Not-so-phunny pharm

I have terrible allergies.

Often people ask me which is my allergy season. I have no allergy season because in my world it's always allergy season. And so I must take anti-allergy (and anti-asthma) medications every single day. I've been doing this since I was three years old. It's old hat. In fact, I can rattle off the name of almost every prescription and OTC allergy drug I've taken over the past 24 years. Most of these have since gone off the market, been reformulated, or just spontaneously stopped working for me.

Which leaves me, at the moment, with three prescriptions to contend with. My insurance company loves exactly one of these. Another they agreed to love when my doctor assured them that I do, as a matter of fact, have asthma. A third they agreed to tolerate when my doctor assured them that none of the other drugs out there are effective for me. (When I rattled off my prescription history for her, she stopped me after a minute or two and said, "I think maybe we'll just mention a few of those.")

On Friday I went to the pharmacy for some refills. I was quite surprised, and not in a pleasant way, to find that the aforementioned third medication cost $50 instead of my usual $15. My insurance sets co-pays of $15 for generics it likes, $25 for brand-name drugs it likes, and $50 for anything it doesn't like. I freaked out, but knowing I'd be in a world of hurt without this stuff, I paid for it anyway. Once outside the store, I called the insurance company to inquire as to WTF?

The representative offered me three absolutely ridiculous explanations:

1. Your prior authorization expired yesterday.
Okay, so first of all I had no idea that prior authorizations expire. Second of all, I'd gotten preauthorizations for both my refills on the same day last year, but only one of them had a co-pay change this year. For the one which did not change, my doctor merely stated that I had a life-long history of asthma, and amazing! it still costs $25 instead of $50. I was left to conclude that diagnosis-related prior authorizations don't expire, but drug-related ones do. Which is odd, considering how long it would take to demonstrate each year that the rest of the formulary still doesn't work. That wouldn't get points for patient-friendliness, either. So why should my doctor have to remind the insurance company of my history every 12 months?

2. Oh, and that drug changed tiers as of the first of the year, so it's always going to be $50, even though it's generic.
Last year, it was tier 3, which meant $50 per fill unless my doctor and I jumped through hoops to lower the cost to $15. From tier 3, there's nowhere to go but up. Curious about whether they'd quietly implemented the industry's first 4-tier system, I asked the representative which tier it was now. "Three," she said. I pointed out that it was tier 3 in 2006, and it's tier 3 in 2007, so what's the difference? Had they changed the co-pay rules for tier 3? "No," she said. So if I get my prior authorization renewed, I should get my medication for $15 again, right?

3. No, because the prior authorization isn't related to how much you pay. Your doctor has to demonstrate medical necessity for us to cover the drug. You can't get it filled at all without a valid prior authorization.
Obviously I had successfully filled my prescription that day, so what's this about needing a prior authorization to do it? "Um," said the representative. If the drug (sticker price: about $75) will cost me $50 with a prior authorization, and I've just proven that it also costs $50 without a prior authorization, then what, pray tell, is the point of the prior authorization? Isn't the prior authorization supposed to give me my own personal formulary? "The pharmacy that was charging you $15 was making a mistake," she said, changing the subject, "but it was saving you money." It's not saving me money now, I replied, and the pharmacy just charges me what you tell them to. "Um," said the representative.

Unfortunately, before we could get this all settled, I had to go to work. And the insurance company is closed over the weekend--so I've got to wait until tomorrow to get to the bottom of

THE MYSTERY OF
THE PHARMACY BENEFITS
THAT NO ONE,
NOT EVEN MEMBER SERVICES,
UNDERSTANDS.

Tune in next time for another exciting episode of Gerbil vs. the demons of Market-Driven Healthcare!

In which my good turn daily turns bad.

