Spring 1998: Molly is participating in a student-exchange program, and she is spending three weeks in Narita, Japan with a host family. On her first night in Japan, she finds herself in the bathroom trying to figure out how to flush the toilet. It is an intimidating-looking instrument, with a control panel filled with buttons and flashing lights; all of the labels are in Japanese. Uncertainly, Molly presses a couple of buttons on the control panel and hopes for the best. Suddenly, a tiny white rod appears, extending from the underside of the rim on the back of the toilet bowl. Molly leans in to investigate this device. A jet of water shoots out of a spigot in the rod and hits her point-blank in the face. Spluttering, she cups her hand over the stream and frantically presses more buttons until it stops and the tube retracts.
After drying her face, Molly happens to notice that on the side of the toilet is a normal metal handle for manual flushing.
Winter, 2008: Molly is scraping the ice off of her car windshield on a chilly morning in North Carolina. Realizing that a spray of windshield-wiper fluid might make the job a little easier, she opens the driver’s side door of the car and, still standing beside the car, pushes the lever behind the steering wheel which releases a jet of said fluid, which hits her point blank in the face. Fortunately, Molly is wearing glasses at the time, the lenses of which are now extremely water-resistant.
I can’t wait to see what I manage to spray myself in the face with in 2018. What scares me is that the liquids in question appear to be growing increasingly more toxic with each event. This does not look promising. I should probably invest in Face Insurance. After all, my looks are all I have!
I like that one of the search terms someone used to find this blog was the phrase “molly health risks”.
Brian, was that you? Are you weighing your cost-benefits? Please stop now. You don’t want to do that.
The last few nights I have woken up in the middle of the night to a horribly itchy, swollen throat. I mean, SO ITCHY. It starts from the back of my palate and goes down to my tonsils.. In order to scratch it I tend to make a horribly raspy, guttural noise that sounds like a zombie choking on a finger bone. I do this regularly. In the middle of the night. Right next to Brian. Who happens to be (or happened to be) sleeping at the time. This is not really fair to him.
I am trying to figure out what tends to cause (and exacerbate) this condition. I think it might be the dog, but there’s no way to really change that variable, since it would be the equivalent of getting rid of your kid. I could vacuum more often, but who wants to do that? I’ve tried changing the sheets more often (since the dog is on them all day while we are at work, as his form of protest), but it doesn’t seem to help. Last night we had the air purifier on, and my throat was itchier than ever from about 3:50am til around 4:30.
I got up and gargled warm salt water, and it seemed to get worse. I drank cold water, and that seemed to help a tiny bit. When I woke up this morning though, I felt pretty much fine.
Night Throat-Itch, whyyyyyyy?
There is very little I enjoy about any aspect of health insurance. In theory, it’s pretty great; if you have it and you get sick, you can go to the doctor without having to pawn your TV. But in practice, it’s a big mess.
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Whenever I start a new job and I am lucky enough to be eligible for health insurance through it, I tend to find myself inundated with information that I am not sure how to use and also that scares me. There are too many choices. I know choices seem like a good thing to have, but health insurance choices invariably involve an intimidating handout and occasionally a degrading PowerPoint presentation. The handout is worse though. At least the PowerPoint usually has pictures-like that stylized ClipArt graphic of the guy scratching his head. I can relate to that guy. Both of us are probably thinking, “Do I need a lot of health insurance, or a little? What are the odds of getting hit by a bus if I opt for the minimal coverage I can afford?” (Ok, maybe that’s just me thinking that. The guy is just thinking “?”).
I think those handouts need to simplify. They ought to consist of one sentence followed by two boxes: The sentence should say “Do you want Health Insurance? Check Yes or No.” Bam! Done.
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But instead, we have choices. Like, do I want a $2,000 deductable, or a $5,000 deductable? Do I want a $25 co-pay for doctor’s visits, or a $45 co-pay? What about specialists? Do I really see that many specialists? What about that weird mole I’ve been meaning to have checked out? What exactly constitutes a specialist anyway? And do I want dental coverage? Do I want terrible dental coverage, and I can go to any dentist I want? Do I want excellent dental coverage, and there’s only one dentist in my network and he only works on Wednesday mornings in months with an “r” in them? Do I want to have to pay $75 for an Emergency room visit, or $150? If I end up going to the emergency room, and I’ve opted for the plan with the $75 copay, will it lessen my pain, knowing I could have had to pay twice that much? Will the ER doctors treat me sooner if they know I paid more to get in?
