Wii Are In Peril

This past weekend, our house was finally invaded by the cultural force that is hell-bent on destroying America's families. It's the modern day Pearl Harbor-in-a-box known as the Nintendo Wii.

I blame it on Costco. I was rounding the candy aisle, checkout lanes in sight, thinking that I might be able to leave the store for less than $200 when I spotted a stack of Wiis - and they were going fast.

I had a massive panic attack at the idea that I had to buy it RIGHT THEN AND THERE, or I would never see it for sale again. Anywhere. Ever. And especially not at such a good price. (Never mind that I had no idea how what the regular price is - I have been duly brainwashed that if it's at Costco it must be a bargain.) I told myself that I would be helping the economy, and that MD could get me a Wii Fit for my birthday so I could try yoga without having to go somewhere and be around people that are wearing coordinated outfits and chanting and having tantric group sex or whatever goes on in those classes.

So I shoved aside a slow-moving twelve-year-old and snatched up one of the last boxes. Twenty minutes later, having blown the equivalent of two car payments, it was wedged in my trunk next to a box of tampons large enough to last me from now until menopause.

When we were setting it up, I had visions of the four of us gatherered around the TV, laughing as we engaged in wholesome family violence, beating the digital crap out of each other's Mii avatars. In reality, it turned them into cage-fighting maniacs. Now, one kid "accidentally" backhands the other with a controller, the other retaliates, and a full-on deathmatch ensues, ending only when one of them winds up on the floor in a quivering pile of blood, snot, and tears.

Last night, when I told The Boy he had to stop playing to take a bath, he spontaneously combusted into forty-eight inches of white hot fury and threw down some vintage Bobby Knight verbal stylings. It went on for over forty-five minutes and ending with him shouting the pre-school equivalent of the c-bomb: "I HATE YOU, MOMMY!"

So he's been grounded from the Wii for a week. And once again, the Irony Gods have vanquished me, transforming the Wii from something that made me Mother of The Year into an instrument of Satan which has made The Boy hate me on a daily basis.

You will pay, evil Costco executives, for turning him against me. I am going unleash pint-sized hell on your collective asses. The Boy is suffering from Wii withdrawal and he is HIGHLY PISSED OFF. Consider yourselves warned.

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Getting Gas

Effing fuel prices.

So... where does one go to get gas in Stamford? Aside from the obvious places like Ole Mole and Kit's Thai Kitchen?.

I'm tired of spending $50 to fill up the minivan. It really chaps my ass, especially since I never wanted to be driving a minivan in the first place. I got hoodwinked into that particular purchase by Manager Dad. ("Don't worry...I'll drive this one, you can drive the other car! And just think of how convenient it will be for road trips and Costco!")

Somehow, the next thing I know, I'm driving it to the office every day, hating on NPR Media Commentator Paul Janesch because I can't bring myself to listen to hip-hop in a Honda Odyssey, on the grounds that it makes me seem like a complete poseur jackass.

So how does a middle-class mom minimize the family gas expenditures? Why, by driving all around town to find the gas station with the lowest price per gallon, of course.

There are three Mobils (two on High Ridge, one on Hope) within a two mile radius of our house that have three different (yet all ridiculously high) prices. The hell? How can the same gas chain in the same zip code be so far off?

There's a couple of Shells that are priced in the same stratosphere as the Mobils.

So I usually go to the Citgo on Hope. And yes, I am fully aware that Citgo is owned by a Venezuelan company and therefore supports dictator (and world-class head case) Hugo Chavez. But what can I say - homey gives cheap gas. I paid $3.45 per gallon of unleaded today while the Mobil right across the street had it for $3.57. Double huh? I think you know what you can do with your Speedpass, Mr. Exxon Mobil Corporation.

But the cheapest gas I've found has to be the 95 Express right on Route 1 near the Exit 9 entrance to rt. 95. This place routinely has gas for at least 10 cents cheaper than any other gas station I've encountered. Because of this, the station is more crowded than your average Amsterdamian discount brothel on payday.

