Can you hear me now?

A few weeks after we moved, I decided it was high time to get myself a local cell phone number. It seemed silly to continue using my old phone number, for three reasons. First, it would be a long-distance call from any land line in these parts. Second, on account of the three-hour time difference, I was getting wrong-number calls at 2 or 3 in the morning. Third, even moving 3000 miles away did not make the pharmacy calls stop.

So I called Verizon and requested a new number. I'd changed my number once before, upon moving to California from Ohio, and it had been a very easy process... until I received a bill with an early termination fee on it. It turned out that Verizon's California operations are completely separate from their operations anywhere else. So Verizon's everywhere-but-California office tried to charge me $175 because they were not told by Verizon's California office that I hadn't, in fact, jumped ship. Fortunately, it only took one phone call to straighten that one out.

(It seems many telecommunications companies have separate offices for California-based services. When I signed us up for land line service in California with SBC, they tried to screw us over with this very bizarre method of "credit establishment," which amounted to giving us about 7 calendar days to pay our first couple of bills and then slowly lengthening the payment timeframe. This seemed like a trap, so I called to complain. I pointed out also that I'd had SBC service in Ohio for four years and had never once been late with a payment--hadn't I already demonstrated myself as a good customer? The representative told me that SBC's California office does not have access to records for SBC's operations in any other state. I tried to enlist the help of the California Public Utilities Commission, but apparently this backwards billing method is perfectly legal in California. Your guess is as good as mine.)

Getting my Massachusetts cell phone number was also very easy--almost too easy. Then I got my first bill and noticed that not only did I have late fees for January (a month for which I'd never actually received a bill) but I was being assessed California state and local taxes on my new Massachusetts number. Naturally, I called to rectify the situation. I got the late fee erased after much convincing of the reluctant representative that, during my 6 years with Verizon, I'd never once been late with a payment, and furthermore I'd never been billed for January anyway. She made me acknowledge at least three times that they could only waive the late fee once, whereupon I reminded her each time that I would have happily paid on time, just as I'd happily been doing for six years, if I'd actually received a bill in January.

The matter of the taxes was a little more complex. It seems that when I had called to notify them of my new mailing address--prior to getting my new number--whoever took the call had not also updated the primary location where my phone was being used. So their computer system thought I was receiving mail in Massachusetts but using my phone in California. (Huh?) The person who helped me fix this was very thorough and not the least bit reluctant. I like it when that happens.



I thought all was well until Mrs. Gerbil called me from home yesterday and found that she had to dial 1 and the area code to get through. We do not live in an area with 10-digit dialing. In fact, the entire western half of Massachusetts has the same area code, so local people look at you funny if you give your phone number as 10 digits instead of 7. My new cell number was supposed to be a South Hadley cell number, but it obviously was outside our local calling area. Our local calling area is pretty big, but it's definitely not the entire western half of Massachusetts. What gives?

So I called Verizon and asked where my new number was based. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it was based in Huntington--which is forty-five minutes away! I wasn't all that attached to my new number, and it seemed silly to keep a non-local number that I'd received when I'd asked for a local number, so I asked for a number that was really and truly local. This time I looked the exchange up in the phone book just to make sure. The representative magnanimously volunteered to waive the $10 new-number charge. It all seemed too easy. But we'll see when the bill comes.

That is, if it comes.

Mispronunciation

My aforementioned temp assignment is at a local hospital's VNA and hospice program. (VNA, for those not in the know, stands for "visiting nurse association.") This assignment has involved a lot of personal "firsts," like operating a Pitney-Bowes postage meter, stamping stacks of incoming mail with the date of receipt (which makes me feel oddly East German), and scheduling a UPS pickup.

This particular UPS pickup was an authorized return, and when I provided the representative with the return tracking number, she impressed me by telling me what company I was with. She did not impress me, however, with her reading.

"This is for the VNA and... um... ho-spice?" she asked.

I wonder--is Ho Spice like the Fifth Beatle?

Reality check

I officially started temping this past week. My current assignment is as a receptionist for a local hospital's visiting nurse and hospice program. I am reminded of the bridge in the Barenaked Ladies song "Never is Enough," wherein they sing

You get your Ph.D.
How happy you will be
When you get a job at Wendy's
And are honored with Employee of the Month

I'm not flipping burgers. However, I'm still not getting enough brain-cell exercise. I transfer calls, I open the mail, I operate the freaking awesome postage meter (this is the highlight of my day), and I sit around and stare at stuff. But hey. It's a job.

