How you know your anti-depressants are working

First it's the little things. A third grader (OK, she should be a fourth grader, but she got held back) who falls on the floor and refuses to do any work and then gets made and huffy at you when you tell her she needs to get up and sit in her chair properly. While once this might have bothered me, I found I was mildly amused by it all, and not at all frustrated.

Then it's slightly larger things, like the favorite student from last year with a family crisis who comes to me first thing in the morning to cry on my shoulder and needs serious intervention to help. While once I might be crying with her, or worried about her all day, I found that I could think about her, worry for a second or two, remind myself that she was being taken care of and get back to business in the classroom.

And then the serious test. The house disaster test.

I got an email from Ricardo yesterday. In it he mentions in a very off the cuff sort of way that buying the special drain cleaner from Martin Hardware wasn't going to fix the slow drains in the showers upstairs.

I saw this email and thought, "Huh." So later in the day, not even during my lunch, but at the end of the day, I called to see what had fixed the drains (since it was clear in the email that the showers were open for business upon arrival home).

Let's start with the way I know that my anti-depressants are working, shall we? I have a hole, a rather good sized hole, gaping in the ceiling of my downstairs bathroom. Not only do I have a hole about the size of a generous beach ball, but I am not right now experiencing any elevated blood pressure over it.

Turns out that the pipes that the two upstairs showers share had clogged and rotted through. Water was dripping down into the bathroom. By the time the plumber came it was clear that the ceiling was toast. The plumber checked to see that the showers were not the problem, assessed that the pipe was old, clogged with hair (clearly mine, OK, because Ricardo, very very bald), and needed to be replaced. $350 and a spaniel sized hole later, and I was ready to shower the 3rd grade grime for my ample body.

Now we have to wait for everything to completely dry out so we can replace the whole ceiling in the bathroom.

Not 6 weeks ago this would have left me shaking in a corner. And now? Well better living through chemistry I say!

Benefits Boogie!

So due to a number of reasons, none of which I plan to share in this forum, we're in the market for health insurance. And as it happens we kind of need to get the benefits under way, by oh say, Sunday of next week.

Ricardo is going to be visiting professor at GWU this year and will be there for 4 days a week. So he can get his benefits there, in DC. But here in Svarlbad, we're kind of out of network. So what to do? Shall I get my insurance through the schools? Shall I trek to DC for my care? Should we risk it and go with a low cost PPO or play it safe with the HMO? Arrrgh!

So today was spent poring over various charts and tables dedicated to health plans. Have you ever spent any time looking at these things? I swear to God, they're designed to try to be "easy to read." What this means is that they are indecipherable.

Here are some examples of the weirdness of all this.

In order to cover myself and my family on my health plan it will cost me $987 a month. That's what they will deduct from my check. However they will then give me a bunch of money back. So what will the health plan actually cost? Wait for it....$488.17 a month. WTF?

But here's the kicker. It's cheaper for me to insure myself and my son on one plan and myself and my husband on the other plan than it is to insure all of us. So basically, it would cost (actually cost, once they paid back parts) $106.08/month for me to insure myself and The Kid. To insure myself and Ricardo? $275.45. To insure all of us? $488.17. WTF????

Then which plan do you chose? What is coinsurance? Why are the deductibles $20 or $30 for your PCP? What are they charging extra for? And why won't they tell you? Why do some plans have deductibles and coinsurance. And when it's a deductible of $1500 is that for one person? two people? 19 people?

I also have found that the people who work for benefits are terrible to deal with. Because they have been asked every question there is to ask about benefits and they understand the plans perfectly, and how retarded do *you* have to be to be asking *that*?

I'm starting to understand why it is that my shrink doesn't deal with any insurance of any kind. She is strictly cash and carry and I am beginning to respect that.

In a related note today someone who shall remain nameless (if it were I, I'd totally tell you, it's not like you don't know my bra size and my dress size, for Christ's sake) went to his/her shrink and had a whole conversation about anti-depressants. Two fascinating observations came out of this.

Observation 1: Why do the media call antidepressants "happy pills?" If they actually made you happy they'd have a street value.

