Livingston, I Presume

Things I've decided are good omens

Sher had a good suggestion that I should consider sedating myself throughout the homebuying process. Our realtor yesterday thought we might be more successful if I stayed home with Connery and her teenage daughter (who was at the time babysitting for us) came with her and Chip while they looked at houses. Chip is starting to give me that look again, the one I remember from our last move, which says, "Who are you and what have you done with my generally capable wife?"

In light of this, I am compiling a list of things that could be considered to be good omens in this process. Watch me use complete coincidences and superstitions to make myself feel better!

1. Our realtor is both Scottish AND named Gillian. Some of our favorite people, Sher included, are Scottish, and much of my ancestral family originally hails from Scotland. Plus one of our favorite Scottish people, Iain, is married to one of our favorite English people, Gillian!

2. Two properties came on the market just as we started to look in earnest under circumstances that could be potentially beneficial to us.

3. I haven't had a panic attack in three days.

OK, so now I'm just grasping. In any case, I'm trying to maintain a positive attitude. Any of you who have bought houses before, how did you survive the stress? Should I go with the sedation route?

English acquisition

"I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English. People who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English." --Our Dear Leader, April 28, 2006, quoted widely (full article here)

And, though I'm sure I won't be the first or only one to say it, so should the people who want to be the leader of the free world (sic). The learning English, I mean.

Speechless

I'm obviously posting on a much lighter schedule this week, thanks mostly to a busy work week and what Alice would call the "stabby stabbiness" of trying to plan and execute a house purchase and move. Every time I think I have a handle on the idea of spending more money than we seemingly will ever have or hope to have in our whole lives, I get word of some new fun in the process. Like one lender who requires me to have been self-employed for two full years before considering any of my income. Like another lender who enjoys charging seemingly random ginormous charges for photocopying and mysterious interest. Who can say where this money will go? One thing is clear: It will not stay with me.

I am the kind of person who will track a merchant down to dispute a $2.50 charge. I have gone back into stores to demand discounts that didn't ring up right or prices that were higher than posted. The Albertson's checkers do not look forward to me and my coupons and my eagle eye on the price scanner. In one memorable shopping trip, my sainted cousin Amy had to wait with me for what seemed like seven hours in a Seattle Motherhood Maternity shop while the salesperson had to re-ring the merchandise to take into account my Montana sales tax exemption.

Nice people might say that I'm thrifty, but the truth is I'm pretty cheap. I don't like getting a list of charges that seem to make no sense and have the express purpose of removing cash from my pocket. I know there are all kinds of hidden costs with this process, but couldn't someone find a way to simplify things? Where's my Saturn of mortgages?

I am soooo ahead of the game

The Associated Press actually covered the Bozeman meeting last night to discuss the crucial problem of the bump and grind. It was the front-page story on the Bozeman Chronicle. Can I spot an important issue, or what?

It's the most wonderful time of the day!

Even though I wouldn't consider myself a morning person, I find myself treasuring those scant few moments before Connery wakes up. I have a cup of coffee, lovingly prepared by my husband and our auto-grind coffeemaker, and read a little of the Bozeman Chronicle before Connery can rope me into recounting Beetle Bailey's adventures with Sarge for the fifth time. My favorite part--isn't everyone's?--are the kooky letters to the editor, which provide us with so much mirth. It's true that the Chronicle has a long way to go to reach the sheer wackiness factor of larger papers such as my hometown favorite, the Great Falls Tribune (Dance break: All the crazy people...where do they all come from? It's Great Falls!)

Anyway, after our friend from Belgrade's popular anti-birth control letter, I thought I would share a little gem from some Bozeman parents, since you all, sadly, cannot read it online. These parents are shocked, shocked I tell you at the style of dancing present at Bozeman High's recent prom. While they were not there personally, they have it on good authority that "more than half of the dancers engaged in this overtly sexual behavior, while the rest avoided it uncomfortably."

Oral sex on the dancefloor? Party rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn following the dance? No. It's the "Bump and Grind," which these parents helpfully describe for Bozeman's breakfast crowd:

"This dance fad is typically done to rap or hip-hop music, often with sexually explicit lyrics, and is also called 'Freaking,' 'Booty Dancing' and 'The Nasty.' It generally involves boys and girls rubbing their private parts all over each other."

First of all, this is a great mental picture, and I don't mean that in a perverted way. Secondly, do you know what else I heard? If you watch Elvis doing pelvic thrusts on TV, you could get pregnant through the TV and your girdle!

The letter ends with a stirring call to arms:

If the message you want taught is of self-control, dignity, abstinence and selfrespect, then perhaps this “Bump and Grind” sexual stimulation at the public high school dances is not acceptable to you either.

