9/30/10

You say tomato...I say Amelia...

I sense a long and glorious friendship with this blog.  That may be because I used to write lists of names.  Seriously.  I would pick the first, middle (two middle names, sometimes...) and last.  And make whole families of names.

I'm not the only weird kid.  My sister did it too.

Hence why I think I will love this blog.  Unless I hate the names.  In which case, it's dead to me.

Pushover

Last night, D and I were watching the last season of Lost after E had been hustled off to bed (don't judge, we only have 3 episodes left and things are getting tense).  When what to my wondering eyes should appear but a small, tousled brown head and a pair of slightly slanted brown baby eyes peering over the top of my couch. 
"Yes?" D & I both sighed, as I pressed pause on the remote.
"You guys didn't check on me!" E exclaimed reproachfully.

*Now, this is a nightly ritual where we negotiate with him how frequently one of us will walk the thirty feet from the living room to his bedroom, so he can be reassured that we haven't completely abandoned him in the few intervening minutes.  He has issues.  To be fair, most of the time we assume he's gone to sleep and don't actually check on him.  Hence the getting out of bed to reproach us.  And the issues.  Obviously.

"Consider this your check, then," D said.
"Ok," E sighed.  "But I have to check my backpack to make sure "The Substitute Teacher From the Black Lagoon" is in there." 

*What? This is absolutely a necessity at 8:45 in the evening? Lost is waiting, son! Lost is waiting!!
\
Commence pitter-pattering at barely-visible-level behind the couch into the kitchen, followed by unzipping of said backpack. An interminable pause later...
"It's there." He announced triumphantly.
"Oh, good. [We can rest easy now.] Now go back to bed."
"Ok.  But check on me in five minutes."  He said sternly.
"Fine.  As long as you don't get up again."

After he'd gone, D started muttering about how this little habit had to end, and how it was ridiculous, and that he wouldn't stand for it, and that E was going to get a stern talking to the next time, blah blah blah. I started laughing.

"You're all bark and no bite.  He'll call for you, you'll start blustering, stomp in there, and he'll turn those big eyes on you and you'll just melt like you always do."

He grinned sheepishly.  "Well, I can't help it.  He's a little you."

9/28/10

Genius Needed. Details Below:

"Mom, do you know any super, smart-smart people?"

"Um....other than me and D?"
(Don't judge me. I still get away with "Because I'm a mom and I know everything.")

"Moooooom, no! Someone super, super, SUPER smart!"
(Well, that answers that question. We're talking serious smart, here, not garden-variety parent smart.)

"I have some uncles who are pretty smart.  Why?"

"Because I need someone who can build me a machine to transport me inside a video game."

Me, thinking: "Darn it, Tron."

D, piping up: "Why?"

"So I can be a Pokemon trainer."


It's several days later and the job is still open.  He's still asking, too.  Don't destroy my little boy's dreams now, people.  There's GOT to be someone that smart around.

9/24/10

Faux Pas

Email is a delightful thing to me.  It avoids the need for personal contact, and allows me the ability to carefully compose my thoughts before presenting them to someone.  Because I tend to say whatever disorganized things come to mind, and then I get flustered.  Yes, I'm easily flustered.  So I love email.

But I hate HATE HATE the "reply all" function.  Yes, it can be useful.  Once in a blue moon.  Or more likely, NEVER.

Case in point: my son's 2nd grade teacher is a kind, sweet, quiet young lady (meaning she's probably my age) who has a tough, tough job.  She has to spend 5 days a week wrestling a classroom of 20+ 7- and 8-year-olds into submission whilst attempting to teach them something so their parents (who should be spending more time teaching their kids themselves) don't get pissy and so she doesn't lose her underpaid, overworked, and all-around unenviable job. 

So when she sends an email to her second grade class that goes like this:
Dear Parents,


We have earned our 100 marble celebration and we are having a “Moon Party!” The students can bring a pillow, stuffed animal and a flashlight only! Please DO NOT send them in pajamas and do NOT send blankets
Thank you so much!

