Calamity in the News

I read the news a lot, mostly for the entertainment of it all, the corruption of politicians, the party crashers at the White House and so on. I find it to be sometimes overwhelming when I read of the excesses of government agencies or large corporations who abuse the positions they hold to further their gains. Then there is just the sheer lunacy of some City offals officials that carries the news to new lows.

For instance, a group called Medical Billing Advocates of America that helps patients to review their hospital bills reveals that hospitals are overcharging patients by obscene amounts, sort of like those manufacturing companies did a while back charging $1,043 for a hammer or some such thing while greedily lining their pockets with taxpayer’s hard got dollars and sitting on their cozy government contracts to rip off and funnel money back to keep getting said contracts.

The thing I liked about this article was the names hospitals gave to hide the truth of what they were really charging for. So clever, so imaginative. I would love to have this person’s job. I could go into work every day, get my cup o’joe (on the house), browse the internet news, facebook and favorite websites, check my emails then try to come up with catchy names for standard everyday items to make them sound more important and worth charging an outrageous sum to dispense to patients who were not even going to see their bill until they left the hospital.

Example: They found that they were being charged $12 for a “mucus recovery system”; essentially a box of beside Kleenex tissues. You know that box? Its slightly bigger than a credit card holder and contains palm sized piece squares of tissue (?) that compromise the effectiveness of not blowing your nose on your chest and gives you splinters from the cheap wood pulp fibers. A normal box of tissues purchased at would cost no more than $2 and the tissues would easily cover your nose, catch your “mucus” and not give you rug burns on the sides of the nostrils.

Then there was the “fog eliminator device”. Basically a piece of gauze to wipe down surgical equipment for which they hungrily charged $57!! Unbelievable no? No. Not even surprising anymore really.

Same price for the “cough support device” aka Teddy Bear for kids who are sick. I never got a cough control device when I was at the hospital. I wonder what they would call an enema? My imagination does cartwheels here. What would YOU think they could call it?

How about those stupid socks with the rubber bits on the bottom? Or the bed-pan? Is your imagination jumping through hoops now too? Its giving me a headache. I’ll have to ask for a couple of brain swelling inflammation pills.

Original Lactaid Containers

Without saying the word breast I don’t know how else to describe them so I’ll just allude to them as the Original Milk containers. 

Recently, I finally got a Smash-o-gram on the twins. I seem to be doing things contrary to how the Government says I should do things. I waited 5 years THEN got my mammogram. Five years ago the Government was suggesting that I get one every year but I said NO! I hate it when they tell me when I should and shouldn’t do stuff. So now The Federal Taskforce (Kevorkian must be a member, I doubt if any women are on it) are suggesting [mandating] that I wait five years then get one. I couldn’t run out fast enough to get it done.

This is the same Task Force that changed their minds and said that tests for pap smears and prostate cancer didn’t seem to be effective and that a high fiber diet doesn’t do anything to prevent cancer. So now they’re saying women don’t need to bother with smash-o-grams or even self-examinations.

It’s like you really can’t believe anything the Government says anymore. After all, eggs were once bad for us to eat but now tests say they don’t raise cholesterol levels. It’s the government that ends up with eggs on their faces. [they look so much more desirable that way]

Well good. Now they’ve freed up my daily to-do list. Maybe I’ll make time now to take up the new Chinese dialect “Learning to speak in American dollars”. Next they’ll say that reading is bad for your skin, or flossing should only be done at the beach. Can’t they just commit to making sense or just being consistent? All this news makes me think that doctors might be the wrong people involved in the breast exam issue. The task force will probably suggest that young perky women not let anyone near their breasts unless the plan is to have sex. Preferably with a politician.

Remember the old food pyramid? That went out the window a few years ago too. See what I mean here? We may be headed back to wearing garlic around our necks and saving leeches in bottle jars for emergencies.

Instead of government bureaucrats forcing insurance companies to cut back such services they should mandate that insurance companies disallow people from even visiting a hospital unless absolutely necessary. Hospitals are the FIRST place to go if you want to get seriously sick. It’s almost more dangerous hanging around a hospital than calling yourself an Honest Politician.

Back to my boob study. They did find an Asymetrical Nodularity on my left juice container positioned at 3 o’clock. But the report said to come back in six months for another squeezolgy test. I wonder if they will be illegal by then.  

Quote of the Day:  In politics, the keywords are Trust and Honesty.  Oh wait. This just in:  They changed the keywords to Greed and Self-Interest.  (my unbiased opinion) [actually that's an oxymoron.]

