Crazy at Any Cost

I'm batshit insane. I would like to believe the monkeys drove me to it, but sadly, I was certifiable long before they even existed. The real difference is that now, I'm medicated for their protection. And, I suppose, my own.
Today I picked up my monthly ration of crazy pills and forked over $50 for the copays and started thinking about how the hell the un- or underinsured manage. While it's annoying to me that I have to pay anything at all to keep from drooling in the corner, the fitty smackeroos doesn't break my bank, and in the end is a small price to pay.
If Husband's insurance didn't cover the bulk of the cost?
Whole different ballgame, my friends.
My weekly therapy sessions cost $150. My monthly psychiatrist appointment is another $175. I'm on three medications. One is only $130. Another is generic, so it's only $50. The third is $998.99. So for the bargain basement price of nearly 2k, I manage to function well enough to be left alone for short periods of time.Obviously, insurance covers the bulk of all of this, and I thank my lucky stars it does, even as I'm annoyed that my crazy effects my wallet at all.
But without the insurance? I'd go untreated. Which means the monkeys would
go unfed, the house would go even more uncleaned, and basically, my life would be an even bigger shitshow than it is now.
What this has made me think about isn't necessarily what my own life would be like without insurance, and not because I think Husband couldn't possibly lose his job or that there's no chance I'd ever have to go without again, because trust me, I'm a champion worrier who always, always, always thinks of the worst possible case scenario. Twice.
For once my incredible narcissism has stepped aside so that I could think about how something might effect people who aren't me. 
Forget the stigma of even seeking help for mental illness-which is huge, by the way- the cost of treatment is simply too high for a large group of people. The same people who so desperately need mental health care- therapy and/or medications- are also often unemployable or severely underemployed.
Without income, there's no insurance. Government subsidized insurance isn't available to everyone, and often doesn't cover the cost of reliable, appropriate treatment, so they simply go without.
I'd have to, if Husband didn't have such rocking insurance.
Without turning this into a discussion about anything else, how many people self-medicate with illicit drugs or alcohol? How many turn to crime? How many simply give up and self-terminate?
I recognize that I'm crazy. I also seek and receive treatment because being bananas isn't actually any fun at all. But as crazy people go, I realize I'm a pretty damned lucky one, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

Talk Derby to Me

Somehow or other, this person who doesn't particularly enjoy people or parents or children or sports is now co-coaching a junior roller derby team. This happens because I enjoy incompetence even less and have an uncanny inability to ever say no when presented with a request to do something way out of my scope of expertise.
Of course, that's not a difficult feat, as anything beyond being snarky on the sidelines of monkey football/baseball/volleyball/basketball games, eating way too much sugar while drinking way too much coffee, and reading while studiously ignoring housework is beyond my scope of expertise.
However, apparently I fake having my shit together fairly well, because this is the second time I've been asked to help coach a child's sport. The first time ended a burgeoning friendship (have I mentioned incompetence is a major turn off?) and netted a second place trophy in the only competition the team participated in. I have super high hopes this time around.
First, I went into it with zero expectations for friendship. It helps that I didn't know a single soul when I signed my monkeys up to participate. Of course, I also had only a basic grasp of roller derby's rules, could barely skate myself, and had never coached on my own. But why should that stop me?
Google, if you've been living under a rock and therefore didn't realize, can fix everything.
Need to know coaching skills, drills, etiquette, tips, tricks, and secrets? Google it.
Want to improve camaraderie amongst these children who don't know each other and haven't learned to work as a team? Google it.
Wonder how to politely inform parents they're behind on their dues? Google it.
It's been several months now, and I've got a good grasp on the rules and my role as a coach. The kids are playing better and learned each and every time I see them. They also give every appearance of having fun, which I think someone said once was the idea behind kids sports, although I personally think the idea should be to play hard and win big, but that's a post for another time.
What Google, even with all its power, hasn't been able to tell me is how to learn to enjoy myself. Derby days bring terror sweat, inflamed bowels, raging headaches, and memory loss. I panic at the thought of interacting with all these short people who are prone to random acts of hugging. And the parents? That's even worse because I know how judgey I am, and can only assume everyone else is just as adept at secretly thinking I'm incompetent and out of control.
Which is how this whole mess even got started- I recognized the incompetent nature of my predecessor and mentioned it to someone who had the power to put my dumb ass in charge of the whole shebang.
Even as terrified and panic-stricken as I am about doing the derby, I'm even more territorial and possessive now that I have this amazing power.
Joke. There's no power. Just my name on a bankbook and my face in front of all these strangers.
I am, however, possessive of this team, primarily because I'm proud of the progress I see in them and knowing I had some small part in that makes my narcissistic little heart go pitty pat.
Also, it's clear to everyone that I'm doing a much better job than the person who came before me, and they tell me so. Again, my ego likes the stroking enough to make it worth explosive diarrhea and cold sweats.
It's all about pros and cons and finding the balance. Something I'm clearly excelling at.
 

