One Cobble at a Time

Only days ago I was lamenting ear infections. I’m about to treble that lament. Kiki and Patches both have infected ears today. The good news is that I was able to get both of them diagnosed in one visit so I’ll only have one co-pay. The bad news is that when Link came down with his infection last Friday afternoon I had a choice of going to the emergency room (And paying grundles of money) or filling an antibiotic prescription in Kiki’s name and giving it to him. I chose to give him the prescription. Only now that Kiki needs antibiotics, the insurance company won’t pay for them because according to their records she’s already on antibiotics. The solution is simple I called the doctor’s office and requested that they reissue Kiki’s prescription in Link’s name. Whee.

Why do they put the toys and candy right next to the pharmacy? While I was trying to sort out prescription nonsense and waiting for the doctor to call the pharmacy and make things official, I had to field begging from Kiki and Gleek about shiny Polly Pockets and I had to stop Patches from filching candies from the bins. Finally I realized that I did NOT want to spend and indefinite length of time at the store waiting for the doctor to call. I carried screaming Gleek and protesting Patches away from all the shiny plastic packaged happiness they didn’t believe they could do without. Gleek tantrumed all the way home. I’m tired and grumpy and I STILL have to go pick up prescriptions. This is NOT how I wanted to spend my morning.

A couple of days ago we recieved a call from Dillard’s credit collection department about Sandra Tayler’s overdue account of $1100. The only problem is that I’ve never shopped at Dillard’s. Howard bought a suit there once, but the most I’ve ever done is walk through the store on my way into the mall. The collection people had my name, my phone number, but someone else’s address. We told them they’d gotten ahold of the wrong person, end of phone call. But the incident preyed upon my attention. Since identity theft is the popular crime these days, I decided to check my credit report. I surfed to annualcreditreport.com to get my free report. There are other sites which offer this service, but their “free” reports come with strings attached. My credit report was exactly how I expected it to be and there was nothing on it from Dillards. I breathed a sigh of relief and expected that to be the end of it.

Today I got two more phone calls. During the course of the phone calls I determined that the Sandra Tayler they are looking for has a different middle initial, different social security number, and lives in a different town. How they managed to attach my phone number to this other person’s account I’m not sure. I AM sure that there is no way they can legally stick me with that $1100 account payment. This is good news. The bad news is that credit collection agencies are notoriously persistant. They expect people to deny responsibility. They expect to be lied to. I’m afraid that I’m in for nuisance phone calls for quite awhile until they manage to actually track down this other person.

I’ve never been on the recieving end of credit collection before, does anyone know what tactics they may mistakenly attempt to appy to me while trying to collect from this other person?

EDIT: April 10, 2005 — The problem is resolved, they’ve stopped calling. Yay!

Tomorrow being Easter, today was the day for the annual coloring of eggs. Patches had never before participated in this ritual, but he has regularly eaten “Daddy eggs” (soft boiled eggs in the shell) and so he reacted to the sight of a row of eggs with joy. He imeadiately picked one up and smacked it on the table. In theory a cracked egg is no good for coloring, but since I use the food-coloring-in-hot-water method I knew it was completely non-toxic. I let Patches have at it. He happily smashed eggs, partially peeled eggs, colored eggs, ate egg bits, spit out shell bits, and then did it all again. The end result was completely ugly and fairly inedible. Fortunately the point of coloring eggs is not having eggs to eat, that’s just a happy by-product. The other kids all colored eggs without cracking any, so I have plenty of hard boiled eggs for next week.

Tomorrow afternoon will be our annual easter egg hunt in the back yard, but that will feature plastic eggs not real ones. And that is the extent of our secular easter celebrations. We will also attend Easter Services tomorrow morning where we will contemplate resurrection, sacrifice, and eternity. I have many many thoughts on all three concepts, but I can’t seem to craft words correctly to reflect the depth of my feelings. Suffice it to say that I am grateful to be here. I’m grateful for the family that I have. And I am grateful for the hope that existence does not end at death.

“It’s not like the old ‘Star Wars,’ ” Lucas told theater owners at the
ShoWest convention. “This one’s a little bit more emotional. We like to describe
it as ‘Titanic’ in space. It’s a tearjerker.”

Titanic was one of the most over-hyped, over-long movies I have ever been exposed to. I’ve been planning on seeing Episode III in the theaters. I’m starting to reconsider that intention.

