Americlecticintellectica
Jonah and I woke up only moments ago wanting pancakes for breakfast. I told him I would make some for him but that I needed a few minutes first to drink my wake-up coffee, check my e-mail, etc. He said, “That’s OK, because I have to do some paperwork.”
(By which he means he needs to draw and cut out some new piece of artwork along the lines of this awesome “train.”)
In these times of widespread health-coverage horror stories it is a relief, and also a little embarrassing, that we were able to get Kaiser Permanente coverage for the kids at little added expense and without affecting the coverage we already had. So today Archer paid his first visit to Dr. Harris in his new, improved office to get a flu shot.
Andrea reports they were each excited to see one another, Dr. Harris showing off his new office while taking Archer for a tour, and Archer showing off his “monster shirt” for Dr. Harris. Archer was brave as usual getting his shot. As for lamenting the old practice: I assumed its demise would be cause for some sorrow on Dr. Harris’s part, but the staff told Andrea they’d never seen him so happy.
So once again, what looked in August like a crisis has revealed itself as an opportunity. Crisitunity!
Subject: Happy anniversary
…of the day you nearly gave me a heart attack.
The story:
Having been together for almost eleven years when we finally decided to get married (in a domino effect beginning with our friends John and Linda and then Scott and Patrice), Andrea and I dreaded planning a big wedding full of guests all of whom would say to us, “What took you so long?” So we eloped to Disneyworld. We were married in a small ceremony (witnessed by those same friends Scott and Patrice) beneath a palm tree on a grassy hill between Disney’s Polynesian Resort and the adjacent lagoon, with views of Cinderella’s Castle and Space Mountain in the distance. It was very memorable.
Coincidentally, Suzanne had a European vacation planned for the same period of time. Our wedding package included a limo ride around Orlando after the ceremony, and one of the things we planned to do during that ride was to call our families and surprise them with our happy news; but I had no way to contact Suzanne, whose European itinerary was fluid at best. However, I did know she’d be checking her Hotmail account from time to time. So before leaving for Florida, I programmed my computer to send her this e-mail message at 3pm on our wedding day:
Subject: Call your brother!
Hi Suze! Please call me ASAP on Andrea’s cell phone.
Poor Suzanne saw the message within two hours but had no way of calling for several hours more, during which time she was sure something terrible had happened! In my excitement before leaving for Florida it never occurred to me that my message could be taken that way. When I did finally speak to her, she tried to be glad about my news but was pretty annoyed at having worried all day for nothing.
Her annoyance was not improved by my laughter at her expense.
Andrea: Happy anniversary, I love you! Suzanne: Sorry again! I love you too.
As for me, I want to sit in a comfortable chair, and watch television, and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. Honestly I don’t think I know anyone who could keep up with my sister. But if you take the average of me and Suzanne you probably end up with someone pretty fun. Also androgynous, and living in Kansas.
Andrea has continued beating the drum for planning a family trip to Disneyland soon, and with the kids in the prolonged grip of a combined Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan frenzy I am similarly inclined. There’s just one problem: Disney is the enemy and I will not give them aid or comfort.
They have an excellent chance to redeem themselves by firing the jerk who said that the mainstream media is too liberal and it’s his job to slant news coverage to the right “so conservatives don’t have to be concerned.” That jerk is Mark Halperin, ABC’s political director. (ABC is owned by Disney.)
The major news organizations in this country have forgotten that it’s their job to be adversarial. To promise one group or another that they “don’t have to be concerned” is to abandon the mantle of journalism.
Mark Halperin must go. With that one gesture I would be willing to let bygones be bygones.
Well Disney? The country seems to be getting ready to return from its wandering in the arch-conservative wilderness. Will you get back in touch with the real Main Street U.S.A. or ride the Republican machine over the impending cliff? One family’s vacation plans, and the health of our republic, hang in the balance.
We took a last-minute trip to San Diego this weekend to spend a day at Legoland. Our hotel in Carlsbad, the Grand Pacific Palisades Resort, was beautiful, the kids had a blast at Legoland, etc., etc. I’m not here to show you slides from my vacation.
No, the blogworthy item from this trip was when we first arrived in our hotel room. Before we’d even made a complete circuit of the spacious suite, Jonah found the TV remote control, figured out how to use it, switched on the TV and planted himself on the couch in front of it.
At home, Andrea and I maintain total control over the TV, so having operational access was a major novelty for Jonah. But even more novel was the experience of watching TV with channels and commercials. Ever since dropping off the pop-culture grid all we’ve seen are carefully selected movies and other child-friendly programming (such as The Electric Company) on DVD. Even before canceling cable, we watched cable shows on TiVo with commercials assiduously skipped.
Thus Jonah’s comment when I explained how to change channels with the remote: “But where is the disc?” And the dumbfounded look on both kids’ faces when, every so often after a few minutes of a coherent story, they would suddenly be assaulted with an unrelated barrage of sights and sounds. As Archer would have said (if he hadn’t been in a mute ecstasy of audiovisual overstimulation at the time), “What’s the heck of that?!”