And I did actually learn something, which is that temp work is a fantastic cure for perfectionism. I will be the first to admit that I am a perfectionist. Many things have made a dent in my perfectionism, mostly having to do with grades which, contrary to my expectations, did not actually bring on the Apocalypse. But old habits die hard, you know, and I want to be the best damn temp there ever was.

Sadly, my efforts to be Super Temp were quickly thwarted. It is the nature of temporary work not to be able to get all the information one needs before diving in... especially when one is filling in for someone who's been doing the same job for almost two decades. Temps are expected to screw things up. (Indeed, I got blamed for doing something I couldn't possibly have done, as I was in the bathroom at the time.) And when there are pre-existing chronic communication problems in the workplace, the whole thing is even worse.

This is, like, totally awesome exposure therapy.

On authority

One of the formative events of Mrs. Gerbil's and my relationship was her accompaniment of my audition for the Newtown Chamber Orchestra's Young Musician Competition when we were but wee high school sophomores. I auditioned with the first movement of Vivaldi's Spring. Alas, I did not win (though a few months later I did win the Youth Orchestra of Bucks County's soloist competition, with the third movement of Mozart's Concerto #5); but we had a lot of fun.

As a thank-you to Mrs. Gerbil for her mad piano skills, my parents and I gave her a CD of The Compleat Four Seasons, featuring none other than Patrick Stewart reading the sonnets which the concerti illustrate. (Didn't know that the Seasons are based on sonnets that may--or may not--have been written by Vivaldi himself? Check it out, yo.)

Oddly enough, it took me nearly thirteen years to listen to this CD myself. But I finally did the other day, and I have to say that Patrick Stewart truly has the most wonderful voice. Violinist Arnie Roth isn't half bad himself; but oh, Patrick Stewart is marvelous.

I would do anything Patrick Stewart told me to do.

Okay, fine, if Patrick Stewart told me to jump off a bridge, I wouldn't.

At least, I probably wouldn't.

But I'd do pretty much anything else.



(Oh, and yes, I own that Picard action figure pictured above. Remind me sometime to tell you about the red felt carrying case I fashioned for him and his accessories.)

Blessings and curses

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but western Massachusetts has a much more reasonable cost of living than does the Bay Area. For example, I bought a gallon of store-brand skim milk the other day at Stop & Shop for $3.69. A month ago we were buying store-brand skim milk from Safeway for $4.59 per gallon. (The gerb demands a lot of milk these days, so milk prices make me a lot happier than they probably ought to.)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is also a lot more concerned about health insurance than is the State of California. California's approach seems to be "let's wait until something goes horribly wrong, then get medieval on some asses" (as in the Blue Cross recission fiasco). Massachusetts' approach, by contrast, seems to be "let's see how much ass-medievalizing we can prevent." Recent legislation requires pretty much every resident to have his or her own health insurance--with steep monthly fines to deter potential law-breakers. Most employers are required to provide at least some kind of health benefit. There is even a state agency, the Commonwealth Connector, via which one can obtain insurance if one can't get anything through one's employer.

Unfortunately, the requirements placed on employers are pretty vague in terms of what constitutes minimum coverage. Mrs. Gerbil (who has found part-time work) and I (with the promise of temp work) have both been offered extraordinarily crappy coverage through our new respective employers. The plan which I've been offered has a very low maximum annual inpatient benefit which stands an excellent chance of being exhausted by the birth of the gerb--assuming, of course, no complications. The outpatient benefit doesn't cover preventive care, and the plan certainly doesn't cover mental health treatment.

Mrs. Gerbil has a choice of three coverage levels, two of which will only pay for 5 outpatient doctor's visits and 3 emergency room visits (presumably excluding ER services that lead to inpatient admission) per year. WTF? Now, I'm all for getting people hooked up with outpatient providers instead of using the ER for primary care, but if you've used up your five (again, WTF?) outpatient visits and you get a sinus infection, the only way to get the treatment covered seems to be to go to the ER. ('Course, the ER deductible might be more than the out-of-pocket cost of an office visit...) Again, there's no coverage for mental health treatment, and maternity care is subject to the same limits as other conditions.

