Insurance Shopping

Who knew when you move from California to Texas, your health insurance rates automatically increase?  Is this added to the yearly increase, or an add-on?  At what age will we qualify for Medicare? Should we get a PPO or HSA?  Beware! When Blue Cross quotes 25% on office visits, this means they pay 75% of the office visit – Hooray – Not so fast: only after you’ve reached your $5000 deductible.  Does this include medications? Is there coverage for medications? Maybe. But only for new ones prescribed. If you’re now taking a cholesterol lowering drug you may not be covered for any or all of the side affects that may occur such as but not limited to . . everything! Or in other words, anything that may happen to your body including and/or mind such as, but not limited to, getting old, cranky, hard of hearing, blind, amnesiatic or insane will automatically disqualify you from a discount on the drug that’s keeping you healthy.

Auto insurance is more forth right: each item you want has a separate fee. You can pick and choose. And the rates are quoted yearly, mainly because they’re so much cheaper than health insurance which, if the companies really want us to feel better should break it down even further, to say, “only $1.66 an hour!” instead of $1,200.00 a month or the amount they don’t dare quote: $14,400 per year.

I think I’ll go into the insurance business, and cover the things that are not covered by life, auto, health or homeowner/renter insurance, such as Shopper’s Insurance.  What woman would not pay premiums to protect herself from impulsive buys?   Just look in your closet, ladies, and see the money you wasted on those boots you’ve never worn and the black pants that fit perfectly but pick up every bit of white lint and cat hair within a three mile radius.  What about that sweater that was on sale that makes you look like a sack of potatoes?  Or the lime-green jersey that shows off your still not-bad breasts but makes your skin look like day old meat?

Or how about Grocery Insurance? Don’t you need protection from all those plastic containers filled with leftovers that seemed so tasty when you cooked them but now are as appetizing as fermented cardboard? That bottle of salad dressing with one serving used, are you going to wait until you faint from sniffing it before you throw it out? With Grocery Insurance you won’t care how much food you waste because you’ll be able to sample everything in the store at a fraction of the cost.  Sure, your premium will be $475 a month (only 66 cents an hour) but think of how fun it will be to buy a bag of Parmesan-Sun-Dried-Tomato-Garlic and Fennel Whole Grain Baked Pita Chips!  You can eat one and then give the rest to the dog.  (Dislaimer: resulting dog farts not covered).

Buying insurance is so depressing! It makes you look at the worst that can happen and then back off toward what probably will happen – you’ll catch a cold, get a rash, strain your back, pick up a bug, find a lump, and eventually just wear out.

Guess I better start looking into death insurance . . .

Halloween

          I was feeling very sorry for myself after I wrote my last blog about missing Quartz Mountain. I laid on the couch, intending to read but a flood of sorrow washed over me thinking about “our” hummingbirds.

          So I decided to sit outside and read the New Yorker.  It was too hot in the sun but okay in the shade. I started on an article about leaf blowers in Orinda – there’s an initiative on the ballot to outlaw them. I closed my eyes and listened but could not hear much, except for an occasional swish of a car.  When I opened my eyes I looked straight up at the vibrant blue sky and the bright stucco of the house and saw something small and white wafting down toward me. A petal?  As I watched, it descended in a sort of spiral as if were taking its time, not wanting to land.  When finally it came to rest a few feet in front of me, I saw that it was a feather, actually a bit of fluffy down. I picked it up. I raised my head to look up again. The sky was striped with lines of white clouds that looked just like feathers! A flood of gratitude washed over me. I felt like a dying man given a sip of water.

          Then the phone rang: a California girlfriend. Just the sound of her voice made me happy. She asked lots of questions about this house and town. As I answered her questions I saw that I really had done quite a lot to make a home here and that the house – for all its faults – isn’t bad.

          She, like many of my friends, has been facing a painful challenge. It seems like almost everyone I know is going through big changes now -  illness, death of a beloved pet, divorce.  Lots of loss. Jenny once told me (and it really helped) “Don’t focus on what you’re losing, but on what you’re getting.”

          The problem is that it’s not necessarily an even exchange – something lost, something gained. There are periods when it’s just all loss. Slowly other things come in to replace what we’ve lost, but we never get back what we once had.  Loss is like an injury that heals but leaves a scar or dull ache when it rains.

          After we hung up I got back to what I’d started the day before: carving a pumpkin. I thought about making a scary face, or a startled face, but settled for my usual - cat-like smiling face.

          As night fell, I put a candle in it, and banished Walter to the patio. Sure enough, at dusk, just as a neighbor had warned, lines and lines of cars showed up, cruising the neighborhood: fathers behind the wheel with mothers accompanying little ones to our door. I didn’t mind.  It had been years since I’d seen kids on Halloween and I welcomed the little candy hounds.