Around here, there are lots and lots of homeless (or nearly homeless) people. Many of my clients are homeless, have recently been homeless, or are teetering on the edge of homelessness. Many of the people with whom I chat at the bus stop fall into one of those categories as well. Very few of the people I encounter on the street are of the screaming-at-fire-hydrant sort. Those who are (like the gentleman I encountered today, who demanded to know, "Who is going to resurrect Batman? Who is going to resurrect the Penguin? We need the Addams family! You have these dungeons with dead people in them! Those dungeons you have are full of people! Who will resurrect Batman and Robin? Frankenstein knows what you did last night!") just happen often to be louder and more malodorous than the rest.

I am hesitant to give out money. My work has taught me that many people do use this money for alcohol or drugs, although perfectly well-housed people also buy alcohol and drugs. But this is only part of the reason why I don't respond to requests for my spare change... with my spare change. If I give someone a quarter or two, it's not going to do them much good because everything here is just so ridiculously expensive. What I prefer to do, when I'm able (I'm not exactly loaded myself), is to bypass the "could you spare some change" and go straight to the "so I can get something to eat."

I've only had one person really and truly turn me down. He was adamant that I give him a dollar "for something to eat." I didn't have a dollar on me, but I did have a bag lunch with two yogurts, some pretzels, and an apple. I offered him the yogurt, but he said he couldn't eat dairy and did I have a dollar? I offered him the pretzels, but he said he couldn't eat salt and did I have a dollar? I offered him the apple, but he said he didn't want any fruit either and did I have a dollar?

Last night my best friend and I went to see Dar Williams in concert. I got to the venue a little before my friend did, so I scoped out the neighborhood for a little snacky-snack. As luck would have it, the neighborhood consisted almost entirely of bars, a few Indian and Mexican, and fancy townhouses. I don't drink, I don't get along well with Indian or Mexican food, and I certainly don't raid the fridges of total strangers, so I didn't have a whole lot of options.

And then this woman came up to me. She wanted fifty cents for some yogurt. She said she was several months pregnant and very hungry. I said I'd be happy to take her to the deli across the street and buy her a sandwich or something. But she wanted to go to the Mexican place with the juice bar "because it's more nutritious." I couldn't really argue with that, so in we went.

There was a pretty long line, which gave us several minutes to chat. I asked about her pregnancy, her living situation, what kind of social services she was getting, whether she knew about various types of government assistance... Her story seemed quite genuine, all the details hanging together. She asked me for fifty cents to call the doctor in the morning. "The place you're staying doesn't have a phone?" I asked. She said it didn't. I gave her fifty cents (actually, fifty-five) on the condition that she ask her doctor to hook her up with a social worker.

Suddenly, we were at the head of the line. The cashier (who was probably also the manager) took one look at us and started doing something with the register tape. I stared her down, and finally, after several more people came into the restaurant and queued up behind us, she asked for our order. My companion got out half her order before the cashier/manager cut her off and asked me what I wanted.

"Nothing for me, thanks," I said, "I'm paying for her. And I don't think she's done with her order."

The cashier/manager person went back to doing whatever it was with the register tape. With some prompting from me, my companion continued with her order. The cashier/manager continued to ignore her. "I don't think she heard you," I said, loud enough for the cashier/manager to hear. "Say again what you want."

The cashier/manager whispered to me, "We've had problems with her. What can I get for you?"

"Nothing for me. I'm just buying her some dinner," I repeated.

"I want this for here," my companion said.

"You can't have it for here," said the cashier/manager. "You have to have it to go."

"This is discrimination!" said my companion.

"You can wait outside and I will bring it to you," said the cashier/manager. She asked for my name. I told her but then said to put the order under my companion's name, as I had to leave and really, I was buying dinner for this woman. The cashier/manager reluctantly accepted my payment.

To my companion, I said, "I'm really sorry. She says she will bring you your food outside. I can't really do anything else." My companion looked very sad, but then she spotted a newly empty table inside--and happily sat down with her drink and her cookie, awaiting her taco. She gave me a hug, thanked me for helping her out, and declared that I was a godsend.

