Tag Archives: Life

123 Windows

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Well, yesterday I woke up early all ready to write. Unfortunately Quigley had scraped my fingers in play the night before and I’d gotten out a sack of frozen peas to put on the scratches, then was distracted and left the bag on the plastic chair mat in my office. With all the humidity we’ve been having the peas had not only totally thawed out, they did so in a puddle of condensate both on top of the mat and under it.  

So that’s what awaited me when I went into the office to work. Thus, before I could get started I had to dry everything off, then prop up the mat against my office chair so the carpet would dry. I could still sit in the chair and work, but only on the side desk, not at the computer, which I’d already turned on first thing — before I’d seen the peas. Anyway, I went over a hard copy of the work I’d done the day before, seeing new places to add things, modify, delete, etc and scribbled my changes into the lines and margins and on the back.

By then it was time to do the morning chores, water the grass, do tricks with Quigley, eat breakfast and finally leave at 8:30 to take my mother to her doctor’s appointment at 9. I was back by 10, and went into the office to find the carpet dry and put everything back the way it was. Then I wiggled the mouse to wake up the computer only to discover that it (my computer) had gone insane. It had already opened 123 Internet Explorer windows, 5 Search Windows and was in the process of trying to open more of each. Clicking X’s with the mouse would close one of the search windows, but did nothing to the 123-and-counting IE windows. Escape didn’t work. Nor Control Alt Delete… and before long another Search window started opening as well.

So I just turned it off, thinking I must’ve done something with the chair while I was fooling with the mat so it had somehow pushed the keyboard. Though it was admittedly difficult to imagine how it could possibly have pushed both the start and the number 6 key to get the IE to open…

I waited a bit, then turned it back on only to get the BIOS screen telling me there were no drives except the CD/DVD drive and which, though it invited me to use various keys to move through the screen, was inoperative. I shut the thing down again and went to call my hubby.

Long story short, I spent the entire day messing with the computer, at long last reaching the conclusion that the problem was my keyboard. Everything worked fine as long as the keyboard wasn’t connected.  I did Bible class with only the mouse. But you can’t put in text changes with a mouse.  

Today I got up and connected a spare keyboard before turning everything  on. That seemed to work okay. Then I deleted the browsing history (which took a looong time) and did a full virus scan, which turned up nothing. The good news is, I’ve not had one instance of rampant IE Window opening for the whole day, so it really does seem to have been the keyboard. Unfortunately, the old one was a broken keyboard and my wrist is not happy about the new flat model. So in the next day or so I’ll probably be heading off to the store to get a new broken keyboard. (Talk about confusing… I’m going out to buy a new broken keyboard to replace my old broken keyboard which really is broken…)

But the cool news is… I have now reached page 9 of Ch 1, in spite of everything. I’m kind of amazed.

Another Day I Didn’t Plan

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Quigley has some bumps on his head around his ears. He’s had them for a couple of weeks it seems and after several days of waiting for them to subside, or thinking they might be getting worse, and  then wondering what they were, and speculating all over the map, suddenly TODAY I decided they were getting worse.

In my examination I found what I thought was a blob of sap on his neck under his ear, got the mayonnaise to take it off, and discovered the hairs coming off with the mayo and underneath, very definitely a lesion.

So I called my hubby about taking Q to the vet. After discussion, Internet research, and more discussion, we agreed that’s what needed to be done. I called, thinking no way he’d get in today, but… they had an opening in an hour from when I called.

Quigley LOVES going to the vet. He gets so excited. He jumps up on the counter in the reception area, wants to smell everything, jumps up on the counter in the exam room, because he knows right where the treats are, or wants to help with the computer. He jumps up to greet strangers, as well…  He’d really like to get hold of one of those stethoscopes everyone seems to carry around.

Despite all that, everyone seems to love him. He’s very good about holding still for the doctor to examine him or the animal tech to take his temperature. If I could just figure out how to break him of the jumping up on people he’d be perfect.