My stint as a managed-care monkey gave me a very solid lesson in what sorts of questions one should ask about benefit design. However, it also taught me what constitutes a reasonable coverage limit. Naturally, I decided to call both of these insurance companies and press them a little on what exactly they cover and exclude.

First I called the plan I was offered. I waited on hold a long, long time and was eventually bumped into voicemail. The outgoing message promised a call back within 24 hours. I was not surprised when 26 hours went by with no call back, so I waited on hold some more and finally spoke to a very nice representative who really knew her stuff. She informed me that prenatal care is not considered preventive care (after all, pregnancy is a sickness), and therefore it is covered. She explained the various components of the inpatient benefit, the process by which one obtains reimbursement for prescriptions, and how to get documentation of prior coverage so as to be exempt from the pre-existing condition clause.

Verdict: plan sucks, but not as much as it could.

Then I called the plan Mrs. Gerbil was offered. I asked whether the outpatient visit limit also applied to prenatal care. The representative confirmed that it did. "That's amazing," I said, "and not in a good way. I'm in my third trimester, and even with a perfectly normal pregnancy I have to go to the midwife every two weeks!" The representative made an ambiguous little noise. I decided not to tell her that once I reach nine months, I'll have to go every single week. Instead I asked whether well-baby care and immunizations are covered, and if so, are those also limited to five visits. The answers: yes and yes. (The American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendations include no fewer than seven well-baby visits in the first year of life.)

Then I posed a more complicated question. Massachusetts has a fairly extensive mental health parity law. This plan has no mental health coverage whatsoever, so how is it exempt? The representative put me on hold, which I knew to mean that she had to ask her supervisor. When she came back on the line, she said that her supervisor (ha! I was right) told her it is because of the "delivery state." It didn't sound like the representative really understood this herself, but I happen to know from my all-too-recent managed-care-monkey days that exemption from parity laws depends on the state where the policy is written (and not where the patient lives) and how it is funded. (I swear, I wasn't trying to fake her out or anything! I just wanted to know!)

Verdict: plan sucks far more than expected.

And this, my friends, is reason #392 why I support universal health care.

Trainspotting

I went down to Pennsylvania for about 48 hours this past weekend. Now that Mrs. Gerbil and I live on the East Coast, it's much easier to plan last-minute trips to my parents' house. Instead of being cooped up in a plane for 5 hours, plus enduring all the aggravations of the airport, I stretched out on Amtrak for 5 hours.

In my experience, time passes much more quickly on the train than on the plane. For one, there's cool stuff to see outside. You can gauge your progress by which stops the train has yet to make. The seats are wide, there's lots of legroom, the bathrooms are reasonably sized, and you can walk up and down the aisles the whole time without getting stuck behind a beverage cart or being ordered to go put your seatbelt on. Because the train doesn't have seatbelts.

I think there's a certain beauty in the run-down structures that one typically sees along the tracks. Also, I find trainyards absolutely fascinating. I can't explain it. This journey definitely did not disappoint on either the dilapidated building front or the trainyard front.

In one of the trainyards in Connecticut, I spied the most amazing maintenance of way cars. I am not sure what they are called, but they are flat and have a big metal steering wheel type thing on one end. They can be connected to each other or to an engine, and they are obviously not for transporting anything beyond the yard. One of these cars was particularly awesome. At one end was stenciled the following instruction:

DO NOT HUMP

I'm sure this means something very particular in train-speak. At least, I hope it does. Either way, it's very good advice.

And the survey says...

First things first: We have phone service! The Verizon guy came this morning and had everything working in less than 10 minutes. Praise the Lord and pass the address book! Haven't heard from our case manager, though we did get a nice (albeit rather superfluous) phone call on our land line to inform us that our phone was now in service. Right-o. That only took two weeks...

And now for other things.

In the mail the other day we received a "Consumer Product Survey of America." I have no intention of filling this out, as doing so will only result in our being bombarded with junk mail. Even if I did not provide our address, I'm guessing that the serial number on the form is already associated with same. And besides, most of the questions don't pertain to our shopping habits anyway.

However, just for laughs I reviewed the survey thoroughly. I found that the "not applicable" field descriptions were priceless. For example:



and my personal favorite:


This all kind of reminds me of lolcat syntax:



I couldn't have said it better myself.