Yesterday after preschool, Jonah rattled off the list of his female classmates who routinely give him kisses, sometimes after chasing him around. Today we learned that there’s been so much kissing, the teachers have asked for it to stop. I asked him appreciatively, “Are you a ‘lover, not a fighter’?” Without missing a beat he answered, “I’m a lover and a fighter.”
Our dog, Alex, is 18 years old today. Happy birthday, Alex! Andrea’s had Alex for all but the first six weeks of those 18 years, and I joined the team about a month later. It’s been a long and wonderful trip so far.
In Jewish tradition, 18 is a lucky number, since (when denoted with Hebrew letters) it spells “chai,” the Hebrew word for life. L’chayim!
(More later, when I’m not moblogging from a Microsoft seminar.)
There are no fireflies in New York. I never saw any in New York while growing up, but I grew up in Queens, which is part of the city proper, and I thought we might get lucky at my dad’s house which is farther out on Long Island, since I knew that there are fireflies not too far away, in Pennsylvania. But no.
No thunderstorms, but you already knew that.
Warm ocean water: check. I’d forgotten just how big a difference there is between New York beaches and California beaches. The sand in New York was soft, fine, and well-groomed — no doubt the effect of charging admission to the beach — whereas in California, where most beaches are public-access, it’s coarse and filthy. In Northern California the Pacific is freezing and the waves daunting; only crazy die-hard surfers in wetsuits spend any time in the ocean. In New York, entire families spend hours bobbing in the warm, gentle swells.
Dino-Walk was kinda lame, but the town of Riverhead is nice in a Norman Rockwell way, even if their church bells won’t shut up.
At Dylan’s Candy Bar, I allowed Jonah and Archer to fill up one bag of candy apiece, and I got a few things for myself, my sister, Suzanne (who accompanied us there), and Andrea. Guess how much I spent? $91. When the cashier rang up the total I let out an involuntary “Holy shit!” He smiled the smile of someone who’s gotten that reaction before.
The Long Island Children’s Museum is the greatest place in the whole wide world. We also visited the New York Hall of Science, and even though it was greatly expanded from when I was a kid (when its chief attraction was [what passed in the 1970’s for] a multimedia presentation about the wonders of nuclear power, brought to you by Con Edison), it couldn’t hold a candle to LICM. And next to the LICM, the Exploratorium is a total crapfest.
If there was a theme to this trip, it was Italian ices. We had Italian ices on Queens Boulevard, we had Italian ices from my mom’s freezer, but best of all we had Italian ices twice from The Lemon Ice King of Corona and scored this trophy photo: three generations of Glickstein men, and Peter Benfaremo, the Lemon Ice King himself.
My kids love their pediatrician, Dr. Harris. They are almost as excited to go see him as they are to go to Train Town. They are excited merely to drive past his office. “That’s my Dr. Harris!” Archer exclaims, pointing through the car window. They love him so much that they put on their bravest face when getting painful vaccinations. Archer, age 2, even thanked the nurse after his last one.
Of course Andrea and I love him too. We first met him when he delivered a lecture to the parenting class we took, back when Andrea was pregnant with Jonah. The best advice we got in that whole class came from his lecture: namely, that it’s pointless to obsess over the birth, which after all is just a day out of your life, more or less. Possibly a difficult one, but one when you’re surrounded by a team of professionals. All you really have to do is show up. No, said Dr. Harris, the right thing to obsess about during pregnancy is every day for the rest of your life after the birth, when the development and well-being of a whole new person is your sole responsibility.
Now the disaster: Dr. Harris’ practice, Mill Valley Pediatrics, is about to close. He and one of his partners will be joining the HMO, Kaiser Permanente.
This follows a string of medical retirements and closures that Andrea and I have suffered through in the past 10 or 15 years. First my GP, Dr. Cumming, got out of the biz, although she was yet a young woman. I switched to another doctor at the same practice, but within a couple of years the entire practice folded, scattering to the four winds some eight or ten doctors in all and probably thousands of patients. (My medical records from that practice are still in limbo.)
Halfway through Andrea’s second pregnancy, her OB/GYN, Dr. Toton, who’d delivered Jonah, retired. More recently, my new GP‘s partner, Dr. Cummings (not to be confused with Dr. Cumming above), has had to institute new limitations on her practice. And now this.
I don’t know the reasons for all these events (well, Dr. Toton was of traditional retirement age), but the Marin Independent Journal blames tight-fisted insurance companies for the demise of Mill Valley Pediatrics. Dr. Cummings’ new rules appear designed to improve her bottom line. And shortly before Dr. Cumming retired (back in the days of Hillary Clinton’s abortive health-care reform effort), she once complained to me of the byzantine rules and payment mechanisms of the American health care industry.
We will make every effort to continue seeing Dr. Harris even though we are not Kaiser members. And from now on we will be voting against the health-insurance industry and in favor of anyone with the balls to set up single-payer healthcare.