Cold Spaghetti

Will’s Summer Camp is a series of four 2-week sessions. At the end of each session is an afternoon performance from each class. Last Friday was the first. Will’s class, the 4-year olds, sang “Bonjour” to open the show to a standing-room-only crowd.

Will walked in hand-in-hand with the little girl on the right. He left hand-in-hand with the little girl on the left.
Will was pretty animated before the song started. But when the singing began, his little mouth barely opened. He completely clammed up. Later that day, he sang the song for us (with hand motions). Although he had the tune, it seems like he is not quite sure what the words are and that this is the reason for his hesitation. It must have made him feel uncomfortable? Since Paul and I won’t begin our French until the fall, we can’t help him out too much. His teacher will send home word-sheets next session so that we can help him a bit more.

But he is rolling with it pretty well, all things considered.
When they were finished (45 seconds after the song began), we filed out into the hallway to let other parents take our spots to see their kids perform. Lucky us, because we got to follow Will back to his classroom and get this cute shot:
Which Will quickly altered to our amusement:

Apparently, wombats are popular in more than one New Orleans household. Thanks to a local wombat-fan’s post, we found this wonderful website.

With a wombat giftstore. Paul will never be short of silly t-shirts again.

In Kate’s classroom, there is a poster with drawings of faces reflecting different feelings, a face drawn in a frown to be sad, a face with furrowed brows for angry, a face with squinted eyes and wavy mouth for frustrated and so on. As part of their daily activities, the kids use Polaroids of themselves and place them beside the face that matches how they are feeling. The exercise helps them identify what they are feeling, normalize it within the context that we all sometimes feel this way, and then give occasion for discussing how to deal with these emotions.

I am doing my best to be an adult and deal with my emotions in a rational way, but I admit that I do not always succeed in this effort. I’ve said it before, by definition, I am just Too Much. I love too much, believe too much, trust too much, and give too much. And when I get burned, I feel angry, disappointed, frustrated, and hopeless — and, characteristically, I feel all those things too much. And now, although I’ve named everything I am feeling, I still don’t feel any better. It’s no wonder that Kate does this exercise everyday in school and still throws things when angry. Right now, throwing something (preferably at someone) would make me feel better, too. Mental note: remember how hard this is next time the kids try to destroy each other.

Yesterday, we got notification from Humana (our current health insurance provider) that the family insurance plan we requested had been denied — or, at least, parts of it had. Plans were offered to Paul and Will, but not to Kate and I. This is after spending more than an hour, during the bedtime rodeo!, on the phone with a nurse representative going over 10 years of medical history for all 4 of us, including Every Single claim for a doctor’s visit or a prescription. Looking back on my notes for the week, I see that I’ve spent about 12 hours on health insurance research, phone calls, and applications. And now we have to do it again.

I can almost see how they might deny me. I have allergies, my BMI puts me in the “overweight” category and I have a prescription for acne treatment. Definitely an insurance risk, me. But Kate? She’s 2 and has had maybe 2 prescriptions in her life (one for thrush, one for her ear infection earlier in the year). It makes me feel better to say that they are women hating and leave it at that.

Today, Paul began to pursue getting our life insurance policies in order. So this morning, I spent 54 minutes on the phone giving medical history which will influence both IF we can actually get life insurance for me and HOW MUCH it will be when we do. One of the questions was if I had ever been denied health insurance. Following up this invasive interview, which included a 10 minute line of questioning about the fact that I see a dermatologist for the acne that I’ve had since puberty, someone will call me within the next 2 days to schedule a blood draw, urinanalysis, and height/weight check. For life insurance.

What the whole experience has shown me, for one, is that I do not ever want to see a physician ever again for anything. That preventative care is a BAD IDEA if you want to coverage for anything. Want or need a prescription? Steal it or cross a border. In short, the smart thing to do is to avoid the medical establishment all together, because anything you do can and will be held against you.

University of Michigan, the source of my graduate training, recently had articles about health insurance in it’s School of Public Health alumni magazine. Several of our illustrious faculty discussed the insurance industry and how it’s not that bad, it actually works well, and it keeps costs relatively low. I remember reading it thinking that maybe the arsenic in the city’s water supply had gone up dramatically or perhaps the legalization of marijuana had finally been passed. Academics are the most famous Mr. In-Between-ers on the planet, being completely unable to commit to a solid ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on any topic, so it makes sense that someone would try to balance out arguments against the way insurance companies work. But I also noted that the faculty who were the most supportive of the current system were also consultants to big insurance companies.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

I know this is suppose to help, but all I really want to do is find someone to call a douchebag. Ah, it felt better just to type the word.

