9/11

Somehow I've always manage to ignore that this is now "Patriot Day".  I'm not saying this shouldn't have a 'day', but patriot seems to me to be the wrong name for a day memorializing 3000 civilians murdered for simply going to work.  "Patriot" seems to require a more specific work on the part of those remembered.

So I will continue to just think of this as 9/11, sort of like Pearl Harbor.  I can't use the place name, since it was multiple places.

I had started work at my new job earlier that year, and had signed up to take "Management of Aggressive Behaviour", a two day workshop/seminar on 9/11 and 9/13.  It was held in what was at that time the hospital auditorium, next to the waiting rooms for diagnostic imaging.  We started at 8am, and must have had our first break sometime around 9.  We ended up watching one of the TVs in the waiting area and I'm pretty sure about the break, because when we started watching only one building had been hit.

We continued with the class for the rest of the day, but took rather more breaks than they usually do, and were glued to the TVs during them.

The instructors told us that they had offered their classes to the airlines for years and never been taken up on them, because the airlines never felt the need to train their people to deal with folks with knives.

Here is last year's post.

I'm doing a bit of YouTube hunting, and have found several videos I'm putting here.  The comments are often disgusting, and interestingly enough, I'm allowed to upvote, but not down vote them.

This one is just footage of the events as they happened, from someone living near the Twin Towers.  Commentary, but amazingly no profanity.  They were obviously home with their child, since you can here childrens' TV music in the background of the initial footage.

Here's more footage, with much less nasty comments.

In spite of the clip's name, it doesn't have the actual falling man footage, but it still looks at the people rather than building.

Another video.

Let's not forget that it wasn't just New York.

More footage, paired with very appropriate music.




And to finish off, the story of Rick Rescorla, "the man who predicted 9-11". (http://www.blackfive.net/main/2013/09/the-last-known-sighting-of-an-american-hero.html has a good round up of info.)

Change of Pace

I'm tired, short of breath (and the weather's not helping any), and retaining fluid like nobody's business, to the point where my toes hurt.

So, to take my mind off of it all, and so I don't look like I'm whining too much:

This is preferable to the headache I'm getting from the church around the corner having an end of summer/holiday weekend picnic and playing gospel music loud enough to give me a headache.  We don't have a noise ordinance in this town, sad to say.

Tired.

I  found this gif over lunch on MetaPicture, and it describes how I've been feeling lately to a T.

I just hope I'm as cute while I pass out.  Somehow I doubt it.

The new school year. Sigh.

The new school year has begun, and both girls have had their first day.

Younger started on Monday, and by Wednesday she had already changed one class.  She really doesn't want to take French anymore, and the minor detail that the class is held in a small windowless room next to the band room, during band practice, might have had something to do with it.  I'm sure that my migraines would get worse.  She's got four years of high school including this year, and only needs two years of a language, so that's fine.  At least she seems to have a good history teacher (they put her in AP American History, and she's already decided that most of the class are idiots - she was the only one who could name even half the original 13 colonies.  Teacher: "can anyone else raise their hand?")

Elder started yesterday.  She's mostly doing the internet based courses, going to a session at the central office every day for two hours so that there's a tutor around to help with stuff she's not sure about.  But she is also going to the high school every other day in the morning for a chemistry course and chorus.  I do have to call guidance about the chemistry, because it's the chemistry for folks who just need another science course, and she's going to be bored to tears by it.

But I also have to call because today I got the robo-call from attendance to let me know that as of 9:30 this morning my child has been marked absent.  This is not surprising as my child is not supposed to be there today.  She doesn't want to sit in the library for six hours, and I somehow doubt they want her doing that either.  And I really, really, don't want to get these calls every other day for the entire school year.

But hey, four days into younger's school year, and she hasn't missed one yet.  If we can just continue like this so as not to repeat last year's disaster.....

Someone with sense!

OK, I'm not a great fan of MSN, but it's the opening IE page on my Asus laptop, and it at least gives me headlines.

And today at lunch I find this: "Tim Gunn says designers’ lack of interest in plus size clothing is 'repugnant'"

And he's right.  I know this as someone who even on the rare occasions in my life when I've not been fat has been a "plus-size" (though why a 12 is a plus?).  My younger daughter is also a plus size, what with dealing with adrenal issues.

