Oh Won't You Choo Choo Me Home

We are in Chattanooga. How the heck are you? I have been hounded in three states about not blogging the last week, but since one of my Rules for Ladies is Never Apologize, Never Explain, I will just say: Hello and Merry Christmas! It is wonderful to see you. You look swell. Yes, those are cake crumbs on my face.

(My mother-in-law's dear friend brought a rum cake over to the house yesterday. Today when I thanked her and complimented her on its deliciousness, she said, "Oh, but you know what? I was out of rum when I made that rum cake so I used a lot of really good bourbon." That works.)

Today that friend and my mother-in-law Betty and a third friend hosted a ladies lunch downtown for everyone to meet my sister-in-law Robin. She's been in the family for two years now, but she's never visited Chattanooga, so this calls for a lunch. It was at the same south side restaurant where I had a bridal luncheon, 99 years ago. And today I was there with Laura, who was not even thought of on that long-ago afternoon. Time, it flies for real.

Blurry but happy.

In other Chattanews, Matt's mom put a new bed in a basement bedroom, so the sleeping situation described in this post is no more. Never say that this blog lacks influence.

It's New Year's Eve! What are you doing tonight? Matt and I went out last night with some friends, and found a place that served really cute drinks with hard-to-find liqueurs in them. This bar was in an old building that had been a bombed-out crack house when we used to live here. We sat on industrial-chic stools that I loved but which hurt Matt's behiney, and we were beautifully lit from below by a glowing tabletop. So that was a lot. Tonight we are going to stay in with his brothers and Robin and play Dominion or Ticket to Ride.

2011 was great--I really can't complain, so if 2012 could just keep it steady, that would be fine with me. Happy New Year from the Sub Mat family. I hope you have a sweet, cozy, or thrilling night with people you like and even love.

Dear Santa, Please See Attached

Weeks ago, probably back in October, Laura took me by the arm and ushered me into the office. She pulled out the desk chair for me and seated me in front of the computer. After some lighting adjustments, she stood behind me in the corner of the room.

Then, as she used the wireless mouse to fire up Power Point from across the room, I realized that instead of writing a letter to Santa, she had created a multimedia presentation. After a flashy intro slide, it went:

There were snazzy fade in/segue effects between each slide. I murmured appreciatively at the clarity and succinctness of her bullet points. My girl. Then she turned the lights up, and, I kid you not, she served refreshments.

(I couldn't make this child up. She is one of the universe's most extravagant productions.)

She brought in a plate of cookies and a cup of juice for Hank. For me there was coffee.

And darned if she's not getting just about everything she asked for.

A note about the tween gossip magazine. She has no idea what "cheated" means, or I don't think she's put that term together with what she knows about the biological facts of reproduction. I imagine she thinks it means going around town with someone else. And what's funny about these magazines--they don't have any REAL gossip in them, like, you won't read a word about Justin Bieber's paternity suit. It's all about who lost her cat and whose mom was really sick but now she's all better. L-O-L. And I never bought her one of those, but I think various grandmothers have.

I think her last slide means that she is open to receiving things not listed, but that Santa would like to provide on his own initiative if he has any ideas. She's fine with that.

And yes, I guess this is another one of those moments when you don't just suspect but know with certainty that you are raising one of the most indulged creatures in history, ever, but then you kinda just want to admire your handiwork.

A couple of nights ago, at dinner, Laura opened her mouth to muse about what she would do if she won the lottery. Matt and I--we really have been together a long time--interrupted her and said in virtual unison, "You have already won the lottery. You won it before you were born." Then we kept shushing her until she shushed.

Y'all having a busy week? I'm like, eek! Ork! Argle bargle Christmas! Coming closer! Been making candy for the neighbors and trying to remember a bunch of little things. And loving it, loving it all. I agree with my sister, Christmas forever.

Ring ting tingle!
B

That Lock of Hair

Back last year when I'd started chemotherapy, on the night we cut off most of my hair, I saved a little bit of it. It was my favorite piece, from right in the front. I snipped it off first, saying I'd keep it. Matt questioned me about it at the time. I wish I could remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, "Do you really want to keep that? When enough time has passed for that to be a souvenir, you will have grown new hair." Those weren't quite the words, but that was the gist.

