Handbaskets

As in "The world is going to Hell in".

And I'm reaching a point where I don't care.

That's not quite right; I'm just too damn tired and depressed to care.

Which is how I imagine folks on the wrong side of the old Iron Curtain must have felt a lot of the time.

Our local SCA group had it's monthly meeting in our neck of the woods on Monday, and there was lots of talk of the events we'll be holding over the next 18 months.  And it all sounded really interesting. If I cared.

This is something that I've always greatly enjoyed, but we didn't have the time or the money for years after we moved back up to CT, and then we were also dealing with elementary age kids - too old to just haul places, but too young for them to enjoy themselves.  But now they are both in high school, they both think the group sounds interesting, and if I wanted to I could come up with some basic garb for the lot of us, as well as the funds for membership and attending a few events a year.

I realized Monday that I'm too tired.  Everything seems like it's going to be too much effort, and all I'm up for is curling up around the computer in the evening, playing logic puzzles on one side of the screen while watching old TV shows (currently working my way through Magnum, P.I.) on the other side.  And for that matter some evenings, I don't even have the energy for that.  At the same time, I can't fall asleep.  I didn't get the light out last night until nearly 1am, because I knew I wasn't going to be able to fall asleep, and when I did get the light out, I was still awake until nearly 3am. Except for a few peanut butter cups I had had no caffeine after about noon, so I can't blame it on that.  I'm scheduled for a stress test and nuclear stress test on July 7th, which will most likely come out completely normal.  So will the echo.  We'll be left with stress, anxiety, and maybe some good old depression to explain the heart arrhythmia, exhaustion, insomnia, shortness of breath, and nearly constant light headedness.

My attitude towards life right now could be because of my health, but then my health could very easily be being affected by reactions to the political and economic disasters that are going on around us and the financial worries that any one with half a brain is facing right now.

So I just keep going to the doctor so we can figure out what the problem is, maybe what's causing it, and hopefully how to treat it, while continuing to buy my weekly lottery tickets.  I figure I've got a better chance of winning the state lottery than I do of ever being in a financial position to retire based solely on work and savings.

And if that isn't a damning indictment of the current economy, nothing is.

It's my blog and I'll whine if I want to...

The title should be fair warning.

I'm tired.  I'm lightheaded. I'm short of breath.  My chest hurts. I have trouble sleeping, what with the overall sense of impending doom and existential angst.  I have no real appetite, but I'm eating a lot of chocolate and caffeine to try to stay awake. Therefore I'm putting on some more weight.

It's most likely anxiety, nothing that getting the girls' issues a little more settled, getting myself a new job or a winning lottery ticket, and some xanax wont take care of.

However, I did go to see the doctor this morning.  My EKG is fine, we'll see what the blood work says (probably anemic).  I also have a  cardiology consult, just in case.  I suspect at the end of everything they'll tell me I have anxiety, take some xanax, and did you know you're fat?  Duh.  I hate the new EMRs where even when the doctor doesn't talk to you about your weight, because he/she knows you aren't stupid, the little visit summary printout tells you to consult the "Healthy weight and you" handout.     Every. Damn. Visit.

Like that's going to help the anxiety.

Have we really put the "Demise of Democracy" off for another generation?

This morning on the way into work I was listening to our local talk radio station.  One of the local op-ed folks was on and talked about attending the Coast Guard Academy graduation on Wednesday.

The thrust of what he had to say was that with the various military academies turning out students like this, and that we still had such competition for the few places in those academies every year, he didn't think that we had to worry about losing our democracy, at least not in this generation. Of course he was also seriously misquoting Reagan, since it wasn't the demise of Democracy, but rather the demise of Freedom that is never more than a generation away.

I'm not sure that I agree with him.  Perhaps on his premise about the demise of Democracy, but then we all know that democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what's for lunch.  We have a lot of wolves out there eyeing the lambs hungrily.

But for the survival of Freedom?  Yes, we have a large number of young people who agree that is indeed the greatest nation on earth, and that we are the last shining beacon on the hill.  But are they really a large enough segment of the population, enough armed lambs,  to keep the socialist, "gimme", hordes of wolves at bay?  Given the massive number of scandals that have come to light in just the last few weeks, it's a pretty sure bet that the last election was, if not stolen, at least severely compromised, and I don't hear anyone worrying about that.  That that compromise was coming from career civil servants is something that should worry everyone, because administrations come and go, as do members of Congress, but the civil service lives forever.  Think "Yes Minister" from England.  The Minister may think he runs the place, but he doesn't.  And if we can't prevent an entrenched priviledged class of civil "servants" from becoming our masters, it doesn't matter who we elect, we won't be able to turn this juggernaut around.  As with the Red October, our ship of state steers like a pig, and it isn't unreasonable to fear that we may already be too late to stop her heading for the rocks.

Hmmmm.... Should I be contacting a malpractice lawyer about now?

I think I've described some of my family's "Fun at the ER" from the other week - 3 trips in fivedays, and the first one was pointless.  That it is the ER at the hospital where I work just added insult to injury.

All told that visit was bad enough that the following Monday I contacted our "Patient Advocate" and gave her the whole story and was assured that she would be looking into it.  I hadn't heard back by this past Friday (10 days later) so I left her another message.

Monday I got a call from the nursing manager for the ER, and she'd really like to talk to me about my daughter's experience.  So she stopped by after lunch and we talked for about half an hour.  Basically, there are protocols for dealing with headache patients, and they involve placing them in quiet rooms.  Room 8A, a sort of anteroom to a double resus bay, is NOT a quiet room by definition.  So I've been assured that staff will be reminded that patient complaint is an important consideration when deciding which room to place them in.  I also got a lot of explanation of why the Dr in question might not have wanted to give Phenergan, nor start out with a head CT.  I agreed, but said my concern was that after three doses of the same medicine which just exacerbated her symptoms, perhaps changing medicine or starting some testing might have been reasonable, rather than just discharging us.

I got to talk to the chief ER physician yesterday.  Again, said I understood the concern with head CTs, and why they wouldn't have started out with one, given that there was a chance this headache was a reaction to a  new medication, and that there is a need to keep radiation exposure to a minimum especially with growing children.  Apparently the treating physician had thought we wanted to leave quickly.  I said well, given that we had been there six hours, and the only plan had been to keep repeating doses of medication which made things worse, leaving seemed a viable option.  What I really wanted was either some actual testing or a change in medication, and yes, Phenergan can have some unpleasant temporary side-effects (which is why it is given with Benedryl), but those side effects which only last a few minutes are preferable to a blinding headache which has lasted hours and looks to continue that way.  Also, seeing that neither Dilaudid nor Percocet had had any effect, I didn't understand why the only script we were given was for Vicodin.  Which unsurprisingly didn't help either.

So to recap, I've had two fairly high level managers spend half an hour each apologizing to me for how my daughter wasn't treated during an ER visit and promising further investigation.  Which to my suspicious little mind means that they are concerned that I could sue.  Given that there was no attempt to find out why the headache didn't respond to the medicine, and that there is a family history of brain aneurysms, if I didn't need to keep my job, I'd be tempted to find a lawyer and find out.

Computer Weirdness.

My computer has decided that one site, and one site only can not be read in Chrome on the Windows 8 side of the box.  Using IE on the Win 7 side is just fine.

I suspect you can see the problem.  For some reason every letter except for links is off by one from what it should be, and there are all these added exclamation marks.

