Happy Halloween

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Choosing Beauty

I could write about Nicolle Wallace's reaction to three Fox faces trashing the motivations of Lt. Col. Alexander Vinman (she called them Chickenshit.... yup, right there on MSNBC, in the middle of the afternoon, and she was unapologetic).

I could write about the irony of the Trump kids' annoyance at the Biden kid's job-by-nepotism.

I could write about the USPS's inability to restart my mail after I cancelled and rescheduled the Hold Mail Request on-line, received a confirmation of the cancellation and new dates, went to the Post Office itself to make the request in person (and to pick up the accumulated mail) and which has stil not resulted in my mail ending up in my mailbox today.

I could, but I won't.

The sun is out, there's not a cloud in the sky, I drove with my windows down and made every light coming home.

My Wells Fargo adviser called me up and saved me $100 a year in fees.... just like that.

I wound my way through a new-to-me neighborhood as I made a wrong turn and explored the area surrounding my friends' home before returning to MapQuest and asking the lady for help.

Sitting in our seats 15 minutes after class ended, pelting her with opinions and questions, her joy resplendent on her face, our professor declared that she loved us:  Look at you!  This makes me so happy!

A friend and I discussed birth control in Russia in the 1870's while we washed our hands, side by side, discussing the invention of the cup in France.

The Karin Slaughter book I requested has arrived at the library.

Seret called, just to talk, and I heard my phone and had time to answer.  Talking to her reminded me of one of the many pearls of wisdom she shared.  Why choose to be in an unhappy place?  Why leave something beautiful for something that will make you sad?  It's a choice.  Choose beautiful.

Just as when she advised me to consider every bite of food that entered my mouth as a choice, rather than slavishly sticking to one meal plan or another, this made perfect sense. It is also easier to implement than I imagined.  I find myself, as always, using Albert Ellis's Rational Emotive Therapy's prescription to say it out loud, with feeling.

Stop thinking about that! has come out of my mouth on more than one occasion .... in my car, in my garden, walking to get the mail.  Falling asleep at night is a perfect time for those unhappy, unpleasant, sorrowful, frightening thoughts to appear; TBG would not be amused to find himself next to a shrieking creature.  Instead, I force myself to open my eyes and reset my brain, repeating It's a choice.  Choose Beauty.

It works for me, just as quickly as Ativan.

How Can It Be Starting All Over Again?

We've spent the last 5 Halloweens with Little Cuter and her family.  No one in our neighborhood decorates.  Only Christina-Taylor came to trick or treat.  There was no reason to stick around. 

Instead, we went to a completely decorated, kid infested, flat community, where every house was welcoming costumed beggars.  I trekked with FlapJilly the first two years; after that she ran faster than I could keep up.  I stayed at the kids' house, toasting my tootsies on the portable fire pit, dispensing candy and resting my rehabbing joints.

They moved to Indiana, and we followed them there. Their new neighborhood is just as wonderful as their old one; the plan is still the same.  We were all ready to join them this year, when illness caused us to reassess the situation.

We woke up two days before the flight, feeling as if every bug we'd ever encountered had invaded our bodies.  I was 12 hours ahead of TBG in all the symptoms, and they kept coming.  The day before we were to leave, we called Little Cuter.

Do not bring that sick to my house was her succinct response.

$250 and a few computer clicks later, we were rescheduled for early November, she agreed to mail my green mylar hair in time for Halloween, and I'd gotten over my anguish over changing plans.  We spent the weekend feeling punk, until Sunday, when we actually felt quite human.

That lasted 24 hours.

This afternoon, with TBG leading the way, the symptoms have returned.  We're tired.  Our throats and glands are trying to act up.  Our heads are pounding.  He looks red and has a little fever; that's the only thing we aren't sharing.

It's only Monday.  We don't leave for 7 days.  I'm sure we'll be fine by then.

This feels like a mini-flu, like our bodies know what's attacking, like our defenses have been mobilized and are doing their best to fight the invasion.  We got our flu shots a month ago; the nurse told me that if I did get the flu it wold be a much weaker version than if I skipped the shot.

If you haven't gotten your shot yet, Go Do It Right Now.  We feel awful, and this is the mini-flu.

Seeds and an Air Quality Issue

It was busy last Wednesday in Grandma's Garden.

There was, as always, watering to be done.  The tomatoes are very satisfying to water; the leaves perk right up.

 Raking, as always, was a prized activity.  The notion of the rake as an outdoor broom, the shovel as a dustpan, and the green barrow as the trash can has established deep roots in a dedicated group of gardeners, who take great pride in their work.

The main event was refurbishing The Hanging Gardens of Prince. 