Interesting factoid:  Here's an Anagram for you.  Take the letters in Election Results and you can spell Lies, Let's Recount!

The Fool's Run

I had an appointment with a Pain Management doctor today to find out the results from a left shoulder MRI that was done a few weeks ago. Apparently, I have a torn ligament in my left shoulder!   I’ll be darn. No wonder it hurt so much.

When I first went to see him (Oct. 29th) on my first run, I thought it was the compressed nerve in my neck affecting my nerves in my left arm. He prescribed me some pain meds and a muscle relaxer.

On my second run today I took the prescription muscle relaxer that I got from him at my previous visit and gave them back to him. He looked surprised and I said that I brought them in so he could see that I didn’t take them except one and then a half. So basically I handed him back 88 ½ pills in the little prescription bottle. I told him that the prescription was probably meant for someone a little heavier than me, LIKE AN ELEPHANT! Seriously, I said that.

I took one the first night and when I woke in the night to use the poddy I felt like I had been tranked by a lion tamer or I just broke out of the Sanitarium on a Librium high. It was horrible. It was all so slow-mo that I think I even slammed down on the toilet and bruised my thighs and butt from the seat cover. Thank gawd summer is over and I don’t go to the pool anymore. You never know when you got bruises on your backside.
The next time I decided to get smart and break it in half. I was pretty uncomfortable and figured it would take about a ½ hour to kick in. Wrong. I kept wondering when this thing was going to provide relief. It took about 2 hours. Well hell, if I’d known that I would have stuck to a beer and a shot of tequila! (maybe two shots) Those are the only kind of shots I’m taking.  

I told him he could just throw them out but I think he pocketed them when I left. He did give me a new prescription for another relaxer. I’m experimenting tonight.  

Maybe I’ll put on my pool tire ring for safety or place it on the toilet seat for that nocturnal visit. I hope this one isn’t another return.

So I asked the Doc what do I do or what can I do about this? He said you have three options. 1) you can wait to see if it will heal on its own 2) I can give you a shot of cortisone to relieve the pain and 3) you can have surgery for it.

#2 immediately gave me IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). I could almost feel my intestines locking into a Chinese Finger Pull.

#3 is out of the question on my kind of insurance (county). I don’t even like to drive by county hospitals. The lines inside are so slow they remind me of Dial Up service on my first computer.

Naturally, I’m going with the pain meds, muscle relaxer and time. I’ve got plenty of time to encourage my ligament to heal thyself.

A shot my ass! No, wait….I didn’t mean that. I mean I just don’t want a shot. I’ve got to be so careful nowadays. These peeps don’t have a sense of humor.


Quote of the Day:  I like Florida.  Everything is in the eighties: the temperature, the ages, and the IQs.  George Carlin

Interesting factoid:  In the year 1979 snow fell for 30 minutes in the Sahara.  (I love these odd facts.  Helps me play Jeopardy better.) [see above quote]

Calamity Jane's Adversion to the H1N1 Shot (all shots)

I. Hate. Shots!  

Don't think my body likes them and my brain hates them, but my imagination goes wild with them.  I read too many murder mysteries.   When someone mentions that I have to have a shot I'm like a cat that can go from sleeping peacefully to bolting out the door at the bark of a dog.  The dogs name is Shot. 

Which brings me to sharing with you that I have heel spurs on both heels of my feet that give me great ache and pain depending on how long I stand or walk or basically, how long I'm on my feet.  If the answer to that measure is a lot then the pain level is equal by 5pm every day.  I took it upon myself to see if there was some way around this foot-draggin problem so I went to see a podiatrist. 

He was a nice enough guy I guess.  Basic generic Doc in a lab coat.  The night before I had been making these severed finger cookies for a Halloween Party so I had red food dye all over my fingers that wouldn't come off around the cuticles and fingertips too well.  I was also reading the book Scarpeta by Patricia Cornwell which has a silver cover with bullit shots through it and blood dripping down it.  So when the Doc came in I put the book in my lap to begin the analysis of the feet.  As he was checking he looked up at me and gasped saying "you're bleeding!"  I was pretty surpised at that so I said where? and he said "your hands". After looking at them I began to laugh telling him I was making severed finger cookies the night before... blah, blah, blah.  He looked at me and then went back to the investigation of my heels.  I was thinking to myself that NO ONE here in Florida has a sense of humor.  They take every little thing like you say.  I really miss Californians who have learned to laugh even when they get the Terminator for Governor.