I looked back over my shoulder as I left to meet up with my friend. As far as I could tell, no one forced this woman outside to wait for her meal. I heard no ranting, raving, yelling, or screaming. I saw no young, well-dressed customer storm out on account of the slightly disheveled, very pregnant woman in their midst.

The whole thing left me with, well, a really bad taste in my mouth. It was clear that this woman had a history with this particular establishment. Perhaps she often begs for food there. Maybe she sits inside and nurses a single can of soda all day when it's cold and rainy, and the owners and the locals think she's an eyesore. Whatever the back story, the cashier/manager was doing her very best to put off a customer. Unless things have changed drastically since my days of food service work in high school, the customer is still the person with the wallet.

As a well-dressed young adult with a wallet, I was no different from the rest of the well-dressed young adults with wallets in the restaurant... except that I wasn't opening my wallet for myself that night. Sure, the staff has the right to refuse service to anyone; but whether I'm buying for myself or for someone in a faded hand-me-down sweater, my seven dollars ought to be as good as anyone else's.

What was that again about the kindess of strangers?



PS:
M., take good care of you and your baby.

Nine Inch Flippers

On the side of a building somewhere between the Lake Merritt and West Oakland BART stations, someone has spray-painted the following exhortation:

GOTHIC DOLPHINS,
NOT BOMBS!

Which leaves Mrs. Gerbil and I to wonder: what, exactly, is a gothic dolphin? Does it intentionally get itself caught in tuna nets?

Meanwhile, at Trinity General...

A man claiming to be Jesus is brought to the emergency room. The triage nurse hands him some carbonless forms and a clipboard and says, "Make sure you press hard with that pen. We need to be able to read all three pages."

The man stares at the forms for a minute, then tears off the first sheet and starts to fill it in.

"Hey!" says the triage nurse. "I thought I told you those are in triplicate!"

"One, three--it doesn't really matter," says the man. "It's all the same thing anyway."

I like pie

A bunch of us were in the Safeway in Mountain View a few weeks ago, looking for items for our Low Maintenance Shabbat dinner. The rules: everything had to be vegetarian, relatively not-disgusting, and needing nothing more than heating. We opted for veggie dogs, cheese curls, and pie a la mode. One of us (not I) was an over-acheiver and, entirely against the rules, made some miso soup from scratch. Apparently we were all craving salt and sugar.

We had a difficult time deciding on a pie. In my opinion, store-bought pies are generally foul. I would like to think of myself as a master baker, but I am also a goody-two-shoes (see above), and so I wasn't about to spend a whole afternoon making a pie from scratch for Low Maintenance Shabbat. Somehow, even with my strong opinions about store-bought pies, I ended up with the job of choosing our pie.

There were so many pies! Oh, so many pies--and all of them generally foul-looking. Then I noticed the best pie of all:

Sugar-free marionberry.

What do they put in there instead of sugar? Crack?

Help wanted

Helping Our Lovely Individuals Eliminate Risk by Teaching Healthier Alternatives Naturally and Touting Happy Opportunities Universally (HOLIERTHANTHOU) is seeking an
ALL-AROUND ROCKSTAR PART-TIME COUNSELOR/ROLE MODEL/EDUCATOR/ADVOCATE/MANAGER/YOUTH OUTREACH SPECIALIST!

Job Description:
The Counselor/Role Model/Educator/Advocate/Manager/Youth Outreach Specialist (CREAMY) is responsible for the design, delivery, and evaluation of HOLIERTHANTHOU's social services program. We offer a wide variety of activities and support to the individuals who need them. The CREAMY is involved in all facets of HOLIERTHANTHOU's work. The CREAMY also provides administrative support to the Executive Director, including (but not limited to) stocking and ordering supplies, photocopying library books, filling lunch and Starbucks orders, and providing childcare for two-year-old triplets.

Compensation:
The position of CREAMY is budgeted for 20 hours per week (FTE $20,000). However, you should expect to work at least 35 hours per week, with anything over 20 hours unpaid. Evenings, weekends, and holidays are required, as is occasional overtime (up to 15 hours per week) and work from your deathbed. Please note that this is an exempt position. Travel (30% of time) is required. We do not reimburse for mileage or parking. The ideal candidate would be just as happy doing this work for free.