I kept it though. I tucked it in the top of my jewelry box, not in a bag or anything, just lying there. And there it lay. Every day or two, when I lifted up the lid of the box to get a pair of earrings out or something, I would have to poke it aside gently with my fingers so I could find what I needed. After that night, the hair on my head went on and fell right out and then, in time, started growing again, and the seasons went around.

Months turned into a year, and then started rounding on year two, and still that lock of hair was there. A couple of times, I took it out of the box. I would smooth it in my fingers a little and admire its texture and color. I thought, "I need to save this to show my colorist when I get highlights put in my hair again." Then I would remember that my hairstylist has my precise color formula recorded in her little black book, just waiting to be called up. Then I would put the lock of hair back in the jewelry box.

Life continued to happen. I kind of stopped seeing the lock of hair at all. With one hand I would flip up the top of the box, nudge the hair aside, pick up my jewelry, and flick the lid shut again. It grew to be kind of a nuisance having it there, as you can imagine. You need to pick up a pair of little stud earrings and there's, like, some hair in the way.

Just as I ceased really seeing that actual curl of hair, the whole issue of having hair and losing it and regrowing it kind of fell out of my top stories. Like, it wasn't the headline anymore, then it slipped below the fold, then it got buried way, way back on like page E20. Maybe after Lifestyle but before Real Estate. No longer current events, no need to catch anyone up on it.

The other night, at my first book club meeting, there was a girl there who had a kid in the same class as Laura a few years back. We kind of recognized each other, but it took a few minutes to make the connection. She shook her head and said, "Oh, I didn't know it was you! Your hair was really long, right?" I said, "Yes, it was long." She kept on, making a kind of gesture with her hands, as though to indicate big, full hair. She goes, "I mean, it was like, really different!" There was a time in the not even distant past when I would have said, "Yes, I had to have chemotherapy and it all fell out, but it's all fine now," or something like that. But I just repeated, "Yep, it's short now!" And left it there. It is not something I find I need to process in conversation anymore.

This is what I would say to anyone who is facing chemo and the loss of hair, because I know that for many people, this is near the top of the list of their fears. But I would say that, believe it or not, not only will you get through being bald just fine, there will come a day when you don't even really regret that it happened, and you sure won't spend any time thinking about it. That day will come sooner than you think. As hard as it is to imagine when you're just starting down that road, the whole story of going bald and being bald will one day be boring to you. Like, over, done, next topic.

So, that lock of hair. Late last week and into the weekend, Matt was gone to California for work. The day before he was to come back, I wanted to freshen up our little bower for his return, so I decided to clean and organize the bathroom vanity. Because you know how husbands come home from trips and say, "Show me the bathroom sink!" Yeah. I also had a cute pedicure to show him. Like, "Let me see your feet, wife!"

Anyway, I was straightening our stuff and I opened my jewelry box and plucked out the lock of hair. I hadn't really looked at it in a long time, and it just seemed like a relic. Not in the good sense of something precious preserved, but like something that had once seemed important and was now just odd. Is that still lying around? Clutter. I picked up my phone, snapped a picture of it, feeling kind of ridiculous even doing that, and then tucked it down in the bathroom wastebasket.

You always hear personal organization gurus tell you not to hang on to unnecessary things. If it's not useful and it's in the way, get rid of it. If it's sentimental, take a picture of it, then keep the picture and get rid of the thing. So this blog post is my way of doing that.

xoxo
b

Things I've Learned about Making An Omelette

For the last four months, I've had the same breakfast most days. I'm a big believer in the maxim that you should standardize one of your meals, especially if you are trying to lose weight or monitor your intake. My two-egg and cheese omelette has 220 calories, and it staves off hunger for hours. I reached my goal weight last week (GOOOOAAAAL!), but I'm still eating the same things, pretty much. Now I'm making this breakfast for Matt every day, and all modesty aside, I have gotten really good at it.

The Lord laid it on my heart to tell you this. Honestly, I was just now standing in my kitchen, and I thought, "I need to speak to my people of these things." Now that I remember, my dad tells a story of the only time he thinks God spoke to him, and it was to tell him to get my mom to eat a good breakfast every day. For real.