I have no idea why Chrome should hate me today, and only this site (so far).

ETA: Crap.  It hates Coursera too.   

ETA: And now, after rebooting, everything seems to be back to normal. I wonder if it had something to do with loading a new set of printer drivers....

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.

Much better

Three days post-op and I can bend my knee almost as well as right before the surgery (which admittedly wasn't that great) and the knee is about the same size as before surgery (which was much larger than the other one, probably something to do with all the fluid build-up and the 2cm cyst behind the knee cap).  I haven't taken any pain meds other than ibuprofen in 24 hours, and I don't need the crutches at all.

This is *so* much better than the last time.  I can even do stairs, though it's not great, and down is still either one step at a time, or backwards.  I don't imagine that steps in the shuttle at work are ever going to be something good, but it does look like I'm going to be back as good as I ever was after the first surgery.  And that's an improvement over the last year.

And now for a shower this afternoon, since even the thought of trying to get into, nevermind out of, a bathtub makes me cringe.

Maybe not?

I had to go to the doctor yesterday to have some fluid drawn off of the knee, and she also injected something, I believe some anesthetic as well as perhaps some antibiotics.  Whatever happened, I can actually almost completely straighten my knee today, and after walking for a few minutes with crutches, I can start to put full weight on that leg.  It's not elegant or pretty, but I am mobile, and for two days post op, that is a huge improvement over last time.  The knee doesn't look that much more swollen than it did before surgery, so here's hoping.

 So I'm going to spend today taking it easy, maybe starting some of the exercises they gave me with the post op packet, and getting caught up on some of the classes I've been following on Coursera.  The ones on Irrational Behaviour (actually an economics class), the ancient greeks, and How Things Work (basic physics without the math) are really entertaining as well as helping get some of the cobwebs swept out of the brain.

Spoke too soon?

I'm heading off to the doctor's office in about half an hour.  This morning I had oozed through the pressure bandages and the ace wrap.  When I took it off, I was still oozing.  So they want to see me, given that tomorrow is Saturday.

At least with the ace wrap off, my foot is starting to look normal, and at least the liquid is oozing out rather than collecting inside the joint like last time.  So I guess you can call that an improvement....

Surgery, oh joy.

I was supposed to call the hospital yesterday between 2 and 5 to find out what time I was supposed to report to Same Day Surgery today.  Instead I got a call from them at about 1:30, telling me that my doctor wanted me there at 5:45.

So I packed a few things for staying at my parents' place afterwards (they have the downstairs bedroom with the bathroom right off of it, a shower big enough to put a chair in if necessary, and fewer steps to get into the house to begin with.  I overslept slightly and didn't have time to take a bath before getting the stuff into the car, and heading out.  The surgery itself seems to have gone pretty well, though afterwards they kept asking me if my throat was sore.  I finally asked why it would be and was told that for some anatomical reason they had had difficulty intubating me.  I had three surgeries under a general less than 4 years ago, and as far as I know that was never a problem before, so I'd kind of like to know what's changed in the meantime.

They called my husband to come get me around 11, and he and my mother got there before 12. We got me out to her car, got my stuff out of my car, and James took it home so that he could get ready to take the girls to their music lessons, and I headed off to the parents where I proceeded to go straight back to sleep, except for getting up around 2 to think about throwing up.  I didn't and instead woke up again at about 4:30 quite hungry.

So far I've been able to walk on the leg, but not really bend the knee, which I'm supposed to start trying to do tomorrow.  I don't know if that will be very successful given the amount of gauze and ace wrap they put on.  I've peered under it and there is a lot more blood on the gauze then I remember from last time, but they may have had to make a bigger incision to get at the cyst.  And it could just be that a little blood can go a long way.

It's nearly midnight, and the local anesthetics they gave me are starting to think about wearing off.  I don't remember being this functional on the day of surgery last time, so I'm hoping this means that tomorrow and the day after will also be much better than the corresponding days last time.  The bit of leg/knee just above the knee cap seems to be about the same size as the other leg, which is an improvement over pre-op so I'm going to use that to help convince myself that things are going better, what with mind over matter and all that. 

If I post whines tomorrow, I will have been wrong.

Still irritated

I'm still not feeling very charitable today.  The joys of living in Connecticut where our legislators have succumbed to the dreaded "we have to do *something*!" disease.  They are planning to effectively criminalize every legal gun owner by doing stuff that won't do a damn to stop another school shooting, but "It's for the children!".  And it makes them feel better.  Heck, most of law enforcement is telling them this is a bad idea.  And even though they are supposed to vote on it today, as of yesterday morning the legislation hadn't even be written for them to read so they'd know what they were voting on.  Though if that's good enough for DC, I suppose it's good enough for Hartford.

I stopped by younger daughter's school this morning.  The guidance counselor *had* got my email, but had been too busy to respond.  In said e-mail I had told her that my schedule was wide open except for the 11th and 12th, since I'm having knee surgery on the 11th.  So today, when she says, OK, let's set a date for this meeeting (the one I was telling her dates for last week), the first one she offers is the 11th.  And then the 8th, when I'm supposed to be taking daughter for her initial therapist visit for the depression.  And after that all that's available is after Spring Break, starting on the 23rd.  So I'm rescheduling the therapist appointment, though at this point I'm going to need some for some anger management. The other counselor has still not got back to me, after THREE messages left over a two week period.

The only way anyone ever does anything is if you camp out on their door step so they have to do something to make you go away.  Have they considered that some of us have jobs we have to go to, and which we would like to keep?

Grrrr.

State and local politics. Tyranny just looks so friendly....

I just got back onto the town RTM (redundency alert - Representative Town Meeting).  We had two folks from the R side of the aisle resign from District 5, and since the current iteration of the RTM is based on the old district lines, I'm eligible, so proving that I'm still insane, I volunteered.

The RTM's main purpose is to act as the taxpayers' say on the town and BOE budgets, instead of sending them to referendum as most other towns in the area do.

So instead of being able to just look at the bottom line, say "Holy SHIT!!!, You guys want how much more than last year?!?!? No F-ing way!", we have to spend two or three evenings a week starting in late April going over the budget and voting on it line by line by line.

And every single line has at least one person on the RTM who feels that if that line doesn't at least get level funded it's TEOTWAWKI.  I do understand why some members get irritated with the group who've been fighting the increases the hardest because at least one member has a tendency, bless her, to stand up, offer a cut of x%, and the only reason she can give for cutting that line is that taxes are too high.  I can see why some members would like to see it a little better thought out, as in, "Yes, item X#R is a great program.  But, we have to cut something, and I don't feel that it is as high a priority as program TQX."  Personally, I suspect I'm going to piss a lot of people off, because I'm going to go through the budget book over the next week or so, figure out what do I think is most important, which I can tell people right now is public safety and public works, figure out how much we want to cut from the proposed budget, arrange cows in order of priority, and start offering to axe them myself.

But we can't afford the budget the way things are now in town, and Pfizer is about to take about $2M off our tax rolls by tearing down Building 118.  And in all likelihood, they'll be completely gone within the next 5 to 10 years anyway.   Just look what they did to New London.  That $2M is probably around 4%-5% of the town budget which isn't Board of Education.  And since the state thinks we are a distressed community because over 30% of our population is below the poverty line (or something like that), we can't cut a penny from the Ed budget.  It's for the children, don't you know?

And speaking of "for the children" ....

