Our healthcare dollars at work
Before I begin, let me just say 1) I didn’t mean to leave you hanging on that last post, I swear, and 2) THANK YOU for all the nice comments and emails. February/March (Farch, as one commenter called it, which I shall use forevermore) is hard on a lot of us, huh? I’m really glad it’s almost April. Also I am (finally) feeling somewhat better, so do not fret.
But that is not why I am here today. OH HO HO HO, no. I am here today to tell you the story of why for-profit health insurance companies do not work and why when politicians start wringing their hands about how EXPENSIVE universal healthcare will be, I have vivid fantasies of setting living, breathing humans on fire. Also—in case you don’t live in Georgia or follow the news—I find it beyond ironic (like, we need a new word that means mega-ironic, please) that the state legislature here has just passed a so-called “heartbeat bill” aimed at criminalizing all abortion, because they care so damn much about LIFE, but in the meantime, everything I’m about to tell you is just fine and dandy by them because it’s not pertaining to a fetus, just my 20-year-old daughter.
Related: My favorite thing about me is how calm and collected and not at all hyberbole-prone I am in the face of dumbfuckery. read more…
Here is the thing about now
February sucks. Everyone agrees that February sucks, yes? I am well aware of the February suckage, and so because I am a fairly self-aware and productive human who has been in therapy for most of her life (wheeeeee!), each and every February when things get hard I keep reminding myself: “February always sucks. This is normal. Just keep going, because this is a short month.”
That’s good, right? I mean, I always feel really proud of myself while I’m doing that. No matter how long a person with depression deals with depression, one common feature of said depression (how many times can I say depression in this sentence, do you suppose?) is the inability to IDENTIFY said depression at critical junctures. This is why I gave birth to my daughter and white-knuckled it until she was about 10 months old before admitting that yes, I had a massive case of post-partum depression, and why I then had my SECOND baby, and—better informed, and so much more mature and worldy!—showed up for my 6-week post-partum check (COINCIDENTALLY IN FEBRUARY) at 10 pounds under my pre-pregnancy weight and responded to “How are you feeling?” by opening my mouth like a cod and then bursting into tears.
And so February, fucking February, man, it’s always a bad month and I always KNOW it’s a bad month and I manage to hold it together and remember that February is short and that’s GREAT. Except. Except, you see, 28 days is apparently the maximum amount of time I can manage that, plus while I am remembering that February sucks, I often forget—please try to contain your shock—that March is worse. read more…
English is stupid and I require supervision
Hello! I know, I started writing weekly(ish) again and then I didn’t write last week, disappointing my legions of fans (read: my father). I apologize. In my defense, our washing machine died, because of course it did! And then I had to deal with that! And that meant I also had to admit that sometimes I don’t do my laundry for weeks on end (pro tip: have lots of socks and underwear, and you too can be incredibly lazy). It stands to reason that the washing machine would croak on the very day I realized my hamper was overflowing and I was nearly out of underwear.
So, last week I was busy doing exciting things like… washing my underwear BY HAND like some kind of peasant. And researching washing machines. And buying a new washing machine, and deciding we should swap the positioning of the washer and dryer, and then panicking that I’d bought the WRONG washing machine, and THEN trying to figure out the new machine, and trying to move the dryer back into the laundry nook and hook it up all on my own as a lovely surprise for Otto. Great idea, yes? He works so hard. But this led to the not-even-a-little-surprising scenario whereby I ended up sending him a string of indignant texts about how the dryer vent extension was too long but once I took it off, the vent line was just a smidge too short, and so I cut the extension piece (hey, all those years of watching This Old House with him have paid off) and had spent an hour trying to refit it and the main vent line together and I give up, everything is terrible, both pieces are both mangled beyond recognition and still don’t fit together, I HATE EVERYTHING, I’m going to rehearsal, Godspeed.
It was fixed when I got home. God bless Otto. read more…
You’re gonna be so sorry you asked
Hey, Mir, how’s your week been?
OH WELL I HOPE YOU HAVE SOME TIME TO SPEND! Pull up a chair! Grab a cup of tea, and maybe a few benzodiazepines. Whatever.
