Don't Have a Cow, Man...

One of the joys of being a grandma is being able to snag a kid and just go do something.  Usually Hubby, Babygirl and I hit the farmer's market on Saturday morning for fresh coffee and cookies vegetables and fruit, and then move on to our weekly shopping. Since Babygirl was hanging with a friend, and Hubby's back was being mean, I went next door and asked Squeaker if he'd like to go.

"Is it far?"

"Not at all!"

"Not the one at the beach?  'Cause it takes EIGHT HOURS to get to that one."

Well.  He has a point:  That WAS the last farmer's market I took him too, and it did take him and Curlygirl eight hours to get there because of rain, traffic jams and general mayhem on the road.

"Nope. It's here in town, I promise."

He agreed, and to our delight we discovered that it was trick-or-treat day at the market. He wasn't costumed, but no one held that against him. He got candy, a tiny pumpkin, fresh cookies, a bag of granola and samples of all kinds.  He wants to go back next week.  I felt a bit like Charlie Brown.  I didn't get rocks, but I had to PAY for my stuff.

On the way home we talked about food we liked.  "Thumbs up if you like:  Carrots!  Broccoli!  Apples! Peaches!"  We took turns suggesting foods.  I finally said, "Coconut!" and he said, "I don't know, I've never had it.  But I like milk, and coconuts have milk, so I guess I'd like it!"  So I had to explain that cow's milk an coconut milk might not be at all similar, and why.  So then he said:

"So, it's not a cowconut?"

I. Laughed. My. Butt. Off.

He's FIVE.  OhMyGoodness.

DeeDee

Me, Too.....

The "Me, Too" campaign to raise awareness of rape/sexual assault/sexual harrassment online has been interesting to observe.  The idea is that any surviver of any of the above should put "Me, too" as their status to let people know just how overwhelmingly common this is.

I'm not surprised by how MANY people have posted. I'm more surprised by how FEW.

Statistics show that one in THREE women (and one in FIVE men) will have some sort of unwanted sexual encounter at some point. I'm not sure those stats even assessed more 'ordinary' day-to-day sexual harassment that women just deal with - catcalls, "why-doncha-SMILE-baby", and having to say, "I have a boyfriend" whether you do or not to get some loser to back off at a bar.

That being said: Me too.

I've never been raped or assaulted.  But....nearly 40 years ago....

I was 22, in my first 'real' job, working in a large biological R&D lab. We did serious research: Our lab developed interferon as a drug, the first biological drug to have to go through the FDA. We developed the test that is still used for early detection of prostate cancer.  It was a very diverse place.  My boss was a Chinese woman, and her boss was a Polish man.  My immediate superviser was Japanese.  One of my co-workers was a soft-spoken Korean woman with a PhD in microbiology.  And then there was Lamonte.

Lamonte was a lab tech.  He was everywhere in lab keeping supplies in place, helping gather specimens for quality control, helping maintain the large tissue cultures required for interferon production.  And one place he ALWAYS seemed to be was behind ME and my Korean co-worker.  He'd sneak up and tickle us in the ribs under the arms, never quite hitting the breasts from behind, simply enjoying watching us jump and shriek.

Personal history:  My dad used to tickle me, and not EVER stop until, well, HE wanted to.  As a child, I had a recurrent nightmare of standing in a spotlight, with hands reaching in from the dark to tickle me.  In the dream I absolutely KNEW that if I could just scream the tickling would stop, but I could NEVER scream.

Lamonte did not sneak up on any of my male co-workers and tickle THEM.  The very first time he did this to me I asked him to never do it again.  He thought that was cute, apparently.  At least once a week, when I could not possibly anticipate it, he snuck up behind me and tickled me.  At the Xerox machine. At my desk. While I was doing delicate work with cell lines. And NEVER when there was anyone to see it. After a few weeks of this I reported it to his supervisor.  A few more weeks and I reported it to MY boss.  My Korean co-worker QUIT, and I didn't find out until much later that he was the reason why.

The last time he did it, I was seated in a solid chair, and by reflex jammed my elbows back, trapping his hands against the metal.  He had the temerity to complain that I had hurt his hands.  I looked him in the eye and told him that if he ever touched me again I'd do more than hurt his hands. And then I went and got his supervisor, dragged her to my boss, and had a come-to-Jesus-shout-down about this ongoing behavior, and how they were allowing sexual harassment in the workplace, and that IF they allowed it to happen again I was going to administration and letting them know just how LONG they had allowed it to continue.

It doesn't sound like much. But it made going to work a gird-up-your-loins chore instead of a joy.  It made me nauseous when I realized he was at work (which was, of course, almost every single day!).  It destroyed my peace of mind.  And it happened only because some man felt he had the right to lay hands on any woman he wanted as long as it was 'just a joke,' whether she was laughing or not.