Qualifications:
1. Quadri-lingual in English, Spanish, and two of the following languages: Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog, American Sign Language, Russian, Vietnamese, Klingon.
2. Master's degree or higher in something vaguely related to social services. Life experience may be substituted for all or part of the education requirement.
3. Valid driver's license, clean DMV record, and reliable hybrid vehicle (preferably blue in color). You must provide a copy of your title and registration with your application. Applicants with Hummers will not be considered.
3. A commitment to HOLIERTHANTHOU's vision of diversity, cultural competency, and respect for everyone who agrees with us. Jaundiced lesbian women with three nipples and a pet iguana are strongly encouraged to apply.
4. A commitment to HOLIERTHANTHOU's commitment to provide quality social services in a committed fashion.

Benefits:
Knowing that you work for the best social service agency in the universe.

Please submit cover letter, resume, transcripts, K-12 report cards, photocopies of vehicle title and registration, photocopy of Red Cross blood donor card (including blood type), and five letters of reference (one of which must be from a previous babysitter) to the Executive Director by 1/31/07.

Playing around

Count me among those wigged out by the "Left Behind" video game. I don't even need to explain why, because others' snarks are more than sufficient.

This morning I read that there will be (or perhaps already is) a video game based on the TV series Lost. I've never seen the show, nor do I like video games in the first place; but I'm not sure it was a good marketing decision to title this new product LOST: THE GAME.

Perhaps what matters really is how you play the game.

Can't we all just get along?

"Cultural competence" is currently quite the topic of interest in mental health services, especially in California. A lot of people here are peeing themselves over making sure that their agencies are "culturally competent." In my never-ending quest for a Better Job, I keep coming across ads that devote more space to the agency's interest in "cultural competency" than to the description of the actual job.

I disagree with the entire concept of "cultural compentency." How do you know when you are "culturally competent"? There is no exam to take, no set of prohibitively expensive workshops to attend, no embossed certificate to hang on your wall. And who gets to decide which "cultures" one must be "competent" in? Most of us aren't even "competent" in our own culture--let alone able to describe exactly our own cultural influences.

"Cultural competency," I think, implies a mysterious package of skills. I would rather be culturally aware. I think it's important to know at least basic things about other cultural groups, especially as may affect therapy. But we should learn from our clients as much as they learn from us. And we must be prepared to be wrong--and accept it when we are.

Once I was the only lesbian on staff and the only Jew, secular or otherwise. So my caseload kept getting padded with lesbians, Jews, and lesbian Jews. I'm not religious at all and was never even a bat mitzvah, so I'm not sure what really qualified me to be Super Jew Therapist. It was our practice to ask clients during their intakes whether they wanted their therapist to have any particular characteristics, such as gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Maybe five percent of my intakes indicated some preference. The rest said, "I don't care. I just want someone who can help me."

Certainly, there are cases where therapist-client matching is a great idea, if not a necessity. A client who speaks little English is probably best served by a therapist who can speak his or her native language. A client who has extreme difficulty trusting white men should probably not be placed with a white male therapist. My move to California was precipitated, in part, by paternalistic heterosexism; and when I became depressed as a result, I specifically sought a lesbian therapist. Though I'd had an excellent straight male therapist in the past, I didn't want a straight man listening this time.

Recently I read a comparison of treatment-related philosophies from the 1970s and today. I think the context was how managed care has shifted psychology's priorities. There was this whole list of factors which were pretty much diametrically opposed, including length of treatment, emphasis on thoughts vs. feelings, and case conceptualization. One of the pairs was "individual differences" (the 70s) and "diversity" (today). At first I was quite confused. How were these mutually exclusive? And then it dawned on me:

Individual differences emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual, rejecting the homogeneity of the group.
Diversity emphasizes the homogeneity of the group, rejecting the uniqueness of the individual.

