So this is why we live here

We spent both Saturday and Sunday at wonderful festivals. On Saturday, we hit nearly every tent at CultureFest in Battery Park. On Sunday we left our part of the island for the Upper West Side and Columbia University who were hosting The New York Times Great Children's Read. We took around a kajillion photos (as usual), but I've collected just 12 here to experiment with the embedded slide show feature.

A free festival on the campus of Columbia University in which Julie Andrews talks about which children's books she loved the most and where They Might Be Giants jazz up the strollered crowd—these kinds of things remind us why we put up with New York.

It's way past time that I admit this

The ladies

So I've crossed the 100 post mark (a little while ago), and my wife deserves a lot of credit for that. She encouraged me to start this little record in the first place and then keep it going when I start to flag. She's given me ideas for posts.

And she's been a great editor. I'm a tinkerer and supposedly an expert on writing, but she quite often has a sharper eye and a keener ear. In even the last little post on pumpkin summer, for example, I originally wrote "pumkin" all over the place. Embarrassing.

As with most things, she makes me better.

(Cute picture, too.)

86° + October = Pumpkins & Sundresses

The weather these days can only be described as freakish. It makes for odd pairings like the one in this photo taken amid the Union Square farmer's market this weekend.

If this keeps up, I'll have to go as a lifeguard or a UPS driver for Halloween.

This is all actually pretty ridiculous if you think about it

You didn't have to look too closely at the photograph in my last, brief post to see that The Boy is sporting a cast on his left elbow and arm. It's actually purple (his choice).

He suffered a broken bone near his elbow late last week, after an inadvertent push by a kid in the park sent him down from the top of a plushy building-block toy.

As my wife put it: "I knew it was bad when he said that he didn't want to go swimming that night and maybe not even this weekend."

We knew it was bad alright, but not how bad. And finding out became the first of many ridiculous parts of this little story. He fell late afternoon Thursday. I had to work past 10:30 p.m. Thursday, so I didn't get to see him before he went to bed. My wife was concerned but, like me, wasn't quite sure how worried to be. The next day I left for work without getting to see him, but when he did pad out of bed, his elbow was swollen and tender and he could move his arm. A sprain? My wife, being more on the ball than I, called our pediatrician's office just to be sure. Our doctor doesn't usually work on Fridays, and last Friday was usual, which meant that she talked with the unkind and unknowledgeable people answering the phones. She was told to take him directly to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon, and eventually she was given a list of such surgeons to contact, all of whom were outside of our health insurance network. And she was told that our doctor's office does not give referrals.

I then used our insurers friendly website to locate all the pediatric orthopedic specialists in network and within a ten-mile radius of our apartment. My wife called all of them. Not one could see him before mid-October; a few said they didn't even treat children. Ridiculous.

Back to our general practitioner. Luckily, we know our pediatrician fairly well, and my wife used to work with her husband, whom she proceeded to call. Through him my wife eventually did manage to talk directly with The Boy's doctor, who firmly encouraged us to have him looked at that day. My indefatigable wife then made another series of calls to the recommended out-of-network doctors until she found one who would see The Boy immediately. After a ginger examination and X-rays (that The Boy found super cool), the break was revealed and contained by a purple cast. My wife paid the entire bill for the visit before leaving and received a receipt that read "THANK YOU COME AGAIN." We will have to come again, at least twice, at our own expense.

It goes without saying that we would pay and do anything we needed to to set The Boy and Q right, to keep them from pain. Luckily, we can afford to go out of network if we have to, even for reasonably expensive treatment like this. But we shouldn't have to, especially given how much per month we pay for family health coverage. And dealing with bureaucracies like the desk sitters at our pediatrician's office or those who summarily deny benefits on the first few rounds (another long story) is a menace. The doctor who saw our son didn't take insurance; that's presumably why he could see him so quickly.

American health care is a mess. In myriad ways. Perhaps now that the next president will likely be a Democrat and that all the serious Democrats have serious health care policies, we will see profound changes come about in how our country deals with health. The ridiculous may yet be replaced by the sensible (or at least the more sensible). I hope so: Q and The Boy have a lot of bones and a lot of years ahead of them.

Though you can't see my talented wife here, you can know she's there

[Please do click for the larger view of this photo; bigger is, um, beautifuler.]