Well, everyone, there are only a couple hours left of 2008. A lot has happened this year, as every year. Friends have been made, found, and lost. Habits have begun, changed, or been broken, as have relationships. I usually do an end of the year blog on my other blog, which has been all but replaced with this one. Here is the biggest thing that is happening tonight that has spent a year in development: I will be ringing in 2009 sober.
The last couple New Year's, I don't really remember except some fuzzy memories. 2004/2005 I remember being hammered and showing my boobs to my then-boyfriend's cousin, and then spending an hour on my bed crying about the tsunami and how I wanted to go to Sri Lanka to help.
2005/2006 I remember being on the phone with Charlie, an older man who I had been sort-of seeing for a few months, as he asked me to get a ride to his house because he was drunk but wanted to see me. I declined because the man I was dating, Adam, was to be off work around 2am and I planned on walking to his apartment. I was drunk and stoned, and that's all I remember.
2006/2007 I stayed on my couch in my pajamas with T. We had been drinking, smoking weed, and doing lines all night. I feel (perhaps wrongly) that it is OK for me to admit this for the world to see, because that is what I did but it is not what I do now.
2007/2008 we attended the Tempe Block Party with about a hundred thousand other people. I have a blurry picture of us taken around midnight, and my eyes are puffy from crying. I have no idea why I was upset.
In February of this year, T and I were visiting his grandparents in Lake Tahoe. I had refrained from drinking much since T's birthday in September, when a night of cocaine, weed, and Patron landed me in the emergency room after passing out on the floor of a bar. The ER doctor told me I was gambling with my life, and if I wanted to survive, I needed to cut out all those destructive activities. In Tahoe, however, sobriety was still new to me, and I wasn't sure yet if it was something I needed to take seriously. One night, T's grandmother offered me some champagne, which I drank. She then made me 2 margaritas, which I very happily consumed, and figured, "See? I'm fine. I can drink." We went to sleep that night, and the next thing I remember, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, with my jeans half on and a sweater unbuttoned around my bare chest, with an IV in my arm surrounded by paramedics. They told me, "Your husband woke up to find you staring at the ceiling, unresponsive. Alcohol is dangerous when mixed with diabetes. You should know not to be drinking."
That's all I needed. Two brushes with death. For most people, one would have been enough, but I'm a bit more stubborn than most. I went cold turkey then and there. No alchohol, cocaine, OR WEED. This is huge, because everyone knows how much I loved marijuana, and I loved cocaine just as much. However, as the drugs left my system, I began to see things more clearly. Drugs are a waste of my time. They are a waste of who I am. I am a smart, kind, generous woman. Drugs made me stupid, edgy, sometimes downright mean, and I had nothing more to give to anyone because everything I had went to my next score.
It has now been 10 months since I quit using. With the exception of a Percocet prescription after I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I have not used any drugs, nor have I felt the craving for them. Sometimes, when watching movies, such as Lords of War or Blow, I get that tingle in my nose and I can almost feel the stinging sensation in the back of my throat from doing a fat line. But I have overcome, and now I will remember, with full clarity, the welcoming of 2009 and the next great year of my life. Peace and love to all who read, and Happy New Year!!!
Autobiography - Will There Really Be a Morning: Frances FarmerFiction - On Chesil Beach: Ian McEwanFiction - Interpreter of Maladies: Jhumpa LahiriFiction - Haunted: Chuck PalahnuikFiction - Eyes, Breath, Memory: Edwidge DanticatNon-Fiction - The Year of Magical Thinking: Joan DidionFiction - Close Range: Annie ProulxFiction - Herland: Charlotte Perkins GilmanHumor - I Am America (And So Can You!
Until the End of the World Director's Cut - Final - La Lengua de las Mariposas (Butterfly Tongues) - Moonstruck - L'enfant - Anne Frank: The Whole Story - In the Realms of the Unreal - Caterina In the Big City - The Crucible - Steal a Pencil for Me - Paper House - Voces Inocentes - Iris - House of Games - Reality Bites - One True Thing - Funny Games - The Dancer Upstairs - Before Night Falls -
Ok, I finally figured it out. Planned Parenthood sent them a bill for $1,000+, and my insurance company analysed it and decided that based on the agreements they have for huge discounts to insurance companies, that the bill should have been about $275, and that much money was applied to my deductible. Since I payed $525, they have to pay me back for the difference. But if I cant get that money back, I will still only have $275 applied to my deductible. They made this as unclear as possible in the weird letter they wrote me. I will be doubly screwed if I can't get that money back and end up needing to spend my entire deductible.
An important thing to note here (that probably the whole world except me knew) is that the insurance system is based on these huge discounts for insurance companies and people with insurance. In other words, if I didnt have insurance... I would have paid quite a bit more for the same service. Basically, uninsured people are being totally fucked over- their medical care prices are absurdly high compared to other people's. Even a place like Planned Parenthood that does sliding scale based on income, has to accept lower payments from the insurance companies and insured then from their poorest uninsured clients. Ok, I'm not actually sure what their lowest sliding scale rate is for abortion, but I think I heard $300 once. I am not sure. But I bet it is not less than, say, $250.
This is not really about abortion, it was exactly the same situation for my co-worker's daughter who was getting her appendix removed. The hospital could only get a little over half the money they would have been able to bill if she were uninsured. So, with insurance it was a $4,000 procedure counting co-payments and what the insurance company paid. If she were uninsured, it would have been a $7,000 procedure. Now that's what I call fair. Thanks, capitalism!
So I talked to my insurance company, and they said lots of things in insurance language that made no sense.