Playing telephone

First, some ketchup: Day Five of our cross-country drive took us to my parents' house in good old Newtown, PA; and Day Six took us to our new home in South Hadley, MA. We've been here since January 13, but we only just got the internet to come into the house this morning. Thus, my lapse in blogging. Sorry about that. (In any event, there wasn't anything funny on Day Five except my parents; and by the time we actually made it to our new abode, we were too tired to consider anything funny.)

So, yes, the internet now successfully comes into the house. The telephone, however, does not. Verizon was supposed to have connected our new phone number on January 11, such that it would work when we arrived a few days later.

It did not.

Well, that's not entirely true. We plugged a phone into the jack and got a dial tone.

When we moved to Berkeley, we discovered that we had a dial tone but no ability to receive calls, as some other number was coming into the house instead of the one we'd ordered. Amazingly, SBC was able to fix the problem within 48 hours. What had apparently happened was that the previous tenants had not disconnected their phone service (which was with another company), so SBC had to send someone up the pole to unplug the line and plug it in again. And voila, we had our rightful phone number.

Having learned well from this experience, I called my cell phone from our newly-plugged-in Massachusetts phone to see what number came up on the caller ID. And lo, it was not our phone number.

So I called Verizon on the 14th and asked them please to hook up our phone which was supposed to have been hooked up on the 11th. I was assured that this would be done by the end of the business day.

It was not.

I called again on the 15th and asked them please to hook up our phone. The representative said that there was defective wiring outside the house, and that it would be corrected either by the end of the week or by February 8. I expressed my frustration that (1) our service had not been connected as scheduled and (2) no one had contacted me to inform me of any problems, when I'd provided my cell phone number for exactly this reason upon placing the order. I made the representative promise me that we would not be charged for phone service until it actually worked. Then I asked what we were supposed to do about all the people (read: potential employers) to whom we'd given our non-working number. The representative offered us a voice mailbox.

"I hope we don't have to pay for that either," I said. The representative thought for a moment and then agreed that we would not be charged for voicemail. Score!

By the end of last week, we still did not have a working phone line. So I called Verizon again. I was told that there was a problem with the outside line--more specifically, that there was no line coming into the house.

"That's interesting," I said, "because every call I've made about this issue has been from a phone that is plugged into a jack in my kitchen."

(This is oddly similar to a situation frequently encountered by Childhood Friend J, who used to work for the phone company in Wisconsin. The difference is that his callers would call him to say their phones weren't working at all--then inform him that the number they were calling from was the one that was out of service.)

I was assured that there was, indeed, a problem outside the house, and that someone would fix it as soon as possible. I was also offered a rather condescending explanation of "how phone lines work," which I politely (okay, semi-politely) declined.

Yesterday, we were very excited to see a Verizon guy up the pole that serves our house. Oh, frabjous day! Calloo, callay! But alas, by evening we still did not have our phone. So I called Verizon again. Verizon said that the number that was coming to our house used to belong to the animal hospital across the street. The animal hospital had since switched carriers and phone numbers, but through the miracle of crossed lines, we somehow wound up with their old number. Verizon also said that the pole-climber had indeed found a working line up there, which could be routed to our house once another technician could come to unplug some wires in our network interface box and then plug them back in again. Verizon promised that this would be done by 11am today. Verizon also promised that I would get "more confirmation calls than I probably wanted" today, not just from the repair department but also from our case manager.

I feel a little weird being case-managed by the phone company.

Needless to say, by 2pm today no one had gone near our network interface box. I called Verizon again and, after initially being told that there was no work order on file for today, was promised that "someone will be out by the end of the day today." It's now well after dark, and not only does our phone still not work, but I haven't received any of these fabled multiple confirmation calls.

I'd call our case manager (again, being case-managed by the phone company? totally weird) but I have no way to get in touch with her.

Verizon must be taking lessons from the Department of Mental Health.

On the road: Day Four

Today we had a relatively short day of driving--eight hours as opposed to ten or ten and a half. We drove from Lonoke, AR, to Knoxville, TN. This particular stretch of I-40 is equally rich in churches and porn shops, as Mrs. Gerbil observes.

I didn't take any scenic pictures today. I did, however, capture some amazing truck graffiti:



(The world on time, indeed!)