Anyway, the bumps are not an allergic reaction as we’d thought, but probably the result of bug bites, maybe ants since we recently had a big problem with them, and/or bacteria. The lesion she said was definitely bacteria, so he’s on antibiotic for the week. At which time all the bumps should be gone.

Anyway, we got home around 1, I caught up on all the regular things I didn’t do, ate lunch and then just crashed, that no doubt the result of going to bed at midnight and waking up at 6… so I took a nap. 🙂

Distractions, Moodling and Not Writing

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I think. Well, I know there were distractions…

… finding the dishwasher had left the glasses and knife handles all chalky again and having to hand wash them all…

…seeing the neighbor’s dog escape and go walking down the street, so I went after her to bring her back…

… a fringe of tall grass around the porch, made starkly noticeable against the newly mown lawn and thus begging to be trimmed. Might as well water the flowers while I’m at it. And pick a few weeds…

…weirdness with Quigley’s digestive system…

… eye drop administration runs…

… other things I can’t recall…

This in addition to the weekly chores (I only got the bathroom towels washed)  and, supposedly, working on Sky. But, as with the rest of my weekly housework, I couldn’t seem to make myself do any of it. Ended up cleaning up my card space (that’s the space where I make cards) and just dinking around. Moodling, I guess. It’s been a week since I last worked and today I just didn’t seem to have the energy. I can feel bad and condemn myself.

Or I can claim the fact that it is God who is at work in me, both to will (motivation) and to do (execution) His good pleasure.

Well, Hello!

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I apologize for being so inconsistent over the last few weeks — Months? Well, maybe, but it’s been worse the last few weeks.  Ever since June ended. I guess there’s been a lot going on, with fourth of July, and then the cataract surgery and this weekend my son and his wife were here. They stayed with her grandparents, but that sure didn’t short us on seeing them. The weekend was full.

And of course, I’ve been trying to write more. That’s been inconsistent, as well. And, as I alluded to in a previous post, since about the first week in July, the heat has been more debilitating than it’s ever been for me. The other night I did some research on whether just being hot can make you tired. Turns out it can, (even if you’re not an introvert! LOL) especially if you combine the heat with high humidity. We’re there.

Since about the ninth of July, the humidity has gone up and the dew point’s in the 60s.  But we aren’t getting any rain. Areas around us are getting rain, but we’re not. So there’s nothing to reduce the heat. I can hardly do anything without getting suddenly and intensely hot. Maybe it’s a hot flash, which can be triggered by being hot, but whatever it is, even standing over a pile of card making papers in the bedroom (out of the flow of the swamp cooler’s air) sorting through them, I have hardly begun before I am dripping sweat and so hot I feel like I ‘m going to fall over. So off to a “cooler” spot I go — chair in the dining room, couch in the living room, a spot in the office — to sit in the breeze and drink ice water until I cool off.

I suppose I sort of knew this already, but it’s true that being hot can drain you because the body uses up a lot of energy trying to cool itself down. Since its main method is evaporation of sweat on the skin, in humid environments, the sweat, while evaporating immediately re-condenses, adding back the heat that was just used up. Blood vessels dilate, water moving processes increase, and metabolism slows down  to reduce the internal heat (one of the reasons, according to what I read, why you don’t want to eat as much). And if you add in any physical activity, like vacuuming, well then you are jacking up that internal heat with your efforts.

So today I thought, why fight it? I’ll use the time to do some reading, which is what I’ve already been doing, (when not running errands or administering eyedrops — that ended last week, thank goodness) but guiltily, since I thought I should be doing other things.

The reading is another reason for my silence because the very interesting books I’ve devoured prompted so many thoughts I couldn’t seem to order them enough to write them down. And we’ve had to walk Quigley later, so that cuts into time I used to do blogging.

Anyway, I hope to be more consistent here without any major events currently before me. I particularly want to go back to the introvert stuff and also talk about the more recent books , two of which I got from the Library and then decided to buy.

But now, sitting here at my desk, I’m suddenly all sweating and HOT again, so I shall stop this and return to my spot on the couch to read the very long article I just printed off from American Spectator on Rush Limbaugh’s recommendation. It’s  something that elaborates on a subject I’ve blogged about before — the class conflict that exists in our country between the ruling elites and the “rubes” in flyover country. It’s called America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. It’s a long article and I’ve printed it up to read.

