Yesterday was kind of a crappy day for me. I'm not even sure why. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and no matter what I did (hang out in the sunshine with the baby!) or what I accomplished (made seitan from scratch!), I couldn't shake the totally bummed out feeling.
It got to the point where I went ahead and slept on the couch, just because I felt like I needed some space. Everything was making me grouchy, and I didn't want to give myself the chance to take it out on Paul. Because sometimes, I'm just that guy. I was getting more and more upset with myself because I couldn't figure out what was wrong, but I was still grumped out of my mind. Fortunately for me, I checked my email before I actually fell asleep.
Mixed in with the usual junk emails was a message from one of my former undergrad mock trial students. She had taken the time to write to me and update me on her law school application process. She recently made her final choice on which law school to attend (she had been accepted to multiple) and wanted to let me know. She also asked after my family and hoped all was well.
That email probably took her maybe 5 minutes to write, but it absolutely made my day. Aside from the fact that I am ridiculously proud of her for all that she has accomplished, and for choosing a great law school, it was the subtext involved in simply sending the email that really made me happy.
When you send an email like that, the information in the email is almost secondary. The act of sending it, of having someone reach out to me and letting me know how their life is going, is something that humbles me on a regular basis. The sender of that kind of email is saying that they miss you. They wish you were around so they could tell you this information in person. They are thankful to have had you in their life and want you to know what is going on, because you were a part of making it happen. They have just passed a super awesome and important milestone in their life, and you are a person that they thought of in that moment and wanted to talk to.
Seriously, that kind of connection is a precious thing. I got so happy when I read her email that I cried. I sometimes wonder how I got so lucky as to have amazing people like her in my life.
I haven't written her back yet. Mostly because I had to process the awesomeness that was her email before I could really formulate a response. I'm getting all teary eyed again just thinking about it.
This is why I like teaching. This is why I love coaching mock trial. This is why I will continue to do both those things any and every time I can.
Take care folks, and I'll write again soon.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Reading To My Son
I believe that books are important. I believe that books can teach you how to empathize with other people. I believe that books cane make people, and therefore the world, so much better. I really do. I firmly believe that part of why I am the person I am is because of the books I read. The courage of those characters, their strength in the face of world-ending catastrophes, reinforced my ideas of what it meant to be honorable and brave and loyal.
Which is why Paul and I read to the Pumpkin every day. We started reading to him before he was born. Sometimes, I would make Paul read to the tiny embryonic Pumpkin just so I could get the benefit of being read to sleep. What I never imagined before the Pumpkin was born was how hard some of his books would be to read.
The Pumpkin has plenty of safe books. Those are the ones that are easy to read. Thomas the Tank Engine, Frank and Ernest, ABC books. I don't have a problem getting through those. But some of his other books, I have to read multiple times to myself before I can even attempt them with the Pumpkin.
Have you ever read Guess How Much I Love You? Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare have a bedtime contest to see who can express a bigger love for the other. It's a simple and adorable story that should be a breeze to get through. But when I read it to the Pumpkin, I completely lose it maybe three out of every four times we read it. I start crying and my throat gets all tight and I just want to hug the Pumpkin until I get a grip.
It's like that with a lot of his books. I read those books, the ones that cloud my eyes and close my throat, and they take all the huge universe of love that I feel for my Pumpkin and they smoosh it all down into my body at once. Like every atom of everything that has ever been, is now, or will be, gets jammed through my pores and into my body until I'm overflowing with the heart of the universe and it's always almost too much. Every time I get so close to being overwhelmed, my mind and heart not sure that there's enough room anywhere, anytime, ever, for all this love. I have to close my eyes and hold my breath to cut off the exchange for just a moment, until I can pull myself together, find the room, remember how to live with so much absolute beauty.