I don't think too much of it other than "well, that's one more thing for me to remember in the morning."  My kid gets excited because he gets a break from the endless rounds of teaching-to-the-test (disclaimer: she is a very creative teacher at a very good school and he loves it).  The teacher gets a much-needed break where she just has to chivvy kids into behaving, as opposed to doing that while teaching them how to read. The event is curriculum-pertinent (their entire school is learning about the solar system).  And I'm all about appropriate rewards for hardwork.  Meaning I love my days at work where I do nothing but study and chat with my fellow residents.

So when some untypeable-expletive of a parent REPLIES TO ALL with this:

"Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource - the minds of our children. "-Walt Disney


I got a little...irritated.

Hence my blog.  I really wanted to reply to all with some choice swear words about people who reply to all.  But that's just being facetious.

I felt really bad for his teacher, though.  People are rude.  If I had been that teacher, I probably would have cried.

Ok, let's be honest, I would have done exactly what I did - read: nothing - and turned the air blue with irritated comments and screeches.  And then replied to all.  Because that particular email function happens to be a tragic waste of my greatest resource.

My freaking time.

9/14/10

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more...

E went to his cousin's 9th birthday party last weekend.  She apparently wanted a hotel birthday party, so my lovely (and long-suffering) sister-in-law obliged, and subsequently my poor in-laws were subjected to 13 little girls and 3 little boys at a hotel sleepover.  Luckily, I was working that night...

E's dad called that Friday, and because I had been in the ER when he called, I later forgot to have E call him back.

Thus, when E's BD called again, and asked E why he hadn't answered the phone earlier, E answered: "Probably because I was in a hotel room with 13 girls."


I don't make this stuff up, people.

9/4/10

A response

The health care crisis CANNOT be blamed entirely on doctors.  Sorry.  Period.  No way.

We do take the Hippocratic oath.  We don't take the original form, true, but then that hasn't been standard for a century or so. And so we do harm people every day (kind of necessary for most things).  However, as it's taught in every medical school in the US (and probably in the world...), non-malfeasance is the balance between risk and benefit of a particular medical decision. The problem is that not everyone may agree which risks outweigh which benefits, which is where the issue of communication between doctors and patients comes into play. And incidentally, most malpractice lawsuits come about when that communication breaks down.

So the issue is not that there are thousands of doctors running around intentionally hurting people, leading to lawsuits, and thereby destroying the health care system (which is another topic entirely, and not fit for one blog post).  The issue is that, despite patients thinking we should all be paragons of caring and intelligence, we're only humans who make mistakes all the time.  And because most of us are fairly caring and fairly intelligent, we've ended up in this profession, instead of one where the mistakes we made wouldn't physically hurt people.  Like the majority of the population.  Yeah, if you're a bad teacher, you're gonna screw up my kid's education, but you don't see people getting sued for that (A. Because apparently we don't care about our children's education. B. Because teachers have no money.  Unlike doctors. Because of A.  It's a vicious cycle, you see.). When you make a mistake, someone's feelings get hurt, or someone gets mad because you charged them too much for their electric bill, or a dish breaks.

My life: you could hurt someone and they could die. But no pressure.  Oh, and you're liable for the decisions you make starting in medical school.  When you're $100,000 in debt.  Which is, incidentally, why you won't get sued (Read: because lawyers don't want to sue you, you have no money, what would be the point?).  But never fear, once you have something worth taking away, someone will try to take it.  Whether or not you did anything wrong.  It's okay, people don't mind going to doctors who've been sued. Your career (and the dozen  or so years you worked so hard to get it) probably won't be in any danger.  On second thought, maybe you should reconsider and become a plumber.  Your life might be less...well, you can fill in the blank.

I'm not saying malpractice lawsuits are bad.  They help ensure that the really bad doctors get taken out of circulation, as it were.  But so many malpractice suits are just plain frivolous, just like a lot of lawsuits (with apologies to my sister, Student of Law).  There are people leaving the medical profession everywhere.  Men and women who were dedicated to their patients, who were committed to their paths.  But who won't accept the bureaucratic busywork that you have to deal with just to take care of one darned patient.  A few people out of many make really bad mistakes.  The rest of us AND THE PATIENTS are having to pay. Literally.  Hence = crisis.

I guess the solution is to have robot doctors, who follow a standard protocol with every single patient, regardless of individuality.  They wouldn't be capable of mistakes.  Let's try it, and see how happy that makes everyone.  As long as mine looks like Wally, I won't complain too loudly.
www.flickr.com