Rush had a lot to say about it today (Monday) so if you’re interested in a summary version, you can find that here. For awhile, anyway.

On to Cataract Surgery

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Well, the bone scan last week did not indeed go as expected. At the end of the process, when all the technicians were at their stations and not visible to my mother, and they were asking her to wait and wait while they waited for the doctor to get out of a meeting… my mother decided to get up off the table they had her on and visit the ladies’ room.

She didn’t realize they had raised the table since she’d gotten onto it and so when attempting to get off, she fell and hit her head on the floor, raising a huge knot on her forehead. She didn’t lose consciousness or even see stars but the crew insisted upon putting her in a wheelchair and taking her down to Emergency. There they took an x-ray of her leg which she said had a place on it that hurt but that she could walk on with no problem. After a long time, the doctor arrived to talk to her and examine her and determine that she was okay and discharge her.

So that added a couple extra hours onto the whole proceeding which had already been delayed an hour at the start.

But this last Monday we learned the results of the scan and overall she’s doing well. They’re going to keep her on bone strengthening medicine and an infusion of what I call “chemo lite” once a month for I don’t know how long. Until they say otherwise, I guess. They also said we could go ahead and see about scheduling cataract surgery.

Which is what we did today. Almost a year from when we started the proceedings in 2009. Turns out she didn’t get the calcium deposits back on her eyes, as we’d both feared, and they don’t need to take any more measurements cause they have the one they took last summer. So we’re set for next Wednesday morning.

The ophthalmologist said, after examining her eyes, that she is at the moment legally blind. So we’re all in a hurry to get this going. For those of you inclined to pray, please ask that the surgery and the recovery both go well. She’s heard some scary weird stories about hardened cataracts, infections, allergic reactions, and lots of recovery problems seeing… After all that’s happened it would be very nice if this could just go as smoothly as they say it usually does.

And since I haven’t had to be driving down to the cancer center every day, I’ve actually begun to see some progress on Sky. I’m working through the Prologue and have done more the last week and a half than for a very long time. Hooray!

Complications

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The day started well. After reading a novel (!) all afternoon yesterday, I awoke refreshed as I haven’t been in some time, and ready to go. I whizzed through my chores and got started on Sky about 10, ended up cutting and moving and cobbling the last ten or so pages. Then I printed them up. About midway through I noticed this piece of gray sponge sticking out through the rollers under the paper as it was fed out of the machine. Also there was smudging on the tops of some of the papers.

After my printing was finished, I pushed the piece of foam back through the rollers and then contemplated how in the world I would ever get it put back where it was supposed to go, given the slots cut into it and the fact that I can’t open my printer top more than at a 45 degree angle. Plus its place is behind a plastic wall that guards the print head…

On to Google… well, one guy says you can use the printer without the “ink absorption foam.” The Canon site says it you don’t have it, ink will drip out every time you turn the printer on and eventually damage it. I’ve had the thing for three years. I really like it. Except when gray sponges are emerging with the paper.

I’ve just been having conversations with people recently about not trying to make things last forever. For one thing, most things these days are designed to wear out within a few years so we’ll all be motivated to buy the new and improved version. And the versions usually are improved in my experience.

The Canon site also directed me to a local firm that will completely disassemble, clean, troubleshoot and repair my printer for $78 per man hour per computer. If it takes two hours I could buy a new one. In fact, even if it doesn’t take two hours, between the labor and the new part… I’d still probably be better off getting a new one.

Which means printer research lies ahead. NO! I don’t want to mess with printers. I want to write. But I can see that’s not to be.