Me, too.

DeeDee

Eating Our Way Through Austin....

Our purpose for this trip was to attend a wedding, but, airfares being what they are, it was MUCH more affordable to stay a week than a weekend, lodging included. Airfare for a 10 day stay would have been the same, but then lodging would have exceeded the savings, so we decided to make a week of it.

The beauty of having an apartment to stay in is that we can eat breakfast and the occasional lunch here, so going to a supermarket for $100 worth of supplies took care of a significant number of meals that would have been $50 each - not to mention coffees and waters that travel with us.

But Austin is a Foodie city.

There are food trucks.  Dives. High end vegan restaurants. Steak houses. Barbecue joints. Tacos of every description. Coffee bars.  Not to mention every strip-mall chain seen everywhere else in the USA, plus the local fast food: Jack-in-the-Box, Chick-fil-A, El Pollo Rico - but thankfully no Bojangles. There are even specialty supermarkets:  Fiesta Mart, specializing in ethnic (including pre-packaged Indian) food, and Central Market/Whole Earth Provision (Whole Foods meets Wegmans in a warehouse). You can't possibly miss a meal here, and you can buy wine in any corner store or supermarket.

So far we've hit two steakhouses (don't ask - I can't remember!), a taco truck, a fabulous Mexican restaurant (Polvos) and an amazing family-style Italian (Buco di Beppo), where 16 of us were seated in "The Pope Room."  This was a domed circular room, with an 8 - 10 foot circular table with an enormous lazy Susan in the middle.  Huge platters of manicotti, shells, chicken, salad, mussels, spaghetti with 1 pound meatballs and garlic bread spun their way around, with a bust of the current Pope smiling benevolently at us as he spun along.  It's the only restaurant I've ever been in where you walk through the kitchen to get to the seating, and one booth is located IN the kitchen, so if you like, you can be seated where you can watch all the action there.

Babygirl has been bringing home leftovers from most meals. I think she plans to have a burrito for breakfast.  I'm not throwing stones: Yesterday I had leftover red potatoes and spicy fried butterflied jumbo shrimp.

Oh - I even picked and ate one of the prickly pears.  The color is amazing. The flavor?  Kiwi-ish, not as sweet.  Not worth the risk of the prickers IMO LOL.

I think I will not step on a scale for a week or so after I get home.

DeeDee

Armadilllos and Such Like.....

We arrived in Austin, Texas on Wednesday to celebrate the wedding of my Godson Danny, which will take place today at The Moss Ranch near Enchanted Rock State Park. We haven't had much opportunity to explore Austin, but we did drive to the ranch yesterday. It's about two hours away from our apartment in South Austin.

(Side note:  I can't say enough good about AirBnb.  We needed a place to stay where we can manage Babygirl's medical needs:  Comfy surroundings, a fridge and a stove, clean bathroom and so on, and we found a very cute, reasonably priced 1 bedroom apartment less than 10 minutes from our hosts, 10 minutes from downtown, and across the street from not one but THREE amazing Taco Trucks.)

We attended rehearsal dinner last night, not because we were needed but because we are just, well, family. It was fun to reconnect and to meet a generation of young'uns I've been watching grow online but haven't seen IRL so far.  Danny is the last of my 'neices and nephews' (from my 'brother from another mother,' Rich) to marry, and the first whose wedding I've been able to attend.

The venue, as I said, is 2 hours away, but only 88 miles.  Google Maps helps sort out traffic, most of the time, but letting Google decide between one deserted hill-country road an another in the dark may not be the wisest course of action.

Google sent us off in the opposite direction from which we had arrived.  Having seen a map, I knew that this was, however odd, entirely reasonable, since we were in a sort of you-can't-get-there-from-here corner of the universe anyway.  But holy Lord, we went over some twisty dark roads with cattle guards and flood crossings and switchbacks and...

We saw a coyote. Since I'd already seen a roadrunner it seemed logical, and could the Acme truck be far behind?  We saw deer.  I saw an ENORMOUS skunk. We saw some WTF was THAT? And some deer, and Hubby scared the life out of me when an armadillo startled the snot out of HIM.  The second one was less alarming, giving us a bit more warning by ambling down the center of the road.

At one point I misheard my directions, took a wrong turn and was then redirected by Google onto a HolyHillsBatman back road.  At the third left turn, we spotted a sign:  "No Outlet. DO NOT FOLLOW YOUR GPS."

OMGoodness.  I wish we had paused for a photo, because, really?  Who is going to believe us?

