This morning, as I sat down to journal my daily gratitude
list, I was rudely interrupted by the child’s barky-sounding cough. “Damn,” I thought to myself, “I’m gonna have
to keep him home again today.” Which, of
course, means that I will need to make adjustments to my work schedule, which
had recently been obliterated by my own 2 ½ week illness.
So, I decided to tackle that task I have been putting off
until the last minute – calling Covered California (the state department
affiliated with Obama care) to register my family for health insurance. Before the office even opens at 8am, their
automated message warns that they are experiencing “unusually high call
volume.” “Damn,” I think to myself as I hang up the phone, “that doesn’t bode
well.”
I call back promptly at 8am and wait on hold for 40 minutes,
when a representative comes online. I
tell him my issue with the website (it’s not working properly) and he tells me
the issue is that the child is still enrolled in Medi-Cal, so their system
cannot register him for Covered California.
When I inform him that my son was terminated from Medi-Cal in back in August
of 2013, he tells me that I need to call Medi-Cal and tell them to cancel him
and then call him back. Right. Like a phone call to a government agency EVER
goes down like that. I ask to speak to his manager, to which he replies, “you
can speak to my manager, but there is nothing we can do.” I tell him that his
suggestion that I call Medi-Cal is not acceptable and can I speak to a manager
and he tells me “there is nothing we can do from our end until Medi-Cal has
cancelled his coverage.” I say “I
understand that, and may I speak to a manager please” and he puts me on hold. Connie comes on the line after a brief wait,
and then, her system goes down. She
needs to call me back later, so I wait for an hour for her call. When I realize that time is ticking and I
will need to leave soon, I hop into my shower, start using my wonderful Aveda
scrub and my phone rings. It’s
Connie.
And then I go to work and, as I have been out for a
substantial amount of time, I am behind. In my rush to catch up, I make several silly
mistakes and then have a brief meeting with my client, who, in addition to
being a bit put off at my errors (who wouldn’t? I was too), appears frustrated
that certain items have not been finished in a timely manner. And I am now put off. Because I have been sick. And when one gets sick, things just don’t get
done. But I leave the meeting feeling
like a slacker.
And then I get a text from home that the child is breaking
the limits I have set for him. So I call
home all agro and call him a lying liar who constantly lies out of his lying
liar hole. I apologize later at home.
And then I jump in the car to get some much needed stress
relief in the sauna, when I get a call from Constance at Medi-Cal who gets
frustrated by MY frustration and asks me “What do you want me to do?” “I want you to fix your goddamn bureaucratic
mess!” But I don’t say this, I say something else she doesn’t like and we part
ways. I feel so much anger and frustration at this
point that I almost don’t go to the sauna…I would rather go home and beat the
child. But a little voice inside my head
(my intuition, god, spirit, higher self, whatever), says “go to the sauna.” And I listen.
This time I listen.
So I am in the sauna sweating the day out and I meet a man
in there who is heavy with prison tattoos and he tells me the story of his recent
hip replacement and getting beat up by three LA cops on 9/11/09. I tell him about my recently diagnosed
fibromyalgia and we commiserate for a while about nerve pain, and he tells me
that he “just wants to find someone who can take care of him, a woman, not no
man,” and I realize that I’m gonna have to extricate myself from this
conversation somehow…when in walks Paul, my mailman!
Paul is a lovely, young 40ish Polynesian-looking man with
long dark hair and a lisp. We get to
chatting about how I fear the US Postal service will cut mail service (they
have threatened this before) and he tells me that’s not going to happen. That they just got a billion dollar contract with
Amazon.com and are in great financial shape.
“Oh good!” I say to Paul.
“Because the US Postal service is the best deal going. I mean 49 cents to transport a letter all the
way across the country?” And Paul tells me that the US has the cheapest rates
of any country. And I tell him that they
could probably raise the rates and folks would bitch, but still use the
service, “cuz there really is no substitute for the US postal service.” And then we talk about how shocked we were
about the $1 raise in Girl Scout cookies this year. But I have had time to think about this one
and I am thinking that they probably do a big jump once every 4 – 5 years so
that it doesn’t seem like they are nickel and diming you every year….$4.00,
then $4.25, then $4.50. So I figure that
the price will probably stay at $5 for a few years, but this year, I just
couldn’t justify spending $5 on a box of cookies, even though I like the Girl
Scouts.
And then, whoa, I look at the clock and it’s been nearly 30
minutes in the sauna, and I have left two sick boys at home to take care of each
other. I say goodbye to Paul, goodbye to
Prison-Tattoo. And by the time I finish
my shower, I feel pretty good about life.
I leave you with this, from one of my top ten favorite
all-time movies:
“If you can’t take pride in your job, there’s always work at
the Post Office”
-
-
Bobby Taylor, Hollywood Shuffle
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg){kind=link}