Letter of Protest to Miami Children's Hospital Billing Dept.

Dear Sir or Madam:

I have to be honest with you.

I am so sick of getting letters from you stating that “we have not yet rec’d your installment for the above referenced account as per your agreement.  If the above installment amount is not received in our office within 15 days, we will take the necessary steps to protect our interest.”

It would be one thing if I were late.

But, your letter is dated May 31, 2012, and clearly states my due date as 6/21/2012.

So, you’re trying to get me to pay six days early by threatening me with whatever “necessary steps” you’re going to take.

Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate the 24 hours of fluids that you gave my son during his bout with stomach flu 1/1/2009, and I appreciate the medicine you gave him to stop him from vomiting.  But, you charged me over $8000 to do so—and as soon as I mentioned my extremely high insurance deductible to the nurse, she discharged my son—immediately—whereupon he threw up at home for another 24 hours for free.

All of this to say, stop sending vaguely threatening letters to me when my payments are not overdue. It’s your choice not to set me up with regular payment coupons—if you did so, which I have requested in the past, I’m sure you’d get payment in a more regular fashion.

Sincerely,

Jasmine Naylor

G.O.M.B.S.

I've been sucked into an infomercial on PBS for the past hour and a half,
Dr. Joel Furman's spiel on improving your health.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/

I wanted to highlight the main point:
eat G.O.M.B.S. to fight diseases, emphasis on heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

G = greens
O = onions
M = mushrooms
B = beans and berries
S = seeds

Motivated by this, I had a kidney bean and cheddar wrap with lettuce for breakfast,
and a salad sandwich for lunch.  Yeah!

Farewell Barefeet

The cats on 63rd Street, they do not eat the mice,
and when a juicy rat runs past, they turn their nose up twice.
For cats on 63rd Street, meals come in cans.
Their lonely servants come each day with tuna fish in hand,
at six o'clock and seven, and once again at eight,
then those cats will shit all day-- oops, I mean defecate.
The world is their oyster, their life is truly grand.
For cats on 63rd Street, their litterbox: the sand.

So, if you love the beaches, and if you love the sun,
Miami Beach might seem like, an awful lot of fun.
But whether you paid millions for your box of luxury,
or if you fed the meter to tan your poor booty,
the cats on 63rd Street truly do not care.
They're far too busy spreading hookworm everywhere!

My Survey response to Einstein Bros. Bagels

"I am shocked that you allow this store to operate in such a poor way.  The line out the door, the place is trashed, people waiting 20 minutes for a bagel only to find out that there aren't any more, absolutely no smiles, no greetings, no management.  I feel that your store has contributed to the ruination of many many Sunday morning breakfasts.  The angry crowd that waited for food with me was far too forgiving in my opinion,  As soon as they got their orders, they hurried to eat it and get the heck out of this black hole.  I was so frustrated, I wanted to jump behind the counter and start calling out "Good morning!" just to try and show those frowning turtles you call employees how it's done.  I'm serious!  You need someone just for Sunday morning-- like a "Good Morning! Specialist"-- b/c it really pissed me off that the only thing keeping me from enjoying my delicious bagel sandwich was your employees."

The Einstein Bros. Bagel shop on the corner of Coral Way and Ponce de Leon Blvd in Coral Gables, FL should be a flagship store.  It rubs elbows with Starbucks, Houston's, and other top notch business establishments.  It just underwent an overdue renovation.
And yet, the same terrible employees serve up the same poor service.  In pricey Coral Gables, it is something of a treat to be able to eat fresh baked bagel and drink good coffee for less than $5.  Every weekend Einstein's is packed; the line stretches to the door.  Upper management should be very happy about that.
What should be very worrisome to the same profit-maximizers is the amount of money they could be making as well as the amount of money that they throw away by alienating their own customers.  Translation: when you wish you could just jump behind the counter and do it yourself, the employees and their company have failed.  Customers will go somewhere else, maybe like me returning in a few months when they crave an everything bagel so bad that they are willing to throw good money at careless, unsmiling representatives of Einstein Bros.  With so many unemployed, you'd think that they'd appreciate their job a little bit more.
Meanwhile, go next door to Starbucks-- as soon as you walk in, they greet you.  You are acknowledged.  You are asked what you'd like them to get started for you.  You may even earn a raised eyebrow if your order is exceptionally bizarre.  You are thanked.  Through the wall, it's a very different scene.
Maybe Starbucks should buy Einstein Bros and run it the right way.  I'm not saying I want to pay $3.50 for my bagel w/ schmear, but I do want to be treated like my order is important for the three minutes it occupies the employee's attention.  Einstein's Bros employees (and my experience at the South Miami store has been just as bad) treat me like an unwelcome intrusion on their day, and, in the process, they bring me down.