Our state reps are preparing to vote on new gun laws tomorrow, which as of this morning hadn't even been written yet.  And they admit that not a single bit of the proposed legislation, if it had been in effect last year, would have stopped the Sandy Hook shooting from occurring.  But they do want to have every law-abiding gun owner who possesses a magazine which holds 10 or more bullets (or maybe it's over 10) register their magazines with the state by Dec 31st or they will be guilty of a Class D Felony, which carries a minimum 1 year of prison and up to $5K of fine.  Though one talk radio host pointed out that once you're jailed you can get 5 days off per 30 days of sentence for good behaviour - we just don't have the jail space.  That the real felons won't give a damn about this law, and won't be deterred from keeping their high capacity magazines doesn't matter, "It's for the children" and "We have to do something".

Just wait until enough people have 3D printers.  I believe that you can already get files for printing disposable magazines.

Papieren Bitte.

Frustration

Surprise! Not.

I'm dealing with the public school system.  So frustration is the name of the game.  I suspect it's written someplace in the union contracts that they have to ignore parents for a minimum amount of time.

Younger daughter is currently pulling Fs in almost all her classes, something to do with having missed about 60 days so far this year with illness. (We have doctor's notes for the vast majority of her absences).  And she is now complaining about the letters and numbers on the pages and screens jumping around a lot, especially when she's tired.  This was something back when she was in 1st or 2nd grade, but it never interfered with her ability to read and do well in school, and she hasn't mentioned it in years.  But of course now she's under a lot of stress, so it's coming out.

Almost two weeks ago, on a Friday, I left her most recent note with the office, as well as a copy of the office visit summary where it showed a diagnosis of possible depression (well you'd be depressed too if you'd been sick for months and it looked like you'd have to repeat the year), and also recommended having the school system test her for dyslexia.  The guidance counselor from the magnet high school, who is assuring me that we can set up meetings with the teachers to figure out which classes she has a chance of getting caught up in and passing, and what she will need to do for that to happen, took me over to the main high school to the social worker/school psych's office so we could talk.  The woman was out sick, so I was asked to leave my name and phone number and she would get back to me the following week.

That was last week, and I didn't hear from anybody. I did use the email system on the school website to send both women messages, again asking to be called.

So today, Tuesday, 11 calendar and 6 work days after leaving the first message, I called the school psych about getting the dyslexia testing.  I did call just before 2, when school gets out, so hopefully, she will call me back tomorrow.

Anyone feel like taking bets on it?

I suspect I'm going to have to take more time off work and plop my physical presence on various doorsteps, being the squeaky wheel, or else nothing will happen.  At least the math teacher is being helpful and has changed daughter to "auditing" her Algebra II class, so that next year she can take Geometry on schedule, and then take Algebra II again in 11th.  It also looks like she's doing OK in English somehow, but everything else?  Not so much, and no one is getting back to us about if and if yes, how, we can fix things.

I need to find out how much it will cost out of pocket to get the kid tested for dyslexia, since otherwise they'll probably manage to drag their feet until well into next school year.

If the child wasn't interested in biomed, I'd consider pulling her out and figuring out some sort of homeschooling, but I'm not up for the science and math at the levels she'll need, and with the way our town taxes look to be going up next year (that a rant for another post, if the RTM can't get things down, and agree to slaughter a few sacred cows, because all budget cows are sacred.., 12% increase in TWO years!?!?!), I can't afford several grand for online classes.

And I've been dealing with a migraine or a stomach bug, or both, since Friday.

Sigh.

School issues. One student down (maybe?) and one to go....

Elder Daughter started in her special program this week.  She goes into Central Office for two hours every day to work on a distance learning Biology class, which is also going to give her time to work on her two incompletes from the fall at her other school.

She does seem perkier, though how much of that is the new meds and how much is just having something to do outside the house on a regular basis I'm not sure.  I'm also not sure if I care much.

So on to dealing with Younger Daughter's issues.

It doesn't help that she's been genuinely sick most of the time since last November.  The school really doesn't want her in if she's running a fever or throwing up.  But she's lost over 50 days already, and we're only 3/4 of the way through the year.  So now she doesn't want to go to school at all since she's positive (probably correctly) that she'll have to repeat the year, so why bother?  Add in that all the classes "are boring except for math which is frustrating", and it's recipe for disaster.  She's also depressed.  I checked with her and found that she hasn't been in touch with any of her friends in over two weeks.  This is the girl who needed to have her cell pried from her hand and thank God I had the unlimited texting plan, or we'd be so past broke.  So I've made her an appointment with the therapist who is seeing her sister, but they don't have any new patient slots until May.  I've also got a call in to get her in to the psychiatrist, who may have openings sooner, and she'll  probably need to see them both anyway.

We're also going to see the regular doctor on Monday, because if we can get a piece of paper with even a tentative official diagnosis on it, the schools will have to do certain things and won't be able to do certain others.  And that may make my life easier, since I've already got them threatening me with the truancy officer.  I have an unfortunate suspicion that part of the problem is the family tendency to be way off to the far right of the IQ bell curve (Based on my GRE results, I could join the Triple Nine Society, and I'm probably average for my family) which makes a lot of stuff at normal grade level boring because it's too easy, and also by high school makes it much harder to make oneself spend time on things one has no interest in.

I need lots of money so I can find a good private or boarding school which works on interest and ability more than age/grade designations.

I guess I better go off and buy a few of those Powerball tickets for tonight.

Dealing with the schools

My eldest daughter is now officially Special Ed.

It's about time.  There have been signs for the last 10 years, but since she's bright enough to be able to learn without studying, and since she wasn't disruptive, no one really cared.  And since I was an odd duck through school, I didn't realize things were that bad until very recently.

It took getting her into a school program which put enough stress on her to bring it out, including the behavioural issues.  I'm happy that we found all this out before she hit college.  I'm not happy that the schools missed it all these years.

I've signed all the papers so the schools can do their psychological testing, and we're also going to try to get to the neuropsychologist that the psychiatrist recommends, but I need to see if our insurance will pay for it.  I've had other issues where insurance refused to pay because the school system was supposed to be doing it.

Having not gone to school for over two months, she's starting back on Tuesday in an alternative program, mostly computer but at a school facility with teachers present to help kids when they have questions or problems, and also to work to keep them on task.   Not totally surprisingly, she's not totally impressed, though she is happy to have a tentative diagnosis.

She's getting special ed since she meets four of the five criteria for an "Emotional Disorder" (you only need to meet one).  But the further testing is because the psychiatrist is considering Asperger's, which may have been exacerbated by several concussions over the years.

Joy.

Oh. My.

Google maps has updated their photos of Isola del Giglio in Italy since last year.



View Larger Map

See where it says Giglio Porto?  Look just north of the text at that strange light blob.  That's the Costa Concordia.

If I lived on Isola del Giglio, I'd be pretty pissed.

12-12-13: I'm going to try to get a screen cap, as the map this links to is updated.  As of today you can still see the Costa Concordia, as well as all the salvage vessels around it.  It's still huge.

And more cute. Because I want cute today.

It's amazing how cats move.  You just don't normally get to admire it since we don't watch real life in slow motiion.

Cute Overload

I had been working on another post, but it was just me moaning and bitching about life in general, and a few specifics, which, really, no one but me is interested in. And it just makes me feel even more like bitching and moaning.

