Silliness. Because the rest of the world is just too depressing right now.

As a cat owner(ownee?), this is just too true.

And this is just amusing.  I want a hedgehog.

On an amusing, but annoyed note, the local squirrel has decided that this year, as last, the flower boxes on the porch railings are there specifically for him to dig in.
I reset all the petunias and coxcombs, and then found the organic pest repellent I used last year with some success on the garden (it has to be resprayed every time it rains, and I forgot - the groundhog took full advantage, damn him), and poured some into each box.  It's an interesting mixture of garlic oil and dried animal blood, and we'll see if it scares squirrels off.  As it was, yesterday morning as I was about to open the door, there he was sitting at the top of the stairs eating a stale muffin and staring at me, bold as brass.  He only left when I opened the door.  I'd invest in a pellet gun for both him and the goundhog, neither being an endangered species, but we have neighbors quite close, and directly in the line of fire from the door to the deck.

Damn.

Repeat yesterday.

Except that this time we're in the other hospital's stand-alone ER/Urgent Care, and it's evening not morning. And it's a lot quieter back here than it was yesterday.  They don't have us in a tiny storage area in a room full of cardiac monitors going off full volume every few minutes.

The nurse seemed slightly surprised that they hadn't done a spinal tap at the other hospital since offspring's neck is sore and a little stiff along with the unrelenting headache.

Joy.

I suppose that if it is meningitis at least they'll have a diagnosis and maybe figure out what they can give her for the headache.  Right now the best guess has been a reaction to the Wellbutrin she started on on Tuesday.  But you'd think that some form of narcotic would have helped.

Update:  It's been about two hours since that post, and we've been sent over to the main hospital.  They do think it's just a bad migraine, perhaps a cluster, and have given her some different meds, benedryl and reglan, and it seems to have stopped the headache within minutes.  Apparently dilaudid is not known as a good pain med for headaches.  I will have to politely complain to the first ED about that, since what we've been given here seems to be the norm at most other hospitals.

I would recommend not looking at this right before bed.

That thing on the bottom.....

I've seen critters in horror movies who were less scary and less living dead.  And those were truly scary movies with real special effects budgets.

And I can't stop looking at it.

If I wasn't coming out of a 3 ½ hour budget session after a 6 hour ER visit (where they sent us home with a child with a worse headache then when we arrived), I don't know if I'd be able to sleep tonight.  

I'm not sure I'll ever look at my little stuffed kangaroo-skin koala the same way ever again....

Dealing with the hospital system. Sigh

Instead of spending an exciting morning at work scanning articles for ILL and searching databases for non-existent studies, I'm sitting in the ER with my younger daughter who has had a bad headache for 24 hours, not touched by NSAIDs, sumatriptan, or even much by narcotics.

For some reason the Convenient Care section for the folks who don't have heart attacks or missing limbs doesn't open until 11am now (it used to 9), and they've put a child with a bad migraine, made worse by noise, in what is essentially a storage corner of a two bed resus room.

At least the monitors have finally been turned off.

She was given some steroids and a shot of Dilaudid over half an hour ago, and she says it actually has gotten worse.  The nurse said that IM Dilaudid can make things worse for a few minutes, but by 20 minutes or so she should be feeling much better.

She's not.

At least she has a gurney to lie on.  I'm sitting on a chair scrounged up from someplace, using the foot of the gurney for the laptop, and trying very hard to be really, really, small so I don't get hit by gurneys coming in and out.

I'm not impressed, and starting to wonder if we wouldn't have been better off at the ER in the next town over.  On the other hand, at least once she's discharged, my husband can pick her up and I can clock in to work if there is enough time left.  In another 90 minutes there won't be much point.

Hopefully the nurse will be in soon with the discharge paperwork so we can tell her that the meds aren't working.

Thank God other people listened so I didn't have to

I'm finally reading some of the reports by people who listened to the Ø press conference.  I agree with everyone who pointed out that it was interesting, but not in a good way, that the president knows all about the first openly gay pro-basketball player, but still seems to know nothing about the Kermit Gosnell trial, or even what is going on about Bengazi.

Should the media really be happy that the president cares more about American Idol type crap than the country's security?

But even worse is being told that Obamacare has already done marvelous things for my family.

Bullshit.

Our primary plan was dropped by my employer, so we're left with Tricare. (As far as I can tell, every single person who works where I do who has Tricare ended up dropping the employer provided Aetna plan this year, since the Cadillac(?) plan isn't financially worthwhile for us when it costs us twice as much, and still doesn't cover a lot of the things Tricare doesn't, and may be taxed at 40% next year anyway.)

I've had to fill out more stupid paperwork so that my doctors could show "meaningful use" of their EHRs.  And somehow meaningful use has my doctor asking all sorts of questions for government databases which I don't think the government has any right or need to know.  My ortho gives me nice printouts of what happened at the appointment, and every single one tells me that I need to look at the Healthy Weight and You guidelines.  I know I'm overweight, and they do, and they never mention it at the appointment, because except for my knees, none of my other health markers show any negatives due to my weight, but the damn form is required to have that on there because my weight and height aren't in preferred parameters.

On a side note, I'd really prefer if my physician could spend the majority of his or her time during my visit paying attention to me rather than a computer.  Supposedly once they get used to the program it will be easier, but I haven't noticed any improvement, even in the practices we use which have had EHRs the longest.