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How are my cells feeling? Any of them planning on going rogue in the next few years? Is there a history of heart disease in my family? Or just a lot of complainers? What are the odds that I’ll fall into a chasm and then get hit by lightning, and would that be covered?
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How about life insurance? I’m 27, and I have a net worth of negative $3,200.00. Is this what I want to leave my family with in the event of my untimely demise? On the other hand, do I really want to put away money every month for such a morbid cause, when I could spend it on beer and downloading Nintendo games for the wii?
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These are the questions that will earn you blank stares from the person whose job it is to explain your benefits to you. But they are the questions I need answered! There is nothing more frustrating than hearing this person say, “Each individual is different and has very different health insurance needs.” Yes…but wait, NO! Everyone has the same exact needs. If something happens to them; if they get sick, they want to be treated and get better, and they don’t want to have to pay through the nose for it. True, some people will have head colds and others will have cancer-but nobody knows who is going to have what. Therein lies the crux of the health insurance provider’s song and dance: “The type of coverage that best fits you,” they’ll add, “really depends on who you are as an individual, your lifestyle, and your comfort level with risk.”
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Ah, risk. Now we’re getting to the heart of the matter. And this is what bothers me the most about any kind of insurance, really-they’re asking you to make a bet on your own health and chances of survival. I have asthma, and terrible eyesight. I have the reflexes of a dead chicken and the sense of direction of a headless chicken. I never wear hats when it’s cold. I have high arches. Grocery shopping depresses me. Even I think my odds aren’t great.
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Also, I plain don’t like gambling. I don’t enjoy risk. I don’t even play poker except with pennies. My fear of losing borders on psychopathic. Don’t even get me started on retirement; I have a 401k plan with risk options suited to an 80 year old. But that’s exactly what health insurance companies expect us to merrily do–calculate our own risk of illness, and then lay down money that we got it right.
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Well, damn it. My unfortunate inability to see into the future makes this a tough call. I could live to be 90 without a single hospitalization, or I could trip over the dog and break both my legs tomorrow. That’s life! Who knows! No one does! But with insurance, we’re asked to guess. This is what bothered me so much when I was being aggressively pursued by Health Insurance Agents after my initial move to North Carolina, when I gave the free market a whirl. Health Insurance Agents are like used car salesmen crossed with snake oil salesmen crossed with vampires who know your phone number. Talk to one of them for ten minutes and you will be suddenly gripped by the fear that at any moment you could slip on the carpet and break your spine.
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I only wish you could be rewarded for making the right choice. That there were some kind of positive reinforcement for skillfully placing your bets. “Hey, you picked the plan with the low rate for Specialist visits and then ended up having to see several Specialists dozens of times! Congratulations-you’ve tripled your money and doubled your health!” I guess good health is a reward unto itself…for the insured and insurance companies alike. Everybody wins.
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So, fine. Take a leap of faith. Take bad vision coverage, and good dental. Take maximum life insurance and minimum disability. Make as educated a decision as you can after viewing a PowerPoint presentation, then roll the dice and see what happens. It’s a gamble, but it’s the best you can do-and I guess it’s better than nothing.
“I don’t like the term ‘Rock Star’,” Crawford confesses, taking my arm and leading me down a slimy, narrow alleyway behind the bar where we’ve arranged to meet for our first interview. His Doc Martens are scuffed and there is a red plastic tambourine on a string around his neck. “I mean, what is a star, anyway? Some shiny thing in the sky, that you make wishes on? Stars are, like, kind of gay.”
He stops to stare moodily at a dumpster.
It’s not always easy being lauded as a ‘musical genius’, nor is it always likely. Crawford Lawman is well aware of this. When his critically acclaimed band, The Pan Flashes broke up, there were those who claimed that his spotlight had dimmed forever. Fortunately, the volatile bassist, who once shocked the nation when he streaked his hair with orange, had other plans. His first solo album, “Lightning Tongs” was released six months later, and its instant success and fairly positive reviews rocketed him to instant stardom. He has been the man of the hour ever since.
