Sometimes I Get Hepped Up and Think I Know a Thing or Two
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This Small Child’s Entire Life, Brought to you by Vaccines!
There’s a huge whooping cough outbreak at a local daycare here. The child who brought it to school was un-vaccinated, and several very little babies now have it, including a 2 month old. Over 120 children were exposed to the cough, as well as all of the adult care providers. Those adults then went home and potentially exposed their families. Several of them are sick. Including Liam’s nanny, whose daughter works at the daycare. I called the pediatrician. I was mildly frantic, if those two words can be meaningfully combined into one descriptor. I’m aware that both my kids are fully up to date on their vaccinations, and a couple…
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Fishing
When my father started his naval career, a college graduate in the officer’s program, he made $8,280 per year. Adjusted for inflation, that amount would equal $32,706 today. First year college graduate naval aviators make $28,000 today. When my father went to college, he paid $355 per year to go to a state school. It rose a bit every year, but that was the average. Adjusted for inflation, that amount would equal $1402.25 today. Totaling that amount over four years of college would equal $5609. Tuition at the same school today is $14,200 per year. That’s equal to $56,800 for four years. In order to pay this, most college students…
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Careful What You Wish For . . .
The back pain has settled into a dull, constant ache. So maybe I preferred the ache-free, sucker-punch-at-any-minute stage more. I don’t know. The dull ache sucks. But it’s an ache that aches in such a way that I know it’s healing properly (it also sort of tickly itches, in that way that major bruises do as they heal). I still get a minor twinge when I bend at the waist. It aches much more if after a day of activity. It’s getting better. I’m trying to be grateful: I could be paralyzed. It makes me grumpy. I’ve attempted to contact my follow up neurosurgeon orthopedist guy a couple of times,…
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Initial Thoughts
Both the liberal and the conservative reactions to the death of Osama bin Laden are irritating me. We are irreconcilably divided in this country, and it’s never more obvious than taking a gander at my facebook status feed in the wake of the death of a terrible, terrible man. People have been so spun, they perpetuate the spin without even knowing what they’re doing. Ugh. I was teaching small children in a Montessori school in Ohio on the day the towers fell. We were talking about insects, and suddenly we were talking about the End of the World. In my co-teachers’ convertible, calling our families. Classes cancelled. The children oblivious.…
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Quick (and Depressing) Brain Dump
I cannot say this aloud to the people I want to say it to, so I’m going to splash it here. But quickly, bc I have a lot to do. So a little boy in Jack’s class has leukemia. It’s the “good” kind of leukemia – as in, the kind that is more like a chronic illness, and is still very health-depleting and scary and awful, but gives him a really good prognosis for a long life. There is another kind that is more of a death sentence. The latter is the kind of leukemia that killed my wee cousin Mary Beth when she was just a kid. So, the goodish news…