Dear Dysfunctional Roommate

First, I hope you don't read my blog.  Second, let me be frank.  We haven't known each other long, since you only moved in a month ago and have generally been gone as your life seems to fall apart in a new away every day.  I sympathize, empathize as much as I am able, even though at least half of this seems to be self-created.  However, your indecision, impulsive decisions, deciding that you're moving out, that you're not moving out, that you're moving out this week, or that you're moving out next month is affecting more than just yourself.  And I don't just mean Randy, our other roommate/landlord, who is listing and unlisting your possibly empty bedroom.

I'm talking about your cat.  Your dear, sweet, annoying cat you have for some reason named Muumu.  Last week, when you didn't come home for three days, I texted you to ask if you were ok.  You asked me to feed your cat.  That's the only time you've mentioned it, despite being gone five out of the last seven days, again.  So I continue to feed your cat.  I even bought more cat food when you ran out.  I pet your cat, and I chase it off the furniture and counters for you.

Let me make myself clear: I do this not because I am thrilled to have a cat in my house.  I do this because there is a cat in my house, its owner is neglecting it, and I'm not coldhearted enough to let an animal suffer from neglect in my own home.  I am growing increasingly worried.  I'm worried that the longer this goes on, the less comfortable I get with the idea of Muumu being ok with you when you do finally move out.  Not only that, but you have mentioned giving her away once or twice.  Basically, I am increasingly convinced that you are unable to adequately care for your cat.  Your dear, sweet, annoying cat that is the most talkative damn cat I've ever met.

I'm worried that since I am already taking care of your cat, loving your cat for you, and apparently more concerned for your cat than you are, I would be the natural choice to take care of your cat.  But I do not want your cat.  There are plenty of reasons that I got a tortoise instead of a cat.  The biggest is that I'm gone a lot, and I don't think my lifestyle is stable enough for one.  But apparently, neither are you.

So please, I implore you, come home, stabilize yourself, and take care of Muumu.  Because if you're gone another week, I'm going to have to learn how to clean out a litter box.

Miss E.

Grown-Up Girl's Cry More

The following is not a plea for sympathy, simply an observation of changes in my own behavior as I grow up:

I've been watching Cake Boss in my spare time the past few weeks of summer vacation.  This week I saw two baby episodes, and I bawled through both, tears of sympathetic joy, and then longing.

That didn't used to happen.

Not a Waste of Makeup

I went on a date with a grown-up.  A live one, in his natural habitat.  A polite, responsible, "solvent," interesting, and well-mannered grown-up.  He asked me out days in advance, he remembered the restaurant I had casually mentioned liking days earlier, and he showed up on time.  He held a balanced conversation, listening intently, commenting, and asking questions and told stories from his own life as well.

He's got a real job, productive hobbies he pursues with passion, and he loves his grandmother.  Do you know how long it's been since I've been on a date with a boy that didn't live in somebody's basement?  The better part of a year, that's how long.  Some of them lived in their parents' basements; the one I dated for a few months at least lived in a non-relative's basement.  It's been a long time since I've been on a date with a boy with a college degree and a job in his field.  Don't get me wrong, those boys were great dates and there's nothing wrong with the lives they're living.  But I'll admit that it was awfully nice to go on a date with a grown-up.  It made me feel like I'm not crazy for having gotten my degree, started a career, and pursued goals in health, travel, and hobbies. It felt wonderful.

I went on a date with a grown-up.  I hope I get to go on another one.

Musings on Growing up

Yesterday I found myself at a coffee shop in an unfamiliar area, killing time before an appointment and meditating on life.  Since becoming a teacher, there are two things I nearly always have on hand:  scratch paper and a red pen.  Put those two together, and this was the result:

You know what growing up means?  It means making decisions, big ones, decisions that come trailing consequences both good and bad, both apparent and unforeseen.  Being grown-up means being aware of just how much you don't know when you make these decisions.  Gone are the days when you knew what you were doing, when an afternoon was sufficient to research an issue and feels sure.  Now you can spend weeks, months, or  years researching, thinking, and evaluating and still come up a little uncertain, because you've made enough decision now to know how many surprise conflicts, issues, hidden expenses, and aggravations yet unknown are waiting just around the bend in the road.  And the prospect makes you afraid, and some of the shreds of adolescence in you will vote for ignoring the decisions altogether.  Turn up the TV, reach for a cookie, concentrate on the other details of life, and let opportunities and decisions slide by while you close the blinds and order take-out.