And then I'm better. Crisis avoided, self in one piece, I finish the book. I kiss the Pumpkin. I breathe in the air around him and wish I could make a perfume of his smell, that perfect sweet baby smell. The whole crazed moment has only taken a second or two. The Pumpkin doesn't even realized that it's happened. It will probably be like that for the rest of my life, with me losing it in small doses and him oblivious to the entire process. I suppose it will be like that with all of the kids I have, since I do want to have more.
I'm going to keep reading those books. I'm going to keep falling in love with my kid(s) each and every night. And when they grow up, I hope that they keep reading. I hope that, eventually, they get to fall to pieces in the exact same way.
Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Which is why Paul and I read to the Pumpkin every day. We started reading to him before he was born. Sometimes, I would make Paul read to the tiny embryonic Pumpkin just so I could get the benefit of being read to sleep. What I never imagined before the Pumpkin was born was how hard some of his books would be to read.
The Pumpkin has plenty of safe books. Those are the ones that are easy to read. Thomas the Tank Engine, Frank and Ernest, ABC books. I don't have a problem getting through those. But some of his other books, I have to read multiple times to myself before I can even attempt them with the Pumpkin.
Have you ever read Guess How Much I Love You? Big Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare have a bedtime contest to see who can express a bigger love for the other. It's a simple and adorable story that should be a breeze to get through. But when I read it to the Pumpkin, I completely lose it maybe three out of every four times we read it. I start crying and my throat gets all tight and I just want to hug the Pumpkin until I get a grip.
It's like that with a lot of his books. I read those books, the ones that cloud my eyes and close my throat, and they take all the huge universe of love that I feel for my Pumpkin and they smoosh it all down into my body at once. Like every atom of everything that has ever been, is now, or will be, gets jammed through my pores and into my body until I'm overflowing with the heart of the universe and it's always almost too much. Every time I get so close to being overwhelmed, my mind and heart not sure that there's enough room anywhere, anytime, ever, for all this love. I have to close my eyes and hold my breath to cut off the exchange for just a moment, until I can pull myself together, find the room, remember how to live with so much absolute beauty.
And then I'm better. Crisis avoided, self in one piece, I finish the book. I kiss the Pumpkin. I breathe in the air around him and wish I could make a perfume of his smell, that perfect sweet baby smell. The whole crazed moment has only taken a second or two. The Pumpkin doesn't even realized that it's happened. It will probably be like that for the rest of my life, with me losing it in small doses and him oblivious to the entire process. I suppose it will be like that with all of the kids I have, since I do want to have more.
I'm going to keep reading those books. I'm going to keep falling in love with my kid(s) each and every night. And when they grow up, I hope that they keep reading. I hope that, eventually, they get to fall to pieces in the exact same way.
Take care, and I'll write again soon.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Customer Service Gone Right
Most of the time when you call customer service, things go horribly wrong. You're on hold for a bazillion years; there's some sort of phone system that leads you in a never-ending loop or automatically hangs up on you; or, my personal favorite, you speak to a series of people who have no idea what you're talking about no matter how often you ask to talk with a manager.
Recently, I have had two customer service experiences that have defied all expectations and have actually served me, the customer, in a positive and helpful way.
The first one happened when I was trying to resolve a prenatal charge from back in June of last year, when we were still living in Illinois. We had a fetal echocardiogram done to make sure that the tiny human, known at that point as Embry, didn't have any heart issues that we should be aware of. The claim was submitted to our insurance, which promptly denied the claim. They sent it up the chain at insurance for review, but to no avail. They kept telling me it was a routine procedure (um, very much no) that they would not cover. Well, as happens in these cases, I got a final bill from Carle telling me that I needed to pay them or I would be in trouble. I called Carle and thought I was going to have the usual awful phone experience where nobody helped me and I just got more and more frustrated and angry.
