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When Jeffrey Dahlmer Invites You To Dinner
Nov. 9th, 2014 07:51 amSpent yesterday and will be spending a great deal of today helping Max with the various essays he needs for his law school applications.
Max writes really good poetry, and the one short story I’ve read by him was pretty good, too. Not sure why he has such trouble with this kind of writing, but it’s almost as though a curtain goes down in his mind, so working with him on this kind of thing is a long, labor-intensive project. I can’t do what would be easiest for me – Here! Just give me the goddam thing! I’ll write it in 20 minutes, and it will be brilliant! – because that would be unethical. In fact, I really can’t even suggest wording, though as part of the editing process, I can replace wording.
Anyway, one of the schools he’s applying to is a notorious factory for private practice firms straight out of a John Grisham novel. And in the first draft of the essay, Max wrote words to the effect of, I suppose it’s possible that I might go into private practice at some point…
And I wrote back, Honey, that’s kind of like accepting a dinner invitation from Jeffery Dahlmer and announcing at the table, “By the way – I’m a vegetarian.”
Which Max didn’t think was funny.
He’s 27. We’ve evolved a pretty good mother/adult son relationship (something I have yet to achieve, and may never achieve, with the Numbah Two kid), so it’s unlikely that some thoughtless riposte from the Mommy Monster will knock him out of his orbit. Nonetheless, I realized I better tune the thoughtless ripostes waaaaaaay down.
And on the subject of tuning down…
I cooked dinner for C and L last night: pork, roasted vegetables, sautéed mushrooms. C is the consummate redneck in every way save one: He has an obsessive devotion to progressive politics.
So over the second glass of wine, we started talking about the results of the recent midterm elections and the fact that a major decision about Obamacare will soon be handed down from the Supreme Court.
Now. I have not read the Affordable Care Act in full, but I’ve probably read more of it than any other person I know – I do have two Masters degrees in what cumulatively amounts to health care policy, after all, and I’m obsessively interested in the subject.
The Affordable Care Act is a badly written piece of legislation.
I’d not talking about its intent – which is deeply flawed, too, so far as I’m concerned, since access to healthcare insurance is not the same thing as access to healthcare, and indeed, I think one might be able to argue that it’s actually harder to see a physician now for the vast majority of Americans. (Not that “physician care” is necessarily synonymous with “healthcare,” either, but I digress.)
In my initial skim-through several years back, I actually read the sections on what happens if a state doesn’t set up its own healthcare exchange, and my Clusterfuck! Clusterfuck! red alerts all went off: The language is extremely muddled.
So I’m not surprised that this section is up for challenge.
The intent of the law is clear: To have the federal government act as a state proxy in the establishment of exchanges that were designed to be administered by the state.
However, the intent of the legislation is not served in the specific language used in this particular section, which is very, very ambiguous.
Tough decision, actually.
Anyway, I began explaining all this to C, who unbeknownst to me had been doctoring his seltzer water with vodka throughout dinner so that he was now quite drunk and C became so enraged that he actually got up from the dinner, walked out the front door and slammed it.
L just rolled her eyes and said, “I had to hang up on the phone with him last night, he was just so off the wall.”
But I could tell she was Not Pleased. The issue in these kinds of social situations is never blame per se. It’s that I had contributed to a situation that was upsetting L, and L is almost invariably easy-going and very sweet to me.
So I felt bad.
I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. When people bring up politics, sex or religion, I need to learn how to steer the conversation back to discussions of The Real Housewives of New York. The way God intended.
In other news, the Meezer has another wood tick, this one under her chin, which makes it impossible for me to remove, so now I have to agonize over whether to drop $150 at a vet or rationalize, Hey! It’s a wood tick. It doesn’t carry disease. Money is in short supply since I am effectively carrying RTT’s rent and food expenses for the next three months. The expensive flea medications the pusskers are on is supposed to safeguard them against ticks, so I am not a very happy consumer.
Also, I had a kind of epiphanal experience running last night. At long last, I entered The Zone, which I’ve been reading about for years and had despaired of every actually experiencing. The last half mile through the dark woods under the gloaming sky was an out-of-body experience, the panorama of this life, all past lives, all future lives, spread beneath me, receding in significance as the sky grew dark.
Daylight savings time has marked a change in my habits. I just don’t want to be awake when it’s dark at night. (Though, oddly, I don’t mind being awake when it’s dark in the morning.) I’d go to bed at 6:30 p.m. if I could. I’ve always loved sleeping more than practically any other activity – I just love to dream, you know – and I find myself wanting now to sleep 10 or 12 hours at a clip.