And every doctor asks the same questions, over and over, and over.  I had knee surgery a few weeks back, and had to fill out three different forms in two days, each of which asked me about previous surgeries and what meds I'm taking.  By the time I got to the last one, I just wrote, "see previous forms".  This is *all* in the hospital database by now, since that's where I've had every surgery in the last 13 years except for my cataracts.  Their system knows it, so why in hell do they have to ask me again, every single time?  Am I suddenly going to have had a new surgery five years ago between a surgery four years ago and today?  And the meds.  I've told the doctor, I've told the hospital, I've told the anesthetist, each on a separate form, but aren't they all supposed to be talking to each other so I don't have to do this anymore?

At least, for right now, I don't have to worry about trying to find a plan on the non-existent exchange, for only 9.5% of our family gross income.  I realized today that the feds don't take into account the cost of living differences between locations when they decided how much a family could afford to pay for insurance.  $75K for a family of four doesn't go anywhere near as far in CT as it would in OK, but each family is considered able to afford the same amount for health care.

I think that right now, to do my bit for improving my health, I am going to play some mindless computer games and try to lower my blood pressure without medication.

Children are a full time job, or, don't trust the schools

I had a very interesting and enlightening talk with our local director of pupil services, i.e., the nice woman in charge of getting kids set up for special ed and other services.

When I told her what had been going on with younger child at the magnet school in the next town she nearly blew a gasket, since apparently they should have called her to set up a PPT months ago, as soon as the absences began to get excessive, no matter the reason.  When I told her that the one interaction I had had with the social worker/school psych from the main high school (the magnet is attached to the regular high school and the students do their non-STEM classes there) was a very rude and threatening call where I was essentially told that if my child missed another day they would have to call the truancy officer and get the police involved she showed me the form, and said that since there hadn't been a PPT or any other attempts at the school level to deal with the problem, the truancy officer would just refuse to do anything.

So I've got copies of the form to request a PPT to discuss issues and decide what if any testing, services, and/or accommodations are needed, and I need to tell the school tomorrow that in future, at least for students from our town, they need to contact the Central Office directly, and start things much much earlier, before it begins to look like a child is going to have to repeat a year, never mind being so stressed that she is in a deep depression, as in deep enough that she is seeing a psychiatrist and is being put on meds.

These are the people towns hire to "advocate" for our children, but in so many cases they don't.  I think if they did their jobs, people would have a lot fewer issues with school budgets.

All I can add to this small rant is that if I, an intelligent person who has dealt with the schools and school boards in the past is having this much trouble, how do less savvy parents manage at all?

Adventures with the schools

Today is going to involve going into our Central Office to see about getting them to pay for elder child's neuropsychological testing, as well as getting them to test younger child for dyslexia.

I should point out that they are in 11th and 9th grades respectively.

The psychiatrist is still pissed that it's taken this long for the schools to do anything for elder child.  All we can think is that up until know she hasn't needed to study to do well on tests and she hasn't been disruptive.  I returned some books to her last school today, and told them that she had just been diagnosed as being Asperger's, and was told that it was quite obvious to them from the beginning of the year, but that they aren't allowed to say anything.  I understand the reasons behind the laws about this, but at the same time, if someone, anyone, had said something to us years ago (and I've had her Sunday School teacher from 12 years ago tell me that there were signs then!) we would have known to keep an eye out for issues.  I suppose if the school balks at the costs, I can point out that if they had done what they were supposed to do years ago, the accommodations probably would have cost them far more over the years.

And that gets us to our school budget...  They have been requesting 0% increases for the last three years, and this year are asking for a 1.4% increase, or a little over $1M.  But they've been able to pay two superintendent salaries as well as legal fees with no problems for the last year.  We also have an IB program in the high school which is seriously underutilized, and is costing us about $40K a year per student.  For the $400K a year we are spending we could send 20 kids to school full scholarship up to UConn, and probably twice that to the local community college.  I would argue that the town would get far more bang for it's buck if we did that than the IB program.

So when we get to voting on the school budget in a week or so during the annual RTM budget meeting, I know what I'll be recommending cutting....

Welcome!

Wow, a Tamalanche, over 350 views in just five hours on my little tiny blog!

Feel free to look around, comment, etc.  And come back, y'all!

The stupidity, it burns.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/04/26/colleges-husky-dog-logo-promotes-rape-says-student/ Old Logo  New Logo

I'd say that UConn owed this woman back her tuition, because they obviously haven't taught her any critical thinking skills.

The comments at Ann Althouse's blog are priceless, and pretty much spot on.

I'm definitely not a big college sports booster, I have no idea why Nike demanded the change as part of their sponsorship, and as a former Husky, I much prefer the old logo, but I fail to see how a picture of a nominally fierce animal promotes rape.  If this student thinks the sports culture on campus promotes violence against women, or at the very least doesn't condemn it, that's what she should be speaking out against.  UConn could be the Bunnies instead of the Huskies, and if the college community puts the athletes on pedestals and treats them as campus gods rather than students, they will still have the same feelings of "entitlement", logo notwithstanding.

Mangled metaphors....

I just got a robo-call from the town high school principal reminding us about parent teacher conferences on Thursday.  He started out by hoping we had had a restful spring break, and commented that the students and come back "bushy eyed" and ready to work.  I'm assuming he's mangling "bright eyed and bushy tailed", but the image that bushy eyed gives is not quite as reassuring.

Actually, the mental image is pretty odd and disturbing.