Please note that I actually started writing this on Saturday afternoon.  What with one thing (work) and another (more work) I wasn’t able to finish it until this evening.  My apologies.  I’ll try to get time sensitive posts done more promptly.

Yesterday was (I thought) the last day of my mid-week “weekend”. I had Thursday and Friday off with the expectation of working a Saturday through Tuesday shift, one day off mid week, two more on and then a three day weekend. This is a typical schedule for me, I’m not passionately fond of it, but it’s not unusual so I live with it.

Spent a lovely day, barring a mild bout of heat stroke and yes I was too drinking plenty of water, in the garden. Weeding, digging early potatoes, planting lettuces, and spraying, deadheading, and yet again revising the staking job on my rosebushes. Andrew had dinner all planned out so I didn’t have to worry about the possibility of having to come up with dinner, I could play all day. So I did…that is until I was starting to think about planting cucumbers at which point my body said “ENOUGH” and got all dizzy and hot so I came in and bagged it for the day.

But overall not a bad day.

Mom called as we were eating. She wanted to know what they could bring for our upcoming Independence Day barbecue. Also she needed to talk to me. She said that she and Dad had to fly back to Illinois on the 17th. Said in that voice. With that tone. Can’t be good.

I asked what was wrong and she said that my uncle Don is dying. Whoa.

Granted I have not been very close with my mother’s side of the family since Gram Do died in 1989. Even then it was mostly a question of seeing the aunts, uncles, and cousins every couple of years when we flew back to Illinois for a few weeks in the summers. But Don has always been something special. The oldest of my mom’s siblings, Don has been, from my youngest memory, someone I’ve been impressed by. A lawyer in his professional life I grew up thinking that it would be cool to have that sort of dedication to something. He had a building with his name on it (okay so it was probably only rented office space, but still….) “DORWARD LAW PRACTICE” and he took care of all sorts of (to a very young child) BIG IMPORTANT things for the family.

Of the golden Illinois summers of my childhood I have flash memories. Mom and Aunt Do (Doris) playing catch with me in the swimming pool at Aunt Do and Uncle Gene’s house. Don talking with my Gram Do (actually her name was Agnes, but since most of us couldn’t pronounce Agnes, we called her Gram Do {for Dorward} to differentiate her from Gramma Hammond) and her throwing her head back erupting with that nasal cackle of laughter that no one will ever be able to replicate. A snapshot of Don holding Gram’s cranky old poodle cross, Mimi. Don taking my sibs and I out for a walk in the cornfields. A dual purpose trip; he said if we were very very quiet we could hear the corn growing and then when we weren’t, and didn’t for the record hear anything growing, he loaded us up with fresh sweet corn to take back to Do’s poolhouse for dinner.

A lot of my memories of all of Mom’s side of the family revolve around those trips: playing cards and dominoes, sitting at the ENORMOUS table in the poolhouse for dinner, being afraid of the crickets in the bathroom, cornfields, the swimming pool, gathering eggs from Doris’ chickens, and the never ending trill of the summer cicadas.

Don’s ran for, as I recall, Commissioner of Woodford county in the early ’80s. For a long time we had a “Donald Dorward For Commisioner” sign on the inside of our back door. Featuring a photo that my dad had taken. He looked all serious and properly respectable but I knew that it wouldn’t have taken much to crack him out of that serious professional semi-smile into a full mouth laughing smile.

We were almost never at Don’s house when we visited Illinois. Don’s first wife, Helen, has some issues (I believe she’s probably bordering on obsessive compulsive, but I don’t know) so she never really wanted us running around the place. And she and Gram never really seemed to get along well together so if we wanted to see the most family for the most time we all congregated at Doris and Gene’s house. I do remember one foray into Don and Helen’s house. I must have been in junior high by then and Don and I had been talking about science fiction. When we went over to his house he took me downstairs into his library….. I had never seen such a huge collection of science fiction and he was a GROWN UP and he was INTERESTED IN SCIENCE FICTION. He gave me two, both of which remain in my collection today: 2001 A Space Odessey by Arthur C. Clarke and The Stars Like Dust by Issac Asimov. And he sent me a Waldenbooks gift certificate for a high school graduation present.
Don was a good Christian, Republican and he was a life long member of the Masons. Managed to work his way up to some pretty darn impressive grand high poobah status before his (now ex) wife blackballed him during their divorce. Tried to get Matt to join DeMolay when he was in high school which went over REAL well with both my brother and my parents. We don’t talk politics or religion a lot when we meet up with that side of the family.

He remarried some years ago. Carol is a much nicer and much more sane auntie than Helen ever was. I’m positive that the years of his marriage to Carol were much happier than those of his marriage to Helen.

First it was Parkinson’s disease. Then the Alzheimers came to claim him. I haven’t seen him in years and there’s no doubt that he wouldn’t know who I was if I went to see him now. I’ll miss the man that helped to make the memories.

And then (of course there’s an “and then”, how could the title be relevant without an “and then”?) as I was digesting that my boss called.

