Benefit Bafflement.

Got new letters today from the Department of Jobs (hahaha) and Family Services today. I thought it would be about cutting food benefits, since that has been big in the news lately.
I  was wrong. We get a ten dollar increase.
How did that happen?

Rex also got a letter from the same place. He gets other/different benefits because of his disabilty, so he occasionally gets his very own letters. He's the only one in the family with any type of medical coverage.
His letter says that they denied his Qualified Medical Beneficiary application. The reason given is that his income exceeds the program eligibility standards.

Now, the QMB has been covering the cost of his Medicare payments, and his drug program. (Medicare parts B and D). The cost for the Part B was in excess of $100 a month. We don't know about Part D, because he never had that before we had to go for help after I lost my job.

So, I go online to see if I'm correct about the QMB being that program, and find that yes, I am right. It is that program. Okay, so that means $100 less per month.
That must be why we get $10 more in food benefits!

But I read on, on the website/page that explains all this and the page clearly states that  the income level for him to qualify is @ $200 more than he gets.
So -- what the hell is going on?

It's after business hours today, so there's no finding out anything.

But it makes no sense to me.
Did someone have a bad day?
Did someone make a mistake?


Oh, and about my other problem I had with Medicare Part B -- I got a letter Saturday that explained they would only pay once a month for the drugs, no matter what the prescribed dosage, etc. Now they tell us, after we'd figured it out and resolved the issue.

On the whole, it is what it is. We can live (survive) on less money. We can manage with no health coverage. We can pay his insurances because he does need/use/benefit from them regularly. Nothing financial is fatal, although the health care issues could be. Any help we are grateful for.

But I really think there should be more explanation than what was given.

Stay tuned for the next dramatic act in "If it's Not One Thing, It's Another," a/k/a My Life.

Fading Out

Rex is down to 84 pounds. He is better but not doing as well as the doctor thinks he should be, and has given him a prescription for prednisone. He told Rex about all the drawbacks with the daily prednisone. the most concerning is that it can cause osteoporosis. Rex already has severe osteoporosis. Oh, yay, Rex gets to choose between working bones or working lungs, when neither is working as it is, and never will work correctly ever again. At least the prednisone gives him a little bit of an appetite.

And Tracy tells him to "Get well." Like that is ever going to happen.
And she starts yelling at me when I tell her so.
Why?
Because she doesn't want to think about it.
I guess I do. It's my favorite reflection, I guess. How much more miserable he will get, how much frailer he will become, etc.
I'm already watching him disappear, one pound at a time. If he stays at a pound a month, that's 85 months before he disappears completely. @ 8 years. Of course he will be gone long before 0 pounds.
I wish I could go first, but then no one would take care of him.
Why not?
Because they don't want to think about it.

NOT My News

They say the world gets smaller every day, especially with the Internet so readily available.
I'm pretty sure the world is approximately the same size as ever, but people and how they communicate are very different.

What I'm not sure about is whether or not this is a good thing.

Easy access to the World Wide Web offers any business a larger audience for its product, whether that product is a twice weekly scribble, such as this blog, or selling services like Time-Warner Cable or Verizon, or marketing goods as Amazon does.
Big audience, big sales should somehow equal better service or maybe even (gasp!) better service for your Primary Customers.

Because really, even though the prospective market is there, if your product is for a targeted audience, wouldn't you rather hit the target? And isn't the closer you get to the bull's eye supposed to be better?

So why are local news stations featuring interstate and international stories instead of what is happening in their areas?

Most news stations are located in or near big cities. Most of these cities have vast suburbs, exurbs, metro areas, and sometimes overlap other cities. (Or sometimes not.)

In all these --urbs of these cities, there are many many things happening; things  that are newsworthy, especially to the residents and neighbors thereof. There are car accidents, barfights, break-ins, buildings giving way, murder, shooting, ambulance calls, fires, runaways, shoplifters.. Not every county, town, village, hamlet has all of these every day, although it seems the city does.
But one of them has one of these things happen, at the very least. Several of the outlying areas could have several things happening. You never can tell. And your local newa may never tell you.

The 'local' city's news, both on air and on social media, sees more importance in reporting a housefire across the country than one across the county. Somehow the availability of all this news minimizes what really is important to their 'local' audience.
The really annoying thing is many of these sations like to brag about how "Local"  they are. Some of them have "Local" as part of their program name. Some have "Local" as their website address.

So why, near Cincinnati, am I being inundated with news and news clips from Colorado and New Jersey, about mundane events such as runaways and bar fights. We had both of those two towns over, in all four directions.

Will we get to see out "Local" stories on the Denver news?