Also we passed arguably the best-named town in the entire state of Tennessee:



(Yes, that does say "Bucksnort.")

America the Beautiful? Try America the Weird!

On the road: Day Three

Today we made it all the way from Amarillo, TX, to Lonoke, AR. Lonoke is about twenty minutes or so east of Little Rock. My cell phone doesn't work very well here, and the phone book is about as thick as your average elementary school novel, but lodgings are much cheaper in these parts than they are in Little Rock.

The cat complained a lot more than usual today--almost four hours of pissed-off meowing. She finally settled down for a (thankfully very long) nap in the early afternoon. We determined that she was just frustrated with being in the car for so long. She's not the only one!

Odd sightings of the day:

1) The Northern Hemisphere's Largest Cross, or so the billboard would have one believe. It's in a field just east of Groom, TX. And indeed, it is humongous.



2) The Alanreed Jail. It's in the microscopic town of Alanreed, TX, at a perfectly respectable (though also microscopic) combination of a gas station, country store, and post office.



The only other customers at the gas pump were two guys about our age who were also on their way to western Massachusetts from California. Small world!

On the road: Day Two

Today we drove from Kingman, AZ, to Amarillo, TX. It was a very, very long day. Three of the four of us (i.e., Mrs. Gerbil, the cat, and I) were rather displeased by the length of today's drive. The cat, on the other hand, feels the need to complain a lot before allowing herself to be lulled. She'll go to sleep after about an hour of kvetching; but that first hour is not pleasant for anyone involved.



The scenery, however, was lovely. For some reason I hadn't realized that the desert would be covered in snow in the beginning of January--perhaps because when I think "desert" I think "hot." But there was quite a bit of snow throughout much of Arizona and New Mexico.



We made it almost all the way across New Mexico before the sun set. Said sunset lit up an awesome cloud formation in the eastern sky.



Odd spotting of the day: a purveyor of ostrich eggs and half-price meteorites. Well, actually, we didn't see the place itself, only its billboard.



What I want to know is this: Who determines the regular price of meteorites?

On the road: Day One

Mrs. Gerbil and I are en route to our new place in western Massachusetts. Today we drove from our lovely extended stay quarters in Emeryville, CA, to Kingman, AZ. (We had left our Berkeley apartment on New Year's Eve day to accommodate the landlords, but to accommodate our employers, we had remained in the Bay Area another week.)

Before today, I had never seen California's Central Valley, which was long and full of artificially irrigated orchards. Further down the road, while the sun was still up, Mrs. Gerbil and I enjoyed the Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, which we agreed looked like something out of Dr. Seuss.

Of course, we also noted a fair number of odd things. We saw an RV called the Citation, which we agreed was even better than the Intruder. We saw a billboard advertising a (poorly proofread but profoundly jerky-riffic) website, FreshJerky.com.

We spotted a restaurant in Barstow called Bun Boy. I am not making this up.


Finally, there is a rather large prison bus in the parking lot of our motel. Neither Mrs. Gerbil nor I wants to know what the Arizona Department of Corrections is doing on the premises.

And tango makes three

We have some designs on the gerb--namely, that it will be a musician. It probably doesn't matter whether musical aptitude is determined by nature or nurture (or some combination of both), as both of its mommies are musicians from musical families.

And already the gerb has definite preferences. It gets all excited when I break out the violin and play unaccompanied Bach, though it tends to sleep through the rest of my repertoire. It dances when Mrs. Gerbil plays this one tango by Albeñiz, but it stays quiet when she plays anything else. It slumbers through violin and piano duets, yet it totally partied when we went to hear the awesome Italian guitarist Roberto Dalla Vecchia a few months ago. But the rhythm that gets it going the most is still the tango.

Mrs. Gerbil likes to sing lullabies to it, a practice which looks to the untrained eye like her serenading my navel. (As the gerb reliably starts to stir when it is mommies' bedtime, I fear that it will start to associate lullabies with waking up!) Last night she decided to sing it some tangos.

Well, we only know two tangos with words ("Hernando's Hideaway" and "The Tango Maureen") so this was a short-lived activity. Neither of these songs is particularly appropriate for babies, but the gerb got down and boogied nonetheless.

What a sophisticated creature is the little gerb!