 So for all our amusement lots of cute critters doing cute things. Though I wish I knew what the dog at the very end is saying. Because it really sounds like he's speaking a human language, just not one I know.

 Enjoy.

Over-reaction

At least that's what I'd call it.  We lost another two days of school at the beginning of the week to snow.  In that we don't seem to be able to handle a foot of snow as far as plowing and keeping the power on, it wasn't an over-reaction, but it would be nice if they'd figure out that we do get snow now and be prepared for it.  We shouldn't need to have the governor declare a state of emergency and get FEMA involved any time we get more snow than will melt in 24 hours of over freezing temps.

So at least two of the local school systems have cut their two-day February break down to just the federal holiday.  Which makes sense given that we've already gone through eight weather days between Sandy, Nemo/Charlotte, and whatever the last snow storm was.  It will be interesting to see how much later my younger daughter's school system has to go to get in their federally allotted minimum class time for the year.

I've come down with something, and it's supposed to snow again.

In spite of my best efforts, my family has proved that I did a good job teaching them to share.  I am sitting hiding in my office at work quickly going through the box of tissues on my desk.  Thankfully I have a new box out in the car.  If I stick it out much to lunch time, I'm sure I'll have to go out and get it.

And they are threatening us with another one to three inches of snow tonight.  My younger daughter's school may be closed again, since a lot of the streets in that town are only just starting to get plowed out today.

I slept very poorly last night.  My husband went to bed early, which should have told me he wasn't feeling great, since today is one of his days off.  I got up there, read for a few minutes, and as soon as I turned my light off he started snoring.  Even on his side.  Even after I poked him to get him to move.  And when he wasn't snoring, it was because he wasn't breathing.  After a few seconds he would start up again with a noise fit to wake the dead.  And I was neither dead, nor even asleep. I didn't get to sleep myself until well after 1am, woke up twice during the night, and had to get up at 6.

I'm debating heading home; I have around 4 weeks of vacation time.  But I have to schedule knee arthroscopy for later this year, and if it goes like last time, though it shouldn't, I'll be out for at least three weeks.  But the knee has started keeping me up or waking me up at night, and it's started buckling for no particular reason again, and it's about half again the size of the other knee.  The MRI from last week showed lots of arthritis, possible re-tearing of the medial meniscus (the one that was torn last time), definite tearing of the lateral meniscus, and a 2cm cyst under the patella.  I don't think conservative treatment will work very well on this.

And my new computer at work as decided that it has to have an HP pop-up every hour or so asking me if I would like the Software Update to check for updates now.  If it were my computer I'd do it, if only to get the damn thing to shut up.  But as it is, I have absolutely no admin rights on this thing, and MIS seems to think there is no way to tell it to go away.  Grrrr.

And I'm still running an outdated browser, although we are at least up to Windows 7 for the OS (only just replacing XP) and Office '07 from '03.  Not that I'm one to talk about Office.  My new laptop didn't come with Office or even Office starter with the ads.  So I've got Open Office, and for those times when you just need an MS product, I've installed my nice copy of '97.  It does what I need it to, and it's not like I'm sharing files so getting a newer version isn't a high financial priority.

I'm going to go back and continue hunting for obscure articles for my patrons, and hope that my nose survives the afternoon.

We survived!

Not that it was hard.  We did lose power for about five hours on Friday evening, but not enough for the house to cool down below 60.  We had parked the cars one behind the other, rather than side by side, which made clearing out enough drive so my husband could go to work today easy enough.  I tried to finish up the little bit behind my car after his left and discovered that the bottom third was more like a hard frozen slushy than snow, so I only got about half of it done before my asthma decided I had done enough for the morning, so I didn't make it to church.  The husband and girls have finished clearing that bit out as well as our front walk, so if there is mail delivery tomorrow we will get it.  But we do have to find our rubbish bins before Wednesday, since they are where the snow all got pushed (one neighbor has a plowing business, and when he saw my daughter working on the heavy stuff at the end of the drive yesterday, he made a few passes and cleared it off - we have nice neighbors).  But away from the drifts we didn't get more than about a foot.  However there is no school again tomorrow, probably because so many areas still aren't plowed, and I imagine they are worried about the ice that will form tonight after so much stuff has melted, but had no where to go.

I'll get some of my husband's pictures to post later today, but this is from the local dairy queen at the corner down from our house.  My husband took this picture Friday evening around 5pm.

I wonder if that was intentional, since they only opened of Thursday.

"OMG! Is that snow? We're all going to die!"

I wish I could find that picture, supposedly it's a real road sign, not a photoshop, seen in Texas a year or so ago.  But it certainly describes how everyone around here acts when they hear the word "SNOW".

The .gov has upgraded the Winter Storm Watch to a Blizzard Watch, telling us "...A POTENTIAL HISTORIC WINTER STORM AND BLIZZARD IS EXPECTED TO DROP 1 TO 2 FEET OF SNOW ACROSS MUCH OF THE REGION FRIDAY INTO SATURDAY..." Of course, "much of the region" probably means a line starting at least a few miles north of our house.  But it also means that we'll probably be lucky if the kids even have a half day of school tomorrow.  And just as my younger girl is starting to go back to school again after almost 2 months of various illnesses.  I really want her to be able to go regularly, and get back into the habit, and we just don't need this.

I should stop and stock up this evening, just to be sure, though we have plenty of TP at home, and I don't eat bread.  One friend has always wondered why everyone always buys eggs when it looks like we might have power outages.  Either they are planning to hardboil them all in advance, or else they like the idea of having something which they can look at but not eat?  Or else they all like making bread pudding after the whole thing is over.

This is New England.  Until the last few decades we expected to get lots of snow.  We need to get used to it again.

I wonder how short the town's budget for snow removal will be this year.  Every year that I've been involved with the budget process, we've ended up doing a 4th quarter transfer to cover a serious shortfall.  And every year they keep the budget at the same level as the year before.  At some point, they really need to fix this.  Maybe ask for the average of the previous 4 years actual expenses?

I should probably ask my boss for a day off tomorrow.  I'm a librarian, so while my hospital badge will supposedly allow me to drive on the roads, even if they've been closed, I don't think the Staties would really consider me emergency personnel.

Ah, Bureaucracy!

I'm finally getting around to switching from the local cable company for TV, internet, and phone, to NO TV,  Comcast for a higher speed cable internet, and a basic metered land line with ATT.  They finally have a package for under $15 a month with tax for a line, but you pay 3.5 cents a minute for all local calls.  Since we use our land line for maybe 15 minutes of calls a month, this is still less money than we're paying the cable company or would pay ATT for the next level with free local calling.

Everything was going fine until we came to the address for service.
ATT: "Are you at Unit A or Unit B?"
Me: "There are no units, it's a single family dwelling."
ATT: "But our 911 files show two units."
Me: There is only one unit.  There has only ever been one bathroom in this house, so I don't see how it could ever have had a second unit.
ATT: "We have to go by the 911 files."
Me: "?"
ATT: "Maybe there was a second phone line at some point?"
Me: "That would explain the second set of lines coming out of the house on the other side from the ones going to the street, the ones that are no longer hooked up to the street, and which I've been meaning to cut off since they are coiled under the front porch right now."
ATT: "Well, we'll put down no unit number and see what happens, but we may have to call you again."
Me: "OK."  /sigh

This is the third time I've been through this with them in two days.

I should call Mike back and ask if there is an e-mail address I can send a copy of the town tax roll and/or GIS info to to show that there is only one physical unit at that address.

