Today after yoga , I dropped off at my parents ' place , ready to take them to the 99 market , where my dad hoped to score some striped bass . I wasn 't able to get any for him at the farmer 's market on Friday because the doctor took too long to examine them , and besides , I had no cash . I couldn 't go to the Saturday Farmer 's Market because of the play , so I thought the 99 would do for this purpose , though the fish wouldn 't , I was sure , be as good or as ecologically correct . When I came in the door , my father was collapsed , unconscious , in an armchair close to the door , wearing his outside jacket . His face was white , his lips blue . His hands were covered in dirt . I asked the caregiver , not the usual one , what was up . Apparently , he had been working in the garden three times that morning , doing who knows what , and it was too much for him , by far . He gasped for breath , the caregiver told me , and she was afraid to make him walk to his room . Instead , she encouraged him to nap right there , the way he was , until he had gained enough strength to wheel himself back on the walker to the bathroom to wash and to sit in his chair by the tv . in his room . I told her that if that happened again , or worse , it might be a good idea to call an ambulance , but then I wondered : is it better to send him to the hospital , where he has twice had heart attacks , and where he would most likely die at this point , or to leave him right there , where he might recover , as he did today , or else die peacefully in his own bed ? Of course , from the perspective of the board and care , they don 't want to be held responsible for his death , so the former is infinitely preferable , but from his perspective , and mine , the second is looking better all the time . I found myself praying , horribly , that my mother would not outlive my dad since it would be so awful for her , so difficult to keep her from running off to look for him , thinking he was somewhere else , perhaps back in the old place , or in the hospital . But it is more than likely that she will outlive him . And wPosted by I have a 5 play subscription to SCR , and I enjoy going to the plays . However , it has not escaped my attention that the choices the theater management generally makes are safe , boring , often mediocre plays . Maybe it is because of the thoroughly white bread , middle class nature of the OC that this occurs . Whatever the reason , it is only occasionally that they step out of this safety zone and put on a really powerful work . Today , I have seen an exception to that rule , a production of August Wilson 's play , Fences . I have certainly known of Wilson , but I have never read or seen one of his plays . It seems I have been missing a lot , and I plan to remedy that as soon as possible , as far as reading all of them goes . From the moment I laid eyes on the set , which was an amazing evocation of a rundown urban landscape , with just a patch of hopeful blue sky hovering out of reach , I sensed I was in for something other than the norm . The dialogue was raw at times , and I could see the audience squirming in its seats . But the acting was absolutely first rate , just about all of it , even the over - the - top part of Gabe , the brain injured , hallucinating brother of the main character , was convincing . But it was particularly the part of Troy , that main character himself , that was hard to get one 's arms around . This is a difficult , complicated character . hard to understand and possibly off - putting , but the actor who played him here gave us a feeling of 3 dimensionality , a feeling that we could understand what made him the way he was . And the role of his wife , Rose , was also beautifully modulated . I count this as a red letter day , which introduced me to a playwright I should know and teach to my classes in the future . If there are still seats to be had , go and see the play , while it is still here . The most homey and friendliest open mic / reading around is Tebot Bach 's monthly gathering at Golden West College . This is a group of honest to God poetry enthusiasts , publishers and philanthropists who take poetry to the underprivileged , prisoners , the homeless all around Southern California and publish a lovely assortment of poetry collections , staging these monthly readings . They meet in a run - down , dark , and chilly community hall at Golden West , in Huntington Beach . One can barely see the poems she is reading , but the spirit is strong , if the light isn 't . Last night , two readers , Tony Barnstone , who I had heard read previously at Casa Romantica , a venue of a completely different sort , and Brian Michael Tracy , a poet who said he had stopped writing poems , much as I had , for a long period , and was brought back into it by a spiritual awakening involving yoga . The two were completely different in mood - - Tracy dark and intense , Barnstone , though he read some very graphically violent , even gross works , essentially light and full of showmanship . His showstoppers , some of which I have heard before , were a series of double sonnets based on Tarot Cards . I can 't wait till the illustrations are done ( and the poems too ) and he publishes them , as a pack of Tarot cards , he says . I will certainly want to own a copy . He is also a noted translator of Chinese poetry , erotic and otherwise , an extremely intelligent and gifted writer . I read two yoga poems . Usually , the regulars in Tebot Bach praise my writing and invite me to have tea after the reading , but this time , they seemed restrained , puzzled . Clearly , these yoga poems , though they are the best things I have done and I chose what I saw as the best of the best , are divisive . I won 't let that stop me in my effort to get them out there . When I checked my messages yesterday , I heard that my parents had an appointment with their regular doctor this morning . I of course had planned to go to yoga class , since I couldn 't go yesterday . But the appointment conflicted with these plans . It was at 8 : 40 . Since I don 't drive on freeways , and this was just the time people are trying to get to work , I had to leave the house at 6 : 30 AM to pick them up . But since I couldn 't sleep last night , I was up in plenty of time , even able to bake the croissants from Trader Joe 's that had been proofing in the kitchen all night . I made three , hoping Richard and Jeremy would like one . But Jeremy was sleeping