Thank you, Robin.

Lately, things have been hard for Will. He has a sister who is a “crazy monkey” (his words) and adores him to the annoying level of copying EveryThingHeDoes. He just started at a new school where his teacher and a ton of the students speak French most of the time. He misses his friends at his old school. And his parents NEVER feed him hamburgers. Or let him stay up all night.So it’s understandable that tonight, during the bedtime lament that has become the standard in the past week, Will became upset. SO UPSET that I was not only declaring it bedtime, but also time for teeth brushing, that he would say terrible things. To me. His Mother. Really terrible things.

And this is where I had my Big Moment. All those words and threats rolled off me as cool and clean as water and I got down to meet him eye to eye and said in a most natural and pleasant voice:

“It’s okay, Will. I know that you love me and you don’t mean those things. And it’s okay, because no matter what you say or what you do, I will always love you more than anything in the world. In fact, I love you SO MUCH that I am making you go to bed, even if it means you will be mad at me, because I know that you need rest to have a good day tomorrow and I want you to have a good day. And I love you SO MUCH that I want your teeth to be healthy, so I make you brush them, even when it makes you so angry that you don’t want to cooperate with me. So it’s okay to be mad at me. Because I love you.”

Then, just in an instant, everything changed. All that stuff about love being the salve for anger? Apparently it’s on the mark. Will’s angry tears dried up and, much to my surprise, his mouth opened for the toothbrush. He even went to bed without too much more fuss. (Okay, he whistled and woke Kate up, which lost him TV privileges tomorrow, but compared to what was in the works 15 minutes earlier, this was nothing.)

Mommy got the GOAL! tonight, but will have to ice her knees and rest for tomorrow; because we will not be having hamburgers for dinner.

“Daddy, can we go to the place that’s spelled W – O – W ? I love their cheeseburgers. They are soooo good, I think I like them, too!”

Challenges abound here in Cold Spaghetti headquarters, but we’re trying to focus on the positive.

Take for example, the other day, when the tire tread on Paul’s truck separated while he was on the Causeway. Now it could have happened when he was in the middle of the longest bridge in the world, but instead it happened close enough that he could see land. Paul and Truck could have very easily been thrown into Lake Ponchatrain, or smacked into the lake by another driver, but instead, he managed to get the car under control at 25 mph and drive it jerking and bouncing off the bridge and to the Goodyear a quarter mile inland.

We are so happy about his living through the situation above that the $600 repair bill isn’t a bother at all.

— We’re moving (the website, not us) although it may take a little bit of time to get set up and functional. I figure since I’m working out a whole new way of operating in terms of photography, word processing (no more MS Word!), spreadsheets (no more Excel!), and all the other random things that connected me to my past work, photography and otherwise (stuff like the bibliography of my prospectus/first part of my dissertation, which was done in Endnote)… I may as well just go for it and do the jump. The website has been there for a year, hosted and ready, so hey… one more thing to use to procrastinate.

— The Dean’s Office Communications Department looked over the photos from the trip and are selecting which they will use. So soon I will be free to get everything else viewable. Of course they want some of the best work and I am not really sure what kind of rights I’ll retain for future use (still working this out). I’m waiting to talk about the trip when I have photos to tell the story… and also in the hopes that my travel notebook will show up. I’m trying not to think about it’s current ‘lost’ status, as it is just one more thing to contribute to that nausea that won’t go away.

— The guy who laid the tile, the one we trusted so implicitly in ways we have never, ever trusted anyone before, never called us back. Despite our several messages and despite his own sister calling him on our behalf. What else can we assume, except that he ripped us off? Going down this road is worrisome, considering we gave him our key and unfettered access to our empty home. Being trusting was a very expensive mistake.

— We have some ideas for how we might salvage part of the poor tile… but need some professional input to really feel good about it. We’re just not sure. We were so hopeful that this guy would come around and want to make it right that we have tried to let it go a little in our minds just to recover enough to keep working.

