I know those of you who are parents will appreciate the educational impact of this new toy and those of you who are still in touch with your inner child will appreciate how Playmobil has kept up with current events. In any event, you must take a gander at this new toy. Don’t fail to read the reviews as they are equally HI-larious!
Been Sick
The shortish story…
Apparently, I let myself get sick. Then I refused to admit I was sick. After weeks of such nonsense, I agreed to go to see my primary care physician. She should be called something else because none of those descriptors fit – not primary, not care, not physician. I’d change her identification to Dr. “I don’t care I just want you out of here” or “I hate my life M.D.”
My chest x-ray was hazy so I was sent to the ER where the nurses repeatedly asked what interaction I had with the homeless population. About the third time I replied, “Have you been in your waiting room?” The nurse tells me that sometimes a security guard with a dog will come and shoo the indigent away.
When the triage nurse called my name, Jesse and I began lumbering toward her careful to avoid the drunk and detoxing. She greeted us with her outstretched arm holding a mask. Dr. Cancerscare’s warning call that we were on our way carried the threat that I had TB. A cursory glance at the chest x-ray indicated that the apexes of my lungs were clear. So, NOT TB! But no one looked at my x-rays (apparently, not even my PCP). They just operated on the cancer/TB idea because it’s more fun that way. Besides, who ever heard of the flu turning into pneumonia? That never happens. I got a mask because the hospital didn’t want me to offend the homeless population in the waiting room with Rebecca germs. Apparently, that’s a one-way homeless-to-Rebecca privilege. Jesse requested a mask for himself on principle.
Eventually, Doogie Houser partially slid my x-ray out of it’s envelope took off his mask and said, “This isn’t TB.” He wrote a prescription for antibiotics and kicked us out. I was instructed to re-contact my PCP.
And so I made the attempt, but the doctor didn’t want to see me. “I was there on Thursday. I have pneumonia.”
“Still, you are a new patient. We can’t accommodate new patients until April.”
“But I have pneumonia now. The hospital told me to follow up with your office.”
“And we can see you in April.”
“But I was admitted to the ER under Dr.’s name.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“I need follow-up for PNEUMONIA!”
I did go in for follow-up with one of Dr.’s colleagues who gave me a relationship appointment for March and a referral to an ear doctor, which never materialized.
My friend betts brought this for me when she heard I was sick. How sweet is that? That drink is the yummiest yum ever – candied ginger, lemon juice, and honey. It made me feel better, but didn’t cure my pneumonia.
My step-father called in a personal favor with the head of pulmonary care at the University Medical Center. Ahhh… real health care. I think the good doctor is operating on the theory that I had the flu, then while in compromised health I contracted cocci, and that came with a complication of pneumonia and pleurisy. How unfortunate is that? Cocci and pleurisy without so much as a kiss. Unfortunately, insurance gave me trouble with the tests so the good doctor saw that I was admitted to the hospital.
I don’t remember much about the hospital because I was sedated after a series of nurses attempted with a series of blown and elusive veins to put in an IV. Since I’m terrified of needles, I had a mini-breakdown in hour two of this process. I do remember receiving a wellness blessing with rancid ointment from my priest, protesting a TB test, more needles, having to pee after my CT scan, and begging to be released.
And after two hours haggling with the insurance company over what meds they will allow, we decided upon a cocktail of drugs that the insurance company is willing to gamble I won’t have an allergic reaction to, though I have previously. I’m not taking the pain meds but I am on two antibiotics that have only caused a minor rash and nausea. That’s where things stand until early March when I see the good doctor and the evil doctor for follow-up.
So, that’s where I’ve been.
Garbage Soup Redeux
I’m reposting a excerpt from a blog I wrote last year about Valentine’s Day. Partly because it got a good response and I like praise and partly because the holiday is a loser holiday for Jesse as I am never materially satisfied. Either it’s too much or not enough.
In the next few days I plan to come up with gift suggestions to make Jesse’s life easier like fair trade organic chocolate or bath and body products I might actually use or maybe a Prius limo. Honestly, I think I might like a composter even though I have no clue what I’d do with good dirt out here in the desert. Maybe one of you will see something to put on your list.
And now for old news…
++++++++++++++
February 12, 2007
Please don’t go out on Valentine’s Day and drop a chunk of change on flowers that were coated in pesticides, kept in a green house, and shipped across the country. What is that supposed to say? “I love you so muchly that I’m giving you something unnaturally begotten. Also, in its making a part of the world was poisoned. Lastly, even with the aspirin dissolving in the water, it’s doomed to die leaving nothing to show for the cash. THIS is the symbol of my love for you.” Please. Save your money. Buy a plant. I hear that bamboo palm is good for taking formaldehyde out of the air.
…
I am compelled to request that you forget the expensive roses! Instead, share this recipe for Garbage Soup, from a Sonoran Desert cookbook (with editorial from me). It would be good for your wallet, the environment, and an honest statement about the longevity of love.