at the new apartment . Richard dropped him off fairly late last night , after I went to bed . Richard didn 't want one . He had to catch the bus for school . I ate mine and took the other two to my parents ' house , thinking that even if dad couldn 't eat his , mom would like them . They 'll probably be eating them now for tea . Their doctor was much more hopeful about my dad 's prognosis than the docs in the hospital . For one thing , he 's doing much better now , though he 's surely not 100 % , which is not surprising . She is sending us to a cardiologist , who may be able to do a modified angiogram without the dye that would shut down his kidneys , or with less of it than usual anyhow , or he may be able to give us medication if he can 't do the angiogram . My father was heartened by the news . It lightens his downheartedness at the restricted diet he must be on , and the fact that they cannot go to the Center for at least another week , possibly more . Poor mom , but she is happy to have dad back , and is eating again , as long as the caregiver feeds her every bite . One knows theoretically that anything said in this forum is fair game for peepers and schemers . But I have felt pretty safe saying what I please on this blog because so few people read it , to my knowledge . But yesterday in class , a student who had evidently shown initiative and some pretty good research skills ( bodes well for his performance in the class , I guess ) surprised me by reeling out a list of facts about me that I didn 't even know were available online . Besides my poems , this blog , my teaching , he also knew what synagogue I belonged to , and said I had a personal web page . Really ? I didn 't make one . Where is it ? He can 't be right about that . It gave me a bit of a scare . I am naturally not one to hide things , believing I don 't really have much to hide ( aside from financial information , passwords , and that sort of thing ) . But this felt like a bit of an invasion , though he evidently meant no harm . I just brought dad back from his stay at the hospital . He went there in bad shape , with kidney failure , weak and sick . While there , he suffered a heart attack , the worst yet . Last year he had a small heart attack while in the hospital . This one was much worse . He was unconscious for over an hour , he says , and his breathing is still halting , different from before . He is stooped over and silent , barely able to walk with the walker , though the doctors say he must exercise , getting back to his usual routine as soon as possible . He must be on a strict diet and limited liquid because of the danger of congested heart failure . This concerns him more than anything else , it seems . He will not be able to eat the wonderful foods he loves so much , like a big bowl of matzo ball soup or a lamb chop . He must be weighed every day , so I stopped and bought a scale on the way home , which we put in the bathroom . If he gains more than 3 lbs in a day , he must go to the emergency room . So many rules . He doesn 't think he will be able to go to the center anymore because the food they get there will not suit his diet . Meanwhile , when we got there , the caregiver told me that my mom will not eat . She wanders around all night . The caregiver had to lie down next to her to get her to stay in bed , and had to feed her to get her to eat anything at all . My mom keeps saying she wants to go home . I don 't know what to do about this . Clearly , this is close to the end . He may improve somewhat , but I don 't think he is ever going to be the same again . This episode has diminished him , has made him grasp his mortality , and saddened all of us . This evening when I arrived for work at the Writing Center , my cell phone rang . I didn 't dare turn it off because of my father . I had been speaking to doctors and nurses and my father himself all day . The cardiologist had explained to me that the doctors could not do the cardiac stress test they had planned ( as I had thought they 'd decide ) because by doing it , they would stress his kidneys , and they were already failing . So it 's a hard choice : go by kidneys or by the heart . One way or another , he 'll surely have a traumatic , and probably fatal , event the next time . I told them that I was fully aware of the problem when he went into the hospital , and had already told the doctor in the ER as much myself . We 've been through all of this before . So she said they 'd release him tomorrow , and that the hospital would arrange transportation for me . I laughed because I knew that was a fantasy . The only transportation available is me , unless I pay the driver to do it , and that 's not an option because the damn hospital makes a person wait around for hours , during which she would be charging me , just to get the paper work together and find a nurse to disconnect the patient from tubes and machines and dress him . So the ninnies called the owner of the board and care and told him to come get my father ! He was quite upset , and had the caregiver call me and ask why I had them call him . Of course , I had nothing to do with it ! And for another thing , dad wasn 't even being released today ! So tomorrow , when I have to work till fairly late in the afternoon , I will have to get him after work , and will no doubt be standing around for hours and hours and then have to stop somewhere for dinner so we both don 't starve . I had hoped to go to the final Casa Romantica reading tomorrow . Oh well . It 's awfully far for me at night , anyhow . My dad is still in the hospital , but he sounds much better than yesterday , and is up and about with the physical therapist . Probably I will be taking him home by the end of this week . But the doctor made it clear that we need to make a plan for end of life care because that is swiftly approaching . This is the first time the doctors have stressed this subject , which is a ticklish one because my dad refuses to make any such decisions , and leaves me to take responsibility for them . I would have to say that full code - - resuscitation under all circumstances , heroic measures , etc . , is not a good idea . But I 'd have to make that decision on a case by case basis . I 'm sure my cousin felt the same way , but he made the decision to pull the plug on his wife , who had been dying of heart failure for years and years . In the face of prolonged suffering , you do what you have to do , I suppose . But that doesn 't