Unfortunately, the station is terribly designed and laid out, with an extremely narrow ingress and only one tiny exit (from which you really should not try to cut across three lanes of the busy Route 1 to turn left, but everyone tries anyway). The traffic flow is frightening. You see a flock of jerks angling to get around other cars in an effort to either get to an empty pump or get out of the parking RIGHT THAT VERY SECOND so that they can get to Hooters or wherever they're in such a hurry to go on 6pm on a Thursday. I actually saw a guy in a Ford Expedition run over another man's foot in an effort to escape, rather than just waiting the two seconds before the car in front of him finished gassing up and pulled away.

So rather than endanger my own life (and the life of the much-despised minivan) I guess I'll stick with the Senor and Citgo of the Despots, unless anyone has any other suggestions.

And by the way, how can Stamford POSSIBLY sustain so many gas stations? (Not to mention strip mall pizza places, banks, and hair/nail salons, but that's a whole other post.)

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Effing Health Insurance

Tonight, as Manager Dad went through an unpleasant cleansing ritual in preparation for a medical test (I will spare us all a retelling of the details) I decided to show some solidary to his discomfort by spending the evening reviewing our medical policy coverage.

After several hours, two broken pencils, and a splitting headache, the only thing I know for sure is that as mad as I thought our tax situation made me, it pales in comparison to the utter, impotent, quasi-homicidal rage that I feel toward Aetna U.S. Healthcare.

Eff.

Yes, I know – you’re thinking, ‘But you’re so lucky! More than 43 million Americans don’t have health insurance at all, so suck it up, you damn ingrate!’

But we still PAY for it, and I can't think of any other product you pay so much for, yet understand so little about. Insurance companies are the most inscrutible, incomprehensible lot around, and they seem to go out of their way to make sure that people don't have the slightest idea of what they're paying for. I have a Master's degree and an MBA (Ok, so the Masters is in advertising, so maybe that one doesn't count), and I STILL can't figure out exactly what my company’s health plan covers.

Those of you who have met me know that I am proudly anal-retentive. I have pre-printed grocery lists that are organized by store, by aisle, hanging on our fridge; items must be circled immediately when we run out or they are not purchased. I have Quicken, a top-of-the-line HP financial calculator, and a custom-built spreadsheet that tracks every cent that has ever come in or out of our family budget. I can tell you things like the out of pocket cost for my epidural (worth every penny) or how much we spent on Aunt Mary's 2002 Christmas present (too much, since she hated it anyway).

I spent hours with a magnifying glass, the benefits manuals, the aetna & merck-medco websites, and a variety of free web-based analyzers. I built a spreadsheet that I THOUGHT accounted for all costs, copays, and prescription fees. The spreadsheet was so detailed, so complicated, so hyper-linked, so formula-and-function-laden, it would make a University of Chicago economist weep in sheer, helpless awe, assuming (s)he could stand to look directly at it for more than thirty seconds before it seared his/her corneas.

Unfortunately, as my inappropriately hot high school math teacher once explained to me, it’s the inputs that matter.

I believe his exact words were “Shit in, shit out”.

So because of all of the shit that I THOUGHT I understood, I switched my family from Manager Dad’s health insurance to mine, mainly because I liked more of the doctors in my network. We pay slightly less per paycheck for my coverage. (Good). But I lost a $500 annual credit from my company that I was getting for NOT taking their health coverage. (Tolerable, because it was a wash when you factored in the lower premium costs).

Where the feathers really start to fly is that after I signed us up, they dropped my chosen method for the prevention of future Manager Kids from the approved medications list. (Bad). So now instead of paying a $10 copay, I pay $50 out of pocket per month. (Very bad). And while they cover Manager Dad’s extremely expensive, no-generic-substitute daily maintenance medication, I somehow didn’t realize that they only cover 20% of said medication’s cost, whereas they had covered 80% under our old policy. (Disaster).

And finally, I somehow managed to miss this little tidbit – that every family member has to meet a $300 deductible before I see one bloody dime from Aetna.

So the end result is we’ll pay thousands more out of pocket than if we’d just stayed with our old policy.

Manager Dad, a kind, patient man who is not type A like me (which is probably the reason our marriage has survived thus far), keeps telling me not to beat myself up for additional health care costs. But I am furious with myself, especially at the thought of the time I wasted trying to get us what I thought was a better deal. I will never get that chunk of my life back - I could have done something MEANINGFUL during the 36 hours between the receipt of our benefits manuals and the end of our open enrollment period besides develop a lasting eye-twitch and a dependency on legal stimulants.

