I’ve never done very well with Novembers. It’s the darkness, the cold, and the lack of sparkly markers of time (I know–Thanksgiving–somehow it doesn’t have the same effect as Christmas lights). I tried walking around my room just muttering “hygge, hygge, hygge” as if I could summon it, but that didn’t do anything (YET).

So I’ve been playing scrabble online, reading, and whenever the temperature shifts back to the 60s, pretending that a) it’s still late summer b) climate change isn’t terrifying.

My Words With Friends opponent noted that he had almost played “steroid” for far fewer points than he gained for playing “asteroid,” and I realized I’ve never juxtaposed the two words before, or considered that they might be related. I mean–they aren’t, because asteroid is from aster and steroid is from…something else, but the possibility is interesting.

One of those hot nights back in October, I figured I would save money on electricity (and do my micro-assist against climate change!) by opening the window overnight instead of turning on the air conditioner one last time. It turns out this my version of “money-wasting things people do while trying to save money,” like driving around trying to find the cheapest gas, because the next morning I woke to find that a $13 harp string had broken due to the humidity. At least it was fourth octave and not fifth?

I think if I took a representative poll, January or February might beat November for least favorite month; people are really into Thanksgiving, and by the time February rolls around everyone is tired of snow…but I always feel better after New Year’s, pale blue instead of dark gray.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

the irony of doing an “overheard” post when my right ear has been stuffed up for two weeks.

Overheard…

on the street:

-No reason to cry, baby. There will be more fluffy stuff up ahead.

-You know what they say–when one door closes, another–another door’s gonna close.

-It’s a PHILODENDRON. That’s the name of that plant, bro. PHIL-O-DEN-DRON.

with my students:

-Solving for x is almost as good as eating a cookie…should I make that my motto?

-(while reading an English paper assignment out loud) Don’t read ahead! I want it to be dramatic.

on the train:

Guy 1: So you had breakfast with her, but you said it was brief.

Guy 2: Yeah, and–

Guy 1: Well WHY? Why was it brief??

in my apartment:

-Beard beard beard. How did you get so big?

-Activate urine!

-He appears to be highly ranked. He has a hat with a tassel on top.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

A few weeks ago I went to a yoga class with a live DJ (it was very hard to vinyasa rather than dance). I had a hard time paying attention to the poses because I was trying to remember all of the mash-ups the DJ created, and also thinking about what mash-up name I could give each creation. Such as (*denotes the ones I was fond of musically):

*”Don’t You Want a Bad Romance?” (Human League + Lady Gaga)

*”How Will I Know if I’m Dancing on my Own?” (Whitney Houston + Robyn)

“Call Me Semi-Charmed” (Carly Rae Jepsen + Third Eye Blind)

*”No Wiggity-Wiggity-Wonderwall” (Blackstreet + Oasis)

There was a nice audio/titular pun when he mixed “Dynomite” with “Under Pressure,” and then there was a weird marriage of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Under the Bridge” and TLC’s “No Scrubs”–I couldn’t figure out why they were paired unless his thinking was something along the lines of “I don’t ever want to scrub…like I scrubbed that day”?

Finally, there was a mix composed of Bruno Mars’s “Locked out of Heaven” and George Michael’s “Careless Whisper” (I Carelessly Whispered in Heaven?), but that was wholly unnecessary because that Bruno Mars song already sounds like its DNA is half “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” by the Police!

Graphic designers: coming in next post.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

Immediate sidenote: I laugh every time at “May the best friend win.” What is that? It’s like a game we used to play in Latin class in high school that we (and our teacher) called “Who’s the better person?” That didn’t have anything to do with the rules or the concept, that was just the title…

I play Words With Friends with some actual friends, but mostly strangers–and I enjoy that, because it means I have more games going. Occasionally people message about the game, which is great, or to say “good morning” which is fine, but then you get things like this:

No…double word scores to me.

People know there is this thing called Tinder, right?

I thought my age would discourage this (very young-looking) person…

…but then he asked if I was a married lady. I tried to put a doorstop to the line of questioning by leaving it vague…

And then I resigned.

After this, I figured out how to change my Words With Friends profile picture to a gender neutral sunset.

This guy and I had played several games and the only non-scrabble topic he seemed to want to talk about was the Yankees…

Oh. There it is.

