teazle vs. the top shelf

Last week I shared a video of Teazle perched on the drying rack in our living room and snatching a little stuffed critter from the bookshelf. Since this is not one of her toys, we moved the critter to the top shelf of the bookcase and moved the drying rack away from the shelving.

Since then she's been doing complex mathematical modeling in her tiny kitty brain, and tonight she put her latest model to the test.

Successfully.

west coast trip [no. 4]: sylvia beach hotel

On our way back up the coast from Hayward to Portland, Hanna and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary (a few calendar days early) at the Sylvia Beach Hotel -- one of my favorite retreat spots on the West Coast.

It probably tells you all you need to know about my relative level of irredeemable nerdiness that it was in the Alice Walker room at the Sylvia Beach Hotel the summer after my 21st birthday, on a solo road trip vacation, that I enjoyed my first "hard" liquor (a Smirnoff Ice -- I know, right? So daring!).

If memory serves, it put me to sleep.

This was the morning view from our bedroom window this time around.

We had less than twenty-four hours in Nye Beach, but we definitely want to go back. Particularly given the friendly company of hotel cat Shelley.

Sylvia Beach hotel is a book-themed locale with each bedroom named and decorated after a particular author. We were in the Emily Dickinson room. On the third floor is a cozy library space with a kitchenette for coffee and tea and lots of chairs with glorious ocean views.

In the morning after our night over, we soon hit the road for Portland -- but not before stopping at Carl's Coffee for, well, coffee and Books on Beach for a great selection of higglety-pigglety books. Including a number of H.P. Lovecraft collections that Hanna was particularly delighted to find.

The store was a converted tea shop, and this was their "waiting to be shelved" system.

Through most of adolescence, it was a pretty specific dream of mine to end up living on the Oregon Coast running an independent/used bookstore like this in one of the tiny towns along Route 101. I'd sell books to the tourists in the summer and the locals in the winter, filling the long periods between wintertime customers (or the days when the storms blowing in off the ocean made going outside a formidable option) hunkered over my notebooks writing novels and drinking tea in front of a crackling fire.

As you can tell, even then I had no head for business.

We were sorry to leave, and we're both looking forward to going back!

cats with new tricks [photos]

We've been chilling at home a lot the past two weeks, even more than usual, due to Hanna's convalescence (she's on the mend, but under strict instruction to keep on resting through the weekend).

The cats are delighted. Also worried. Worrlighted?

Gerry has decided, around the third anniversary of her joining our family, to become an intensely human-centric companion. As I type this, she is hunkered down between me and Hanna on the bed.

Teazle, on the other hand, has gone the opposite route: instead of crowding closer, she's taken the opportunity to get up to no good. She's like her own walking, talking marauder's map.

This is her latest trick. She's been trying for months to figure out how to scale the drying rack, and just this week mastered the act. 

She's so proud.

Here it is in video form:

on being out day [a belated post]

This Friday, October 11th, was International Coming Out Day.

I thought, in passing, about writing something but I was distracted by trying to get things done at work and by the fact my wife was getting a chest x-ray for pneumonia. And then picking up antibiotics (thank goddess for antibiotics) for her. And remembering to feed the cats. And pick up something for dinner.

Hanna in the redwoods (Sept. 2013)

So this is a belated post on the theme of coming/being out. I don't have anything particularly original to say, except that I am grateful to all of the people throughout history, past and present, who have conspired to make International Coming Out Day an unremarkable occasion in our day lives. Hanna and I live in a time and place where our bisexual inclinations and same-sex relationship are known and largely honored structurally in our workplaces, with our landlord, at our health center, in our city, state (and now, finally, the federal government), by our friends and relations. We hold hands and kiss in public, speak of things sexual while dining out, review queer porn, blog about being dykes.

We don't fear being evicted, fired, blacklisted, jailed, physically attacked, disowned or disinherited, treated as sick because of our sexual selves, or otherwise grossly discriminated against. And if any of these things were top happen to us, we would have advocacy organizations and a network of supporters to turn to for aid.

In many ways, our security is exceptional: many queer folks still live in the toxic closet, or cover aspects of their identities, for fear of social and material marginalization. The young and the old, the gender non-confirming, trans folks, queer people in nations that still actively persecute sexual minorities.

There is obviously still work to be done.

But this week, I'm grateful in my own small domestic way for the work of activists and the kindness of those people in our lives who together made it possible for my Friday to be, in part, a story about leaving work half an hour early so I could get to the pharmacy and pick up Hanna's antibiotics. A story about a boss and colleagues who sent well-wishes for Hanna's quick recovery. A story about a health clinic that knows were a couple and has no problem letting me pick up her medications.