We backtracked a mile or so, caught our road, and finally hit civilization and revived ourselves at a "Texas Stop Sign," AKA Dairy Queen.

Now we get to go back there for the wedding. Wish us luck!

DeeDee

Midnight and Pearls....

I haven't had many insomniac nights in the past year - scarcely any, actually. But tonight is a humdinger of a can't-shut-my-head-off kind of night. You know: The kind where you might just as well give in, get up, and accomplish something.  And it isn't like there isn't always a to-do list, right?

Bella is getting married tomorrow.  JuJuBee's middle sister: Eight years old when she first charmed her way into our home, in and out during her mother's tumultous struggles with addiction, and on her own by age 18 with a 2 year old. She has had her own demons to fight, and has grown up all the way, ready to become The Grownup in her own family.

When she asked me to be Mother-of-the-Bride, I cried.  I am deeply honored, yet incredibly humbled.  There is so much I could not do for her, so much I could not save her from, so many times when all I could do was pray, and pray, and hope and pray some more.

She deserves better, although I know I couldn't have done much more.

So...

I asked her if she would like to wear my mother's pearls on her wedding day.  She got teary, and touched, and excited.  But antique pearls and modern wedding dresses don't always work well together. So this week, she asked, "Do you have anything else 'old'?"

Oddly, yes.

Among my mom's things were not one but three sets of pearls.  One has an, um, interesting, history. Mom left those to Citygirl. That set I know is about 65 years old. The next, I'm not sure of - judging by the clasp and the stringing style they are likely older, possibly MY grandmother's.  The third set of about that same age had a cheaper clasp and a broken string, and the pearls were coming off.

So I offered to stitch the loose pearls to her garter.  Something old, something from her Grandma.  My friend Michelle (one of my best inheritances from my mother) is a talented seamstress, so when I asked if she had fine needles and silk thread she produced "beading needles" (who knew that was a thing?) and beading thread (again, a thing?), so all I needed was some time to get it done.

Work's been crazy. Nothing like a computer software overhaul to make your day difficult, or to trigger some massive migraines.  I guess I needed some insomnia.

Sixteen pearls are now adorning the lace of her garter. I've had some quiet space in my head to pray for her and her soon-to-be-husband and their new life together.  May they face it with courage, grace, and humor.

"Always kiss me goodnight."

DeeDee

Water Under the Bridge....

Last summer, I got a dental infection.  It needed treatment with not one, but two antibiotics. That led to a gut infection, which pretty much left me as ill as I can recall being in years.  But here's "The Rest of the Story."

My parents were awesome people, but they grew up poor.  I remember the day my mom came home after having ALL of her teeth extracted.  I don't think I was in school yet, and she was only 20 when I was born. Regular dental visits were not part of my life, growing up.  Toothbrushes were also not a regular part of my life in early childhood:  It took some dental hygiene classes in school and some sleepovers at friends' houses to notice that we were missing something. By the time I was a teen, brushing was a regular habit, but by then the damage had been done.

When I was 21, I got a job with REALLY good dental insurance.  It took a good dentist about a year of almost weekly visits to fix what could be fixed and pull what could not.  When all was said and done, I was down 2 wisdom teeth and 4 other adult teeth, and had fillings in nearly every other remaining tooth.  I lost another tooth during medical residency - I just couldn't afford a root canal.  So when I finally got another 'real job' I started seeing a dentist again.

To cover a gap due to these missing teeth, my dentist recommended a permanent bridge, crowning 3 teeth and adding 2 'fake' teeth.  Twenty or so year later the enamal cracked, and I had to replace it.  Now, these suckers are expensive:  A 5-tooth bridge is $2500-$3500, and dental insurance at the time covered very little of it, but hey, I like to eat, and chewing with your gums isn't comfy, so I did what I had to do. When the replacement bridge was installed, I needed a root canal in one of the teeth, so the timing was good even if the cost was ungodly.

Fast forward to last summer.  The infection I had was in the tooth, under the bridge, with the root canal.  So earlier this year I went to an oral surgeon and had some procedure done that made the tooth stop getting infections.  I went for routine follow up at the end of July, and he said it was healing well, despite the fact that I told him that it felt like the bridge was, "Chewing funny."

Two days before we left for the beach, I had a routine cleaning.  I told the hygienist the same thing.  I was due for x-rays.  My regular dentist was on vacation, so another guy looked it all over, said everything looked great, see you in 6 months.

Later that same day, I was eating, and the bridge came out.  At least, that's what I thought at first.  But what actually happened was that it BROKE between the two 'fake' teeth, bringing the recently repaired tooth right out with it, root canal included.  So, there I am with essentially three teeth in my hand and....Geeze. In retrospect, the crack is completely visible on the x-rays, not that it mattered.  It would have saved me only one emergency dental visit the next day.