They go on to ask other concerned parents to call the school and attend a special meeting about dances and dance behavior. They even threaten to organize an alternate prom! I assume that one will be thick with chaperones armed with Merriam-Webster's Third Collegiate dictionaries to place between those couples who get too close on the dance floor, like they used to have at the Mormon dances I attended as a teen. And perhaps everyone can wear high-necked dresses that button up to the chin.

My point is that in a world in which teens routinely leave the prom to party all night in hotel suites that their parents pay for, what is more harmful? Sexy dancing or the stuff that goes on off the dancefloor? Or how about that these formal dances can cost couples in excess of $500, and that's in "cheap" Montana? Today's teenager has more pressures to be bad thanks to the media and the continual sexualization of younger and younger "tweens"--and probably less information about how to navigate the waters safely, given the "abstinence-only" dogma that passes for sex ed--than kids did when I was in high school. And instead of helping their kids learn how to handle these pressures--which they will continue to face even more strongly in adulthood (and especially on college campuses)--these parents are most worried about today's equivalent of the lambada.

How about we ratchet down the fear factor on the vertical mambo and worry about what's really important for teens? Here's a couple of examples: Let's start by making sure public schools have enough money to provide a quality education and by keeping teens from working 30 hours a week at the local fast-food joint so that they sleep through their classes but have enough money to buy a smokin' ride and some meth to go along with it.



 

Sorry to go dark...

...but I'm in magazine feature hell currently.

This week I have been trying to write and research articles that I have due on the biotech industry, McMansion garden pools, and Cystic Fibrosis. As a result, the last thing I want to do in my spare time is share my thoughts, because they are not interesting. They relate entirely to things like blood serum, sweat tests, and Chief Cliff. Many of these things are not things I knew about at this time last week, hence the brain overload.

I hope to return to your regularly scheduled program of whining, ranting, and outraged moralizing very soon.

Running on fumes!

Yesterday we drove home from Great Falls after a delightful Easter weekend involving all the standard holiday delights: eggs in abundance, Easter grass underfoot, children hopped up on sugar, and parents swiping the good peanut butter eggs. It was such a delightful weekend, in fact, that neither Chip nor I gave a second thought to filling the  tank before we headed out with a quarter tank of gas. In a "normal" state, such an oversight would not have been a problem. In Montana, on Easter Sunday, it was a problem. We didn't discover our blunder until we were turning south to go over the Kings Hill Scenic Byway, which the Montana Tourist Board split-infinitively describes as "allowing travelers to leisurely savor the rugged beauty and fresh air that are part of the Montana experience."

"Stretching 71 miles along US Highway 89," the description continues, "the Byway winds its way along pristine mountain streams and is home to an abundant variety of wildlife." Perhaps not unexpectedly, the Visit Montana website fails to mention that there may not be a single open gas station on that 71-mile excursion, or indeed, more or less from Belt to White Sulphur Springs. It's true that "Stretching 71 miles along US Highway 89, the Byway will terrorize families who were stupid enough to leave civilization without a full tank of gas in the minivan" is probably not going to attract the same number of tourists. Nor would, I'm guessing, "The abundant variety of wildlife and pristine mountain springs may prove to be your only sources of food and water should you run out of gas atop the 7,393-foot Kings Hill Pass." Of course we would have survived on Easter candy, hard-boiled eggs, and a disturbing rabbit-shaped loaf of bread.

When we headed up the actual pass portion, our helpful onboard computer told us that we had 31 miles until we would run out of gas. The distance to White Sulphur Springs' Exxon oasis was 41 miles. Employing every trick we'd ever heard about fuel efficiency (slow to 55! turn off the fan! coast in neutral on the downhill!--OK, maybe not that last one), we crawled our way to the top of the hill. Chip had to turn off the onboard computer to keep me from hyperventilating when the computer said we had less than 20 miles left and we were still 30 miles away. We managed to make up some ground on the downhill section and thought we were sunk when we hit another hilly portion, but in the end we were coasting into the Exxon when the computer said we were at zero. We promptly put 17.882 gallons in our 18-gallon tank, said a little prayer of thanks, and went to have lunch at EAT, the only restaurant in White Sulphur, to celebrate.

Why I don't love HSAs

In between making plans to nuke Iran and fending off irate real estate salesmen, President Bush of late has been riding his favorite healthcare "reform" hobby-horse: HSAs, or health-savings accounts. For those of you unfamiliar with HSAs, here's the scoop, as explained by UPI:

"HSAs allow individuals to save money tax-free that can be used to pay health expenses. The accounts are coupled with high-deductible catastrophic insurance that is used to pay large costs associated with serious illness or injury."

I feel qualified to speak about this "reform" because it is what currently (sort of) covers our family. DH's employer switched to the HSA model in part because they were backed into a corner by evil Blue Cross Blue Shield, Montana's virtual monopoly insurer, and in part because I truly believe they thought it would be a better deal for their (mainly young, mainly healthy) employees.