— In the meantime, we ordered some wooden closet pieces. They arrived, we installed. Last night, we HUNG CLOTHES IN A CLOSET. We haven’t done this since before Thanksgiving! Granted, the closet has no doors and only has room for a small amount of shoes (we’ll do seasonal rotation like we do with clothes), but! still! A closet!

— Countertops for the laundry area/utility sink and master bath vanity will be installed either tomorrow afternoon or Wednesday morning. Paul finished the plumbing prep yesterday and just painted the primer around the install area. This means that we may have a BATHROOM SINK and a UTILITY SINK by as early as tomorrow night!

— Will is miserable at his new school. He misses his friends (several of whom, surprisingly, won’t be moving on to other schools this fall) and I think is struggling with a strict activity schedule. It doesn’t help that we pick up Kate after Will. When Will walks into Abeona each afternoon to get his sister, it is like Norm walking into Cheers. The kids line up to greet and embrace him, some of the hugs lasting several minutes and including kisses and whispers. I’m not sure that he’s totally miserable all day in school (he’s told us that he talks silly with ‘the boy in the soccer shirt’) and certainly his teacher seems to think he’s fine… but when he is out of school, he is clear that he is not interesting in going back.

— Paul went to infectious disease last week for the 3-weeks of (ahem) that we’ve been dealing with since he swam in the Amazon. Not that I am drawing any conclusions by pointing that out; in all likelihood I had as much exposure to the very same river water in the shower as he did swimming and showering. Still, the garlic treatment held it aside while we were on the road and the 2 cycles of z-packs didn’t make a dent in curing it so he went in for tougher stuff. Ironically, the vote was giardia… the same stuff we were concerned that Will had… and they started him on treatment. It started working quickly, so maybe it’s a match? No confirmation yet on the exact bacteria he had/has, but I’m really happy he is finally feeling better.

— Between insurance phone calls, house stuff, reduced school hours, and getting everything set up from the Peru work, I have not been able to follow-up with anything for my dissertation. I’m feeling defeated, dumb, and un-engaged. I feel like writing some stupid survey, going door-to-door, and analyzing it with statistics that I can make say whatever I want. Isn’t that what public health is, anyway? (Okay, so maybe I’m feeling sort of grumpy, too.)

— Paul’s job… and all our health, life, and whatever other insurance one carries for wellness and security… ends on FRIDAY. Currently, we have no plan for any of the above.

— Will is out of school for three weeks in August. Kate has the first week of school off for Abeona, which is NOT one of the three weeks in August that Will has off. There is a distinct possibility that we may have kids at home for an entire month. We have no idea what we are going to do.

— Paul is sporting a painful crick in his neck, I have stress ezema popping out on my left hand and have bit off all of my nails. Not that the stress is getting to us or anything.

UPDATE: The International Health Newsletter for the Summer just came out, with a really nice blurb about me being recognized as a Schweitzer Fellow (this project is actually going better than planned at the moment) and has bouyed my spirits a bit… thanks INHL! (sniff, sniff)

The computer is great, working, and all is fine here. Photo workflow is still working out kinks. Particularly regarding blogger, which may be a past-tense experience shortly.

Most of the focus has been on the Peru work, which was (mostly) reviewed yesterday by the editor, which is why I haven’t been able to focus much on new photographs of the kids or anything else with learning the new system.

I need to figure out a good photograph workflow. Here are the needs: something where I can quickly scan and weed out photographs (finder seems fine here); something that will let me create an archive file to have around short term for blog-entries and then upload to our archive — AND — will see photos after I’ve done edits from Photoshop (iphoto is breaking down for me on that last part). Also, I made a mistake by not shooting everything RAW and am not sure how to incorporate current shots and future RAW conversion in this workflow…

And I can’t figure out a smooth way to get photos from iphoto to blogger, which is why I haven’t blogged in a few days. This may be the straw that breaks my back and forces me to move out from blogger to one of the URLs I’ve been holding for a year. Time to download wordpress…?

The monitor is massive, the keyboard and mouse are all trendy and slick, and I keep using words like “sexy” to describe the whole experience.  Then Paul noticed boingboing had a post on objectum-sexuals and now I’m officially not using that word anymore in reference to my computer.  As long as it doesn’t cry out in the middle of the night, stick it’s toes up my nose during cuddle time, or whine about wanting hamburgers for dinner, this big hulk of a thing could quickly become the household favorite.  (Sorry, kids.)