Our health insurance has a deductible. We’re in the deductible range, meaning that if we go to the doctor, we’re paying for it. It’s a discounted rate, but it’s still billed to us. I just realized I have been putting off going because I don’t want to spend the money if my immune system can do the job for me - when clearly, my immune system, as usual, needs a boost of help. I can’t even imagine how difficult it must be for a parent who has to put aside grocery money to buy antibiotics for a kid’s ear infection, or medicine for strep, because they are also paying their deductible. I’m not even going to pretend I have a solution for this problem on a national level.

My own personal problem is that I’m a foolish person who should go to the doctor already and get some medicine and get better, followed immediately by getting over myself. 

1. Best LOLcaption this week, possibly for whole Olympics.

2. I am tired. Bored now? Let’s move on.

3. Hubby said something wise last night while we grunted at each other over dinner (which was good, too. Hubby makes good burgers). Our whole life right now is triage. Deal with what’s most urgent, move on to next urgent thing, with many, many things piling up in the background. So, so fucking true like holy shit.

4. Freebird: “Baba is loooking at me! Stop looking at me!”
Morag: “It is way, way too early for that. No way.”

5. In a small matter of great personal triumph, I have managed to carve out 20 minutes for myself three times a week after work. I am so, so proud of myself for this. It’s ridiculous. But those 20 minutes I guard with the ferocity of a really cranky overtired overworked bear. With big teeth.

Once again, Hubby and I stayed up till 11pm watching SWIMMING until 11pm. WE WATCHED PEOPLE SWIM. Ordinarily, that’s one above “watching paint dry” and “watching someone vacuum” in terms of visual stimulation.

But Olympic Swimming? I love the Olympics. I love every strange event. I could watch table tennis with a side order of judo.

Only on mute, however. The insipid schmaltz of the announcers makes me want to pound my head with the DVR box. 

H: I just could not give less of a crap about gymnastics.
M: Yup.
H: And the floor exercise is particularly boring.
M: Yup. Especially the ones where they have the ribbon and the ball and the whatnot.
H: You mean Floor Exercises with Cat Toys?
M: *chokes*

Announcer: And then, by the power of Olympic gold, she was healed from her sorrow!
M: Oh, my God, if you don’t hit mute, I’ll commit a felony right now.
H: *HITS MUTE*
M: Thank God. Those people are awful.

Poolside interview to Kirsty Coventry: “How did you break the world record?”
M: “She swam that way really, really fast.”

Here are the top five things I don’t give a shit about:

5. Anything having to do with Madonna, A-Rod, or Madonna’s rod.
4. Whether or not Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian.
3. When and in what part of the world Angelina Jolie gives birth.
2. Anything having to do with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.
1. Whether a popstar sings songs (again) about kissing a girl. Between Lohan and this song, I can’t tell if it’s “lesbian chic” or “lesbian?! Eeek!”

Here are the top then things I do give a shit about:

5. Why the state of mental healthcare in this country is so mother fucking awful, even as photographed iconic war heroes die of PSTD? What has to happen before people in the US take mental health care seriously?
4. How is it that people aren’t more interested in simple acts of conservation, even if the cumulative effect of conservation is that they save money?
3. Where is my food coming from? I live in the goddam Garden State. I need to go find me a damn garden.
2. What plants can I put in the new parts of the addition (which is almost finished, hooray) that are perennial and will be happy in part shade?
1. What do I do about feeling unsafe when I walk around in Manhattan? Low plane? Cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Walking under a crane? Same thing.

Hubby and I are a few years past the age when everyone around us is getting married and we have weddings in multiple to attend each year. One summer, I remember, we had five weddings between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and damn, were we poor after all that travel.

I was just looking at pictures from a coworker of mine whose son got married recently, and little has changed. Everyone has that haze of wonderful when it comes to weddings, and I don’t think anyone has clued in the American bride as to a few points of etiquette. Namely:

If you are thin, and your bridesmaids are not, you look like a first rate asshole by putting them in dresses that accentuate how small you are by making them look hugely, enormously uncomfortable. The bride in question was rail thin and wearing a strapless dress. The bridesmaids, whom I believe were her sisters since there was a definite resemblance, were in short peach strapless dresses made of shiny satin material.

Let me go over that again. Peach. Shiny satin. Short dresses. Strapless. On women of considerable size. The dresses could barely contain their bosoms. The hemline ended at the widest part of their calves. The fabric was wrinkly and hugged all the wrong places and highlighted them. It was one giant, “Oh, honey, no.” And I couldn’t blame a single one of those women because there is no way on God’s green earth that they chose a dress like that. Not a chance.

Jesus fucknuts. I looked at the pictures, and granted I knew exactly one person in the crowds depicted, and my only thought was, “That bride is an asshole to dress her closest friends like that.” The bridesmaids of size looked so uncomfortable, I cringed.

Look, no one says you have to buy bridesmaids dresses from the bridesmaid dress makers who think the rest of the world is a size 6. There are plenty of ways around it. But take it from me, if you’re a rail-thin bride wearing a strapless wedding gown and you dress your bridesmaids in styles and fabrics that are utterly, completely, and terribly awful and unflattering, not to mention uncomfortable, you look like a douchebag who doesn’t treat her friends very well. I could go so far as to say that I suspect brides who do shit like that are subconsciously or deliberately highlighting their own svelte figures against the forms of her closest friends and family members. In short: by making your friends and family look unflattering and uncomfortable, you look like a shitheel.

Just sayin’. 

After two months of nonstop work on The Book, I have time to read magazines. OMG the luxury. Freebird is watching tv from under his coffee table bed/fort (note to self: get the boys a tent at some point) and I’m in a chair drinking coffee and reading magazines from the past 3 months. Blissssssss.

But I have to ask: Who the fuck is Domino kidding with this outdoor furniture shit? $1200 for a table that gets rained on? $1500 for a wrought iron sofa WITH CUSHIONS that gets RAINED ON? $750 for a chaise that… wait for it… GETS RAINED ON? What are they smoking? I don’t spend that much on INDOOR furniture (that gets jumped on) much less the stuff that sits outside and gets rained on, to say nothing of pollen, tree detritus, seeds,apples, and flower residue.

Seriously. Craigs List. If I’m in the market for an outdoor set, I’ll haunt the used listings and get someone’s $1500 set for less. I can’t wrap my brain around spending that much for something that will look dirty and messy after one good rainstorm.

Clearly, there must be something wrong with me.