A story about going home to my wife.

some stuff we've been watching

Hanna's in the third week of what's just been formally diagnosed as bronchitis, so between her feeling crap and me keeping the household running (and Gerry getting a cold somewhere in there) none of us have a lot of energy for much beyond work except watching telly.

Thank the goddess for WGBH.

One thing we've gotten sucked into is Last Tango in Halifax. Let's just say we stopped by for Derek Jacobi and hung around for the lesbian sex (NO REALLY).

And then on a lighter note:

Watch The Cafe on WGBH 2 on PBS. See more from WGBH.

The Cafe is a truly delightful little twenty-minute comedy about the denizens of a small seaside village in southwest England. I think my favorite episode might be the one featuring the Hellboy living statue...

Meanwhile, we're thinking good thoughts for all of our friends and fellow citizens affected by the government shutdown (not surprisingly, a fair number of museums, archives, and other cultural institutions are federally funded) and hoping the anti-ACA faction don't get their way at the expense of the rest of the world.

More when things are a bit less of a muchness around here.

west coast trip [no. 3]: hayward

Hanna and I just returned from Connecticut last night, where we enjoyed a brief overnight stay in Storrs so Hanna could deliver a conference paper on late 18th & early 19th century English travel narratives of Ireland, and then yesterday had lunch with friends. If only travel were less expensive, we'd do it more often!

Meanwhile, here are some photos from the wedding leg of our west coast trip.

We were in Hayward, California, to participate in the wedding of Chloe's parents: now Diana and Collin Thormoto.

The night before the wedding, we held the rehearsal on the back patio of Collin's parents' home.

We had to calm down nervous Pastor Dan, who was thrown off-guard by the super-organized bride and groom.

Hanna, one of the three wedding attendants, got to practice her paces on the arm of Collin's brother David.

The wedding was on a Monday in Tilden Park at the Brazilian Room. Despite being September, the afternoon was brutally hot and we had to keep everyone as cool as possible before the ceremony!

The wedding had a bunch of awesome nerdy touches, from the TARDIS cake topper and Sting cake knife to the Star Wars processional music and Lord of the Rings-themed reception tables. You can see lots of beautiful photographs by the professional photographer here.

The wedding "cake" was actually a tower of cupcakes catered by James and the Giant Cupcake, brought in and arranged by these to enthusiastic women (one of whom was wearing a cupcake on her head!).

While not officially part of the wedding party, I was asked to help out and invited to sit at the head table (Bag End) with my own most fabulous spouse. The skirt I wore was sewn for the occasion by my colleague Andrea, who moonlights as a costumier.

(If you squint you can see our bridesmaids gifts -- gorgeous silver necklaces!)

Less than a week after this extravaganza, Hanna and I got to celebrate our own first anniversary while the newly minted wife and husband were off on their honeymoon on Kauai. We silently wished them many happy returns of the day -- and then snuggled up under the comforter and fell back asleep!

Next up, redwoods and ocean views ... we take in a bit of the Oregon Coast before catching our flight back to Boston.

in praise of obamacare [because experience]

As we are all well aware by now (unless you've been living in a media blackout), the Affordable Care Act-mandated healthcare exchanges -- the websites that will enable uninsured folks and people paying for individual plans to enroll in health insurance plans and gain access to government subsidies -- open today.

Much has been written about the political right's hysteria about the ACA, or Obamacare, and their effort to deter the eligible from using these exchanges to gain access to affordable medical services. For the past few weeks the freak-out has only gotten worse.

So I thought, on this auspicious day of an important piece of the Obamacare roll-out, I'd offer up a big "thank you!" for my own experience with Obamacare's more local predecessor, Romneycare.

When I moved to Massachusetts in 2007, I had been paying independently for health insurance since graduating from college in 2005 and becoming ineligible for my parents' workplace-sponsored healthcare coverage. I paid to extend that coverage for several months through COBRA at the price, if memory serves, over $300/month. As that cost was unsustainable, even living in my parents' household, I switched to a catastrophic-coverage plan through Michigan's Blue Cross, Blue Shield. The monthly payments weren't too bad, about $50, but the deductibles were so high that I was paying out of pocket for all of the routine, preventative care that I actually needed: primary care, medications (I'm on several ongoing prescriptions), as well as dental and eye care. Actually, before moving to Massachusetts, I had never had coverage for dental, or eye care. I was used to paying $90-180 per appointment for regular dental cleanings.

