Good News, Bad News

Scripture Reading: Vayikra (Leviticus) 25:18-26:46

Lev 25:55 ‘Because the children of Yisra’ĕl are servants to Me, they are My servants whom I brought out of the land of Mitsrayim. I am יהוה your Elohim.
The Butterfly Project (http://www.hmh.org/minisite/butterfly/index.html): Somehow I managed to get the 2 wings done of this second butterfly. The pattern uses British terms, but that's not what made it confusing. It was just the way it was written, e.g. sometimes 'ch 2' and other times '2 ch'. Commas would be missing so that I couldn't tell if a number went with what came before or after it. Like if it was 'tr 2 ch' I didn't know if it meant to make 2 trebles (actually double crochet in American terminology) and then a chain, or if it meant 1 treble and then 2 chains. I plodded through it, trying to do what seemed most logical or seemed to give the best result whenever the direction was confusing, and eventually I did end up with something that looked like a butterfly wing, and amazingly enough I managed to duplicate what I did in making the second wing so that they match perfectly. In order to complete this one, I still need to do a contrasting color edging around both wings, make the body and then sew all the pieces together. I think it will be pretty when it's finished. I got multicolored pastel thread for the wing edging.


School Stuff: First the good news--My 12-year-old son won the school spelling bee! He is in 7th grade, and this spelling bee was for 2nd through 8th grades, and he managed to be the last one standing. He will be representing the school in the district-wide spelling bee in February. We're really proud of him. He won a $25 gift certificate and a big brand-new Webster's Dictionary.





Now the bad news (and consider this your rant warning)--Back at the beginning of the school year, we were told that sports physicals would happen on a certain day at the school and that we were to fill out the necessary forms and send $15 per child for their sports physical if they wanted to participate in sports this school year. All of this I did--in fact making a special trip to the school to give them $30 cash before 9 a.m. the day the physicals were to take place. The children subsequently told me that the doctor left before doing all the physicals so that they didn't get theirs. I think the doctor showed up one more time on another day a week or two later, and again my children were not among those who got their physicals. I called the school and was told they didn't know when or if the doctor was coming back, and they suggested that I called his office, which I did.




The woman at the doctor's office (after I was on hold for a long time after explaining the reason for my call) told me the doctor was going to be at the school doing physicals again on Oct. 4. My children were out of school that week as we were celebrating Sukkot, but I figured it was worth a trip to the school during the festival to finally get their sports physicals done. As I was getting ready to make this early morning trip to the school, I got a hinky feeling and decided to call the school to be sure he was going to be there. Sure enough, the school didn't know anything about it and he was not scheduled to be there. I then called the doctor's office again, and the woman (again after putting me on hold for a long time) came back on and told me he wasn't able to be at the school because of "an emergency". If it was such a big emergency, then why didn't she know about it BEFORE she put me on hold for a long time? The answer, of course, is that I was being jerked around.


Okay, now we're getting into basketball season, and I decide to just quit asking when then doctor will be showing up at the school to do the sports physicals, and instead I call his office and ask if I can just make an appointment to get it done, so they give me one on Dec. 6, today. By this time, one of my children has lost interest, so I have only one child who still needs the physical. I go to the school this morning to get her and take her to this appointment, and once we are there, they inform me that it's going to be $25 instead of the previous $15. I said, "Okay, let me get this straight. Me taking time off work and bringing the child here to him instead of him having to go to the school to see her costs $10 more?" Answer: "I'm sorry, but $15 was the school price." As if I didn't ALREADY PAY the "school price" and as if he couldn't do it for me as well as the school at the "school price"!



I explained how I had already paid the "school price" and yet he repeatedly failed to give my child the physical at the school as he had agreed to. But apparently their story is that it is the school's fault for not calling him back, etc. So, I refused to be gouged and left and went back to the school, told them their story, which they again refuted, saying that when the guy DID show up, he'd only stay an hour and then leave without completing all the physicals that needed to be done.


While I was out, I went to the only other doctor's office in town to see if they would do a sports physical and for how much. The lady at the desk told me they didn't do them, but shared with me that she had gotten her children's physicals done at the bigger town 35 miles away from us at an urgent care center for only $25. So, I'm going to call the place she went to to see if I can get it done there for the same price. I'd sure rather pay them the $25 plus incur the extra gas cost to go there than to pay that jerk doctor a cent.


I just wish I had known all this back at the beginning of the school year so I could have had it all over with instead of going through this whole merry-go-round and getting jerked around all over the place.


Chanukah Reading Tonight:


Bemidbar (Numbers) 7:1-17
1 Maccabees 4:36-61
Yochanan (John) 9:1-7; 10:22-39


Dinner Tonight: Beanless Turkey Chili (We went out last night, so I ended up not making this, and now it's re-scheduled for tonight.)