I just want to fucking play scrabble.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan: I liked the conceit more than the actual book, though I did enjoy it well enough.

American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, by Nancy Jo Sales: I read this mostly on an airplane, and it was so depressing I started sobbing. Granted, I also thought I might have appendicitis and was afraid my appendix was going to burst somewhere over Nebraska.

Jungle of Stone, by William Carlsen: Oh man, this was a SLOG. I think I started it in the middle of 2016.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Required reading.

American Housewife, by Helen Ellis: This is the most delightful, and Helen Ellis is in my top five favorite people I’ve never met. She has a cat named BIG BOY.

The Grownup, by Gillian Flynn (Kindle single)

That Darkness, by Lisa Black

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, by Elena Ferrante: I think The Story of a New Name is still my favorite, but that might change on reread…

Upright Beasts, by Lincoln Michel: My former classmate–these are bizarre and captivating.

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann: Recommended by my dad, and fully made up for his previous recommendation (Jungle of Stone) 🙂

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson: I was still in Morocco and reading on my Kindle, and I wish I had had a hard copy of this so I could look back more easily. I don’t know if you NEED to read Life After Life before reading this, but I would recommend. And I’d recommend both.

Cities I’ve Never Lived In, by Sara Majka: This is really plain prose, and somewhat bleak. I was more interested as I went along, but it’s hard for me to recall much about it now.

Better Than Normal, by Dale Archer: I love to read about the brain but this seemed like a bit of a con job.

The Brain That Changes Itself, by Norman Doidge: This, on the other hand, was amazing. If you have any interest in brain plasticity, read both of these.

The Brain’s Way of Healing, by Norman Doidge

Wilde Lake, by Laura Lippman: I think Laura Lippman is one of the few authors in the world whose entire oeuvre I’ve read.

A Manual for Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin: Love. It’s hard to say if there are really multiple narrators–for some stories there are clearly different ones, but not most–or if they’re all semi-autobiographical versions of the author (or, okay, versions of one character) at different ages.

Willnot, by James Sallis

The Gloaming, by Melanie Finn

Mercies in Disguise, by Gina Kolata: I’m obsessed with prions.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

The Trespasser, by Tana French: I love that Tana French’s books are all set within the same world and threaded together via the main and supporting characters. You can generally read most of them without being spoiled about the rest, with the exception of In the Woods and The Likeness (which is still my favorite).

Oryx and Crake (reread), by Margaret Atwood: One could technically categorize 70% of this list as “post-apocalyptic,” leaving out only the police procedural, the WWII epic, and Elizabeth Strout. I reread this because it had been about 10 years and I wanted to read the other two in the trilogy.

The Flame Alphabet, by Ben Marcus: Language! I like the conceit of this, but I couldn’t help but compare it to The Word Exchange, which is probably my favorite in the sub-sub-genre of linguistic-end-of-the-world novels.

The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood: The other day someone said to me, “Is it strange that everything Margaret Atwood wrote…” and I finished with “…is coming true?” The wording wasn’t “Isn’t it strange that…” but rather a genuine question–is it weird that she’s so prescient, or does that just make perfect sense? Is it prescient, or just observant?

All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr: Lovely, lovely, and there’s often nothing more welcome than a giant book pieced into tiny sections. Unless you want to take it on the subway, but it’s a better evening-book.

Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry: This and the other two Lowry books (all of which I read on my Kindle in Morocco!) are sequels to The Giver. I’ve never been disappointed when rereading a childhood favorite, but when you read a phenomenal children’s book or YA novel as an adult–sometimes it turns out just as you want it to, and other times it seems like you’ve missed the window of time that would not only have led you to love the book then, but would have allowed you to love it forever. In this case, I experienced the former, probably helped by the fact that, of course, I read The Giver fifty times growing up. The characters and their universe already lived in my brain.

Messenger, by Lois Lowry

My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout: This is not nearly as famous (or I just missed it?) as Olive Kittredge, but I found it pretty transcendent. I didn’t start sobbing on the subway (well, it would have been on a mountain or a camel, not the subway) like I did when I read Olive Kittredge, though.