Mental health care, too, was something that my family had never had coverage for -- counseling appointments were strictly out of pocket, if we were lucky reimbursable through the flexible spending account (FSA) my parents paid into every year.

Between 2005-2007 I worked a number of part-time positions for between $7-10 per hour. My last pre-library school job was at Barnes & Noble where I worked 15-30 hours/week for minimum wage. I started there at $7.50/hour and when I quit the job to take a position at the Massachusetts Historical Society I was making around $9.00/hour.

At the MHS I earned $14.00/hour, which was more than I'd ever made in my life. But at 21 hours/week only came to roughly $15,300/year ... before taxes. In order to buy into the Simmons-sponsored student health plan, I would have had to take out additional student loans to cover the premiums.

Thankfully, as a part-time graduate student I qualified for the Massachusetts state-subsidized healthcare program. After submitting an application, providing proof of income and lack of insurance options through work, and waiting for the bureaucracy to churn away I was approved for Commonwealth Care. Hanna was also approved as well, after many years of being uninsured during periods of low- and unemployment in states without comprehensive health insurance programs.

bDuring the rest of my part-time employment/graduate student days -- until I transitioned to full-time professional employment with work-sponsored healthcare coverage -- I had Commonwealth Care to thank for access to a primary care provider, to eye- and dental care (for which I paid only co-pays for the first time in my life) and, wonder of wonders and miracle of miracles mental health coverage.

Let me repeat this for you:

For the cost of between $0-$100/month in premiums, and $0-20/visit in co-payments, scaled as our income changed, Hanna and I had access to comprehensive medical care. Thanks to Romneycare. 

Between 2007-2011, while we pieced together part-time work for living expenses and shouldered the burden of student loans to cover tuition, we had the peace of mind that our medical needs wouldn't go by the wayside due to our inability to pay.

our awesome health center

Romneycare paid for us to go for our annual physicals and our ladybit exams.

Romneycare paid for my thyroid medication and all of Hanna's prescriptions, sometimes with no co-pay.

Romneycare gave Hanna access to psychiatric and counseling services when she needed them to combat depression.

Romneycare brought us eye exams and low-cost prescription lenses.

Romneycare funded dental cleanings, x-rays, and repair work.

There's been a lot of talk about how young adults, supposedly healthy, have little incentive to engage in these health insurance marketplaces. Yet there are plenty of young adults out there who have chronic health conditions (or are working to prevent chronic health conditions toward which they would otherwise be trending). Apart from anything else, how many of us need glasses or contacts? Despite America's love affair with youthful bodies, young bodies are not always healthier bodies. And the struggles of those bodies are not always within our powers to ameliorate or eliminate without access to health care professionals.

I can't create the synthetic hormones that make up for my lack of a functioning thyroid.

I can't grind the glass to create the lenses that allow me to work and drive safely.

I can't manage my migraines without assistance from my primary care provider.

Hanna needs ongoing support to navigate her depression and anxiety.

We've both, in the past two years, needed diagnostic tests and physical therapy to prevent chronic injury.

In 2011 we both transitioned into professional positions that offered robust health plans as part of the benefits package. Today, we pay roughly $120/month (pre-tax) in premiums through our employers to continue our access to medical, mental, dental, and eye care. Most appointments come at a $15-20 co-pay; prescriptions are $5-20 per refill. We are able to utilize flex spending accounts, and thanks to a strong union, Hanna's co-payments annually top out at $135 for her wage bracket.

Last year we were reimbursed about $800 by Harvard for prescriptions and co-payments.

I haven't done the math for all our medical services, but without insurance our counseling appointments alone would cost $10,800 as billed ... about 2/3 what we pay in rent annually.

While we're lucky to have workplaces that offer these benefits, it's also reassuring to know -- in this age of uncertain employment -- that if one or the other of us needs Commonwealth Care again, it will be there to access. I've referred friends the program. And I'm glad to know that many, many others in the state of Massachusetts have been able to access care like we did, supported by our tax dollars.

(According to one subsidy calculator, if Hanna and I needed to purchase
private insurance, even at our current income we'd get $900 annually
in federal subsidies to help make that more affordable.)

This coming year, I'm going to feel a little bit better about being an American citizen in a nation where people in Michigan, Texas, Oregon, and elsewhere can access care also.

Supported by our tax dollars.

I believe this is (the beginning of) government as it could and should be.

Thank you, Obamacare, for taking a step in the right direction.