The only place near where we live where you can routinely find nice clothes which look decent on a larger body is Lane Bryant.  Some of the other stores occasionally have nice stuff, but the word is "occasionally".

I'm sure that designers have taken in the attitude towards large folks that the rest off society has, that we're all lazy, self-indulgent, slobs.  But first off, a lot of us aren't.  My daughter really doesn't eat that much, and she was getting plump even when she was figure skating.  I packed on the weight last year after a round of cortisone, which left me starving and tired all the time.  Right now testing says my adrenals and my pancreas aren't working properly, and my thyroid may give lab results in the 'normal' range, but one side is, to quote my doctor "boggy", and the other has a large nodule that she can feel, so I'm going for an ultrasound and perhaps a biopsy tomorrow, depending on what the ultrasound shows.

Second, whether our fat is genetic, medical, or poor life-style choices, treating us like lazy criminals isn't exactly going to make us feel better enough about ourselves to start doing anything other than ingesting even more comfort food.

When you feel good about yourself, it's a lot easier to take care of yourself, and work on medical or life-style issues. So making it easy to find clothes that make us look pretty and/or professional will actually help us get healthier.

They should also remember that Liv Tyler was/is a plus-size model before she was Arwen.  And I don't think anyone would consider Arwen fat.

A good start. Now just sue the DA personally!

As a break from the "I feel like crap" type of posts, I ran across this article this morning.

Apparently in Florida, if you are acquitted, you can get the state to pay some of your legal costs, just not the lawyers' fees.  Personally, I think George should be suing the DA personally, as well as the her office collectively, for all costs, since there is no way this can NOT be considered malicious prosecution.

More testing

The good news is that it looks like there is actually something .. wrong.. and it's NOT all in my head.

The bad news is that it looks like there is actually something wrong.

Not that we're sure exactly what yet.  I had a lot more labs drawn today, and I have an appointment with the naturopath on Monday to discuss the results and decide what direction we want to go.  I'm definitely anemic, though it's a little weird, which is why we're running a lot more lab tests, including looking at the size and shape of my red blood cells.  She asked me today if I had ever been tested for thalassemia, which I haven't, because I'm not of mediterranean extraction.  Though I have been tested for sickle cell, and I'm far, far more likely to have the former than the latter.  I figure the Navy didn't want to look discriminatory, so they tested every single pregnant woman for sickle cell.  That I'm whiter than white, and at the time was in my mid-30s and several months into my second pregnancy should have ruled it out without the blood work, but this is bureaucracy.

I was told that my cortisol levels were also low; I haven't seen the actual lab results, but since my am blood work showed a low/mid level, I'm guessing that it either dropped too much during the day, or just stayed where it was, and never increased when it was supposed to. There's all sorts of fun things that can cause that, so we'll just have to wait and see.

But at least someone believes me that I'm feeling like total crap, and that it's not just getting older and something I'll have to learn to ignore.

Hmmm. A few more thoughts on shooting and the media.

This made me think of my previous post, and Tam's comment on it.

Do the "news" media report on police shootings the way they do, at least in part because this is how the entertainment portion of the media treats cops and shooting?  Or do the entertainers treat police shooting ability the way they do (unless the police man is the hero of the piece) because of how the "news" folks report it?  Or option number three, they both treat law enforcement's shooting the way they do because of the some ingrained, '60s leftist or related bias?

Because yes, the police (at least in some necks of the woods) aren't as well trained as we'd like, but still.  If I am ever, God forbid, in a position where the bad guy really, really, needs to be put out of commission NOW, I'd feel that my odds of surviving the situation are a lot better if the guys and/or gals trying to do the decommissioning are LEOs or military rather than poor Joe or Jane Schmoe who's never even held a gun before.

Note that I am presuming a situation where my options are only between the police or a complete firearms neophyte, as in the movie scenario.

Amusements for the day.

I spend way too much time on MetaPicture, and found this today:

 And realized that this would also fit the NYPD, at least based on the last few shootouts I've read about. Though to be fair they did hit the guy they were aiming at.  They just hit 9 innocent bystanders too.

If I have a clean bill of health, why do I feel so bad?

The results from the echo came back as stable also.

