Golden Rule

You’d think it’d be easy enough to operate a stupid no-spill container for filling up with gas.
Not so much.
It comes with valves and spouts and even INSTRUCTIONS!

And I STILL ended up with gas from the pump all over my hands, the canister, the ground, and then the car when I tried to pour from the stupid canister into the tank.

But I will say this - Don't ever underestimate the kindness of strangers.
Thank you to the nameless geo-physisict with an Austrailian accent (I think it was Aussie) who has worked for Exxon for the last 10 years or so

And that's all I have to say about that - can you put the pieces together by yourselves my loyal blog readers?

Only in the South

Disclaimer: Be prepared to giggle aloud! May not be appropriate for teenagers to read unless you expect and can handle whining and stomping off to their room with an accompanying door slam!


APPLICATION FOR PERMISSION TO DATE MY DAUGHTER

NOTE: This application will be incomplete and rejected unless accompanied by a complete financial statement, job history, lineage, and current medical report from your doctor.

NAME_____________________
DATE OF BIRTH_____________
HEIGHT___________ WEIGHT____________
IQ__________ GPA_____________
SOCIAL SECURITY #_______________
DRIVERS LICENSE #_______________
BOY SCOUT RANK AND BADGES_____________
HOME ADDRESS_______________________
CITY/STATE___________ ZIP______

Do you have parents? ___Yes ___No
Is one male and the other female? ___Yes ___No If No, explain: __________________________________________
Number of years they have been married _____________
If less than your age, explain: ______________________

ACCESSORIES SECTION:

A. Do you own or have access to a van? __Yes __No

B. A truck with oversized tires? __Yes __No

C. A waterbed? __Yes __No

D. A pickup with a mattress in the back? __Yes __No

E. A tattoo? __Yes __No

F. Do you have an earring, nose ring, __Yes __No
pierced tongue, pierced cheek or a belly button ring?

(IF YOU ANSWERED 'YES' TO ANY OF THE ABOVE, DISCONTINUE APPLICATION AND LEAVE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY. I SUGGEST RUNNING.)


ESSAY SECTION:

In 50 words or less, what does 'LATE' mean to you?

_____________________________________
In 50 words or less, what does 'DON'T TOUCH MY DAUGHTER' mean to you?

_____________________________________
In 50 words or less, what does 'ABSTINENCE' mean to you?

_____________________________________

REFERENCES SECTION:

Church you attend ______________________
How often you attend ____________________
When would be the best time to interview your:
father? _____________
mother? _____________
pastor? _____________


SHORT-ANSWER SECTION:

Answer by filling in the blank. Please answer freely, all answers are confidential.

A: If I were shot, the last place I would want to be shot would be:

_________________________________
B: If I were beaten, the last bone I would want broken is my:

_________________________________
C: A woman's place is in the:

_________________________________
D: The one thing I hope this application does not ask me about is:

_________________________________
E. What do you want to do IF you grow up? ___________________
F. When I meet a girl, the thing I always notice about her first is:
___________________

F. What is the current going rate of a hotel room? ______________

I SWEAR THAT ALL INFORMATION SUPPLIED ABOVE IS TRUE AND CORRECT TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH, DISMEMBERMENT, NATIVE AMERICAN ANT TORTURE, CRUCIFIXION, ELECTROCUTION, CHINESE WATER TORTURE, RED HOT POKERS, AND HILLARY CLINTON KISS TORTURE.


_________________________________________
Applicant's Signature (that means sign your name, moron!)


_______________________________
Mother's Signature
________________________________
Father's Signature

_______________________________
Pastor/Priest/Rabbi State Representative/Congressman

Thank you for your interest, and it had better be genuine and non-sexual.
Please allow four to six years for processing.

You will be contacted in writing if you are approved. Please do not try to call or write (since you probably can't, and it would cause you injury). If your application is rejected, you will be notified by two gentleman wearing white ties carrying violin cases. (you might watch your back)

To prepare yourself, start studying Daddy's Rules for Dating.



Daddy's Rules for Dating
Your dad's rules for your boyfriend (or for you if you're a guy) :

Rule One:
If you pull into my driveway and honk you'd better be delivering a package, because you're sure not picking anything up.

Rule Two:
You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off of my daughter's body, I will remove them..

Rule Three:
I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open minded about this issue, so I propose this compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, in order to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four:
I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a 'Barrier method' of some kind can kill you. Let me elaborate, when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five:
It is usually understood that in order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics, and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is: 'early.'

Rule Six:
I have no doubt you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. This is fine with me as long as it is okay with my daughter. Otherwise, once you have gone out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven:
As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her makeup, a process than can take longer than painting the Golden Gate Bridge . Instead of just standing there, why don't you do something useful, like changing the oil in my car?

Rule Eight:
The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: Places where there are beds, sofas, or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands, or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater, and a goose down parka - zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual themes are to be avoided; movies which feature chain saws are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks homes are better.

Rule Nine:
Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been. But on issues relating to my daughter, I am the all-knowing, merciless god of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and with whom, you have one chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me.