She’s not technically the boss, the practice is owned by a corporation, she’s the medical director but boss is close enough. She wanted to tell me something. Something kind of shocking, but she thought I needed to know before she made it generally known.

She bought her own practice and she’ll be leaving on July 31st.

As a person and as her friend I can’t be anything but happy for her. She’s been upset on multiple levels, some more obvious than others, since our home grown small corporation in which she was a bigwig, was purchased by a national corporation out of Los Angeles and her bigwig status immediately evaporated. There are other issues, the salaries aren’t as flexible, the doctor contracts are a nightmare, the corporation doesn’t treat support staff as well as the old corporation did….. So she decided to strike out on her own. Good for her, I wish her well in her endeavor.

As a doctor and as a corporate employee, however, this is a FREAKIN’ NIGHTMARE. Our “really needs seven but currently can only afford six and we’ve only had five since late March when we let the nitwit go” doctor practice will be dropping from five doctors to four. This is a nightmare.

And the corporation will be in charge of installing a new medical director. This is worse. I’m not taking the job, I’m not that much of a loon. They can install a corporate toady, someone who practices medicine (and expects their subordinates to practice medicine) the exact way the corporation dictates if they so desire. They’ll have open insurrection on the part of their professional staff, but they can do it and we (the professional staff) don’t have much of any say on it. Or corporate could install a friendly medical director who would look upon the WORD FROM ON HIGH at the home office (or HO as we like to call them) as mere suggestions to be debated and decided upon or discarded as desired.

If I were betting I’d lean heavily towards the corporate toady. This is a freakin’ nightmare. Anyone out there want a medical director’s job? Anyone out there want to employ a slightly worn around the edges but experienced small animal veterinarian?
I got of the phone with the boss lady and decided that I really shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.

That’s the penalty any business would incur for sending this sort of thing through the mail, were I anointed Supreme Dictator For Life.

So I pull our mail out of the box this afternoon and amongst the unrequested catalogs, digital TV offers and announcements for huge sales on all my favorite brands of recreational vehicle is a small, nondescript envelope from Geico. Now, we don’t currently do business with Geico. In fact, we are highly unlikely to ever do business with Geico, mostly because of my previous encounter with their truly annoying advertising practices, but also because, if we really wanted to make a stink about it, I’m sure we could get our current insurance provider to give us a rate comparable to Geico’s. Nobody in this business actually has a serious hand up on anyone else: they all charge you what they think they can get you to pay. If you have a good driving record and you’re seriously clenched about saving a few bucks, you can get just about any company to lower their rate to you by playing one provider off another. I just don’t have the patience or initiative to do so.

Anyhoopty, so this envelope from Geico has a disturbing legend emblazoned on the back:

Now at this point I know, I mean I really truly with all my heart, lungs and other viscera know, that this letter is yet another bullshit advertisement. Much in the same way that water is wet, french fries are tasty and the Reverend Falwell secretly dreams of fellating Fabio, it just is. No doubt about it. Whatsoever.

But now the bastards have my curiosity. What kind pathetic, flaccid attempt to capture my attention—and my business—will the document contain? Will it refer to the dire warning printed on the envelope, ala, “You could be throwing money away every month if you throw away this letter!” Is the advertisement contained within also designed to resemble an official customer communique? By ripping open the envelope, do I sign away my right to not have these turkeys interrupt my dinner with phone solicitations, as apparently was the case with the “complimentary” issues of National Geographic Magazine that arrived unbidden at our door, followed by a phone call asking if we’d like to sign up for twelve, twenty-four or thirty-six more? (And boy howdy, did that piss me off. What an obvious attempt to sandbag the rules of the National Do Not Call Registry. “But we do have a prior relationship with the customer: we sent him free shit he didn’t ask for!” I’m starting to think we need a three-tiered registry: National Do Not Call, National Go Fuck Yourself, and National The Next Thing You’re Getting From Me Is A Letter Bomb.)

So my curiosity got the better of me:

Nothin’ but ads. Of course.

This strikes me as more than merely asinine; it borders on deceptive advertising. Hell, it practically borders on intimidation. How am I supposed to know what dire consequences discarding the document unopened might bring? Maybe they’ll send Rocko and Icepick over to my house to rough me up. Maybe the letter is designed to burst into flame a presecribed period of time after the recipient fails to open it, setting fire to my recycling bin and then my house. Maybe that damned lizard they use in their commercials is really a Komodo Dragon, ten feet long and capable of running at speeds up to 13 miles per hour, lusting for the gamy tang of terrified human flesh.

Were it up to me, I’d force companies that participate in unsolicited advertising via the mail in the exact opposite direction, requiring them to put big labels on the outside of their mail that say things like “WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF CONSEQUENCE INSIDE”, or maybe “INFORMATION YOU DID NOT ACTUALLY ASK FOR CONTAINED HEREIN”. If their product/service is so freaking awesome, why do they feel they must disguise their advertisements as something else?