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Opportunity Costs

My Teeth Are DONE

toastfloats on Flickr

I am sitting in the orthodontist's office as the kind, competent staff install hardware in my eldest daughter's mouth which will cost us roughly the same as a new main sail. We do not sail the high seas any longer. In fact, it may be six months before we even consider taking the boat out for a harbor cruise. Nevertheless, I would really prefer a new main sail.

I suspect Jaime would also prefer a new main sail. Idly I ask, "Jaime. If you had $7,000 to spend on the boat, what would you buy?"

"A car."

I blink. Even the dentist blinks. He looks at me, so I say it again, "On the boat?"

"Oh. Ahh boh…" There are now hands in her mouth. She thinks for awhile. "Uh caw."

Okay, still the car. "The Boat."

Fine. Jaime grimaces. It could be something the dentist did. Alternatively, it could be my persistence. The hands leave her mouth long enough for her to blurt out, "New galley. Top to bottom."

She has a bit of a lisp at the moment, but I can understand. Yes, if I had a lot of money, the galley would probably come before the sail. It would definitely come before a car. An oven that works without using elastic and a knife to jam the solenoid would be lovely. A stove that actually browns meat would be even better. I nod in agreement, "Good thinking, Jaime."

"Whai?" The mouth is wide open, ablaze with light, and looking rather sparkly with the new bits getting glued to the upper jaw.

"That's how much this is costing us."

We both sit grimly, silently, as the dentist installs our new countertop and sink. As he finishes, we both sigh at the lost opportunity. I try to look on the bright side, "With those blue elastic bands, you match the boat."

Her tongue probes the edges of her new mouth, "Huh." She doesn't sound mollified. "It hurts."

Thinking of the coming winter sans galley upgrade, new sails, or a functioning heater since we now can't afford to replace that either, I hug her quietly. "Priorities, my love. Priorities. We can do this." Her unexpected return squeeze and quiet, "You'll be okay, Mom," cements the deal.

Elephantine Musings

The Girls Contemplate Our New Home
Uploaded by toastfloats

At times I am convinced that the Fates are determined to prevent me from successfully reentering the work force full time. I swear it is not merely an elaborate form of laziness which over the years has pulled me out of the employment market. Homeschooling, cruising, extended stays in foreign countries, all these are arguably my fault but I OWN them. I fully admit that life distracted me. I did it on purpose with a purpose.

Now, however, I want to work. Okay, world? I want to work. I work hard. I'm good at what I do. Let me work.

Except not for the last two months while I sorted our immigration paperwork, got DrC all spiffied up and off to work himself, and scrapped nearly 8 months of indescribably icky goo off our bodies and out of the boat.

And not this month while my Mommy is in town.

And apparently not next month while I have a good chunk of my face reassembled.

It turns out that the little bump on my nose which initially appeared like the world's most persistent and slow forming zit is actually not a zit at all. It's a zebra case of a tumor which is going to just keep growing until I either cut it off or I can't see past it and run my car off a cliff. The medical definition of a zebra is a disease or condition that is so uncommon that a doctor only learns of it because medical schools engage in a form institutionalized hazing which in any other context would be declared a felony. Any given zebra only shows up in the average medical practice once or twice in a doctor's entire career, if that. Such cases are shared with colleagues over a slice at lunch or at the annual Christmas party after a few drinks. Professors make presentations about zebras, others make a living doing research on them and publishing the results in esoteric journals.

This zebra tumor has -- as is usual in such cases -- an unpronounceable, unspellable name which I promptly forgot but which DrC rattles off with élan whenever the topic arises. It apparently has been there for years and years… maybe even since childhood! … just waiting till the perfect moment when lack of ready cash, a high deductible insurance plan, and extraordinarily pent up demand to get back to work combine to make this the worst possible moment to erupt into sight. Now that it's growing, however, the thing is on a roll. Depending on my mood, the girls either refer to me as The Two Nosed Witch or Rudolph, the Double-Nosed Reindeer. It just gets bigger from here. Fortunately, there is just about zero chance it means death to Toast unless I am foolish enough to allow it to grow so large as to block my ability to eat.

Unfortunately, getting rid of it is fraught with all sorts of horribleness. It'll be expensive. It'll leave a really nasty scar. And, I am not shitting you, I am going to spend three weeks with an "elephant trunk made out of skin" stuck gobsmack in the middle of my face. Explaining how this works may require a diagram. The idea is the plastics doc cuts a strip of my forehead, backs it with a chunk of belly fat, then without detaching it, twists it over and down and attaches it to my nose where the dermatologist has left a great gaping hole after cutting out the tumor. Then we let the thing sit there for nearly a month while the skin grafts together after which we "trim the tusk off". You're damn right you are going to trim that off.

Climbing Out
Uploaded by toastfloats

On the upside, I told you I didn't need all those 'get rid of belly fat' Facebook adverts. I have my own creative ways to reduce that flab. On the downside, I'm not entirely clear how I'm supposed to go on a job interview with a skin trunk curling up from my nose. I'm going to look like a Star Trek character, and I don't mean that in a good way. I know I should be happy that I'm not cast as a Red Shirt in this drama, but I just keep thinking that no one really ever thought the Ferengi were doable, no matter how lovable Quark got towards the end.