Done with thinking about printers for the afternoon, I watched a cool video about using a new technique in making cards, and then went in and tried to reproduce it. Using different paper, different ink and a different stamp. So then it didn’t turn out as good as the one in the video.  🙁 

Right then my mother called to say the insurance had called her and told her she must “contact Dr. Schwartz regarding her pre-certification.” Neither of us had any idea what that was, so off I went to call doctor’s offices and await their return calls. I’ll not go into the details. It involved gaining approval for the Bone Scan she’s to undergo beginning at 8am tomorrow…

Then I walked Quigley and it was like Grand Central station during rush hour on the path around the park, with strollers and strollers and strollers, and walls of people, and rivers of people, and speeding bicycles and …a loose dog, running through all that, collarless, but apparently with a helpless owner in tow, (on an invisible line) barking ferociously at every leashed dog it encountered. Er… the dog was barking at the other dogs, not the owner.

This was a thing between me and God. Could He protect us from the loose dog? Gee… I don’t know… LOL!  Well, He did, in a very obvious way. So that was the fun part of it all.

Quigley is in here right now begging me for his bed I think. It’s hard to tell. He just stares at me. When he’s not sticking his nose under my arm and disrupting the typing. Or trying to climb into my lap… And signing. And moaning.

Anyway, all the above is why there is no continuation yet on my adventures with the Introvert books. Maybe tomorrow, though that is the day of the bone scan, which will take the entire morning (and that’s if we’re lucky). I’ll still have writing time, and chores and Bible Class so it’s probably unrealistic of me to expect that I’m going to also get a blog post of that sort (the sort that requires extended thinking to winnow it all down) done tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just put up a good quote. There are a lot of ’em. I’ve taken the plunge, committed sacrilege and have begun writing in my books!  Underlining, making notes.  Oh! The Horror!

LOL. It’s not like they’re library books. I wonder where that rule about never defacing a book came from…

But anyway, now I can find the “good” parts more easily.

So, now I’m off to check the water on the grass and get ready for bed. The Sun rises SOOOO early around here these days.  And I’m very light-sensitive. So I tend to wake up when it gets light regardless of when I go to bed. Thus, the earlier I do the latter, the better.

End of Cycle Six

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Well, it turns out I did get home with a reasonable amount of time after my mother’s cancer treatments, but then I had to deal with… insurance issues. Like, “Once you’ve reached your out-of-pocket maximum, do you have to pay the copays for doctor’s visits?” I have called the health insurance company, pored over the insurance information and documentation, went online to look at evidence of coverage and am STILL not sure.

Originally the insurance agent told me that my mother would not have to pay anything, including copays once she reached the out-of-pocket limit. But then she got a bill for doctor’s visit copays after she’d reached her yearly cap (which happened after only one month of her chemotherapy regimen; it’s that expensive!). So I called the insurance company direct and was told that doctor’s copays are not applied toward the out-of-pocket limit and she would have to pay the bill and any subsequent copays. Okay.

So we went in today and told the receptionist that we were mistaken and my mother was supposed to pay the doctor visit copays even though she’d already reached the cap. The receptionist thought that was weird and suggested I talk to the Oncology center’s financial advisor. The financial advisor also thought that was weird; in fact she’d never heard of such a thing and asked me to bring in the EOB (Explanation of Benefits) for what she thought were the doctor visit copays my mother had been billed for. 

But the dates she gave us were after the ones on the bill…

I am utterly bemused by the lack of clarity in the language used in the Summary of Benefits. Under “Important information” it says:

$XYZ out-of-pocket limit.

There is no limit on cost sharing for the following services:

Medicare services:

  • Doctor office visits
  • Chiropractic Services
  • …etc…

So… From this I gather that “no limit on cost sharing” means that you must continue to share the cost without limits. Which means doctor visit copays do not apply to the oopl and you do indeed need to keep paying the doctor office copays…

Later on in the charts, they list items that are included in the out-of-pocket cap. “Doctor office visits” is not on the list but “physical exam” is. When you look at  “Physical exams” it says there is no copay for a routine exam, of which you may receive only one per year. Why list physical exams under what can be applied to the oopl if you don’t have to pay a copay for them? In “Physician Services,” they tell you all the rates of copays for various types of doctors.  But in many of the other categories, after they tell you the various copays they state, “you will pay these amounts until you reach your out-of-pocket limit.”