Son, by Lois Lowry

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

I love any absurd Twitter hashtag game, like #FatIndieBands or #TrueLoveInFourWords or whatnot, but I always get a little deflated by the fact that, by the time I realize they are happening, people have thought of everything already. So I thought I would make my own…

Ruin a childhood toy in one letter:

Lite Bite

Rainbow Brute

Skinky

My Little Phony

GI Joke

See N Pay

Power Heels

Kinker Toys

Not going to lie–I had a pretty strong level of hubris about my abilities here, and thought this was going to turn out way better than it did.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

Ugh. I’m tired of this story (so tired, apparently, that I avoided finishing it for a month. Um…summer break?) But anyway:

(Part 1 and Part 2)

Having had no luck at the doctor’s office in its many and varied forms and no luck at my normal pharmacy, I tried my case at City MD, where I had been assured that they “routinely write same-day prescriptions for SSRIs.” I went there prepared to pay $125 out of pocket to be seen, since for some reason they take all major insurance except for mine. I signed in on their fancy iPad, I was called back to a room and required to sign something stating that I would pay out of pocket, which made me immediately suspicious, and I spoke to a physician’s assistant about why I was there (I tried to give her a short version. Are you surprised that I did NOT succeed at that?) She went to get the doctor…and I sat in their weird industrial lazy-boy thinking that this was potentially going to end the same way it had with the doctor and the pharmacist–that is, with no Zoloft and a proclamation of “My hands are tied.”

(I was right!)

(Well, it was “It’s a liability issue,” if we want to be verbatim)

They said BOTH the doctor’s office and the pharmacy had been negligent. They were also intent on explaining that it wasn’t just SSRIs; if I had walked in needing a blood pressure medicine prescription, they wouldn’t have been able to write that either, even if I had records (I HAD SCREENSHOTS) of being prescribed it up until now.

So…you would just let someone walk out without the blood pressure medicine that’s keeping them alive, then?

(I fully understand that in a lot of ways, their hands ARE tied by the system, which is so utterly fucked that I can only be grateful this wasn’t a life or death issue like, well, blood pressure medication).

I think that was the point at which I started checking with friends to see if anyone took Zoloft. No! Here an Effexor, there an Effexor, some Prozac, a Lexapro…aha! In Connecticut lay my salvation–a friend who had STOPPED taking Zoloft and could bring me an entire bottle when we met up later that week. So at least I only had to worry about four more days of feeling like my brain was shivering jello and that my edges were blurring (yes, I was reading a lot of Ferrante just before this adventure).

I am aware that health care professionals will frown upon medication borrowing or re-gifting. I’ll stop doing it when the healthcare system stops imitating Kafka.

In addition, I would actually be able to pick up my (incorrect) prescription the day after that! An embarrassment of antidepressants.

And FURTHER, I would be seeing the doctor that same day to get a new prescription written!

But first…I had the next four days.

TO WRAP UP: The following day I went to the pharmacy where my prescription (with the incorrect dosage) had most recently been filled, told them that my regular pharmacy had said that they, the new pharmacy, should have given me a week’s worth of pills, and received the response of, “We can only do that when someone doesn’t HAVE a prescription, or is in-between prescriptions.”

I said, “I understand that this isn’t your fault and that there’s nothing you can do about it, but I just want to clarify: You’re telling me you can’t give me six Zoloft now, but you’re happy to give me 90 on Wednesday?”

And then, almost off the cuff, I said, “This is a generic that costs pennies–I can’t just BUY some?”

“Oh!” the pharmacy cashier said, “you want to pay for some out of pocket?”

Words had already failed me, so they did one better and died, then came back to haunt me. I managed to stammer that YES, I would be thrilled to do that.

It was $12 for 6 pills. Why did no one suggest this in the preceding four days?? I was so relieved I started crying when I thanked the cashier, who looked embarrassed and said, “It’s okay! You’re getting them! You don’t have to cry!”

And that was how I walked out of Duane Reade as the happiest person ever to pay 1000% markup on something.

There are two punchlines to this story:

1. The morning of my doctor’s appointment, I woke to a voicemail from the office…saying, “I’m sorry, but the doctor called in sick today, so your appointment is canceled. Please call us to confirm you got this.”

