This entry really ought to be titled "Where Have I Been?" I don't even have the nerve to look at the date on the previous posting. Suffice it to say, I've missed me, too.
What have I been up to?
Let’s see. You don't want to hear about the pinkeye incident. I don’t even want to think about it. Suffice it to say, it’s one of those things, like head lice and bullying, that I really hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with since we homeschool; and, like so many of us, I was living in a happy delusional realm of my own creation until cruel Reality came barging in with bloodshot gaze and itchy optics.
And?
Oh -- you probably already heard something about the recent legal threats to homeschooling in California, where I live. Said threats took a serious bite out of what I laughingly (okay, weepingly) call my spare time. (I hope you're willing to hear more about California, politics, and homeschooling, btw, since I'm writing a pretty hefty article about it -- everything from how secular homeschoolers suddenly became a precious commodity on this coast to why I may have to buy a pair of pants that isn't made of denim.)
What else?
If you're an American, you, too, already survived that whole Six Holidays In One Week thing we had back in March: the beginning of Daylight Saving Time (if you're a fan, you're in the wrong place unless you enjoy making innocent editors scream), St. Patrick's Day (which, in our house, means making a green cardboard castle and festooning it with little rubber snakes the night before; in the morning, the snakes are gone and St. P. has left candy potatoes, and no, I'm not kidding), the vernal equinox (if you don't know what an equinox is, you have ten minutes to go look it up before I call the Homeschool Police and have you kicked out of the club), Purim (which I only celebrate if, as happened this year, my gorgeous brilliant shiksa-girlfriend-who-married-Jewish invites me over for a dinner that her equally amazing eleven-year-old daughter cooks from scratch), Bach's birthday (a.k.a. Good Friday, at least this year), and Cadbury Egg Day (a.k.a. Easter Sunday).
None of which has to do with Charlton Heston or sleeping, but I just thought I'd mention it.
Oh -- and I got the second issue of the magazine out, as you may have noticed and even read.
I think that the second issue of SHM was, in its own way, even more significant than the first. Because, really, the second issue is solid evidence that the magazine truly exists. I mean, the first one was important, but let's face it -- it could have been a lark. Or a fluke. Or the place where I ran out of money, patience, ideas, inspiration, time, and/or energy.
The second issue says that I witnessed all that insanity and stayed up all those nights and wrote all those checks and watched all that hair fade from red to bleah -- and was willing to do it all over again.
I'm currently reading, writing, and editing for the third issue. Which brings me, finally, to the stupid heading on this much-belated posting.
First -- okay, if you're reading this, you're probably a homeschooler. Or a parent. Or a human being. Maybe even two or three of those. And so you know how it is with health stuff. You're right in the middle of a big project, and something goes a little wrong with the corporeal part of your mind-body problem. But it's not lethal, and so you bargain with it. "I'll go to the [health practitioner of your choice -- I'm not judging, unless you buy that online homeopathic medicine where all you have to do is place your order and then put a glass of water next to the computer, in which case, no offense, but you're insane and should give me all your money] just as soon as this is all over. I promise. If you'll just give me until the end of this [week, month, retrograde of Mercury -- again, not judging], I'll be a good [boy, girl, other] and get everything that's ever been wrong with me taken care of. I swear. Just don't kill me or give me more pain than a reasonable over the counter medication can take the edge off for a little while more. Please."
Well, that's the state I found myself in. The magazine was just going to the printer and a tooth that's been giving me trouble started really acting up. I will not go into my famous rant about how evil insurance companies are, except to briefly mention that the reason this tooth hadn't been taken care of before is that first we didn't have any insurance or money, because my husband had been laid off; then we had dental insurance but it had that waiting period built in where you can't get any major work done until you're on the plan for x number of months, 'cause you know how people are about the dentist's office -- they love it so much, they'll go all the time if someone doesn't stop them; then our dental insurance finally kicked in, but they kept refusing to pay for stuff because my husband's last name is different from mine so they insisted we weren't actually married and they weren't about to pay for some shameless hussy's dental work. At which point I gave up and just decided to buy a pair of pliers and carry them around and ask my nearest friend for a bit of a pull the next time I had any trouble in the teeth department.
But I got a pretty bad pain a few weeks ago, and we'd changed insurance companies again, and my husband swore they wouldn't be evil jerks like the last time. Which I still don't believe, but I got too uncomfortable to argue. So my husband found a dentist nearby us and made the appointment (yes, your own Mad Editor really won't go to pretty much any medical establishment unless someone else dials and talks first), and I limped in to their office, clutching my bottle of Motrin.
You'd think that dealing with all the magazine stuff -- subscribers, writers, advertisers (okay, not too overwhelmingly many of those), printers, post offices -- you'd think that at this point, I'd have learned to suffer a certain amount of paperwork and bureaucracy with a certain amount of patience. You'd think wrong. I am, if anything, less patient than ever with this kind of nonsense, if it doesn't even have the excuse of being associated with the work I love. If I'm in a dentist's office, I'm in pain, dad gum it. I want help. I don't feel like answering three pages of stupid questions.
And these questions cared. Or at least they pretended to. Which, if anything, ticked me off more. Because I knew they didn't really want to know if I'd had "a negative experience" with a dentist in the past. They just wanted extra credit for asking.
But it was their office and their rules and they weren't going to let me sit down in that horrifying chair until I filled out everything just right. So I answered.
After the question about whether or not I had any fears about this dentist's appointment, I circled "yes." When they asked what it was, exactly, I was afraid of, I wrote, in my neatest handwriting, "pain, pain, death, pain." When pressed about previous horrifying dental incidents, I replied, "pain, pain, condescension, pain." I mean, they weren't going to read the danged thing anyway, so I might as well enjoy myself a little.
Except they did read it. The dentist came in to the torture chamber they'd led me to, and I saw that the newspapers had all been wrong. Charlton Heston is not dead; he's my dentist. Really. Okay, that's not what he calls himself, but this is him, I swear. He doesn't just look like him; this guy even sounds like him. It's uncanny. I wanted to ask him to say the thing about how I should take my hands off him, seeing as how I was a damned dirty ape. Maybe next time.
He did, however, say in a tone of rich amusement that he'd read my form and had duly noted my concern about death and pain. He also asked what exactly it was I edited. (He really had read the form.) When I gave him the name of the magazine, he actually wrote it down. It was kind of sweet, if a little ludicrous. The guy has to be in his sixties, for crying out corn. And he's Charlton Heston. Which makes him Moses, Michelangelo, and Ben Hur, last I checked. I don't think he's looking for secular anything.
But anyway. He tortured me, as was his legal right and duty, and then sent me to some specialist who tortured me some more, only with slightly different equipment. I love how you tell a dentist that you're in pain, and he'll rush to get you an appointment with someone who can help you be in even more pain. Plus they don't even give you drugs. At least they don't give me drugs. Seriously, they didn't even offer. I guess they figure as a writer I'm already doing all that drinking.
But it isn't the tortured remnants of what used to be my jaw that's keeping me up nights. I'm very, very tired right now, though, so more about that next time. Which will be soon. I promise. For now, I'm alive and reasonably well, and so's the magazine -- and I really appreciate all the people to whom that's good news.
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