INGREDIENTS:
water (the elixir of life)
vegetable waste (eggplant sounds like elegant fare for a Valentine dinner, but gack!)
coffee grounds (from the pot you shared over morning breath)
eggshells (you already walked on them so they are nicely crushed)
other similar kitchen waste (so not the shit you sling at each other like monkeys after the kids are in bed)
not grease (this is about living plants not the yummy goodness of slaughtered lambs)
DIRECTIONS: Chop waste in food processor or blender with equal parts water. Mix it up until it’s as convoluted as your fights. Bury soup around outer edges of plants along side the hatchet.
Commercial fertilizers can kill beneficial microorganisms in the soil. This recipe for plants can be used in lieu of those fertilizers. Can you feel the love?
Consumers Cut Off
When our economy began to tank we saw a downturn in the economies of several other countries who rely on our consumerist behavior to support them. Consequently, we want to rush through a stimulus package that borrows money from China, maybe, to buy Chinese goods. That’s great for us, because we’ve come to expect a certain lifestyle that is slightly beyond our means. What would happen if at the national, state, local, and individual level our credit was cut off because we had a “higher than acceptable risk profile” and we were forced to reevaluate our values versus spending habits?
A banking company in the UK has cut off the 7% of their credit cards with just that sort of spending to payment history. The story reads as though the bank is Big Brother saving consumers from themselves. My feeling is that with the economy trending down these folks will have difficulty making payments and the bank will have to eat it when those people finally go belly-up from their “support of the economy”. This bank is saving it’s ass and maybe the by-product is that 160,000 Brits will have to apply for a card elsewhere or hopefully make better choices.
Would American banks do this to Americans who have been ordered by the president to spend money to the extent that it’s ingrained in our psyche and part of our identity? The mall is a shared American Experience! Even more interestingly, would the U.S. get cut off and therefore have to make more difficult decisions about what we do with taxpayer dollars? Perhaps we have forever status with our creditors. But what if our balance were due and we had to say no to ourselves? My mother-in-law sent me this YouTube video that asks a similar question. Where are American vales? Do we support the mission in Iraq? Do we reinvest in our corporate structure? Do we refocus our funds on children?
Outdoor Education
Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) published a self-promotion story on the bird sanctuary at the kids’ school where I spend a few hours each week. Borton Environmental Learning Lab (BELL) is a patch of desert that a few parents and I have been cultivating for the past few years. The committee is mostly driven by betts, though other parents contribute significantly. We try to get the kids outside once a week on top of the planting, watering, and clean-up we also do once a week.
It’s great to see the kids outside, but the ventures into BELL aren’t to replace recess. The kids are involved in meaningful learning. They take in their surroundings through careful visual, auditory, and tactile observation and then journal about the experience. There’s a great deal of science and writing involved. There’s also the occasional cactus prick and bug bite.
The kindergarteners and first graders I’ve taken to BELL learned about symmetry when comparing mesquite, palo verde, hackberry and other tree leaves. They’ve learned about Precolumbian people and uses for the desert plants. They’ve learned about habitat, adaption, and how they relate to each other. They’ve learned some state history too. My next goal is for them to create their own desert story using the information they’ve gathered. I’m not an educator, so we’ll see how that goes.
I’m proud of the students’ work and would post it, but it’s not my intellectual property. Let me just tell you, it’s incredible. At the beginning of the year, students were unnerved by crickets, unsure about sitting on the ground, and asked about polar bears. Now they run to the bee bush to see if it still smells like lime gummy bears. They are much more confident in that couple of acres of wilderness.
Kids are too smart to be taught how to take tests or to write to arbitrary prompts or to sit in front of a computer. For that matter, teachers are too valuable a resource to be scripted. I’m probably biased toward an inquiry curriculum since I work for the woman who put it “out” there, but to teach all subjects to a child’s imagination is a powerful thing. I’m thankful for this school, principal, and teachers. Every child deserves these opportunities.
Be Gone Bunnies
Being a mom seems so easy, so natural, so effortless for some women. When it comes to feeding, clothing, roofing, and educating my children, I certainly meet the world’s minimum daily recommended allowance. Beyond that, I struggle, I obsess, I cringe. Tucson is a hard place to live for the mother of a kid with a dust allergy. I’m sure this is hard on my son too, but this is my blog. If Parrish wants to post about the cough that keeps him up all night when I don’t manage a thorough dusting, he has his own blog.
Today I learned that along with being slow to care about the PLUs on produce and not playing Baby Einstein to the zygotes I gestated, my dust bunny ranch is ruining my kids. I don’t know why I bothered to breast feed when I was just forcing fire retardants down those innocent, vulnerable baby throats.
Apparently, those dark dwelling dust bunnies have their own culture, whole lives built up around a sedentary lifestyle and, oddly enough, disco. I should have known by the way they swirl around my broom. Some people think of dust bunnies as pets, but dust bunnies have a darker side. They don’t merely reproduce. They mutate – first as hibernating bears and then as devils. I believe it. Dust bunnies are evil!