Making Love Under the Miami Sun

I caught these lizards making love the other day.

Rusty, our guard dog, did not seem to mind them, or even to notice, really.

Rage Against the Drake Machine

I have established a Drake Free Zone in my car and home: the DFZ.
My husband violates it with impunity.

I think that back in 1992 when I listened to rap and hip-hop music for the first time,
it held a universal appeal because it was about the downtrodden,
the oppressed and their oppressors,
but now it just seems like the only rappers and hip hop artists to get radio play
rhyme about how much the artist likes to receive oral sex and all the shit they've bought.
Can't really call most of them artists... how about Marketing Reps?

I'm sick of... what exactly...
I'm sick of consumerism and materialism, and I'm sick of conspicuous consumption and inconspicuous consumption, which is even worse than its braggart cousin, you know--when rich people hide their luxury purchases--hide their excess because there are way too many of the rest of us wanting.

Wanting can be very dangerous.

One of my history professors argued that the wave of revolutions
that swept Latin America in the early 1800s were revolutions of rising expectations.
People just expected so much better for themselves than what they
actually achieved that they revolted.  Their everyday was not at all what they'd imagined it should be.
Things were not terrible, but people wanted more, expected more.

Anyway, how in the world does this link back to dastardly Drake?
My expectations are too high to accept his lyrics.
I urge everyone to revolt via a boycott of his songs,
and I further incite boycotts against other actively bad lyricists.

My Fat Brown Confession

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. I have never confessed before, and this confession will not be a thorough one. I should begin by making it clear to you, Father: I do not believe in God, but I do believe in right and wrong, and what I did the day before yesterday at the toy store was wrong. The small satisfaction I gleaned from saving myself some time and money has been outweighed by the disappointment of the innocent child who will suffer from my selfish misdeed.

But first, my defense:

At twenty-two months of age, my budding artist favors “Large” crayons. We call them fat ones and we refer to the regular size crayons as skinny ones. In the two months since he has been introduced to drawing, (or as his unforgiving aunt says, scribbling) he has worn through three 8-packs of fat ones, one 24-pack of skinny ones, two 16-packs of glittery skinny ones, one 16-pack of scented skinny ones, two 8-packs of large, plastic-encased colored pencils, and five assorted skinny siennas sent to him by his grandmother and apparently singled out by the post office for ill-treatment as they arrived in many small pieces, despite her loving request for extra special care.

When he colors, the rest of the world falls away from him, except of course for his devoted aid and enrapt audience, Mommy. He refuses to eat or drink. He cannot be tempted away from his canvas for any other toy, book, or activity. He colors so furiously that he wears the paper-wrapper away by dint of sheer pressure before I can peel it back from the tip. He pauses to complain only when he needs fresh paper or when he has broken a crayon. On occasion he will demand that I draw him something, usually a hippo or a whale with sharp teeth. As he watches me draw, he rolls his own crayon back and forth between his palms, just like my fourth grade teacher used to do with her chalk as she spoke to the class. It is unusual for me to finish because he snatches the crayon from my hand and appropriates the drawing.