After several moments of pushing and prodding he started to fill up a needle with a cocktail of 3 different drugs.  I calmly asked what he was doing and he said he was going to give me a shot in each foot.  I blanched, fought back my cat like reflex to bolt, and asked if it would hurt?  He then showed me the summation of Floridian humor by replying "It won't hurt me a bit."   

In return, I passed on a new lesson in CA humor by telling him that if it did hurt I was sure he would feel it!  We shared that glance known to Gladiators before facing the lions.  They just don't get humor here.

Well, the shot did hurt.  In fact, I thought I was going to die right on that chair.  I am certain that as my face grew as red as my fingers he got alarmed, then when I suddenly grabbed my purse off the floor and started digging through it vigorously  maniacally, he stuttered out "what are you looking for?" I could barely breath (he was also reminding me to do just that while calling the nurse to get me a cold compress) so I couldn't talk very good without breath and just popped out my little Mona Lisa fan from Italy that my dearest Cousin Guy got me and I said "my fan." 

I was too agitated hyperventilating to figure out that I think he reconsidered the severed finger thing and blood on the book and my earlier comment and probably thought I was reaching for a gun or machete to educate him on pain. 

On a plus note, I believe my right foot had a spontaneous healing from the fear that it too would recieve a shot.  Doc agreed that we wouldn't mess with the right foot. 

Quote of the Day:  We're young only once, but with humor, we can be immature forever.  Art Gliner.

Interesting factoid:  The telephone has been one of the most profitable inventions in the history of the United States.  But you don't have to call me, just leave a comment on the blog.  It's easier.

Fried Eyes to the Max

OMG.  I spent the Day watching the trilogy of all the Mad Max films with Mel Gibson.  I've never spent such a beautiful day indoors doing this type of activity before.  This was a first! 

It was really kind of cool to sit and watch each one back to back.  Now they're having a Matrix trilogy.  I'm NOT going to do that.  My eyes have had enough for the Day. 

Quote of the Day: You are not drunk if you are lying on the floor without hanging on.  Dean Martin

Interesting factoid: In the Middle Ages, peacocks and swans were sometimes served at Christmas dinner.  The Pox on those horrible people... oh wait....

A Cat in a Jam

I figure after all my complaining yesterday about my situation that it would be good to show that I'm not the only rowboat in a hurricane.  This little Black and White kitty got his day in the barrel too!  Not that I'm feeling all that much better but it did make me laugh! 



Quote of the Day: Two roads forked in the woods and I took the road less traveled.....by state troopers [we have state troopers here in Florida same guys like CA Highway Patrol but different hats]

Interesting factoid:  Hawaiian Poi (Taro Root) is boiled to remove its poison then pounded into a murkey purple paste to eat.  Non-Hawaiians think it tastes like murkey purple paste.  Don't know what the point is but I don't understand Spam either.

Meany Me

I think I should start a new Blog Category called Meany Me. On some days I’m just gonna be mean. I’m down with that. I’ve realized my shortcomings a long time ago, somewhere around my third marriage.

Anywayhay, I had to “hang out” at the County Social Services Dept. today to file some stuff to get some attention to some important matters blah, blah, blah, but I had to sit for a Real. Long. Time. Try 7 hours. In a hard deformed plastic chair. In an ice-cold room.

Now let’s take the above paragraph and peel away the onion skins to see what we really have up there. 1 County; 2 Social; 3 Services; 4 Dept.

For number One I’d prefer to attend the County fair but in all ‘fairness’ they had enough cows, clowns and bull there to cover that trip.

Second, I wouldn’t call it a Social because at those uppity events they serve food and chilled Chardonnay. There was no food near that place. Literally. If you go to one of these “Co. Social Services Depts” bring your own damn food. Seriously. Otherwise prepare to walk out of there 7 hours later like you just got off the Cannibal Cruise Lines. They did have a water fountain. Don’t you love those fountains that tease you with a trickle and a squirt? They’re so playful, almost as if Steven King was inside the little metal box messing with you.  Actually, the fountain was so pathetic I think it was crying not fountain-ing. I would no more put my mouth close to that gurgling spout than I would put my lips on Michael Moore’s jiggling buttcheeks. If there is any disease, germ or bacteria that can jump its gotta be on that overused fountain. So now we turn a 7 hour ordeal into a Carnival Cruel Lines edition of “water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink”. I should have killed myself for forgetting to bring my water bottle and ended this misery before I made you suffer through reading about it (but I’m a meany, ‘member?). I had to go into the bathroom, wash my hands, then cup up water to drink. It tasted somewhere between Fish Tank Dirty and Rusted Metal Bathroom Supplies.