Max writes really good poetry, and the one short story I’ve read by him was pretty good, too. Not sure why he has such trouble with this kind of writing, but it’s almost as though a curtain goes down in his mind, so working with him on this kind of thing is a long, labor-intensive project. I can’t do what would be easiest for me – Here! Just give me the goddam thing! I’ll write it in 20 minutes, and it will be brilliant! – because that would be unethical. In fact, I really can’t even suggest wording, though as part of the editing process, I can replace wording.
Anyway, one of the schools he’s applying to is a notorious factory for private practice firms straight out of a John Grisham novel. And in the first draft of the essay, Max wrote words to the effect of, I suppose it’s possible that I might go into private practice at some point…
And I wrote back, Honey, that’s kind of like accepting a dinner invitation from Jeffery Dahlmer and announcing at the table, “By the way – I’m a vegetarian.”
Which Max didn’t think was funny.
He’s 27. We’ve evolved a pretty good mother/adult son relationship (something I have yet to achieve, and may never achieve, with the Numbah Two kid), so it’s unlikely that some thoughtless riposte from the Mommy Monster will knock him out of his orbit. Nonetheless, I realized I better tune the thoughtless ripostes waaaaaaay down.
And on the subject of tuning down…
I cooked dinner for C and L last night: pork, roasted vegetables, sautéed mushrooms. C is the consummate redneck in every way save one: He has an obsessive devotion to progressive politics.
So over the second glass of wine, we started talking about the results of the recent midterm elections and the fact that a major decision about Obamacare will soon be handed down from the Supreme Court.
Now. I have not read the Affordable Care Act in full, but I’ve probably read more of it than any other person I know – I do have two Masters degrees in what cumulatively amounts to health care policy, after all, and I’m obsessively interested in the subject.
The Affordable Care Act is a badly written piece of legislation.
I’d not talking about its intent – which is deeply flawed, too, so far as I’m concerned, since access to healthcare insurance is not the same thing as access to healthcare, and indeed, I think one might be able to argue that it’s actually harder to see a physician now for the vast majority of Americans. (Not that “physician care” is necessarily synonymous with “healthcare,” either, but I digress.)
In my initial skim-through several years back, I actually read the sections on what happens if a state doesn’t set up its own healthcare exchange, and my Clusterfuck! Clusterfuck! red alerts all went off: The language is extremely muddled.
So I’m not surprised that this section is up for challenge.
The intent of the law is clear: To have the federal government act as a state proxy in the establishment of exchanges that were designed to be administered by the state.
However, the intent of the legislation is not served in the specific language used in this particular section, which is very, very ambiguous.
Tough decision, actually.
Anyway, I began explaining all this to C, who unbeknownst to me had been doctoring his seltzer water with vodka throughout dinner so that he was now quite drunk and C became so enraged that he actually got up from the dinner, walked out the front door and slammed it.
L just rolled her eyes and said, “I had to hang up on the phone with him last night, he was just so off the wall.”
But I could tell she was Not Pleased. The issue in these kinds of social situations is never blame per se. It’s that I had contributed to a situation that was upsetting L, and L is almost invariably easy-going and very sweet to me.
So I felt bad.
I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. When people bring up politics, sex or religion, I need to learn how to steer the conversation back to discussions of The Real Housewives of New York. The way God intended.
In other news, the Meezer has another wood tick, this one under her chin, which makes it impossible for me to remove, so now I have to agonize over whether to drop $150 at a vet or rationalize, Hey! It’s a wood tick. It doesn’t carry disease. Money is in short supply since I am effectively carrying RTT’s rent and food expenses for the next three months. The expensive flea medications the pusskers are on is supposed to safeguard them against ticks, so I am not a very happy consumer.
Also, I had a kind of epiphanal experience running last night. At long last, I entered The Zone, which I’ve been reading about for years and had despaired of every actually experiencing. The last half mile through the dark woods under the gloaming sky was an out-of-body experience, the panorama of this life, all past lives, all future lives, spread beneath me, receding in significance as the sky grew dark.
Daylight savings time has marked a change in my habits. I just don’t want to be awake when it’s dark at night. (Though, oddly, I don’t mind being awake when it’s dark in the morning.) I’d go to bed at 6:30 p.m. if I could. I’ve always loved sleeping more than practically any other activity – I just love to dream, you know – and I find myself wanting now to sleep 10 or 12 hours at a clip.