But those shreds of adolescence are not your enemy, nor should you seek to smother them or stamp them out so you can proceed toward down the path of your choosing toward that bend in the road with grim, skeptical, fatalistic adult determination.  Instead, use all your adulthood to decide which road you will take and to make the best preparations you can--pack an extra pair of underwear, $20 cash for an emergency, and the phone number of the towing company.  Let your adulthood worry and over plan as much as it can for what's coming.  Pack your six duffel bags of clothes and equipment for every weather and contingency.  Then, decision made and unknown future chosen as best your adult self can manage, and with preparations made based on what you know or imagine will be ahead, then gather up those shreds of adolescence and wrap them around you like a cloak.  Tell them that that the grown-up you has prepared for everything, nothing is going to go wrong you can't handle, and, most importantly, convince those remaining bits of idealistic, adolescent you that you are embarking on an adventure and it is going to fun.  Lie if you have to.  Because those fragments of youthful optimism are what's going to keep you from losing your smile and your soul as you go around that bend in the road and get blindsided by the stuff waiting in the shadows.

Those pieces of the youthful you are everything you've spent years training yourself not to be:  idealistic, stubborn, willful, rebellious, naive, and blind.  But all your adult knowledge educated guesses about what's coming up now that you've chosen a path are only going to make you afraid.  Whisper to those shreds of naivete that when difficulties come up they should be as stubborn and pigheaded as they have ever been; give them a free reign to be rebellious.  Tell them you're going to put them back in charge for a little while, and that you're going to keep forward as blindly ignorant of what's ahead as you did when you were 15.  You've used all the adulthood you have to make the decision and prepare as best as you can, the adult open-eyed, grim determination will only lead you to despair along the way.  It takes all the stupidity, blind optimism, and unreasonable, unbearable stubbornness and cheek of a teenager to travel the road ahead and enjoy it.

After all, this is going to be an adventure.  It's going to be fun.

Grown-up Girls Solve Their Own Problems

If you haven't been following my grown-up girl saga  involving sewer pipe, doctors for your lady bits, and mysterious insurance companies, you can read about in part one and part two.  If you don't care about my grown-up girl saga and you definitely don't want to hear about insurance or gynecologists, I'd recommend not reading those parts, or this post for that matter.

Like any grown-up will tell you to do, I mustered up my courage and confronted the problem:  I called my grown-up insurance company.  After a brief discussion, the problem was identified.  The reason they didn't want to cover my grown-up girl doctor appointment and all his lab work was because they didn't believe I was actually a grown-up!  Really, that's what the problem was this whole time.  Those weren't the exact words they said, the exact words were more like, "We're not listed as your primary insurance."  If you translate that it says, "We thought you were still on your parents' insurance, little girl."  I informed them that they were my primary, indeed, my only insurance and that they had been for years (years, That's how long I've been a grown-up.).  They told me I'd need to call my previous insurance company and have them fax over my letter of termination.  Now, call me crazy, but when you get a letter of termination from your insurance company, doesn't that sound like you should be dead?  But their doomsday terminology not withstanding, I immediately called DMBA and asked them to fax a letter over to Educators Mutal and let them know that I was dead, or a grown-up, whichever they took "terminated" to mean.  They told me the letter would arrive within a half an hour.

Three days later, a day after a third grown-up lab bill arrived at my apartment to inform me that I owed another hundred grown-up dollars from my grown-up salary, I got another email from my insurance company informing me that there had been new claims filed to my account.  With very un-grown-up haste I rushed to their website, typed in my password, and sat back with a downright childish cry of delight.

I don't owe the doctor or his labs a single penny.  My insurance company was forced to acknowledge that I am, indeed, grown-up enough for them to pay for my bills.  Now I am fighting the very un-grown-up desire to go blow the $400 I'm not paying my gynecologist on something awesome.

Grown-up Girl Gripe

Sometimes being a grown-up girl isn't just about learning how old sewer maintenance works, sometimes it's about figuring out how your own maintenance works.  For example, I did my best grown-up girl job to find a gynecologist for my first ever grown-up girl appointment.  I picked the name off the "covered provider list" provided online by my grown-up insurance company (you know, the one that isn't your parents' insurance).  Then I bravely called them all by myself, drove myself to my appointment, boldly went through all the joys and pains and awkwardness of that kind of doctor visit with a stoicism that made me proud of myself.

Then, a week or so later, I get a very grown-up sounding email from my grown-up insurance company informing me that there has been a new claim on my account and that I should check it out ("check it out" is what all the grown-ups are sayin' these days).  So I checked it out.  And I was informed that my grown-up insurance actually didn't cover my grown-up girl doctor appointment, and that, between the visit and the standard lab work, I now owed over 300 grown-up dollars to my grown-girl doctor and his lab.  This money will have to come from my hard work at my grown-up job, money I was planning to spend on other grown-up girl purchases like new sheets (the ones my mother gave me before I left for college are finally wearing out), new towels (the ones the nice lady in the ward gave me when I left for college are now the same color--they were originally bright orange and bright green), and maybe some more new clothes that fit.