In other news, today is my 28th birthday. Daaaaaaaaaaaang.

HIPAA and the Good Samaritan

I received a call the other day from a man who said he'd found a wallet with an insurance card inside it. On the insurance card was a phone number, and when he called it, he got me. He wanted to return the wallet (and the money and credit cards inside) to its owner, and he requested the member's phone number for this purpose.

Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do to help this kind man. HIPAA prevented me from acknowledging even that the wallet's owner had this insurance in the first place--to say nothing of giving out his phone number. I apologized profusely for my inability to help him, suggested he enlist the help of the local police, and added that the wallet's owner would surely appreciate his efforts.

May your holidays be full of good will toward all--and be unencumbered by complicated federal privacy legislation.

Assumptions

My cubicle is strategically located by the breakroom. Thus, lots of people stop to say "hi"... but apparently lots of people also stop to check out my decor when I'm not there. And when someone introduces him- or herself to me at work, I usually hear "I love looking at all the decorations in your cube!"

So I will fall into conversation with this person. This person will ask when I got married, where I got married, etc. It's also pretty obvious by now that I am pregnant--I've gained almost 20 pounds (a little more than one-sixth of my pre-pregnancy weight) since late July, and it's pretty much all out in front--so we talk about pregnancy and babies and morning sickness and things like that too.

And then this person will ask what my husband does for a living.

In my cubicle I have six framed photographs. These include 4x6 prints of my two best friends and me, my parents and me on Wedding Day, Mrs. Gerbil at the zoo, our phenomenal but lazy-at-blogging cat, and my cousin and me. There is also a 5x7 print of Mrs. Gerbil and me on Wedding Day. In this picture we are wearing our big bridal gowns and our matching floral hair garlands, and we are toting identical bridal bouquets.

Make no mistake: this is not a picture of two sisters in a double wedding. This is a picture of two chicks getting married to each other.

(What makes this question even more bizarre is that the only man in any of these photographs is my father. If I had a husband, wouldn't you think I'd have some pictures of him up on display?)

So I tell this person that I have no husband, that this (here I point to the aforementioned 5x7) is my better half. And this person will apologize profusely and say things like "This is San Francisco; I should really know better than to make assumptions like that."

I should say so!

Weasel words

After Mrs. Gerbil determined that she writes like a man, we had ourselves a lively discussion about what, exactly, makes for manly vs. womanly (girly?) writing. When I analyzed several sections of my dissertation, I found that I write like a weak (girly?) man, or possibly a European man, or maybe a European metrosexual. But other writings of mine--especially letters of complaint--came back strongly male.

I freely admit: my nickname in late adolescence was "Manly Woman," on account of my death-grip handshake and my arm-wrestling prowess.

Mrs. Gerbil's theory was that scientific writing, especially in social sciences, contains more "weasel words" than in other areas. Social scientists such as yours truly are taught never to write "X is," but rather "X may be," or "the data suggest that X is" or "it appears safe to conclude that X." This is an unfortunate effect of the scientific method, whereby you can never actually prove anything, just disprove its opposite (i.e., the null hypothesis) within a reasonable margin of error (i.e., less than 5%).

But theologians such as my better half don't engage in a whole lot of hypothesis testing. They just come up with an interpretation, hopefully think about it for a while to make sure it's internally consistent, and present it. They don't need to do validation studies to see if their conclusions hold up under different conditions. I suppose it's all just a matter of faith for them.

So then this begged the question of how social scientists insult each other. (Trust me. It did.) If we social scientists really wanted to be true to our hypothesis-testing heritage, we might have to say things like

The data suggest that you suck.

It appears that you suck.

We can confidently reject the null hypothesis that you do not suck.

You suck (p < .05).

It appears safe to conclude that you suck. However, further research is recommended to determine what factors, if any, mediate or moderate your suckage.

And now, if you will excuse me, I must go calculate the Spearman's rho of your mom.

Assorted tidbits

1. If you know me in real life and/or read Mrs. Gerbil's blog, then you already know that we are moving to Massachusetts in a little less than a month. If you don't know me in real life and do not read Mrs. Gerbil's blog, you are hereby informed that we are finally moving back East! (And why aren't you a reader of Mrs. Gerbil's blog? Hm?)

