Zev News – December 2009

In early December, Jackie had an appointment to get her hair permed. She was seeing a new hairdresser, her old hairdresser having moved to Tumecula. She walked into her appointment with her new hairdresser and told the hairdresser she wanted a perm. "No you don't," the hair dresser replied. Jackie was stunned. This woman, would had never met her before knew what she did and didn't want us! But Jackie decided to give her some leeway and to see if she liked the result. The hairdresser cut a good 6 inches off Jackie's hair and highlighted it and colored it and styled it in away Jackie knew she'd never be able to reproduce. Did she like it? It definitely looked better than before. But it also didn't really look like her. So she wasn't sure. The reaction of everyone else, however, was that it was a good change, so she has not rushed out to get a perm.

The first Saturday in December was a latke dinner at the Temple and the second square dancing class dance. Benjamin had to miss both, because he was on a religious school retreat. On Sunday, the Temple sisterhood went to SOVA (a local food bank) and volunteered there for a few hours, sorting food for shipment to other distribution centers.

The next weekend was the LA Vex Robotics Championship. Jonathan's robot again did very well. Marc and Benjamin went to see Scrooge on Saturday. This was the first night of Hanukkah, and we went to a Hanukkah party at Diane's at 6 pm. After a little dinner, we took off and went over the hill to see Racheli Schuratz perform in her high school's play “The Curious Savage.” Being a high school play, we did not have high expectations, so we were thrilled with the high quality of the play. Jonathan had to miss it, since he was still doing robotics, much to his chagrin when we came home full of stories about how wonderful the play was.

The following day was the AAUW holiday party, for which Jackie provided the entertainment. She did a repeat of the karaoke Sisterhood meeting last September. The AAUW women loved it. To Jackie’s surprise, they preferred the pop music over the musicals. That night was Chanuka at Jackie's mom's house. The next night was square dancing class. The following night Jackie went to a college planning workshop, while Marc went to a board meeting; Wednesday, Jackie went to quilting. Thursday was a Sisterhood Hanukkah party and gift swap. We were supposed to bring a $15 gift that represented our favorite vice. Jackie brought a bottle of Kahlúa. Now, at a gift exchange, you want to feel like people appreciate the gift you bring. But people were not choosing the gifts that look like wine, including the Kahlúa, so Jackie had to be patient. The Kahlúa was of the very last gifts unwrapped. But Jackie’s patience was rewarded by lots of oohs and aahs when it was finally opened.

The next day, Benjamin started his study for Bar Mitzvah with a meeting with Rabbi Lutz that Jackie and Marc also attended. A most unusual thing happened at this meeting –Jackie cell phone rang. It was unusual that someone would have her cell phone number; she doesn't normally give it out. It was unusual that her cell phone would be on. It was unusual that her cell phone would be with her. It was unusual that it would ring. And it was unusual that, when it rang, Jackie heard it!. It turned out it was her friend, Patty, who happened to be stuck at the airport waiting for her luggage which didn't make her flight. She wanted to know if Jackie could come to the airport and visit. Un fortunately, She couldn't because she was at the meeting with Rabbi Lutz.

That night was Hanukkah with Blanche, Al, Irene, and the Steinfeld's at our house. And the next night was the annual holiday party at our neighbors down the street. We returned home and realized it at least one of us had been away from home every single night of Chanuka. Not that we hadn't lit candles every night, but one or more of us (usually Jackiewhen not all four of us) was always running off.

Winter break started and with it came the Workstock 2009 event at the Temple that Marc had organized. This was three days of demolition, cleaning, wallpaper stripping, and painting of the ECEC (Early Childhood Education Center) at our Temple. Marc and the boys were supposed to be there for all three days, Jackie got the boys excused Sunday afternoon to attend a team square dance in Garden Grove, about an hour's drive from the house. There were only two squares at the dance, and I was only if a lot of the adults danced. But we still had a good time. One advantage of only having two squares was that the caller could cater to the square is much more them when they are lots of squares.

