Sameritan in the City

My best friend's In-Laws are in town. They are staying with her while they remodel her kitchen. Or to put it another way, her In-laws have been living with her for a month and they have destroyed her kitchen. I buy chocolate chip cookies and wine and set off to console the desperate.

After 10 minutes of driving I am in the heart of my friend's neighborhood at the corner of Drug Dealer's Paradise and Working Girl Central. My tire blows. Not only do I hear it and feel it blow, but a nice lady who just happens to work the corner knocks on my window, "You have a flat!" I sigh and pull into the nearest parking lot which happens to have not only Korean grocery store and Mexican eatery, but a message parlor with tented windows as well. Great.

I think: "Right, well it can't be that hard to change a tire." I open the trunk and find a screwdriver, jumper cables, shoes, lawn chair, large amount of plastic swords, two teddy bears, Cheeze Nips, water gun and underneath it all, a tire bolted down, which I cannot budge. I go back to the front of the car to try to will the tire to change itself. A pickup truck pulls into the lot and I wave frantically. The nice man stops and asks me if I need any help. As it so happens, yes I'm desperate, and the man sets about freeing the tire and jack from the trunk. It is at this point I realize that his knuckles spell out "K-I-L-L". I take a deep breath and look at his girlfriend who is still sitting in the truck. As a ponder the wisdom of this situation the man continues on with the job in hand. It takes him about five minutes. My tire has a lengthy gash in it. He pours scorn over my spare and implies I will die horribly if I attempt to drive on it as is. He says he will go straight to a gas station to put air in my spare.

As he throws the donut into the bed of his truck the girl friend in the front cab is having a hissy fit. I suspect she does not like me and these suspicions are confirmed when he forces her to stay with me while he redeems the tire. I extend my hand to the designated-bodyguard-girlfriend as she gets out of the truck. As I am introducing myself my eyes are involuntarily drawn to her breast which are slightly covered by a neon green tank top which reads, "Light Up the Nite!" in pink glitter. It turns out Chloe is a women of few words. Neither of us is good at small talk so we sit in silence and wait for her boyfriend to return. By now, the poor guy is dripping in sweat. It has been another 100 degree day and he has been fiddling with my tire for close to 30 minutes. He wastes no time finishing the job and refuses my offer of all the cash in my wallet. I shake his hand and thank Chloe for lending him to me. I do not think she likes me. They drive away. I open the chocolate chip cookies.

Statistics....

I got really excited the other day when I was watching FOX NEWS of all networks and they cited a poll that shows 59% of Americans think we should leave Afghanistan now that Osama Bin Laden is dead. This is progress. I thought, the American people are coming around. The American people are starting to motivated less by fear and more by rational thinking.

I thought that until I was reading an Article on NPR.org today which cited a poll that shows 41% of Americans believe dooms day will arrive by the year 2050. That's almost half. Almost half of the American population think that dooms day is just 39 years away. That's in my life time. Almost half of the people living in the United States of America - and industrialized, secularized nation - think that I'll only be 67 years old when Jesus starts raising people from the dead. According to 41% of the Americans who answered the poll cited by NPR I will see zombies walk this earth before I die.

That blows my mind. Is that the divide in this country? Fifty-nine percent of us are rational, thinking people and the other forty-one percent are just bat shit crazy. 

Must Be Nice

That was the subject line of an email I got this afternoon. On a morning when I already am in a funk because EAR INFECTION!!!!! And now that I'm on an antibiotic... DRUG SIDE AFFECTS!!!!
I really did used to be one of those people who never got sick. Whatever happened to that? And when did I become the person who experiences side effects of every freaking drug doctors prescribe?

Must be nice to be you.

Well, yes it is actually nice to be me, thank-you very much. But not for the reasons that you think.

It is nice to be me because I have a place to live with person who loves me. A person who routinely drives me precariously close to the edge of the crazy cliff, but a person who loves me nonetheless.

You think you are so perfect.

No, if I were perfect I would have made a little person who wouldn’t drive me crazy. Also she would love to read, not watch the Disney Chanel. Doing homework with her be a seem like a mother/daughter bonding experience, not like I'm stabbing my brain with a pencil.

You have so much money.

Yes, I am lucky enough to have money to pay my rent, buy groceries and keep our lights on. I am lucky that I have enough money left after I have paid our basic living expenses that I also pay for a tween's school activities, and school t-shirts, and yearbooks, and karate lessons, and belt tests, and church retreats, and birthday parties, and school lunches, and school trips, and other luxury items.

I know that it may seem like all these things are paid for by magic. That my daughter gets these things, and we go to Disney World every year because I have discovered the secret of magically pulling money out of thin air, but the truth is, we have these things because I save the money I earn and I don't buy a lot of things new for myself. We have these things because I have a large family and circle of friends that have helped me get by over the years when I couldn't get by on my own.

You aren't perfect.

Believe me, please, when I tell you that I know this. I'm not even good at faking perfect.

