Beyond Thunderdome

The year is half over.  Can Christmas be far behind?

We've been running an interesting sort of social experiment around here - half our immediate area is without power, while the other half (including moi, thank heavens) is still luxuriating in such modern conveniences as electric lights and working air conditioning.  Sort of a First World meets Third World reality show, waiting to happen.  I managed to reach a friend on her cellphone (landline and Internet down in her part of town) earlier, and she admitted to feeling a surprising amount of resentment toward the other people she ran into at the grocery store, the people who weren't scooping up flashlights and who didn't smell as if they had been sitting in a not air-conditioned house on a 95-degree day for hours.

All this man wants is some AC

Hey, we didn't have Internet for almost the entire morning ourselves.  I KNOW what it's like to suffer.  And I was supposed to work this morning, but I need the Internet for that.  So I figured I'd drive over to the nearest Starbucks and use their WiFi, until a neighbor informed me that the entire town center was without electricity.  "Darn!" I said.  "Guess I'll just have to take the girls to a movie instead!"

Because I'm slow to figure things out.  Things like, movies need electricity.  So there went that idea.

The whole day went like that.  By the end, things were getting a tad crazy - roaming sweaty hordes searching desperately for their next hit of AC, flashlight shortages, gas lines (not sure why) - sort of like Mad Max, only more apocalyptic.  If things don't improve soon, Larry will be staying awake all night, defending our dwindling ice cream supplies with a shotgun.  Pray for us.

Team Roberts

There are so many things I want to blog about, but this is uppermost in my mind today:

Beyond awesome

Thank you, Chief Justice Roberts.  Thank you.  I know so many people who cannot get health insurance right now.  I know others who can't afford it.  I'm glad that my children, when they are adults, will regard that sort of situation as unbelievable.  I'm thrilled that none of my kids will be stuck in the wrong job, simply because a pre-existing condition keeps them from switching to a better one.  I could cry with relief knowing that I won't have to empty my retirement account to help out an adult son or daughter who might become unable to obtain health insurance.

I know some of my readers think that Obamacare is a bad thing.  But please understand that we are one of the only first-world countries where citizens routinely go without medical care, where hardworking people are bankrupted because they drew the short straw in the cancer lottery.  Please realize that, in a country as rich as ours, there are third-world style medical missions taking place ALL THE TIME, because we have not had policies in place that would ensure access to basic healthcare for everyone.  That's just not acceptable for the greatest country in the world.

Government takeover?  Hardly.  Insurance companies are still firmly in place as the gatekeepers to health care.  Obamacare merely sets up exchanges (done individually by states) to facilitate the purchasing of health insurance from these private companies.  Federal workers already purchase their insurance from this type of exchange.  It provides a broader range of choice and fosters greater competition among insurance companies.  Sounds pretty capitalist to me...

There's still work to be done, of course.  Medicare needs to be reformed, with its fee-for-service structure being replaced by salaried doctors with less incentive to perform unneeded tests and procedures.  Mental health needs to be covered more comprehensively, so suicidal patients aren't kicked out of their psychiatric hospital just because their 5 allotted days are up (to name just one problem with the system).  DENTAL should eventually be included in general health insurance.  Our mouths are part of our bodies, people.  Go figure.

But for now, this is enough.  This is more than we dared hope for.  I'm off to order my Team Roberts T-shirt.  Anyone else want one?

RIP, Nora Ephron

Oh, man, I'm just broken up about this.  If you haven't read I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing, you might not be able to appreciate how witty and insightful Nora Ephron was.

Gah, I had to use the past tense.  I can't take it.  I just can't.

Go - listen to her interview on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me last October.  I'm heading out to rent a few movies.  Would you believe I've never even seen Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail?  I think it's time.  And I don't care if Larry likes them or not.  This is for me and Nora.

Who's dead.  How can that be?  Death isn't funny.  And Nora wouldn't do anything that wasn't funny or -- at the very least -- archly witty.  Would she?