So I visited my GP on Wednesday morning to ask about other reasons for the chest discomfort and also the rather severe (for me) edema in my lower legs.  I'm retaining more fluid than I did during either pregnancy, and marks in my leg stay for a few minutes.

I was told that the edema wasn't severe, but was given a script for some lasix to take three times a week.  I'll take pictures of the pitting in the edema this evening before taking the pill tonight or tomorrow and see if it makes any difference.

However....  he didn't quite yell at me that as I got older I would have more weird little aches and twinges, and if they were benign, I would just have to learn to ignore them.

I pointed out that I had been ignoring the discomfort from the PVCs for five or six years now, and they had suddenly gotten much worse and stronger, and even if they were benign they were really bothering me.  I was told, in not quite these words, to just suck it up and shut up about it.

It's hard to ignore something that suddenly jumps on you as you're trying to fall asleep and feels like a cross between a heavy weight on the top of your breastbone and a very too-tight turtle neck, and which can last for several minutes.

I didn't bring up my concerns about hormone problems again, since last time I mentioned concerns about adrenals or pituitary I was told we didn't need to look for zebras.  That we've ruled out all the horses....  I've put on 40 pounds in the last year, 10 in the last month, my diet isn't any different or worse than before, I've got that horrible edema, and the beginnings of a weird hump of fat at the top of my spine.  For the last few weeks I have had trouble going to sleep, not because it's hot (which it is), but because I feel that something is lying on my throat making it hard to breath if I lie on my back, and that's how I normally fall asleep. The fat is also mostly around my waist and chin, instead of my hips and thighs where I've put it for the previous 35 years.

So I've called the local naturopathic practice and have an appointment in two weeks.  Bizarre creatures that they are, they are more worried about the patient's quality of life than just whether the lab numbers look good.  When I mentioned my concern about being told I'd just have to learn to ignore the discomfort of a benign arrhythmia the woman on the phone tsked, and "no, no, no!".

So. Let's hope I can stay awake and functional until the 5th. I'm tired of being so tired.

Testing Update

Well, my nuclear stress test is "stable".  A message was left on my voice mail, so I called them up to find out what exactly was meant by stable.  Basically, it means fine, and since I had one of these tests five or six years ago which this practice knew about, and presumably got and looked at, presumably there have been no changes.

I'm not sure whether this makes me happy or not.  It's not that I want something to be wrong, but most of the stuff that they find on stress test is fixable, and I'd really like to know why I'm tired and short-of-breath with chest pain and water retention.  So I'm going to have an echo next Monday, where they will be able to see if the valves are working right.  With my luck, they're fine too.  Which will leaving me feeling like crap with no reason for it.

Personally I think it's thyroid, or at least thyroid-related, but nowadays, physicians, including endocrinologists, almost always treat the numbers, not the patient, and tell you "You can't be hypothryoid, your numbers are within the normal range", ignoring the fact that just because a certain percentage of people who are supposedly healthy have numbers in a given range doesn't mean that that is the right range for you.

I think it's time to start seeing the local naturopath, in general they seem much more attuned to the patient rather than the lab values.

And if I ever start feeling better, I might be able to write some posts of interest to others than just me.  But I'm too tired.  I get home from work and fall asleep for 12 hours most nights lately, which isn't conducive to getting anything done, electronically or around the house.

Joys of Testing

I get to spend an exciting day tomorrow at the cardiologists' having a stress test and a nuclear stress test done.  Hopefully we'll figure out why my chest keeps hurting, I'm short of breath, exhausted all the time, and retaining tons of water (worse than either of my pregnancies, though I retained so little it wouldn't be hard to retain more).  At this point, I'd be happy for them to find something wrong, just so we know what's going on, and can maybe do something about it.

Mine.

 The new car.

Waiting....

We have improved our credit score a fair bit since we bought the last car. We've even bought a house since then.

The car we want isn't that much more than the previous one cost us, we can finance for up to seven years rather than five, and hopefully at a rather lower interest rate.  Still, it's rather nerve wracking waiting to hear whether the financing has gone through.  I gave them the go-ahead to run it over an hour and a half ago.  I hope that's not too bad a sign....

It's dead, Jim.

I have tried, and maybe succeeded, in killing my car.

