What *was* I thinking?

I actually don't know why I started blogging.

It was 21 years ago today. I just started writing on a whim.
I'd been in the daycare business for a year, I was still homeschooling, running a Girl Scout troop and working part time. Busy.

I've been glad over the years that I wrote stuff down, it's helpful to me in my work, for example. Old science experiments or other busy-nesses are there when I want to see them or remember 'how did I'.

Working (slowly) on the book I want to write about after school, the stories about my kids are invaluable. It's been pointed out to me more than once that I already have the book written, I just have to find the posts and put them in some sort of coherent order.

Coherent may not be within my reach right now, my brain is going in too many directions.
When this publishes, I'll be 11 days out from a visit from the father in law. 

This time we're putting him in the Costco room. The Momcave is more than occupied. I think he'll actually have more room in there than in here.

Anyway, it's a sort of family chronicle, a journal, a photographic record, work history. Things that make me laugh. An occasional political post, although mostly I just sit here and seethe. No point in writing it down, we still have a shit president and shit people surrounding him.

I'm approaching retirement from my job, guessing I'm going to be done in a little over a year.

I'll probably still write. Seems it's habit forming.

Another thing that I've appreciated greatly are the connections with other people that have happened through what I've written. I follow a lot of of other bloggers, too and have made more than one 'imaginary friend' as my hubby calls you.

Thanks for coming along.

I looked for a picture of a blogger via google (minus ai of course, I always add -ai to the end of my searches) and found nothing I wanted to use. 
I'll leave you with this photo of me about 58 years ago. 

We don't realize how much we're aging until we really look back, huh?

Future Blogger 1968

Get to the MONKEY!!!

I watch a lot of videos on YouTube. 
Painting tutorials, political things, stories about people finding their way out of religion. Lots of content, all free. It's amazing to be able to find so many things so easily.

One of the things I watch (because I'm always working even when I'm not at work) are craft videos. The people who are content creators are generally trying to make money off their videos, so they want to maximize engagement. That's understandable, but it causes me a great deal of impatience sometimes.

A person will be showing how to make something and you'll get 30 seconds of their hands, pointing and/or moving while they talk. Not always about the project, either.

A project will need 20 of something glued on. Instead of gluing one or two to give the general idea, they painstakingly glue on all 20 little baubles or whatever. I usually watch them on double speed without any sound. I end up skipping to the end quite often, too.

I don't want to hear about your trip to the beach or why this craft reminds you of your great uncle Henry.

Move on, willya??

It's usually necessary to mute anyway, as for some reason, they think we want to hear some tinkling, annoying, strident "music", too. Sets me on edge every time.

It annoys the CRAP out of me, in case you wondered.

And let's talk about cooking websites, too.
I do not want to hear about how your grandma moved West via covered wagon and wore gingham until she died at 107 and you still have the beat up old bowl she used. I mean, that's great for you, but I do not care. At all.

Skip to the ingredients. Now.
I scroll a lot.

I used to say, "GET TO THE POINT!" until several years ago, when my son sent me a link to this video.

The point of the video is aggravation about going to the King Kong movie (hey, this is an old video) and having them tease and not quite show the big ape until well into the movie.

Get to the goddamn MONKEY!!



I find myself saying it a lot right now as I take the art project and science experiments and other things I've harvested over summer and rewatch and try to get them into some kind of order for the school year.


Don't click on this video (it's actually audio only) if you're offended by profanity.

Commercial Time!

Once again I'm horrified by the fact that I remember quite a few of these commercials, but couldn't help laughing at the commercial starting at 5:49. 

As I recently mentioned, I was a 12 year old boy in my past life.

What is this thing?

Okay, so, this was on the floor next to my desk chair in the Momcave.

It wasn't there last night, I'd be willing to swear to it.
I don't remember ever seeing it. I have zero clues about what it might be.

I waited for Eric to get home to ask him about it, he said he's never seen it before and also has no idea what it is.

So let's just skip right over the 'who left this thing' because NO ONE DID. 
Eric didn't do it. I did not do it. No one else lives here. No one else has been in the house.

I think we're going to have to say Glitch in the Matrix on this.

But WHAT IS IT???

Any ideas?

Edited to add: I read today that using the same answer for all 'what is this' posts is perfectly acceptable. 

Here's that answer, courtesy of ye olde internet:

I have one. 
It’s a fart tone adjuster. 
Stick it up your bottom and it changes the pitch of your farts to a more pleasant sounding tone.

 

mischief managed

Made it over to the medical office complex today. 
2nd attempt to see the vampire. 

There were fewer people in the waiting area this time, but the wait was longer. Make it make sense.

I ended up having to wait about 15 minutes past my appointment time. Once I was in the sacrifice room, it was really fast. I let the phlebotomist know that I did not want adhesives on my skin. Contact dermatitis is a real nuisance, if you didn't know that.

I asked her how many people she takes blood from every day. She said there were two people doing the blood draws and that almost every day they go over 200 patients.

Told you I felt like livestock.

But she was fast and efficient. I won't even have a bruise. There's a very tiny red mark where she stuck me, but I doubt it will even be visible in a couple days.

The first test results came wandering through my email a few minutes ago, everything looks fine. I'll be interested to see what the other tests show.

There's a bit of aggravation right now with my job, though.
::sigh::

I'll write another thrilling post about that soon, hopefully over the weekend. 

Why can't things just stay mostly the same? Huh?? 

Such a moo-ving experience.

I feel like livestock.

