Thursday, August 21, 2003
REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE DAY
By 6 a.m. yesterday morning I had brought the husband to the airport so that he could again have the pleasure of flying across an ocean to get to his office. He just recently started at what we hope will be the very last start-up company we'll ever have to do -- another 'great opportunity' that this time happened to be in Europe. Oh please Zeus, Allah, Jesus, Buddah, let this one put us on an island in the Caribbean sipping Campari; we're getting too old for this shit.
The back and forth time-zone-traveling-thing sounds glamorous but in fact is exhausting. And jumpstarting a new company spun off from a multi-billion dollar conglomerate sounds like an exciting challenge unless you've done this enough times already to know all the road blocks you're likely to encounter ahead. The first one has already hit: new executive management team meets wary, feather-ruffled employees bitter that new management has usurped the positions they thought they were going to get. One in particular I am watching closely from the sidelines -- she is a forty-something woman who as far as I am concerned is giving a very bad name to professional women everywhere i.e. she really isn't being mislabled 'bitch' for what would simply be called 'assertative' if a man were to do the same thing; no, she really IS a bitch. Good thing hubby has had so much practice dealing with me all of these years or I might have said he'd met his match.
By 7:30 a.m. yesterday morning I had returned from my airport run in time to get the son to the hospital for a tonsillectmy and septoplasty (our second attempt to straighten out his nose so that he may breathe easier/snore less/someday have a girlfriend who will want to sleep in the same bed with him). It must have been Repair and Maintenance Day because we saw a number of teens waiting his/her turn for an incision of some kind or another. I love how when my son put on the flimsy cotton three-quarter-sleeve bathrobe they handed him, he immediately rolled up the sleeves so it would look cooler. He may be vain but he is also a MAN, I noticed yesterday. Gone are the days when the medical staff would direct information and questions at me. They spoke only to him (especially the nurses: "you sure don't look eighteen..."); I was only somebody there keeping him company before they wheeled him off to the operating room. Cost: $6000+.
By 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon my daughter and I had made it to the oral surgeon's office to get her a full-mouth x-ray. Time to pull the wisdom teeth. She'll get them out next Tuesday thus foiling my plans to have both of my teenagers quiet for a week. Cost $1800. Leave it to entrepreneurial humans to make a killing while we wait for evolution to phase out all of these useless vestiges. I hear the latest is women having 'toe work' done to better fit into pointy-toe stilletos. The good doctor showed us a nice little video which included information about all the risks applicable to only a 'small percentage of patients.' "Nice mouth," he chirped when he checked inside. Which struck my daughter funny and she cracked up. She of course does have a nice mouth thanks to flouride sealants when she was young and bi-yearly check-ups since the age of three. Not one of her pearly white teeth has a cavity, in good part thanks to never having been without health insurance. It's an inexcusable travesty that so many American families are without and it amazes me that people are not more outraged about it; the calls I get from my constituents on a daily basis just sound abjectly resigned rather than angry.
On a cummulative scale, the dog just cost $84 for her annual check-up. Body work on the fender bender my son had at the beginning of the summer $700. Groceries that will last three days: $240. A scheduled trip for my daughter and me to go to Pennsylvania to check out colleges: about $700. Another to trip to Virginia for same purpose: $ditto. And possibly a trip to St. Louis: $ditto. Once we've narrowed in on six college choices, there will be $50-each application fees. The son goes back to college the end of the month: $200 airfare plus stuff he will need for his new dorm/apartment ($300?). And I need my highlights re-touched again, plus a haircut: $200. My daughter does too: $ditto. Upcoming Abercrombie expenditures: $hate to think about it.
Then there is TUITION: $obscene, ROOM AND BOARD: $outrageous. But these colleges aren't stupid. Demand exceeds supply which allows them to charge you a small fortune in order that your child can spend a good chunk of his freshman year puking his beer-marinated guts out. You simply feel so lucky that your child beat out 17,000 other applicants competing for 1600 coveted slots -- one of which your son or daughter just snagged.
I don't know what to say folks. Am I thankful to have the financial freedom to choose all of the above-mentioned commodities? Of course. Do I see something VERY wrong with this picture? Yes. Do I know what to do about it? Well Bush isn't helping. We need someone who has a viable, executable vision for taking care of THIS country and I don't just mean the privileged top 10% of the population. Universal healthcare. The economy. Education. Homeland security. Well-informed, strategic foreign policy.