Bully Entertainment

How many of you are watching programs like Impractical Jokers or Deal With It?
You know, those shows where they bully people into doing stupid things?

Oh, you think it's not bullying, because they are getting paid for it?
It's not bullying because they agreed to it?
It's not bullying because they are just stupid for doing it and therefore deserve anything they get?
It's not bullying because it's funny?

Which of those excuses are not used by the REAL bullies of life?
Maybe the one about getting paid? You've led a charmed life to have never been the victim of a workplace bully/boss.

Money, of course, excuses all sorts of bad behavior in this world. Just look at our lawmakers.

Let's put aside the money issue. Children don't know too much about money,  nor do they value it as adults do.

Do you have or are you around young children?

What are they seeing when they watch you watching and laughing at these programs?
They see you, one of their role models, being amused and entertained by some people coercing other people into doing sometimes cruel, sometimes careless, sometimes dishonest activities. It doesn't matter what they are doing, or why.

The children see you laughing at the results of bullying.

How are you going to explain that to them?
How are you going to stop them from emulating this behavior that gets all this favorable attention from you?

What are YOU going to do?

Smoother Sailing

Babies have gone home, heart-breakingly early, but for the best. Best for them, best for me, best for where we all are in this crazy life.

Supposed to be taking my ailing daughter to the hospital to apply for their financial assistance program so she can get her gall bladder out before it kills all of us. She hasn't wakened yet -- sleep is a  healer and a small cessation of pain.
Anybody wanna bet the first thing she says will be "Why didn't you get me up?"

I could, of course. Make her start hurting again, make her NOT have to take responsibility for her own needs, for her own health care.
I think not. She needs to learn independence, something that she has somehow failed to learn.
She also needs to make her own medical decisions, because that is the law of the land.

Did she not learn, or was she not taught? I've thought often about this and have no definitive answer. Not teaching would be my failure; not learning would be hers.
It doesn't matter, anyway. That's in the past, and we -- I -- must go on from here and keep trying to get those lessons across.

Not easy, with her daddy's nurturing helpful dispensing of the knowledge that "Your mom knows how to do that."
I learned by doing, as everyone must.

Dad has an appointment with his pulmonologist this week. We have questions about headaches and a tickle in his throat.
Anybody wanna bet I'll end up being the one who asks the doctor about these issues, because he won't speak up? (I'm going to try, if I must, just reminding Rex he wants to ask about these things.)

This issue annoys me because it makes me sound like a bossy managing dictator, and not in a good way.

Yes, I'm bossy. I'm the oldest of eight, and I know no one in that situation who isn't bossy. It's part of the job description of oldest child ( of a multitude.)

Yes, I'm managing. Someone has to take care of things.

A dictator? Possibly at times. Waffling on decisions has to stop somewhere; decisions need to be made.

But I only look like one of those militant fat-ass Battleship Broad!

That said, I have had some sleep and feel capable. I hope that I can remain so, even when the sailing once again gets rough. As it will.
As I well know it will.

I'll be ready.
I hope.

At least, for a while, I'll be rested.

Mammaws are Only Human, too (Even me)

Today, I feel like the worst Mammaw in the world.
Because the baby cried all night.
Because In  yelled at him.
Because I pushed  Hailey off him.

Because I am going to have to take them home early, and I never, ever want to take them home early. I wish they could stay, longer and longer. This is Hailey's last weekend/week to stay here as OUR  Hailey. Next week she meets the world; she'll be becoming a different child. (She starts school,)
I wanted this to be a long lovely time to enjoy with her.

But she's anxious about school, wants her mommy for every head-butting dispute, is weepy and whiny and singing the ABC song, incorrectly and incessantly.

The little guy is teething. Yes, young as he is. He has not one but two teeth just below hid gums and the pesty things won't come through. Poor little guy.  Mammaw can give him pain med -- not really a good idea -- and rub numb numb on his gums (very carefully) but all these things wear off way before they can be readministered.
He has chewed bigger holes in his nipples so now he drowns himself in milk and chokes. That is 4 nipples in about 36 hours.

Then there are the residents of my home. Rex is chronic, and Tracy is having a crisis. She's had intermittent gall bladder problems, and in this last week it's become constant. She went to the ER twice in the last ten days, but it's not quite bad enough for them to be able to help.

Took her to the doctor yesterday, kids in tow.
They were astonishingly good in the boring old waiting room for almost two hours. (Maybe that's why they had problems later on. They used up all their ability to be good.)

Anyway, Tracy is still in pain and trying to learn to deal with it, but in the meantime she wants cuddling and soothing that should be the babies' purview. (We all want our mommies when we're sick, even if they never really did anything for us. Such an odd facet of humanity.)