Happy Camper

I dropped my son off at basketball camp the other day, and came away feeling dirty, alarmed, and ashamed. Let me explain.
This monkey is the oldest of all of our monkeys and also it seems, the least ready to eventually face the real world. Allow me to demonstrate how I've reached this conclusion.
When I told him to grab a pillow, for instance, he brought his pillow down, sans case, and thought that was acceptable. Now, I don't know about you, but I find that I'm skeeved out by the thought of my sweaty, nearly grown child sleeping for even one night without a pillow case, but sending him off to camp with a naked pillow seems especially wrong. Like the parenting police will come and revoke my "I'm capable of keeping humans alive" card. Because let's face it, I don't really deserve a "good parenting" trophy or even merit a "halfway decent" consolation ribbon. But I do, generally, manage somehow to keep the horde alive.
So, ok. I hand him a fresh pillow case and we head off. As slightly alarming as knowing he was perfectly willing to sleep without a protective cover on his pillow for a week was, nothing could prepare me for what the day would bring.
We arrive at camp registration and he signs in. They hand him a key, and tell us where the dorms are. (This camp was at a local college.) I head into the adjoining room to finalize the medical and official paperwork, and he heads back out to the car. Fine. Except on my way out, one of the registrants hails me, telling me he forgot to actually take the key they handed him. So, back in he goes, alarming me to the fact that my key deposit will never be seen again, and my child may well spend several nights sleeping in the hallway due to his inability to enter a room with a key he's already lost within the first five minutes of being at camp.
We eventually find the right door to the building and then the right floor. He gets turned around following the signs clearly posted on the walls (by this point, I'm conducting a scientific experiment whereby I'm not helping him survive in the wilderness), and finally he finds his room.
Then the fun begins.
This is an old school building. The locks aren't fancy magnetic swipe locks, there's no thumbprint and retinal scan necessary to gain entrance. It's a simple insert key into hole and turn type device. Maybe that was the problem- such low tech apparatus are not customary for this generation. Or maybe my particular monkey is simply inept. Either way, he struggles for at least a full minute with fitting the key into the lock.
He eventually manages to make it work, and we enter the room, where his roommate had already been and left one of the beds neatly made with matching sheets and a turned down quilt. My own offspring? Tossed everything he was carrying onto the bed, turned to me, and said "Bye."
Really, kid? You don't feel the need to make your bed, put your single backpack containing a week's worth of clothes and hygiene supplies somewhere other than in the middle of your unmade bed, or even thank your mother for her time and trouble, not to mention the expense of sending your ungrateful ass to camp?
Clearly, I'm doing a stellar job at mothering if my child can't be bothered with even the slightest degree of politeness. Never mind unending declarations of love, all I really want is a thank you and a handshake.
But alas, that was not to be from my most sullen, surly offspring. In fact, there's no doubt in my mind he didn't even consider the possibility.
So, I replied with "Bye." right back, then forced him to hug me, told him to have a good time and that I loved him, and walked away, feeling distinctly as if I'd thrown my eldest child directly into the lion's den.
By some insane miracle, he appeared none the worse for wear when I returned days later to retrieve him, and against all odds, he somehow hadn't lost his key, and therefore my deposit was, in fact, returned to me.
Color me surprised.
I'm figuring the lesson here was that sometimes it's ok to let your child sink or swim. Especially if that child will be considered an adult in just over two years, capable of dying in combat or given the power to elect government officials.
While a little part of me may very well have felt just slightly guilty, leaving such an obviously incompetent person in charge of his own welfare without my presence serving as a safety net, ready to catch him should calamity strike, the rest of me was like "meh."
It was a semi-controlled environment, for one thing. And he's more than half grown and really needs to be able to figure shit out on his own, for another.
I may not be given any awards for the way I participate in the raising of this flock of monkeys, but when you consider my end goal is to have them turned into productive and moral human beings by the time they fly the nest, all that really matters is that somehow or other, he managed to survive a week at camp without me there reminding him to brush his teeth and take his contacts out.

