feels like i haven’t written in forever. went from being an unemployed person languidly enjoying the hours between 7am and 3pm (my god,1 i miss tuesday/thursday early morning sessions and jaunts through the hood with my homegirl/fellow basketball mom) to being a person who has to count her hours and minutes on a piece of paper, document them properly, and fax them to The Man in order to get a little rent and/or eating money for the following week…. i am enjoying on-site freelancing though. i’m working as an advertising copywriter and i think i’m bigger and better than the people i work with. what i mean is, i’m learning good shit about process/concepting/direct mail and a plethora of other ad tidbits, but i want to advance more adventurous tags and headlines and copy–and hell, clients–yet most of my co-workers look/act like saturday night live rejects or members of the upscale, elderly residences we represent in DMs, FSIs, and wack ass landing pages. so i, the only black staffer (other than the brothas who work as security and in the mailroom. but that’s another posting altogether…), wear black everyday, smile when smiled at, speak when spoken to, am polite, and try to kill with the copy i create….for images of like, old white men golfing: “the best thing about aging is tee time.” and the best thing about working is payday. so ha ha ha. whatever. shit pays. i’m good. no longer in the depths of unemployment. getting up to go downtown every day is an act of success in itself. despite the smell of rancid fart on overheated city buses.
all’s not well on the homefront though. challenges abound. my straight A kid got accepted into a prestigious private school. and then we found out they didn’t offer a penny in financial aid to attend. and by we, i mean the village. i have come to recognize and value the village effort so much. from my dreadlocked and responsible, silent-type boyfriend to my angry white female girlfriend who loves basketball and can’t handle injustice, to my kid’s intellectually fierce aunt in manhattan–it is taking a village. and we are raising the child. and i thank god1 for each of them. and many, many several others–living and dead, near and far. including my incarcerated brother who also helps hold it down when mama needs a breather. the financial aid fire is subdued for now, but not at all dead. must stay tuned for the outcome of that one. the kid was also accepted into the “ok” school. dammit. for her, i want the best! (sigh)
there’s other shit that i won’t go into. lots more. but i will say this: last week was a week from hell. straight from hell.
the kid woke up with an ear infection monday. the first one of her life. i was unsure how to treat it because my research didn’t say anything about excessive drainage, which began a few hours into the pain. she reported that there was some kind of release (a pop?) and as the pain subsided, the leakage began. i asked friends; i asked google. everyone’s kid has had ear infections. no one had ever seen that kind of drainage. (the way i’ve described it is honey poured all over the outside of someone’s ear)
so tuesday, i took her to the doctor because i didn’t have enough faith in my own healing abilities. and i paid dearly. some prick who barely looked into her ear prescribed amoxicillin (i am so tired of spelling that god-awful word). simple enough mistake. no one could have anticipated—
that night, after her first dose, she began to complain that the pill was making her feel crazy. her eyes were doing something strange. her sinuses were acting up. she could feel “sparks” in her nasal area. in my general, motherly-authoritative way, i told her, “go back to bed. drink some water. you’ll be ok.” all the while reaching for the list of side effects, immediately and quietly alarmed. noticed all the expected shit for general side effects, but before i could fully process all the symptoms of allergic reaction on the other side of the page, she came out again, this time with glassy, red eyes. i was getting really worried, but sent her back to her room once again (never let em see you sweat. especially this kid. i freak = she freaks), my hand on my phone calling the doctor. something on the allergic reaction side mentioned EYES. nothing on the general side effects side did.
when i got the doc on the phone, the child was back–thank god1 she advocates for her own health–and this time, her left eye was swollen shut what. the. fuck. i grabbed her arm, showing her face to my boyfriend (who never, ever freaks), told the doc what was happening and was immediately and assertively directed to proceed to the nearest emergency room. we rushed out, with her asking along the way, “am i gonna die?” (she sees right through us not freaking) fuck no, i thought, but said, “put your shoes on, wrap your head, let’s GO.”
once we got there (to the filthy ER), the solution was a simple antihistamine – benadryl. we are not a medicating family though, so what did i know? i was pissed because i really didn’t want to take her to the doctor in the first place. i hate being seen by residents. i hate that they are practicing. even the ones who have finished school! the excessive wait and horrific night in the ER (where we were seen by a lying little nigerian resident who had the gall to show us he worked in at least 8 other hospitals. who gives a fuck, you idiot?) only served to affirm why i don’t fuck with most doctors. we came in around 9, left at 3am with 3 more prescriptions and no explanation for the excessive drainage, which still hadn’t slowed despite the absence of pain, fever, etc.
and i noticed, there was dried blood on the soap dispenser in our triage room. the “real doctor” who eventually came to look into my daughter’s ear (the third that day), put the otoscope back in it’s cradle without removing my daughter’s waxy, wet specula. would the next patient get that one? had we gotten someone else’s? disgusting. and the nurse who appeared abruptly had bloody, hangnails and chewed up looking fingers. i hate when i ask someone–as i asked the bloody nurse about the meds (a trio of steroids, antibiotics and some other shit for good measure)–sooo…”is it X that we should XWZ or is it Y?” and they respond, “YES.” with a smile. idiot savant.
