Something has been driving me crazy lately. It's this onesie.
It's striped and says "Bananas over Mommy". That's it. What? I don't get it. Why that particular phrase? Shouldn't there be a monkey on it eating bananas, or a bunch of bananas, or something "cute" that's somehow banana related? If it says "Mama's Boy" or "I [heart] Mommy" or something like that then I wouldn't think anything of it, but to use the word "bananas" and then not have a picture of any bananas or anything banana related -- like I said, I just don't get it.
We had an appointment with the pediatrician a few days ago. Lil S' had to get an immunization shot, and it went pretty well, he cried a little when the needle went in but it was very brief. The appointment was much harder on S and I than it was on him; we had to wait for over an hour! And that's just the waiting-room wait, it was more like an hour and a half if you factor in the sitting-in-the-examination-room-staring-at-medical-pamphlets wait. The thing is, I understand doctors are very busy, and the duration of appointments can vary, and it makes much more sense for patients to wait than for the doctor to have a bunch of idle time, but an hour is pushing it (and by the way, the actual doctor didn't even help us, it was a nurse practitioner). Moreover, an hour-long wait can't possibly sneak up on the staff; they have to know in advance they're backlogged, so why not call us a half hour before our appointment and tell us to come in 45 minutes later? S isn't back at work yet, and I was working from home and could've pretty easily fit my schedule around the appointment, coming in 45 minutes later wouldn't have been a big deal, if we had known. It wouldn't even have to be a phone call -- a text or email would've been fine. The system should be automated and recognize backlogs and just send a notice automatically. How nice would that be? I wonder why computerized appointment systems don't do this already? Is it a case of "that's just not how it's done", or are people less annoyed by waiting than by getting a push-back notice? I don't know, but this is something that needs to be implemented ASAP, if you ask me.
Waiting did give me a chance to check out all the other parents and babies. The doctor we go to is in the heart of DC, so it's an eclectic mix. You see people who look well off, but you also see people who look, well, not so well off -- inner-city* women, multiple kids, no signs of dads -- people who look like what Mitt Romney thinks half of America looks like. There was one very large woman there with one kid in a stroller and one by her side, ignoring both of them, yapping loudly on her cell phone. The kid in the stroller kept standing up, and it was one of those strollers that's raised up a few feet, so another woman, presumably worried he might fall, told the big woman to watch her kid. The big woman's fix? Shake the stroller vigorously (while still talking on the phone), so that the kid loses his balance and has to sit down. That's just good parenting. The ironic part is that the kid wasn't in danger of falling out (the walls of the carriage were too high for him to go overboard unless propelled by an outside force) until she started shaking the stroller. Then when they called this big woman back to the exam room, she just left the stroller in the waiting room right where it was, blocking several chairs (and it was getting crowded). No attempt to fold it up or move it to the corner or anything. It was an impressive display of disregard for everybody else in her general vicinity.
After we left, I mentioned to S how many of the unaccompanied women in the waiting room didn't have on wedding bands (about ten or so). She suggested that they just weren't wearing them. Maybe, but I'm dubious. My guess is the vast majority of them were single moms. I might be wrong, but I doubt it. And that's kind of sad.
Changing the subject, I mentioned Mitt Romney above, and, frankly, he needs all the mentions he can get. It's not looking good for him. He's a 17% underdog to Obama according to Nate Silver, and if you go just by current polls, he's even worse off. Silver's model takes into consideration "convention bounce" (which is still in effect a bit for the Dems, apparently), and economic indicators. But the bounce not have been a bounce, it might have been real headway for Obama, and a sluggish economy, it seems to me, is only going matter if people blame Obama for the weak economy and/or they think Romney has a better alternative, neither of which seems like the case to me. Things could change obviously, but Democrats and Anti-Republicans (I'd never call myself the former, I'm very much the latter) have to like the current outlook.
Changing the subject again, you might not have heard, but the Seahawks won a game on a questionable call Monday night. Despite the fact that bad calls are made in every football game that's ever been played, and it's only Week 3 of the season, this particular bad call led to a tidal wave of indignation the likes of which the NFL, nay, the American sports world at large, has never before seen. People are literally ranking it among the worst calls in sports history, and they are branding Golden Tate (or as I like to call him, "Golden Tate, the Man with the Golden Taint") a cheater because he aggressively tried to make a play on the ball. It's absurdity. It's much more a product of football fans being tired of the replacement refs (who are gone now, thankfully) and of living in the Twitter / Facebook / blog era where every schmo (like me) can voice his or her opinion.