To my pleasant surprise, I wound up talking to a manager in Carle's Maternal and Fetal Medicine department within just a few minutes. This woman was a customer service goldmine. Not only did she listen to me and actually understand my problem, she then told me she would call our insurance company directly and give me a call back to let me know how things went. I was a little worried at this point, because usually "I'll call you back later" means "You will never hear from me again and I won't even note in the system that you called." This amazing woman not only called our insurance company, explained the problem to them, and immediately faxed them some documents to support our claim that the service should be covered, she then actually called me back. She explained what the holdup was on the insurance company's end (they didn't know I was pregnant, because "fetal echocardiogram" doesn't indicate pregnant...?), told me what she had done, and asked me if I had any questions or if there was anything else she could do. Seriously, I was blown away.
My second bit of awesome customer service relates to our stroller. So I went a bit extreme on the stroller I wanted. It's this amazing (and, unfortunately, expensive) jogging stroller that totally rocks. It's aggressive. It will roll over anything. It rides super smoothly. It has decent storage space. I love it. Unfortunately, the same stupid plant caltrops - goat's head thorns, which I now hate with the passion of a thousand burning suns - that ate my feet a few weeks ago have also destroyed the stroller's front tire. It wouldn't hold air and I really didn't want to have to pay the rather large sum to have new tubes and tires sent to me. So I called customer service.
I couldn't get through the first couple of tries, so I was starting to get worried, but eventually I got hold of an awesome person who helped with everything. He apologized profusely about my not being able to get through and explained that they were celebrating a co-worker's birthday, so folks were eating cake and bagels when they normally opened the lines. But, he then indicated that he would send me a free replacement tube for the front stroller wheel even though tubes and tires aren't normally covered under the warranty. Which is awesome, because I kind of live by that stroller. Recently, I've been using our Baby Bjorn to take the tiny human on walks, but the longer the walk the more intensely angry my back is at me when we get home.
Soon, I shall once again be the proud owner of a usable and intensely awesome baby jogger!!!
Customer service should be so simple. I should call a place, talk to a person, and get my problem fixed. If they can't fix my problem, they should apologize profusely, explain why, and patiently allow me to snidely berate their company. Okay, that last bit is a bit jerky, but that's one of the services offered by customer service: client venting. The two folks above are amazingly awesome, and I am planning on sending them cards. Seriously, it makes absolutely everything so much better when you can talk to a person and get the help you need.
So, my friends, may all your calls to customer support be as helpful and non-frustrating as these two were for me. Take care, and I'll write again soon!
Monday, April 13, 2015
Misery Loves Company
Unless the only company you can get is a baby. Then misery does not love company. Not at all. In that case, misery loves blessed solitude, silence, and two simultaneously free hands. This past week has been something of an endurance test. So I apologize for not posting this past Thursday, but I hope you'll understand.
When I got to law school and had my first apartment and was living on my own for the first time ever, I thought finally understood the crappiest part of being a grown up. Namely, being sick. It's seriously the worst part of not living at home. You're miserable, you're probably barfing out every five minutes, and there is nobody around to take care of you. You have to hold your own hair back when you barf. If you want saltines and gatorade, you have to dress yourself, leave your apartment, get in the car, go to the store, interact with a human being (unless they have self-check), and then somehow get back home before you can enjoy those little squares of salted cardboard redemption.
It's truly awful. But now I have found something worse. Far worse. Like a million orders of magnitude worse. So what's worse than being sick as a grown up and having to take care of yourself? Being sick as a grown up while having to take care of your 6-month-old kid. Who is also sick. While your spouse is out of town. And you live in a place that is at least 10 hours' travel from your closest relative. That, my friends, is the definition of misery.
The worst part was the poor baby boy didn't let me get to sleep until 11:00pm on Wednesday. We started bedtime a bit after 7:00pm. You know, when he seemed tired. He wouldn't go to sleep. So I tried feeding him. We read a few books. We did some tummy time to try and tucker him out. I fed him again. We walked around the house. We turned the lights on. We turned the lights off. We played soothing music. We rocked in silence. Finally, we drove around for about 45 minutes and he passed out.