Next on the list is SERVICES. I capped this one to stand out on its own. I’m writing an evil letter to Webster’s Dictionary to change the meaning of this word. It has nothing whatever to do with helping others. I’ll request that they put down a new description of my own experience with this word today. Under the word ‘services’ put [see Alfred Hitchcock] and maybe add a photo of some flock of birds stuck in a cheap motel room shower. After sitting through 7 hours of hearsay (stuff all the other people were talking about) and finally getting my name called I found out that I’d have to “come again” another day. Seriously? Wouldn’t I rather have a few root canals or a greenish weeping infection where I sit? Noooooo, I got more paperwork to fill out and about the best help I received was the lady telling me to “ask next time I come in if I made the cut”. Meaning, should I waste 7 hours again or just ask next time. Why didn’t anyone say that when I signed in??? She said they “filled their quota for the day and couldn’t be taking on new cases” or whatever. I was so zombified and calorie deprived I just got up and left. I didn’t even have the energy to give my favorite death stare.

The last word is Dept. Or Department. Kinda like Decapitation is ‘ment’ to be taking ‘de part of me off’. Or how about the abriviated word. If you look at it jest right you could imagine the p being a fallen over b. That would bring it back to Debt. The county is definitely in the red. You can see it in the eyes of every one that works there. Glassy and red. [maybe you can see my stress building with this paragraph? I'm not sure if I lost more than just 7 hours today]

So next time you ever notice that you drove by a place with the words County; Social; Services; Dept. on the building I hope you say a little prayer for my next visit.

Pray I don’t do something stoopid and end up on the evening news.

Note to Self: Next visit bring Voodoo Doll w/pins and red food dye.

New Blog, New Name, Let's Roll!

I'm hitting up the blogging bidniss again.  I understand that if I don't blog [write] I tip and tilt like a cheap arcade game pin-ball machine. 

I moved from California all the way here to Florida this summer and I'm adjusting to many things.  I'm working as a temp for agencies when I can get work, I'm working through the County Healthcare processess to get my health looked at, I'm living with my childhood buddy/friend/familymember Gloria and her sweet little cat named NiNi. (The cat doesn't know it but I've been calling her Meany.)  She's not mean, but I am a little bit so I guess that's why I do that.  I also call her NiNi-Banini and neither of us knows what that means.  Here's a photo of the little fuzz ball.  She's like Little Queen Nefertit resting on the handmade carpet I brought back from Egypt 5 years ago.  I love them both. 

Now that it's November here outside the Tampa area the weather has gotten more like Fall instead of Living Hell Hot.  Now the temperatures hover around 80.  Brrrr, so fall-like.  I moved here at the worst possible time in Mid-June.  I figure if I can live through the summer here then... heck, I forget what.  Darn heat stroked daime bramage. 

I never drove so far in my whole life and I never will again (I hope).  The only thing that made it less daunting was that my dearest ever best cousin Guy drove with me from Las Vegas to Tampa.  Sometimes we were laughing so hard that we couldn't see where we were going from the tears.  That 5 day trip will be with me forever.  Guy is so funny, talented, clever, intelligent, an amazing incredible artist and did I mention funny? 

He loves dinosaurs so we stopped at the big HUGE Dino Museum outside of Tucumcari, New Mexico for the thrill of seeing old bones glued together, and true to our 'form' I snapped a candid photo of Guy running away from a threatening beast of bones, the Meat-a-Saurus.  He was saved by my flash as it blinded the beast.  WTF am I saying here?!   Anyway, we had fun.

So this is how I'm going to fill my days while I work at getting work, complain about this and that and generally try to amuse myself.  I hope you come back often and enjoy your visits with me. 

A Favorite - Category

I've been blogging for several years, entertaining myself as I go along.  I have decided I need a Category to place all my old Re-Posts here in my new blog since I've deleted the first one called Brainhairballs years ago.  My second blog, The Kitchen Bitch logs my days of learning and cooking at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco.  I'll re-post from time to time some of my very FAVORITES.

Here is the first....

A FAVORITE

I had to go to Macy’s yesterday to buy a black bra and girdle to make me look good in a formal dress I’m wearing to a big deal wedding this Saturday. I’m a size 12 and have been for a couple of years now. I was much happier at size 10 but somehow the pounds keep adding on ever so slowly. It’s like you go to sleep at night and a tiny ounce of fat creeps into your bed and you think maybe it’s just the cat so you cozy up to the pillow and fall back to sleep. When you wake up in the morning you pet the cat, kiss your husband and off to work you go. You’re never the wiser until the 16th or 30th nocturnal visit from the first fat ounces cousins. Then when you weigh yourself you noticed two extra pounds. How the heck did that happen you say?

