Rainbow’s Point

two of them. yesterday. the twins are 3.

it doesn’t seem that long, really. a lot has happened, and not all of it has been fun, but there we go. they’re learning to talk, and benjamin, as always, remains made of rubber. ben is also getting the pee pee in the potty thing down, though we haven’t started that with samantha.

ian isn’t getting anywhere on that, really, mostly because he just doesn’t care. he doesn’t want to stop laying on the floor and playing with his fuzz. he will spend hours on the living room floor playing with stuffing pulled from a pillow — pillow fuzz. hours. just running it through his fingers.

his mother is getting more and more frustrated with his behavior, and i can’t really say i blame her. he doesn’t talk much, and he doesn’t talk spontaneously at all. he doesn’t indicate what he wants — if he gets hungry and we don’t realize it’s lunch time, he’ll just starve.

other.

the server will be moving again in a few days, so you can expect some downtime. not like anybody really depends on my silly little blog being up, but whatever. i’m moving the server off my boss’s pipe and back onto my own.

and i’ve added a little advertising over there on the right. maybe it’ll help financially. but that sort of depends on actually having people read the site. considering how much traffic the place gets, you know.

school continues. today’s project is catching up on the economics, which tertia promised she’d do for me but she seems to be in about the same place with my economics exam as she is with those cooter pics she promised me. somehow i’m not surprised, tertia is v coy about that stuff.

my wife keeps putting pictures of her cooter on her blog. see?

i think cecily and tertia should follow suit.

really.

love em both.

well, i guess cecily can wait until she stops hurting. but tertia has no excuse.

… as cecily commented once, in one i think i accidentally erased … is this thing on?

so an update.

—

first, in the “calls you do not want to receive at 9:15am when you’ve been asleep for an hour and was up all night” department.

“i wanted to let you know that your mother checked herself into a psychiatric hospital.”

so i have schlepped to san antonio to see what the hell is going on. and what the hell is going on is … not a great deal.

i can not say too much because i do not want to discuss secrets that are not mine, but it would be appropriate to say that a large part of my mother’s social life is based on a past that did not actually happen. she has been found out, and the results remain to be seen. some significant relationships in her life were based on this fabricated past. i, of course, have known for something like 15 years that it was all bullshit, but i said nothing because i saw nothing but pain to be gained by my doing so. her husband especially would have been devastated if he’d known.

her motivations can be described as unclear at best. she claims a disassociative disorder led her to flashbacks and dreams of the events that she didn’t participated in, and after she got involved in the associated community of people, she realized that it hadn’t happened, but by then she was in too deep.

the smarter thing to do might have been, perhaps, to pull away without discussing the real reasons. we’ve all lost touch with someone for any of a number of reasons, and doing so could have been done, i think. but whatever.

now someone has asked for proof of her participation, and of course it does not exist. this led to an episode of extreme depression and suicidal ideation, and so here we are.

—

my next task is to get her out of the hospital before they carry her out feet first with a sheet over her head. she is actually pretty lucid although hasn’t discussed much about motivation and what-nows and so on.

the point of these hospitals is to get you off the ceiling and get you back into society after 3-5 days. but while you are there, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be an effective patient advocate for yourself. many of these people do not know up from down; one of them shits on her bedsheets and then pushes her soiled linen across the floor in huge piles, also stealing linens from other patients when she can. when i was in one of these places, there was one guy who was stark raving nuts; his only reason for staying was so that his insurance would maybe approve covering shock therapy. when he got it, he was a new man.

anyway, this place has some serious problems, aside from the woman pushing her shit-covered sheets around. (she also serinades the assembeled patients, staff, and visitors with horrendous renditions of “amazing grace,” and her own tune, the words to which go something like, “racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist.”)

first, let’s talk about diet.

now, everybody complains about hospital food, and everybody has a right to. even so, a diabetic meal does not mean sending a breakfast danish and fruit cup to the ward with a “diabetic” sticker on it. the first day she was there she couldn’t get anything at all to eat. the second day she got a hamburger patty and that was it. today, the third day, they let her out to go with the assembled crew to the cafeteria, where they were serving breaded fried chicken (had to pick the breading off, starch), rice (starch), mashed potatos (starch), and corn on the cob (starch).

okay, so if they don’t starve her to death, they’ll kill her with medication.

it is the responsbility of the nursing staff to follow the orders. so when the orders say you get one pill of blood pressure meds, you get one.

except the pharmacy didn’t have one. call. they’ll send. three hours later. call again. they’re out, they’ll get some from the grocery store down the street. never comes. next day, they send double the dose, plus double the dose of the other blood pressure med, plus a third blood pressure med she’s not supposed to be on.

now remember that most people here don’t know up from down. the night before the doctor had said to my mother that hers was the third complaint that day he’d gotten of a medication error. most of these people will swallow rat posion if you put it in front of them.

if she’d taken the bp meds like they handed them to her, it could very well have killed her.

christ. isn’t america’s profit-driven health care wonderful?

