Put Down the Teasing Comb

I know my blog is supposed to be about gfcf food, my life, etcetera. Well, you know what the tagline to this blog is...it's right up there at the top of the screen. But my friend Lynn wrote about something today that has frankly been plaguing me since last night. So I'm going to stray from my blog's theme for a moment and ask the burning question:

Sanjaya, dude, what the @#*& is up with that hair???

I tried to explain to my husband what it looked like, and I came off sounding like Simon Cowell. It went a little something like this: Honey, if I'm being honest, he looked like a deranged cockatoo. After my husband stopped laughing at me, I rewound the show back to Sanjaya's performance (again thank God for DVRs) and there he was in all his glory. I was so perplexed by the whole thing that I had dreams about Sanjaya and his crazy hair. Crap, no wonder why I had such a horrible night's sleep. All I saw was this kid with cockatoo hair singing "Bathwater" way off key.

Diss-missed

Up until yesterday I could say that, goody-two-shoes at heart that I am, I had never been kicked out of anywhere. That all changed yesterday, when my husband and I were summarily dismissed from...get this: a pediatrician's office! Wow, are my husband and I rebels or what?

It all started innocently enough. Due to a change in HMO, we were forced to pick a new pediatrician for our son. We love the present doctor (who also treats Zoe), but we were told we needed to change docs if we wanted the insurance company to pay for Ayden's medical care. So we reluctantly went to the new doctor's office for the initial visit yesterday.

As eager as I am to jump right into how rude and inept Dr. Personality was, I should explain something very important. Right now, my son is not yet vaccinated. I know that is something that bothers many people, but there are multiple reasons for this. First, we were concerned about autism since we already have one child with the disorder (if you already have one child with autism, your more likely to have other children with it than others), and we fear vaccines could have something to do with it. Second, we have a family history of seizures brought on by adverse reactions to vaccinations. This history includes our own daughter and several other family members. Third, we feel that it's an enormous amount of chemicals to inject into a small child, whose body may not be ready to accept them. So we decided to wait until Ayden is a bit older to begin shots. Our current doc is okay with it, and a growing number of physicians say they are becoming more accepting of patients who choose to wait.

So we get to Dr. P's office, and while we are waiting we become very aware of her behavior towards the office staff as well as other patients. It seems she was absent the day they taught bedside manner at medical school. And apparently she was never taught that it's not nice to be snippy to people who are helping you and/or working for you, i.e. your employees. We get into the exam room after Ayden was weighed by a nurse, had his finger pricked to check his blood, and provided the required urine sample. Dr. P walks into the room, doesn't introduce herself, says hello, and rudely tells me (without even looking at me BTW) that I'm about a month early to give Ayden his shots. I explain that we are delaying the vaccines and my husband starts to explain to her the reasons why, which I have listed above. This doctor yanks her stethoscope off and (cutting my husband off) tells us that she doesn't treat anybody who is not vaccinated. She then gives us some speech about how she disagrees with everything we say, all the while giving off a vibe that says, "You two have got to be the dumbest people ever! Don't you know that I'm a DOCTOR, for Christ's sake!"

My husband asked the doctor three pivotal questions. 1. Does that mean that aside from people with medically-necessary reasons for not vaccinating that you also do not treat people with religious objections (such as Jehovah’s Witnesses)? 2. It is written anywhere in this practice's procedures that you refuse to treat people with religious and medical objections to vaccines? 3. If not, would you put that in writing? The doctor then said that she does not discriminate against Jehovah Witnesses, she just doesn’t accept them as patients. She stated (with a raised voice) that her policy is not listed in the office’s procedures, and that she would not put it in writing. Then she scooped up our son’s chart, said good-bye and bolted out the door. She promptly scooted over to her phone and said that she was calling the HMO and telling them that she wanted our son transferred to a different doctor. We told her not to bother; we’ll just do that ourselves.

My husband and I kept our composure the whole time. We didn’t want to upset Ayden by arguing with the doctor, even though she had absolutely no problem going there in front of a child. Also, we expected that we might encounter some resistance to what we had to say. But this lady went apeshit on us, which was completely unprofessional and rude. Hey, if she wanted to refuse to take my son so be it. Truth be told, I’d rather crawl naked across a bed of rusty nails than take my son back to see that lady. Not because she disagrees with me, but because I refuse to be treated that way.

Technology is a Fickle Friend, Part Deux

You may recall that back in the fall I was having issues with getting my photos to upload onto Blogger. Once I updated to beta those issues were worked out. Now we are having other tech problems here at the hacienda, this time due to a power surge. Our computers (mine and the hubby's), which are currently networked to one another, are not speaking to each other. Flamenco Dad's computer does not have internet capability either--due to said surge--which sucks because his computer is the one where our photos are stored. That means that until we get that network thingy going again I can't post pics on this site. Bugger! Unless I can sweet talk my husband into getting me a thumb drive. Hmm, maybe I'm onto something...

Now that I've got a headache from all that computer talk, I can talk about my husband's cool gig this week. He was asked to play with the Florida Orchestra this week for two performances of music from the score of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This is great for two reasons: one, we LOVED those movies; and two, having an opportunity to play with the orchestra is a great experience. He's gotten to work with some great conductors when playing with this orchestra, and this time was no exception. Unfortunately I didn't get to see these performances due to a lack of a babysitter--people would tend to frown on the idea of me leaving my kids home with a block of soy cheese, rice crackers, and some Welch's grape juice. So I stayed home and watched Survivor and American Idol (thank you DVR) after I put the kids to bed. I baked a loaf of gfcf bread for Miss Z and thought about Frodo, Gandolf and company--guess which movies I'll be watching this weekend?

Technology is a Fickle Friend

For some odd reason, Blogger does not like when I attempt to post more than 1 photo in a single blog entry. I discovered this by accident today, when I posted an entry with both the photo of this cake as well as the photo of my rocker kid (see below). If you viewed the entry in Internet Explorer, the photos appeared one above the other, and all looked fine. However, if you use Mozilla Firefox, the two pictures appear side by side, and it makes my blog look--well, funky. So I'm posting the picture of the cake separately so as not to upset whatever forces exist in the internet world that conspire to make my site look weird. I'm going to try to figure out why this crap happens, because it is annoying. If anyone out there has a good (simple) explanation for why this happens, feel free to let me know. I stress the word simple because anyone who knows me knows that computer stuff just isn't my bag, baby.

In the meantime, I'm going to just curse at my computer.