make it easier to deal with the decision . When I was a little girl , I was the youngest cousin of my generation . My dad used to take me to play with my cousins , who were all at least 4 or 5 years older than I . They were his brother 's kids . On one hand , I felt that his brother and his wife treated us as sort of second class citizens . My dad hadn 't gone to college because of his mental and neurological illnesses , even though he had been offered an apprenticeship in vet school and scholarships . Back then , people hid their shame , and they regarded my dad 's condition as shameful for the family , or at least my grandmom did . Also , my uncle and aunt were Orthodox , pillars in their synagogues , and my parents were rather against religion . So they looked down on us for that reason , and my grandmom , who lived next to her eldest son , a brilliant scholar in something related to math ( I 'm not sure what ) , was I think the origin of this attitude . But I dearly loved to play with my cousins . We spent weekends playing , eating waffles , making volcanoes , climbing and skating and doing boy stuff I didn 't get to do by myself . My cousins were scientific sorts , always building things , developing photos , etc . It was exciting to hang out with them . Now one is an engineer , I think , the other an economist . One lives in New York , surrounded by his children and grandchildren , and the other in Israel , and his kids are about Jeremy 's age . One of them wants to be a writer . He has one grandchild , who is about 2 , I think . Today they were going to visit anyway , since my Israeli cousin was working in San Diego for a couple of weeks . They were planning to see my parents at their new home . So they went to the house and met me there , and together we went to visit my dad in the hospital . I don 't have any pictures , but they promised to send some , and I will post them when I get them . We had a good visit , getting a bit lost in the new parts of UCI hospital , stopping for tea at the cafeteria , and having a good talk with dad , who seemed very tired , worse than this morning . SO many doctors were doing tPosted by This morning I had a call from my father 's doctor . He is a young intern , very bright and perceptive , and he listens carefully . He said my father had a small heart attack last night , as he did when he was in the hospital last year . The doctors were very concerned about his high blood pressure and wanted to raise his level of blood pressure medication , but I warned them that when that had been done during other hospital stays , it had ended up almost killing him . They tried to find ways around it , but it comes down to the fact that either we let the blood pressure rise and give him a heart attack or stroke or we risk the medication killing him . Rock and hard place . Then I talked to my dad and he got hysterical , telling me to come and to bring a lawyer or even the FBI . He claimed the doctors there were ignoring his pleas not to hurt him , and that he knew exactly what time all this happened , etc . I tried to calm him down , and told him , quite reasonably , that I could not bring any lawyer - - never mind the FBI - - to the hospital . So I had his brother call him , and asked my cousin in Jersey to call too , and to help calm him down . When I came , I put his glasses on him , gave him a newspaper , held his hand for a few minutes and let him talk , and asked if he wanted his hearing aid . I spoke with all his doctors , and discerned truth from fact as best I could . I think being deaf and scared and being transferred to the cardiac unit in the middle of the night was pretty alarming . I also think there 's more than a little of that hospital psychosis thing again . THat has happened to him before . It 's hard enough without that . Tonight R . , Liz , and I made our way over to P0 for the film only to find the room locked and dark . We went over to the police station and that was closed too , so we called the police on the number they had posted at the door , and they said they didn 't know anything about any movie . I guess no one else did either because no one , not even one person , came . We watched the film anyhow , and I have to confess it scared me silly , as much as the first time I watched it , and I was annoyed , just as the first and second times , at the behavior of the wife , Wendy . What a ninny . She just stood there and cried and acted like a moron . It strikes me that I felt that way because it reminded me of the way that my mother dealt ( or didn 't deal ) with my father 's violent behavior when I was a child . I am sure that is why that movie still scares me so much . I cancelled the followup appointment for my dad yesterday because of the immanent big storm that was supposed to arrive ; it turned out to be ( here at least ) merely about a half hour of very hard rain and hail late in the evening , though I understand it was worse elsewhere , including in Orange where the appointment would have been . I rescheduled the appt . for today , and it was raining , sometimes hard , as I was driving there to pick them up at the Rehabilitation Center ( Daycare ) and then on to UCI to the appointment . My dad was very weak , much worse than last week . He was pale and could barely walk . He hurt , and had scratched his skin bloody all up and down his legs and on his feet . The nurses were very disturbed by the fact he couldn 't keep his eyes open and did not talk and joke as usual . He was in obvious discomfort , and most disturbing , his kidneys had shut down , according to blood levels , so we went to the hospital , where we were immediately told he would be admitted , though when I left at 8 : 30 this evening , he did not have a room in the hospital , but remained in the E . R . - - albeit in a room with a door and a tv ! I don 't know what this will mean for this weekend 's plans - - the yoga workshop ( in Orange ) tomorrow , the movie tomorrow night , the visit with my cousins on Sunday . I don 't know when he will get out of the hospital . The doctors still don 't know exactly why his kidneys have shut down , though they have concluded that the antibiotic he was taking for his most recent urinary infection didn 't kill the bug . We 'll see what they can do about the frequent urinary infections and the problems with his kidneys , if there is anything they can do . I suppose I have been audacious lately , acting on my idea of starting a film series , when the college , I have learned , has actually hired full time film people who haven 't started one . And also , today , speaking with two artists about the yoga chapbook project and writing to a third as well about this project . While I was at it , I decided to write to Chapman 's reading venue and ask if they would be interested in me coming there and doing a reading . I attached some of the yoga poems . I got an immediate answer , and although they didn 't have space for me ( booked through 2012 ) , the University has a reading series in the fall , and the director invited me to submit another letter next summer and to join their group on Facebook in the meantime . I would dearly love to teach a workshop at Chapman , so perhaps this is a way in . I hope by next fall to have whipped the yoga collection and artwork into some kind of shape and possibly also the entire poetry manuscript . I don 't think the autobiographical nonfiction manuscript will be finished by then , but who knows , with the number of essays I have been turning out in the process of answering those calls to submit ! I haven 't heard from many of you in the past few days . Hope all is well . I am instituting a film series on campus starting this Saturday night . The idea was to introduce students in my class ( and others ) to films they probably haven 't seen , but should . This semester , as I 've said before , my Writing 2 class focuses on adaptation from literature to film . I figure that students will have a hard time choosing appropriate films though because they haven 't seen many , only the latest blockbusters . So I will be showing a film every Saturday night , starting with this Saturday at 7 PM in room P0 on campus . The film I 've chosen to begin with is The Shining . I have been told that there is a tv miniseries of this film that is far closer to King 's original than Kubrick 's film , but no one ( besides newspapers and trade magazines ) has had anything in particular to say about that second version , so it isn 't appropriate for a research paper . In the future , if anyone shows up , I will screen Whale 's Frankenstein , Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Double Indemnity , Maltese Falcon , Prizzi 's Honor , A Streetcar Called Desire , A Clockwork Orange , Blade Runner , and Solaris ( the original Russian version ) . I have checked most of these and found that the right kind of research exists for each , so students could easily use them for the project . If you 're around , please drop by to the series . I 'd love to see you . BYOP ( Bring Your Own Popcorn ) . Today at 1 : 30 , I was on campus in the thick of the worst storm I have ever seen . I went to the Writing Center at 1 to meet with a student who was supposed to take the writing diagnostic and be added to the class , but unknown to me , she had sent an email saying that she found she had another class that conflicted with this one , so would not be coming . When I arrived on campus , it was raining , but nothing particularly bad . But while I was inside the Writing Center , talking to colleagues , the sky was getting darker and the rain heavier , until at about 1 : 20 , when I had to go across campus to the library to be videotaped for the college 's anniversary celebration , I suddenly realized that the sky was dark as night , lit up only by lightning . Thunder boomed constantly , and I knew that the storm was very close to where I was , vulnerable with my useless umbrella - - useless because the wind was blowing so hard that I was wet from top to bottom , my hair flying in the wind . I honestly thought I might be blown away or be hit by lightning . But in an hour , the storm had passed , and though we were told a tornado had passed over very close by , and one had actually touched down in Fullerton , about 30 minutes away , and another in Costa Mesa , about 20 minutes away , we were okay for the moment . The sun was out , and people continued about their business . I just heard today about another anthology called the list . It is made up of poems that include 6 words chosen by guest editors . The words are Anteros ( the god of thwarted love , brother of Eros ) , crippled , spindles , stairwell , threshold , and whirligig . I have always liked such exercises , though these words did not strike me as particularly promising . But I did write a poem . You will find it below . Anteros In the bad dream you keep having , a spare stranger stands at the threshold bearing news you would rather not hear . He leans on a stick , crippled leg twisted , peering like a falcon into the room . Around the edge of his crumpled raincoat , a bit of bright wing protrudes . At the sight , all the spindles stop turning . The whirligigs cease their merry clatter . The stairwells echo your empty howl . Confessions of a Book Addict " Reading is Fundamental , " proclaims a well known slogan designed to entice children to read . The statement suggests that literacy is not only a virtue , like vegetables perhaps , but actually worth doing for its own sake . But I would argue that the sentiment is a bit forced , and grows out of a popular , if unspoken , feeling we as a society might not be so quick to admit that habitual reading is essentially somehow adverse to one 's own natural instincts , and that it is therefore not likely that any child , left to her own devices , would embrace it , and regard it , without being told to , as an activity worthy of one 's precious and scarce free time . It is only by holding one 's nose and taking the medicine , the covert message implies , that one can actually convince herself that reading is recreation and not primarily a chore . I am one of those comparatively rare souls who never needed slogans to want to read , someone for whom the smell of library stacks arouses pleasant memories of lazy hours immersed in a favorite activity . In fact , I can say , as a person at an AA meeting might , that I am an addict , who cannot imagine life without books , but that , much as an alcoholic might , I have had to hide this at various parts of my life , have had to pretend that for me , as for most , reading was just a tool and not an end in itself . When I was a child , I lived in a suburban Philadelphia neighborhood of the very sort this slogan targets . It was a compact place , lined with brick row homes the color of dried blood , with neat postage stamp lawns or patios . Within easy reach , one could find schools , a bakery , a butcher , post - office , grocery , and most important to me , a branch of the free library , right across the street . The Bushrod branch was very small , boasting at most a couple of thousand volumes , most of which I had read by the time I went away to school at 19 . The collection aimed to please the locals , with special displays of romance novels and best sellers on many of the central shelves , and Posted by Yesterday or perhaps the day before an email arrived in my mailbox , announcing a call for submissions . An anthology about childhood reading experiences is asking for essays , stories , or poems about that subject . I am working on an essay , but how about some of you folks ? I 'll put a link up , and you can send in your own work . If you do though , I 'd love to see it too . It 's for an anthology called Flashlight Moments . Read more athttp : / / silverboomerbooks . com / submissions . html This morning I went to the first film in the Jewish film festival , an Israeli comedy called A Matter of Size . It was a character study of five overweight people - - 4 men and 1 woman - - who decide to give up fruitless dieting and become sumo wrestlers . In the process , they find strength and dignity and , predictably , empowerment . It was a very sweet and funny film . If you can rent it , I recommend it , even though I find it a bit baffling to learn that it won 3 Israeli academy awards , and was nominated for even more . It 's a small country , I guess . My dad was so out of sorts and obviously in pain yesterday that I decided I had to distract him from it somehow , so I told the caregivers I would be there at 7 : 30 AM today to get them and take them to the Farmer 's Market in Irvine . My parents love the market 's free samples , its cheerfulness , everything about it , so despite the fact that I wanted to get to my yoga teacher Isabella 's first Saturday morning class in Laguna Beach , and wasn 't sure I could swing it , I took them to the market . Dad cheered right up . He complained only once about the pain , and said nothing about the nervous disorder ( probably Tourette tics ) that had been troubling him , though I saw quite a few tics during our drive to the market . Dad bought a beautiful new candy - striped succulent ( green and red ) and a whole striped bass for the caregiver to cook up tomorrow . I bought a pound of tremendously expensive ( but delicious ) Opakapaka , Hawaiian pink snapper filet . Yum . I cooked it with a crust of crushed macademia nuts - - actually very simple and fast , tiny roasted potatoes , and mixed veggies . Then I drove straight down to Laguna on Crown Valley , getting there half an hour early for class ! I was so pleased with myself , I hardly noticed the ominous stirrings of my own pain . For years , I have had problems with my hip . I think it began when I learned to drive , about 10 years ago . Being a short person , I find that cars are not made for people my size . I can 't see over the windshield without two pillows , and in some cars , can 't reach the pedals either . In my Toyota , I reach the pedals and see over the windshield ( just barely ) when I sit on my pillows . However , they are not even , and one leg just sits there while the other stretches mightily . So I have developed a misalignment . Yoga helps a lot , but at times , it gets really severe . A few years ago , I had two classes in a row and by the end of them , I would be in tears , since walking to and fro or standing there teaching aggravated the hip so that I could barely walk . I never liked standing at a lecturn orPosted by My dad is a sneaky guy . He enjoys working himself into a frazzle , and then suffers the consequences for it , but he doesn 't seem to learn . Deep into the pain and suffering of those muscle pulls , nervous exhaustion , and back pains , he swears he 'll never do it again , but he forgets really fast , and in a few days , will be up and at em again , proclaiming that he 'd rather be dead than perpetually sitting in a chair . In the recent move , my dad didn 't HAVE to do anything . I was steadily packing things up and transporting them during the week leading up to the move . My husband , son , his friend , and the friend 's truck ably transported things on the day of the move itself . We didn 't require my father 's assistance . But he was so wound up , so anxious to be out of the old place , and so sure that we bungling young ones were not going to manage it without him that he bent , lifted , sorted , and carried for the entire week , and then had to remember not to trip on the boxes he had stacked in the room for the rest of the week , the ones I couldn 't lift without injuring myself . Yesterday , he was pale and sweating when I came into his room , crying out with pain . Because he had an untreated bladder infection , everyone assumed the worst - - it had gone to his kidneys , and he would probably have to be hospitalized . Now you may ask why his bladder infection hadn 't been treated ; the problem is that he has developed allergies to several key antibiotics , and the doctors were unsure what their options were at this point for curing this infection . They wanted to see him , and that 's where I was taking him yesterday afternoon after work . It was difficult for him to make his way down the long long driveway and into the car , to get out of the car and slowly slowly make his way to the nearest medical building at UCMedical Center , where we were already nearly half an hour late for the blood testing that was supposed to take place at 2 . I had not factored in the extra half an hour or so it took to get to the new place from school and from that place to thPosted by Last night , with the teaching week over ( except for some hours today at the Center ) , I decided to go over to a new coffee house with an open mic across the street from the college and give some of those yoga poems a whirl . I knew when I went that it wasn 't likely to be a crowd serious about poetry or any kind of crowd at all for that matter , but I must say I didn 't expect what I got . When I arrived , I looked around for five minutes in vain for this coffee house . I couldn 't see its name on the sign , and it didn 't appear to be in any of the places I looked in the shopping center . Finally , in an obscure corner on the far far left side , hidden by a building and in the darkness , I found it . It was actually a very large place , with much unused space , divided into two parts . The