More work stock

dinner at the Segals

Rivi and Jeffs party

Christmas

We woke up at 6:00. The plan was to eat, get dressed and get out the door by 6:30. But there were clothing issues. Jackie had identified what long underwear and jumpsuits, everyone was going to wear, but she hadn't identified sweaters. It been so long since either boy had worn a sweater that sizing was an issue. But Benjamin borrowed from Jonathan and Jonathan borrowed from Marc and it 7am we walked out the door.

Jackie insisted that the boys NOT both just stick their noses in a book for the 1 1/2 hour drive. So they made a plan as to who was going to keep me company for how long and who was going to read on the drive. We followed Google's directions to get to Mountain High which involves shmay-draying along back roads, but did get us there in less than 1 1/2 hours

We arrived and Jackie dropped off Jonathan at the booth where the lines were forming. Jackie parked and we left our gear in the car and went to join Jonathan. When we did, we discovered he was in the wrong place. So we moved to the ticket lines, and Jackie sent the boys back to the car for gloves and hats. This was problematic, because Jonathan didn't know where the car was (since Jackie had dropped him off) and Benjamin, despite having been there when Jackie parked, didn't either. Worse yet, he thought he did, so they didn't ask. After a long, long wait Jackie got the tickets, but the boys weren't back yet. So Jackie went to the car. Jackie could see that they had been to the car, because their hats and gloves were gone (but not hers – fortunately since her hands were cold!). We all had cell phones, but they were useless, because we couldn't get a signal.

Fortunately, the place just isn't that big, and Jackie was able to find the boys again pretty quickly. Jackie put them in line to rent their skis, and she went to get her boots and skis from the car. The boys finally got their equipment and got on the slopes at 10 a.m. Jackie’s thinking that avoiding the whole rental thing by buying some cheap equipment for the boys might not be a bad idea.

Jonathan can ski anything Mountain High has to offer, but Benjamin is just moving on to the intermediate slopes. We skied a beginner slope and went off to do an easy intermediate slope. Benjamin did great on the slope, so we decided to try a harder intermediate slope. This was not successful. The only way Benjamin could get down this slope was to ski to the side, sit down, flip his skis around, stand up, repeat. Jackie stayed with him the whole time and Jonathan skied down, went up the lift again, and skied down again. Once we got to a point where Benjamin could ski properly, we looked at a map and realized we had not gone down the intermediate slope we had planned, we had done an expert slope by mistake. No wonder Benjamin had trouble! At this point, we decided to ski to the lodge and break for lunch. Jackie had soup, Benjamin had chicken fingers and Jonathan had a hotdog, mini-corndogs and fries (growing boy!)

After lunch, we did some truly intermediate runs, and Benjamin did much better there. He wanted to do the run we had intended to do when we did the expert run by mistake, so we did that run. This turned out to be a harder run than some of the other intermediate runs. Jackie stayed with Benjamin the whole way down until she thought he was past the hard stuff. And then she skied to the bottom, where she met up with Jonathan. Then she discovered that her assessment (of being past the hards tuff) had been incorrect, and although Benjamin had not crashed during what she thought was the hard part, he had crashed during what she thought was the easy stuff and lost a ski. She watched him struggle to get back on and after became apparent that he was having significant trouble, she hiked back up the slope to help him.

Jackie was feeling frustrated that she was not keeping to her game plan, which was to put Benjamin on easier intermediate slopes with a neighboring expert slope so that Jackie and Jonathan could alternate going down with Benjamin and going down the expert slope. So they reverted to that plan for awhile. Towards the end of the day, Benjamin wanted to finish on the beginning slopes, said Jackie let him go by himself, and Jackie and Jonathan went off to do expert slopes. At the end, they had no difficulty finding him again at all. They turned in their skis shortly after the sun went down and everyone was tired and happy. They went home by reversing the directions they took to get there. Jackie had anticipated trouble finding the correct place to turn in the dark and had brought the GPS. They had not turned it on when they went to Mountain high, but having it on the way home proved to be good forethought, as indeed they missed turns twice on the drive back. It was about half an hour before they could get a cell phone signal and call home. They were really glad they had not insisted Marc join then for this trip when he had dinner waiting when they arrived home at 6:50.