Today on the way into work it started making tick, tick noises, almost immediately followed by thwuk, thwuk, and then THWAK, THWAK.  I pulled over to the side of the road and called GEICOs roadside service number, which is in my contacts, though it's never been to the point where I felt it needed a speed dial.  An hour and a half later I was at the dealer's repair shop waiting for a ride into work.

It turns out I haven't had an oil change in 9 months. (!Ack! And I'm the one always nagging my husband to get his car done, because he works at Sears, and it's so hard for him to leave it at the in-house auto repair while he's there.)  In my defense things have been pretty crazy the last five months, and that wasn't high priority, especially as it's really inconvenient for me to get it serviced.  And as with many low priority things, when you leave them alone long enough, they turn around and bite you in the ass.  This particular ass-biting involves having destroyed the engine.

I'm waiting to hear from the repair shop with an estimate on how much a used engine is going to cost, parts, labour, and taxes.  If it's under $3K it will still probably be a good idea, since I doubt we'd get a car for under $300 a month in car payment, and with a new-to-us engine we should be able to nurse the Santa Fe along for at least another year.  It's only a 2003.

Sigh.

The only thing that makes me feel a little better about it, is that my mother did exactly the same thing to her first Camry.  So it's not like she can say anything.

Update 7/2:  It will cost between $4K and $5.5K to put a new-used engine with 100K miles on it, or a refurbished engine in the car.  And even in pristine condition, if we were buying it from a dealer it would only be worth about $5K anyway.  So today (Tuesday) I'm starting the car hunt.  At least our credit should be better (we have a house), dealers are starting the "Get rid of the 2013s!" sales push, and there's a chance we may still be able to get something as trade in for the Santa Fe.  If nothing else it should be worth something for parts.

Again, sigh.

Blackberries

The one things that's gone reasonably right in the last few weeks.

Our feeble excuse for a front hedge has several berry canes in it, and starting last year we had some thorny things growing by the steps to the side porch.  The canes in the front had berries, but about the time they turned red they disappeared; presumably some birds liked them. This year we have more canes and a lot more berries and I thought to put bird netting over them.  Whatever the reason we currently have a lot of red berries and, at least the ones by the porch, are turning a lovely dark blackish purple.  So I guess they are actually blackberries, and the birds just liked them when they weren't quite ripe.  I'm not complaining.  They are very tasty.

The girls are getting sorted out.  Younger will be doing some summer school stuff, and while she will be repeating the year, she won't have to repeat 9th grade English and World History, which she found insanely boring the first time round, so a second would have been torture.  Elder has some stuff to do over the summer and I'm hoping that the carrots we've jointly picked for her to get after each 20 online units are done enough to submit will get her to actually work on them.

Me?  I'm just tired all the time, and then, when I get to bed, I mostly can't get to sleep, or at least not at a decent hour.  Friday I turned the light out at about 1:30, and was still awake at nearly 4.  It takes very little to get me winded, and something as simple as sitting still and eating or drinking something can get the heart arrhythmia going.  I did get some stuff done around the house and yard last Sunday, but I'd had two days off at that point, having had to take Friday off to keep an eye on elder child as she had had some anesthesia for an impacted tooth removal, and needed a responsible adult to keep an eye on her.  However, I don't get two days off between every day when stuff needs to get done, so almost nothing is getting done.  I am scheduled to have stress tests, regular and nuclear, done on the 8th, and I almost hope they do find something, because then we might be able to do something about it.  Or at least we'd know *why* I feel so useless.

And someone stole our lawnmower last week.  I admit that the shed doesn't lock, but the door does shut, and for heaven's sake, it's a 15 year old Craftsman 21".  If they've sold it I doubt they could get more than $50 for it, and probably less.  But that means all we've got is a slightly rusty hand mower, and I need to sharpen the blades.  It doesn't do well with grass longer than 4 inches either, and some of our stuff is worse than that.

I need a goat.

Over-reacting and Chocolate

Yesterday I saw this:

It actually makes me feel a little bit better.  Because if you think about it, there really is an abnormal amount of bullshit going around out there if you follow the news.

So when I add all the family issues (two kids with education/psych issues) to all the stuff that's going on out in the world, as well as the fact that I truly hate my job, yes, I'm tired all the time, and eating way too much chocolate and ice cream.

Because:

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.....