The baskets were filled with soil, and your hands and your arms and your bracelet got very very dirty and you just couldn't stop giggling because Grandma Suzi wants you to feel the soil that will nurture your seeds so being dirty was just fine.

 The seeds were very different, and had different needs. 
The hollyhocks were flat and round and black and tan and just needed a gentle push into the soil

The nasturtiuim seeds, on the other hand, were bigger and went in deeper.... 1" to be somewhat precise.  They are experienced enough to know that the seeds must be gently covered and watered in.

 Many scholars knew which tip-to-knuckle finger was exactly one inch, and Grandma Suzi was suitably impressed.
Those who lacked that particular digit used the 6" white and red plastic ruler Grandma Suzi's been carrying around since she lived in Chicago. 
"When you find a good tool, you hang on to it"  - one of the many lessons learned in the garden.

 There was rhythmic chanting coming from the other end of the garden.  It was a lovely sound, a delightful background to the distribution of seeds down at my end.   A scholar presented me with a fallen gonfreda petal.

 As I looked up to take her picture and agree that she could take it home,   I noticed a dust cloud behind her.  Someone was coming to alert me!

They were chanting DUST....DUST.....DUST......

 They were the last group of the day; there would be no further passersby to be dusted. 
The other gardeners were working on the hanging baskets, far away from the oncoming haboob. 
As far as I could see, no tools were raised above shoulders.

 ince there was no harm being done (beyond breathing the dust they were joyfully creating

 Grandma Suzi smiled and, as the dust settled and the clean-up crew took over,

took pictures of some Garden Kids.

Medicare Woes

It's the verbiage that gets me.  Coupled with the bad grammar, it's another indication of how this President has let the country devolve into stupidity and chaos.

The Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) premium amount for 2020 wasn't available in time to include with this bill.  You're being billed the current 2019 premium rate for January 2020.  Your next bill will reflect the new rate for 2020 and any difference in the amount due for January 2020.

That was printed at the top of the insert in the billing envelope.  If there were ever a sign that the world has gone to hell in a hand-basket, that's it.  How that is possible is beyond me.  There are government employees who are supposed to be on top of this issue.  

Recognizing that, I called my Congresswoman.  The lovely young man who answered the phone thought he might be able to help me with a Medicare question, but, alas, he did not have a ready answer at the tip of his fingers.  We laughed, he put me on hold, and he went to find the Health Care person.  

A brief wait (with no Muzak!) and he returned to tell me that she was as flummoxed as we were.  She wanted to do some investigation - I wanted to know where to direct my ire - and he wondered if she might call me back later, after gathering facts.  Agreeing that facts were important and that my issue was not pressing, I left my contact information and hung up.

The bill is due on the 25th of this month.  Recognizing that the USPS might take its own sweet time in delivering the payment to St. Louis, Missouri, I went on-line to mymedicare.gov to pay it.  Signing in was easy, though the popups were annoying, and arriving at the payment page was simple, too.  Everything was going well until I scrolled to the bottom of the page where this notice awaited:

It may take 3 days to process your payment.

Three days?  Where's the float on that money during that period of time?  Why would it take 3 days for the bits and bytes to find one another and transfer the funds?  Another question I suppose Medicare will have to answer if my payment isn't processed in the next two days, before the due date and I end up protesting late fees.

And, it got worse the more I read.

Due to a processing error, a small percentage of people with Medicare who pay their Medicare premiums through Easy Pay had premiums deducted twice from their bank account. We are currently working with the Treasury Department to reverse the duplicate Medicare premium deduction and have the erroneous deduction credited back to bank accounts, as soon as possible. You can contact us at 1-800-MEDICARE (or use the Live Chat feature) with any questions you have.

Imagine living Social Security check to Social Security check, budgeting and planning so that you don't run out of money at the end of the month.  How must it feel to wait for Medicare to talk to Treasury to fix the problem?  A processing error?  Are there no checks and balances? 

These are old people we're talking about; we frighten more easily, are more vulnerable, have less resilience than we used to.  Double dipping by the government is bad in any situation.  Imagining this happening to G'ma as her mental faculties declined has given me a bellyache.

By this point, I'm really less concerned about the missing commas between January and 2020.

But wait.  There's more.  This was on the bill from TBG's last visit to his GP.

PSA SCREENING - NOT A MEDICALLY NECESSARY SERVICE

Apparently, neither AARP's Medicare Advantage plan nor Medicare itself thinks that prevention is better than treatment.  There's an Adjustment on the bill, which brings the cost down by two thirds, but there's still that pesky $20.44 to pay. 

