Livingston, I Presume

My fellow Americans*

So now that my guy is out, I'm faced with a choice. Do I support Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? To the many knowledgeable and informative pundits out there, my choice should be an easy one. I am, after all, a Vagina-American, and we all know that Vagina-Americans consider only their lady business when they go to pull that lever. (No unintentional penile symbolism there, nosiree.) The plain fact is that neither of them is talking enough about the things that matter to me--the decline of the middle class, family values as something more than a shorthand way to slap down gays and lesbians, the unbelievable growth of wealth among the corporate cronies enriched by the current administration--the very things that John Edwards came out swinging for every day.

Many people didn't like his "anger". I did. It seemed to me that he was the only one on the stage who was actually angry enough to make real changes in a system that--as far as I can see--has gone terribly awry. I certainly can't see Hillary Clinton--who has some pretty questionable corporate ties herself--being willing to make the bold moves that are necessary. Moreover, Clinton is saddled with the legacy of 1990s gridlock. Somehow I can't imagine the "vast right-wing conspiracy" moving over to make room for her agenda in 2009. Do we really want to hear more about Vince Foster and Whitewater for the next five years? Put me down as a firm no for that one.

I guess in a way it's unfair of me to judge her based on the attacks that she would attract, but that's the Realpolitik in me. It's no good being a trailblazer if the trail ends on Inauguration Day.

That leaves me with Barack Obama. He seems to have passion and integrity, and he doesn't (yet) present the same bulls-eye for the Right that Clinton does. But I can't say with any certainty that I know what he stands for in the realm of policy. "Change" doesn't really count. Plus, Obama thinks that my ass and I owe the United States a trillion dollars, and frankly, I don't have that kind of money sitting around. I haven't asked my ass yet, but I think it's broke too. Freeloader.

Of course, it's not as if my views actually count anyway, living as I do in Montana, Home of The Nation's Last and Least Significant Primary. And, in the final analysis, any one of the Democrats who have been in the running this year--along with most primates and possibly a few of the brighter marsupials--would be better than what we've got now.

*And interested non-Americans

Not for the grapefruit-phobes

I haven't said too much about my pregnancy on this blog, in part because I'm superstitious and in part because there really hasn't been that much to report. I've been so incredibly lucky--no morning sickness, no uncomfortable heartburn or weird aversions, very little discomfort of any kind--that I feel bad when I read about others' trials in pregnancy. Remind me that I said this in four months when I'm ready to deliver the baby on my own with kitchen shears and a teakettle of boiling water just to be done, but I really do feel that my body functions better when I'm pregnant. My cravings? Fruit and plenty of it. My metabolism? Apparently working almost like a normal person's rather than that of a dieting famine survivor with a thyroid condition. My spirits? Generally good, with a tendency to the crabby when crossed, but I can hardly blame that on pregnancy.

Alas, the plan is that this will be my last pregnancy, so we'll never know if I could have become a supermodel or Mother Teresa or something if I had followed my Great-grandmother Helen's childbearing lead. But given that the whole parenting part is a helluva lot harder than the freight part, I guess it's safer not to find out. Besides, if I'd wanted to be pregnant 19 times, I really should have started sooner.

Anyway, I trust that I'm not breaking too many readers' hearts by not going into overly icky pregnancy details, not that there have been many of them so far, unless you have a horror of grapefruit. God, I love grapefruit right now. I could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Are you grossed out yet?

For my mother

Today's Get Fuzzy:

One invisible hand clapping

There's just nothing like coming home to a letter from a collection agency to get that blood pressure gunning and the baby kicking. Uh, Mom? (Thunk.) Time to calm down. Mommy? Mother! (KER-thunk!)

The local hospital turned us in for the bill for Connery's emergency room visit in October, even though I've been disputing this bill with them since I first received it. Let's go back in time for a moment, so that we can recall the circumstances of said emergency room visit:

The ER doctor was the same one who had seen him back in April when we figured out that maybe this wasn't so much "mild" asthma. She was very reassuring as she ran through the various tests, and she ultimately decided to put him on a course of steroids, which she handed to us to take home and give him. At the time I thought to myself, why shouldn't we just give him the drugs now, at the hospital? All that became clear just minutes later in the kitchen of our house. PediaPred--the Only Children's Steroid Guaranteed To Taste Like 100% Ass!--was not too popular. He spit the first dose out (onto the leather daybed--note to self: medicine should not be given in formal living room. and also: duh.) and when I tried to re-administer it, he took three very brave gulps and proceeded to throw up the steroids and the entire contents of his stomach.

Those fun times were followed by this revelation:

In the morning, we called our regular doctor's office, and the nurse there said that the barf-o-rama was why they never prescribed Pedia-Pred.

Now, I was going to just let it go, the getting of the medicine that should not have been given to him and the subsequent buying of the medicine that we should have gotten in the first place, but when I got the bill for the visit, we had been charged $90 for the Pedia-Retch. That I couldn't just let go.