So:

1) Use a small pan. I have some kind of "green" nonstick pan. I hope this means that the nonstick coating isn't killing us.

2) I put a little olive oil, like not even a teaspoon, in the pan first.

3) Let the pan get hot before pouring your beaten eggs in. I did this wrong for about two months and the whole mess stuck like crazy. Hot pan.

4) Use a soft silicone spatula to nudge the cooked edges in and let the runny egg take its place.

5) Add your sprinkling of cheese to one half of the omelette, or a little chopped tomato if you go that way.

6) Use your soft spatula to fold the omelette over, lightly and gently, like you're covering up a baby.

Enjoy in health.

I had some other post for you but OBVIOUSLY this is more important, as it concerns eggs and cheese.

Happy Monday.

More Gravy Than Grave

This happened tonight: Laura as Jacob Marley in the school production of A Christmas Carol. I don't know if anyone has ever played the role with more relish. Certainly no ten year-old girl has. Her Marley was just a little too happy to be wearing the chains he forged in life, and she brought a refreshingly brisk impatience to her exchange with Scrooge. Like, "Okay, dude, lemme break it down for you. You're gonna be visited by three ghosts. No, three besides me. Try to stop talking for a second. This is important." She speaks well, though. And of course I thought she was the best one, NATURALLY.

The whole performance made me think of this David Sedaris piece from Holidays on Ice. 

Although the program listed no director, the apathetic staging suggested the limp, partially paralyzed hand of Sister Mary Elizabeth Bronson, who should have been excommunicated after last season's disastrous Thanksgiving program.

and

Once again, the sadists at the Jane Snow-Hernandez Middle School have taken up their burning pokers in an attempt to prod A Christmas Carol into some form of submission. I might have overlooked the shoddy production values and dry, leaden pacing, but these are sixth-graders we're talking about and they should have known better.

Laura asked us what our favorite part of the play was, and I told her it was when she first said, "SCROOGE!" from offstage. It was startling! And then she was clinking her chains. Jacob Marley gets a fine entrance.

She wore a pirate shirt from my old Halloween costume, a Mrs. Claus wig we bought at Party City today, and some dog chain my dad procured from the hardware store. She also gave great thought to the single, torn sock she wore. She wondered whether to rip the toe entirely off or leave it dangling. She decided that partially attached was more suitable to her vision of the character.

The girl doesn't have a nervous bone in her body. After the curtain calls, another mom came up to me and said, "If you could just get the child out of her shell a little." And Matt was like, "She's related to me how?"

Hank needed to tell how, at school today, they acted out the first Christmas in Chapel, and he got to be one of the Wise Men, the one with the gold, and there was no gold in the box but they pretended, and he got to wear a purple shirt and a purple sash, and it was very exciting because another Wise Man was the darling Annabelle, whom he loves.

So neither child is hiding any lights under bushels.

I hope you are all feeling festive out there.

That Is Not Festive

Is your community plagued by the scourge of the inflatable Christmas yard decoration? This is my neighbor's house. I drive by several times a day, and Frosty, Santa, and Rudolph are ALWAYS lying down on the job. Rudolph looks like he just slipped in a puddle of his own Christmas cheer.

At least at night they're inflated. During the daytime, they lie there as wrinkled shells of themselves, looking for all the world like giant, discarded Christmas condoms. I kind of wish our HOA would institute a brutal crackdown. Eyesore! Litter!

Yes, I need to sip some wassail and chill.

I do think those inflatable things can be cute, maybe, if they're inflated. Eh, you know what, I was going to try to say something conciliatory so as not to alienate anyone, but we can just leave it with, inflatables are not to my taste.

Now, do we possess an adorable light-up tinsel Rudolph and tinsel penguin that we will be placing on our front porch tonight? Affirmative. So it's not all small white lights and fresh garlands from the Maine woods up in here. Heh.

We're going to get our Christmas tree today. Yay! I just like having a huge tree in the house. If it could stay there all year, that would be great. As it is, I tend to leave it up long enough to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. My mother-in-law once redecorated hers with red bows and hearts for Valentines Day.