Angst, angst, existential dread!

Well, not quite that bad, and not mine.

My younger daughter is having back and neck issues since she hurt her ribs coughing last month.  She is very upset that I am expecting her to go to school since her sister is a piece of glass which we let get away with doing nothing.  That her sister has had six vertebrae fused in her lower back, as well as developing an anxiety disorder which leaver her in full blown panic attack mode after a few hours at school has nothing to do with it.

This morning in the car on the way to school we went from tears of pain to "I should just move in with hobos, they'd treat me better", to "I should just kill myself because then I wouldn't be in pain for the rest of my life."  I'm not taking the latter to seriously since it was shouted at me in the heat of battle, so to speak.  I dropped her off at school, and after very emphatically slamming the car door (hard to do you'd think if her back were really that non-functional), and watched her stump her way angrily to the door, again not showing any signs of back or neck issues.  If they were really as bad as she's trying to make out, she wouldn't have been able to do that impressive stumping.  I know, having been there.  I will admit that she probably has back and neck pain, but it's not the mountain she's trying to make of it.

The title has to do with a housemate back in college.  I don't know where the others dredged him up, but he was a philosophy major, and had a tendency when things weren't going his way to start getting all angst-y.  The thing is that I'd never seen the word before, and tended to pronounce it American, not German.  Another housemate and I were discussing his issues over lunch one day and I used the "hang" version and she corrected me.  I thought about it for a moment and then suggested that for this guy, hang was more appropriate than "tong".  She thought about that and agreed.  From then on, whenever he started getting all serious, in the way only a 19 or 20 year old can, we'd start laughing and saying "Angst, angst, existential dread!".  He hated it, and would at least leave and be all angst-y someplace else.  It also probably made it easier to kick him out when we found out he was keeping pot in the house which was a) illegal and b) something another housemate was seriously allergic to.

But it gave me a great phrase for dealing with teenage emotional woes.  I do have a call in to her doctor about whether we should be making an appointment with ortho.  I also need to get her back to the naturopath, and get a refill on her herbal script, because whatever is in that Vitex stuff really seems to help her emotional stability.

Seriously people...

Is it really that hard to drive in 1 inch of wet snow, especially after the plows have been out and thrown sandy salt all over everything?

This morning we woke up to a "snow storm".  In our area it meant that we had less than an inch of slush on the porch, cars, and drive, and the stuff that was falling lightly from the sky was already rain. Maybe it's just having spent much of my childhood in Michigan, both Marquette and Ann Arbor, as well as a year in upstate New York, outside Geneva, but I would not qualify that as a storm, never mind a snow storm.

However, here in wimp land, most of the school districts had at best a delayed opening, and several of the more inland ones actually cancelled school.  Since elder child's school is in Norwich, even though it is not a Norwich public school, it was cancelled, not that it makes any difference to us, since she won't be attending again until probably at least next week. (The PPT meeting is tomorrow, thank God.)

Younger child attends the magnet high school in New London, which happens to be the only school system in the entire state that is functioning normally today.  Since I drive her, she actually got there more or less on time, which means 90 minutes earlier than the other Groton students.  The roads were fine.

However.... There are a lot of idiots out there who probably should never have gotten behind the wheel of a car this morning (or maybe any other morning).  Just after turning on to the main road from the house I saw a fair few emergency lights, and as I passed them I could see where someone had gone off the road and into a parked mini-van.  The van had presumably been parked in someone's driveway, but it was skewed at least 30 degrees off true, and had a dent at least a foot deep in the back passenger side quarter panel.  I hate to think how fast the sedan driver had been going to do that much damage.  There were reports of accidents all along I-395S; I was going north and we were fine, but the traffic backups on the other side were fairly impressive.

The thing is, that I'm driving a 10 year old front-wheel-drive Santa Fe with generic all-weather tires.  This is not the greatest vehicle for bad roads.  And I had no problems at all.  But then again, I was also driving at a sensible speed and taking turns and lane changes cautiously, something many other drivers in this neck of the wood seem pathologically incapable of doing.

Folks, this may be southern New England, but it's still New England.  We DO get snow, and learning how to deal with it without either creeping at 5 miles an hour or blasting along like a sunny summer day would be A Good Thing.

Another New Year

May it be better than the last.

My lack of postage the last month has had several reasons.

First, a certain existential weariness in the aftermath of the November elections.  I'm mentally bone tired, if that makes any sense.  I know we've got to keep fighting, but right now I need some serious R&R, and failing that, at the least some lengthy down time before I get back into the fray.

Second, I've had the bug that's been going around New England this last month.  I think it's the flu, but since I got my shot, I'm just not feeling well, even if I'm not feeling sick.  And my children have both had the same thing.  Add in younger's foot issue, and then costochondritis from coughing so hard, she's been out of school since early December.  At least we're trying her on some naprosyn and starting PT and she's (supposedly) going back tomorrow.

And then there is elder's anxiety/depression/panic issues, which are exacerbating her migraines, as well as a new school with lovely newer light fixtures, which hum at a pitch that irritates her as well as the florescents, which also are a migraine trigger....  We tried two of the older anti-depressants which usually help with migraines, but they didn't help much if at all, and the side effects were too much to deal with.  So then her doc tried her on Prozac, and we found that she is one of those folks whom Prozac turns into a ball of weepy despair.  She saw her Neuro yesterday, and we're trying gabapentin now, which works for her aunt for depression, and which is also supposed to be good for migraines for at least some.  I also need to get her some wrap around sunglasses which aren't too dark to wear indoors to try to block the worst of the florescent light.  She has an initial evaluation appointment with an MSW Monday week, and then we have a PPT the Thursday after.  Oh joy.  At least the kid is bright and if she puts her mind to it, once we get the headaches, anxiety, panic, and depression under control, she shouldn't have any real trouble catching up, since she too hasn't been to school since early December.

Work is work, quite slow right now, but at least they've gone away from having everyone choose two "goals" for the year.  Totally pointless, and sometimes counterproductive to actually doing the job you were hired for.  I got a whopping 1% raise, but had to drop the health insurance, since they dropped the lower cost plan, and our premiums for the higher plan would have been equivalent to the maximum out of pocket for the year with Tricare.  Since we'd still have had co-pays and stuff, it just didn't seem worth it, especially since we didn't know what was happening on the tax front.

And speaking of taxes....  From the point of view of the family fisc, the continuation of all the Evil Bush Tax Cuts which Only Help the Wealthy(tm) has been a good thing; their expiration would have cost us another $30 to $40 a week.  I understand the SS tax going back to it's original 6.2%, which I wouldn't mind half as much if I thought I might actually ever see a penny of it coming back to me.  However, from the point of view of a concerned citizen, I'm appalled that we've passed $40 of new taxes for every $1 of cuts, with unspecified (and therefore never will happen) cuts to be discussed sometime in the future.

And then last weekend the MacBook died.  I opened it up from sleep mode, the screen flashed on for a split second, and then nothing.  I turned it off and turned it on again, and the same thing.  I don't know if it would work hooked up to another screen, though the drive itself seems OK. Thankfully there were only two or three files on it which I hadn't recently backed up to another device, and while ones I want, they aren't crucial, and I can recreate them.  So I went out and spent way too much money on a new ASUS Core i5 laptop with a 15 point something inch screen.  I am happy.  Now I just have to arrange with ATT to get the landline back at the basic, pay extra for any calls, level, and have the cable company drop the TV and phone, and up our cable internet speed, which should save enough per month and then some to pay for the computer within the 18 months/no interest period.