Today I pulled out my photo album from last year. It contains a whole section of pictures from a trip I took to visit my parents last March. I flew with 4 kids and no Howard. It actually turned out lots better than I could have hoped. The kids were so well behaved that I actually got compliments from total strangers. As I looked at those pictures I realized that in one month I’ll again be getting on a plane, but for the first time in 12 years I’ll be flying solo, no kids.
I’ll be able to read without interruption.
My carry-on bag won’t be full of fruit snacks.
My luggage won’t contain a single diaper.
I’ll get to nap if I feel like it.
I won’t have to worry that my kids are disturbing other passengers.
I won’t have a car seat as one of my pieces of luggage.
I’ll get to actually watch the in-flight movie.
If I have to wipe up a drink it won’t be because I was blowing bubbles with the straw.
I’ll get to wander past airport gift shops without endless discussions of what we will not buy.
The only person I’ll have to keep track of is me.

It is going to be very strange and wonderful and a little bit lonely.

I just figured out what bothers me most about the latest Harry Potter book. It is the way that all of the adults keep secrets from the children. My philosophy is that if a child is old enough to ask the question, then they’re old enough to hear the answers. This is particularly important if the child has been traumatized in any way. If you withold vital information, then the child will not trust you and come to you for help when they need it. In the very first book Harry asks why Voldemort wanted to kill him. Dumbledore refuses to answer the question. Harry should have been told about the prophecy right then and there. Dumbledore claims Harry was “too young”. Any child who has been visciously attacked and nearly killed NEEDS to know everything about causes of the attack in order to recover. In addition Dumbledore tells Harry that his father saved Snape’s life, but fails to tell him the full story even though it is relevant. What should have happened was that Dumbledore sat down with Harry for an entire evening and answered every question Harry had.

My approach when my kids ask difficult questions (Like “where do babies come from?”) is to give a general, but truthful answer. If they then ask for more information I fill in details. That way the child gets exactly as much information as they are ready for. Dumbledore should have answered Harry’s “Why” with basic information about the prophecy and elaborated as Harry asked further questions. At least that is what Dumbledore should do if his first concern was for Harry. I don’t believe that to be true. I believe that Dumbledore’s first loyalty is to humankind at large and that his intention is to bring the permanent downfall of Voldemort. This larger goal causes Dumbledore to hide things from Harry and to use Harry as a tool. The sad thing is that Dumbledore could as easily achieve his larger goal by telling Harry things and then Harry would be a willing tool. I don’t like Dumbledore as much as I used to.

Howard and I have indulged in what I’ll call “retro-sci-fi” movies over the last week. We watched Soylent Green and then Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow.

As a movie Soylent Green was bad. 90% of the movie was watching actors appreciate things which we take for granted, like soap and water. The concept of the movie could have been done better in a 30 minute twilight zone episode. What I found fascinating was what the movie told me about societal values in the 70’s when the movie was made. It was obvious that the civil rights movements of the 60s had taken hold. The hero was Charleton Heston (a white man), the slimy villains were white, every other male character with a speaking part was black. The women in the movie came in two categories “destitute extra” and “furniture”. And by “furniture” the movie meant just that. You rent a furnished apartment it comes complete with a beautiful girl as part of the furniture. (Apparently women never rent their own apartments.) There were about a dozen of these women who simply were there to provide the camera with anatomy to focus on. Only two of the women had speaking parts and all of the lines were either flirting with men-in-power or screaming because the men hit them. Had the movie been made recently it would have offended everyone. It makes me wonder what modern movies are going to tell people thirty years from now about our values.

Sky Captain was beautiful. I enjoyed watching it with Howard in our own home where I was free to make fun of the ridiculous stuff in it. Some serious scenes made me laugh out loud, supposed-to-be-funny scenes fell flat. We declined to watch any deleted scenes because I decided that I didn’t want to watch anything that had been removed from the film on purpose. And the supposed love interest between the two main characters? Completely disfunctional. It’s a movie to watch with a group of friends for an MST 3K party. I’m not sorry I watched it, but I don’t think I’ll watch it again.

Friday was a day for good friends. Pi and Kreely stopped by for the day in their migration from Texas to Washington. We had lunch, a round of disc golf, dinner, and lots of fun visiting. It was definitely something that bears repeating. Maybe next time we’ll take our horde of children and invade their hometown. If nothing else it sounded like they were considering going to Penguicon. It would be very good to have familiar friends at that event.

Today was the day for good neighbors. The house behind ours finally sold to a wonderful family. They have four kids who are near perfect matches for ours in age. They share some of our interests and in all respects bode really well for being long term good friends. To simplify the kids playing we took down a section of the fence and now all the kids have free run of both yards. A few weeks ago I mentioned that I needed to pull up a patch of lawn to create a larger vegetable bed. It turns out that they had a patch of dirt which needed sod. The patches were almost the same size. Today they rented a sod cutter and we pulled sod from my yard and laid it in theirs. I am so glad I didn’t have to do the work with a shovel, they are really glad they didn’t have to buy sod. Everybody wins. Only now I’m stiff and sore and exhausted. Sod is very very heavy. And the more of it you lift the heavier each piece seems.