By 6 a.m. yesterday morning I had brought the husband to the airport so that he could again have the pleasure of flying across an ocean to get to his office. He just recently started at what we hope will be the very last start-up company we'll ever have to do -- another 'great opportunity' that this time happened to be in Europe. Oh please Zeus, Allah, Jesus, Buddah, let this one put us on an island in the Caribbean sipping Campari; we're getting too old for this shit.
The back and forth time-zone-traveling-thing sounds glamorous but in fact is exhausting. And jumpstarting a new company spun off from a multi-billion dollar conglomerate sounds like an exciting challenge unless you've done this enough times already to know all the road blocks you're likely to encounter ahead. The first one has already hit: new executive management team meets wary, feather-ruffled employees bitter that new management has usurped the positions they thought they were going to get. One in particular I am watching closely from the sidelines -- she is a forty-something woman who as far as I am concerned is giving a very bad name to professional women everywhere i.e. she really isn't being mislabled 'bitch' for what would simply be called 'assertative' if a man were to do the same thing; no, she really IS a bitch. Good thing hubby has had so much practice dealing with me all of these years or I might have said he'd met his match.
By 7:30 a.m. yesterday morning I had returned from my airport run in time to get the son to the hospital for a tonsillectmy and septoplasty (our second attempt to straighten out his nose so that he may breathe easier/snore less/someday have a girlfriend who will want to sleep in the same bed with him). It must have been Repair and Maintenance Day because we saw a number of teens waiting his/her turn for an incision of some kind or another. I love how when my son put on the flimsy cotton three-quarter-sleeve bathrobe they handed him, he immediately rolled up the sleeves so it would look cooler. He may be vain but he is also a MAN, I noticed yesterday. Gone are the days when the medical staff would direct information and questions at me. They spoke only to him (especially the nurses: "you sure don't look eighteen..."); I was only somebody there keeping him company before they wheeled him off to the operating room. Cost: $6000+.
By 3 p.m. yesterday afternoon my daughter and I had made it to the oral surgeon's office to get her a full-mouth x-ray. Time to pull the wisdom teeth. She'll get them out next Tuesday thus foiling my plans to have both of my teenagers quiet for a week. Cost $1800. Leave it to entrepreneurial humans to make a killing while we wait for evolution to phase out all of these useless vestiges. I hear the latest is women having 'toe work' done to better fit into pointy-toe stilletos. The good doctor showed us a nice little video which included information about all the risks applicable to only a 'small percentage of patients.' "Nice mouth," he chirped when he checked inside. Which struck my daughter funny and she cracked up. She of course does have a nice mouth thanks to flouride sealants when she was young and bi-yearly check-ups since the age of three. Not one of her pearly white teeth has a cavity, in good part thanks to never having been without health insurance. It's an inexcusable travesty that so many American families are without and it amazes me that people are not more outraged about it; the calls I get from my constituents on a daily basis just sound abjectly resigned rather than angry.
On a cummulative scale, the dog just cost $84 for her annual check-up. Body work on the fender bender my son had at the beginning of the summer $700. Groceries that will last three days: $240. A scheduled trip for my daughter and me to go to Pennsylvania to check out colleges: about $700. Another to trip to Virginia for same purpose: $ditto. And possibly a trip to St. Louis: $ditto. Once we've narrowed in on six college choices, there will be $50-each application fees. The son goes back to college the end of the month: $200 airfare plus stuff he will need for his new dorm/apartment ($300?). And I need my highlights re-touched again, plus a haircut: $200. My daughter does too: $ditto. Upcoming Abercrombie expenditures: $hate to think about it.
Then there is TUITION: $obscene, ROOM AND BOARD: $outrageous. But these colleges aren't stupid. Demand exceeds supply which allows them to charge you a small fortune in order that your child can spend a good chunk of his freshman year puking his beer-marinated guts out. You simply feel so lucky that your child beat out 17,000 other applicants competing for 1600 coveted slots -- one of which your son or daughter just snagged.
I don't know what to say folks. Am I thankful to have the financial freedom to choose all of the above-mentioned commodities? Of course. Do I see something VERY wrong with this picture? Yes. Do I know what to do about it? Well Bush isn't helping. We need someone who has a viable, executable vision for taking care of THIS country and I don't just mean the privileged top 10% of the population. Universal healthcare. The economy. Education. Homeland security. Well-informed, strategic foreign policy.
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