On the plus side, I have discovered that I can get through pretty much anything. Also, I am a Bad Ass Mama Jamma. Seriously. I rock. Plus, Paul's home now so at least I have the option of passing off the Tiny Human if I need to sit down for a minute without a tiny being clawing my arm. He's recently gotten very into pinching and scratching. I very much hope that passes soon.
Also on the plus side, I managed to fix the comments issue that some folks were having. There was some kind of weird log in thing you had to do to comment, but that's turned off now and anyone and everyone should be able to leave a note if they so desire. In the meantime, I'm off to do some more LSAT training. I start teaching at the end of this month, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Anywho, take care and I'll write again soon!
When I got to law school and had my first apartment and was living on my own for the first time ever, I thought finally understood the crappiest part of being a grown up. Namely, being sick. It's seriously the worst part of not living at home. You're miserable, you're probably barfing out every five minutes, and there is nobody around to take care of you. You have to hold your own hair back when you barf. If you want saltines and gatorade, you have to dress yourself, leave your apartment, get in the car, go to the store, interact with a human being (unless they have self-check), and then somehow get back home before you can enjoy those little squares of salted cardboard redemption.
It's truly awful. But now I have found something worse. Far worse. Like a million orders of magnitude worse. So what's worse than being sick as a grown up and having to take care of yourself? Being sick as a grown up while having to take care of your 6-month-old kid. Who is also sick. While your spouse is out of town. And you live in a place that is at least 10 hours' travel from your closest relative. That, my friends, is the definition of misery.
The worst part was the poor baby boy didn't let me get to sleep until 11:00pm on Wednesday. We started bedtime a bit after 7:00pm. You know, when he seemed tired. He wouldn't go to sleep. So I tried feeding him. We read a few books. We did some tummy time to try and tucker him out. I fed him again. We walked around the house. We turned the lights on. We turned the lights off. We played soothing music. We rocked in silence. Finally, we drove around for about 45 minutes and he passed out.
On the plus side, I have discovered that I can get through pretty much anything. Also, I am a Bad Ass Mama Jamma. Seriously. I rock. Plus, Paul's home now so at least I have the option of passing off the Tiny Human if I need to sit down for a minute without a tiny being clawing my arm. He's recently gotten very into pinching and scratching. I very much hope that passes soon.
Also on the plus side, I managed to fix the comments issue that some folks were having. There was some kind of weird log in thing you had to do to comment, but that's turned off now and anyone and everyone should be able to leave a note if they so desire. In the meantime, I'm off to do some more LSAT training. I start teaching at the end of this month, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Anywho, take care and I'll write again soon!
Monday, April 6, 2015
The Cost of Delivery
People always say that having a baby is expensive. And they're right. From birth to college, adding a tiny human to your household can tack on an inordinate expense. I've seen estimates that, through age 18, it costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child. Given the number of activities my children will likely want to be involved in, I'm considering that an underestimate.
What people don't talk about, and what is currently infuriating to me, is the sheer bureaucracy underlying many of those expenses. I'm a very smart person. I am well educated. My husband is at least as smart as I am and has even more education. Yet between the two of us, we have managed to be confounded by medical billing since the Pumpkin was born.
The first thing that happens is simple enough - they send you a bill. You should just be able to pay it, move on, and have some ice cream. But we have yet to get a bill that we have just paid. Most of them come to us with some kind of problem, all of which have been related to our insurance. So once you get the bill, you have to call your care provider and have them remind you what in the bloody heck happened on June 14, 2014, that supposedly cost upwards of $2500. Once you know what they did (and assuming you haven't been mistakenly billed for something that never happened, or that happened to someone else), then you have to call the insurance.
The insurance people will go through a very long litany of introductory messages and notices, and after about 15 minutes you might actually be talking to a real person. Hopefully they are helpful. If they can't tell you anything more than, "My notes just say you weren't covered by our insurance," then you can feel free to tell them they are abysmally wrong and let them know that now you have to talk to a supervisor. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
By the time you're talking to a person who actually knows anything about anything, you can count it as the first miracle of your sainthood if you're not swearing up a storm and reminding them every third sentence that you are a licensed attorney who won't have to deal with attorney's fees when you sue them because you'll be doing all the legal work yourself.