The next time I see Crawford, he is smoking what appears to be a stub of charcoal. It doesn’t seem to stay lit, but apparently serves other purposes.
“I can write with it if I need to, if an idea strikes me,” he tells me, lips coated with black carbon. “You never know when you’ll need to jot something down.” Crawford turns and draws a smiley face on the brick wall behind us in charcoal.
We both stare moodily at it.
During lunch, Lawman orders a shot of Nyquil to wash down his chicken tenders and is outraged to learn that it is not on the menu, nor can it be special-ordered.
He rips off his leather jacket and tries to bite it in half.
“Easy, Craw,” the bartender soothes. “Why don’t you go around the corner to the CVS an’ pick yourself up a whole bottle?”
Last Spring, Lawman appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a g-string made of kazoos. This prompted The New Yorker’s Alex Ross to proclaim, “Who is this guy?” Several critics since have called him “a visionary genius”. Others are not so complimentary. One former roommate I interviewed said that Lawman “still owes money for his share of cable and utilities for the last three months we lived together.” Mrs. Horner, Lawman’s querulous mother, reached by phone, requested that I ask her son “if it would kill him to come for dinner once in a while?” His father, who was busy “watching his stories,” at the time, was unavailable for comment.
I was disappointed by my conversation with Mrs. Horner. I had very much hoped that speaking with Lawman’s parents would help to supplement the little that is currently known about him: Born in 1979 as Herbert Horner in the small town of Stockbridge, Connecticut, it has been established that Lawman was a mediocre student who enjoyed gym class and disliked wearing hats. None of his elementary school music teachers appear to remember much about him, which leaves the initial formation of his tortured genius steeped in mystery. Lawman’s childhood friend, Ben Beasley, with whom he is in sporadic contact, has said in interviews that the young Herman Horner was something of a “dweeb”.
“Not exactly an outcast,” Beasley added, when I met with him in his West Newton, MA apartment. “Like, just a big dork. We weren’t rebelling against anything. We weren’t really a part of much of anything either. We mostly hung out after school and watched TV and ate jello jigglers.”
It is difficult from these small snatches of information to piece together a portrait of who this American Legend really might be. Our exchanges over the course of six interviews were limited by Lawman’s terse, one-word responses, his difficulty understanding certain words, and his fondness for quoting entire scenes from the comedy Space Balls for twenty-minute stretches at a time. While nuanced and vibrantly hilarious, his recitations did not get me any closer to understanding the brilliance that lay beneath those fringed vests and polyester smocks. My time with Lawman was a tantalizing, frustrating glimpse into the world of the maverick genius.
The last time I catch up with Lawman, he is sitting on the stoop of a neighborhood Laundromat.
“I wash my clothes here sometimes,” he says. “I do a lot of thinking here, too.” He stares moodily across the street.
I point out that his shoelaces are untied.
He gazes down slowly.
“Fuck,” he says. “I meant to wash these pants today.”
We both stare moodily at his pants. Later, he will call me to tell me he wrote a song, Dirty Pants, about the incident.
Yesterday after writing a long rant about how much better I am than people who shop on Black Friday, I went shopping. Hooray for being full of inconsistencies and flaws! And shit!
And day-old stuffing. Mmm, it’s even better the next day.
I went to a local thrift shop where I spent a good hour wandering the aisles and bought approximately twenty pounds of Christmas Decorations. Oh man. It was awesome.
I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Ew, gross! Used Christmas Decorations!” Unless you happen to know me personally, in which case you’re thinking, “Yeah, that sounds about right.” Don’t worry, I scrubbed them free of any residual cheer when I got home.
Anyhoo, I did this shopping because my family is coming down for Christmas, so I am officially hosting my first Christmas Family Gathering. It is a new milestone for me, and I wanted to make sure to commemorate it with several fake pine garlands, a couple of candles shaped like pine-cones, and a whole mess of other decorations and ornaments.