And now back to do some more before I head out to pick up elder child for her voice lesson.....

Dear God....

This is less than a two hour drive from me.

26 Dead at Newtown CT Elementary School

I'll give NBC some credit, they don't seem to be counting the shooter in that number, since other outlets are reporting 27 including the primary shooter, though it seems there is possibly a second one.

And right on cue all the gun haters are out claiming that if we just banned guns this wouldn't have happened.  That the UK banned hand guns and hand gun crime has gone up steadily since then would suggest that it might not be too successful.

What would be much more successful is not making target-rich, defense-free environments out of our schools and hospitals.

If there is indeed a second shooter who survived, it will be interesting to see how many folks in state government suddenly have second thoughts on their votes to get rid of the death penalty.

If I'm sounding a little callous, it's just because I'm working my way mentally around the edges of this thing, it being far to horrible to face head on.  That and I've never been one for hysterics and "sensibility" in the Jane Austen sense of the word.  I also don't personally know anyone involved so it's a little more removed emotionally.  I really am not up for contemplating a classroom of dead kindergartners.

Horses

The last few days have been ... long.

I've got an elder daughter who has Generalized Anxiety Disorder, bad enough now that the school is having to put together an IEP.  We've tried attending class, but within the first hour or so she breaks down in tears for an hour or more.  So she's staying home for now until we can get the PPT meeting set up, probably in early January.

Younger daughter has a bad cold/flu along with abdominal pain.  She's on her eighth day out of school.  I think at least part of it is feeling jealous of the attention her sister is getting.  But it's getting old, spending tons of time at the doctor's and the hospital, just to be told there is nothing really wrong.

/Sigh.

So I'm thinking about stuff that makes me happy.  I've got a piano, though it isn't playable yet; my mother is going to get me a piano tuning/check up for sometime after Christmas, so soon.

The other thing I haven't had in my life for years that makes me happy is horses. I spent most of my childhood trying to convince my parents to get me riding lessons, but my father was quite adamant that "only the children of doctors and lawyers" learned to ride.  Which always seemed a bit weird since his father, admittedly the child of a judge, had not only ridden horses, but had worked out in Montana and Wyoming for over 10 years as a cowboy, after attending the Cornell Ag school.  My grandmother always said that if Grandpa had been alive I would have probably had my own pony by the time I was six or seven.  But he had died when I was only six months old, so no horses for me.

When I was 13 we moved and I only had one music lesson a week, there being no clarinet teachers in the area, the closest stable was walking distance, and the lessons cost the same or even less than the music lesson, and the neighbor who was a builder got his kids lessons there.  So I got to ride.  A year and a half later we moved to Galway and I took lessons for the next two years until I went off to college.  I took lessons for a year in grad school, and then again for a few months about 10 years ago, until I had a fall and cracked my tailbone hard enough that it hurt to stand or sit or move for several months.

At this point I'm creaky enough and fat enough that I'm not sure I want to get back on a horse, but I want to be around them, maybe learn to drive, which has always looked pretty fun.  I was never that good a rider, being not the most physically adept person out there, but I always got on well with the animals.

At my second stable we had a large dapple grey hunter, more draft than thoroughbred, named Lord Jim.  I remember going into his stall one day to tack him up for the lesson to find him lying on his side, doing a very good impression of dead.  I called his name and he flicked an ear and an eyelid at me, so that worry was dispelled.  Now I just had to get him up.  I called him again and walked up to him.  His ear twitched.  I poked his rather vast stomach with my boot.  The ear twitched again.  I poked harder.  Same reaction.  I gently kicked him, and got the "Oohh!, that's the spot! can you move a little to the right now?" look from him.  At this point the instructor came to see what was taking so long.  The instant she looked over the door he was on his feet looking guilty.  I have been since given to understand that this a sign that Jim liked me and trusted me, but I'd rather have had a little less trust, since it wasn't like I could physically pick the beast up.  On the other hand, it did mean that I could get him to do stuff that most of the other students couldn't, much to the instructors' surprise, since I wasn't that good.  When they'd ask how I did it, I'd look at them say I just asked Jim nicely.  He liked me, so he'd do it.

At my first stable my favorite was an outsize pony (14.3 or so) named Pivot.  There were days when he wouldn't do what I asked him to, especially in the beginning.  I can remember a frustrating five or ten minutes when I couldn't get him to canter on the correct rein for love nor money, and much to the frustration of the instructor.  She finally had me get off him so she could show me how to do it.  Pivot crab-stepped the entire way around the ring, and wouldn't even for her.  But again, he liked me, especially after that first summer.  My second summer there, I was usually in the first group lesson of the day, and I'd get him, because I was one of the few students who could go in to tack him up and not have him play lame.

I also remember one day watching the owner give a "lesson" to a very small child, a toddler really, whose parents just wanted her to have the experience of being on a real horse.  Even though the stable did have some real ponies, much smaller than Pivot, he was the owner's choice for this, and watching I could see why.  As he was led around the ring with this tiny child on his back, whose feet didn't even go past the saddle leathers, he was walking on glass.  He knew what he had on his back, and that he had to take special care of her.

We moved at the end of that second summer.  We were visiting two years later and I stopped by the stables to find out that the previous winter someone had been poaching in the state forest the stable abutted, and shot him in the pasture, thinking he was a deer.  I still think of him fondly after nearly 40 years.

Well, if they actually do sort out the tax situation and I don't have to come up with an extra $60 to $70 a week in federal taxes next year, maybe now's the time to get started again.

Piano!

As are many others around the blogosphere, I am tired of politics.  I'm following it, but just don't have the energy at the moment to get worked up about it.  I'm preparing for economic disaster to the family fisc starting January 1st, and after that it's pretty much going to be playing it by ear, since no-one in DC seems to have a clue what is actually going to happen.

So, instead I'm going to be happy because I now have a piano.  My husband isn't too sure about it; when I told him a few weeks ago that I would be able to get one if I took care of the moving of it, his first and only question was "Why?".  To which the answer was, "I want one, I played for years, and I've missed having one for the last 20, and the girls want one too".

So I spent the last week tidying things up, and taking down the old guinea pig palace since it was in the only sensible spot for the piano.  I have a friend who's family could really use the money and gave him $100 (since he'd have to round up at least one other healthy male - uprights are heavy, and possible rent a truck) and said that they could pick up our spare fridge that has been living in the shed since we moved, since their's broke a few weeks back.

So yesterday afternoon, said friend get a U-Haul and a friend, went to my mother's friend's to get the piano which they needed to get rid of (so now those friends are happy), brought it to our place and got it into the back room (so now I'm happy), took the fridge from the shed (so now we're both happy, I can use the space more than an unused fridge), and presumably got it set up in his house, so now he and his wife are happy.

All told not a bad days work all around.

Now I just have to finish cleaning the downstairs for Christmas, and so we can have the piano tuner in. Needless to say the move wasn't kind to the tuning, and since it hasn't really been played in many years,  the action is stiff in places, and doesn't always rebound completely.  But it's a Beckwith, and even grossly out of tune it sounds pretty decent, especially for something that cost me $100 and a 30+ year old refridgerator.