At which point, your first step is to explain to them that you were, in fact, covered by their insurance at the time of service. Yes, I know it shows that I am not insured with you right now. But I was at the time of service, and that's what counts. Yes, you can check your system. Yes, I am correct. Yes, I'm still here after 5 more minutes of hold music. Yes, I have been through this before. Yes, I would love it if you would actually submit this information to your processing department so you can begin the long process of actually paying the insanely inflated bill for my flu shot (or whatever it was).
About a month or so later, you'll get the second bill from the medical folks. They'll tell you that they haven't been paid yet. They won't give you any additional information beyond that because they don't have any, no matter how many different people you are transferred to. None of them know anything. The CIA should take notes from these guys.
So you call the insurance folks again. After going through the first five circles of hell, they allow you to speak to someone who knows something about something, and you ask why they haven't paid yet. What you will likely find out this time is that the service was not coded properly. If the service code doesn't match the diagnosis code, then they won't pay. Yes, they will be happy to tell you what those codes are. Yes, they will be happy to repeat those 35 numbers for you a bit slower this time. No, they do not have any idea what those codes are or what other magic numbers your care provider needs to give them to make the money start pouring out of their tight little insurance fingers.
At this point, you wonder why you bother. Maybe you should just rob a bank. Or ransom some globally influential CEO or dignitary. Maybe you could even steal the nuclear launch codes and sell them to Greenpeace. Because all of those things (including Greenpeace somehow having the money to buy said codes) would be far less difficult than actually doing this over and over for every god blessed bill you get. Because, much like parenting, it's not one day or one bill that wears you down and makes you dream of changing your name and escaping to an uncharted tropical island. (No, I don't know how I will get there if it's uncharted. Yes, it's still easier than dealing with medical billing and insurance.) It's the thought that you have to keep doing it. Over and over.
With the billing, there will come a day when it's done. And I suppose with the children, there will come a day when they are out of the house and living on their own. But once you're a parent, that's it. You have forever changed the course of your life. No going back, no end to it. Ever.
Thankfully, that's the difference between medical bills and children. With children, you don't ever want it to end. Even when they're screaming, with weird gunk coming out of their eyes, nose, and some third orifice that depends on the time of day and cycle of the moon, you love them so much your heart feels like it's going to rupture right out of your chest.
Of course, you don't literally have your heart explode like that. If it did, you'd have to go through all that medical billing stuff again.
Take care, my friends, and I'll write again soon!
What people don't talk about, and what is currently infuriating to me, is the sheer bureaucracy underlying many of those expenses. I'm a very smart person. I am well educated. My husband is at least as smart as I am and has even more education. Yet between the two of us, we have managed to be confounded by medical billing since the Pumpkin was born.
The first thing that happens is simple enough - they send you a bill. You should just be able to pay it, move on, and have some ice cream. But we have yet to get a bill that we have just paid. Most of them come to us with some kind of problem, all of which have been related to our insurance. So once you get the bill, you have to call your care provider and have them remind you what in the bloody heck happened on June 14, 2014, that supposedly cost upwards of $2500. Once you know what they did (and assuming you haven't been mistakenly billed for something that never happened, or that happened to someone else), then you have to call the insurance.
The insurance people will go through a very long litany of introductory messages and notices, and after about 15 minutes you might actually be talking to a real person. Hopefully they are helpful. If they can't tell you anything more than, "My notes just say you weren't covered by our insurance," then you can feel free to tell them they are abysmally wrong and let them know that now you have to talk to a supervisor. Not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.
By the time you're talking to a person who actually knows anything about anything, you can count it as the first miracle of your sainthood if you're not swearing up a storm and reminding them every third sentence that you are a licensed attorney who won't have to deal with attorney's fees when you sue them because you'll be doing all the legal work yourself.