2. Many people have asked whether we will be having a home birth for the gerb. We are not. (Or, at least, we're not planning one.) This is mainly because we doubt our new landlords would appreciate my giving birth on their carpets.

3. It was ridiculously windy here yesterday. I left the house (for a walk to the post office) with wet, fresh-from-the-shower hair. I returned 15 minutes later with completely dry hair.

4. Rite Lite Hanukkah candles totally suck. I think a more appropriate name for them would be "Rong Lite."

Dream on

I had a very strange dream the other night. I don't recall most of it, but high-capacity porta-potties figured prominently therein. And in my dream, they were called...

...Oodles of Doodles.

I'm pretty clever even in my sleep, eh?

Getting carried away

There has been a surge in disciplinary action for "sexual harassment" among schoolchildren. "Sexual harassment" appears to mean "hugs." A preschooler was suspended for hugging a teacher's aide. A junior high student served detention for hugging friends. Schools have developed very strict no-contact policies that even ban hand-holding. (Huh? Isn't that how you keep track of your field-trip buddy?)

It seems that the Powers That Be have forgotten what sexual harassment actually is. Sexual harassment is, at its core, unwanted (and unsolicited) sexual attention. It might be overt; it might be subtle; but in any case, sexual harassment creates an uncomfortable and/or hostile environment for the recipient.

Now, I suppose the preschool teacher's aide might have felt uncomfortable when the little boy hugged her. Freud be damned, four-year-olds do not have the same understanding of sexual behavior as do adults--or even adolescents. Can sexual harassment exist where the alleged perpetrator does not know what constitutes sexual behavior?

Plus: if you give your best friend a (totally non-sexual) hug and she welcomes it, an observer should not be able to declare that you have engaged in sexual misconduct. Perhaps the observer is uncomfortable with public displays of affection; but if neither the hugger nor the hugged believes there is anything remotely libidinous about the embrace, then what evidence is there to support a third party's decision that yes, there was something sexual about that 5-second hug?

I suppose I feel rather strongly about this issue not only because it's patently ridiculous, but also because I was sexually harassed in junior high and the perpetrators were not punished. To put it mildly, as a grade schooler I was never among the popular crowd. I was also a year younger than everyone else in my grade. By junior high, not only was I still shorter than everyone else, but I was also not going through puberty with everyone else. The boys teased the more well-endowed girls and snapped their bra straps... but they teased me just as much ("Roses are red, violets are black; why is your chest as flat as your back?") and made a big show of attempting to snap a bra strap I didn't have. At recess, the boys liked to shove me "accidentally" via my equally flat little butt. I complained to the assistant principal. His response? "They like you." (I told him that, if that was the case, they needed some instruction in the proper demonstration of their affections.)

And in eighth grade, the boys whose lockers were on either side of mine for the entirety of junior high (God bless the alphabet) took it upon themselves to say all sorts of bizarre, inappropriate, and unrepeatable things to me, adding the occasional "accidental" shove. Finally, my mother went to our homeroom teacher and demanded that this sort of thing stop. It did, mostly. But not entirely. For although my young, female homeroom teacher sided with my mother and me, the older, male administration still maintained that "boys will be boys."

Yeah, I hated junior high.

I don't think kids have changed much in the 16 years since I began the seventh grade. Boys are still boys, girls are still girls, junior high still sucks, puberty is still long and embarrassing. Forbidding children and adolescents from engaging in "good touch," because it's just a slippery slope down to "bad touch," won't change any of that.

Human contact is precious, instinctive, and important. Perhaps sucking face in the hallway between classes should be banned; but not friendly hugs. When we police innocent displays of friendship and appreciation, we risk instilling outright fear of human contact in a generation already more comfortable with virtual socializing than with face-to-face interaction.

Another fun pregnancy post: Things that make me happy

1. My new sock monkey slippers from Target. I prefer ballet slippers to scuffs, but my feet are starting to swell on account of the gerb; and so these (with their memory foam soles) are just plain awesome right now. For maximum sock-monkey-osity, I wear my sock monkey slippers with monkey socks.

2. Cocoa Creme Tums Smoothies. Okay, so I turned up my nose at vanilla chai deodorant. But since chocolate itself currently gives me heartburn (so tragic!), I think it's only fair that I have chocolate-flavored heartburn relief.

3. Seeing our little wiggler on ultrasound yesterday. It put on quite the show!