Marriage, Ltd

Oh, blessed cool evening air!  The humidity has dropped and our windows are open - this is heaven.  Doesn't hurt that the kids are all out of the house with Larry at a minor league baseball game.  Dollar night, folks - can't beat it.

Has anyone seen this piece of inanity yet?  No?  Here's the kicker:

...perhaps we should consider marriage as more "till the kids part" than "till death do us part." The partner we need in our 20s and 30s, when many of us are looking to settle down and raise kids, may not be the partner we need in our 50s, 60s and beyond, when we're free to explore new passions or reinvigorate the ones we gave up when the kids came along.

Wow, first we have disposable wipes and disposable diapers; and now?  Disposable spouses!  Use one up and get another!  What's striking about the above (aside from its complete misunderstanding of the marriage concept) is its lack of awareness that the children don't just disappear into their own lives after age 18, never to be seen again.  There's also a refusal to acknowledge that stuff happens in our lives, BAD stuff, even before our lovely offspring have been released into the wild to spawn.  Can you picture saying to your 50-year-old Parkinsons-stricken spouse, "Well, our contract is done, kids are raised, and I'm off to seek my own adventures now!  Have a nice life!"

Essentially, the above concept assumes that the married couple has nothing in common but their kids.  No shared history, no shared responsibility toward each other, nothing that would add depth and meaning to a relationship that has already endured for at least 18 years.  Has this author never known a long-married couple?  It's not necessarily about exploring new passions together as they age; it's about deepening the ties they already have, sharing the memories that only the two of them possess, enjoying their grandchildren together.

Don't get me wrong - I am not in the least Pollyanna-ish about marriage; and I'm not against divorce, per se.  I have friends getting divorced left and right, and for good reasons.  But at least they tried to build something lasting.  At least they regarded their marriages as something more than a limited partnership with a pre-determined expiration date.  Lifelong marriage is a worthwhile, if lofty, goal and shouldn't be abandoned wholesale.

Pretty ambitious talk for a woman who can still become incensed by her spouse's toothpaste tube habits, I'll admit...


[wedding image: posterjack]

Little Things Mean A Lot

This is harder to do than it looks. 

I got up at 6 this morning.  I walked 2 miles.  Then I came home and prepared food for a neighborhood going-away party - a couple that has lived here since these townhomes were built (over 40 years ago) is moving closer to their daughters, several states away.  I don't know why it took me several hours to whip up some batches of hummus, lay out cheese and crackers, and cut up fruit; but it did.  Then we had the 2-hour party, which lasted 3-and-a-half hours.  I staggered home around 7 and collapsed on the couch.

Tell me, since when did I become this old person who can't have a busy day without feeling destroyed by it?  Add to that fact that I still have Brian's lovely illness, an illness whose symptoms increase the more tired I am, and I feel as though I have one foot in the grave already.

Have I mentioned how much I am going to miss my departing neighbors?  The woman is my buddy from this humiliating trip to Harris Teeter.  I refer to her as my personal trainer, because she would show up at my front door 2 or 3 times a day to invite me to walk a mile around the neighborhood.   I always accepted, because I can't let an 80-year-old woman best my not-even-50-yet self in the physical fitness department.

Sometimes?  I had trouble keeping up with her.

When Rachel was 6 weeks old (almost 10 years ago), Larry's father lay dying from a stroke.  Larry - naturally - hurried to his father's side, 12 hours away, leaving me with a 5-year-old, a 2 1/2 year-old, and a new baby (not to mention Theo and Anna).  People, this neighbor of mine made a point of stopping by every evening to help me.  She would either hold the baby while I bathed the little boys or else she would read to the little boys while I took care of the baby.  Only another mother can understand what a big difference that small bit of help made in my day.  She earned my undying gratitude from that point on.

Moral of this meandering blog post: It's the little things we do that matter.  Don't pass up a chance to do the little things.  Don't expect that someone else will think to do them.  You know, my neighbors really appreciated the party we gave them.  That mattered, too, much more than I had thought it would.


[Fruit bowl image: Taste of Home]

[Little things image: Sodahead]