So that got me thinking, as it is, they make it so that you have the potential for happiness, but ultimately whether you experience it or not is up to you and who you're hanging out with. Perhaps one should try the Little Miss Sunshine test. If you're on your meds and you can't laugh at that movie, you need to have a chat with the shrink.

The second observation the shrink made is as follows: How does he know when someone is over medicated? If they have a conversation with their health insurance company and they aren't enraged, they're over medicated.

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges...

What Shall We Have For Breakfast?

The next day dawned hot and sunny. Our plan had been to go to Ocean World and enjoy a day there away from the hell that was the compound of the Lifestyles Hacienda Resort. And we were looking forward to our hot, fresh breakfast.

I was up early because the concrete like bed had left me with stabbing pains in my back. So I was there to witness the truck pull up and disgorge two maids with plates from the buffet. It seems that, as per usual in a Latin country the term "fresh" does not mean what it means in the US. Fresh is a relative term and means only that once upon a time the ingredients were prepared and at some point that day they were in fact "fresh."

A plate of sausage and potatoes, another of waffles, a third of bacon and a fourth holding pancakes were brought into the villa. There the maids proceeded to microwave them all and serve them to us. We did not immediately tell my mother since she'd had a hard day the day before and we thought maybe she mightn't find out about the "fresh breakfast." After all, the eggs were prepared on our stove.

The breakfast was tolerable and we proceeded on to Ocean World. Once there we found that the Kid could not have an encounter with the sea lions as was promised at the hotel (quel surprise!) but we did pay for him to have his picture taken with the sea lion and it was awesome.

We swam in one of their aquariums where you can snorkel with all kinds of fish including this huge school of giant silver fish whose name I do not know. We also saw a shark show, a dolphin show and swam at the beach. We then walked back to the resort since we'd been told all different times for the bus and frankly it just wasn't that long a walk.

That night we ate at the so called "sea food" place, Blue Lagoon. Most of the food was disgusting, but Santiago liked his fish. Mine was virtually inedible. When we went back to the buffet to get ice cream, we found that everything we ate there was being served on the buffet. D'oh!

So we loaded up on sliced beef (it was so much better than what we'd eaten) and bread and lettuce and tomatoes. The next day we ate great steak sandwiches at the villa. Ingenuity paid off for us!

OK. I need to get back to making supper. Sorry to not be around much, but I started back to school this week and it's kicking my ass. Besides, I am not feeling the love people. Let me know if this saga is worth continuing, ok?

Lying Liars and their Stiking Lies. Part II of the DR

I'm going to start this by saying that I went to the Doc in the Box this morning because I couldn't stand the stomach issues I was having still after the trip. I had a fever and swollen internal organs. Diagnosis? Salmonella! I think that's a good preview for the next part in this series.

Our second full day dawned cloudy and drear. We became trapped in the breakfast buffet as it rained monsoonal rains upon us. No matter. We needed to pack up anyway to move to the Villa that day.

My mom had booked two nights in the suites and then 5 nights in the Villa. She paid for all 7 in the Villa but the evil bitch who sold us this trip double dipped and sold us 5 days and someone else 5 days but charged both of us a whole week's worth and overlapped them so she only paid for 10 days. More on her to come.

The night before my mother had arranged for us to move at 4pm so we could enjoy the beach for the day and not have to rush back. But when we got to the reception area they told us we needed to leave our room because they needed it for someone else arriving that day. By then the sun had come out and we were ready for beach. So Ricardo went up and moved our stuff. But while waiting, my mom found out that we could move to the Villa then and have the whole day ahead of us at the beach. So when he came down, we told him the plan and vacated the rooms.

But it turns out that that was a lie. Because when we came down with all our stuff, surprise! The Villa wasn't ready. And also we owed them 20 pesos for a call we'd made to the Trapische Paradise restaurant the night before because they wouldn't give us a reservation at a restaurant and we didn't want to eat at the buffet again. It was 10:30am.

Now, 20 pesos is about 60¢. It's 33 pesos to the dollar. So I handed her a 500 peso bill. But she couldn't make change. But we couldn't check into the villa until we'd settled our bill with them. But they couldn't make change. Finally I found a 100 peso bill. Still, no change. WTF? I was yelling at them. My mother was yelling at them because we'd been tricked into giving up our rooms and there was no villa for us.

