Budgets & Birthdays

Now there’s a topic to really get your blood up—budgets. Especially professional association budgets. Be still my heart. Read on at your own risk. If you fall into a paroxysm of fiduciary frenzy, don’t come crying to me.

I am now the Treasurer of my professional association. That’s Treasurer with a Capital T that rhymes with P that stands for pool (for you Music Man lovers out there). Pool would be more fun than this. Several executive board members and I had a two hour conference call to go over the budget line by line by line by line. When we were finished I was absolutely wrung out. Now we have our annual conference coming up and I have to present the proposed budget to the Board and to another group of members. This means I have to explain why we did what we did.

When I was an ordinary mortal member of the Board, I didn’t pay much attention to the budget. “What-ev-er” was my attitude. Now, though, I actually have a stake in its neat orderly rows of now-comprehensible figures.

The new president wants to increase her travel budget, but since we are running a deficit, we hope to disabuse her of the notion that she can use our money to finance her family vacations (as she has done in the past with her employer’s money). Did I say that out loud? Meow. A few of us know her story and now we have to nicely maneuver the Board into keeping her budget status quo (us Treasurers occasionally get to flaunt our Latin).

The past president will miss the first round of the Board meeting on Sunday, so we have to table the budget discussion until she can get there to make a case for fiscal responsibility. She is aware of the current president’s shenanigans so it is important to have her there.

I used to look forward to these Board meetings and the conferences, but now I have these petty politics clouding my sunny outlook. Once we get past the Board meetings, the rest of next week’s conference should be fun, though.
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In other news, today is my little girl's 35th birthday. Hard to believe. I know she went on a trail ride today (as in horseback riding) as part of her celebration. She told me the other day that she was at the cattle market this week. I asked her if she were picking out some steaks, but she was serious--someday she wants to raise cattle so she went to learn more about them. I realized she'll finally have her dream job--being a veteraniarin--if only an amateur one.

Roseanne was right

Saturday night was a double celebration: we all went out to dinner in honor of brother-in-law John’s birthday, and his and Priscilla’s wedding anniversary. They picked the place—a very pricey restaurant a few miles from their house. They have expensive tastes. It was the sort of place with $40 steaks and $70 surf and turf. I settled on the salmon, a mere $32. They did have chicken for $!8, but I am kind of chickened out at home. We spent a leisurely three hours or so in the place, watching the three sisters get silly. They seemed to be getting primed for Kathy’s coming birthday sleep over at the Ritz in September.

The other day, Kathy and Max and I took Kodiak for a walk early in the morning. He saw one of our feathered friends land on a neighbor’s lawn and he exclaimed, “Look-a birdie! Whenever I see a birdie, my heart is full of love!” How cute is that? I know he won’t be thinking that way at 15, but at 5 it’s just right. Lately he has been promoting vegetarianism, talking about how good the food is and how great it is for you. The other night he asked me directly, “Are you thinking of becoming a vegetarian?”—quite the little proselytizer.

Earlier this week I was afraid my knee was infected because it felt warm to the touch and a red spot was spreading over the affected area. I saw my doctor on Monday, he drew some blood and since my INR was a little high, he changed my Coumadin dose and sent me on my way. I decided on my own to see the orthopedic guy the next day. He said he didn’t think it was infected, so that was a relief. The blood tests turned out fine. Today I discovered why my knee was warm. I’ve been putting ice on it every day and I realized I had given myself freezer burn! Then I went for another INR today and got a call from the doctor’s office saying it was 5.5, so I have to skip today and Sunday and see the doctor on Monday. Just like Roseanne Roseannadanna said, “It’s always something.”

T-ball

I saw five year old Max play in a tee-ball game for the first time this week. At first I thought they might cancel the game since the temperature was still in the mid-90’s at game time, but they played anyway. Shane and Max and I got there a little early and watched the game before ours. There was one little girl with a hat bigger than she was, you wondered how she could see anything. She was just arms and legs and a hat.

For those unfamiliar with this game, the baseball is placed on a "tee" about two feet off the ground and batters take a swing at it. There is no pitching. They smack the ball and they're off! No one keeps score in these contests, and they only run three “innings”. Each team bats around three times and then that’s it. It was hilarious.

Max got a hit, and eventually scored a run. As he approaches the base, he stops and then does a little hop to land on the bag with both feet. This slows him down of course, so he could be tagged out during his dismount. He’s hasn’t quite got the principle of catching the ball just yet. Chasing the ball, he knows. He watches it roll past him and then he happily runs after it then picks it up and holds it in the air triumphantly while everyone urges him to throw it in. He’ll get a running start and lob the ball in the general direction on home plate.

The kids have no idea what the score might be, and don't really care. Parents cheer and holler advice (" Throw it to first! Throw it to first!....Not now! Not now!--as the runner is already safe.) There are "coaches" in the outfield and on the baselines to help the kids along.

He really enjoys playing, and loves hanging out with his “teammates” before the game. After the game, the coach told the boys “No more playing with the dirt—it’s ball playing not dirt playing.” His audience was not exactly rapt, as they watched the ants crawl in the dugout or tossed their gloves in the air. Talk about herding cats.

Sicko

This was much better than the 9/11 movie. I went into the theater with some large grains of salt, but Michael Moore put together a great argument for national health care. It was fascinating to see the history of how all this came about, from Nixon and Erlichman and Kaiser to today. The stories of people being denied care were heartrending, as was the woman who confessed to refusing care for someone who later died. It occurred to me that that could be considered manslaughter if it wasn’t legal.

The role of money in American politics and the power wielded by the insurance companies was scary. How can we ever dislodge these companies when they’ve even bought off Hillary Clinton, who was a champion of a new health care system in the 90’s?

True, he seemed to find only people who were happy with their national health insurance when he was in Canada and France and England. Maybe he could have presented more of the down side of it, but there didn’t appear to be one. Kind of made me mad the way our government scares us into believing that we would lose freedom of choice, get poor care from crappy doctors if we nationalized health care.

I know it’s a concern of mine, especially when I retire, with all the things I have going on. They just changed my health plan at work. For the last two years I didn’t have any co-pays at all and just paid a higher premium. I definitely came out ahead. Now I have co-pays ($10 for doctor visit, $75 for ER) and still pay the same premium. (I’m glad this latest incident happened on June 30 and not July 1 when the new policy took effect.) Even so, I have little to complain about.

I wonder what my blogger friends in other countries (Canada, UK) have to say about this. How has your national health care system worked out for you and your families?