I spoke to my insurance advisor about this; she agrees that it's ridiculous but told me that my complaints would fall on deaf ears.  Others have tried, and failed.

I'm glad he had the test. I'm glad we had the money to pay for it.  I am beyond sad that my government doesn't want to help me keep him healthy.

I did some sleuthing on the interwebs, and found this, from healthcaredive.com back in June, 2017:

HHS currently has 17 vacant positions that are important enough to require Senate confirmation, according to data from the Washington Post. .....and other rank-and-file HHS positions remain unfilled. The cause appears to be a combination of lack of experience on Trump’s transition team, a federal hiring freeze Trump has administered and his stated belief that many government positions are unnecessary.

Perhaps it was the duty of some of those unnecessary government employees to figure this stuff out.

Medicare used to be a lot easier to navigate, when I was doing it for G'ma, back when they weren't double-charging, back when they knew how much money they wanted, back when.......

As I said to the billing officer at the medical practice this morning - VOTE!

Conflicting Values

I hate it when Doing The Right Thing gets in the way of Doing What I Want.

When I wore stockings, the Gentlemen Prefer Hanes ad campaign forced me to write a sternly feminist letter to the company, forswearing their brand forever.  

Unfortunately, they were the hose that fit me most perfectly, at a price point I could afford (especially on sale at Macy's), with a look and feel that I loved.  I kept up my outward disgust while sporting the product.  I laughed at myself as I shopped.

Then, there were grapes. I was appalled that my supposedly woke sister and her friends were happily munching on anti-labor grapes.  They'd never heard of Cesar Chavez; they spit out the seeds and moved on to watermelon.  Lettuce was a little harder to enforce, because the labeling was uncertain.

I'm sure that we figured something out about the roughage, though I can't remember exactly what it was.  I know for a fact that those were the last grapes bought that summer.

Daddooooo made G'ma return the perfect wooden skirt hangers because they were made in West Germany.  His antipathy for the country apparently waned as he aged; his favorite car turned out to be a Volkswagon Rabbit.  Volkswagon.... a People's Car..... a Nazi car, a phrase I tossed at him once and once only.  He was flustered.  I was surprised that he didn't have a ready answer.  We never revisited the topic again.

That was all then.  Chocolate and the Cubbies are now.

I did some research, until I couldn't stand it any more.  Here's what the WaPo has to say about it, in a June 2019  article titled Cocoa's child laborers. 

Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago tI am  using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labor. Behind much of the world's chocolate is the work of thousands of impoverished children on West African cocoa farms.

Not-Kathy promises to investigate ethically sourced unsweetened baking chocolate but my brownie recipe has remained unchanged - and much loved - for decades.... and it depends upon a Nestle product.  Not-Kathy's promise came right on the heels on my wondering aloud if I had to abandon making brownies in order to be a responsible human being.

After all, child labor is..... well, child labor.

Chocolate, all 4 of them replied to me in one loud voice, is CHOCOLATE!

So, I've seen where their boundaries lie.

What about sports?  Big Cuter got a Sports Divorce (predicated on facts which might change and thus result in re-establishment of the relationship) from his beloved 49'ers after they treated Colin Kaepernick so poorly, but that break up was tempered by the whole Football as America's Blood Sport meme, coupled with the concussion and CTE admissions.

I am faced with a more troubling dilemma.  

President Trump is coming to Chicago for a fundraiser with Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts. read the headline in last week's Chicago Tribune.

I wrote to all the companies on the Ivanka's-stuff-sold-here list, refusing to shop there until they stopped being a venue helping to enrich the Trumps.  I advocated for boycotts related to Breitbart and Fox News (the Fox Sports channel is included in our basic package; I avoid the conflict by amortizing the cost and recognizing that any protest would be futile).

But my Cubs?!?!?!?  Can I give up my Cubs because their owner will use the monies he earns from their success to support that which I find insupportable?

I suppose that if I buy no more Cubs gear I can still cheer for the laundry... divorcing those who own the team from what the team means to me.

Can't I?

Probably Not What They Had In Mind......

...... or was it?

I love the jams and aiolis from Stonewall Kitchen (like Soldier Field, there's only one of them).  The fruit spreads are natural and seasonal (I'm opening the strawberry rhubarb right now).  The savory spreads are made with oil instead of mayonnaise; it feels somehow less decadent to lick the spoon clean because of that.

I could only find them at our local Breadsmith , and their selection varied.  So, swallowing my desire to shop local, I went on-line. 

It was lovely.  The site was easy to navigate, I found it simple to meet the minimum for free shipping.  I have emergency house gifts available if I need one before I need the contents myself.  I was content.