Finally they agreed to "transfer" the 60¢ charge to the villas, we got a guagua (bus) to take us to the villas reception. It was now 11:30 am. There they kept us waiting while they answered the phones instead of helping us and took other customers before us for another 1/2 an hour. We were told they were cleaning the villa. We were told there was no villa for us. We were told we'd been upgraded to VIP and then that we weren't. Eventually someone came to take us to the villa.

And then the fun started. It was 1:15. We got to the villa where we proceeded to slide on the tile floors which were wet but not clean. Everyone chose bedrooms. We turned on the fans because it was a million degrees in there. In the bedrooms we cranked down the thermostats. But then we couldn't find the thermostat in the living areas.

At reception we had been told the villa was air conditioned. We had specifically asked, because the day before we found out from a guest member like us that hers was had a/c only in the bedrooms. My mother had insisted we be given a place with a/c throughout because we knew from another person (a VIP) that her villa did have a/c throughout.

So we asked Diaz who had brought us there where the a/c was for the living areas. He said it was on. We hadn't turned it on. How did it get on? The maid turned it on. Where were the vents? He said he didn't know. So we began looking. But there were no vents. Because there was no a/c. Finally we got him to admit there were no vents. But, he told us, if we leave the bedroom doors open it will cool the villa. So we left the doors open and put the fans on. It did not cool the villa. We asked to be moved to another villa one with a/c. But they couldn't do that. All the villas were full. There were members coming and the villas were being saved for them.

We had been told by the absolute bitch whom my mother had rented from that we would be entitled to all the VIP privileges she got. So we were still of the opinion that this might be true. Thus we began the quest for our golf cart, promised by Eileen Bravo whom we'd rented from (DO NOT RENT FROM HER ON EBAY SHE LIES!). But we couldn't have one. There weren't any. We weren't members. My mother pointed out that she'd had surgery the month before and they told us they could probably get us one. But then no, they couldn't because the members were coming and they needed them. There was not one single golf cart to spare. Nor a villa with air conditioning since everything was so so full. At the lowest season in the tropics. With the place at least 1/2 empty. 1/2 empty? they scoffed! Full, full, full.

By then it was like 3:00 and we were starving. We had once again failed to get reservations for a restaurant. Our entire day had been eaten up by the lying merry-go-round. So Diaz called us a guagua. Which didn't come. So we all piled on his golf cart and they took us to Indochine to get something to eat. The food was inedible. The hamburgers had hard bits of bone in them. The pasta tasted funny. We ate almost nothing and then returned to our villa.

And thus began the quest for breakfast. We had been told we would get a hot cooked breakfast in our villa every morning. So when we called, they told us we could only get a continental breakfast. Finally we got a customer service person on the line. We began to ream her out over everything that had happened. She promptly blamed everything on Eileen Bravo. It had become clear that she was a total liar and her ad had been full of total bullshit. But it wasn't like the resort hadn't had their fair share of lies to spread as well.

Between my yelling at Nicola and Ricardo yelling at her, we managed to get some free passes to Ocean World out of them. I told her they needed to be ready for us to pick up in one hour. Of course they weren't. But we got them.

We went back to the villa where Cesar appeared to try and straighten us out. He claimed that eggs, bacon, waffles, these things were part of a continental breakfast. Despite the paper that we'd gotten with what we could order. On that paper it said continental breakfast was rolls, fruit, juice and coffee. But he denied what was written there. Then he told us that we were never told what we'd been told. We'd always been told we were getting a hot breakfast. OMFG!!! Get me out of this fun house!!!!!

That night we went back to the Trapische Paradise where we had a delicious meal.

Tune in tomorrow to find out exactly what a hot breakfast at the Lifestyle Hacienda Resort and Spa is...

Where to even begin. Part I of the Dominican Republic Saga

Yesterday we got home from the Dominican Republic trip we took with my mother. I've spent the last week trying to figure out just how I can possibly blog about this week. I'm still working on this, but have decided that it's too long a tale to be told in a single entry. This is a multipart story.