It took me a few days, but I eventually got to talk to a human at the hospital, and she agreed that we should not be charged for the medicine and pointed out that, in addition, we had been charged for the medicine twice, and would I like her to take care of that too? I would, and I thought she had, and all was fine. Until we started getting more bills for the visit that included the $90 prescription.

Because I am a slow learner and because I had been transferred about from department to department in the hospital like some kind of radioactive device, I did not have the name or department of the woman who was supposed to be taking care of this. And try as I might, I could not get anyone to return my calls to help me sort this out. I did keep trying. I'm sure I left at least a dozen messages in various departments, but no one ever called me back. Yesterday I got the letter informing me of the turnover to collections, so I called (again) hoping to find someone who could help me. I was again transferred around, put on hold and eventually told that someone would call me back. Imagine my amazement when someone actually did and was even helpful. We got it straightened out and I even remembered to get her name.

Today I got the letter from the collection agency and realized I was going to need to know the last name of the woman I talked to. So I called back to the original number I had called yesterday and asked to speak with the same person and was told there was no one by that name in the office. When I tried to explain that someone from their office would have had to have talked to the other person in order to get her to call me back, I was informed very snippily that there were a lot of people by that name and that I couldn't expect to find her with so little information.

So which is it? Are there no people by that name or lots of people? Was I to go about town screaming the name and hoping to run into the right person? She eventually transferred me to someone who wasn't at her desk (a huge shock) but whose department seemed to make sense on the voice mail. That's good enough for me. I sent off a letter of dispute today and will be interested to see what comes back.

This is one of the major hidden costs of our royally screwed healthcare system, by the way. I don't like to overvalue myself, but the fact that I have spent hours trying to fix this problem, this $90 problem, indicates just how super-efficient that great invisible hand really is. If I could reincarnate and then enslave Adam Smith right now I can tell you what his job would be: He'd be my go-to bitch for fighting with health insurance companies and sitting on hold with billing departments and leaving endless unreturned messages and filling out forms in triplicate, and I'd lend him out to my friends and family. He'd be like Prometheus with a headset, trying to maintain an unflappable calm while the vultures of bureaucracy* eat his liver and then charge him double for its regeneration every day, plus a $360 daily surcharge for tiny packets of Advil and single-size servings of JELL-O.

Not that I've thought about this at length or anything.

*When metaphors attack!

Fat in the Times

I am an avid reader of blogs in the "fatosphere." They tend to be funny, well-written and wise and Fat Fu's feed has added considerable time to my daily surfing. Today a whole bunch of these blogs got a great write-up in The New York Times, in what has to be one of the more positive articles ever to appear in the mainstream media on the topic.

Fatosphere bloggers, I salute you!

The DA (not Dumbledore's Army OR District Attorney)

Elaborate apologies for my blause, folks. I had the chance to do a really great project on a really tight deadline, and I've been totally engrossed. It's great to come up for air today with a solid feeling of accomplishment.

Meanwhile, it's fucking cold today, no other way to say it. It was -12 degrees F. when I woke up, and by the time I took Connery to school it was down to -16. (That's almost -30 to you Celsius folks.) Still, I was bundled up and ready to start the day by the time we got into the car with minutes to spare before he needed to be at school. I treated myself to a decaf latte--important later--and eased on down the road.

One of the, shall we say, unique things about Livingston is that they really don't believe in plowing the streets after a big snow. Oh, they'll plow the three main ones, but even though it is a small town, there are way more than three streets here. I think they are trying to save money because eventually the wind will come along and blow all the snow away anyway. I had already turned down one of the rural-ish roads that leads to Connery's school when I saw some pretty big drifts ahead. Still, there were tracks and I have the spanky all-wheel drive van with the great tires, so I went for it. You can probably see where this is going. About halfway down the road, I found myself high-centered on a snowbank. I wasn't going anywhere.

Luckily, just at that moment, a colleague of Chip's happened by and stopped to see if she could help. It was pretty clear that we weren't going to be able to get the car unstuck, so she gave Connery and me a ride back to the school, where I called AAA. Naturally, I wasn't the only dumbass Livingstonian high-centered on a snowbank today, so I was told the wait could be an hour or more. In true smalltown fashion, a kind and helpful Montessori dad offered to help me out with his truck.

He dug me out with a shovel and then towed me to safety (not before I compounded my dumbassedness by letting him try to pull me out in Park rather than Drive), and as I was driving out onto one of Livingston's three plowed roads, I noticed the wonderful decaf latte, undrunk, but now not in my cupholder and instead oozing into the floorboards and all over my front instrument panel. Apparently all that rocking (because, duh, the car was in Park) had tipped it over and I hadn't even noticed.

Guess who's getting the Dumbassedest Award (DA) today? That's right. I claim it.

Now I think I'll go back to bed.

Hair Nation

In his young life, Connery has been exposed to many different kinds of music and other verbal stimulation. However, I don't think he's ever reacted quite so favorably as he did the other day when he got his first taste of Ozzy Osbourne.

Yes, I'm frightened too.