I also love all of your comments on my previous post. Matt and I have been reading them and exclaiming over them. Just, wow. Here's to some peace of mind and better days for those who need some.

Oh, hey, I have a nice Christmas playlist that I made, over on Spotify. If you have Spotify, you can click here I think to listen? I spent a ridiculous amount of time putting this together. Back in September. I'm all about readiness.

Smacks,
B

Let's Name Numbers

Well, hey there, you who have been so kind as to come by and read me all month. This was fun! And here's a thing: today was not only the last day of my Month-Long Blogging Festival, it was the last day of the six months that I have had no health insurance, the six months that I needed to have no health insurance in order to be eligible for the federal government's Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. 

Made it! Exhalation.

I feel like there are too few people here in the US who are willing to lay bare the details of this issue and how it actually works out in their lives. It is partly from a sense of shame, I think, or something that has us convinced that our insurance status and our insurability is a personal, private problem and not a social, structural one. That if you don't have insurance, you have failed. But hi, have we met? I'm willing to share, I certainly don't think Matt and I have failed, and I thought the details might be of interest to somebody.

At the beginning of 2009, Matt got some money from the sale of another company he'd worked for, and was able to leave the job he had here in Atlanta and start his own game company. We continued our family group medical and dental coverage through COBRA. For those who don't know, having COBRA coverage is like still being a member of your employer's group plan, only you pay the premium yourself, with no employer contribution. That cost $1100 a month for the four of us and lasted for eighteen months. Somewhere around the thirteenth month of that coverage, I got diagnosed with breast cancer and started the full ride of surgery and chemotherapy, paid for by insurance.

As the summer of 2010 wore on, and I finished my chemotherapy, we started to work on what to do about insurance when our COBRA ran out. I discovered that if Matt were to divorce me, it would extend my coverage another eighteen months. Yet we decided to stay married. He and his business partner got an insurance broker and shopped for small group plans to cover themselves, the kids, and any future employees. I stayed out of their group because I knew that, as small as the group was, with my medical history they would either be denied outright by the underwriters, or would be charged a jacked-up premium.

I figured that I was on my own, insurance-wise. I wanted to avoid the individual market like the plague, as it is not subject to even the meager regulations of group healthcare. (Of course, what I now know is that with a cancer diagnosis in my medical history, I am uninsurable on the individual market, for any amount of money.) Then I discovered HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996. 

Listen, 'cause you might need to know this, and nobody makes this info easy to find. What HIPAA meant in my case was that, because I had: a) been covered continuously for at least the previous 18 months, and; b) been last covered by an employer's group plan; and c) taken their COBRA coverage for as long as permitted, I was entitled to purchase an individual policy from the company who had been insuring me, as long as I converted to the individual policy within 63 days.

Do you get that? This is huge. If you are reaching the end of your COBRA coverage, your health insurer (or in some cases, the state you live in) is legally required to convert your group policy to an individual policy. And the premium they can charge you has some slight legal restriction upon it, it isn't completely unregulated like the pure individual market. So if you can pay, you will not lose your coverage.

BUT, and this is a big but, if you have anything wrong with you at all, they will not tell you about this HIPAA conversion, and when you call and ask about it, they will know nothing about it. That last part is not an act; the frontline customer service people will not know anything about this. If you are lucky, you may reach a department manager who might know what you're talking about, but they almost never deal with this, it seems. I understood why when I saw their rate sheet.

Lemme back up and tell you that the first time I called the insurance company and said I wanted to see about converting my COBRA into an individual policy, they said, "Okay, we'll send a conversion packet out to you!"

But they did not do that. Not the first through fifth times I called. Reader, I don't even remember the details of all the ways I escalated this. I do know that I emerged from all of it as some kind of hardy swashbuckler. At one point I got to someone semi-knowledgeable and she said, "Oh, the state of Georgia will handle your conversion policy," and I had to explain that yes, Georgia will do that if your previous employer group's benefits were self-funded. If not, as in our case, the conversion policy comes from the company that provided the group coverage. I had already talked to the state insurance commissioner's office, and I told the company this. They were like, OH, okay, right, got it!

