My medical portal lacks a door!

I spent most of yesterday afternoon trying to get a message from the eye center.  The message popped up on my email, "You have a very important message from @#%^&*(*& Eye Center!"  Now I had already been through this with my doctors office and their little portal means of communication, so I cringed inwardly.  Since I have surgery scheduled for tomorrow, I thought I better try to retrieve it.  I am so friggin' naïve it amazes me most of the time.  The episode with the doctors portal, had taken me 3 days to complete and it was after they sent me the correct link that I was able to retrieve my message there.

So when I received this one, I had my usual sinking feeling when I know I am on a dead end trail and a cliff awaits me at the end.  But it had 2 pages very detailed telling me how to reach the portal door and all the secret codes I needed to step through.  HA!  But nonetheless, I persevered.  User name.  User password.  Incorrect user name or password.  Try again.  Ok.  Put on my glasses and make sure I am doing it right.  Check every letter and number.  Incorrect user name or password.  Try again. Ok.  Once more with feeling!  Incorrect user name or password.  Your computer is now locked for your safety.  It will automatically unlock in 20 minutes. Try again then.

20 minutes later I tried again.  Once more I was wrong 3 times was locked out.  So I called the office.  Of course by this time I was in tears.  The automatic man that answered told me all circuits were busy and to stay on the line.  After several more minutes I heard a human voice.!  Name.  Birthday.  I know this.  Oh, ok, she will transfer me to the surgery center nurse.  This is going good!
Oh, she is not in, but will return my call in just few minutes.  It is now the next day!

Here is my question, why do I have to fight this system to get a message from the medical profession?  She is going to ask me if I started my eye drops.  It would have been much simpler to pick up the phone and dial my number and ask me.  30 second job at the most.  As it is, she had to look up my info for the portal, type in the question, hit the send button,  hit the button to send me a notice that I have a message (that I am not going to get), back out of my file and go to the next one.  All that is going to take way more than 30 seconds.

So, by the time I went to bed last night, I was wound up tight enough to rip the throat out of a charging Rhino.  If I have one more place making my life easier, I am going to go completely nuts!
I have 2 telephones.  One hangs on the wall and has a home number.  The other rides in my purse wherever I go, so I am always within easy reach of every telemarketer in India and beyond, but not able to be reached by the medical community who in in charge of my health and well being.  I do not have a smart phone, because the word "smart" denotes to me that it is smarter than me.

I can remember the time when I had a doctor and he had a nurse.  They both knew my name.  If I went in for a problem, one of them would call me the next day to ask how I was feeling.  A human voice!  Not a damn portal that I can not open.  I am going to remove my email address from all my medical records.  I may even close my email, so no one knows I have a computer.  I got this thing for my convenience, but I am beginning to hate the damn thing because other people do not respect the fact that I do not want them in my world.  This goes for all the yahoos who try to send me Viagra because my name is Lou.  I do not want to go on a cruise.  I do not need vitamins or wrinkle remover and I sure as hell do not want to lose 22 pounds overnight.  If I needed that stuff, I would google it.  I know how to do that.

I know my medical providers will not read this and if they did they would think I was nuts.  I may very well be, but I am happy  to inform them, that my contact information is about to change and they can either pick up the phone, or not.  Their choice.  As for me, I know how to dial!

A cow named Bossy.

I am not sure her name was Bossy, but I think it was and that is what counts.  She was brown, but back in those days most of the milk cows were.  I want to say she was a Guernsey, but you are not going to catch me lying at this stage of the game.  She was brown.  A soft brown.  We had several cows when we left the Ailmore place, along with the horses dad used for plowing. We also had Star, the Shetland from hell that no one could ride.  You would have thought he was a sweetheart if you just looked at him, but try to get on his back and that was not happening.  He is the one that left the scar on my brothers face.  But back to the cow.

 The reason I am telling you about Bossy is because that cow knew how to give milk.  But the best part of the milk was the cream.  We had a separator which separated the milk from the cream (hence the name separator).  We would toast a piece of bread and then put cream on it and sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar and put it under the broiler for just a few seconds.  That was heaven!  The cream was so thick it stayed standing on the toast.  I go to the store now and buy "heavy whipping cream" and it pours out of the carton.  I have not even seen cream like we used to eat.

The same cream was churned into butter.  The butter was bright yellow when it was rinsed and put in the refrigerator.  It was also very delicious.  After Bossy died in cowbirth, (the baby also died) we were without a cow and thus without butter.  The neighbor girls lived with their father right next door.  Their mother had passed many years before and he raised the girls  alone.  They also had a cow and made butter.  With no cow we had to resort to eating margarine.  Now in those days margarine was white.  I think it was actually lard, but it came with a little yellow dye button that you could work into the white mass so it looked like butter.  We used to trade margarine for butter because the neighbor girls did not like butter. 