          Walter had a great time barking his head off. When all the kids had gone, I let him back inside. He sprawled out on his bed, pleased that he had fulfilled an important canine duty, and fell into the deep sleep of  weary contentment.       

Escrow Closes

Thursday Pat called and said escrow closed. We are no longer homeowners. It’s been so depressing thinking of the house empty and outside the planters John left abandoned – succulents, eggplant, tomatoes, flowers – because he didn’t have room to bring them. I’ve been worrying about deer eating the roses and the rabbits not having water in the pans I filled every morning.

So now I can stop worrying. The new owners will take care of everything. On the patio in this small rented house, Walter chomps on the manzanita log John brought him from Coarsegold, the last one he’ll ever know. I sit on the chaise pad Lynne & Paul gave us, as a housewarming gift, ten years ago. We were so hopeful then, excited at the thought of being neighbors on Quartz Mountain, before the casino was built, before they divorced.

Walter’s settling in. After living in the country all his life, he seems to like his twice-daily walks around the neighborhood or when I take him to the park. But I really struggle, trying to hold him back from chasing deer. Today I feel like collapsing into tears at the thought I’ll never again walk my trails in Coarsegold with him running free;  I’ll never stroke the smooth red-barked manzanita, or eat their sweet apple-flavored berries in the fall. I’ll never greet another lumbering tarantula as he tries to find his mate.

Out in the garage I visit Jane, the ornery cat, who’s adapting pretty well too.  I tried to make her an indoor cat but she attacked Audrey, so she’s back outside.  “Back home” her garage had a door to the outside and windows that looked out over the vegetable garden on the south side and the pond on the north; it even had windows in the door.

I remember lying on the white carpet, the door open, spring, or late fall, with sunlight flowing in as we looked out onto the island of bush lupine, a forest of oaks and towering bull pines.  I’d lie still and listen to the swoosh of humming birds whizzing from live oak to the feeder, the chirps of ground squirrels in the woodpile and the faintest click as blue-bellied lizards did push ups, signaling to each other, on their hill.  For it was their hill, after all, not ours, not mine.

There is enough space in this warm, box-packed garage for me to lie on the floor with Jane. She walks around me purring. The overhead light is on. Outside a chainsaw is running which is unusual, for I can’t recall any trees that need to be cut, in this constantly manicured community.

It goes on so long I get up and go in the house so I can look out the front-door window: a half-fence hides the bottom of a man wielding a chainsaw, his truck parked haphazardly on the street. 

So, someone’s hired him to carve . . something for Halloween?

Loyalties

Last night John and I watched game #1 of the World Series: Rangers at Giants. I said, “You root for Texas & I’ll root for San Francisco.” He had no problem with that because he has such animosity toward California and undying love for Texas. But for me it wasn’t so simple.

Growing up in Southern California, I felt that I was the luckiest girl in the world to grow up where the sun shone most of the year (barring of course the June gloom at the beach), and if we did want to experience snow, we could get in the car and be in the mountains in a few hours.

It wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco in 1970 that I discovered  everyone did not love L.A.  We were considered shallow and unsophisticated, more into our looks than books. The Bay Area was a hub of intellectual and cultural activity.    When I moved to Central California in 1990, I made friends with people who had grown up in places as far away as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky. My husband was from Iowa, for goodness sake, which we Angelinos thought of as some sort of purgatory. I remember watching the news, as a child, and seeing reports of blizzards in the Midwest, saying, “Why would anyone live there?”

My father always brought up the weather when we talked. The temperature in his back yard never got over 80, or under 60. He didn’t own a coat. He spent most of his time in zories and thin cotton slacks and shirts.  He never understood that I actually grew to love cold weather (but not snow, which was just too much of a pain to shovel and hazardous to drive in) once I had leaned how to layer my clothing.

Now here I am in the South, where for my first month the weather has been hotter than normal and the sun is so bright!  How I’ll deal with summer I have no idea.  But, do I long for coolness San Francisco? Not at all. Do I wish I were in California. Not really.

I suppose my strongest loyalty is to the L.A. Lakers, because I’ve followed them since 1977. When Randy Newman sings “I love L.A.” I think, yeah, I do love L.A.  Yet when I’m there I just want to leave. I can’t stand the congestion and the unfriendly, snooty attitude of people on the streets.