My Last Word on Education

Le bateau atelier
Claude Monet

It seems like our public schools are either places where the devil dwells or tombs of learning where angelic teachers jump through molten lava to save the future of our children.

I have a daughter who struggles with school. We can't all be geniuses. We aren't all complete failures either.

I spent the morning with my daughter's teacher and her vice principle. It seems Alex's problem is that she is already getting extra help at school and at home. She isn't doing great, but she isn't failing either. If I were to stop helping her, if she were to fail, a whole host of services would be there to get her the help she needs. But because she hasn't failed yet, there is little else they can do.

Its a frustrating struggle. Being a parent with a child who is falling through the cracks isn't easy. Not having money to pay for private help is maddening.

Really, this whole capitalism thing is great until you find yourself on the bottom trying to get to basic services only open to people at the top. I faced this battle with health care and medical debt. Now I find myself about to go into education debt. I'm taking out a loan so my daughter can be tutored. So my daughter won't have to fail before she can get the help she needs.

Gosh I'm proud to be an American. Best country in the world. Where no rich child is left behind.

Hands Down...

... the US Copyright Office has to be the worst governmental agency I deal with regular basis. As far as I can tell they don't really do much other than issue copyright certificates and yet their processing time for applications is insanely long (up to two years) and they don't even have a 1-800 number to call. I have spent many an afternoon just hitting redial after getting busy signals... (so 1980s) only to speak with a clearly annoyed government employee who seems to be under the impression that my brain cell count is extremely low.

Now, I do realize that this is because they deal with a lot of odd balls. I have seen this in limited numbers in the trademark field, but because getting a copyright requires little effort the problem seems magnified. If you ever have a moment to peruse the FAQ section on the US Copyright Office website, you will get a hint of what I'm talking about. A lot of people are apparently trying to copyright diaries they found in their grandmother's attic, (WTF?) and are ultra worried about their personal information becoming public (do I see a mob of aluminum foil hats in the distance?)

But this has to be the best. I don't know if it was just added, or if I had just always skipped past it, but I saw if for the first time yesterday:


How do I protect my sighting of Elvis? (Follow the link. I did not make this up.)

Copyright law does not protect sightings. However, copyright law will protect your photo (or other depiction) of your sighting of Elvis. . . No one can lawfully use your photo of your sighting, although someone else may file his own photo of his sighting. Copyright law protects the original photograph, not the subject of the photograph. [emphasis added]

Oh, and the tip of the month: Can I get a star named after me and claim copyright to it? The answer is, sadly, NO!

Melodrama

Its Friday. I have written this post every single day this week and deleted it each time. I don't tend to engage this blog in the melodrama of my life. Don't worry, I don't intend to post on this subject regularly. I just feel like I need to get this out.

If I have learned anything from working with litigation and attending arbitrations, it is that we aren't there to argue the facts. We argue people's memories of the facts. The facts they wrote in there notes. The facts as they see them. Whose facts sound the best to the judge?

I found out last week that Alex's health insurance coverage has lapsed. It lapsed a year ago. Apparently everyone knew this except for me. Depending on whose telling the story, either I wasn't told or I'm just extremely thick.

I still don't know which of those scenarios I believe. Either way it seems the majority of the parties involved have decided to blame me. A year ago, Alex's Step-mother asked me if I had a copy of Alex's birth certificate. The insurance company needs one. I don't have one. This is why her insurance lapsed. Because of me. There is more to this conversation, but I'll make a long story short. Step-mother and Father are not responsible for anything. I need to go and get a copy of her birth certificate and mail it to them if I want Alex to be insured.

Now, these kinds of conversations occur about once a year. You know, the ones where something has happened, or not, and really and truly it is all MY fault. I usually just sit, listen and wait for my cue. I wait for the moment when my mouth becomes possessed by demons. Every cuss word is screamed. Every skeleton, no matter how despicable or humiliating, is dragged out of the closet and thrown on the table.

But this time, as I listened to Step-mother babble and giggle (yes, she was literally giggling at me), I found myself uttering the Prayer of Patience which is simply: "Dear Lord, give me patience." I have variations on this prayer. Sometimes I make it: "God give me strength." Occasionally, I just say: "Holy fucking hell." I uttered my prayer, then cut her off. Just as I was about to roar like a mother lion protecting her cub I found myself saying... "I don't care." We were stunned into silence. So I said it again, just to be sure it was real. "I don't care whose fault it is." I was incredibly calm. "Let me send you the web link that will explain everything you need to do to fix this. I'm sorry I can't be of more help, but really this just needs to get taken care of." She started up again. I could hear the adjudication in her voice. So I repeated my new catch phrase, "I don't care" and hung up.

I have thought about this often this week. Could this possible be true? Do I really not care? I'm still mad at them for being the way they are so I guess I do care. But no, I really don't care to talk about it with them anymore. Somehow I feel like Solomon has cut this particular baby in two.