A pox on those effers at Atena and their ‘manuals’. A double pox on my company’s HR staff and their lousy ‘benefit’. A triple-dog-dare, pre-existing condition, unqualified expense, non-HCRA reimbursable pox on them all.

Eff.

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Effing Taxes

I just received an email from my tax adviser, Steven T at the accounting firm of Laventhol and Horwath (actually, Van Brundt Du Biageo on Summer Street). Help me out here - why do I always think of Laventhol and Horwath when I think of accounting? Did they sponsor the People's Court or the Academy Awards or something like that? Anyway, I digress.

Thanks to our nation's crappy tax code - one that penalizes people that happen to live in high cost areas (such as, let's say, oh, I don't know, Fairfield and Westchester counties), my family is getting reamed. First of all, we pay a HUGE amount in annual federal taxes. We work in New York but live in Connecticut, so we have the privilege of paying tax in BOTH states.

And because of our income, even with 2 kids we no longer qualify for any deductions outside of our regular mortgage interest. To add insult to injury, for the last 3 years our household has been an unwilling member of the Alternative Minimum Tax Club.

Granted- by 'absolute' standards, we bring in a healthy income. But by the RELATIVE standards of this country, and the high percentage that our average living expenses eats up of our income, we are firmly middle class. We live in a 1500 square foot house in a mixed blue/white collar area. We drive a Honda Odyssey and a Honda Civic. We take one vacation a year, and I clip coupons to save on groceries.

Every year come spring, I am afflicted with Seasonal Affective Tax Anxiety. Every year, the AMT takes a bigger bite out of our butts. We're already claiming zero exemptions...what else is a family supposed to do to try to keep up? Oh, and as far as the 'stimulus package', thanks for nothing, effing Congress. You can cram your rebate checks where the sun don't shine, because my family ain't getting squat.

And who should I vote for? I'm a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. Because I'm a feminist I should probably be a Democrat. But nobody, Democrat OR Republican, has the stones to pursue a flat tax code that would have everyone share a fair proportion of the tax burden...and eliminate all of the money we waste maintaining the IRS, which has to be one of the most hated government bureaucracies outside of the Cold War KGB.

So McCain, Obama, Clinton, Paul, LaRouche, I don't really give two hoots today...the day I got my tax results from my accountant. None of you are really going to make a difference in MY fiscal life.

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Girl Scout Cookies...or Satan's Biscuits?

It's that time of the year again....the time that the Scouts of America website claims, "The activity of selling cookies is directly related to our purpose of helping all girls realize their full potential and become strong, confident, and resourceful citizens."

At every grocery store, school dropoff, gymnastics class, and kid soccer game, I have been accosted by hordes of pre-teens blinking hopefully at me as they shove stubby pencils and blurry order forms my way. By selling enough of these cholesterol bombs, they'll qualify to win prizes... er, I mean, build greater life skills. As most of these children are the spawn of my friends, I feel obligated to sign up.

Life skills don't come cheap. To be exact, they cost $4.00 per box. In this economic environment, I don't really need to be blowing $24 of my discretionary on cookies that I don't even like.
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On the health front, although I don't think I've ever personally ever eaten an actual cookie (they look like decorated Styrofoam), I usually bring them to the office and leave them out for all to plunder... thereby fostering the obesity epidemic, and contributing to our national health crisis.

And then there's the environmental impact of the discarded packaging clogging our nation's landfills...and the questionable ability of a Trefoil to actually decompose in a garbage bin, much less digest in a stomach.

It has implications in our post-feminist culture as well. I'm a working mother, raising a daughter that I hope will be strong, smart, and possibly take an interest in business as a career path someday. As such I take umbrage with the whole concept of cookies for cash. Isn't this a subversive attempt to convince women to stay in the kitchen where neoconservatives think they belong? Can't we encourage our daughters to find passion in entrepreneurship OUTSIDE of the domestic arts?

And finally, I find something vaguely racist about the "Samosas". Not sure where you all net out there.

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