first part was the business end of the cafe , selling hot drinks and pastries . The other half , which apparently can open up into a patio in warm weather , was a performance space . There were maybe 7 people scattered in this space , so big it echoed . The master of ceremony was a big florid man in a Hawaiian shirt with the most insincere manner of any person I have met . He managed to make " Hello " sound as if he didn 't really mean it at all . He sat down with me and asked me a bunch of questions as we waited for some kind of audience to show up ( in vain , as it turned out ) , asking me what exactly I taught , and then starting a conversation about women vs male writers , telling me he had always assumed that women wrote lighter stuff than men , but then he read some of Oates ' stories , and was startled at their darkness . I told him that there was no particular female subject matter or style . He said he had taken many writing workshops , so I wondered how he had come to that conclusion . At this point , if there had been some way I could have slipped out easily , I would have left , but it wasn 't possible . So I sat through the performance of a novice guitarist and singer who had never performed before . I was rooting for her . The mother of three , she wanted to returnPosted by It is so quiet in the Writing Center right now it 's hard to believe that in a week or so it will begin to get crazy , crowded , chaotic . In my hour here so far , I saw one student . I admire this student for the question he asked about the difficult diagnostic prompt , a piece from Thoreau 's Walden . He asked : " What did you guys expect me to do with this ? What kind of answer SHOULD I have made to this question ? " I asked him what he thought the question was , and he had a very intelligent answer , but said he was used to writing stories , not essays , and I endeavored to explain the difference . Then he asked me whether I thought he was in the right level of class , and I explained the difference between the bottom level of developmental writing and the next one up . He decided he was in the right level , and that was the end of our discussion . Today the caregiver called me and said that the owner of the place where my parents used to live accused us of stealing . Apparently , when my son and husband picked up my parents ' TV , they accidentally took a signal booster the old place let us use . I wasn 't there to tell them it didn 't belong to us , and probably my parents were not paying attention , or perhaps they were already en route to the new place . But anyway , the owner threw a fit , and someone called the caregiver and told her we 'd better give it back . Someone came over and got it . But I still have to go over to that place and sign more papers , according to the current administrator . The caregiver warned me to read what I was going to sign very very carefully before signing it . I don 't know what more they could want from me . I signed receipt of medication and property papers . What more could they want ? I have done this before at an assisted living place . There were many papers I had to sign there , but for a board and care with only a few people in it , I have never had to do it before . We didn 't have a contract ; we lived there month to month . If they press me to hurry and sign , I may just tell them to send me the papers , and I will read them at my leisure and send them back . I won 't sign anything without reading it carefully . And I may refuse to sign something that seems objectionable and show it to the new owner , who is a lawyer , or to licensing . Today was the first day of the new semester . I have started a new class , a new year , and a new syllabus all at once . The class is quite assorted . An aspiring add is a very intriguing older gentleman I have heard playing the violin on campus . He appears to be from Iran . I haven 't seen his writing yet . I have a couple of other older guys and an English major from UCI . This class again has many more guys than girls . That seems to be a pattern the last year or so . I 'll know more when I look at the diagnostics . I haven 't touched them yet , as I am going to choir and must ready dinner and also take Jeremy to work . We 'll see how it goes . As I was driving away with my parents this morning from the home where they have lived for the last almost 4 years , I found myself singing an old top 40 hit - - " We Gotta Get Out of This Place , " and laughing to myself . We did it . All of my mom 's many many clothes ( most of which she has never worn , and some of which still have tags on them ) , all of my dad 's gardening stuff and plants , all of the books , papers , magazines , etc . my dad just can 't let go of , all of the books of photographs and framed pictures , my dad 's worm farm , and my parents themselves are out of there . I found as I was signing papers to acknowledge receipt of their medication that they were not using current medication information , but information from early last year , which means that they were giving my parents the wrong amounts and in some cases the wrong medications entirely . But they seem none the worse for wear , and are happily adjusting to their new place . We scouted around the grounds , arranging my dad 's plants . These grounds are so large , dotted with little houses where the caregivers stay , gardening sheds , picnic benches , umbrellas , and tchtchkes of various kinds , including cherub fountains and a large plastic dinosaur of uncertain origin , that one could get lost in them . They will make a good place for a birthday or holiday party for either parent during the year . I found the nearest Costco , delivered mom 's diapers and their vitamins , then went shopping for my son 's frozen foods , and went home , too late for yoga , but satisfied and admiring the gorgeous blue sky , stratified with clouds of various textures - - one layer like a ribbed palate , the next like a length of white silk ribbon , the next like a field full of dandelions gone to seed , happy to be finished the move . After I finished at my parents ' new house last night , I got into the car , exhausted and hungry , to go home . It was totally dark , and there were not any street lights to guide me . In the daytime , I found the place without problem ( except for one wrong turn ) , but at night , I drove around and around in the same loose circle until I followed a hunch and turned on a street that looked somehow