Theme 1 of the DR Saga: Arriving

Let's start with the fact that we had a 6 am flight to Miami out of Dulles. Dulles is a complicated airport. It's complicated because it's old and under construction. It's complicated because it's near DC and it's all threat level conscious and all (not like National i.e. Reagan where Ricardo managed to take a pocket knife right on through security no questions asked. He's also gone through without any picture id as well. Nice airport security!). It's complicated because in order to get to the gates you have to take shuttle buses, which I affectionately think of as "pods."

Because we were flying internationally, we couldn't do the self check in and instead had to wait in line. The thing about flying to Miami, is that it's the capital of Latin America. So the line, at 4:30am is long and full of Latins. More impressively it's full of their luggage. Piles and piles of suitcases, crammed to capacity, two to five per person spilled out of the lines as families who had shopped for days probably prepared to return to their home countries. We waited and waited and waited. Finally at 5:15 am they started to let us through the line so we could make the flight. At 5:30 we were still not through security. At 5:45 we pulled up at the gates on the pod and literally made a run for the flight. We were the second to last people on the plane. But we made it.

Maybe we should have taken that as a sign though. Maybe this was not a trip that was meant to be. But since we made it, we went.

Upon arriving in the DR we were greeted by a driver and brought to the Lifestyle Hacienda Resort and Spa. We had been told we were getting a two bedroom suite for the first couple nights. But...no! They did not have that. So we got two one bedroom suites. Fine.

We went to the pool, where we were immediately accosted by the first level shill sent to rope us into the sales pitch for the timeshare. When would we come for breakfast? He'd meet us there with our free gifts! Oh goody free gifts!

For dinner that night, because we couldn't get reservations at any of the restaurants in the resort, we went to the buffet. We'd dressed nicely but as it turns out the place was open air, no a/c. This is fine but it was hot and humid and the mosquitoes were out full force. But they had Dominican food and Ricardo and I were thrilled. We ate plantains and they had roast pig (chancho). This was going to be great! We headed back to the suites, climbed the three flights of stairs to get there. The air conditioning was on and we were tired. We all searched for the softest of the cement like pillows and then went to sleep. And thus endeth the first day.

By the next morning the vacation took its first turn. That morning we were accosted both by difficult bowels and by Alex of the timeshare shill. As it happens he didn't have our free gifts with him. Shock! Would we mind accompanying him to the office to get them? It would only take a minute or two and we'd be off to the beach. Hmmmm. It's getting fishy!

The gift turned out to be a bottle full of roots and twigs and leaves with a label on it calling it Mamajuana. It was a Dominican "vitality" elixir if filled 1/3 of the way with honey, 1/3 of the way with red wine and 1/3 of the way with brandy. Sure to beat viagra at its game. Guarunteed to clear up any ache and pain. Perfect for "el estress."

But the real "gift" as it were was the sales pitch, delivered by someone else in the scalding heat and humidty of the morning. When it became clear that we were not going to give them $85,000 so that we could pay 1200 a week to stay in their resort, they allowed us to leave, calling the "guagua" so we could head to the beach.

Once there, we continued to get accosted by everyone about buying there. I started to pretend I didn't speak Spanish or English or German or French (actually it's not hard with th German now since I wasn't very good at it 19 years ago in college and haven't spoken it since then). This worked relatively well and provided a certain measure of calm.

The beach was not fabulous, the sand rocky and rough the waves too strong in one place. But once we learned to stay in front of the VIP beach, we enjoyed bobbing in the waves, and once we also figured out we could use the VIP beach, we took full advantage of their cool bubbling pools and the all you can drink piña coladas. The Kid was on a regular of 4 or 5 a day (virgin, of course!).

The VIP beach more than made up for the only so-so nature of the actual beach. Not only did it have a collection of bubbly hot tub like pools with cold water in them, a waterfall, and drink service, there were no chairs there. Instead they provided a series of beds. Queen sized platforms held thick soft matresses (better than the actual beds) with curtains around them and over them for shade. Some were swings, others double decker, still others low and some high. All of them had pillows and fresh towels on them. Talk about decadance there.

Day 1: Creepy sales pitch, but great beach. So far, a dream!

Tune in tomorrow for the metamorphasis of dream to nightmare as the saga continues with the tale of leaving the suites for the villas. There will be lies, deception, anger, and more!