(And all of a sudden, this interview made a whole lot more sense.)

Racism sucks. Sexism sucks. Homophobia, bi-phobia, and transphobia suck. Anti-Semitism sucks. Ageism (though completely legal under federal law unless you're over 40) sucks. Ableism sucks. Dude, discrimation sucks.

However, it's impossible to talk about "diversity" without endorsing stereotypes. There's nothing inherently bad about stereotypes. What's bad is assuming you know everything about your 10:00 intake... at 9:59.

Rantings of a Luddite philistine

I recently asked Mrs. Gerbil (who has a much better grasp of such things than I) whether performance artists need a cognizant audience. For example, if a performance artist sat at a bus stop in downtown Berkeley and just stared suspiciously at passers-by, I doubt anyone would realize it was performance art.

Put another way: Can you do performance art for the plain old art's sake?

Mrs. Gerbil said that performance art relies on the relationship between the artist and the audience. The audience at least has to know that something out of the ordinary is occurring--and that it's occurring on purpose. Downtown Berkeley is full of people who stare suspiciously at passers-by. Therefore, unless the bus stop performance artist squirted soda water at people wearing red sweaters and just stared at everyone else, it's not a very effective performance.

I don't understand performance art. I think it's very strange, although I also think it's an excellent punch line.

Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Performance artist.
Performance artist who?
Performance artist.
Performance artist who?
Performance artist.
Screw you! Go away!
Performance artist performance artist performance artist PERFORMANCE ARTIST...

The real question, however, is this:

If tree falls on a performance artist in the woods and no one's around to watch, is it still performance art?

In other news, I got a new cell phone last week. The last time I got a new phone, I had to convince the Verizon guy that I did not want a camera phone. Our conversation went something like this:

VG: So how come you don't want a camera phone?
Me: Because I don't need my phone to take pictures. That's why I have a camera.
VG: But you could use your phone to take pictures.
Me: All I want to do with my phone is make and receive calls. I don't need to take pictures with it, I don't need to surf the web, I don't need to send text messages with it.
VG: But if you had a camera phone, then when I called you, you could see a picture of me on your phone and know that I was calling you!
Me: Um, I program in people's names. Because I can read.

This time around, the Verizon guy didn't give me a hard time about not wanting a camera phone. Our conversation, however, was pretty amusing:

VG: So what do you want your phone to do?
Me: Make and receive calls.
VG: That's it?
Me: Yes. That is it. I don't even care about text messaging.
VG: You don't use text messaging????
Me: No. I figure, if someone needs to tell me something, they can call me. If I'm not there, they can leave me a message.
VG: But text messaging is cool!
Me: I turned off text messaging a few years ago because it cost me money to receive messages like "I'm bored." If people are bored, they can call me and tell me about it.
VG: Uh, yeah. I guess you have a point there.

When Mrs. Gerbil found out that I didn't have text messaging, back when we were still living apart, she said, "Oh, that must be why I sent you all those text messages and you never replied!" Which leaves me to wonder:

If a performance artist doesn't know that I don't have text messaging, is it performance art if he tries to text me that a tree is about to fall on him?

I saw the sign

I feel a lot better now that Christmas is over, thanks. Now I just have to get through my birthday (which is this Thursday, hint hint) and then everything should be peachy-keen.

Last week Mrs. Gerbil and I went to Seattle for six days to visit the in-laws. I definitely needed the vacation. Relaxation was just what my mind, body, and snarky soul needed. One day we took the Edmonds-Kingston Ferry, which was great fun until I decided to take a little walk from bow to stern. I felt a little funny while we were still on the water, but I felt a lot funnier once we disembarked. Add this slight seasickness to a fantastic sinus infection, and you get great potential for snark.

I noticed a sign on the ferry which read PLEASE, KEEP OFF LADDER. Mrs. Gerbil and I were impressed by its grammatical correctness--signs don't usually sport commas!--but we were perplexed about the profound lack of ladders in its vicinity.

