless! What are they going to do with it? A whole bunch of times I actually circled two answers, like “sometimes” and “often” or “sometimes” and “never.” They didn’t offer a “rarely” or a “frequently”, see, so I had to create my own. Of course, I imagine all that’s going to accomplish is to make the scorer people mad, because they can’t score it like that, so they’re going to have to choose one of the answers themselves, but hey, better them than me. Let them decide whether R “sometimes” or “never” does behavior x, y, or z. They don’t know her, so they’ll have it easier.
So, the R paperwork of the moment is… finished. One big fat form, one big fat questionnaire, one medium sized form. Whee! Now we move on to step… 3? 10? 502? I lose track. And the ball is once again rolling on the mental health initiative for the kiddies. Mental health… that sounds nice. Where can I score some of that?
Have you seen that anti-smoking commercial where they slice open a dead woman’s brain and whole bunch of blood spurts out and they say that’s a stroke that she had from smoking? Yeah. Super nice. We already know how I feel about brains. I didn’t really need to see what one looks like after it’s had a stroke and you slice it open. Of course, that stroke was a lot worse than R’s, etc., but so the heck what?? I know enough already. I know that her blood can’t always make it through her vessels appropriately, and I know that the sky’s the limit in terms of what could happen next. Isn’t that enough?
I wonder what my father’s brain would look like if they removed it from his head and sliced it open. That’s what they want to do, see, though not until after, as they put it, he’s “finished with it.” Heh. They don’t want it because of his prodigious skill in chess, either, or because of his near-perfect SAT scores, back in the 50’s when that still meant something; they actually want it so they can learn more about that stupid old disease of his. Feh. I told him to forget it, that his brain is going to stay in his head, and that no matter what he signs I’ll override it as next of kin (I know you can do that, see, because I watched a lot of ER back in the day) (of course, my mother is actually his next of kin, but that’s beside the point). This was years ago. Now I say, to heck with it. Take the darn thing. I hate brains. I say we’re better off without them. No offense to any of my family members who make their livings off them. I just think brains are stupid and they suck. Can you really disagree with that logic?
Anyway, don’t mind me. I’m just tired, as well as annoyed because my toilet is still stuffed (plumber hasn’t gotten here yet). Apparently a full day of sleep wasn’t enough to tide me over for the rest of the week. Looking forward to a Shabbos of my whole family being under the same roof, with the added bonus of my in-laws, who we decided to invite at the last minute. Can’t wait for the Boy’s weekly explosion of ecstasy when he realizes he’s about to get grape juice (”Gaydoose! Gaydoose!”), and can’t wait for my weekly Friday night couch snuggle with the three girls. Mmm. Getting all smiley just thinking about it. 
Shabbat shalom.