I watched the play many times. My honest opinion: it was a bad call, but not anywhere near as bad as it's being portrayed. The rule is, if both players have possession of the ball it goes to the offensive player (Tate), but if one guy has possession first it goes to that guy. It definitely looks like the Packers guy (Jennings) gets possession first, but you can't establish possession, until you're on the ground. Now it looks like Tate does get some possession before they land, like it's 80% Jennings and 20% Tate. So what's the ruling there? I'd probably say interception, but it's not a completely outrageous judgement to say catch. Anyway, every team as benefited from / been hosed by bad calls before, the real refs are coming back, the Seahawks won, let's move on.
Alright, that's all for this entry. I think I have to spend some quality time with my wife staring blankly at a TV screen. It's her choice of show (my compromise for getting the TV all day Sunday for football), which probably means Say Yes to The Dress. Whenever she suggests it I always come back with, "I say no to that show." Witty, huh?
Until next time...
*By the way, I'm not using "inner-city" here as code for "black". If that's what I meant, I would've just said it. I get very annoyed by the PC Police Police. People who try to call others out for being overly PC, when they aren't. Like if you said, "kids in urban schools score worse on standardized tests than their suburban counterparts," a member of PC Police Police might chime in snarkily, "oh right, 'urban' and 'suburban', c'mon, what you really mean is 'black' and 'white', just say it." But that's not what you meant, the distinction you made is perfectly apt. Sometimes PC nomenclature is better not because it's PC, but because it's accurate.
It's striped and says "Bananas over Mommy". That's it. What? I don't get it. Why that particular phrase? Shouldn't there be a monkey on it eating bananas, or a bunch of bananas, or something "cute" that's somehow banana related? If it says "Mama's Boy" or "I [heart] Mommy" or something like that then I wouldn't think anything of it, but to use the word "bananas" and then not have a picture of any bananas or anything banana related -- like I said, I just don't get it.
We had an appointment with the pediatrician a few days ago. Lil S' had to get an immunization shot, and it went pretty well, he cried a little when the needle went in but it was very brief. The appointment was much harder on S and I than it was on him; we had to wait for over an hour! And that's just the waiting-room wait, it was more like an hour and a half if you factor in the sitting-in-the-examination-room-staring-at-medical-pamphlets wait. The thing is, I understand doctors are very busy, and the duration of appointments can vary, and it makes much more sense for patients to wait than for the doctor to have a bunch of idle time, but an hour is pushing it (and by the way, the actual doctor didn't even help us, it was a nurse practitioner). Moreover, an hour-long wait can't possibly sneak up on the staff; they have to know in advance they're backlogged, so why not call us a half hour before our appointment and tell us to come in 45 minutes later? S isn't back at work yet, and I was working from home and could've pretty easily fit my schedule around the appointment, coming in 45 minutes later wouldn't have been a big deal, if we had known. It wouldn't even have to be a phone call -- a text or email would've been fine. The system should be automated and recognize backlogs and just send a notice automatically. How nice would that be? I wonder why computerized appointment systems don't do this already? Is it a case of "that's just not how it's done", or are people less annoyed by waiting than by getting a push-back notice? I don't know, but this is something that needs to be implemented ASAP, if you ask me.
Waiting did give me a chance to check out all the other parents and babies. The doctor we go to is in the heart of DC, so it's an eclectic mix. You see people who look well off, but you also see people who look, well, not so well off -- inner-city* women, multiple kids, no signs of dads -- people who look like what Mitt Romney thinks half of America looks like. There was one very large woman there with one kid in a stroller and one by her side, ignoring both of them, yapping loudly on her cell phone. The kid in the stroller kept standing up, and it was one of those strollers that's raised up a few feet, so another woman, presumably worried he might fall, told the big woman to watch her kid. The big woman's fix? Shake the stroller vigorously (while still talking on the phone), so that the kid loses his balance and has to sit down. That's just good parenting. The ironic part is that the kid wasn't in danger of falling out (the walls of the carriage were too high for him to go overboard unless propelled by an outside force) until she started shaking the stroller. Then when they called this big woman back to the exam room, she just left the stroller in the waiting room right where it was, blocking several chairs (and it was getting crowded). No attempt to fold it up or move it to the corner or anything. It was an impressive display of disregard for everybody else in her general vicinity.
