Month: March 2005

Is this crazy? they’re bleeding

Is this crazy?

they’re bleeding me dry
doctors, insurance payments
all punk ass bitches

Got this bit of fantastic news the other day… my son’s pediatrician’s office is now charging all of their clients $100 a year per child to have the privilege of being treated there. This is in addition to co-pays and the out the ass wads of money we fork over for insurance.

The doctor’s office says the fee pays for "value added services" like having on-site blood draws and an x-ray room. It’s also to compensate for the extraordinarily low reimbursements they get from a handful of insurance companies.

We’re supposed to pay $100 a year per child so that we get the "benefit" of STILL BEING CHARGED MONEY when we call to talk to a nurse in the evenings or on the weekends.

Really, though, as I get worked up over my kid’s doctor’s office charging us like it’s a country club, I can’t really blame them. I imagine they’re right and they ARE getting screwed by the insurance companies. But don’t I pay enough already? I mean DAMN. Over $600 a month (which is CHEAP) for family insurance, plus an insane deductible, plus co-pays, plus still having to pay out the wazoo for prescriptions… I AM NOT MADE OF MONEY.

So now I just got the second letter from the doctor’s office saying that my child won’t be a patient there anymore unless we pony up the cash before April 15th. And the thing is… we love love love his doctor. We love the examining rooms decorated with Star Wars figurines. We like the nurses and the patience with which everyone answers our questions.

But now that we live in the burbs, this doctor’s office is a 45 minute drive. If my son, god forbid, breaks his arm or something, would I really drive 45 minutes to see his doctor about it? Probably not.

Will I feel horribly guilty to change his doctor (the only doctor he’s ever known) to one that is closer and doesn’t charge an extra $100 just for the privilege to set foot in the office? Hell yes.

So maybe I’ll pay. I don’t know. I feel very indignant about this.

Punk.
Ass.
Bitches.
All of them.

these things salty and cheesy

these things

salty and cheesy
my mouth likes to crunch them up
pretend they’re healthy

Have you seen these new things? they’re called Munchies and they’re mad expensive, but SO AWESOME. In one bag you get: doritos, sun chips, cheetos, and pretzels. There’s a cheesy bag and a cool ranch bag and some other kinds too (sweet, hot, etc. You know the drill.). Each piece is bite-sized so you can cram whole fistfuls into your mouth. Yes.

The doritos satisfy your craving for crap
The sun chips make you feel like you’re eating healthy
The cheetos give you that touch of heartburn that everyone loves
And then there’s the pretzels…

I have to say I’m not a huge fan of the pretzels. Pretzels are like the ugly step-child of real junk food. When eaten alone they’re not bad, but when thrown in a mix there’s always too many of them and they mute the delectible cheese/grease flavor of the other crap.

Anyway. Muchies taste gooood. Not as good as Combos (the holiest of pretzel exceptions), but still. My hunger was cheesed away. And my future fat-filled saddlebag hips were nourished and all was right with the world.

Oh, and speaking of weird food… check this out: Moto is a restaraunt in Chicago where even the menu is edible. The chef has created flavored inks for his Canon inkjet printer and he makes various edible printouts. He’s also exprimenting with helium and ion guns right now – trying to figure out how to float foods on the table.

This, my friends, is the Future of food. When my Munchies can float in front of me while I watch Lost I will have reached nirvana.

swish vile greenish liquid coating

swish

vile greenish liquid
coating teeth, tasting real bad
does swish still exist?

The other day I went down to the new Whole Foods with a friend of mine and I partook of some grocery store sushi. (Though, in my defense, it hardly counts as grocery store sushi when there are real sushi chefs there preparing the food.)

Anyway, my little plate of sushi came with a teeny weeny little plastic cup with a teeny weeny little amount of wasabi. Just enough to set your hair on fire, no more. When I first saw the teeny weeny little plastic cup, though, I was dragged, teeth first (or as my mother-in-law says with her french accent, "teat" first) through a swirly time travel vortex back to the fifth grade.

There I stood, in my hot pink Esprit sweatshirt and my high top Reeboks. In my hand I held a teeny tiny plastic cup filled with something green. The cup was a little bigger than the wasabi cup, though. And the green stuff was not wasabi. It was something equally – if not more – horrible… it was Swish.

Did you have Swish in elementary school? My parents paid something like 25 cents a decade for the school to force me to swish around a vile green fluoride treatment at least once a week, during homeroom (I don’t remember if it was more – I’ve blacked it out).

Once we returned to home room for the last few minutes of the day, the Swish Kids were handed our cups, ordered to swish for a minute, ordered to spit, and then ordered to toss our now spit/swish filled cups in the trash.

The girls would try and cover the cups so the teacher couldn’t see they were still full – that we were, in fact, swishing air. The boys would do stupid things to make each other laugh and send swish streaming into the air, or out of their noses. It would have been comical if the swish had not tasted of burning.

This brings me back from the swirly time travel vortex and into Whole Foods where I stood, holding something else that’s green and tastes of burning.

As I ate my sushi (sans wasabi, thankyouverymuch) I wondered why I was required to swish at school. Did the water supply where I grew up not have fluoride? Was this just a value-add provided by the school district? Was the 25 cents a decade enough money to fund some secret school account for more than just Swish cups – like maybe for all the copies of A Cricket in Times Square that we were endlessly forced to watch on rainy days?

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone else was tortured by enjoyed Swish in elementary school?

Easter Observations AM jelly beans

Easter Observations

AM jelly beans
create the apocalypse
in wee one’s pampers

Just got back from spending the holiday weekend at my sister and her husband’s house. It was tres fun – lots of eating and muppet movie watching and egg dying. How can you beat that?

I will say that perhaps the Easter Bunny wasn’t thinking straight when he dropped off jelly beans, Superman PJ’s (complete with velcro cape) AND a 3 foot tall (ie "child size") shovel. An almost three year old running around the house, hopped up on jelly beans, and wielding a large shovel is more than most people can handle at 8 am on a Sunday morning.

And by "most people" I mean "everyone".

We escaped permanent damage, though, as did the house and the dog, so I think it’s safe to say we had a successful Easter Sunday.

I hope you all did, too.

Oh, and what is Easter without a bunny cake? The wee one helped with the decorating this year, so it has an awesome picasso-esque face.

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jinx! won’t say what it

jinx!

won’t say what it is
but something is on the wind
I hope it don’t stink

Sorry to be cryptic, but I don’t want to jinx anything. My lips are sealed about what’s going on right now. Suffice it to say, though, no matter what happens I’ll be hollering. Hollering from joy or hollering from angst, I don’t know yet.

Until then, I’m off to bounce off the walls and freak out a little bit. Then I’m going to cook pork chops for dinner and have a margarita. Oh wait, we’re out of tequila. Damn. I’m going to cook pork chops and have a Coke, then.