the wife

Three for Thursday

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1) In about an hour, I’m going to have a yearly performance review for day job. Good thing I’m posting to the internet right now. (Update: not fired)

2) I wish I could find the spot in WordPress that would let me capitalize the first letter of my name. It’s so annoying seeing it that way. Of course I find it as soon as I post about it. Of course I do.

3) Last night, I asked my wife to sit down next to me and I said “I have to tell you something you’re not going to like.”

For most husbands, the next line would be something like “There’s this woman at work…” or “I spent the grocery money on a new Playstation” or whatever. My wife knows better. She knew it would be either about our son’s school or something I’d done to cause pain to my own self.

In this case it’s the latter. After being fine for 10 years, I’ve started having wrist pain again. When I told her, she immediately grabbed my arm and started working on me.

(Digression: One of the physical therapists in town has started telling people that my wife is one of the best massage practitioners in the state. The boy and I had the same reaction, separately: “Only the state?”)

She started to traction my wrist immediately, turning it this way and that, and the way it cracked as it released startled the hell out of me. Wrists shouldn’t do that. She also worked on my forearm for a while, and lemme just say that shit hurts. Yes, I’m a big wimp, but it still hurts like hell. She just about had me ready to confess to anything she wanted.

It’s better today, but I can still feel it. I see ice in my future.

This makes me happy

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Remember a couple days back when I said my wife was painting behind me? Well, she has a commission. It’s not finished, but I’m estatic to see her working on it.

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Oh, and I fixed WordPress. I even got rid of those faint gray links.

Today

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I’m not around much today. I’ve taken a break from my daily goal to get a cup of coffee and skim my friends list, when I found this.

My wife is sitting behind me, working on her latest canvas. It’s a good life.

Tomorrow…

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Tomorrow, the whole family will be going to the Apple Store to buy some sort of iPod for my luddite, tech-phobic wife.

Amount of research I have done on this purchase so far: none.

Pizza tonight

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My son’s school is having a benefit pizza party tonight. Mom and boy are already there, hanging out at Volunteer Park or the library nearby, and I’ll be catching a bus over there later to join them. It sucks that they have to kill three hours between the end of school and the start of the party, but it didn’t make much sense to have him ride home on the school bus for an hour, demand food at home, then take a Metro bus in the other direction.

As for me, I’m making progress on Everyone Loves Blue Dog, but I can’t shake the feeling that I should have finished by now. I really really want this thing to be in my rear view mirror. Man Bites World is sitting fallow while I tinker and trim, and I am itching to get back to it. … Blue Dog is solved. It’s done. At this point, I’m just managing the reader’s experience, which is important (very important, I know) but it isn’t interesting.

Also, I’m tired. Tired enough to feel kinda sick. If we owned cell phones, I’d call my wife and beg off.

Yesterday

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Here’s a quick tally of yesterday’s strangeness (not all of it bad):

Woke early. Worked on …Blue Dog for a while, then rushed home.

Went out just after lunch to see BATTLE FOR TERRA. My son nearly fell asleep on the bus.

We all stopped in at a comics shop for Free Comics Day. The first comics we saw were very, very adult. We had to make our way to the back to pick up books the boy wanted.

At the movie theater, I had to take the elevator. This particular shopping center (Pacific Place) is four stories with a wide open mezzanine structure. The escalators trigger my fear of heights, and for some reason I was extremely vulnerable yesterday.

Loved the movie. See previous post.

At the boy’s insistence, we sat down to eat at Johnnie Rockets, which was even worse than I remembered. The meal was interrupted partway through by an PA announcement that they were evacuating the building.. I stayed behind to settle the bill, then met my wife and son outside. So much for visiting the bookstore in the basement.

On the bus ride home, I noticed something strange just before we came to our stop. A woman was standing by the door to her townhouse, pushing a man away. She would then turn to unlock her door, and he came up close to her again. She appeared to be fending him off.

My wife said “That didn’t look good.” We all got off the bus and I immediately went over there, but they had both gone inside. When I turned around, I saw that my wife had flagged down a police car. We explained what we saw, and he promised to look into it.

Was she about to be raped? Why was the building evacuated? I don’t think we’re ever going to find out.

6 things make a post

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* Check out this short “video” which I guess is supposed to advertise a new TV. Actually, I probably shouldn’t have quote marks around that word, because this is a digital video at 30 frames a second, but it’s really more of a technical acheivement than a short film. Basically, it’s “bullet-time” on red kryptonite.

* Health care reform without a public insurance option=the German model. Money quote: “Finally, premiums for children are covered by government out of general revenues, on the theory that children are not the human analogue of pets whose health care should be their owners’ (parents’) fiscal responsibility. Instead, children are viewed as national treasures whose health care should be the entire nation’s fiscal responsibility.”

* Seven year old boys prefer store-bought lemon-lime soda to the homemade variety.

* On NPR this morning, the father of Roxana Saberi, the journalist sentenced to 8 years in prison in what appears to be an Iranian kangaroo court, has been trying to make waves by telling people that his daughter was tricked into confessing to spying. According to him, they promised to let her go if she admitted to the crimes, which he thought was illegitimate. I hope someone explains to him that this happens in the U.S.A. all the time–the teenagers wrongfully convicted in the Central Park “wilding” case were nailed because of exactly this tactic, and that the FBI wanted Richard Jewel to confess to the Olympic bombing as part of a “training video.” While the Iranian government is deeply fucked up and in desperate need of reform, there’s no point in criticizing them for doing the same thing we do.

* I don’t have whatever cable channel showed THE WIRE, but I know it has a lot of fans. If you’re interested, here’s the original pitch and series bible. (Warning, that’s a .pdf file) I haven’t looked at it myself, because I plan to watch the series someday.