Anyway, the nine hundred bazillionth time I had to get up with Fussy Baby, in the wee small hours of the morn, I sat and cried with him in my arms.
When that didn't help, I put him in the playpen and I went outside on the porch to cry alone.

Baby Warren yelled at me, and I yelled at him. He can make quite an astonishing amount of sounds now.
It would have been funny if it wasn't so heartbreaking breaking.

I hope the little ones and their parents know if it were a necessity they could of course stay. That I would expect them to.
I hope they all know the little ones will always be welcome here and understand that some Times are just a little more difficult to live through.
I hope I hope I hope.

And still I feel like the worst Mammaw in the world because I am having such a hard time coping.

I feel so old and inadequate.

Crisis at Mammaw's house, I am ordering you to pass.
Mammaw just wants to be Mammaw again.

Rent-2-Own hosts Back to School

The owners of the Rent-2-Own in Georgetown hosted a back to school festival. They combined a generous community giveaway with fun and play, and the result was a lot of fun.

They provided school supplies for children in the county, and they made it a party for parents and children alike.

Who can do that? 

Even when they can, how many people take the time to actually put it into action? 

There was food, there was music, there were (sorta) rides, some with water. I never knew you could take a ride in a bouncy-house. 

Guess I got some schooling, too.

I don't know what the employees (I assumed) thought of the day. Many wore tags saying "Volunteer." The day was humid, the crowd was crowded. Kids pushed and shoved and cut line, tattled and pushed and shoved.

They also held hands to run together, jump together, climb together. Grown-ups walked around trying to keep track of children. There were lots of "Mammaw" and "Hey, Mom" and "Daddy, lookame!"

Through it all, I never saw any of these volunteer/employee/ helpers lose their patience. In the heat and the humidity and the hollering, the personnel kept their cool. Every one of these people should be recognized and awarded with, at the very least, a smile and a heartfelt "Thank you. You made our day."

From the owners of the venue, who have made this community giveaway a shining example of "Charity Begins At Home" to the Church across the street that allowed its parking lot to be used for parking, to the many many WONDERFUL people who were there before after and during the event -- it was a fantastic experience. 

A lot of work and a lot of fun.

Thank you all.

(And thanks for the notebooks, too.)

Not Quite "Christmas in July"

We are enjoying a lovely bout of October weather here at the end of July. It's not quite a "Christmas in July" but I'll take it. I think it's pretty darned nice!

I'm not quite sure what the technical situation is . The weathermen on the TV have been talking about "record high lows" and "record low highs". All of this makes sense to me while they are explaining it, with little charts and diagrams onscreen, but my understanding disappears with the charts. Somehow, I don't think a record high low is a record low. That would be a low low, to be a new record.
Am I wrong about that?

I am surprised at their surprise. For the last several years, the weather seems to have shifted somewhat. Spring blooms earlier, summer dies off earlier. The key is not in the calendar, but in the wildlife. We've had daffodils in February, redbuds at the end of March, black-eyed Susans and Tiger lilies in July. Daffodils used to be "Easter lilies" to us as children, the redbuds are more familiar in mid to late April, and the susies and tigers should only now be coming into full growth. Both of these are part of the transition to September.

September and October should be foxtails and goldenrod and grass (hay) drying in the fields. The last few years, we have had the goldenrod before school starts in mid-August. This year it looks as if the same thing will happen. We'll see the first snowflakes in late October or early November. The "January thaw" will be near Christmas.

But, NO.
Not necessarily.
Here I am, doing the same thing as the weathermen and meteorologists -- trying to put Mother Nature and her business into neat little cubicles (dates on a calendar.)

When will we learn that nothing not man-made fits into our neat little boxes?
Just because it's usually gold and orange in September doesn't mean it always will be so.
Just because it has always snowed in February doesn't mean we can't have sunshine and warm southern breezes that month.

There are plenty of people ready to blame man-made sources for the changes in the weather. Plenty of them, but their 'proof'' is that the weather has changed. That really doesn't prove the why.

Weather has never been constant according to Modern Man's demands. The constancy is vague and steady,  seasonal; not date-to-date, not month-to-month. Weather just won't fit our convenience.

Maybe the solution to our (not a) problem will end up being the time-honored tradition of updating the calendar. That is what our species has done historically when the seasons and the dates have become out of sync.



I say let's keep our calendars loose and flexible, and let us not bind ourselves too closely to what our little blank calendar boxes and our record books say we should expect from the weather. Because, no matter how many blacks we draw for time and nature, these things will not co-operate with the corporate mentality.

Above all, though,  let us enjoy  this October weather in July. 