At which point, your first step is to explain to them that you were, in fact, covered by their insurance at the time of service. Yes, I know it shows that I am not insured with you right now. But I was at the time of service, and that's what counts. Yes, you can check your system. Yes, I am correct. Yes, I'm still here after 5 more minutes of hold music. Yes, I have been through this before. Yes, I would love it if you would actually submit this information to your processing department so you can begin the long process of actually paying the insanely inflated bill for my flu shot (or whatever it was).
About a month or so later, you'll get the second bill from the medical folks. They'll tell you that they haven't been paid yet. They won't give you any additional information beyond that because they don't have any, no matter how many different people you are transferred to. None of them know anything. The CIA should take notes from these guys.
So you call the insurance folks again. After going through the first five circles of hell, they allow you to speak to someone who knows something about something, and you ask why they haven't paid yet. What you will likely find out this time is that the service was not coded properly. If the service code doesn't match the diagnosis code, then they won't pay. Yes, they will be happy to tell you what those codes are. Yes, they will be happy to repeat those 35 numbers for you a bit slower this time. No, they do not have any idea what those codes are or what other magic numbers your care provider needs to give them to make the money start pouring out of their tight little insurance fingers.
At this point, you wonder why you bother. Maybe you should just rob a bank. Or ransom some globally influential CEO or dignitary. Maybe you could even steal the nuclear launch codes and sell them to Greenpeace. Because all of those things (including Greenpeace somehow having the money to buy said codes) would be far less difficult than actually doing this over and over for every god blessed bill you get. Because, much like parenting, it's not one day or one bill that wears you down and makes you dream of changing your name and escaping to an uncharted tropical island. (No, I don't know how I will get there if it's uncharted. Yes, it's still easier than dealing with medical billing and insurance.) It's the thought that you have to keep doing it. Over and over.
With the billing, there will come a day when it's done. And I suppose with the children, there will come a day when they are out of the house and living on their own. But once you're a parent, that's it. You have forever changed the course of your life. No going back, no end to it. Ever.
Thankfully, that's the difference between medical bills and children. With children, you don't ever want it to end. Even when they're screaming, with weird gunk coming out of their eyes, nose, and some third orifice that depends on the time of day and cycle of the moon, you love them so much your heart feels like it's going to rupture right out of your chest.
Of course, you don't literally have your heart explode like that. If it did, you'd have to go through all that medical billing stuff again.
Take care, my friends, and I'll write again soon!
Saturday, April 4, 2015
Texas Hates Me
No, it's true. Texas may be an inanimate object/concept, but it really does hate me. Even the plants here are out to get me.
Thursday this week marked the first time in quite a while that I have been attacked by a plant. The last time it happened, I was very young and it was seaweed and I've been afraid of the stuff ever since. But yesterday, I discovered that there is a plant in Texas that makes caltrops. I am not joking. Texas makes natural caltrops, and they are in my backyard.
See, all I wanted to do was take some bits of asparagus out to our compost pile without putting on my shoes. Having been raised in the Midwest, I knew to be on the lookout for nettles and sticks and maybe even very dry clumps of grass, which can get a bit prickly. But this was a whole different level. This was not a minor annoyance, or some patch of ground that was slightly uncomfortable to walk over. I didn't really get stuck until I was headed back into the house, at which point I had almost Bruce Willis in Die Hard levels of ouch.
I was pretty sure I had stepped on a series of small nails somehow embedded pointy part up in the ground, or had actually wandered into a Bruce Willis movie and was walking on broken glass. But no. This was no man-made item, no accident of rental house repair, that had caused me such pain. This was pure hatred, growing from the dusty red dirt of Texas to stab me in the foot. This was nature at its most sweetly twisted, drawing my blood even as I tried to do the right thing and compost! This, my friends, was the evil heart of Texas, stabbing at me.