In the car on the way home I grooved along to Christmas carols on the radio. It was seventy degrees in Garner, North Carolina yesterday, but in my heart I was baking cookies and stomping snow off my boots. My boots I wear in my heart.
Whither came this sudden burst of schmaltzy sentimentality? I wondered. But deep down I knew it had been there all along, just waiting for the right moment to burst forth and make me purchase a candelabra decorated with fake holly leaves.
When I was growing up, We had an entire closet filled with Christmas decorations (and that is no small thing for an apartment, where closet space is heartbreakingly limited). Decorating for Christmas was a day-long project that I began looking forward to as soon as we remembered to discard our rotting jack-o-lanterns.
When decorating commenced, we also began listening to Christmas music, which I loved. I’m talking Sinatra, Roger Williams, Vince Guaraldi, John Denver & the Muppets (come on. You know the album), Nat King Cole…A Chipmunk Christmas. I loved it all. It made me feel all warm and cheer-y inside. I loved the way the livingroom looked when it was fully decorated– complete with Annalee Dolls and a wooden nativity set that appeared to include a superfluous fourth King, which puzzled us anew each year…who was that extra guy? He looked too nice to be a shepherd. Maybe he was someone’s random brother-in-law who turned up for a free meal and some myrrh? Anyway, our apartment felt like a different place.
I guess that’s the part I like about the holidays; whatever holiday you celebrate– the fact that for a short period of time, everything feels a little different, a little more festive. You need that sometimes– an excuse to simmer cinnimon and cloves on the stove to make the house feel warm and delicious, and to light candles and maybe buy a damn poinsettia. An excuse to listen to tinkly piano music all day long, just because you can. Particularly in the winter, when everything outside is dreary, and all the trees look dead, it’s nice to have an excuse to party, and bake, and eat, and drink.
Christmas, you enabler.
It’s 4am the morning after Thanksgiving. Your system is still processing copious amounts of sausage stuffing and green bean casserole. You are what you eat, and right now you are 85% turkey and cranberry relish. Or Lean Cuisine and despair. Or Pinot Grigio and paralyzing rage at your insane family.
In any event, to me the idea of getting out of bed and hitting an outlet store at some dark, unGodly hour of the morning after Thanksgiving is extremely unappealing, no matter how many things are 40% off with limited stock. Is the idea supposed to be that you’ve just given thanks for everything you are lucky enough to have– now it’s time to go buy whatever stuff you’re missing?
Apparently people have been lining up outside of department stores FOR DAYS waiting for these sales. If I were a cult leader looking for a fanatical following of people who desperately need something to live for, I would feel like a kid in a candy store, if lonely people were candy. (They would probably be Mary Jane candies. Remember those retro-looking candies that elderly people gave out on Halloween? If you go to the Mary Jane website, it is full of stories of children who grew up extremely poor in rural America and once a year they got to eat Mary Jane candies. And that was their best childhood memory. Um…I’m sorry I went to that website.)
Ahem. I suppose my basic point is, I hate getting up early, particularly the day after eating my body weight in home cooking, and drinking until I enjoy togetherness. I also don’t have the money to go shopping right now, so 40% off doesn’t help me much, unless it makes something Free. And I’m not great at math, but I’m pretty sure that is not within the realm of possibility. Also, if anything were free, it was probably snapped up by someone who’s been camping outside Best Buy for a solid week. And I don’t begrudge it to them, because they probably need it more than I do.
Gourmet magazine, your standards of living are so utterly unattainable for me. I envy you your Olde Worlde charm and sophistication and your goat tacos. GOAT TACOS. For that article the author actually went to some neighborhood in Long Island City that has a goatery (I assume that’s what a place is called where they raise goats) and handpicked the goats for the goat tacos.
No really, I love to hate you, Gourmet. Your enchanting glossy photographs leave me breathless, not to mention painfully aware of my own shortcomings as both a cook and a decorator. But they give me hope for the future. I may not have mosaics of vintage Italian tile in my kitchen, or antique plates hand-painted with stylized birds of paradise, but I do have an iron skillet from Target and a snazzy red enamel paper-towel holder, from Target. And a girl can dream.