And then the package arrived.  It was filled with those problematic white poofy peanuts, the ones you never send to a young mother with a toddler and a dog, especially if they are coddling gifts wrapped in glittery tissue paper.

It also contained this set of instructions, which I'll retype below for those who don't want to enlarge the screen.

Psst...

We're good inside and out.

Not only do our products taste

 great, but they're also shipped

in eco-friendly materials, like our

packing peanuts, which are starch

based and fully dissolvable in water.

Would that that were true.

This was a big box.  There were a lot of those theoretically fully dissolvable eco-friendly peanuts in there.  Having wreaked havoc on my kitchen plumbing by pouring starch down the drain (every Thanksgiving as I peeled potatoes into the disposal and clogged the pipes until one kindly plumber showed me the folly of my ways as I watched him clear out the u-joint)  I was reluctant to up-end them into the sink itself.

Instead, I took a handful and tossed them into a big pot of water.  And I waited.  Seret and Mr DreamyCakes and TBG waited with me.  We watched as nothing much happened.  We looked back as time passed.  This is as good as it got: 

I collected the scum and tossed it in the trash.  It may be eco-friendly, and I may not be on the greatest terms with the pack rats and the javelina in the neighborhood, but I wouldn't subject them to whatever that is in the strainer.  

We watered the in-ground lantana with the remaining starchy liquid.  So far, the plant has survived..... as have the rest of those peanuts.  I'm trying to resist the temptation to pack my Brownie List with them..... and share the wealth with my friends and family.

What's wrong with crumpled brown paper?  This is more trouble than it's worth.

No Comments. I Could Write Nothing Else Tonight

I haven’t seen her in months.  Today, she arrived at the neighborhood bbq as TBG and I were making new friends.

I hesitated, but only for a moment.

I walked over as she wrote her name tag, smiling at her son as I drew near.

I hugged her, pressing my face gently into her hair as she continued to look down.

Hi, it’s good to see you, or some such banalities were exchanged and then I walked away, collected TBG and our folding chairs, and left.

It’s all I can do for her.

I can still smell her shampoo.  That has to be enough.

Too Much Fun

We ate.  We walked.  We swam.

We talked.  A lot.

We did a 15 minute meditation, then we ate some more.

And now it's way past my bedtime and we're still at it.

I'll be back after the weekend. Right now, I'm needed on the couch.

I'm having too much fun to create coherent sentences.

Friends

There are some people who fill the holes in your life so perfectly that it seems like magic.  Two of them are coming to us this afternoon.  They are in a rental car driving down from Sky Harbor Airport, and I am ready.

I have the provisions they requested; it's so easy to shop when instead of coffee she tells me Whole Foods Allegro.  It took two stops and some searching, but almost everything they need is here.  I cannot be blamed for adverse agricultural conditions devastating the mini-cucumber crop; the English cucumbers will have to suffice.  Otherwise, I have a wide selection from the categories she suggested, and the exact items when specified.

Every step down every aisle of every store gave me joy.  In class yesterday, the professor discussed the Russian concept of the Hearth Angel; that's just what I felt like today. I straightened and prettified and fluffed and plumped.  I rearranged and reconfigured and tested it all.... which led to this purchase.

I thought the bedside lamp was broken until I discovered that the plug was controlled from the switch by the door.  That's convenient for some things, but neither the reading lamp nor the clock was well served by it.  This covers up the door controlled outlet and offers a wide variety of insertion points.  It was the finishing touch on my preparations.

Now I just have to wait.

Sad

I've been walking around in a grumpus mood for the last few days.  I have a heavy weight on my heart.  Everyone I love is relatively healthy and relatively happy; I have no new complaints in the personal department.  That means I am in one of those rare moments when all is at peace, and I should be too, except, I'm not.

It's Donald Trump's fault.

I open the paper (yes, the physical paper, delivered to my driveway every morning before sunup) to the local news about the roads, skipping past the front page battle over Tucson as a Sanctuary City.  I smile at the comics I find after purposely avoiding the second section, the one with the National and International news.  Those are headlines I need to avoid if I want to stay moderately sane.

I told TBG this afternoon that I was sad for the Kurds.   And I am. 

But I'm sadder for America, for what we have become, for who we are as seen by the rest of the world.  Russian soldiers patrolling abandoned American positions is not the image I want in my head right now, yet it's on a continuous loop behind the talking heads.... and I can't seem to tear my self (sic) away from it.

I feel as if I need to bear witness.  I need to watch it and be horrified and and and and......  what can I do?  I called my elected officials;  even Martha McSally is appalled by the withdrawal.  I can't order the troops back in.  My voice has been heard.  I'm powerless, and I don't like it one bit.