The gist of it (I think) was that the amount planned parenthood quoted me for the cost of the abortion was probably discounted based on my income(since they are a non-profit and do that kind of thing), but since I had insurance my insurance was charged the full cost (which was indeed over $1,000).
Also- this thing they sent me that looks like a bill is not. It is telling me how much I should have owed to Planned Parenthood after my insurance paid their portion, which was $254.13. But, I paid $525. So Planned Parenthood owes me the difference and my insurance company could care less because it isn't their money that is in question. It's mine. So I have to sort it out myself. I've tried calling the billing phone number at planned parenthood for a while, and it reminds me of
this other time I was trying to reach them on the phone.... Ussually I would go to my parents to help me figure out this sort of insurance stuff, or to the person in my office who deals with insurance stuff. But my parents are prochoice politically but not personally, and I have no idea what my co-worker thinks on the topic and don't want deal with pity or condemnation in the workplace. It just wouldnt be pleasant.
So I'm done trying to deal with this for today. I guess I will try again tomorrow.
Where I am starting to wish I could be a stay-at-home mom and/or housewife. Yes, I know...there are inherent challenges in that career choice, as well...but man, I would love to be able to stay home and cook and clean all day every day. I would give it a year or so before I would get antsy and need an outside job.
Anyway, I decided that I need to make a list of the good and bad habits I have developed during this break, so maybe in 5 years I will read them again and go "Oh crap! I should have kept doing that!" Or "Criminy! THAT'S when I started doing that! I need to cut that out!"
(I'll let you decide which of these habits are good, and which are bad! I'm sure I don't know.)
- laying in bed surfing the internets until 11 AM (or later, as evidenced by the time this is being posted.
- staying up until 3 in the morning, dancing around my room and listening to music.
- writing endless love-struck entries in my private journal.
- NOT watching news shows.
- Playing the Sims 2 (until my computer decided spontaneously that it can't handle the graphics, and started to blank the screen within 5 minutes of startup time.)
- Planning and plotting news ways of being creative in the upcoming year.
- Totally embracing my oddness, my kids' oddness, and our odd ways of communicating oddness.
- REALLY not putting up with any bullshit from people, and not pretending to be nice and happy when I'm not feeling nice and happy.
- Making a conscious effort to not complain.
- Using google task lists excessively
- Going out to be among friends whenever the opportunity arises, rather than giving in to my hermitude and staying home.
- Making plans with people, rather than waiting for people to make plans with me.
- Driving less, walking more.
- Folding clothes right out of the dryer when I go to the laundromat
- Using the dryers at the laundromat more frequently (when I can't hang clothes out on the line)
- Not stressing about work so much.
- Actively envisioning and articulating a "plan B" for my life.
I'm sure there are more...maybe I will add them as I think of them. Have your habits changed over the holidays?
Anyway...so on Sunday, the kids and I were off on a mad adventure that netted no results except overly much time in the car together and a fairly filling meal at Chuy's. Our intention was the visit the gardening center so I could get some good soil to lay in the box (that I builded all by myself!) But the gardening center is closed until after New Year's, so all we REALLY did was listen to the Hank Williams tribute broadcast of American Routes.
And I am so mad they don't appear to have a podcast, because it was an awesome show. (More and more, as I grow accustomed to dvrland, I find myself wanting to rewind the radio.)
Anyway, the boys were unimpressed with all of this Hank Williams malarky. I tried to explain to M. that Hank Williams influenced a WHOLE BUNCH of artists that he probably enjoys to this day, or is at worst twice removed as an influence. He wasn't buying it. "Mom." He explained, "this is *folk* music."
"Yeah, and?" I pressed...and then, resigned, sighed "Oh, you will understand once you are older and get your heart broken once or twice."
I could hear him rolling his eyes at me in the back seat "I'd rather take up DRINKING than listen to FOLK music."
"Well, ha!" I giggled, "They pretty much go hand in hand, my dear."
I awoke Saturday morning in our hotel room, and turned on CNN. I expected to watch coverage of the one-year anniversary of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. The first female Prime Minister of a modern Muslim nation, she is a beloved figure in Pakistan, and my personal hero. The day she died, Tommy came home from work to find me crying on the bed. He had never heard of her before he met me, much like many of my friends. But in the Middle East, she is well-known. On Saturday, 150,000 people walked hundreds of miles to kiss her grave.
However, there was no mention of this.
Israel is, once again, waging a war on Hamas, and killing Palestinian civilians in the process. Since Saturday, over 300 people have been killed and over 1400 have been wounded. Targets hit by Israeli airstrikes have included a university and a mosque, and a number of children have been found among the dead.
This airstrike was planned 6 months ago, but because of an agreed ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the operation has been put off. Until now. Days after the ceasefire expired, the airstrikes began. Israel violated the terms of the ceasefire by blocking humanitarian aid at the Gaza border, which resulted in shortages of food, water, electricity, and medicine. Of course, the United States is blaming Palestine.
I marvel at the timing of such actions on the part of Israel. It is Hanukkah. The codename for the operation is taken from a popular children's Hanukkah song. This is the equivalent of America bombing Mexico on Christmas Eve and nicknaming the attack "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". It seems a little...twisted. It does not escape me that there is an important election coming up in Israel. Perhaps this is a deliberate attempt to win votes. International leaders are calling for a truce, but really, what option does Palestine have now? After all this death and destruction, do we really expect the Palestinians to lay down and give up?
I fear the worst is yet to come, but I hope I am wrong.
Below are my 2008 New Years resolutions - OOPS! I barely held to even two of them. I got lots of good hugs and kisses from the dog and re-made two music videos from last year. I'm such a loser!!
Sure, I can look as good as I did in 1989 - in my "Thank You for Pot Smoking" T-shirt. Well, at least I can try to fit into it again.