right . I couldn 't see any street sign , but for some reason , I liked the looks of the street , and it turned out to be right . After solving that one problem , I got home without incident , but it was already 7 PM , and no one knew where I was . My dad called up Richard and asked if I had gotten home yet , and was very worried when I wasn 't . Richard was worried too , though I left a message for him when I was going around in circles and told him why I wasn 't there yet . Everything turned out okay , and we 're both going there this afternoon with a big load of stuff . On Sunday , only the big things will be there , and I might even be able to go to yoga class and not be there at all , though I think it would be best if I am , to take my parents to the new place . I took the first load of about 4 suitcases full of clothes , underwear , coats , and pjs to the new place , putting away as much of it as I could . In the process , I learned some more about the new place and the person who owns it as well as the caregivers and the person who will be my parents ' neighbor . She had a lot of junk in what will be their closet , and was thoroughly miffed when I had it moved somewhere else so I could put my parents ' clothes away . I hope she isn 't as contentious with my dad as she was with me this afternoon . My dad will give as good as he gets in that department if she is . Speaking of dad , he was in a panic , afraid that we would not be able to move all the stuff because he feared that Jeremy and his friend , who is helping us with his truck and his strong back to move the majority of the stuff on Sunday morning , would not come through for us , but I impressed him by packing tons of things into the suitcases and somehow picking them up , even the big one , and putting them in the car . Meanwhile , my mom thought we were going to leave her there . I assured her that was not the case , and filled a suitcase with her underwear , socks , and pjs . When I got to the room , I asked the owner to give my dad a desk so he can continue to do his puzzles every day , and to put a ramp on the door to the patio so he can go in and out by himself with his walker . This guy doesn 't really know very much about the board and care business , and that 's why the house is so empty , I think . I 'll be glad if he can help him learn the ropes and get some more clients . I hope my parents are happy in the new place . It won 't be like what they 've been used to in some ways , but the physical situation will be much nicer , I think . My friend Steve from synagogue probably saved my life this week . He needed a ride back home from choir practice Monday because his son was using his car . While we were riding back to his house , he noticed that the car was making a kind of grinding sound whenever I stopped at the lights . I don 't hear so well , and though I sort of noticed a sound , I am sure it wasn 't anywhere near as pronounced for me as it would be for someone with normal hearing . I decided I didn 't trust our regular garage to fix it since when I went there last week to get the blowout fixed , I heard them say something things to other customers I found pretty appalling . For example , one woman had left her car there to be fixed last week . After she picked it up , when it was supposed to have been fixed , she found it was still stopping dead in the middle of traffic , and she was , justifiably , afraid . The guy at the counter said the shop was too busy to fix it . She should take it home and bring it back tomorrow . The truth is , she should not have been driving the damn thing at all , never mind bringing it back tomorrow , and he should have shown concern and apologized for sending home a customer in a car that could have gotten her and other people killed . This is the same garage that about a month ago sent me away when I requested help putting air in the tires , saying they didn 't have time to do it . How much time would that take ? Low air may have ultimately been the reason the tire blew out . So Steve recommended a garage in Tustin , the next town over , and I went there today . Not only did I find the garage really good and helpful , but I think they charged less for things than the previous place , and in addition , they are located in old town Tustin , a little village of a place I had driven through many times , but never gotten out of the car and walked . I found when I did that that all kinds of little shops emerged from the alleyways , places that remained invisible to me as I zipped by them in the car , bound from one place to another . Today I had time , whilePosted by I have finally gotten everything ready for my parents ' move . The only thing we have to do now is actually get the stuff to the new place . Also , I am concerned because my dad 's bed will be moved on Saturday night , which means he has to spend that night at our house . That won 't be easy . We have to give him his medications , and I don 't know how . So I 'll have to contact Suzie , and ask her about it . Or else we can send him to the new place for Saturday night , but that probably won 't work . I could ask the place where they live now to put another bed back in their present room , but I really don 't want to ask them for anything . It 's the details that make things difficult . Last night , a few diehard Torah groupies met in the freezing library at the synagogue to discuss a parashah - - Numbers 8 - 12 , B ' haalot ' cha . I hadn 't paid too much attention to which book we were supposed to read , and actually had gotten a few books ahead of the game . In this book , the Israelites were griping about the lousy accommodations in the desert and Moses ' faulty leadership . But management , in the form of Aaron and Miriam , Moses ' siblings , got in on the act , criticizing Moses for marrying an outsider - - a criticism that seemed to have racist overtones , since the word used to describe his wife might be one that describes a person of a dark - skinned nationality . The thing is , no one is exactly sure what this ancient Hebrew means in a given context , so it 's anyone 's guess . It 's kind of like that classic mistranslation of Cinderella 's slipper . In the French , it was made out of " vair " - - fur ; but the translator read it as " verre " - - glass . So we in English are stuck with images of a glass slipper in our heads that did not exist in the original . Of course , as one who believes that every reading necessarily