So now I have to squeeze myself into this terrorist girdle and I hope I suffocate some of those fat cousins so they die and get flushed out with my next martini. My family keeps telling me I look just fine and not to worry so much about it. Gee aren’t they sweet. It’s not like they want me to quit cooking just because I need to diet or anything. No motives there.

Back to the girdle made for Barbie. This thing was transported to Macy’s through some time-machine from the dark ages. It comes clear up to my ribcage and goes down half my thighs. The midsection is lined with PVC pipe stays or some other less than forgiving torso length sticks. When I finally got it on, up and crushingly snug in place I had to sit down. Positive note: I didn’t let loose with flatulence as I bent over getting it on or sitting down. Not yet anyway. I looked in the mirror and then at my 3 torn fingernails, hoping they were on the floor somewhere and not getting re-injected back into my system under the girdle. I thought I looked a little smaller in the mid-section so it got put on the ‘buy it’ list.

This wedding I’m going to will have a lot of real jet-setters, and famous and simi-wanna be’s there so I need to feel better than the Pillsbury Dough Girl fresh out of the oven. I just don’t want a jiggly tummy doing dance steps to no music while I stand around and mingle. If it was a costume party I wouldn’t sweat it since I’d just go as a Float, but it’s a star-studded party with people who‘d rather find an Ex-Lax on their hotel room pillow. It’s true. They eat that stuff like candy to keep slim. Funny how you don’t see celebs coughing as much as us normal people do.

Next to try on was the cool black lacy “shelf-bra” as they call it. It also has sliced walrus tusks under the boobs to keep them up – or some other hard as tuff-luv thing otherwise known as underwires. I was looking for a bra that would push up the twins so I looked all Hollywood fake with my real boobs. Now-a-days no one really appreciates real double D’s anymore. Fake is where it’s at. I tried the bra with those jelly like inserts to see what that looked like first. Stupid dumb. The idea was to have them puffing out of the top of my dress, not under my armpits! They don’t sell armpit girdles so I popped those puppies right out. Then when I tried it without the inserts I felt like someone built a short shelf for long torpedoes. I want to look sexy in my dress, not hooker savvy. I ended up with a simple black bra without clever attachments, so that scored the ‘buy list’ too.

At my age I should just forget about sexy but then I think of Sofia Loren in her 70’s and I gotta keep trying. It’s a woman thing to want to look good at a fancy affair. (or be good at having an affair!) Anyway, I digress. My biggest concern really is not so much as looking sexy but trying to keep the hot flashes from driving me to tear off all my clothes because when the hot flashes hit even the hair on my head drips sweat. It can drive a woman to tears. (it’s really sweat but I tell everyone I’m crying. I always cry at weddings even late into the night). Yea, whatever. I really don’t think I’ll be ripping off my clothes if I get too hot anyway. I’ll show restraint for a change.

Okay, time to grab my goods and buy them. The bra came off pretty easy peasy, just like I was at a high school dance. Then came The Incredible Hulka – aka girdle. That damn thing just didn’t want to peel off nicely. Think Evil Power Struggle. It was like I was trying to get out of one of those things they put on crazy patients at the asylums. Nothing worked. It didn’t bend or fold down easily because of the steel bars inserted all over it. I was beginning to panic wondering how I was ever going to get this frickin’ thing off me. There I was, all alone in a tiny closet jumping and hopping around like I was at the gym.

I was practically crying thinking about how embarrassing it was going to be to have to walk out and find the saleslady to help me get it off me. By now it was even more difficult since my body decided to have a HOT FLASH which made it feel like I had on a wet wetsuit. My skin would tear just trying to pull it off. I was desperate. The last time I worked that hard on something was my marriage, which didn't work, so you can see how I was filling with anxiety. When I finally got it off I punched it a couple of times. That made me feel a little better. I almost threw it on the floor and stomped on it but sometimes there are stray pins on the floor and staples and stuff. Can’t be too careful, not like you're dealing with a spouse or something. I had to confess I do think I slaughtered a few of those Fat Cousin cells in the scuffle so it was worth it.

Note to Self: Good idea for weight loss book – make women sign up for girdle exercises. Figure out 10 difference exercises to do with girdles and find out if they are toxic when burnt to a crisp.