Now before you tell me I should have checked with my insurance before scheduling the appointment, like any sensible grown-up would, I TRIED.  I hunted all over my grown-up insurance company's infantile web site without discovering anything remotely resembling a list of benefits.  So I made inferences based on available information:  I live and work and am insured in Utah, which is probably the baby-producing capital of the US.  Surely my insurance, my educator (another high baby demographic) insurance, would cover a routine gynecologist visit.  They cover a once a year eye examination, and it's not even vision insurance!

And now, because of my grown-up girl logic about my grown-up girl insurance company's interaction with my grown-up girl doctor, I am now pouting like a five-year-old.  Well done world, well done.

Grown-up Girl

I'm been doing my best to be a grown-up these past few years.  I clean my own toilets without being asked, I wash my sheets regularly, I pay my bills on time, I have a car payment, I get regular dentist appointments, etc.  One of these days I'll even manage to send birthday cards to my nieces and nephews.  Then someone can give me a medal.  A big medal for being a grown-up.  They give those out right?  There's a ceremony and streamers and a big sign that says "CONGRATULATIONS!  You Made It!"  And then someone presents me with a certificate redeemable for a husband, 2.5 kids, and a blue house with a .75 acre yard in some suburban neighborhood.  And chocolate cake.  There'd better be chocolate cake or I'm not doing it.  Unless there's pie.  I'd grow up for pie, I guess.

But anyway, as I was going through the mental list of "things that grown-up girls do," it occurred to me that grown-up girls sometimes go to the doctor.  In fact, they go on a regular basis.  Then I realized that I haven't had a physical check up of any kind since....high school?  Seven years?  I don't have a primary care physician.  I've never picked up a prescription for myself.  Then it occurred to me that grown-up girls go to girl doctors to talk to them about girly stuff.  Was I supposed to be doing that, too?  So I asked my roommate who is a nurse; I ask her all of my medical related questions, whether or not she should be able to answer them.

"Am I supposed to go to a gynecologist sometime?" I asked.
"Well, when was the last time you went?" she replied.
"I've never been," I said nonchalantly.
"Never?!" she said, her eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.

I inferred from this that this was, in fact, something I was supposed to be doing as a grown-up girl.  So I dug through my wallet until I found my insurance card, dug through the internet until I found a covered provider, and then picked a name of the list and called to make an appointment.  The receptionist told me to go to a website and fill out the registration and health forms before I came in.

So, this morning, I sat down to fill out the forms.  Besides asking me my name, birthday, social security number, and what surgeries I've had (tonsils out when I was two, Lasik eye surgery when I was 21), they also  asked for a family medical history.  I stared at the screen trying to remember, did any of my uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc. have cancer, strokes, diabetes, etc.?  As the youngest child of a youngest child, my grandparents are all long gone, and my aunts and uncles on my dad's side are all retired with grandchildren older than I am.  Luckily, I'm at home for a few days, so I tripped my way upstairs to my dad's office to ask him how my grandparents died and if his siblings are healthy.

That's how I learned about sewer pipe.  Old fashioned sewer pipes, the kind that had homemade gaskets made from hemp and molten lead.  The plumbers would pour melted lead on the hemp they had pounded around the opening.  They would boil the lead right there in the enclosed, underground space, inhaling the the vapors from the lead.  Did you know that?  I didn't know that.  But that's what I learned form my dad this morning.  How does this relate to my family medical history?  When of the many professions my paternal grandfather had was a plumber.  He got some sort of poisoning several times and eventually died of bone cancer when I was in second grade.  Then Dad and I spent another ten minutes discussing cheerful topics such as nursing home neglect and old fashioned sewers.  Then he went back to work, and I filled out my forms, musing on the nature of life, death, health, and the way you never know where a conversation is going to go.

Maybe my gynecologist doesn't know about old-fashioned sewer pipe, either.

Grown-up girls climb big rocks, too.  

Mommy--Wow! I'm a big girl now!

I would just like to take this moment to broadcast to the world that I, for the first time in a very, very long time, just voluntarily cleaned the bathroom. No one made me do it. No one assigned me the chore, threatened me with a cleaning check, or in anyway hinted that my bathroom was past due. In fact, since I've only lived here for a couple of weeks, by college standards my bathroom was still quite shiny clean.

Nevertheless, this morning I woke up, walked to the store, bought my very own cleaning chemicals, carried them home in a reusable grocery bag, and then cleaned the whole darn thing. All by 9 a.m. Go me!