Rule Ten:
Be afraid. Be very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy near Hanoi . When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. As soon as you pull into the driveway you should exit the car with both hands in plain sight. Speak the perimeter password, announce in a clear voice that you have brought my daughter home safely and early, then return to your car - there is no need for you to come inside. The camouflaged face at the window is mine.

Deep Thoughts

This is an email that I sent a few weeks ago to an esteemed Rabbi Wolbe from a line of esteemed Rabbi Wolbes who sends out a weekly message regarding Torah parsha, upcoming Torch events and a "sermonette". These are some of my comments on part of the sermonette. I also copied a friend, mother of 4 and teacher/speaker/rebbitzen who is the head of the women's division of that same organization, and personally invited me to come to a women's conference in January that left me invigorated. Sometimes it's good to vent!

From: Brenda Namer [mailto:bnamer@Petrohawk.com]
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 5:14 PM
Subject: RE: To Be A "Mensch"



So I'm scrabling to make the house ready for Shabbat after I went to the VIP Shabbat program Friday morning at my son's pre-school and I read your article to take a break.



This part really moved me:

only this time it is not the Nazis who are finishing us off but we who are gradually doing it to ourselves through assimilation and intermarriage. The Jewish people are literally disappearing as we speak.



We have moved back to Houston (I'm native, my husband Israeli) and I struggle to keep our identity as a Jew in Galut - only bringing it up if someone notices that I am speaking Hebrew throughout the day to my husband on the telephone, food choices, etc



I haven't really come to grips with the fact that I am making a life for my family here and not in Israel.



Maybe that IS why I've found my way back to my roots here - to be the token Jew (it always seems like that is the case in my daily circle and with the choices I've made - {I went to LSU in Baton Rouge rather than Tulane where my mother went or UT Austin where my brother went}) who shows others around me that we are not all like the sterotypes and what I think it means to be Jewish. And of course to help others strengthen their Jewish identity by being comfortable with my own Jewish identity.



Thank you for these weekly drasha - it gets you thinking and sometimes even sparks a spark.

Brenda Namer


This is what I got from the author of the sermonette and whose children are at Sephardic Gan
From: TORCH [mailto:torch@torchweb.org]
Sent: Tue 1/29/2008 8:59 AM
To: Brenda Namer
Subject: RE: To Be A "Mensch"

Hello Brenda,

Thanks for you kind and touching words. I agree and think that just about the only way for a Jew to stay connected, especially in "galut" is by being empowered through Jewish learning. When we learn, we connect, and are able to stay strong and feel part of a community. I welcome you to join our learning opportunities.

All the best,
Aryeh
(have you ever gotten a note signed with just a first name from a distinguished learned Rabbi? Its a first for me too - and then last week he added me as a one of his 145 friends on Facebook..., its a new generation!)

This is what my friend wrote back later:
Sent: Mon 2/18/2008 11:50 PM
To: Brenda Namer
Subject: RE: To Be A "Mensch"
Well Spoken, Brenda. You are a wonderful Jew for others to meet and learn from…

What a warm fuzzy, just thought I'd share with the blogosphere!

Best laid plans...

So we're driving home from Bubbe and Grandpa's house this evening when Yoni brings up out of the blue that he wants to meet Santa Claus. Don't ask me where this came from?
Then he calmly mentions that "Jewish don't DO Christmas" as I plainly told him many times as we drove around looking at the "Merry Christmas lights" in December and watching all the Hallmarky goodness that are holiday time movies at the end of the year.
My question is: Why did he decide to remember all this right now at the end of Februaury?
Then he goes on to say that he has met Santa Claus at the North Pole and that it wasn't so cold. And that Santa had given him a lolipop, but not just any lolipop, a candy-corn shaped one that was filled with peanut butter. This from my child who is not super keen on sweets... What an imagination! I asked him if he could draw me a picture of that and he said SURE in all the beautiful tones of his innocence. Then he proceeded to hang his sister's pink and purple butterfly/flower blanket around his shoulders superhero cape style and took off running for the door. He won as usual by beating us to the upstairs door to the apt.



And another thing...
Sorry for taking so long to get back to blogging...Life somehow just keeps getting in the way.

Yaeli is "The Biter" in her class and she has left her indelible impression on a few of the other children, much to my chagrin. When they tell me she's biting, I give her a little more attention than usual and hope that those chompers will finally come through and stop tormenting her gums.... Sometimes a little extra TLC is all it takes.

It was president's day yesterday and BAC was closed as was my office (hooray, we didn't even have to think about who I was going to pawn the kids off on for the whole day - It was ME)
We took full advantage of the BEAUTIFUL almost spring day and went to 2 parks with the public library in between in hopes of calming down for an afternoon nap. Best Laid Plans....

The first park was quite nice until the first graders from Lovett had a picnic on the bleachers and then invaded our serene toddler friendly park.

So we went to the library (which worked so much better in my head than it did in reality) where Jonathan pulled so many books off the shelves that I thought the librarian was going to kill me on the spot. Yael was every bit a toddler and she promptly pooped 3 times in succession because I had no back-up wipes and then she was into everything and not wanting to sit still for the story I was trying to read aloud whilst the slight greasy gentleman in the back corner hid his glares from behind his laptop.