His favorite crayon color is brown and his favorite crayon size is fat. Once he went through an entire fat brown crayon in a single day. As the crayon shrinks, there is less and less paper to protect the nub from his moist palm. The wax warms and spreads easily on the brown builders’ paper that we use, a heavy weight usually put down by contractors to protect new floors. When the crayon becomes too small, less than one inch, he will not use it. If he cannot find an immediate replacement, he becomes frustrated and threatens, “Throw it!” to which I implore, “Please don’t!” after which he gives it a deliberate toss and cries out, “Fall down!” whereupon he deliberately lowers himself to the ground, taking extra care with the back of his head, and calls to me, “My baby crying!”

So, we have been out of fat brown crayons for a week or so. I set him up to color and he came to me after only a few minutes, heartbroken:

“Where, oh where is fat brown, Mommy? I don’t see it anywhere. Oh dear, where brownie?”

I offered him skinny ones, which made him angry, as did the small remainders of two fat browns. We needed a new pack of fat crayons to unlock the artist.

          We went to the toy store for the fresh pack. In the arts and crafts section, they had one box of Jumbo crayons in stock—these were about four times the size of the “Large” ones we had been using and, in our ignorance, calling fat! I opened the box and three tips were broken off. I scanned the shelves for any misplaced Jumbo boxes, but we ended up with our usual box.

          I stood there in the aisle, holding the box of crayons and looking at the price tag on the shelf, and I thought to myself, “We are going to be back here in less than a week. And, what are we going to do with another yellow?”

And then I glanced to my left: empty aisle and no black bubble cameras on the ceiling. I glanced to my right: a mother and child about thirty feet away, walking toward us. I said out loud to my son, “OK baby, we’re almost ready, just have to make sure these tips aren’t broken off too. Just like checking eggs at the grocery store.” 

          With that I opened two packs, said, “Oh dear, it’s a good thing we checked,” and I switched out a yellow for a brown. 

          I considered the worst case scenario, that the cashier would check the box at the register. Unlikely, I decided, that had never happened before in all of my crayon purchases. My heart was steady as I completed the purchase.  It was only when I got home that I considered the child and mother on the receiving end of my deception and theft. The poor dears will open the fresh pack only to confront two fat yellows and no fat browns.  

The worst of it is, Father, I can never go back to buying a mark’s pack of crayons again. Next time, I’m going for a half-pack of fat brown.

A Minor Investment, Carefully Considered

When my husband told me that he was going to “invest in the good dog brush,” I considered my answer carefully.  We sat companionably in the afternoon sunshine as our son napped, and we watched the dogs play and sniff around the palm tree perimeter, thick as it is with rats.  We had agreed the day before to stay in our tiny house after the impending birth of our second son, and, made a joint to-do list to combat what my father calls “renter’s demise.”  After two years, we had failed to replace 8 ceiling dome lightbulbs, at least one in every room of the house.  We were On-the-Same-Page, and many of you will agree that this is too pleasant a state of existence to disrupt over a dog brush.

So, restraining myself from blurting out that I thought that would be a waste of money, and with his too-careful choice of the word “invest” tweaking my dimples, I constructed my reply.

“I think you should,” I began, somewhat disingenuously.

“But, here is my concern, and you are going to hate to hear this from me: we are not in the habit of brushing the dog.  If you would agree to use the mitt we have, that works quite well, for a week or two, and then get fired up about brushing the dog, then I would feel that an investment in a better brush is warranted.”

I turned, looked him dead in the eye and led with my left jab, “The best brush in the world won’t help us if we don’t use it.  And, that is my fear—that we would not use it.”

As he frowned at my logic, I finished him with a powerful right hook, stolen as it was from his own guide to verbal boxing:

“Now, I hope to God that I’m wrong—Lord knows that I want that dog to be brushed,” big pause here as I cocked my head to the side, feigning the victim, “but I’ve got to play the devil’s advocate.”

True sportsman that he is, he mustered a graceful smile as he recognized his defeat.

