update on Andy

After reading the last post, I realized that I left out a very important part of Andy falling off the balcony. When Andy fell off the balcony, he was wearing his bike helmet. He was not trying to commit suicide. What he told me was that he was upset with MB & I, b/c we had disciplined him for lying to us about his homework. After I disciplined him that morning (& mind you it wasn't anything really harsh, I just made it clear that I wouldn't tolerate lying), he wanted to find out how much or if we cared about him so he jumped off the balcony.

Andy, in 4 days of hospitalization (psychiatric) and a week and a half of outpatient counseling is learning better coping skills.

Andy will be back to his normal school schedule on Thursday. His last day (& it's actually only less than 3 hours) at Children's Memorial Hosp. is tomorrow. Yesterday and today he has gone to the Arbor Park Middle School (his normal school) for an hour and then the rest of the day at Children's Memorial.

I was going through the coursework he missed in the 2 1/2 weeks he was out. It was multiplying decimals, dividing decimals and long division. Math is unique because skills you use 1 week are applied the next week. That's not really true of other subjects.

I discovered that Andy doesn't know long division. He can do problems like

72 divided by 8 =9

36 divided by 6 = 6

But he can't do problems like

723 divided by 8 = ____

452 divided by 2 = ____

So, I've been teaching him this. It's going to take awhile. I wonder how long it will take him to learn this??

I can't figure out why he didn't know this!! When I was ten and eleven, I worked on long division in both 5th and 6th grades. He told me that they worked on it some in 6th grade but he didn't do very well. He's in a good school district. I don't understand how this happened.

At any rate, he is going to be all right and we will work very hard to see that he does well in school.

be back later.....

I have been very busy and can't really blog hop and stay in touch with my dear blogging buddies or write any new posts.

The biggest problem is that my oldest son, Andy, jumped off our balcony at our condo. It was over a 20 ft. fall. He has no broken bones but they are trying to prevent such an incident from happening again. He is still in the hospital and will go 2 weeks to a transitional place before going back to school.

One of the problems is that he's having a tough time w/ 7th grade and his grades are worse than before. The other problem is that bigger kids bully him every now and then, but that's been going on for several years. It goes away for months, then it comes back. Then it goes away and comes back again. The transitional school will directly address better coping mechanisms and how to deal w/ bullying.



So I may cover this situation more later or I might talk about something else in a week or so.

Ted's in FOOTBALL!!

Ted, my 2nd son, has been doing very well in football. He's the biggest kid on his team. He was moved to center and got an award for snapping the football back to the quarterback without any fumbles. He plays everything: offense, defense and special teams. He plays every single minute of the game!

I hope he continues to improve. His team is not very good. They have the smallest team in the league. Oh well, Ted is doing well. He is very competitive. So when they lost 26-0 Sunday, he was very upset. I agree with him. I don't think it made any sense to console him or make him feel better. I want to encourage him to be competitive and hate losing. That's the type of attitude that will get you off your ass when bad times strike. That's the type of attitude that doesn't merely want to do a good job or average job, but an excellent job. That's the type of attitude that EMPLOYERS WANT!!

People say that in high school or grade school sports the object is not to win but to have a good time. I understand that view. But tell me something.....raise your hand if you ever enjoyed getting your ass kicked in a sport by over 20 pts. No hands? Yeah, I didn't think so.

It's fun winning, it's fun scoring and doing well. IT ISN'T FUN when you are losing, playing poorly, and getting your ass kicked!!

PS. In case you were wondering why Ted had black under his eyes, that is used to make you see easier in the sun. The idea is that when you rub that black stuff under your eyes you can see better even when the sun is in your eyes. I don't know how exactly, but hundreds of ball players use it every weekend.

The Beauty of a Deep Cut

How many of you out there have the Rolling Stones album LET IT BLEED? The 3rd track on it is a song you never hear on the radio called "Country Honk". It’s the earlier version of the better-known song "Honky Tonk Woman". Obviously, "Country Honk" is a country western version of "Honky Tonk Woman". All the things in this song are things I despise in Country Western music. My opinion is that Country Western music sucks. I used to have wake up at fuckin' 5:00 am and go to the barn & milk cows. & our local radio station that was barely worth a "fiddler's fuck" played Country Western music in the morning. "Country Honk" actually has a fiddle on it. The fiddle is DEFINITELY NOT my favorite musical instrument. But the fiddle played by Byron Berline in this song puts a sweet ole' shit-eatin' grin on my face. I LOVE THAT FIDDLE PART ON "COUNTRY HONK". Where fiddles usually suck on all those hayseed songs that I heard milking cows, well it works like mad on "Country Honk". You can just imagine them doing this song in the studio. The great fiddling virtuoso, Berline, standing there fiddling his ass off, while Mick is singing glibly and right along side him is "Keef" Richards playing acoustic guitar and a 20 yr. old guitar virtuoso, Mick Taylor (who just joins the band that year, 1969) playing SLIDE GUITAR alongside them all.

I love this song so much! & few people know about it b/c it never gets played on the radio unless it's some special program like "Midnight Album nightly special: LET IT BLEED by the Stones" or some program like that.
My favorite music is the deep cut. I will come back to this subject from time to time. There are some great deep cuts. "Let Me Take You Home Tonight" & "Party" both by Boston. "The Rover" by Led Zeppelin, "Different Strings" by Rush, "Glass Onion" and "Baby You're a Rich Man" both by the Beatles. the beauty of the DEEP CUT is that it's like a beautiful secret shared among only a few people. No one knows about the DEEP CUT except you and the few that also have that album. (I guess in the Beatles and Stones case it's not really "few")
The DEEP CUT plays into and proves my theory about mileage and songs. (Part of the theory is that some popular songs are played so much that they sound worse and worse b/c like an old car they deteriorate from overuse.) The DEEP CUT is like that car that is shined and polished and only driven a few hundred miles so that sweet beauty is in MINT CONDITION! & the sweetest, most sublime part is YOU ARE ONE OF THE FEW PEOPLE WITH THE PRIVILEGE OF DRIVING THE CAR!!