Lately, though, I’ve noticed that the people in your delicious event-themed photo spreads are rather close to my age, which seems strange. Would a bunch of bronzed twenty-somethings spending a lazy summer day lounging on a dock really be serving up oil-poached red snapper with a chipotle-scallion glaze? Or am I just getting invited to the wrong parties? The last time I lounged on a dock with a bunch of attractive twenty-somethings, we put away two thirty-racks of Bud Light. We also grilled up some burgers. And those burgers were great, but to my knowledge they had not been rubbed with cumin and paprika and spiked with garlic-infused peppercorns. We were on that dock for most of the day, and nobody complained about the lack of homemade cucumber-mint granita. At least, not out loud.
Part of the problem is that I know the way twenty-somethings eat, especially at parties when the drinks are flowing. You can bring out a tray of pretty much anything and it will be devoured before you can say, “Please enjoy these Cajun-rubbed beef-tip skewers with garlic mole—” BAM. Gone. Why did you waste your time in the kitchen Cajun-rubbing those beef tips? You may as well have spent ten minutes in there with a box of brownie mix and saved the fancy stuff for your boyfriend’s parents.
Not only that, it is unlikely that people of my generation have the skills, patience, or budgets for these kinds of kitchen accomplishments. We leave those fancy and delicious efforts to our elders—whose stately kitchens and houses are more evoked by the glossy spreads of Gourmet anyway. They’re the ones who actually own massive, artfully distressed wooden dining tables, antique silver bowls and art-deco flatware. They have stately china plates with crackle finishes; they are aware that less is more when it comes to décor, that cloth napkins exist, and that a beer bottle with an ostrich feather stuck in it is not a table centerpiece. But apparently nobody wants to see pictures of worldly, tasteful fifty-somethings cavorting on a dock, even if they probably built that dock, and own the house it goes with. So instead we have the unlikely image of a tanned, muscular young man in swim trunks, standing waist-deep in water and leaning casually on a dock…with a glass of wine in his hand. This is an image found nowhere in Nature.
Gourmet! I may mock the images you show me, but I also cherish them, because they are a window into a different world; I daresay a more elegant and beautiful world. You make me feel as though if I only believed, I could journey through the back of a wardrobe and find myself in a mystical land where even the most outrageously expensive, frivolous kitchen gadget is a household necessity. A land of endless farmer’s markets where the idea of spending $40 for a pound of imported cheese doesn’t make you want to punch yourself in the crotch. I thank you for these dreams. You make me want to reach for the stars, and to encrust them with apricot-glazed pine nuts.
Why do you live where you live?
When I lived in Honolulu I had split ends and sunburnt shoulders and wore flip flops everywhere. When I lived in Boston I wore knee socks under my pants and walked stiffly from the cold.
Now I live in North Carolina, and this evening I was overcome with a sudden panic. I wanted desperately to see the ocean. Any ocean. I live four hours from the coast. It’s the furthest I’ve ever lived from the coast in my life. The island of Manhattan doesn’t feel much like an island, but you know it is one.
The other day I was listening to the Talking Heads while driving–an album I used to know by heart, and the song ‘The Big Country’ came on. David Byrne sings about being on a plane and looking down at the fields and houses in the middle of the country. The chorus goes:
“I say, I wouldn’t live there if you paid me.
I couldn’t live like that, no siree!
I couldn’t do the things the way those people do.
I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.”
I realized with a shock that for the first time in my life, he was talking about a place like where I’ve chosen to live. It actually stung. I’ve loved the Talking Heads for a long time, but I’ve also always felt like we were on the same side, having both lived in New York city (I even babysat for David Byrne’s daughter once when I was 13, which is my only claim to fame). But now I winced when I heard him sing,
“It’s not even worth talking
About those people down there.”
Ouch.
I guess I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about my new adopted state, and my new little town. I moved here to check it out, see what it was like living further South, in a smaller city, with a different culture. But the people I’m surrounded by aren’t just living here because they thought they’d check it out. This is where their lives are; this is where they want to be.
I am not sure if it’s where I want to be yet.
Possibly this is why I am having a hard time making friends.
I Heard Tell 