The story begins without me, when Chip and Connery were heading back from the ski hill after their first-ever father-son skiing day. Since we have been without our Sirius radio since the whole deer-stravaganza, they were stuck listening to commercial radio. Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" came on, and Connery was rapt with attention. Chip told me about it later, and so when "Crazy Train" came on the radio a few days later when I was alone in the car with Connery, I turned it up so he could hear it. He was very excited to hear Ozzy again. And then he asked me, in his sweet four-year-old voice, "Can you hear that driving beat?"

After I nearly drove off the road trying not to laugh, I began to think about the advisability of hooking my son on metal bands from the 1970s and 80s. Surely, I thought, it can't be good that his musical tastes are running toward hair bands.

But then, in subsequent days, I started to remember my own checkered past. I'm pretty sure that I spent the entire summer of my 15th year listening to "Appetite for Destruction" by Guns N' Roses and delighting in the fact that it was so, so naughty--at least for a nerdy child of liberals like me. I actually owned more than one Billy Idol record. (I may be the only person who can say that--or at least will admit to it.) I once stopped talking to a friend for several days because she voted for Journey over Def Leppard on Friday Night Video Fights. Yes, I am that old.

And I can't even blame the flush of youth. While my musical tastes did change considerably as I grew older (thank you, Jon Thomas, for introducing me at a young and impressionable age to The Smiths), I still carried a flickering lighter of love for those bands. I'm not ashamed to admit that when U2 and Guns N' Roses came to Vienna on two consecutive nights when I was studying abroad there that I actually had to ponder for some time which concert to attend, since I couldn't afford both. (You may be relieved to know that I chose U2, although perhaps the most thrilling moment of the whole concert for me was when Axl Rose made a surprise guest appearance and duetted with Bono. Oh yeah.) Even now, NPR member and music minor that I am, I can't resist singing along with "Welcome to the Jungle."

So is it my fault? Did I pass down some kind of genetic trait that makes my child extra vulnerable to power chords? When he starts asking for pleather pants, I guess I'll get worried.

IT'S A GIRL...maybe

So we had the big 20-week ultrasound yesterday and everything looked great--all the expected numbers of organs and appendages and a strong heartbeat. However, Baby Fetus decided that this would be a good time to get all modest, so we couldn't get a good look at its business. Both the ultrasound tech and the radiologist felt pretty strongly that it was a girl--there was a decided lack of dangly bits, from what little could be seen--but weren't ready to go a hundred percent.

So I'm putting off painting the nursery pink (because you know that's what I'd be doing...in some alternate universe where I enjoy enforcing rigid gender roles), but I'm going to tell people that we think it's a girl. Just like I'm telling you now, Internets.

Note to self

This one should be obvious, but it bears repeating: Never go to the gym on January 2nd. I mean, unless you enjoy the overnight tripling in membership and fighting for the last treadmill in an epic battle that makes your workout unnecessary.

I think I would be too embarrassed to join a gym in January. It's like admitting that you just can't take any more badgering from every media outlet and office conversation and goddamn P.A. system at the grocery store. The endless cycle of drivel that run from November through January is enough to make plenty of us crack, though.

It starts in before Thanksgiving with the onslaught of stories in the newspaper (and on the radio and the Internet and TV and magazines and anywhere else your eyeballs may stray during this time) with oh-so-original titles like "Tips and Tricks To Avoid Those Holiday Pounds!". (For the record, having read or skimmed more or less this exact article an estimated 12,093,823 times since learning to read, let me sum it up for you: "Eat an apple or some nuts BEFORE you go to that dinner party--you don't want to be hungry for the food you will be served! Drink plenty of water--it will fill you up! Don't stand by the table where the food is--too tempting! Skip the mini-meatballs and fill up on the veggie tray instead--but don't you dare have any of that ranch dip!" Oh, and the ever-popular, "Take the stairs instead of the elevator! And park at the far end of the shopping mall when you're fighting those holiday crowds!") So simple!

This article is followed by the classic, "Oh My God Did You Realize How Many Calories Are in a Single Piece of Fudge" genre, which takes over by mid-December. The day after Christmas, though, the party's over. "Best Ways To Take Off Those Holiday Pounds That You Could Have Prevented If You'd Just Read the November Article" stories dominate until New Year's Eve, when the focus switches to "How To Finally Stick To Your Resolutions and Lose Those Holiday Pounds".

Frankly, it's exhausting and more than a little insulting. Bill O'Reilly may think that secular liberals are waging a war on Christmas, but I'm here to tell him that the Weight Loss Industry is one of the primary movers behind turning November, December and January into a celebration of deprivation and its reaction, over-indulgence, followed by guilt and "redemption".

How about if we all just gave ourselves a collective break? If we said, "This is the year I am not going to obsess about each and every calorie that goes into my mouth and instead am going to listen to my body and enjoy the food I want." If we looked at the gym and activity in general not as "punishment" for our "sins" but as a time to enjoy how our bodies work. If, overall, we just took morality right out of the question.

Food is neither good nor evil. It's...food. Those who exercise are not virtuous. They're moving their bodies. For myself, eating a wide variety of mostly unprocessed foods and getting regular exercise makes me feel good.

It just doesn't make me good.