What I thought, over and over again, was, "What do dumb people do?" Seriously, what if you don't have the time, wits, patience, and capacities to deal with this stuff? And I was feeling well. What if you are really suffering and vulnerable? This goes way, way beyond being your own advocate, like we're always told to do. I have asked that exact question, what do dumb people do, to a few different medical professionals. They all say some variation of, "It is a catastrophe and they die."

Okay, so finally, I extracted a heavily photocopied rate sheet for various individual coverage scenarios. Matt took one look at it and said, "Oh, these are the 'fuck you' prices." And they were. To continue our group coverage for the four of us would have cost over $3000 a month. It was clear, patently clear, that they don't expect anyone to buy these plans. No way. But with Matt and the kids safely enrolled in his company's new small-group policy, I ran my finger down the page and found an single individual option for just me. It cost $1368 a month, and I signed up.

During that period, I had radiation therapy and reconstructive surgery. We paid that premium until this summer, when I got notice that at my one-year coverage anniversary, it would go up to $1800 or so. If it continued. I had the feeling that they were constantly looking for a way to rescind the policy and end my coverage. And that $1300 a month, on top of everything else, was really hurting us.

I just thought, "How are people doing this?" I mean, Matt and I were not improvident, we were not reckless. One or both of us has always worked, and we have had continuous insurance coverage our entire lives. We are thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Also, and I'm no Max Weber, but by most any definition, we find ourselves in the upper middle class, and were lucky enough to afford the higher and higher rates that we had to pay to get this far. And yet, even though I don't think we made any "bad lifestyle choices," this situation was a total colossal fucking nightmare. I mean over and above the nightmare of life-threatening illness. So how are people doing this?

I've read that half of all Americans have what are considered pre-existing conditions that affect their insurability.

Around that time, my mother showed me an article about the PCIP part of the health reform act. I had looked at it before and noted that one of its eligibility requirements is that you have been uninsured for six months prior to enrollment. That always seemed wrong and unworkable to me. But I'd reached a point where my active treatment was over and my health was good. And I didn't know what else to do. I might have tried to get into Matt's small group plan, but even if I could have been added to it without waiting for open enrollment period, I thought that when their open enrollment came around, my medical history would swamp their little boat, and I didn't want to imperil the coverage they had found for their families.

So I stopped paying my continuation premium. I talked to Matt about it. I worried and sweated over it. Then I was like, well, I'm doing this. I checked to be sure there was a medical rider on our car insurance. Then I tried to stay healthy. I thought if I broke an ankle or something, if it amounted to less than the premiums would have been, we were ahead. And if the worst happened and my cancer came back, well, I thought, that's what bankruptcy is for.

And so far, knocking wood, nothing bad has happened.

So now I can apply to be covered in the pre-existing condition insurance pool in my state, and it will cost $264 a month for the standard plan or $356 for the extended plan. These PCIP pools are a temporary measure, designed to bridge the gap between now and 2014 with the health care exchanges are supposed to come into being. Don't know how that's gonna work.

Whew. Did anyone actually read this? That's my story. I don't actually know what to say by way of closure. I hope there was some helpful info in here if you are in a position to need it.

Love you guys,
b

Leverage, Baby

Two days ago, the garbage disposal in my sink made a terrible noise and stopped working. It did the humming thing but nothing was moving. I figured something was stuck in it, so I did the thing they tell you not to do: I flipped off the switch, put on a rubber glove, and put my hand down in there. I did this quickly, before two things could happen: 1) Matt could come into the room and yell at me for doing it--I mean, he is really, really against putting your hand in the garbage disposal, I've seen homeboy turn it off at the circuit box; 2) Poltergeists could possess the electrical wires in our house and turn on the disposal with my hand in it like they did in that movie Amityville Horror 4: The Evil Escapes.


So neither of those things happened and I got my hand down there and fished up some glass beads, big ones, like the size of mini marshmallows. They were the remains of a little glass Santa bracelet Laura had. How they got down the drain, I don't know, except that I do know because we keep so much crap on the counter above the sink, naturally stuff gets knocked in. I try to tidy that area, but everything that comes into the house lands there. It is a very bad system.