I don't know exactly what plant these things come from, but when I find them, I'm going to dig them out of the ground and then salt the earth where they grew. Because when I say it drew blood, I'm not kidding. I got stuck in the foot with these things on Thursday, and I was still picking bits of plant caltrop out of my foot just this morning. They stabbed deep enough that they made my feet not only bloody, but sore at each of the tiny wound sites. I love the planet and all, but I'll be darned if I wouldn't pour industrial strength weed killer over the entirety of my backyard just to be sure I destroy whatever is producing these things.
What's really awful is that, beyond killing my ability to walk outside barefoot, which is something I enjoy doing, these stupid things are also going to keep me from letting Theo play out in the yard. Sure, I can put shoes on his feet and make him wear long pants and long sleeves, but what happens when he trips? He's going to trip. And when he falls, he should hit grass. Maybe he'd get a bit grumpy at having not kept his feet, but I sure as heck don't want him impaled with tiny little plant knives every time he falls. Plus, they'd probably stab him through his pants and sleeves anyway. These things are frickin' serious.
So thanks, Texas, for producing these awful things. Whatever they are, my feet still hurt where they stabbed me and they have made a mockery of the already lame set of weeds that passes for a lawn out here. If tomorrow weren't Easter and everything in this god forsaken state weren't closed (including the grocery store for half the day!), I would be out planning my gardening revenge.
I guess my anti-plant rampage will have to wait. Until then, take care and I'll write again soon!
Thursday this week marked the first time in quite a while that I have been attacked by a plant. The last time it happened, I was very young and it was seaweed and I've been afraid of the stuff ever since. But yesterday, I discovered that there is a plant in Texas that makes caltrops. I am not joking. Texas makes natural caltrops, and they are in my backyard.
See, all I wanted to do was take some bits of asparagus out to our compost pile without putting on my shoes. Having been raised in the Midwest, I knew to be on the lookout for nettles and sticks and maybe even very dry clumps of grass, which can get a bit prickly. But this was a whole different level. This was not a minor annoyance, or some patch of ground that was slightly uncomfortable to walk over. I didn't really get stuck until I was headed back into the house, at which point I had almost Bruce Willis in Die Hard levels of ouch.
I was pretty sure I had stepped on a series of small nails somehow embedded pointy part up in the ground, or had actually wandered into a Bruce Willis movie and was walking on broken glass. But no. This was no man-made item, no accident of rental house repair, that had caused me such pain. This was pure hatred, growing from the dusty red dirt of Texas to stab me in the foot. This was nature at its most sweetly twisted, drawing my blood even as I tried to do the right thing and compost! This, my friends, was the evil heart of Texas, stabbing at me.
I don't know exactly what plant these things come from, but when I find them, I'm going to dig them out of the ground and then salt the earth where they grew. Because when I say it drew blood, I'm not kidding. I got stuck in the foot with these things on Thursday, and I was still picking bits of plant caltrop out of my foot just this morning. They stabbed deep enough that they made my feet not only bloody, but sore at each of the tiny wound sites. I love the planet and all, but I'll be darned if I wouldn't pour industrial strength weed killer over the entirety of my backyard just to be sure I destroy whatever is producing these things.
What's really awful is that, beyond killing my ability to walk outside barefoot, which is something I enjoy doing, these stupid things are also going to keep me from letting Theo play out in the yard. Sure, I can put shoes on his feet and make him wear long pants and long sleeves, but what happens when he trips? He's going to trip. And when he falls, he should hit grass. Maybe he'd get a bit grumpy at having not kept his feet, but I sure as heck don't want him impaled with tiny little plant knives every time he falls. Plus, they'd probably stab him through his pants and sleeves anyway. These things are frickin' serious.
So thanks, Texas, for producing these awful things. Whatever they are, my feet still hurt where they stabbed me and they have made a mockery of the already lame set of weeds that passes for a lawn out here. If tomorrow weren't Easter and everything in this god forsaken state weren't closed (including the grocery store for half the day!), I would be out planning my gardening revenge.
I guess my anti-plant rampage will have to wait. Until then, take care and I'll write again soon!
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