And then this morning, I got back to work after taking the youngest to the doctor's to find a basket of recorders at my office door.  My mother seems to know from whence they came, and since she doesn't need a full consort of Aulos and some other less expensive wood ones, it looks like I may also now have a full set of recorders, only missing a garklein, and a contra-bass. Though it looks like they've been sitting around unloved for quite a while, so they'll all need a thorough cleaning.  But again, FREE! The bass and the two tenors alone would set me back about $600 new.  There are also two aulos altos, an aulos soprano as well as two wood sopranos and one wood sopranino.

Obviously this is music week.

A Mindless Saturday.

It's finally Saturday.  I think I've figured out the meds (had to cut the Toprol dose in half, I was so sleepy), I had good solid, long, sleep last night, I've started picking up the kitchen and living room, and taking apart the old guinea pig pen, and in between, I'm playing stupid facebook games, logic puzzles, and watching really bad SyFy channel horror movies.

I'm always amazed that when something is falling towards someone they back straight up, when two steps sideways and they'd be clear.

So far, we've watched methane causing earthquakes and flash freezing people, a snow globe which makes things happen (with at times rather bad special effects), and later on, they will be showing their new for this year piece of Christmas disaster porn, which seems to have the same girl in it as last year's. But it has Ed Quinn, so at least the eye candy will be good.

And hopefully tomorrow, I'll get my piano.

Greece, here we come!

I haven't posted anything for a week because I've been tired.  I've also started back on Prozac, so I'm a little calmer about impending doom and don't have to work out as many frustrations in blogs and screams.

It's just so amazing to me, in the horrified fascination sort of way, that so many supposed adults, who call themselves Democrats and Americans, think that a compromise means that the other side does exactly what you want them to.

As a country we're broke, and unlike the average American who upon finding themselves deep in debt starts cutting back, takes a second job, etc, etc., the president and the Congresscritter (D)s think that we can spend out way out of it, by taxing the citizenry, and that we don't have to cut a single thing, except maybe "Later".  Like anyone with even half a brain believes that.

It's not like Ø won with anything resembling an "overwhelming mandate".  The Dems didn't even get the House back.  So why they think that that gives them the right to do whatever they want, and half the country be damned, I understand intellectually, but not on an emotional level.  To use standard leftist terminology "It's not FAIR!"

Of course, that when they get their way the entire country will be damned either hasn't occured to them, or they just don't care.

Sigh.

The obligatory Happy Thanksgiving post

And indeed, the sentiment is honest.

I do have much for which to be thankful.  I have a good husband, two (usually) good daughters (hey, they're teenagers, some angst is to be expected), a nice house, a job, working (for now) cars.  We are all in reasonably good health, and we can afford to put a Thanksgiving dinner on the table.

I hope my few readers will have lists as good or better.

I'll try to put my usual ranting/venting/pessimism on hold for a day. 8)

Mind numbing idiocy/willful blindness

My sister who is a doctoral student at Cornell just posted this on her Facebook page:

I was happy to see Cornell students exercising their political voices today, and pleasantly surprised that the pro-Palestine/pro-peace rally dwarfed the Hillel sponsored pro-Israel rally across Ho Plaza. Also impressed to see one of my Coptic students front and center standing against the violence, contra his pro-Zionist family.

I'm wondering why she is surprised, pleasantly or otherwise, that the pro-palestinians would outnumber the pro-Israelis.  Likewise why my sister thinks that only the pro-Palestinian protesters are for peace.  Her area of study is middle-eastern archaeology, and she knows enough Jews that you would think she would know that there are far fewer Jews who would like to see a full-fledged conflict than there are Palestinians.

I'm actually going to be a good family member and NOT post any response, because it wouldn't do any good anyway.

It just boggles my mind that supposedly intelligent people refuse to see that the Palestinians, or at least their chosen leadership, are intent on destroying Israel and killing every Jew, no matter if it kills every Palestinian in the process.  How do these supposed "intellectuals" sleep at night?  How can they automatically demonize every Jew, even when they know Jews?  I don't demonize every Muslim, though I admit to believing that while there are some, indeed many, good people who are Muslims, they are good people in spite of, not because of, their religion.

Secession?

Glen Reynolds has an interesting little column today, A Solution to Secession Fever -- Federalism.  And everything he says in it makes sense.

Except...  I don't see our current federal government being willing to give up any of those improperly asserted powers without the application of force. 8(

He is quite right though that the White House probably doesn't give a rat's tuchus about the fact that over one million people have signed secession petitions.  What I find more interesting is the response of some progressives which was to start another petition to have the feds strip anyone who signed such a petition of their US citizenship and deport them.  I don't recall the folks on the right suggesting that when the progressive left got their knickers twisted after the elections of '00 and '04.  We offered to pay for them to leave the country since so many had sworn that that's what they'd do if Bush won, but I don't recall anyone suggesting forcibly removing folks who were unhappy with Bush.

More proof, as if we needed it, that the left has some pretty strong totalitarian tendencies.

Girls - bodies or minds?

Just saw the 4everygirl campaign ad. It includes a line to the effect that girls need to know they are valued for more than their bodies. 

Yet we had a national party campaign for women's votes almost exclusively on sex. On the ability for these same girls to have free contraception and abortions. This was pushed as the *only* concern for women. 

Aren't these two messages working against each other? If girls are valuable for more than just their bodies, it would seem that in politics they should be treated as if they might just possibly have interests and concerns outside the ability to have consequence-less sex. If a major political party thinks that the only thing that will get women to vote is an appeal to their hormones, that party *is* valuing women only for their bodies.

Venting

OK, life sucks right now.  I don’t see Congress getting off its collective asses and fixing anything tax wise, because the Democrats won’t help working people unless they are allowed to “stick it to the man”, and Republicans want to see some actual spending cuts put in place other than gutting the military, one of the few Constitutionally mandated roles of the federal Government. 

So, we’re looking at another $250 or more in federal taxes a month starting January 1^st.  Instead of telling me it won’t happen, do something about it! Don’t tell me to not worry about it.  Don’t tell me anything which can be interpreted as “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”  I haven’t been down sitting at Congresscritters offices because *I* have a job I have to go to.  It’s a sucky job, with management who seem to only be interested in cutting costs, no matter what it does to staff morale.  Heck, they’ve rewritten my job description to require only a Bachelor’s degree.  Which isn’t a professional degree in my line of work, but I’m sure it comes cheaper.  And that’s all they care about. 

I’ve got crappy dumb terminals which I have to help people with and every time they cause issues making folks lose 30 minutes or more of work, I’m told that there isn’t a problem, it was fixed years ago.  Well, guess what?  It ain’t fixed now!  But replacing those three Citrix terminals with desktop computers is too expensive.  That those damn terminals have probably cost a few grand in staff time this year alone doesn’t matter, those costs can’t really be quantified, and the cost of the boxes can. 

They’ve dropped my health insurance plan, you know the one I’ve had for years that the president promised that if I liked it I could keep it?  Well, thanks to the Democrats and their PPACA, passed through probably illegal procedural moves and without any bipartisan support, that plan has gone away.  My options were paying more which I don’t have because of the other tax increases for a Cadillac plan which a) does more than we need because we have Tricare Standard too, and b) will be taxed at 40% starting, I believe, in 2014, or getting a High Deductible Health Insurance plan with an HAS, except that I can’t do that because of the Tricare.  So now we’re stuck with less money to pay for the expenses which Tricare doesn’t cover.  Thanks folks.