So.

Today, after a lot of back-and-forth between my regular dentist and the oral surgeon, the bridge has been turned into 2 crowns, and sad remains of the other tooth pulled.  An implant was placed, and I'll tell you that I've never had so many stitches in my life as I have in my mouth right now.

The total anticipated cost on this baby is about $3500, but thanks be to God this guy takes our insurance, so I'm expecting to pay less than a third of that.  And THEN I get to see about getting a removable bridge, because no way in HELL am I putting in a third 'permanent' bridge at those prices.

And tonight, I have to say, I am incredibly grateful for hydrocodone, and for medications that cut nausea enough to make it possible to take it.

Interestingly enough, dental implants frequently require bone grafts, and I needed grafting. So I now have donor bone in my jaw (not to be disrespectful, but jamming splinters of someone else's bone up under your gums is uncomfortable while it is happening, even with Novocaine, and QUITE painful when the Novocaine wears off).  I asked the oral surgeon about the donor, thinking to write to the family and say thank you, but he said, "It came from the University of Miami, so it must have been a smart guy."  By this point I was a bit dazed by all the yanking and jamming and whatnot, but I'm planning on slapping him upside the head when I go back for my recheck to remind him that perhaps some respect is due to those who donate, right?

DeeDee

Prescription Glitches.....

 Babygirl has been managing her pill sorter for some time now. Generally, she's pretty good at it. She lets me know when she is running low on things, but yesterday for some reason I asked her to check on her supply of translplant medications. She'd asked me to call in the one that has to be filled at the local pharmacy, but I couldn't recall getting any medications from the specialty pharmacy that sends her 90 day supplies of the pricy ones.

Sure enough, one of them was pretty close to gone.  She just sorted two weeks' worth, and there are a few still in the bottle, so we have time enough to get them ordered.  Another one was about to start on the last bottle. The pharmacy usually can get them to us in three to four days, so no problem.

I put in the call, and the chaos began.

"That will be two medications, with $15 co-payments each, for a 30 day supply, okay?"

Um....not really!  "Why just 30 days?  We always get a 90 day supply. And why do we have a co-payment?  We haven't had to ever pay you for these medications before!  Not that $15 is so much, but what changed all of a sudden?" I know insurance companies sometimes change the rules, but to change two rules simultaneously seemed, well, just off.

I spent thirty minutes on the phone with a very patient and kind pharmacy representative who did her best to try to figure out what had changed and why.  When all was said and done, she really didn't know, but mentioned something about a 'cap' on the amount of medication, and read me back from the insurance coverage that this was, indeed, what the price and amount was supposed to be.

Well, we're three weeks away from out of medication on one dose, so here's my credit card number and go ahead and ship just THAT one, okay?

We've been using this mail-order specialty pharmacy for transplant medications since right after Babygirl's Medicare ended 2 1/2 years ago.  We were told, if I recall correctly, that we HAD to use it for these medications or face fairly astronomical monthly co-payments at the local pharmacy.  We've been using them without a single glitch ever since, and I have nothing bad to say about them - they've been convenient, easy to contact, and unfailingly courteous. But.

There is no way to tell someone who doesn't have a chronically ill child (or a personal catestrophic illness) just exactly how gut-clenchingly terrifying the word "CAP" is.  The implications are staggering, nauseating, insomnia-inducing, palpitating, adrenal-squeezing:  That moment when you realize the ship is going down and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

It implies that your coverage is running out. And without that coverage, bad things - VERY bad things - will happen to your child.

It was a good thing we were having chicken soup for dinner.  (Cock-a-leekie soup, actually, but no one seems to believe me when I say that, and it makes people laugh. But it's very good soup.) It's very calming.

During lunch today I called the pharmacy benefits department of our insurance.  They looked over the policy, and assured me that the mail-order people have it right:  We can only get a 30 day supply for a $15 co-pay.  "Since when?" I ask.  "Since always," they reply.  They seem to believe that the pharmacy has been working in error for 2 1/2 years, gifting us with co-payment-free medications to the tune of nearly $1500 in missed revenue without noticing.  Furthermore, they tell me, I should be getting these at my local pharmacy because the monthly co-payment THERE is only $10.

I was so mystified by this absolute crock of crap that I totally forgot to discuss the work 'cap', but under the ACA (while it stands, and God bless us, it still stands) there ARE no caps, so I'm going to let that sleeping dog lie and hope my adrenal glands and my gastric lining recover.

Meanwhile......Babygirl turned 18 on the first of this month.  I can't help but wonder if THAT tripped some trigger somewhere.

DeeDee