transforms a text , even if it is nominally in one 's own language to begin with , I don 't mind that so much . Moses , in turn , complains to God that he has had enough of all of this kvetching . And God , his alter - ego , who acts on mild - mannered Moses ' impulses , concocts punishments to fit the crimes . For the Israelites , who were complaining that they were sick of eating Manna , Manna , Manna every day , and demanded meat , he swept in millions of quail , which they gobbled avidly . Seeing them greedily stuffing their faces , God struck them with a plague , which killed thousands of them . Then God called out Aaron and Miriam , but as usual , Aaron was spared . We have all noted this , and have become fed up with his continual escape from punishment , though one might very well argue that seeing his sons ' destruction was punishment enough , since God zapped them for not following instructions exactly during their first gig as priests in the Posted by I continued to persevere today to finish my syllabus and to get that check of my parents ' taken care of , as well as calling hither and yon to arrange change of address stuff . We got the medallion signatures and will now send the check back to be rewritten in my father 's name . We were not able to figure out how to get a joint account , though I have some ideas for the future I want to pursue . Visiting my parents ' house today made me feel very sad that he is leaving . The owner 's wife is a really nice person , very kind , but yesterday , the caregiver gave my dad the wrong amount of medication . Luckily , he knows what he is supposed to take . But he didn 't say anything to her because he didn 't want to hurt her feelings . I told him that someone 's life could depend on that information , so please tell the caregiver when it happens . But my dad is essentially a very kind and sensitive person . I have always known that . Even when he was a brutal monster , it seemed , down underneath , this person was always there . When Jeremy gets his driver 's license back in February , he is planning to move out of the house . Like any kid his age , he can 't wait to go . I remember that feeling , and sympathize , but I am really concerned about his plans . Jeremy likes nice places , even though he doesn 't have much money , so he is planning to move in with 4 people who work at Ralph 's - - one of them a girl , a former student of mine , who I don 't like very much at all . And she is going to be his roommate . It is not just because she didn 't do any work in my class and stopped coming almost immediately ( though that doesn 't help , of course ) , but also because she seems like a completely inane and stupid girl , who will set him back , just when he has begun to make progress on his education . As far as I know , he hasn 't really gotten involved with anyone , hasn 't even dated anyone more than once . And it 's about time , I guess , that he try it , but I really don 't like the idea of him signing a year lease with this girl , living in a room with her . I think it will make it impossible for him to continue in school , just because she is such a goofball . He sat down with me and told me his plans , to get my input , so I gave it to him , that I don 't like this girl , that I think he is making a mistake . I thought his friend Scott and he were going to share a room , but the place is too expensive for Scott . It must then also be too expensive for Jeremy , but he 'll find out the hard way , and then we 'll end up paying for it ; that is my fear . Jeremy wanted us to move into a one bedroom apartment after he left , but considering how many clothes and books I have - - we have , as far as books are concerned - - and how crowded and cluttered our two bedroom place is , I don 't like that idea at all . Richard was thinking if we moved into a one bedroom we 'd have more money for Jeremy 's new place . I don 't think that 's a good idea either . He needs to find out what it is like to have to pay for things himself . We 'll continue to pay for his education , but not this . Because it isn 't a good idea , not thePosted by It seems Suzie may not take the job after all . The owner of the old place was so enraged when I told them we were not staying that he threatened to hurt Suzie anyway , even if going with us was not her idea but mine . Her brother was afraid and told her she shouldn 't take the job . I think she will eventually make her way , even if she doesn 't take the job , but frankly , I am worried about my mother . I think in a totally new place with unfamiliar caregivers , she will not be okay . I don 't want to leave her in the old place now , without caregivers at all and give the guy the satisfaction that he kept us from leaving , controlled us . He is a bully . Today was a trying day . First thing this morning , I got an email about the account I tried to set up for my parents so I could cash that check . Guess what ? It didn 't work . They won 't accept mom without a DMV ID , and the state won 't issue her one because she was not born in the U . S . and has no alternative ID . And round and round we go ! So after yoga class , I picked them up at the house and was heading out to the bank when . . . my back tire blew ! I pulled into the nearest turn lane and called AAA and Richard . Luckily , we were only a street away from home , so he came and got them and took them to our house . A cop pulled up behind me and protected us till he came and got them , and then the AAA guy came and changed the tire to the spare , and I drove up the street to the garage . Two tires later , I drove to my parents ' house and paid the rent for the days we will be there . I tried to call the owner of the house , but he is in Las Vegas with his family , so I just told the administrator . They don 't even HAVE a caregiver at the house , just the administrator . She told me she thought I was doing the right thing because my mom is really freaked out with Suzie gone . She is taking all her clothes out of the closet and is anxious and fretful . When the administrator bathed her , she didn 't want to take the towel away from her body . She was reluctant to let this stranger touch her . So it will be good for her to be with Suzie , even if it is a totally new place , which is bound to be a bit confusing at first . Monday I 'll try to take care of the bank business and ask the credit union whether they would set up such an account for my parents if I am on it too .