Tonight, I'm glib about this, able to tell jokes and contemplate the whole thing with some degree of distance and equanimity. I have to be honest, however. After leaving the plastics consult, I just sat down for awhile and cried. I don't want to do this. It's expensive, painful, and scary. I have no real hope I'll look like Nicole Kidman after my surgery is complete. I'll probably look like someone who has been through a far worse experience like a car crash or the collapse of a building in an earthquake. It'll take a long time to heal and might require several additional surgeries before I don't look like someone grafted a piece of my ass on to my face. I had a real zit on the other side of my nose this morning which almost sent me into hysterics. I want to be brave and strong and reasonable, but my inner me appears to just want to scream and jump up and down and bitch about the unfairness of it all. Fairness, of course, has nothing to do with it. Our own troubles touch us more profoundly than the most terrible trials of others, because they are our own. That doesn't make my trouble less to me, the thought does help me with the reasonableness of it all. It's a benign tumor. While I can't see how it could possibly make me stronger, it isn't going to kill me. I am not a great beauty to begin with and this isn't going to make me less so.

Getting down to brass tacks, what I really need is some work to do for the month of February that does not involve seeing people. Reasonable or not, I don't think I can shake hands with a client and keep a straight face when my face isn't.

My Facebook Rant

[EXPLICIT] This post includes explicit language. I was in a Mood.

Mom's Scoping the Business
Uploaded by toastfloats

I am not a great fan of Facebook. Its user interface lacks elegance, and Zuckerberg's machiavellian approach to privacy is profoundly annoying. It is, however, the AOL of its time. All the people we want to know, all the people with whom we are interact, they live on Facebook. We are, in a word, stuck.

Stuck with the fat ads. Those assholes. I have never in my life clicked an ad for botox, a fad diet, or magical ways to get rid of belly fat. Nevertheless, the pricks that wrote the algorithm on Facebook insist that because I am a woman of a certain age with children, these are my Must See adverts. I imagine a pimply faced, sun-deprived graduate of the Stanford comp sci department sitting in a cubicle in Silicon Valley tweaking the selection algorithm to prioritize diet ads above every other possible option for all self-avowed females who also admit that they eat. I have down-voted these ads countless times. In vain, I once attempted to up-vote a series of "Have Sex with this Russian Beauty" ads that somehow slipped through Facebook's no-porn policy. I figure if I'm having sex with Russian beauties with enormous tits, I am clearly comfortable with my extra tonnage and don't need any further assistance. My next foray will be to up-vote anything having to do with a penis. Penile implant surgery on my non-existent manly appendage would be vastly more appealing to me than a magically surprising way involving eggs and a tire to resize the waistline.

Stuck with the crazy as chick who I vaguely remember from high school who posts semi-nude photos of herself, the one probably also clicking those belly fat ads. How the hell do these make it into my feed, anyway? I mean, yeah… at one point I was stupid enough to agree to join the group devoted exclusively to my fellow high school alumni. I was a problem child. As I had zero social life in high school, loathed most of those people at the time, and abandoned my hometown with no regrets nearly 20 years ago never to return, I'm not sure what the hell I was thinking. I just spent the last 5 years utterly sabotaging the usual geek's revenge of owning the companies where my former class mates work as well as sporting a better hair cut, gorgeous eye candy husband, and fantastically higher standard of income. I suspect that no one 'back home' is going to be impressed with the fact that DrC and I dropped out as it rings eerily familiar to so many of them. I have no interest in their lives or their children, and I am utterly convinced that the feeling is profoundly mutual. So I unsubscribed or declicked or unchecked or something which was another completely pointless exercise. Once a relationship lives on Facebook it is like a stain on a white fiberglass boat deck and remains forever to remind you of the error of your ways. 

Stuck with requests to take this or that poll, join this or that cause, or participate in this or that quiz. I believe that Facebook proves we are all monkeys banging away at the keyboard attempting to produce Shakespeare and instead generating enough demographic data to keep a football stadium full of marketing executives cumming in their boots till they all pass out in brand awareness nirvana. What these clicks do not do is make a damn bit of difference in the greater scheme of things. There are ways that social media is a force for change. Facebook is not a participant in any of them. 

That Steep, Really...
Uploaded by toastfloats

I think the only thing more annoying than a Facebook friend who plays Farmville, participates in every poll, and feels compelled to Share every link in their feed, is a relative who insists that Facebook is the anti-christ, refuses to check their pages, and then whines that they have no idea what's going on in your life because you "don't write any more." Wake up and smell the bits, people. The letter is dead. Frankly, so is the phone. If you want to know what I had for lunch, by all means look it up. I have absolutely no privacy any more, but don't expect me to spoon feed you. This is a pull economy. If you want it, pull it down; I will never send it to you again. You should be thanking me for not filling your life with a monthly, landfill-worthy missive detailing the size of the growth on my nose and the length of the seaweed on Don Quixote's transom. It is so much easier to avoid my drivel now than it ever was before. Just get Facebook to stop displaying it. Oh wait… good luck with that.

Techies know Facebook is crap, hate the cascading absurdity of Facebook's privacy setting changes, and would like to put a gun to head of every Zynga developer and executive while forcibly requiring them to grow strawberries on a real farm surrounded in singing and dancing middle school students dressed as badly drawn mange characters. Nevertheless, it is foolish for us to believe it is going to go away or that we can convince our family and friends of the superiority of any other social network. What we need is time. In the list of great where are they now social sites, we have Orbit, LiveJournal, AOL, and -- perhaps most memorably -- MySpace whose decline and fall signals in my opinion one of the greater triumphs of form and function over sheer numeric dominance. Like Rome, the British Empire, and American Hegemony, Facebook will ultimately fail to be replaced by something even yet more inane and intrusive. 

As long as it includes a heads up display and lets me down vote the bitch who cut me off on the highway this morning, I'll be there.