The Pizza Problem

Some interesting things that happened in mid-February, so, so long ago. I was busy collecting three letters of recommendation for my application for board certification as a chaplain, along with university transcripts, sign-off on my clinical hours from two different people, proof of my Clinical Pastoral Education units, and an updated letter of endorsement from my spiritual community. The latter took two and a half years to get, what with one thing and another, including a series of last-minute complications in February, but now has been received by the certifying body. Good thing I started that well in advance.

Carol-Joy and I went one day to Berkeley Rep to see Gatz, in which every word of The Great Gatsby is read aloud, which takes many hours. It was fantastic. We had lunch beforehand at Au Coquelet and went to Angeline’s Louisiana Kitchen during the dinner break. Getting to go out to eat twice in day was an aspect of this outing that was attractive to both of us when we were making the arrangements. At the latter restaurant, I freely confess that I had fried catfish, potato salad, hush puppies with butter, and also mac and cheese with parmesan crust and bacon. All were excellent.

One day I walked over to a physical therapy appointment and then to Whole Foods to see about pizza. It is now self serve, and looks thin, dry and yucky. I stopped at the customer service counter to express my feelings about this. The young person there asked if I would like to communicate my concerns to management. I said I would leave it up to him to decide what to do, up to and including doing nothing. He said Whole Foods is aware they have problems with their pizza, so maybe things will improve soon.

I remembered earlier seeing a sign outside a café regarding croissants, and went over to get two. The young fellow there looked right into my eyes and smiled pleasantly. It was a little bit creepy: why is this person smiling at me? Years ago, I smiled pleasantly at an old lady on her lawn as I passed by and she said accusingly, “You looked at me like you know me!” That’s exactly how the croissant man looked at me, and is probably the way I often look at patients and family members. Maybe this needs an adjustment. If everyone did it, it would probably be very nice, but since people perhaps rarely smile at people they don’t know, maybe it’s more alarming than comforting.

I stood at the corner of Church and Market eating the croissants, which were superb, and heard a familiar voice say, “Hi, Bugwalk!” Tom, on his way home from work. He went off to Safeway, and I slowly made my way home. As I neared our building and finished the last of my second slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza—the croissants were just to tide me over until I could get to the pizza place half a block from the croissant place—I again heard, “Hi, Bugwalk!” Tom again!

Back at home, I finally had the chance to review several explanation of benefits forms that had piled up. This is always worth doing. I discovered that I had been billed $150 for utilizing an out-of-network provider, and was outraged. The service was an ultrasound ordered by one of my doctors. I used my ABC insurance to go to ABC’s radiology department: how much more in network can you get? But for reasons so far known only to themselves, the radiology department asked an out-of-network physician to interpret the results (which were fine). I myself did not seek out an out-of-network provider, would have declined the offer of such, and had no control whatsoever over this being done. I filed an appeal.

This spooked me. What if someday I need surgery and end up with a bill for fifty thousand dollars because ABC decides to call in an out-of-network surgeon and out-of-network anesthesiologist?

I got a very nice card regarding Hammett from my friend Lesley. It features a thick piece of cloth sewn to the front of the card, with an image of a rabbit hopping out of a fancily decorated enclosure. Lesley wrote something about cats having nine lives, so at first I thought—I was preoccupied by a jury duty notice that arrived in the same batch of mail—she was saying maybe Hammett won’t die, after all. I liked the idea, however fantastic, that maybe a cat could spend three or four lives at once to banish cancer. It turned out she was saying something much more poetic: “Here’s a bunny hopping beyond the bounds of his pen. Kitties have nine lives, so Hammett has done hopping before. Just want you to know I’m thinking of you.” What a lovely idea: that Hammett, like all cats, is an expert at dying, and will be able to do it gracefully this time, too.

As for jury duty, I filed a request to be excused because I work as a per diem and have no paid time off. I explained that I make such-and-such amount of money per month. Since I’m always noticing articles about how people making $350K a year can barely scrape by in San Francisco, I thought that would take care of that, but you have to be actually below the federal poverty line. A person in the jury duty office kindly listened to me vent, and said that when I actually get there, I can explain the undesirable effects of missing more than a few paychecks.

As I meditated one morning, someone began to play the same two notes over and over and over on a piano or keyboard, so relentlessly that I began to think maybe those other ten tones in the Western scale had been a figment of my imagination and didn’t actually exist.