Another thing was they made doughnuts every Saturday morning.  Their father was diabetic, but he sure liked those doughnuts and he thought if he only ate them once a week he would be alright.  Another daughter came from Plevna to visit them every Sunday so they managed to eat all the doughnuts.  None for me!

One time mother had fried up a bunch of small carp that she had seined and Dorothy got a bone caught in her throat.  Mother had picked the meat off, but apparently missed a small bone.  As she was choking one of us ran next door and told Mr. Reinke.  He had experience at such things, you know.  He grabbed a piece of bread from the cupboard (in case we didn't have any and of course we didn't).  He made Dorothy eat the bread, which dislodged the bone and sent it into her stomach where the acids would dissolve it.  He was a hero!

Mostly Mr. Reinke just did handy man work around town and then did his chores when he came home.  We could here him singing songs in German while he did his chores.  Since he sang in German, my dad was sure he was a Nazi, but we never knew that for sure.  I just thought he was a very nice man to save my sisters life. 

I was always envious of their "outhouse" because it had a concrete floor and a lid on the potty part.  Ours had a floor that was pretty well shot and a bench with 2 holes.  I never understood that part, because we never went in there with anyone.  I just could not picture that!  Thiers also had a door and a latch from the inside for privacy.  Ours had a door at one time, but not by the time we inherited it.

The point of this entry when I started it was about cream.  The point I wanted to make was, back in those days we ate thick cream.  We used real butter.  We ate potatoes, and bacon, and gravy and we were all skinny.  When I married my first husband I stood 5'1" and weighed 92 pounds.  I am convinced that all the additives in our food are still in our bodies.  I have given up trying to read the ingredient list on anything I pull off the shelf or out of the freezer.

And I am sure I will never live long enough to ever be able to toast a piece of bread and pile cream on it with cinnamon and sugar.  Sure would like to see old Bossy again, but those days are long gone.  I would not eat a Carp now if I was starving.  I am beginning to look forward to the day when I can once more run barefooted down Strong Street see all my family and friends.  Seems like that list gets
shorter every day.

(After thought) I do need to tell you, that when the separator quit working at one point and mother strained the milk it was not the same.  She would leave it set and the cream would raise to the top.  I could not stand the bits of cream that were floating in the milk  to touch my lips.  I would try to pick them all out with my finger, but it was an exercise in futility.  I could eat straight cream, but not swallow a fleck.  I was so happy when we had to buy milk from town because it was homogenized.

Inside my head is a scary place.

Some times I wake up in the middle of the night and just wonder what is going on anyway.  You should know that in the middle of the night I come up with some brilliant ideas.  I even amaze myself at the simple solutions I find to the world problems.  I have written several best seller books in the wee wee hours and blog ideas are so easy at 2:30 in the morning.  My mind is clear and alert and my fingers itch to start typing, but I control myself.  I know if I start my day at 2:30 AM I am going to be dozing off at 1:30 PM and I will be headed for bed about 6 which is not acceptable to the real world.

And isn't it then amazing that when I do click on the writing page, my mind is just as blank as that sheet of paper.  What happened to all the things I came up with when I should have been sleeping?  Now I know that I am supposed to jot down notes when I wake up like that, but I have tried that.  The next morning I read something I have written and wonder what in the hell I was smoking.  "Rodeo, mules, ostrich, breakfast."  I am sure in my sleep induced stupor that made good sense, but in the clear light of morning, it is sheer jibberish.  I even tried the voice activated tape recorder, but by the time I had a brilliant thought, the batteries were dead.  So I have come to this conclusion:  My batteries may be dead.

If I could be the witty, animated person that I am in the middle of the night in the cold hard light of day, I would be a millionaire and everything I wrote would fly off the shelves.  I have come to one conclusion;  there is someone else living in my head along with me.  I know this because I can be talking to someone and looking them right in the eye and listen as they reply, but my mind has gone off to what I need to get at the store, or something that needs done across town.  This scares me.  Today I was reading the Bible reading at church and at the same time I was trimming the tree by the goose house.  Planned every cut, ended the reading, went and set down and baked banana bread in my head.

Before you laugh, I want to tell you that it is scary being me.  I just wonder if any one else has this problem.  You can tell me, because I won't remember it when I blink my eyes.  

A place for every plant and every plant in its place.

Living with Grandma Haas and Great Grandma Hatfield was definitely challenging.  They had a place for everything and everything was in it's place, especially in the summer.  All year long the little house plants set in there place in the house where ever it was they belonged.  The Oleandars lived in the basement and were not watered from fall until they were brought out in the spring.  Always surprised me that they survived.  One was white and one was pink.  They had the sweetest aroma rather like vanilla only sweeter.  Maybe with a tinge of almond.  What ever.  It was hard to believe that they were deadly poison.  But I digress.