after that wicked night, and multiple conversations with doctors on the phone afterward, i was back to my militant, cussing, angry self about the whole healthcare system. i didn’t fill any of those prescriptions. stayed home from work a couple of days (missing all my little hourly wages), gave her acidophillus (4 – 8 capsules per day), vitamin c (at least 1500 mg per day), vegetable juice with the NATURAL antibiotic (GARLIC), and had her eat mostly raw fruits and vegetables. by day two of staying home, her ear had stopped draining and her swollen eye returned to normal.
however, when i examined her (head cradled in my lap) eyeballs (nose, throat, teeth, and ears) with a reading light, i noticed red splotches on her affected eyeball. those scared me, but even though the doctors were still calling, insisting i run up my tab further, i said fuck it. i am already nervous about the medical bills that are en route. and thanks to scott walker, and my trifling baby daddy, i won’t even have the luxury of keeping my kid insured when step-mom, a wisconsin union member loses all her good shit next year. no sir. no more doctors. we continued my regimen, i sent her back to school thursday, and in the days that followed, she made a full recovery.
but where she went wrong was the 3 Fs she hid – during that WHOLE hellish week – on her progress report.
i got that little tidbit of information after begging for her to be allowed into the private school, battling random battles with various professionals (and pushy grandmothers!) over email, containing fires on my own home front, planning to host a surprise baby shower, working all day every day (trying to make an impression on my slaveship), squeezing in time to go on interviews (with some wacky bitch who tried to get hired where i work while interviewing me(!) and then asking, “soooo, what kind of work are you looking for again?” i have to train myself to stop asking the question, “are you SERIOUS?” SO MUCH. i just CAN’T though. i’m BAFFLED BY BULLSHIT!), and time to call the child support office (who informed me that in 5 months of my calling, they have remained unable to “verify” my kid’s dad’s address which I know and THEY know, but the post office has to confirm it TOO and they keep dropping the ball and BURNING IT….
( by the way, i made more money on unemployment than i do working. this hourly ish and the commute are killing me. but whatev. i have a plan, always a plan. that was just a thought. )
it also warmed up in chicago for all of five minutes that week, and i think 19 people got shot. i hope no stray bullets ever whiz past my cipher. but i’m not even really complaining. i’m JUST SAYING.
i got really heated at work today, and sort of enjoyed my co-workers silently listening to me being multi-dimensional tiff as i almost lost it on the idiots at h & r block who lost my fucking tax info. it was that or the rotten-toothed woman who prepared my return yesterday took my shit home with her and then quit. she didn’t process the return. she didn’t come back to work. she didn’t respond to email. and she didn’t return my calls. or those of her office mates. and the people at the desk had the nerve to keep asking me what they should do. kill yourselves, i felt, in my blood. but not really. it–the rage–was just coursing through me hot. angry. so many cuss words been flowing lately. so many things riding on the damn return. all for the kid, you see. and this damned private school and the money it takes to get there. and not that my tax return could make a dent in it. but rather, the proof of my poverty, that might help the kid. i feel like fucking slave.
look, anyone who knows me knows i like to chill. relax. parlay. the libra in me, probably. i take care of my business and keep things running smooth. sometimes shit is beyond our control though. and that’s cool. i can often see all sides of things. however, incompetence fucks me up. negligence. irresponsibility. dishonesty. bullshit. and even as i fumed about some of the situations in the last couple of weeks, a part of was still chilling because i’m not in japan. i’m not in libya. i’m not even in englewood. my kid is well. she has a chance. and i am working. AND, i have a village.
the only thing i really had to be sad about was not being able to tell my dad my daughter got accepted into that private school. that would have made him even more proud than having a black president.2
in the meantime, however, she’s grounded. (shock!) don’t fucking play with me kid. i love you to pieces, but i’ll get in that ass and make you wish you never crossed me. she knew about the Fs on the progress report while we sat in the ER, and while she attended a 2-night sleepover the previous weekend. she knew it when me and my homegirl took her to brunch sunday, and she knew it while she laid up chilling at the apartment with mom doting on her, playing night and day nurse. even worse, she knew it while i dealt with all manner of bullshit behind the scenes rallying on her behalf to give her a better shot than i had. that is what made me lose it when i found out. hell, she even knew it when we talked in the car about it, when she was too scared to come in the house and face the music once my boyfriend got the cat out the bag. she STILL neglected to mention she’d been carrying that crumpled piece of paper around for 10 days, even after we hashed out what went wrong in her classes and what she was going to do to fix it. it wasn’t until i came back in the house that i found out she still left out one big chunk. and that, my friends, is what caused the blood vessel in my neck to pop….
it’s a week later though. almost friday. mercury doesn’t go retrograde til the 30th. i can’t wait to see what else is in store! (grrrrrrr……….)
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footnotes…
1 i am often self conscious about saying stuff like ‘thank god’ and whatever because i’m fairly agnostic. (i think i pray for real when i get scared. otherwise, years have gone by without… and that’s the extent. period.) i saw this great video today and i was really feeling dude:
most memorable statement: GOD IS NOT A CHRISTIAN. amen to that!
2 saw one other interesting video. it’s probably for the best that i can’t be caught jacking around on facebook all day at work. i can barely gmail, but it’s cool. i get it in as i can. anyway, when i came home, i saw this video. qaddafi kicking thoughts on “our” black president:
Nonfiction Woman 