My loyalties even vacillate with my pets: Some days I can’t stand my dog. He follows me from room to room when he’s in the house; when we walk he pulls on the leash; he eats God-knows-what that he finds in the road. But when he calms down and lets me brush him, I look into his big brown eyes and feel an inkling of something akin to love. But then I’ll  see someone walking a smaller, calmer dog and I’ll wish Walter were different.

I won’t touch on politics except to say I was raised by Liberals, married a Conservative and became a Libertarian in 1996. This seems to protect me from either side trying to “convert” me to their views.

So, where are my loyalties? Am I just a wishy-washy sort of gal, or is it that I can’t stand the idea of being against anyone. What’s always in the back of my mind is that we’re all struggling to live our lives and none of us can outrun the Grim Reaper. So I tend to look for similarities between us rather than differences.

Go Giants! . . .or Rangers.

Sonnet

I'm the only poet in the writing group I found. Everyone else works on essays, memoir, stories, etc.  Last week, one fellow, an old curmudgeon, didn't like that I had shared a poem that didn't rhyme. So I wrote this for him and shared it today:

California

Perhaps it’s true, that I’d become myopic

living my whole life on the West Coast.

Conversations focused on two topics:

how California had become a ghost

of its former thriving self and when the

big earthquake would strike - an 8.0 -

and kill us like the tar pits of La Brea

wiped out the dinosaurs so long ago.

There was a sense of doom that hung like smog

and colored everything. Reminds me of   

an early morning beach shrouded in fog.

You know the sun is somewhere up above

shining somewhere else, just not for us.

You see now why we chose to move to Texas?

He said it should be longer. I explained a sonnet is only 14 lines. He said, "Then write a different kind of poem!"  Maybe next week I should bring in a pantoum. To my California friends, I don't mean to offend you! It's just my observation of the state of my native state which I still love! 

Stonehenge

After working hard Saturday to get the dryer hooked up and the bed put together, we finally got a day off Sunday and were able to spend some fun time with our friends Michael & Holly, who live in North Carolina. They had been in Austin, so decided to drive out to see us -about a 90-minute drive.  

We had a Chinese lunch, then went down to the river.

It was a beautiful fall day and I loved watching two little boys, with their older brother and dad, swimming and playing in the water.  We saw turtles and ducks, little fishes, crawdads. When Holly & I wandered off to explore we talked to the woman who rents paddle boats, kayaks, and inner tubes. She said the river’s warm enough to swim in through November.  At the end of the day, when the people are all gone, she goes in the water and soon curious turtles emerge to check her out.

Then we drove to Ingram, about 10 miles away, where Texas Stonehenge is being relocated at the Arts Center. It’s 60% scale, cement over metal lath, and is about half done.  Also giant tiki heads.

Holly & I played Scrabble while the guys talked speakers. Then they departed and I was sad to see them go.

But, as is typical, we saw things we might not have seen if we had not had guests!

At the Laundromat

I don’t think I’d been to a Laundromat since about 1969 when Tom and I lived in North Hollywood.  But I could see that hooking up the dryer was not going to get done, what with John setting up his office.  I’ve been able to wash small things and hang them on my racks, but I hadn’t washed my sheets in three weeks and enough was enough!

I chose one near the Starbucks which I hadn’t yet visited. It was about 2 miles out of town. Why so far? I thought Starbucks would be right in the heart of downtown.  When I got there I understood: it’s not a usual Starbucks but a big beautiful building with the parking lot that slopes  down to the river, and a huge deck where one can sip coffee and take in the view of the wide water and rolling hills on the far shore.  I wish I

had time to sit and chat in the warm breeze, but I was on a mission.

While I did the wash, I read an article in the New Yorker about the Israeli novelist David Grossman.  Two well-dressed young guys came in and talked for a long time with the girl who works the drop-off laundry and dry cleaning service.  As they were leaving one of them mentioned Pao Gasol. I just blurted out, “What about Pao Gasol?”

And thus I was able to engage in a stimulating discussion about my favorite team. Turns out the guy works for the San Antonio Spurs and was in Kerrville as part of Fan Appreciation, giving away tickets. He’s originally from Hawthorne and is a Laker fan, too. “If you’re lucky enough to get to go to a Spurs game, you’ll see that have the people are Laker fans,” he told me.  All right!

The rest of the day was spent signing escrow papers, a bitter sweet process. We took them to the UPS store to be notarized. No charge. No fingerprint required (like in California).

Jane kitty was banished to the garage overnight, which allowed us to get good nights’ sleep.  The Rangers beat the Yankees! And I stayed awake for most of the Laker pre-season game. I’m not as sad at the thought of Phil Jackson retiring, when I see Brian Shaw taking his place. I’ve always loved Shaw and think he’ll be a great coach.