   

Hold the Door

This morning I dropped our car off at the dealership for the third time in two weeks. It's not falling apart as the number of trips to be repaired might suggest. No, each of these trips happened to be for the same repair, which hasn't yet happened.
The first time they told me what it needed, and that the warranty would cover it, but that I'd need to come back, as they didn't have the part in stock. Ok. That's reasonable, even though I'd been waiting for nearly three hours.
The second time, I had an 8:30am appointment. After hauling ass to drop a monkey off at soccer camp, I rushed to make it to the dealership in time, and then sat and waited. Nearly four hours later, when it was time to pick the same monkey back up from camp, I approached the service department to discover that not only was my vehicle's repair not finished but it hadn't even begun yet.
So I made another appointment, this time verifying that there'd be a loaner for my use while my own car got fixed.
I dropped it off and left in the loaner that was very similar to my car- so similar in fact that my completely unobservant monkeys didn't even realize it wasn't our van. Everything was going well- I wasn't stuck at the dealership all day, I could run errands, and the loaner looked at home parked in the driveway.
Sure, the windsheild's cracked. Ok, the exhaust is loud. And the check engine light is on, the right turn signal doesn't actually work, and the gas tank was empty when I got in. But other than those little things, it runs and it's temporary.
After a morning puttering around the house and make my grocery list, I headed out to the grocer's, content that the loaner would work fine for errand running even if I was slightly ashamed to be seen in it.
Everything was running smoothly until I came out of the store with a cart full of frozen items and attempted to open the back door of the van. Minivans, most of you will recognize, have large sliding back doors. This particular car's door is apparently broken, something I was not warned about when I was handed the keys.
Now, there's broken and then there's broken.
This door is so broken that once opened, it promptly fell directly off the car and nearly onto my sandal-clad feet.
Yeah, picture that for a moment. I'm pulling the handle with one hand while holding the cart still with the other, so my body's contorted, angled away from the van, but between it and the cart. Suddenly, I'm standing there slack-jawed as the door slides off the rails and onto the ground, my hand on the handle the only thing keeping it from crashing all the way down and onto my feet.

This happened, only more dramatically.

I jumped back a little as if I was doing some sort of ragtime dance in an attempt not to have my toes crushed and looked around frantically for help.
Luckily, there was a car full of men just a few spaces over who heard my plaintive pleas for assistance and came to my rescue. Because the three of them couldn't get it, either, another man who just happened to be walking by also came to my aid.
Between the five of us (ok, four of them and me wringing my hands extremely helpfully) we managed to get the door back on and latched and locked and I made a mental note not to ever open that door again under penalty of death. Or crushed toes.
What I've learned from this experience is that A) a dealership who can't even keep their own cars in good repair probably isn't who I want fixing mine, B) strangers can be very kind and C) there's no such thing as full disclosure.
Also, the fact that this even happened is bananas. Like, something from a Rom-Com, only not nearly as funny in real life.
Also, I'm counting down the minutes until my own van is parked back in my driveway and I can be rid of this beastly car that tried to kill me.
 

Resting Bitch Face

Before the internet went bananas and made a thousand memes about Resting Bitch Face, those of us who actually have a naturally bitchy look about our visages were sitting over here, looking like we hate everything.
You know what I'm talking about, naturally happy-looking people. You've all seen someone who just looked like a massive bitch. Odds are, they weren't, although some of us can totally be when the need arises. Or just because.
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me to smile, or cheer up, or asked me what was wrong, I'd never have to send Husband off to work again. Sadly, I don't have a dollar for each such occurrence, so Husband will be slaving away until our lottery numbers get picked. Meanwhile, I'm sick to death of hearing that I look miserable. If you all think people with RBF don't know they have it, you're sadly mistaken.
That little tragedy notwithstanding, what really grinds my gears is knowing I look like I'm pissed off at the world and being powerless to prevent it, which only causes more people who sort of know me from the Monkeys' school events but have no actual idea who I am when I'm not pretending to be a good parent to express their concern over my normal face. 
Ok, sure, I could walk around with a forced permagrin, but trust me, that shit gets old.
I know because I tried it for a few minutes the other day.
The upside is that I don't have to worry about tricking strangers into thinking I'm a nice person who gives two shits about whatever inappropriate thing people overshare with strangers. People who don't know me don't often talk to me. Since I'm anti-human, Resting Bitch Face actually works in my favor here. 
I just wish the rest of the world would shut up about it already and let me look like an asshole in peace. But then, I'm bananas, so what do I know?  