But here's the trouble with HSAs: They work well primarily for single, healthy men in their twenties who only need medical care when they crash on their snowboard or stumble off a porch drunk after a particularly long night of drinking. They don't work for women, because we have these pesky persistent medical needs for our lady business, and they really don't work for families with kids, because what two-year-old doesn't have three bouts of croup, a case of RSV, two falls resulting in runs to the emergency room, and the heartbreak of eczema?

When we go to the doctor for any and all of those things, we pay the entire cost until we meet the (exceedingly huge) deductible. When we fill a prescription (and Chip and I have two that need to be filled monthly), we pay the entire cost of that prescription. The bastards won't even put my birth control pills toward the deductible, although I'm fighting that now. As you might expect, last year we spent all but $10 of our HSA but never did reach that magic deductible amount. Some people would say that's just how it's supposed to work out, that we were helping to control the spiraling cost of healthcare by taking ownership of our healthcare costs, but to that I would say, "Bullshit."

It's a nice idea, that people will be more judicious with their "own" money than an insurance company's, but what it really means is that people don't see the doctor when they probably should. They wouldn't put my annual lady part exam toward the deductible because it led to my prescription for contraceptives. A friend of mine on the same insurance was denied coverage for a mammogram. Chip went in for a routine physical for which there was supposed to be a followup exam, but we had run out of HSA money. After age two, well-child visits are no longer covered. Not covering preventative care is possibly the best way to drive costs up, and it's exactly what HSAs do.

The other big fallacy is that HSA owners will be able to comparison-shop for their healthcare. Maybe it's possible to do that when you live in a city with dozens of hospitals and thousands of physicians, but when you live in a one-horse town, you're pretty much stuck with the rates offered by the horse. And even for those who live in larger cities, how easy is it to find out how much a certain procedure or visit costs? It's not as if those are posted on a menu board. As most of us know, the insured pay a different cost than the uninsured, and the insured pay a different cost than those insured by other insurers, and so on.

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to have any coverage, given the state of health insurance today and the fact that Chip and I were both turned down for individual coverage before he got his job after we returned to the U.S. in October 2004. But HSAs are not going to save American healthcare. If we want to try something common-sense that would reduce people's everyday costs, why not tell Big Pharma it has to take those disgusting Cialis and Levitra ads off television and out of magazines and start spending its money on research? It's the direct-to-consumer marketing costs that make a three-month supply of Yasmin here cost about what a year used to cost me in Prague.

But that's not going to happen. At least not on Mr. Personal Responsibility's watch. But we can hope that his HSA push goes down in flames bigger than his Social Security "reform" plan did.

Irritating

I wrote a looooooooooong post about the pitfalls of HSAs (health-savings accounts), inspired by my discovery that the "discount" prescription plan I get saves me a grand total of about $1.50 on a three-month's supply of Yasmin. So much for my increased awareness of healthcare costs making me more accountable.

Anyway, I wrote it, previewed it...and then closed the preview window to find that it was the *only* window I had open. Hence my post disappearing into thin air. I'd like to re-create it but must first spend some time being irritated.

Toddler motivation techniques

Any toddler parent is familiar with the cajoling, wheedling, and imploring that go into an average day. All you want to do is get out the door for preschool and all the toddler wants to do is play with firetrucks, throw himself to the ground, or choose the seven important items that *must* come to the car with him. For a long time I had success with the closed-ended question: "Do you want to walk to the car or shall I carry you?" "Do you want to eat the peanut butter sandwich I made you at your behest or would you prefer to starve slowly?" "Do you want to brush your teeth or would you like them all to turn green like a pirate's?"

But then Connery started giving the "wrong" answers to the choices (clever little man), so I knew I would have to come up with something else. As an experiment the other day, I tried something new. We were doing the dental hygiene shuffle, whereby I try to convince him that he must enter the bathroom and allow me to place the toothbrush on his teeth in a brushing manner. The whole process, including dawdling time, can take up to 10 minutes. This day I said to him, "OK, Connery. If you don't want to brush your teeth, I'll just use your toothbrush on Sotek's teeth." Sotek is our cat, and she would no more allow us to brush her teeth than she would jump in the bath, but Connery doesn't know that yet. Protesting vociferously at the thought of his Curious George toothbrush on Sotek's Indoor Formula Chicken Meal-y teeth, he raced to the bathroom and stood still for the brushing.

I have had similar success with threatening to dress the cat in his pajamas, give the cat his dinner, and, yes, putting the cat in his bath. I told Chip that we could only do this because Connery is an only child and because the cat is the cat. If we tried this with a sibling it could lead to lasting therapy for both of them. Who knows, maybe it still will. For now, it's getting us out of the house in a somewhat expedited fashion, so I'm calling it OK.

What are your best toddler motivation techniques?