Pence and Pompeo are taking their dog and pony show over there.  What can they say about the mess their boss created?  Just more noise, when what I want is less stupidity and hubris. 

Because when John Bolton is the sanest person in the story, you know I'm right to be a grumpus. 

85/15

That's the blend of ground beef I buy. 

That's also the balance between recovery and disability I face.  On the surface, that's a very, very good thing. 

I remember when I couldn't bend over to empty the bottom rack of the dishwasher.  Picking up a plate down there- let alone a stack of three or four of them - was impossible.  Once the plates were out of the machine, turning and walking the two or three steps to the cabinet was excruciating. 

It was much easier to concentrate on the top rack and let TBG bother with the bottom.  It's our division of labor even now, almost none years later.  When I'm alone, I can.  When he's there, why should I?

That's the dilemma of 85/15.  A physiatrist, looking at my Activities of Daily Living, would be delighted.  I can hear it now:  At my age.... with my injuries.... 85% is wonderful.

That last 15% though, that's all the fun stuff.

I gardened,   Getting up and down off the ground,  shlepping soil and plants and Little Cuter's gifted kneeling bench, filling the watering can and carrying it back and forth to the newly planted beds - none of that was fun for me.  It used to be. 

Yes, I was able to do all those things.  Yes, I did them with strength and balance and didn't have to stop to rest.  Yes, I couldn't do those things until recently.  Yes, I'm glad that I am able to do them.

But they exhaust me.  They make my hip hurt.  Going from sitting to kneeling and back again is, I find, an inherent part of my gardening experience.  Just thinking about the logistics, let alone the discomfort, keeps me in one position longer than is comfortable or compatible with the task at hand. 

Standing up and seeing the work from a distance creates a similar situation.  So does needing a drink from the garage refrigerator and kissing my husband when he comes out to admire my work, both of which I did and both of which led to loud announcements of those feats.

The announcements were along profane lines not suitable for a (mostly) family-friendly blog.  I was pissed and I didn't mind letting the world in on the secret.

And that is all it took.  I let it out and then I laughed at myself because 85% is better than 0% and I have miles to go before I sleep so who knows...... maybe next year I'll write about how 90% aggravates me.

Thanks for letting me rant.  I feel much better now.

Happy Birthday, Daddooooo

A somewhat altered version of a previous post or two.

It was always very confusing - was his birthday the 12th or the 14th of October?  One of them was Columbus Day and the other was Herb's Day and to this moment I'm still not sure, especially since the bureaucrats moved Chris's Day to the generic second Monday.

He was a confusing person, so this is not surprising.  I never knew if I wanted to hug him or throttle him.

Deaf-as-a-door-nail, hearing aid batteries constantly squealing or dying or resting comfortably in the breast pocket of his plaid wash-and-wear shirt, he monopolized conversations so that he would know what was going on. That works well until your audience hits second grade or so; after that, it becomes a full fledged "Herb Attack."

I know this because I have been guilty of them, myself.

His tales were fascinating.  If the facts weren't really facts, well, they should have been.  He went to City College with Richard Feynman.  He lived down the block from Jonas Salk. He knew every cobblestone, every cornerstone, every brick and street sign in Manhattan.  Serving as tour guide in The Big Apple made him about as happy as anything else I can imagine... and I've been sitting here thinking about it for a while.

Surrounded by his grandchildren-of-a-certain-age, those who were sentient but not yet sarcastic, he could sit for hours, regaling them with stories about the chickens they raised in the backyard on Hessler Avenue; about the boat he and his brothers built one summer... the boat that almost floated; about the time it rained frogs; and about all the times he got into trouble at school, because he just wouldn't stay still.

He probably deserved a diagnosis or medication; born in 1916, he was "just being Herbert." He continued being just himself, sui generis as I called him in the obituary I wrote for the New York Times, until the very end.

He died at home, between the first and second commercial of the 10 o'clock episode of Law and Order on the Saturday night before Thanksgiving.  There's some confusion about the date, since the hospice nurse didn't get there to sign the death certificate until early Sunday morning.  Like his birthday, I need cues to keep the date straight.  Like most things Daddooooo related, this is not now nor has it ever been easy.

The funeral home attendants gave her a moment in the hallway before they wheeled him out the front door.  G'ma leaned over, kissed him, and then admonished him, one last time: "Behave yourself, Herbert!  Don't give them any trouble."  The paramedics were bemused.  My mother looked right back at them.  "If you'd known him, you'd understand."

Happy Birthday, Herb, you strange and singular father of mine.  Happy Birthday to YOU!