American Standard, who would like to sell you air quality products, conducted a 20 city census. Check out their Dust Bunny Barometer to see how concerned you should be about your domestic neglect and its possible poisoning of your babies.
If I were a better mom, I would eradicate dust bunnies in the home. Dust bunny removal requires a specialist, I’ve decided. A Hoover engineer well versed in the use of one of those dust sucky things. This ain’t no DIY project. I should probably be able to round up the bunnies and combine them with dryer lint to knit reusable grocery sacks, but I’m not that mom. I’m the mom that waits for snotty noses and lethargy before moving aside heavy furniture.
(Art stolen from MYRANT. That’s my new vision of a dust bunny full of crap that could irritate your kids’ respiratory system at the least and give them cancer at the worst.)
Tree Room Star
George’s class made the newspaper! This time it’s for their work and not the MRSA scare, which wasn’t an issue at Borton to begin with. George’s class designed and executed a newspaper publishing operation. The front page article was a blurb but on 4A is this article.
As the daughter/great-granddaughter of a public school teacher (my mother is still in public schools as a speech pathologist) and the daughter of a former newspaperman, this project was fun to see come together. It brought back vivid childhood memories. Dad read the paper to us and frequently had smudgy inky fingers. His work was a madhouse! He taught me to use a dictionary with the command, “Summon your elder sibling.” My mother’s teacher lounge was endlessly fascinating with an old duplicating machine, typewriters with no letters on the keys (click, click, zip, bing!), and a vending machine. She was an English teacher and so I learned classic stories like that of Abelard and Heloise and in 5th grade, she helped me memorize the Emma Lazarus poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty. But back to George…
George is quoted in the article and to the right of the screen is a photo gallery that includes this picture of me looking every bit the exhausted mess I am. (Would somebody please shove me in the shower once in a while?!?) Molly, who is also quoted, is Parrish’s teacher. Don’t worry about her skipping math instruction. She has a math focused master’s degree and so her students get lots of it. The more I know Molly, the more I like her. Dana came to the U.S. last year from Iraq. During my tour, he pretended to be interviewing the president.
+++ rant on NCLB, scripted/corporate curriculum, crippling mandates and so forth deleted to highlight how looking at teachers as degreed professionals who teach between the cracks can make awesome things happen +++
Toilet Surfing White Lab Rats
The other night, I snuggled between the sheets to watch season 3 disk 3 of Six Feet Under and enjoy the ice cream sandwich I repeatedly denied to my kids. While savoring the moment, my cat stretched her tiny body out and farted. More than any other member of my family, including the dog and the guinea, that cat has the must putrid, wretched flatulence. I wanted to kick her, but Jesse is in Mexico and she’s the only security I have against toilet surfing white lab rats.
Oh, and I’m not even joking about toilet surfing white lab rats (story two). I am blessed to live in that one, small, midtown area plagued by toilet surfing white lab rats (story three!). I’m to understand these couldn’t possibly be coming from the university labs across the street. Well, maybe, but they still have to explain the toxic spill sewer roaches with super creepy powers from which my cat also protects me (along with lizards and other wee beasties that make the mistake of movement).
Penny Pincher
“She’s so frugal, her pennies will forever show her thumb and finger prints.” My family didn’t make up the phrase, but did oft apply it to me. I thought economy long before I thought green.
About five years ago, I read the Tightwad Gazette and Cheapskate Monthly issue for issue. I was fascinated with tips such as recycling paper coffee filters and even tried it with success. I calculated the cost of everything I did, but mostly purchases of consumer goods. I was on a mission and completely blissful.
These thoughts (d)evolved leaving me now lost in figures relating to my water, gas, and electrical use. I read my bills; I’ve figured my meters; and I compare month to month behavior. As Jesse points out, it’s still about money. For example, I knew we had a gas leak in our water heater, but lived with it until the gas company hiked their rate by 30%. Nevermind how it may have impacted the health and safety of my family.
One of the largest energy users for residential domiciles is the refrigerator. Last week, I pulled mine back from the wall and saw a huge wad of Boris hair mucking things up. Being a good housekeeper, I swept it up, but didn’t think much of it except that it satisfied my fear that someone might someday want to look behind my refrigerator. I mean I knew, but I didn’t really think about it. But guess what! Cleaning refrigerator coils makes a HUGE impact on energy use and there is a right way to do it.
I guess I’m not all that green. At my core I just don’t like waste but do like manipulating the numbers. I do it while driving too. If I’m headed to Oklahoma at 80 mph and it’s 1000 miles away and I’m held up by icy road conditions, how long before I yell at my kids to quit touching each other?
Kakefuda Furoshiki
I haven’t, and may not find time to, wrap my Christmas gifts. Maybe that’s a good thing because I just stumbled across this You Tube video.
This is furoshiki, the Japanese art of gift wrap. Kakefuda in Kyoto, Japan is such a cool place. Judging by the website, that is. Go see it. I visited Kyoto in 1991, but was so busy looking for a McDonald’s that I never saw such a store! Not that I would have had money to shop, but I could have looked.