—

okay, other news.

—

i’ve recently taken to reading the adventures of dr. diana. diana york blaine phd is an instructor at the university of southern california. her aredently-feminist viewpoint is eloquently expressed on her blog. i, of course, am an evil misogynist, especially considering my work. just ask my wife. she’ll tell you. so will tertia.

i originally found her blog after some news stories about some usc students going wacko over some nude pictures she’s posted of herself. (i’ll save you the work. i think she’s a hottie.)

in time i may slap her with some trackbacks. what she says has merit and is worthy of discussion, but is not the be-all and end-all of what gender relations ought to be.

—

work.

work is on an upward slope. we’ve addressed some communications issues and i’m feeling better about my progress there. i’m still not billing the hours i want, but i don’t feel like i’m operating in quite the same vacuum.

we may be doing a booth at the big convention in vegas. the one i went to last year. oh joy.

—

sex.

i want some. may have found myself a girlfriend, too.

—

sleep.

time for that.

“honey, i broke my blog’s sidebar. so, if i give you a blowjob will you fix it?”

consider your problem solved.

dr schoolmarm is my (and my wife’s) psychiatrist. it’d been almost a year since i’ve seen her and a lot has happened in that time, so i spent a couple minutes catching her up. school, work, family, the works.

but the more i think about what she said, the more disturbed i become.

“i have patients who spend 10 and 12 and 14 hours a day on your site, and it’s runing their lives.”

this is without asking what site, by the way.

okay so sex addiction is real, as its its close cousin porn addiction. i don’t deny that for a second.

i do, however, take umbrage at the suggestion that i or my work is responsible for others’ problems. i am no more responsible for someone’s porn addiction than the local brewrey is responsible for alcoholism. (by the way, i live a 5 minute drive from the brewrey. cooking barley stinks.)

i’m of three minds.

one is to let it drop, get my meds and go on.

one is to confront her.

one is to just cancel my next appointment and get someone else.

for the first option, i don’t like it much. i feel like i get enough judgemental bullshit from society in general i do not also need to pay $100 for a 15 minute med management visit to get more of it from dr schoolmarm.

on the other hand, i don’t really feel like paying $400 an hour to confront her either. i shouldn’t have to pay to correct a situation she created.

and of course finding someone else is a huge pain because there aren’t a lot of psychiatrists around here, and dr schoolmarm is actually the best of them.

this is actually the best job i’ve ever had. i have a friendly, supportive if demanding boss. the people i work with are fun and intelligent. the product we create is intelligent, friendly, and respectful of what our models want. we pay way more than the going rate for modeling in the area we produce in. on occasion when a model has a change of heart, we take her material down and permit her to buy it back. and we shoot all girls — there are only four shoots of men on the site, done as experiments, and we won’t be doing more.

it also pays better — way better — than any job i’ve ever had. it feeds my family and keeps my lights on and pays my mortgage.

and that’s where dr schoolmarm’s, and everyone else’s, arguments fall down: this is the job i’ve found that pays my bills, and it’s legal to boot. until you pay my bills, take your moralizing elsewhere.

i really should write more often. it might help. it might even help build traffic.

nah.

okay. tuesday april 10, i went to see ladysmith black mambazo. ladysmith, if you’ve been living under a rock since 1986, is a south african a capella group. they were made internationally famous on paul simon’s 1986 album graceland. they sing about the hardship of south african life, and now about the freedom since the end apartheid and the holding of the first all-race elections in 1994.

definately worth a listen.

passover was the next night, and i got roped into leading the 20 minute version of the seder. it was, as you can imagine, really fast.

i don’t really have a problem with a fast seder, but i have a problem with a fast seder when i lead it. it’s not that it’s meant to be slow, but let’s face it: the story of the exodous from egypt, the giving of the 10 commandments at mt. saini, and 40 years of wandering in the desert, ending at the jews’ arrival in the land of israel, is the central story of the religion.