Let’s start last Saturday, because why not? Monkey has had a cold which has morphed into a sinus infection, and Otto has remained healthy because 1) Otto never gets sick and 2) Otto is rarely actually home, and I spent most of my spare time since the first sniffle washing my hands every ten seconds. Because I would NOT get sick, damnit! I have no time! And this time, I would escape it! So:
SATURDAY
Otto and I puttered around the house for a while, and then headed out to run various errands. I enjoy forcing Otto to do things like go to the supermarket with me, because then we can engage in romantic activities like arguing over what kind of lettuce to buy. It’s an exercise in resilience. We hit the drug store, big box home improvement store, two different grocery stores, and concluded our fascinating afternoon with actual plans for me to cook an Actual Planned Mealâ„¢ the next night, so that was my reward for standing my ground about the unacceptability of Iceberg. Also, we picked up a giant take-n-bake pizza so that Otto and Monkey could have an easy meal after I headed out to work at the theater that night. read more…
So many rabbit holes
There are approximately eight gazillion things I should be doing this week, so naturally I have accomplished none of them and now I am using what little time I have left before heading out to Tinytown to deliver a bunch of stuff to my oldest tonight to blog instead of work. Because blogging brings in the big bucks!! Oh, wait…. (Did you know I actually used to make money doing this? I don’t anymore, but once upon a time it was in fact lucrative to overshare on the Internet. It probably still is for people who have business plans and long-range goals and strategic partnerships, whereas I just have A Lot Of Feelingsâ„¢ and spend about half of every day looking at my dogs and demanding to know which one of them smells bad.)
Speaking of the dogs, they are responsible for one of today’s rabbit holes. They’re not just smelly (seriously, between the yeasty ears and I-ate-something-dead breath, it’s a VERY good thing they’re cute), they’re also getting kind of old. Licorice still acts like a puppy, but Duncan is moving slower, no longer jumps up or down on furniture (preferring, instead, to stare at the couch and bark until you lift him up), etc. And I gave him a bath and washed his bed this weekend, and then I washed the pad in the crate the dogs share when we’re out, so somehow I got it into my head that the crate needs a better/thicker pad in there. I want the dogs to be comfortable. Easy enough, right? I’ll just go look online and find something and… read more…
A very special love language
Obviously my husband is a very special person TO ME, but in 2018 he became a lot more important to a bunch of other people as well, people like his boss and several boards of various Important Things, and so it seemed like he was busy or just plain not here for large segments of the year. Well, 2019 would be different, of course, because he’s really going to pull back on the travel this year. He said. And he meant it, I’m sure. That was the intention. Otto has very good intentions. (Also, he’s cute. And recently our dishwasher drain clogged up somehow and he fixed it like some sort of home repair wizard, so there are many reasons I keep him around, you see.)
You know where this is going, right? And so we made it, oh, I don’t know… I think FIFTEEN WHOLE DAYS into the year before he had to fly across the country for the better part of a week. He assured me it would be a quick and painless trip. Of course, no sooner had he left than another emergency trip to someplace else was needed directly upon his return, so he came home for a day and then left again. And then came home again.
I mean, at least he comes back, right? And I would never try to make him feel bad about ABANDONING ME, because I’m a grown-ass adult and I don’t need a man. But I do miss him when he’s gone. Kind of a lot. read more…
Something something metaphor
I go thrifting on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes I’m looking for something specific (e.g.: lo, I have partaken of too much ice cream, and require new pants), sometimes I’m just looking. [Sidebar/shameless plug: I’m finally putting some of this thrifting to good use by selling stuff on Poshmark. Here’s my closet, and if you’re new to Poshmark and put wantnotdotnet as your invite code, you get $5 of credit and so do I.] Usually I just look at clothes and shoes, but sometimes I look at other things.
Anyway. A while back I was doing my regular Goodwill rounds and I found a wicker planter shaped like an elephant. It was adorable and I immediately knew I needed to buy it, not just because it was 99 cents, but because Chickadee loves all things elephant and she lives in an apartment now and I think there is no better “You’re a grown-ass adult” marker than someone giving you a plant with the tacit understanding that you’re capable of keeping it alive. (Once upon a time a friend gave me a nice plant on Chickie’s first birthday, telling me that now that I’d kept a baby alive for an entire year, she was sure I could take care of this violet. It took a while, but I did indeed kill it. I mean, not on purpose. But. Let’s not dwell on it, I guess.)
