Dani is home; she chose Di Pescaro, and the happy surprise was that Anat also showed up. She finished one exam yesterday, and only has one left on Friday.
Marty brought us up to date on the house, but it’s nothing new since last week when he announced that they can park in both sides of the garage. What is new is that Cindy was rear-ended, about 1500 worth of damage, but the car is too old to put that kind of money into it. They’re figuring out what to do about a car.
Marty is always a wealth of information; he seeks out interesting news articles from around the world to share with his children. He told us a story about the overflow of pigs in Germany, and how a guy who often fed wild pigs was shocked when a huge one climbed into his car, thinking he was going to be gored. Instead, the pig rested its head on the guy’s lap!
I asked Grandpa how all his projects are going, and Marty told us that he and Milton visited a mentoring session in one of the inner city schools.
January 8, 2009
Today, in honor of Grandpa’s 81st birthday, almost everyone came to lunch; we met at Maggiano’s in Old Orchard. It was Maya’s idea. Her entire semester in Israel was suddenly cancelled because of the situation (Israel finally had enough of Hamas launching rockets from Gaza, day after day, during cease-fires, without ceasing, and has been fighting back on the ground). Now, Maya has to make a decision about what to do, since her apartment and most classes are filled. NYU has been very supportive about it, offering to refund her non-refundable ticket and finding her alternative programs. It looks like she’ll be going to Buenos Aires for the semester, instead.
It was nice that Ibby came to celebrate; and Matt came about 45 minutes late with Josh Weiss. They sat on either side of Grandpa, insuring a good time and lively conversation for him. There were too many people and it was too loud to have one conversation, but I did pick up nuggets from different ends of the table.
Some of us discussed the current situation in Israel, and how the media is portraying it as if there is moral equivalence to terrorists attempting to kill anyone their rockets land on, and the Israeli army sending flyers and calling cell phones to warn civilians of approaching tanks. Because the Hamas rockets have been mostly benign, in spite of scaring and paralyzing all of southern Israel, the world seems to see the Israeli incursion as showing too much force and being non-balanced. We talked about different news sources and about the emails being sent around making these points.
We talked a little about Mexico, fondly remembering the sun and sand, and lots of funny things that Sam said during the course of the week. Marty enjoys hearing those stories. Milton talked about feeling better after his asthma attack…he said he was whacked out on the beach. Dani had a little talk with him because she was worried that he had upset Grandma with his talk of potential money problems. All the kids are aware that she did not always have an easy relationship with money, and they were all concerned that Grandma, who even in good times has worried about spending too much when they’re out to dinner, will now insist that the cousins meet at McDonald’s for their club dinner, or even worse, she’ll insist on cooking a turkey at home!
We talked about death row and legalizing marijuana. Dani, of course, gave a strong argument for selling ALL drugs in a legal setting, over the counter, adding taxes and incentives for companies to manufacture clean product. EVEN crystal meth Milton asked? Yes, replied Dani, all illicit drugs should be made legal. Our court system is bogged down and our prison population overflowing with drug arrests. Let those people go into a pharmacy and buy drugs using their ID and credit card, just like when they buy Sudafed or any prescription drug. In fact, let them get prescriptions, and let the doctors get a cut. Dani is pretty persuasive and it started to sound about right to me, especially when she started talking about the expense of keeping all those druggies in prison.
During lunch, Josh taught Grandma how to text using her phone and she sent a bunch of practice texts. Grandpa and Matt kept making prank calls to Becky, who kept answering, hoping for someone interesting and not-related.
Ibby ordered four slices of chocolate cake, which were humongous, and nowhere as yummy as they looked. Luckily, I insisted on also ordering the Apple Crostada, which even Maya remembers as being delicious. It was nice to sing to Grandpa in honor of his 81st, and we chatted about how the actual celebration was that whole wonderful vacation together in Mexico, where we ate, sat in the sun, lounged around, played games, and generally had a fabulous time. It was really a great idea, and the kids were talking about how they hope we can do it again. Even better, a couple of them agreed that they would like to be able to take all of their children on a vacation like that one day!
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