Ashes to Ashes

"Lovey," I said, passing the end to him.
"Keep it," he said.
I didn't want to.  It needed to be ashed, and the ash tray was to his left, while I sat to his right with his foot in my lap.  I smoked a bit more then attempted to pass it again.  He accepted it this time, but, as he took it, a chunk of ash fell onto the remote control.  He didn't seem to have noticed, or maybe, I thought, he is waiting until he puts out the cigar before he dumps the fallen ash from the remote to the ash tray.  I was preoccupied with this bit of ash because I didn't want it to dirty his new black T-shirt and I didn't want it to fall on the already linty leopard-print couch cover.

Should I mention that the tv was on?
Isn't that a given?  It's on every night at our house.  Most days too.  Sick.

Anyway, I picked up the remote control and handed it to him.
"Ashtray, please," I said and nodded meaningfully at the remote that I had just handed over.
He looked me in the eye, nodded, took the remote and spilled the ashes on his new shirt.  He began changing channels.
Smiling, I said, "I was asking you to tip that ash into the ashtray.  Now it's on your shirt."
"Oh," he said and plucked his shirt out twice, sprinkling the ashes all over the couch cover.

A Typical Morning, Several Years Ago

I woke up and stretched. My knees cracked and my hip popped, and I frowned at the prospect of starting the day. I looked over at my husband, who showed no signs of getting up, although I knew he was awake under the blanket that covered his face. I inhaled quickly and deeply through my nose and arched my head back as far as it would go, savoring my final stretch, then sat up, surveyed the damage from the night before—two dirty glasses and a half-empty bag of chocolate chip cookies—let’s be honest, more than half empty, I thought to myself. Probably why I’m so gassy.

I proceeded down the hall, bare feet on the painted concrete floor that was mostly clean, and settled into the bathroom for my morning movement. Astounded by my own toxicity, which could not have been attributed to chocolate chip cookies by any stretch of the imagination, I remembered my lunch at Lan Pan Asian the day before—chicken dumplings in egg noodle soup with spinach, bean sprouts and what had been described on the menu as Chinese broccoli, but what appeared to be only ordinary broccoli stalks. My husband had accompanied me, but after reviewing the menu, ordered nothing except for a can of soda and then watched television silently. I might as well have come here by myself, I had thought. I watched my husband watch the news and tried to eavesdrop on the next table’s conversation, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Perhaps the only thing worse than eating by yourself, I mused, was eating with someone who both disdained the menu and had nothing to say.

“You know, you can go look around in the shops for a while and I’ll come meet you when I’m finished,” I said, listening hard to my own voice to hear if I sounded sincere or sarcastic, my eyes downcast to my noodle soup.

“What?” He glanced at my guardedly blank expression. “Eat your soup, I’m fine,” my husband replied, looking at me with a half-smile on his lips before he returned his gaze to the television.

“Hmmm,” I sighed to myself, completely unable to resist, “I should have brought a book along.”

“What? A book? Why?”

“Because at least I would have something to do while I eat, since you don’t want to chit-chat with me.”

“Chit-chat? What do you want me to say?” He snorted, not nastily though.

“Well, you could have asked me how I liked my soup, or how was the salad. That is typical chit-chat between people who are dining out. But, whatever. You just watch your news.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he laughed just a bit too heartily (clearly he thought he was driving this thing), “How was the salad? Was it good? How’s that soup right there? Do you like it?”

I brightened immediately. “Well, the salad is just OK, a lot of brown; the dressing though is excellent, and the soup is good. I like it, but it needs about four more chicken dumplings. I’m glad I ordered it though, because I’ve never gotten the big bowl of noodle soup before, and I always wanted to try it. Here, would you like a taste?”

“No.”

As I rested on the commode, I remembered a particularly good jab I had thrown as we amiably winded down our back-and-forth after yesterday’s lunch:

“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to find a friend and we’re going to eat Asian food together all of the time. And, we’re going to eat at the green Thai place next!”

My husband and I had laughed and laughed. The very idea that I would make a new friend was ludicrous, and if I ever did manage to make one, the threat of me eating out with the new friend could only have been idle.