"It would be even funnier if it ended with 'FOOL,'" I said.

Mrs. Gerbil agreed.

Imagine if "FOOL" was a standard component of signage:

Such blunt advice might help California drivers, at least, behave a little more normally.

War on Christmas

This time of year is really hard for me. Historically, I start getting depressed just before Thanksgiving and stop sometime after my birthday (10 days after Christmas, hint hint). In recent years things have been somewhat worse. It could be that I've already been under stress before the ever-lengthening holiday season and therefore have had a lower tolerance for Enforced Happiness.

Or it could be Enforced Happiness in general. There are exactly two Christmas carols which I actually like--I am a secular Jew, mind you--and these are "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" and "Angels We Have Heard on High." The rest I could do without. Especially in stores; stores are overstimulating enough already! Enforced Happiness also includes advertising of all sorts, including (but not limited to) radio, television, and print ads.

Or it could be this whole "War on Christmas" myth. I do not understand this business. If anyone's trying to remove the meaning of Christmas, it's those who make it into a capitalist orgy. The way I see it, retail workers who wish people happy holidays instead of a merry Christmas are actually preserving the meaning of Christmas. When did Christmas become a reason to spend lots of money? I might be a secular Jew, but I know that Mary and Joseph weren't exactly rolling in dough.

When I was a baby, my parents decided that we should give presents on Christmas. We lived in a very WASPy area, and they didn't want me to feel left out once I began school. Every year we constructed a Christmas bush with branches clipped from our pine trees and a whole bunch of electrical ties. Sometimes my mother would pick up discarded bits of real Christmas trees on her way to work and add them to our bush for extra variety. One year we discovered--the hard way--that I am violently allergic to white pine. As soon as I could open my eyes again, we transferred the ornaments to the ficus. After that incident, we decided to hang the ornaments from the piano instead.

Perhaps I grew up with a skewed version of Christmas. Christmas was something which belonged to other people and which I could dabble in, if I wished, but it was never something I could do for real. Christmas meant shopping and wrapping and stress and you know, I used to love it... except that it was always phenomenally depressing.

So I reserve the right to wish someone happy holidays if they wish me a merry Christmas. Does that make me anti-Christmas? No stranger has ever come up to me on the street and wished me a happy Hanukkah, nor a comfortable fast on Yom Kippur, nor a happy new year in September. But that doesn't bother me. What bothers me is when people get all het up (in Decembers of late) when someone wishes them something other than a merry Christmas.

Does it really matter? If Jimmy the Cashier doesn't wish Mrs. Jones a merry Christmas, is Mrs. Jones doomed to have a terrible time on December 25? Isn't it okay just to acknowledge that there are a whole slew of holidays in December (Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, and the winter solstice, to name but a few) and cover all the bases with a generic holiday wish?

If Mrs. Jones needs prompting from Jimmy the Cashier to have a merry Christmas, Mrs. Jones has some serious issues.

I'm glad Christmas comes but once a year.

I do Windows

Last weekend I had the distinct pleasure of reinstalling Windows.

I learned a lot of interesting things during this process. For example:

1) There is such a thing as a Plug and Play Bus Driver. I wish AC Transit had some of those.

2) Microsoft technical support personnel do not appreciate the term "Blue Screen of Death," even though Microsoft offers a screen saver called BlueScreen, whose official description includes the phrase "infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD)."

3) Reinstalling Windows does not delete the contents of My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc., but it does move all of these folders to a completely inconvenient location. Then it creates completely new folders with the same exact names, leaving you to scratch your head and contemplate the similarities between reinstalling Windows and moving house.

In fact, there are so many interesting things to be learned from Windows that I think all household appliances deserve an operating system.



I can see it now:

It is what it ain't

George Orwell, of course, taught us that

WAR IS PEACE.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Recently, George W. Bush taught us that

"'Stay the course' means keep doing what you're doing... Don't do what you're doing if it's not working -- change. 'Stay the course' also means don't leave before the job is done."