the passover seder is the annual retelling of that story. the service has a lot of flexibility, and there are many ways to do it, but it felt to me like the way we did it on wednesday and thursday was about getting through it as quickly as we could.

allowances must be made for my three small children, who are unable to sit through a long production. even so, in the future i’d like to give some thought to actually telling the story. like, the entire story.

one of the major complaints is that people often spend a long time doing the first half, and then they get to the meal, and then they rush through the after-meal stuff so they can get home.

i would take an alternative approach, so if any of you are out there taking hints, here’s your chance: do both nights, and invite the same people both nights, so you have the same crowd.

on the first night, do the first half, and quit after eating. on the second night, eat first, and then do the second half.

this gives you plenty of time to do both parts of the service without shortening what could be a beautiful, meaningful event.

school is drawing to a close and i’m glad of that. i may take one course over the semester. i guess i should get off my ass and decide, since registration opens in the morning.

cecily talked about wanting a honda element.

no, hon. you don’t want an element. your credit report notwithstanding, an element is the wrong car.

elements are designed for the lithe, thin, strong college-age crowd who want to throw their shit in the back and go. although it says “five doors,” those … things … behind the doors (bat wings?) are not doors.

for people who are old, decript, fat, and have children (like me), any vehicle in which there is even the slightest possibility that i might have to slide the driver’s seat forward to mess with the rugrat is unacceptable. a single child is actually pretty portable (compared to, say, three). and i’m going to suggest that cecily and hubby will wind up taking rugrat out quite a bit as they go about their lives.

but rugrats come with crap. lots of crap. diaper bags, for one. diaper bags tend to contain, at a minimum, diapers, wipes, plastic baggies (for used diapers), a change of clothes for baby, one or more baby mres, at least a change of tops for mom and/or dad, burp rags, bibs if you use them, and assorted children’s rattles, pacifiers, and other assorted attention-wasting devices.

if you schlep your child around much, you will of necessity also shelp your child’s crap around. this means that, in addition to getting the child in and out of the car (and bending over the seat to buckle said child in, which takes some getting used to), you will also wind up getting the crap in and out. and while the child can not walk, chances are at least average you will also want to take a stroller, so you don’t have to carry the child all the time.

rainbow’s suggestion for the sight-seeing parent: strollers are not permitted in carlsbad cavern, but the ranger desk at the top of the mountain may have baby backpacks you can borrow. borrow them; they are actually rather comfortable for both wearer and wearee. do not attempt to hand-carry an infant through carlsbad caverns, even if you’re taking the elevator down. it is a very bad idea.

all of this means you want a car that has at least four doors. like, real doors. full-sized doors.

and of course, with gas now at $3 a gallon, you want a hybrid, which the element most assuredly is not.

i’m sick and sleepy, and now i’m going home.

when it’s just blah. and meaningless blah at that.

sue lost her job at that complete shithole a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve now gotten the cobra letter — their crappy insurance is now over $1100/mo for us.

she’s taken a $10/hr job for a temp agency now grading 7th grade math tests for the state of new mexico, but that doesn’t really pay gas and a baby sitter. it’s mostly to get her out of her funk or something.

so we’re back to … nothing. except this time we don’t even have severance.

i’m getting really tired of cobra.

got back from a weekend trip to west texas, where my mother’s family celebrated her father’s 80th birthday. we schlepped the kids out there and in general had a decent time.

i would, however, like to express something that i had to bite my tongue over.

she muttered something about ian dropping her daughter’s electronic toy several times. i did not say what i thought.

i wanted to say something like: ian is autistic. i’m sorry he has fine- and gross-motor deficits, which causes him to have trouble holding things. and he’s also got a speech delay, which causes him to be unable to say stuff like “i’m sorry.” now, i’m not getting all upset at your little brat who keeps pestering me to count her stupid poker chips, telling me that they’re pieces of carrot and she’s a rabbit, while i’m busy talking to someone i haven’t seen in five years. but obviously my child’s deficiencies are repugnant to you, so next time we come out here i’ll put him in the corner with a dunce cap and make him hold a sign that says tard warning - keep away. would that make you happy, bitch?

but i didn’t. i kept it civil. but i was not sorry to see the backside of that woman.

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