By which I deduce, again, that you must continue to pay doctor’s copays or they would have said “you will pay these amounts until you reach your out-of-pocket limit,” after the listings of the various doctor types of copays…

Are they being deliberately obtuse or is it just me?

On a brighter note, my mother is doing very well with her treatments. Today was the last full treatment and the end of the sixth cycle. She looks good, she’s feeling well, her pain is vastly reduced, and her appetite has returned. We now wait three weeks during which she’ll get a bone scan. Then we’ll go back for “maintenance” treatments with the chemo-lite drug that supposedly has no side effects… At least that’s his plan now. We won’t know for sure until the scan comes back and we see him again. But for now it looks like we might have a three-week break.

I say might because the one thing I’ve learned in all this is… you never know what a day might bring.

New Things

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I’ve taught Quigley how to take something into his mouth and hold it long enough for me to take his picture! Isn’t he cute?

Yes, I know I’ve not posted for almost eleven days now. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed, having so much to process and do that I’ve not hardly been able to think. My brain has felt empty, fragmented, blitzed. I’ve had no words to offer the world, no words, at least that would make any sense.  In fact, today in my journal I wrote that I felt like a character pulled out of a story. Someone with no back story, no objective, no narrative of events in which to fit, just a character doing things that seem to have lost all relation to each other. Then, a couple of hours later I read almost that exact description in a book I’ve been reading called The Introvert Advantage,  part of their description of an introvert who is suffering from an “energy crisis” as a result of not having “enough downtime.”

And certainly over the last three weeks or so my downtime has been severely limited and/or compromised. I thought of 2 Corinthians 4 and how there’ll be times we will be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted and struck down. One of those words — I think it’s “perplexed” — means to lack resources, at least temporarily. Like the resource of internal energy, and the time to be able to process everything so you can actually think straight…

But, since I see that it’s almost time for me to take my mother to get her shot, I’ll have to save my elaboration for another day (and notice I didn’t say “tomorrow” since I have no idea what the rest of today will bring, much less tomorrow).  I do, however, have a new Jeep, and it is without question an upgrade!  I love it:

A Very Strange Day

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Yesterday was a very strange day. It started at 8:00am with me going to the hospital for what was supposed to have been a D & C because an ultrasound had shown a thickened uterine lining. That’s the stuff that at my age is not supposed to be thickening and could be cancer. But it turned out to be only a fibroid the size of a nickel that the surgeon removed. (I’m so glad I refused to allow myself to worry about speculations in the negative realm!) Because it turned out to be something different than they expected, they had to shuffle around their equipment and the operation took longer than planned, which is why I think my throat hurt this time, when it hasn’t before and why I had more symptoms from the anesthesia than previously. Anyway, though we got home around 3 instead of 1, overall it went well.

Upon returning home we checked the answering service where we discovered a call from my editor informing me that The Enclave is among the nominees in the Visionary category for the 2010 Christy Awards!  Whoa! That was a pleasant and very unexpected surprise. I’d pretty much written off the prospect of having any books nominated again. But how weird to have the call come in the same day I’d been in the hospital. The last time I had to go in for surgery (for my arm) was the day my agent was going to meet with BHP regarding what were then my future books, so how weird to have book events and hospital events coincide again.

But if it doesn’t seem like two momentous events like that should be happening on the same day, how about three?

About two hours later my husband left with Quigley to walk around the park. He was going to bring home dinner on the way back. I went to sleep, during which time the phone rang. I heard the answering machine go off, and then a man’s voice, but it was no one I recognized so I went back to sleep. A little later, Stu and Quigley came home so I got up to meet them. Stu did not have dinner with him. “I’m sorry,” he said, and I’m thinking this has to do with dinner so it took me a few moments to catch up to what he really said: “We were in an accident and I’m afraid your car is totaled.”