I've mentioned before that until I signed up for Medicare in March, I'd been seeing my doctor at Providence and paying out of pocket to do so. 
I did not want to start over with another doctor. 
When I was young, I couldn't understand why people said that. I sure get it now, though.

I had Kaiser insurance through my employer in case of a dire emergency (and wouldn't that have been fun?)

I won't go into the reasons I didn't want to use the insurance, I'm sure you know at least some of them. Publicity exists.
Kaiser is not a health 'care' organization. 

Haha, Providence isn't either. I used to have a doctor there I really loved. She left about 8 years ago because she was fed up with the money money money money thing at Providence, telling me there was no standard of patient care anymore, and that the people making business decisions weren't interested in patients, they were only interested in money.

Providence closed their on-site labs in January, meaning I can no longer see my doctor then walk down the hall and see Brian, the guy with the needles.

Brian's fine, he had a new job before the old job was even over. And he's really great at the work. Losing Providence didn't hurt him any. But losing him had and will continue to have a cost to Providence. Every little thing they 'streamline' has consequences. 

They're dropping their medicare 'advantage' plan, too. I'd like to think it's because people have gotten smart and realized that type of insurance isn't always what they need and definitely not what they've been promised and were leaving in droves, but that's not it. 
It's a cost-cutting measure and it benefits Providence. They don't give a shit about their patients. I don't know if they've ever cared, sure couldn't prove it from my experiences.

With the loss of their 'advantage' plan, a bunch of people are getting tossed out the door to seek medical care elsewhere. People who have been seeing their Providence doctors for years. This stuff has a real human cost, but since the people making the decisions won't ever have to suffer the consequences of their actions, they don't care.

In my lifetime I've seen the quality of care in most of my medical situations turn to crap.

I've been dismissed so many times. When I finally find someone who listens, they don't listen to everything. I settle for whatever I'm getting, knowing it's going to be harder to start over than it is to stick with some shit that's not working the way it should.

My current doctor isn't a big jerk or anything, she's just harried, too busy to really understand what I need (no idea if her other patients have similar feelings, I would imagine they do) and seems to be more concerned with how she's going to answer me than letting me finish.

Something common to a lot of people, but not really helpful in a doctor.

She ordered some blood tests and other stuff last time I visited.

Since there's nothing in the clinic anymore except for the doctors/back office and reception, they've added another step to my life, I have to drive across town and deal with still another place.

The stars aligned and I managed to get to the appointment I made (online, no human necessary except at my end and really, is there any guarantee that I'm human? I might be ai-generated. Except I really have to pee, which is relatively rare in ai. Or so I hear.)

I drove over to the nearest hospital. 
Behind the hospital is a new office building.
It's four stories with at least 250 parking spaces.
Five of them are for handicapped parking. 

Five. At a medical facility.

I drove into the small parking area with those spots, but there was only one open, and I felt like someone might need it worse than I did, so I parked across the street. It was 94 degrees out. Ugh.

As I walked past that last empty space on my way into the building, a 30 something guy in a Miata convertible zipped into the lot, screeched to a halt in the handicapped space, VAULTED over the side of his car and jogged into the building and up the first flight of stairs.

There was no handicapped placard on his car.

Dick.

There are no signs outside the building to inform a person if they're on the right track but once you get inside, you can't miss the Lab Corp corral.

Cattle, er people are milling around in an echo-ey space, there are kiosks for you to check in via tablet, not via human being.

I got out my driver's license and put it in the scanner, then was prompted to scan my Medicare card. I didn't know I was going to have to do that, so wasn't ready. By the time I had removed it from my wallet, the friggin' machine reset and I had to start over.

It did it again because I wasn't fast enough digging out my supplemental insurance card.

I was getting frustrated. Everything finally uploaded, and I found a place to sit in the overcrowded waiting room.

I didn't have to wait long, they called my name right on time. I went to the window where the attendant said brightly, "Just the one test today, huh?"

"Um. No. Several different ones."

"Oh, we just have the one on our list."

It wasn't her fault. The heat wasn't her fault. The automated kiosk wasn't her fault.
I refrained from looking or sounding grumpy, smiled and said, "Okay, never mind for today, then. I'll get in touch with my doctor and come in again."

On the way out, I'm sure my expression was unpleasant, but no one saw me.

I sat down in front of my computer as soon as I got home. Sent an inquiry through the patient portal. If they were going to get back to me within three business days, as they say they will, they would have done so on Monday.

Three guesses. Go on, guess.

So yesterday I sent this:

Still waiting for someone to email/fax/mail/pony express/bicycle/skate/skateboard courier to get a list of the things that are supposed to happen at Lab Corp. I went there once and they only one test on their list. It's been 5 days. Why do we have this patient portal if our messages go into a black hole and are never seen again? I HATE having to drive to the office and come in and explain the whole situation to get results, I really do. But you can expect me to do just that in a day or two.

There was a response today.
Some medical assistant who told me they'd taken care of the tests so I should be 'fine' but then added that I was not to eat or drink anything before the test, something my doctor told me wasn't necessary. It was even on her printed instructions, 'fasting not necessary'.

I queried immediately, 'Dr. said that it was not necessary for me to fast, why has this changed?'

My DOCTOR actually answered me within about 2 minutes to say that it is not, in fact, necessary for me to fast before the blood tests.

I wish I could trust these people, but if you put 'providence' in the search field up there, you'll see that they haven't really done a great job for me in the past.

So tomorrow is my interview with the vampire (not Brian dammit) and maybe I'll know more about what's going on after that.

Everything in the damn universe is a pain in the ass right now.
Have you noticed?