Our NEW car is 10 years old, our other “new” car is 17.  I’m dropping cable TV in a few weeks because we can’t afford that.  I don’t know how we’re going to be able to pay for my daughters’ music lessons next semester.  I guess they’ll both have to give up something they love.  I need to get them both new pairs of glasses.  That will eat up all our non-assigned reserves for a few weeks.  This year I have bought myself ONE new skirt, two or three new tops, and some cheap underthings.  My husband hasn’t bought anything other than work clothes this year.  I’ve gotten the girls some new school clothes, but they need new shoes, and I can’t do that and get them glasses too, not within a few weeks of each other.

But everyone assures me that now that Obama has been re-elected, even though the Senate and House are still held by different parties, and Harry Reid still refuses to even discuss a budget, the economy will improve, and gas prices will go down, though Obama assures us that they were so low in 2008 because the economy sucked even worse(?) .  Electric prices are going to go up, but that’s OK, because somehow making electricity and oil cost more will help the economy and our bosses are all going to give us raises or something? 

Tell me how it’s going to get better.  Give me specifics.  I don’t want any more damn unicorn farts and skittles.  I want numbers.  I want to know how repeating things that failed spectacularly during the last four years is suddenly going to do what you wish it to now.  I want proof.  I want to know that I’m not going to have to give up my TV, and my phone, and keep the lights off, and the heat at 60 all winter.  I want assurances that none of us are going to lose our jobs as our employers try to keep their lights on and their doors open.  I want assurances that when it all goes south, as it almost assuredly will, you won’t look stunned, and WILL be able to help me out.  Because it’s your fault.  You didn’t listen, you didn’t think, you voted based on feelings. 

I WILL be saying “told you so” but it will give me only a little bit of schadenfreude, because I’ll be hurting worse than you.

My wonderful family /sarc

Baby Sis: Oh my god. My feed is filled with angry political posts. Seriously people, STOP. Instead of looking forward 4 years, and trying to get your conservative or liberal parties in shape so you can "WIN" next time, how about worrying about NOW? As if WINNING has anything to do with running a country or helping people?? For the sake of whatever deity or philosophy you happen to hold true, could you all stop your posturing and posing and instead of assuming you're right and smarter than everyone around you, actually try to help the country and help the people in it now? 

Younger Sister *(YS): BabyS: Hunh, my feed is *mostly* full of calm, reasoned discussion - some of it disappointed one way or the other, but not angry (and yes I have friends in all sorts of parties, as well as none). Do you have a problem with your friend-mix?

ME: Hmm. YS, You blocked me for "offending" your friends simply because I disagreed with them. I never called them names, I never swore at people, I just used facts to explain my position. You on the other hand, called me "delusional" and "mentally unstable" for not agreeing with you politically, and attacked friends of mine personally on my wall. I'm glad your friends can be "calm" and "reasoned". But I've had way too many people including family call me names and tell me that if I disagree with them in any political area it's because I "hate brown people" or am stupid or evil. I hope this means that you've become less dogmatic and are willing to entertain the notion that those who disagree with you may have something of substance to contribute to the conversation. None of us is ever 100% right, in any sphere of life.

YS: I blocked you for making alarming and outrageous statements. You were claiming that it was better that a family member have died than that women be allowed to make their own healthcare decisions. I found that "beyond the pale". Wishing death on people is outside common decency, and should not be tolerated. And BTW. I only blocked you from certain parts of my list. You then chose to de-friend me entirely, without waiting to discuss it. There you go. You can disagree with me on tax policy, and you can disagree with me on social policy - but when you make statements that cause a reasonable person to question your sanity? Well, remember that I'm a reasonable person. And so are most of my acquaintance. You may not come to my wall, and say things that make nice people I know cry. Bad form, dear. I won't allow it.

ME: You did the same thing, and not only disagreed with people but you called them names. I never said you or your friends were delusion, or insane, or evil, or stupid. You did all of the above. And your blocking meant that I could read everything, where you told all your friends how evil and deluded I was, and I couldn't post anything anyplace.< It also seemed that disagreeing with you on tax policy meant that I was making statements leading "normal" people to question my sanity. The same with disagreeing with you on social policy. I should also add, that thanks to the PPACA, my employer is no longer offering the health insurance plan I've had for years. I can't afford the higher payments for the cadillac plan, especially since it will get a 40% tax in a few years, and the IRS says I can't get a high deductible plan, because I'm covered by my husband's Tricare. And I NEVER said it would have been better for someone to die rather than have a certain medical procedure. And I don't know anyone, including devout Catholics, who wouldn't agree with me on that. You are equating using the procedure for elective purposes with using it for life saving purposes, and that's flat out disingenous. Sandra Fluke claimed that her friend was denied contraception by Georgetown, when in actuality their policy covered birth control for medical reason, just as the Irish Government paid for me to be on the pill when it was prescribed to keep me from throwing up and passing out every month. And if you are going to claim that not paying for someone's birth control is "DENYING THEM MEDICAL CARE" I could claim that other people not paying my mortgage or rent is "denying" me shelter. And now, I'm dropping the subject.

YS: Before dropping the subject, I must tell you that you specifically *agreed* with the extremist position of "no abortions ever, under any circumstances" - a ridiculous position, but one you held forth on with enough vehemence to cause me to receive alarmed private messages from several nice people I know - nice people who have been the victim of sexual assault, nice people who have had to make the terrible kinds of choices that the Republican platform would deny them. You upset them, and made them wonder who on earth you were, and why you were allowed on my wall. You were incredibly rude.


ME: Your friends must have mis-understood me, because I don't believe in abortion myself, except for the life of the mother, (and I don't count gee, a baby would crimp my lifestyle as meeting the "life or mental health" criteria). If I were pregnant, unless it were ectopic, i.e. the baby would die no matter what, I'd have a hard time having an abortion myself, even if I knew there was a chance it would kill me. If someone else wants an abortion, I'm not fine with it, but I'm not going to stop them. But..unless it is to truly save their life I don't want my tax dollars used to pay for them. Nor do I think that a religious organization should be forced to pay for something it finds morally unacceptable. I paid for my own pills for years after coming back to the states, and they are really extremely cheap. You could have contacted me and let me know what was going on, instead of just blocking me, making Eilis wonder what she had done to offend me in that particular thread. I didn't unfriend you for nearly a week.

Bad news, Good news

Well, the insurance company was able to get the adjuster out this morning, and yes, the car is totalled.  Having had time to look at the damage without trees sitting on it, yes, it's bad.  And there is a strange piece of metal on the lawn which probably came off the car.  And it makes a very scary rattle when you turn it on.  So, yes, it's dead, Jim.

But then there was the good news.  We're not getting Blue Book value, we're getting replacement.  Which is a lot better.

I'm going to try to stop over at the local used car place, which we've bought a few cars from over the years.  They have another Subaru, a year older, but much lower milage, for just a bit more than we're getting from the insurance company.  If nothing else it should last until we've paid off the other car and actually have some money each month for a car payment.  It also wouldn't raise the car insurance bill much at all.

They've had the car for a while, so hopefully it won't disappear before I can get there and see if it will work.  It's not a sports version so the seats shouldn't be those weird bucket type things, which they are using in the newer Imprezas.  I sat in two today, and yes, I need to lose weight, but those things were not designed for normal size women with hips.  I could lose every extra pound I own, and they would still have been uncomfortable.