Yes, that’s what he said. My car being the official dog-toting car, that’s the one he took to the park. As he was crossing one of the side streets, en route to the park (where the speed limit is 30 mph and people usually drive slower than that), he was broadsided on the passenger side by an oncoming car he never saw till it hit. The Jeep was flipped all the way over to the driver’s side and spun around to face in the opposite direction from where it was originally headed. The windshield was demolished, but neither Stu, nor Quigley, who was traveling free in the back of the car, nor the driver of the other car were injured.  The police officers who investigated said that was really surprising because usually in accidents of this sort there were serious injuries. 

God at work. My car was towed away and I’ll never see it again (I really liked that car) and I thought how swiftly things can be taken. My next thought was that it could as easily have been Stu or Quigley, and I was sooo grateful that it was not. Grateful that they were not harmed in the slightest. We forget so easily how much God works in our lives, how we have not one thing apart from His consent and power, how every single moment is truly in His hands. We forget how little we have control over. In fact, though it may seem otherwise, in the end I think  the only thing we really have control over is our volition…

Oh, and the phone call I mentioned that I didn’t answer? It was one of the police officers calling at Stu’s request to say there was an accident, and that Stu was okay. That was great, except that he said nothing about Quigley, who, traveling without a seat belt or crate or anything, was the one I’d have most expected to be seriously hurt. So I’m glad I was too out of it to answer the phone. Yet another of God’s small mercies.

But definitely a very strange day.

A Test for Introverts

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When you get on the Internet and go from link to link, that’s surfing the web, isn’t it? I don’t know. Seems like a better metaphor would be bread-crumbing through the web. Or Hansel and Gretel-ing through the Web. Okay, surfing is easier, it just seems a lot more purposeful and shorter than following a trail of breadcrumbs, each leading the next as you wander deeper and deeper into the forest… And then suddenly you sit up, look at the clock and say, “What happened?

It’s almost always interesting, and sometimes it’s actually useful.

Like last weekend. A friend sent me to an interesting essay by Maria Shriver. I think there was a link there that caught my eye which led to another link (Job Tips for Introverts– Find a Career to match your personality traits)  and another (What Your Favorite Dog Breed Says About Your Personality) until I had reached A Test for Introverts

Having already been intrigued by statements in the Job Tips article about introverts, and already knowing I was an introvert, I still wanted to see what their criterion was and what the test about. The Job Tips article pointed out the advantage of knowing yourself and more important being comfortable with that knowledge when you go about choosing a career. Obviously it’s a bit late for me to choose a career, and really my career (if you can call it that) chose me, so the whole thrust of the article was not aimed at me, but I’ve mostly come across descriptions of introversion presented as if it were some sort of aberration or handicap.

Indeed, given that our culture seems to favor extroverts, I suppose it can be regarded as such in the eyes of extroverts. It seems that extroverts have taken over, especially the book industry, with all the advice that’s piled on writers, (generally introverted types, who like being alone a lot,) to get out there and work the room, make contacts, sell your book, pitch it in elevators, go make friends with the bookstore clerks, radio people, TV people, do book signings, tours, seek out the stockers that fill the book racks at grocery stores, make friends with them, sell, sell, sell, network, network, network, etc.

Eeeeuuuu. 

I think I might prefer pounding my thumb with a hammer. But, as I said, I am and introvert. Anyway, in the Job Tips article I came across one book that regards introversion as an asset not a mental defect, and another one entitled Self-Promotion for Introverts!  At last.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The article introducing the test for introverted personality traits (said test coming from The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney) (advantage? Did it really say advantage?) promises the test will

reveal some interesting facets of your personality – especially if you’re an introvert! For instance, did you know that introverts don’t think of casual acquaintances as friends? And, introverts take a long time to sort out information…and they dread returning phone calls (that’s me!). 

That’s me, too. In fact, all three of those characteristics are me. The test has 29 questions. If you answer true for 20 – 29 of them you’re a “true introvert”. I answered 26 of them true and one more true and false (“I usually need to think before I speak”. If I stop to think before I speak, I often don’t speak at all. So while I might need to do it, I’m not usually at a loss for words and tend to blurt… )

If you answer 10-19 of them true, you’re both, and 1-9 means you’re an extrovert. “You relish variety, have lots of  ‘close, personal’ friends and will chat with complete strangers…”