So some of the beads were whole and some were broken, and I was not holding enough beads to reconstitute the bracelet, yet I couldn't feel any more down where the impellers are. I withdrew to think and study.

During this time of contemplation, I half-heartedly stuck a broom handle down there for some reason. And I complained to Matt a lot. He said that he would look at it later.

I decided to see what the internets knew. I found this beautifully simple and helpful walkthrough. With its help, I realized that the flywheel wasn't turning, though the motor was getting power, which must mean that it was still obstructed by a bead stuck somewhere. The guide instructed me to manually turn the flywheel to dislodge the obstruction, which can be done from above (the broom handle method) or by sticking a wrench in the little wrench hole on the bottom of the unit. What stopped me from carrying out this plan was that the guide says, "Use the wrench that came with your disposal." I was like, huh? We don't got that wrench. And I'm not wise enough in the ways of wrenches to know an alternative.

Some time later, I said to Matt, "Do you have an offset wrench? We need to, like, stick a wrench in this little hole down here." (By now I'm having flashbacks to our ball cock conversation. Why does this stuff always happen in the kitchen?) Matt's like, "Wrench?" And I'm like, uh huh, and he's like, figure out what kind of tool I need and I'll take care of it.

That had me stumped. I mean, I had just very clearly with my mouth formed the word "wrench." I don't really know where to go from there. He went downstairs to work and I continued to live with the nonfunctioning sink with the tiny puddle of muck in it. This went on for another full 24 hours.

But Reader, just like the young sapling in winter, during this period of latency, I was gathering strength and summoning my internal resources for the surge of power--the new world that was to be born.

Also during that time, I drank a cup of coffee with Kahlua in it at 11pm and slept like CRAP last night. Smart women, foolish choices. That threw off my whole morning and made me feel like butt and I didn't work out with my neighbor today, and it rained a bunch and I made two separate trips over to the pool/dojo, arriving home at 8pm to a sink with a tiny puddle of muck in it. Somehow that damn thing was not fixing itself.

Oh my God, there has never been a longer story of small appliance repair! I am proud.

While Matt was up starting the kid-bedtime process, I stood in the kitchen and made a small keening noise. I groped the disposal with the rubber glove some more and pulled out another half bead. Then my eyes alit on a plastic bag of odds and ends Matt had used to take apart a bed in Chattanooga. 'Nother story. I looked into the bag and there was a little pouch of something called "hex keys." Reader, here was something familiar! They looked like the little wrenches that come with Ikea products, ie, the only wrenches I've ever used. I wiggled my fingers into the pouch and picked out the chunkiest wrench.

Sitting on the floor in front of the sink, I tried the wrench in the little hole. It seemed to fit. The guide had said that the flywheel will be hard to turn but then, when the blockage is moved, it will turn freely. And that's what happened. First the thing wouldn't turn, and then it made a terrible noise, like two pieces of metal with bits of broken glass between them. I got it turning easily.

Then, checking to see that the little red reset button was pushed in, I stood up and turned on the switch. But I didn't just flip it on and leave it! No, you gotta pulse it like a blender. On and off, on and off, while water runs. At first the disposal was making the awful grinding noise, but it was turning. So I kept pulsing until I was brave enough to leave it running. And it cleared the junk away and sounded normal.

I whooped. Then I hollered, "Who just fixed the garbage disposal?  ME. WITH A WRENCH. I am TAKING BACK THE NIGHT!" And I wasn't sure Matt had heard me, so I went upstairs and found him to tell him face to face. Then I tweeted it and then I put it on facebook. I almost texted my parents. And now I have blogged it. Hear me roar.

But it's funny, seriously, I studied the little diagram of the parts of a garbage disposal, and now it is in my head and it is mine. What was an opaque black box to me is now part of the mapped territory, and it will not trouble me again. Knowledge TRULY IS POWER, they were not kidding. Imagine if you could come to grok the workings of your car that way! Or something else hard! And there is information out there to help us learn! We have only to seize it!

Seize it!

(Jiggle it.)

Teach a man to fish!

Peace out,
B