* Finally, putting my wife on a bus for her second day at her conference pretty much wasted my writing time today. My son is up, too, and once that happens I’ll have no time to focus on the book at all. Which sucks, but hey, that’s what family is about. Now we’re off for our Saturday library run.

Skip this post if you hate Valentines Day

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But first of all, I met today’s goal and made up the words I missed on Wednesday. The book is finally hitting its stride, thank Pikachu. Now, if only I hadn’t put in a bunch of exposition that was basically a repeat of 30 pages before…

I hate exposition.

Also: it’s Love Day. I got up at 4:30 to make Salad Eater the ginger pear scones she requested. I’d mixed the dry ingredients last night and wrapped her gift, too (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). No flowers this year. That was an expensive book.

Unfortunately, I left to write today’s pages before she woke up, so her Love Day gifts were sitting on the table waiting for her. It would have been nicer if I was there, but it didn’t happen.

Time to collect my library books and go home.

It’s been a while since I talked about politics here

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I never even commented on Daschele’s withdrawal from the health care reform fight, even though the scandals he was facing seemed fairly minor and his loss hurt our chances of seeing decent health care reform in this country.

But I do want to post about two things, quickly. First, I hope everyone takes a couple minutes to read this op-ed in the Washington Post. It’s co-written by Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists in recent years who publicly warned of the financial crash that hit us months ago.

He’s calling for the government to nationalize the banks put failing banks into receivorship. It’s worked in the past, and if the government acquires and then sells troubled assets after they aren’t so troubled any more, it would not be such a financial hardship on the tax payers.

It would also free up credit for businesses who are struggling to replace capital and reduce the size of institutions that are “too big to fail.” We really shouldn’t have those any more, and a little breathing space to let us regulate those would be welcome.

Check it out.

Next, I have leap frog over the Republican refusal to join Obama and the Dems on the stimulus package, bipartisanship, GOP discipline (message- and otherwise) enforced by hardcore conservative interests willing to put up ambitious conservative politicians in the upcoming primaries and talk about Betsy McCaughey.

In 1994, McCaughey was part of the political hit job against the Clinton health care reform plan. She wrote an article in which she said she read the whole thing and gave her thoughts–and stated that the plan would allow the federal government to block you from seeing a doctor of your choice.

This was reported widely by Republican opponents and in the press, and helped fuel public opposition to the bill. Nevermind that it was an outright lie. Clinton’s plan stated exactly the opposite. Explicitly.

Now she’s back, claiming that the stimulus bill has secret provisions that allow the federal government to decide what treatments you can get.

It’s all BS, but it’s all over Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the other usual suspects. See here for a small link farm (really more of a pea patch) of bloggers pointing out the outright deceptions in her remarks.

How does that rate a comment when the whole stimulus bill fight didn’t? Her lies this time around are an attempt to stifle means testing for medical treatment. What works? What doesn’t? What works best? What’s uselessly expensive? See, McCaughey is on the board of a medical device company, and works for a think tank funded by the pharmaceutical industry. She knows that one in five dollars in this country is spent on health care, and that a frightening percentage of that money is wasted on unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.

Very profitable unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.

It sounds crazy to say it, but some people think that gathering data on what treatments work best–saving lives–and which don’t is controversial. They’re afraid that letting Americans see the numbers will cut into their profits. And they’re right.

Watch out.

In happier news, I met my daily goal again today. I have a book to give my wife for VDay, and when I leave to write in the morning, I plan to have it waiting on the table for her along with a nice, fresh scone.

Cya.

Eight quick notes

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One: my back is much better than it has been the last few days. I’m at the day job, I can move around pretty well, and I’m mostly sitting without pain. Yay for healing.

Two: So much for the rowing machine. I’ve been planning to take the rowing machine out of the back room into the living room (which is the only space big enough for it) but we just don’t have room. Salad Eater has pushed the TV in front of the fireplace and set up her easel, which makes me wildly happy even if she only gets to paint once a week, maybe twice. But there’s no room for the rowing machine out there; I have to let that plan go and do something else for my health. Thanks for the reminder, back pain. Better you than a heart attack or letter from my doctor about diabetes.

Three: Once or twice a week isn’t really enough for her. Once some other crap gets taken care of, we’ll figure ways for her to get more painting time.

Four: Still haven’t heard back about my proposal for Man Bites World and I haven’t gotten my notes for Everyone Loves Blue Dog. For a while, I stressed about this stuff, but at this point I’m going to shrug it off and write book three. It’ll come when it comes.

Five: Last night we made Alton Brown’s ginger ale recipe. It should be ready for tasting Saturday night. I’ll let you know how it comes out.

Six: You know how the economy slows down during a recession? It’s the same for doctors offices, too. The phones have been pretty slow–I guess people have been putting off their routine care.

Seven: On Tuesday, David Frum was on NPR (I know, I know, I forgot to post this earlier. Gimme a break!) to talk about Obama’s economic plan, the recession, and how conservatives can win back the majority in congress. His suggestion for regaining political power? Conservatives need to appeal to working class Americans again, and stop ignoring the wage stagnation of the past decade. His suggested fixes? Anti-immigration and deregulating health care Yeah, he wanted to deregulate. He said government over-regulation had made it impossible for a Sam Walton to create a nation-wide Wal-Mart of affordable health care.

These people are shameless. Worse, this sound bite of his was supposed to appeal to the working class, even though it’s the same old, same old. I guess it’s all about the marketing.

Eight: I’m reading one of Donald Westlake’s “Samuel Holt” novels, but mostly out of a sense of inertia. I’m in one of my book grouch phases; nothing satisfies me and nothing is interesting.