And according to my crossword puzzle this morning, everything else you know is wrong too:

I crack myself up

Last night I made up a joke and I just have to share.

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Therapist.
Therapist who?
I'll answer that in a minute, but first, I'm curious about why you ask.

New look--same great taste!

I've finally migrated over to the new beta version of Blogger.

I think "beta Blogger" sounds an awful lot like a class of anti-hypertension medications.

I also think this new version makes it a lot easier for you, dear reader, to overdose on public transit stories.

Stop right there, cowboy

Ground has been broken for a memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr. I think this is fantastic, and long overdue.

US Presidents number 42 and 43 were there:


But just why is Bill gripping George W.'s wrist so tightly?

Does George W.'s left hand know what his right is doing?

Perhaps the most important question of all: Do the rest of us want to know?

The Therapist Clock

No one warned me that, in the course of my training in psychology, I would develop a Therapist Clock.

I learned early on how to check my watch as subtly as possible (the "itchy wrist" is always a good technique), where to place the furniture for maximum clock visibility (you need at least two clocks, one across from each chair), and how to structure the last 10 minutes of the session in order to segue smoothly into "We need to wrap up for today" at 3 minutes before the end.

But I never learned about the Therapist Clock until it was too late.

The Therapist Clock is an internal timekeeping device that divides up one's waking experiences into 50-minute chunks. The Therapist Clock also contains subdivisions, at 10, 15, 25, and 35 minutes. The Therapist Clock is capable of running longer than 50 minutes, but it is not always accurate in its second cycle (indeed, it is frequently 10 minutes behind).

The Therapist Clock cannot be shut off, and it does not care what you are doing. The Therapist Clock is useful in many situations, such as waiting for the bus, making pasta, or gauging how much longer the washing machine will be running. The Therapist Clock is also frighteningly good at predicting plot twists during Law & Order, which, for the curious, generally fall at or around :15, :38, and :50.

But the Therapist Clock is very much a handicap with respect to other activities, such as sitting through a slow movie, talking on the phone ("hey, it's so good to hear your voice, but our time's up for today"), or *ahem* intimate relations.

The Therapist Clock frequently malfunctions on airplanes, but not on trains, buses, or cars. It never malfunctions in the waiting room at the doctor's, nor in the emergency room (provided, of course, that one is fully conscious). The Therapist Clock also never malfunctions during one's own therapy. I find it absolutely hilarious when both of us start to fidget after 45 minutes.

Yesterday morning I went to Target, in search of some random items. I entered the store at about 10:10. When I left the store, I estimated I'd been shopping for about forty minutes. I'd forgotten my watch--I knew what time I'd gone in from the car radio--so to check my estimate, I pulled out my trusty cell phone (which, for the curious, has a bitchin' Law & Order ringtone).

And lo! It was 10:47.

Quite pleased with myself, I called Mrs. Gerbil to brag.

"You scare me," she said.

I think I've been working on this post for about 50 minutes now... oho! Indeed I have. Well, we need to wrap up for today. See you next time. Bye bye, take care.

Public transit story #14: Parallel postulate

Last Wednesday, the first of the month, our rent was due. We pay rent directly into our landlords' bank account, as we use the same bank and it's a lot easier than mailing a check several days in advance. This month it was my turn to go stand in line at the bank. Whoopie.

So I boarded the #88 and figured I would have about three minutes' cushion for my transfer to the #51. Oh, how wrong I was; but if I'd been correct, you wouldn't be reading this, now, would you?

There was this very confused woman on the bus who had evidently been trying to figure out her stop for most of the ride. She kept insisting that she needed to get off at Acton Street (or, as she spelled it, "A-C-T-I-O-N Street"). The driver and the rest of the passengers kept telling her, "This bus runs along Sacramento Street. Acton's the next street over. They don't intersect."

"But I have to get off at Acton!" she repeated.

"No, you have to get off at a cross-street. You're going to Acton and what?" we all asked.