Urine Luck

The other day, in an attempt to get a diagnosis for my unruly neck lump that I'm pretty sure is growing by the second, I was sent for labwork.
Now, I know plenty of people who are afraid of needles, or can't abide the sight of blood. I'm not like them, and have tattoos and donate blood regularly. Bring the needles on, but stay the hell away from me with your Band Aids or medical tape.
For some reason, I have a completely irrational fear of the sticky stuff Band Aids are made of. Possibly because I spent some time in a cancer ward where nurses covered me with Band Aids many times a day. Having them removed for more injections was sheer torture, and truly my only clear memory of what was an otherwise hazy couple of weeks spent mostly unconscious. For real, the spinal tap was barely a blip on my radar, but the incessant pulling off of bandaids? Terrifying.
Possibly the fear is simply because I'm insane and have odd phobias completely unrelated to reality.
Either way, I typically dread having labwork for the sole reason of not wanting tape or a Band Aid after the blood draw. This lab, however, used some sort of magical non-sticky wrap to hold the little gauze square in place, and suddenly I knew which lab I'd be using for the rest of my life.
The part of the testing that tripped me up this time was the urine sample.
Not like I don't know how to pee- after all, I've been doing it since birth, and I even needed to, so actually giving a sample wasn't the problem.
The issue is knowing how much of a sample to give.

This seems like way too much.

Too much and I look over eager and like I can't control my bladder or urine stream or whatever the lab technicians are judging me on based solely on the amount of urine in the little cup. Too little and I look like a weakling who can't even give a proper sample. Besides, I have no idea how much urine a lab actually needs to do whatever it is labs do with urine.
How embarrassing would it be to be called in again simply because you didn't give them enough pee? Like you're the dim-witted child who can't follow simple instruction and are incapable of getting something as basic as peeing in a cup done properly.
What would be super handy is a line on the cup. Or actually, two lines. One for the bare minimum required to perform the test, and another that means "anything over this is overkill and looks like you're trying too hard."
Really, I wonder why no one has thought of this before, because I'm quite sure I'm not the only person who has ever dumped out half of their sample because they were sure it was simply too much.
Of course, then you run the risk of dumping out too much and needing to provide more and being unable to.
You see the problem with the current system?
This following unclear directions is exhausting and completely bananas. I need to be told precisely what to do and how to do it, usually eleventy dozen times. Unless, of course, it's written down, like a mark on a cup. Then it's just a few dozen times.

Step One: Discover there's a problem

The other day, in an ongoing effort I'm making to take better care of my body, I went to a routine doctor's appointment. It was basically to get established as a patient, because even though I've lived here for coming up on three years now, I've not been to a medical doctor.
I guess I thought all the head shrinkers I see on the regular were enough or something.
The first part of the appointment went very much like every doctor's appointment I can remember: he told me to quit smoking, lose weight, and keep being awesome.
Then came the touchy feely part.
Attired in a super fancy paper gown and my knickers, I waited patiently for the doctor to stop palpating my neck and start listening to me breathe.
Only he palpated. And palpated.
And then said, "How long have you had this lump?"
I responded with "What lump?" and then the discussion began.
I've a lump in my neck. While it's probable that it's my thyroid, he was also concerned that it was so large and not as uniform in shape as he'd expect.
So, tomorrow I'm headed in for an ultrasound, possible CT scan, and some bloodwork.
I was doing a relatively decent job not freaking: I knew WebMD would tell me I had died last week, so I avoided it. I verified that hypothyroidism is treatable with medicine, something I'm an expert at taking, and that was the extent of my research.  Looking for answers when you don't yet know the question is the surest route to madness. This I've learned the hard way, so this time I was determined to take the wait and see approach.
Until I went to see my head shrinker the day after my appointment with the medical doctor, and we went over the labwork she'd ordered about a month ago. I'm vitamin D deficient and my cholesterol is a little high, but my thyroid is functioning beautifully, according to the bloodwork.
So, why's that bad? Well, it's good for my thyroid, but that means it's more likely that the mass I can see, now that I'm aware of it, isn't my thyroid as the bloodwork, in all likelihood, would have been abnormal, and mine wasn't.
Even though it's tempting, I still haven't jumped head first on the cancer train, so I'm trying to mantain some semblance of composure over the whole thing, but here's the deal:
Whether it actually is my thyroid, a benign tumor, cancerous, or some sort of cyst, it's not going to be a good thing. I'm not going to be able to ignore it or pretend it isn't there- it's causing me to be hoarse and if it continues to grow unchecked, will undoubtedly cut off my air supply. The severity and course of treatment will vary depending on the diagnosis, but it's never going to be like a doctor feels you up and says "Oh, you have a growth! Congratulations, you're getting xray vision and the power of flight!"
There's never a time when having a lump or bump or mass in a place where you haven't always and aren't meant to is a nice surprise.
That's pretty much bullshit, if you ask me.
If we have to worry and wait and wonder, we ought to at least have the tiniest fragment of a possibility that something good might be behind our anxiety. 
Like, when someone tells you "We need to talk," it's almost never a good thing, but every once in a while they want to tell you that you've won the lottery or something. Having some sort of extra bit somewhere on your body will never be like that.
It's not always deadly, it's not always painful, it's not always incurable. But it's never welcomed as a fun surprise.
And that's bananas.