After we left, I mentioned to S how many of the unaccompanied women in the waiting room didn't have on wedding bands (about ten or so). She suggested that they just weren't wearing them. Maybe, but I'm dubious. My guess is the vast majority of them were single moms. I might be wrong, but I doubt it. And that's kind of sad.
Changing the subject, I mentioned Mitt Romney above, and, frankly, he needs all the mentions he can get. It's not looking good for him. He's a 17% underdog to Obama according to Nate Silver, and if you go just by current polls, he's even worse off. Silver's model takes into consideration "convention bounce" (which is still in effect a bit for the Dems, apparently), and economic indicators. But the bounce not have been a bounce, it might have been real headway for Obama, and a sluggish economy, it seems to me, is only going matter if people blame Obama for the weak economy and/or they think Romney has a better alternative, neither of which seems like the case to me. Things could change obviously, but Democrats and Anti-Republicans (I'd never call myself the former, I'm very much the latter) have to like the current outlook.
Changing the subject again, you might not have heard, but the Seahawks won a game on a questionable call Monday night. Despite the fact that bad calls are made in every football game that's ever been played, and it's only Week 3 of the season, this particular bad call led to a tidal wave of indignation the likes of which the NFL, nay, the American sports world at large, has never before seen. People are literally ranking it among the worst calls in sports history, and they are branding Golden Tate (or as I like to call him, "Golden Tate, the Man with the Golden Taint") a cheater because he aggressively tried to make a play on the ball. It's absurdity. It's much more a product of football fans being tired of the replacement refs (who are gone now, thankfully) and of living in the Twitter / Facebook / blog era where every schmo (like me) can voice his or her opinion.
[The controversial Golden Tate catch, but no slo-mo, so you can't tell what happened at all.]
I watched the play many times. My honest opinion: it was a bad call, but not anywhere near as bad as it's being portrayed. The rule is, if both players have possession of the ball it goes to the offensive player (Tate), but if one guy has possession first it goes to that guy. It definitely looks like the Packers guy (Jennings) gets possession first, but you can't establish possession, until you're on the ground. Now it looks like Tate does get some possession before they land, like it's 80% Jennings and 20% Tate. So what's the ruling there? I'd probably say interception, but it's not a completely outrageous judgement to say catch. Anyway, every team as benefited from / been hosed by bad calls before, the real refs are coming back, the Seahawks won, let's move on.
[Not a non-controversial, but bone-crushing play by Golden Tate from two weeks ago.]
Alright, that's all for this entry. I think I have to spend some quality time with my wife staring blankly at a TV screen. It's her choice of show (my compromise for getting the TV all day Sunday for football), which probably means Say Yes to The Dress. Whenever she suggests it I always come back with, "I say no to that show." Witty, huh?
Until next time...
*By the way, I'm not using "inner-city" here as code for "black". If that's what I meant, I would've just said it. I get very annoyed by the PC Police Police. People who try to call others out for being overly PC, when they aren't. Like if you said, "kids in urban schools score worse on standardized tests than their suburban counterparts," a member of PC Police Police might chime in snarkily, "oh right, 'urban' and 'suburban', c'mon, what you really mean is 'black' and 'white', just say it." But that's not what you meant, the distinction you made is perfectly apt. Sometimes PC nomenclature is better not because it's PC, but because it's accurate.
If you have to wait that long again I'd seriously think about changing docs. They could have had an emergency or a couple urgent cases that set them back that day, but if that's a regular thing and they don't address it... unacceptable. Especially with young children. Our pedi has a sign in their exam rooms that says if you've been waiting more than 20mins to bring it to their attention. I've never had to wait more than a 1/2 hour total and that includes when we've been urgent walk-ins.
ReplyDeleteOh and about that bananas onesie. I'm guessing it came in a 3 pack with 2 other monkey or banana themed onesies. I've seen a few of those kinds of trios where all together they make sense, but then there is that one oddball that on it's own is just cuckoo.
ReplyDeleteK Fuji -- I think you are right about that onesie. He does have another with monkeys on it, come to think of it, but as you allude to, he can only wear one at time, so...
ReplyDeleteWith the doc, this was the only time in three that we've had to wait like this, so hopefully they were just having a bad day, but yeah, an hour an a regular basis will not be acceptable.