When Spring arrived which was usually late April in Kansas, the basement door was opened and the Oleandars were drug up the steps by what ever hapless  cousin was around.  It was usually cousin Carl.  He was the farmer boy and lived just outside of Plevna so he was handy.  And Aunt Lola usually came and picked up the laundry to take it home and wash and return.  We did not go through the clothes back then like we do now.  Now I wear something a day and throw it in the hamper.  Back then the same outfit was good for a week.  Back to the house plants.

The Oleandars were placed on either side of the steps in the front of the house.  We never used that door.  It was the front door and that was its job.  We used the side door which opened into the dining room for most of our comings and goings.  The only exception was when one of us needed to make a trip to the "outhouse" or the trash needed carried to the burning barrel.  Then we used the back door.  The trash was kept in a wooden hamper by the back door and there was a damn good chance that there was a mouse in it when I dumped it so I would carry it very carefully, slowly to the barrel.  I would gently place the edge on top of the barrel and then quickly push it over and wait for the mouse and the trash to empty and then grab it and run for the house.

After the Oleandars were in place the other house plants were carried out one by one and the first was placed by the front sidewalk and then each next one got a little closer to the house until all of them were setting outside and then I could begin watering.  And I watered them every day because the Kansas sun is very hot and dry.  This ritual continued until Grandma Hatfield saw signs  of  an  early frost.  Then the whole process was reversed.  I often wondered what happened to the Oleandars when Grandma Haas passed and Great Grandma moved to Coldwater.  Sadly there is no one to ask.

I have a few houseplants but they are all big.  I do move them out to the patio in the Spring, but sometimes I have to carry them all back in, because Colorado weather can not be trusted.  Oh, and spiders build homes in the stems so that sucks.  But mostly I got to have green stuff around me for one reason or another.  I have a pink Oleandar if anyone wants to come by for tea.

It is just a matter of time until it is our school.

Another school shooting.  Another record set.  Oh, but that is Florida this time.  It is not our problem.  Not my circus, not my monkeys.  Of course we are sending thoughts and prayers.  That is what we do.  I want to speak to you people out there who actually need an AR-15.  You need it for.......?

There was a time when our forefathers needed a gun to put food on the table.  Those were the ingenious men and women from whom we are descended.  They had traps.  They had knives.  Some of them even had musket loaders and they kept food on the table.  They took care of their possessions so they were ready when needed.  They fought a war and freed the slaves with the same weapons they used for hunting.  If you are not smart enough or adroit enough to kill a deer with something smaller than an AK-15 then you are not smart enough to have a weapon that fires an ungodly amount of bullets in one minute.

And don't hand me that bull shit about a well regulated militia.  We have that under the government control.  And if you think you are going to over throw the government you are more full of shit than even I give you credit for.  (Now I will interject here that if Trump thinks he is going to have a parade at the cost of 30 million dollars because he wants one, then I might go a little ballistic myself.)  There is only one way to describe you people that refuse to let any gun laws pass and that is narcassistic morons.  Who dies from your gun rights that you so vehemently protect?  Innocent people.  Young people.  Children barely old enough to know what in the hell your gun is.

Send my prayers to Florida!  Send my prayers to Las Vegas.  Sandy Hook.  Columbine.  And on and on it goes.  The NRA gets richer.  Congress pads thier pockets.  Everyone's rights is protected except the innocent people who die from the bullets because the background check is a joke.  Everyone has a right to keep and bear arms.  And we bury our dead!  Everyone prays for the victims.  They try to figure out what the killer was thinking.  But no one does a damned thing!  We pass not one law to change anything.  NOT   ONE!!!!  Think about that.  Think about that every time you send your kid to school.  Think about it when you go to a concert.  Think about it when you tuck you baby in bed at night.

The NRA is a powerful agency.  They are in the business of selling guns.  They are not in the business of protecting any one.  They donate more money into the political system then our feeble minds are able to comprehend.  They have more Senators and Representatives in their pocket then we can even name.  So think about this.  There is no way of knowing who the next shooter will be because we can not know inside a person's head.  And we can not know where it will happen.  We only know that with our gun laws as they now exist, it will happen and it will happen with an AK-15 which is legal to buy and legal to sell.

Pueblo, Colorado is a spot on the map.   So is Las Vegas.  So was Columbine.  So was Sandy Hook.  And on and on.  It is always too soon to talk.  No!  It is not too soon...it is too late!  People are burying their children.  They should be celebrating the little accomplishments, but that hope is gone.  Nothing is taken for granted any more.  This has got to stop and it has to start with you!  One small voice crying in the darkness.  One will soon become 2.  Two will grow and a movement against the laws of this land will begin.  It has too.  It will not start in Washington, because those bastards are bought and paid for.  It has to start here in our town.  In our county.