I must’ve found the planter after move-in, because it became one of those things I hid in my closet while I tried to figure out what would be the Right Plant for it, and planned to give it to Chickie at Christmas. read more…
So those things happened
And now it’s 2019. Remember all of those years when Otto and I approached the new year swearing that 20whateverwascoming was gonna be “our year” finally? We don’t do that, anymore. As we approached 2019, Otto turned to me one evening and said, “2022! That’s definitely going to be our year.” At first I was horrified, and then I couldn’t stop laughing, and Otto grinned and said, “At least I can still make you laugh.” It’s a good thing we don’t need a special year for that.
I know the last post was a big ol’ wall of catch-up. On Christmas one of the gifts I unwrapped was a pen and a journal, and Otto hastened to explain that it was symbolic—I could use them if I wished, or write online, or whatever suited me best, but that he hoped I would return to writing regularly because he misses it and he thinks I miss it, too. My handwriting is nearly illegible, you know, so HERE I AM.
Understand, too, that on that same Christmas morning I unwrapped this gem of a gift, lovingly pre-ordered for me by my oldest, because I am unable to pass one of those giant tube guys out in the world without shrieking OH ME TOO and doing a terrible impression of their flailing and flapping. I like to think of my blogging as the perfect intersection of these two perfect gifts: I flail, and I write, and somehow it’s a decent representation of my inner workings, ridiculous though it all may be. read more…
Pretend this is our belated holiday card
Dear Everyone,
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Festive Festivus! Joyous Kwanzaa! Happy Freakin’ New Year (please dear baby Jesus let 2019 be less of a dumpster fire than 2018, amen)! Or enjoy grumpy Grinch-ing. Whatever. You pick. I just wanted to wish you and yours a bounty of whatever floats your boat during this ridiculous season of both joy and frustration, generosity and over-commercialism, gratitude and guilt. Or maybe that’s just me. Again: whatever the season means to you, hooray! Enjoy it.
This letter is both overdue and far less interesting than you probably suspect. 2018 has been a long year and yes, sure, we haven’t actually sent out a proper holiday card with pictures of the children and a newsy “here’s what’s happening in our lives” letter for many, many years, but perhaps it’s time to try to return to that tradition at last. Dressing up the kids in matching sweaters and making them pose for photos until one or both of them was in tears used to be a regular feature of my holiday preparation. Somehow in the trials of A Life Not Going According To Plan this tradition fell away, and I regret that. This year I have succumbed to good old fashioning Baking Therapy (would you like a cookie? a cheesecake? a gluten-free pumpkin bread French toast? TWELVE DOZEN COOKIES, PLEASE, TAKE THEM!), and it just feels like a good time to get back to basics.
Fortunately, I did lose my mind a little bit this month and so I’m well-prepared to show off my babies in festive holiday style. I mean, sure, they’re no longer BABY babies, but they’ll always be my babies. And did they bicker while I snapped pictures? Yeah, they did. Did they complain, fall over in exaggerated displays of displeasure and bonelessness, and was there some epic eye-rolling? Of course. DID I GET A GODDAMN HALLMARK MOMENT ANYWAY BECAUSE I SNAPPED ONE HUNDRED TERRIBLE PICTURES? Yes, I think I did. Hopefully it makes up for the letter because they’re pretty cute. read more…
Hurricane, redux
I recently received a kind but somewhat plaintive “If you’re never going to write again could you at least TELL us” message and then I felt guilty because guilt is my go-to emotion. (My second go-to emotion is anger, which is a real treat for those around me, lemme tell you.) I never INTEND to stop writing. I just… don’t… for a while… and then inertia kicks in, and before I know it, months have passed. I do miss the days when my children were small and cherubic and uncomplicated and everything out of their mouths was entertaining and I had endless blog material simply from the day-to-day insanity of trying to keep a couple of tiny terrorists alive. (I mean, just to be clear, not just because it provided blog fodder, but because life was so much simpler back then. You know, back when I believed life made sense and if I was a good parent my children would grow up to be happy and healthy and productive. HAHAHAHA.)
Now life is more like… well, on the same day that one (theoretically adult) kid tells me what an unbearably shitty parent I am, the other (also theoretically adult) kid texts me this from across the room with a complete deadpan face and I’m still trying to figure out why:
Sooooo. Yeah. Life is ridiculous, yes? I think it is. It’s the only excuse I can offer. Also, we keep having hurricanes. read more…