"A-C-T-I-O-N! I can see the #88 from there and so I know this bus stops there!"

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally I said, "Maybe you want to get off at Addison?"

"Or Allston?" suggested another passenger.

"Addison? Yes, that's it. No! I want Acton. Maybe this is my stop coming up." The bus driver pulled over to the stop, which was Channing. "No," said the woman, "I think it's the next one."

So we stopped at Bancroft. We stayed there a while, so that she could debate with herself whether this was her stop. Finally: "No, this isn't it. It's the next one."

The next one was Addison. As the driver was pulling over, the woman said, "Oh, no, it was the last one! Now I have to walk all the way back there?"

"I can't turn this bus around for you," said the driver. "You either get off here or you get off somewhere else down the line."

"Where's Acton then?" she demanded. We all pointed to the left. She grumbled off the bus.

"I don't know what her deal was," said the driver as she pulled away from the stop. "Doesn't she understand you can't get off at Acton and Sacramento when they don't intersect?"

With all that delay, I missed my connection. The #51 pulled up just before we did, and even though the driver tapped several times on her horn (secret code for "hey! transferring passengers!") and I ran as fast as my little legs could carry me toward the bus, the #51 (which had neither discharged nor picked up anyone else) closed its doors while I was still a few feet away. Yes, I knew another would come in 7 minutes, but it was the principle of the thing:

AC Transit might break some rules now and then, but one thing it can't violate is Euclidean geometry.

(And speaking of lines, the one at the bank did indeed suck.)

Public transit story #13: Of age

While waiting for the #40L yesterday, I noticed a small boy watching me with intense interest. This little fellow could not have been more than 9 years old. He was there with his older brother, who looked about 13 or 14, and a woman who was probably their mother but may have been grandma instead. You can never tell.

After a long period of observation, the boy came up to me and said, "How old are you?" (Brazen little dude!)

"How old do you think I am?" I said. I would never reply this way to an adult, but the answers I get from kids are hysterical.

"Thirteen," said the kid.

"Multiply that by two," I said.

"Huh?" the kid replied.

"Times two?" I tried. The kid looked at me blankly. "Thirteen times two?" I said. Another blank look. "Do you know your times tables?" I asked.

"Nooooooo," said the kid, with a big silly grin.

"Well," I said, "thirteen times two is twenty-six. I am 26 years old, but I'll be 27 in two months. How old are you?"

"I'm thirteen!" he crowed.

This was obviously not true, but I thought I'd play along. "Then I'm twice as old as you are."

"Naw, I'm not thirteen," he said, "Actually I'm twelve."

Also a lie, but this was all very cute. "When will you be thirteen?"

"April."

"Oh, you're halfway there then!"

"Yeah, my birthday is next week and I'm gonna go out to dinner and have a big ol' party all over town!"

Then his (grand?)mother chimed in: "You're not thirteen, you're eight! Stop being stupid."

"No, I'm thirteen!"

"You'll be thirteen in five years," she said.

"No, I'll be sixteen in five years!" he replied. Then, to me: "You go to school still, or do you work?"

"I'm all done with school. I work."

"You work in West Oakland?"

"I work right around the corner from here."

"You work at the doctor's office?"

The outpatient medical offices for Children's Hospital of Oakland are indeed right around the corner from the bus stop--and directly across the street from the day hospital where I work. Figuring it would be a losing battle to try to explain partial hospitalization to an eight-year-old, I said, "Yeah, I do work at a doctor's office."

"WOW," he said, his eyes wide with admiration. Then he announced that he was going to go slip and fall on his butt in a puddle of rainwater.

Hot Live Local Singles Strike Again!

Racy Wrong Numbers: Not just a San Francisco treat!

The mayor of Edmond, Oklahoma, handed out tens of thousands of flyers upon which was a rather unfortunate typo. The flyers, prepared by the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, were intended to discourage underage drinking but accidentally advertised a phone sex line.

I am not making this up.