When I called the number they specified–at 9:15 am–I reached a message that said “You have reached our after-hours answering service. The office is now closed. Our regular business hours are Monday-Friday, 8:30 am to 8 pm…”

Because of its proximity and just how punchy I was feeling, I decided to just go to the doctor’s office on foot. I continued trying the number as I walked there, so I could be really justified in my righteousness. Some things happened there–I spoke with the site director, who was a giant man and looked like he hated having to deign to use a tiny keyboard, and who said he didn’t really understand the computer system (I was hoping to see where my voicemails and the theoretical emails that had been sent on my behalf had ended up); he told me he could try to schedule and appointment for me later that day, but he didn’t know when it would be; he asked me, “What do you want?” and I managed to refrain from leaning forward and hissing dramatically “I want to NEVER COME BACK HERE AGAIN”–but now this is not a punchline but an episode, so I will stop.

2. So you know that I don’t think I’m blameless in this fiasco: A few days later, brain feeling normal again and with enough generic Zoloft to dump out and Scrooge McDuck around in, I went to visit relatives for the weekend. When I reached into one of my bag’s pockets to get my travel toothbrush, I found a tiny tupperware container…WITH NINE TABS OF ZOLOFT in it. I must have never unpacked it after traveling back in March or June.

The end.

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.

I thought this was going to be a two-part post but it seems it’s going to be three parts.

After not being able to pick up my prescription from the pharmacy on Tuesday night, I started calling the doctor’s office on Wednesday morning. The first time, I left a two-minute message with the administrative assistant’s voicemail. When I hadn’t heard back by Wednesday afternoon, I called again. This time the I tried the appointment line. As soon as I reached a human and said, “Hi, I’m having a problem with my prescription–” they forwarded me to the front desk of the doctor’s office.

There, the phone rang endlessly with no answer. Later that afternoon, I called the appointment line again, was transferred again, and left a message with the receptionist (she assured me that the doctor would call me back by the end of the day…)

I foolishly hoped that having left messages in two places, someone would indeed call me back by the end of the day or by Thursday morning. Hope springs eternal! I had 50 mg of generic Zoloft left, 1/3 of my usual dose, that I took Wednesday morning.

On Thursday, I called the doctor’s office six times. I left a message on the administrative assistant’s voicemail again. I called the appointment line and was transferred to the front desk again, where I spoke to a different receptionist who assured me…that the doctor would call me back by the end of the day. I called the appointment line at the end of the day and was transferred to the nurse’s station, where the phone rang 26 times before I hung up.

Thursday evening I talked to a friend who is a pharmacist, who told me to go to my usual pharmacy–not the typhoid-vaccine pharmacy where my prescription was mistakenly sent–and that they should give me a week’s worth of sertraline for free. “This is a generic drug that literally costs pennies,” he said, “and it’s not a controlled substance. There’s no reason they shouldn’t give it to you.”

On Friday morning, I called the doctor’s office again. I recounted the messages I’d left and the people I had talked to on Wednesday and Thursday. I said I had screenshots (true) from my online patient portal showing that my prescription was noted as 150 mg/day back in my August and December visit summaries, then disappeared for no apparent reason, then reappeared as 100 mg/day in later appointment summaries.

(No one was particularly interested in hearing about my screenshots).

All that the appointment line could do for me–understandably–was give me a doctor’s appointment. For Monday morning. “What am I supposed to do until then?” I asked. “Honestly, I don’t know. There’s nothing else I can do for you. This is a call center. Have you tried sending a message to the doctor who wrote the prescription? You can send her a message through your patient portal.” “I can’t send her a message because I’ve never actually met her…she wrote the prescription, but she isn’t my doctor, so she isn’t listed in my contacts on the portal…”

We both threw up our hands and hung up, basically.

After that, thinking that at least I’d have this issue fixed by Monday, I went to my normal pharmacy to ask if they could give me six pills to get me through Monday/Tuesday, since I had now not taken Zoloft for three days and was starting to get the brain-pulsing feeling of withdrawal.

My regular pharmacy looked into their database and saw that, yep, I had been filling my 150 mg/day Zoloft/sertraline prescription there for the past two years…but “We can’t give you any extra pills because we aren’t the last pharmacy that filled the prescription.”

“But…the pharmacy that filled it won’t give me any extra because they aren’t my regular pharmacy, so they don’t know me, and all their records say is that I take 100 mg/day.”

“Well, that pharmacy didn’t do right by you. They should have given you extra pills.”

This would become the recurring theme–“such an such other person really did wrong by you…but unfortunately, MY hands are tied.”

To be continued…

Posted by Claire & filed under Blog. This post has no comments yet.