After the library we went to the grandparents' house for lunch and a quick diaper change (even though neither one of them was there) Yoni let the dogs out and they had a fun time chasing each other in and out the patio door through the curtain. Then we drew a snowman with different sized round objects and Yaeli and Mommy fell asleep watching Rachel Ray tell us about her favorite hot spots in New York and Chicago


We went back out to enjoy some more fun in the sun at the newly renovated BLUE park, as Yoni calls it, since the equipment there is a sun collecting magnet of dark blue and green. (the new improved Godwin Park with mud repellent, oh so soft wood chips on the ground under the equipment - whose bright iedea was that?) As my friend Miriam the Mommy puts it, here comes a honking BMA (Bad Mother Alert)
So of course Yaeli, probably the smallest kid out there, fell off the swing and got trampled at the park yesterday in front of all the other parents who were so shocked and offended they were frozen in time (or maybe they were just so glad it happened to someone else's child and they could live another day satisfied in the fact that they were perfect parents) Of course she was scared and rightly so. I had put her tummy side down on the big kids swing and dropped the stuffed dog I was holding for Yoni so I looked away for just that one critical second for her to fall off that swing and somehow roll under the feet of the kid who was on the swing next to her. He was probably 5 or 6 and he tried his best to stop so as not to kick her and gravity being what it was and the pendulum effect, his feet and her little head and body just managed to collide at full force.
SCREAMING ensued and I did my best to calm the other child so that he knew he wasn't in the wrong, meanwhile brushing her off and cradling her to my chest and picking wood chips out of her clothes and hair and the random piece or two that ended up in her mouth (dont think she swallowed any as there wasn't enough wind-up time between the time she started screaming for her to breathe and swallow)


And of course just becasue I wasn't having a bad enough time at the park, here it comes - another HUGE BMA - I kept losing Yoni - between all the other kids (and hovering adults), my split attention in keeping up with our acoutrements and keeping Yaeli out of harm's way-fearless little daredevil that she is- and all the great hiding places on the new playground equipment, I was just sure someone was going to make off with my perfect precious angel without me noticing and I was going to end up the subject of one of those awful made for daytime TV movies.....

I started the day out with a little headache that never actually went away and by the end of the day I had a full-blown major migriane that had me moaning in bed for a sip of water (even worse than my raging hormones on pitocin delivering Yoni) Thank you Eran for bringing me water to the bed, but next time spare me the accompanying Israeli dehydration lecture...Drink some water, its the Israeli band-aid cure for everything that ails you!

But we all survived -maybe a little worse for wear- and work was an unexpected haven today after I was hit with the harsh reality of being a stay at home mom - definitely not for me, but big kudos to those who do it, it's not easy. so much for my dreams of being a schoolteacher ...maybe with some practice I could really do some damage to some other people's kids.

On to other things...Yael was sent home early Friday with a case of kinim (Think Pesach seder). YUCK! Then the school called me again to come get Yoni too-same thing. And it was Eran's milestone 30th birthday and it was all kinds of ruined. He also got bsorot lo kol cach tovot - a childhood neighbor and father figure had finally lost his long battle with cancer (zochur l'tov). And then Macabbi Haifa lost their game today so he lost a bet and owes a friend a pizza...bkitzur, not a great week for my sweetie Eran - and his homesickiness is even worse than ever.

And just in case we weren't struggling enough with random stuff...Last year, BAC made a big deal that at a Jewish day school we don't celebrate Valentine's Day, since its not our holiday. This year, Yael got 3 valentines gifts and the two other kids that didn't bring "gifts" were two other 2nd generation deep-rooted Jewish kids whose parents knew better (myself, a Topek, and the granddaughter of one of the teachers at the school) AARGH!

Then of course there is the PM teacher that won't stop badgering me (and whoever comes to get my children-maybe I shouldn't have mentioned that I had grandpa drop off the check for me at the office) for a late fee that I was unfairly charged and told by the office staff to forget about. This incident was over 3 weeks ago and it is still lingering despite supposed intervention by the vice principle. And this morning I made a right big mess of the interaction between the AM teacher and the other teachers and the principle over the whole kinim issue. Damned if you do and damned if you don't - I just want a few days away from all the politics and demands on me and my already thinly streched, finely orchestrated chaos. If I leave just right from my house I can drop everyone off in time to get to my office by 8:15 (which is still 15 minutes later than I want to be and more than an hour after everyone else - it seems -gets there) Then if I am not in the middle of something and can just drop everything at work and not get stopped along the way by chatting or traffic - I can just make it to the school to get the kids and let Quin go get her child on time. But then I have to tack on another hour in getting Eran and dropping off those STUPID (I really want to use a stronger word here but am trying to restrain myself) FEDEXES!!! But if I don't do it, then I don't see my darling husband till hours later as he feels obligated to run whatever errands his ride wants to run (sometimes including a stop for their dinner on the way home)