insured

Dear Ladies and Gentleman of the Internet:

Today marks my official entrance into adulthood. No, I did not pay taxes for the first time, find out I was pregnant, or sign my first lease. Today, I received my health insurance card in the mail. Insurance, for my health! If any of you have ever been uninsured for any period of time (or if you suffer from a chronic illness requiring constant medication, as I do), or if you have ever feared losing your insurance, you know how exciting this day is. I could get hit by a train! Or fall down the subway stairs! Or contract malaria! And all of it would be paid for by the man (except for deductibles, copays, prescriptions, any treatment administered by a doctor out of my network, etc. etc.), hurray! I have already booked my first internal medicine appointment and have gotten a little slap happy with the whole thing; let's go see a cardiologist! rheumatologist! proctologist! Well, probably not so much the last one but you get the idea. Damn it feels good to be a grown up.

Love,

Hannah

recommendations

• Do you like trippy movies with subtitles? Then The Science of Sleep is for you.
• Do you like bluegrass music with your brunch? Well, it's sort of hard to hear the music so more importantly do you like a free mimosa with your brunch? Then Nolita House brunch is for your (also recommended: $2 tacos during happy hour).
• Do you like bloggers who update more than once every millennium? Not so much? My bad. I'll get on it I promise.

summertime

I have never wished for rain more in my life than over the past couple of days. Not when I was little and craving mud baths. Not at as a teen public pool employee wanting to ditch work. Not ever. But the late August heat settling into my unairconditioned apartment is more oppressive than reading Harper's Bazaar and realizing their "Cheap Finds!" would max out your credit card. But when it rains I can open the back door and catch spare drops and the window fan in my room blows a cold mist that is probably mildewing everything in sight but is totally worth it.

Today at work I had to send a form to Buenos Aires that was in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. It took forever and my fax machine nearly blew smoke before it finally sent the message through the wires. The combination of random Spanish commands floating through my brain and the humidity dripping down the sides of all my glasses are clouding my thoughts. My couch has never been more comfortable and my netflix never more used. I'll reorganize my closet and paint and accent wall somewhere (somewhere!) in the fall, until then I'm just going to keep letting summer drag on through.

trends

I have noticed a trend in television recently, a plot line that has fallen into favor, apparently. In this scene, an abandoned/abused/lost/bewildered/endangered child is sheltered/consoled/nurtured/cared for by a public servant to whom its care has been entrusted, a doctor/cop/nurse/detective. The public servant, feeling a hollow spot in their maternal/paternal self, grows attached to the child, considers adoption. More often than not, the child's parent(s)/relative(s)/social worker(s) pop(s) up and whisks them away, leaving the public servant alone with their hollow spot.

It happened in Dexter (Police Lt. LaGuerta, season 1, episode 5, cuban refugee boy witnesses a murder and latches onto her until his uncle turns up), House MD (Dr. Cuddy, season 4, adopts a baby whose teen mother abandons it before dying of post pregnancy complications), Nurse Jackie (Nurse Akalitis, season 1, episode 8, considers adopting an abandoned baby before its fledgling young parents show back up). The story seems to be a mostly female one, although in the show Southland, a male police officer takes a young eye witness under his wing when witness protection falls through (although when his wife objects, the girl is passed on to a female co-worker).

TV is not generally regarded as a highbrow art form, nor its fiction shows fodder for intellectual stimulation, but when the same plot arc spans seasons and networks, it's hard not to notice. So what is the trend telling us? That female criminal justice and medical workers are incapable of separating their emotions from their jobs? That their maternal instincts will trump their career aspirations? Based on the examples listed above it seems to me a mechanism used to soften female characters previously defined by their professional drive. I understand the desire to give the characters more depth; more personality dimensions=more viewers? More Emmy nominations? More placating women from each side of the stay-at-home vs. working-mothers debate? But let's not say they're humanizing them. Because we're not. We're feeding the idea that women who go the path of Lieutenant and Chief of Staff and Head of Department are lonely. Unable to find a partner to procreate with. Unable to naturally fill the void of children.

I'm not taking issue with any show in particular, making light of the pressure women feel to choose between working life and home life, opposing the right to depict women in this way, or arguing that there are not women who fit this description. I just think that two, three, four, examples are enough. I could use a new storyline.

this i believe

NPR has this segment called "This I Believe," which nine times out of ten reduces me to a whimpering tear strewn mess while driving. I am not nearly insightful enough to warrant appearing on the segment but here are some random thoughts from today that could fall under the heading "this I believe:"

• The Lorna Doone shortbread cookie 100 calorie packs are by far the tastiest. I don't even bother with those weird Oreo slivers.
  
• If I have to hear another MSNBC news segment about "the birthers," I will lose my shit permanently. As in, the shit will never be reclaimed and I will walk around screaming nonsensically at the top of my lungs with a hot-tranny-mess version of Marilyn Monroe's haircut. (I have a substantially sized flat screen tv next to my desk at work that plays MSNBC all day every day. Soon a report will be released that Dick Cheney employed a similar method of torture when waterboarding proved ineffective.)
  
• I am horrible at doing laundry. Lord knows why. It involves all sorts of things that I love: measuring, reading instructions, and folding. Yet I always manage to shrink and dye things inadvertently. Any chance my college degree will be revoked for this?
  
• I saw on the news today (see earlier bullet referencing 24/7 MSNBC proximity) a townhall gathering full of people chanting against healthcare reform. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW THIS IS POSSIBLE. You don't like the current bill floating around? Fine, whatever, I get that. But to not want ANY change AT ALL? Such an idea is causing my brain to short circuit. I could proceed to tell you all about my experience with nationalized medicine in countries ranging from Canada to China but I'm just going to shut my mouth and point you in the direction of this article, which proves that sometimes anecdotal evidence is the best kind.