They Think You're Stupid

One of the worst things about not working has got to be daytime TV.

One of the worst things about daytime TV has got to be the commercials.

Lately, these seem to have gotten worse. Many of them sound like they are talking down to you, some just use bad grammar -- and bad English, too!
There are some, I'm sorry to say, that seem to be actively looking for stupid people as their main source of customers.

This may even be true; I don't know. Maybe that is who they look to for a customer base. How hard can it be to confuse stupid people and get their money,after all?

The worst offender, commercial-wise, is LoanMax. This is a company that makes title loans on cars. Their main clientele, I think, is people who can't get a bank loan, even using their car as collateral. Banks don't want to make small loans, for one thing, and for another, they don't like older cars.
Title loan businesses know two things banks refuse to acknowledge. 1)People will generally pay to keep their car when it's all they have and 2) if it runs, they will likely get their money back at auction, if it should go that far. Maybe not all their (outrageous) interest, but at least the original loan.

The procedure is similar to a bank loan.  You get a loan using the car as collateral. If you ever try to sell the car, you have to pay off the loan/lien first.

Loan Max ads feature a woman who was just so relieved she didn't have to give them her car!  She got to keep her car! Imagine that!
Lady, if you didn't get to keep your car, it would be a/k/a selling your car, NOT a loan. How the blankety-blank did you ever get a car in the first place?

There's also a man who can't keep driving on tires with 'plugs' in them -- I was told 20 years ago they don't make tires you can put plugs in anymore. If that's still true, this man is driving around on excessively old tires, and I don't want to be on the road with him anyway. (I could, however, be wrong and someone somewhere did figure out a way to make plugs for modern tires. In that case, I'm the stupid one.)
There's a woman who doesn't want to drive around on bad rotors. I guess she can't plug her tires anymore and has no wheels.
And there's a guy who got a loan to get tattoo training -- not so bad, but you'd think they might go for something classier in the eyes of society as a means of going into business. And a fellow who buys storage units at auction. Maybe he'll be on TV someday!

There's a lawyer who "Gets answers done." Okay, I want answers, and I want a lawyer who gets things done. I don't want my answers done.

Then there's one of those infernal schools, with one-class-a-month, or one-subject-at-a-time classes. These people are really annoying. It's too bad the schools have no better representations than people who can't speak properly.
These women have their dreams accomplished.
How the hell does that happen?
I (or they) can accomplish a dream, but the dream doesn't accomplish. This person needs to speak with the lawyer who gets answers done.

This woman also talks about how the school 'accomplished' or 'created'  "new dreams for me and new opportunities for mySelf."
Only you can accomplish or create things for yourself.
The school can create or accomplish things only for itself
Only I can do things for myself.

Do intelligent persons want to go to a school that doesn't see basic communication skills as a selling point?

Do you? Will you?

I don't.
I won't.

Not even to get away from the inanity of daytime TV commercials.

Welcome the Weather, Whatever it is.

Finally, a break in the weather. Like all good things, it didn't come without a price. Parts of our northern 'Border Country' was torn apart with severe storms. Lots of wind damages, lots of uprooted trees, property damage. This was all in a part of the country where this type of storm is a little unusual.

But, oh the pay off! Lower humidity, softer air. And, the rest of us are beginning to feel that same relief, as if our weather-break is trailing in the skirts of theirs.

Today, here in Winchester, Ohio, it has been raining all day. Nice, gentle, cleansing, healing rain. There are flash flood watches and occasional storm warning, but for the most part our transition has been fairly nonviolent.
That's a good way to be.

The heat and humidity will return. It's still July, and there's August to be lived through, and the first few days after Labor Day. It would be odd to not have a week or so of hot-and-humid after back-to-school and Back-to-school -after-the-first-holiday.

I like the rain.
If Hailey were here, she'd be liking the rain.
She'd even be allowed to go out in this rain. Pappaw doesn't let her out when it's storming. She doesn't like that.

People are always complaining about the weather. If it's raining, they want sun. When the sun is shining, it's too hot. When it's hot they want cold. When it's cold they want snow. When it snows they want the roads cleared and cleaned and wish for the hot and humid summer.

We'd change things if we could, and once we have it, we start wishing it was what it was earlier (in the year, season, month, week, day).
We need to take the time to enjoy the weather we have while we have it. It's going to change soon enough, and we are very lucky if it changes without upheaval and terror.
Let's be happy with what we get.
After all, it could just -- blow away.

I'm as bad as others. We all are. We all think we wish for prescribed weather, for perfect weather. The problem with that is --

We can't even agree on perfect weather!

Some DO like it hot!