If you want to pray about something, pray that we can gain control of our country and make it a safe place for our kids to live.  The things they face on a daily basis like bullying, hunger, discrimination, homework and peer pressure are bad enough without having to worry about being shot dead because someone just wanted to make a statement.

And if you want to pray about something that hasn't happened yet, pray your baby comes home tonight.

Learning to let go is not going to be that easy.

I have been active all my life so letting go is not going to be easy.  I live in a 2400 square foot house, and trust me, every inch of it is in use.  Most of it is used for "stuff" setting around full of more "stuff" or with stuff on top of it.  I am contemplating moving into a smaller place, but that means I have to leave some of the "stuff" behind, or give it away, or burn it, or sell it.  Now some of my "stuff" is good stuff.

So some one told me I should hold an item in my hands for 20 seconds and if it does not make me happy, throw it out.  I guess I will try that.  First I am going to pick up those 2 little toys on the computer desk and then go put them in the Jiraiya toy box because I know he is happy having them there.  My biggest problem seems to be in just deciding where to begin.  I could start on this desk, but that is not going to work because this is all important stuff.  Most important is that damned cat laying in the middle of everything.  But you must understand, she loves me and wants to be a part of everything I do.  She also likes to go way up high and bat stuff off onto the floor.

I could go start at the front door.  First we have a bag of clothes for Sister Nancy.  Then a small table that holds 6 egg cartons for Penny, mail I will probably never read and a bag of crochet that I carry when I go sit with someone.  Next is 4 milk crates of books that belong to PFLAG which will go to thier new home soon.  Very soon.  I have a card table, and a drafting table and 2 sewing machines in the corner.......

The point is, it is not just a matter of holding it for 20 seconds.  It is a matter of which part of my life is that item going to be used as a vital part later on today.  I should go down stairs and start digging there.  I have a box of basket weaving stuff that I absolutely had to have and then never touched after I bought it.  I want to give that to Erica, but first I have to find it.  I have giant gourds that I have had for most of my adult life that I am going to do something with any minute.  And if I can just find that box containing every Workbasket magazine ever published, I can put it on ebay and retire on the profits.  

I am sorry.  The 20 second second  rule is just not going to work for me.  I have a second plan that will no doubt be more condusive to my way of life.  I am going to get old and die.  The kids can come in here and do the 20 second thing and I am sure they are not connected to this shit like I am.  But then again, there is the possibility that they may actually see a use for all this stuff and they can take it home.  Course I am not sure any of them have room for 2 floor looms, 4 sergers, 5 sewing machines, a 6 needle embroidery machine, 7,000 bolts of fabric and 11, 426 spools of thread.  But I could be wrong.  

So here is the plan.  I am going to publish this blog and if I have anything you are interested in, give me a call.  Otherwise, I will be setting right in the middle of the whole mess wondering just where my things took possession of me rather than me possessing them.  

So having once more foiled myself in my desire to empty out this house and move into an efficiency  apartment in town, I will go have a Happy Valentine's Day coffee at Starbucks with my friend Nancy and buy 3 bags of goose food for the 8 geese out back that would never fit in the kitchen in town.  Oh, and the dog and cat seem to be at home here.  

But maybe some day.  Just not going to happen today.

So now what?

I am very naïve.  I have insurance on my car.  Full coverage to be exact.  I never use it.  I just have it.  My son bought an older car second car for 2 reasons.  First they needed an automatic because they needed a car for Amanda to drive since she does not drive a stick.  And his car gets like 13 miles to the gallon.  They live in Florence and he works in Pueblo and goes to the PCC here.

This was all working well and life was looking good until he was leaving work and some yoyo ran a stop sign, broadsided him and spun him head on into a third car.  Bret's car was totaled.  Of course Mr. Yoyo got a ticket.  His insurance called Bret that night and told him they would get him a rental car until they could replace his car.  Medical bills would be taken car of.  Well, here we are on the third week.  No, they do not pay medical.  No rental car has been forth coming and no one seems to want to talk to Bret.

So some one out there should be able to tell us what the next step is.  We called our lawyer, but he is not interested unless there is a big medical bill.  Since the kid HAS to work, and he HAS to go to school he really does not have time to be doctoring.  Life does go on.  And he needs another car that is dependable and gets good gas mileage like the one he had before someone totally ruined it.  I guess I am looking for a voice of experience to tell us what course to take rather then just set here and wish we knew what to do.

Any ideas?