Friday thoughts

1.  I can breathe a sigh of relief now.   On Monday we saw "the runner".  He's alive and well.

2.  I called the dentist on Tuesday.  My tooth isn't hurting as much as the bone above the gum (that's probably TMI).  I told them with my cough I doubt I could keep my mouth open without coughing.  I got them to put me on an antibiotic and then I'm going next Friday to get it checked out.  Hopefully, the antibiotic will stop the hurting.

3.  Our son had to get one of his teeth pulled on Monday.

4.  We got most of our taxes done this week.  We just need to get our city taxes done and then that's it for us.

5.  Mom's doing pretty well. When I got there on Wednesday, she was at a St. Patrick's Day party.   She was off the oxygen. Maybe she's turning the corner.   I'll blog more about the party next week.

6.  I haven't cooked at all this week.  One day we had sandwiches.  I don't remember what we had the other day.  On St. Patrick's Day my husband went and got us corned beef and cabbage.  Two dinners was a lot.  I also had it Thursday and they'll be enough to eat it over the weekend.  I try very hard not to eat meat on Fridays during Lent so he usually gets me pierogi's.  Yum.  They are not as good as mom's used to be but they are entirely too much work for me to be eaten so quickly ;-).  As you can tell my meal planning is not going well.

7.  We got our census form yesterday.  I'll have to sit down and fill it out this weekend. It's not like I have anything else to do, right @@.

8.  March madness is on.  I haven't started watching it yet.  I'll probably start tonight when The Ohio State plays.   Although I should have watched it last night, the Ohio Bobcats upset Georgetown.

9.  I keep trying to think of a name for my Friday posts since I'm pretty sure they are always going to be lists.  At first it was Random thoughts, then it was Random Friday (but after I thought about it it didn't make sense).  Now I'm going to try Friday thoughts LOL.  Eventually I'll come up with something I'll be happy with.

10.  Have a good weekend everyone. 

Alphabe-Thursday

I thought and thought until my head almost imploded about what to do for the letter I and decided to write about blogs with a lot of I words thrown in LOL.

I like/love all kinds of blogs.

Some blogs I read let people tell their stories of injustices that happened to them.  I think these are very important issues and may help someone.  At times, they are very intense and I want to hide my eyes but I don't because if they are brave enough to write it, the very least I can do is be brave enough to support them.

Some blogs I read about women who are alcoholics.  I find these woman to be very impressive and incredibly  inspirational.  That they would tell their stories in hope that someone may identify with them and would get help and not feel isolated.  I think the people that write about injustices also have these same traits.

Some blogs I read for fun. I love irreverent and sarcastic humor.  Although sometimes I don't always get it LOL.

Some blogs I read seem almost invisible.  I don't understand why.  There are bloggers who are really good writers with interesting stories to tell  but not a lot of readers.

Some blogs I like to read are considered niche blogs.  You know the food, decorating and craft ones.  I enjoy these not because I usually make the food, decorate or craft like they do but I still find myself going to the blogs to look at the indescribable things they do.

Some blogs I read started out slow and became influential.  I've just recently deleted one from my google reader.  It sort of became a one woman boycott that I'm the only one that knows about ;-).  Although I'm still checking to see if the thing that irritated me has been addressed - so far no.

These are just some of the types of blogs I read.  I'm sure I left out tons of other types I read but I find pretty much any blog I read I can learn something from.

I often wish I could go to the start of everyone's blog and read from the beginning.   But I don't think there's enough time in a day, week or year to do that.

Go over to Jenny's and see what others came up with for the letter I --http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com/2010/03/alphabe-thursday-i.html

A tale of two cities

All my life, I've only lived in two cities.  Cleveland and where I live now.

I'm not sure when I was brought home from the hospital where we lived but I know it would have been somewhere in Cleveland.  I tried to get it out of mom but she was somewhat confused on that.

Eventually though when I was still small, we moved in with my father's mother I do know that in Cleveland.  It was a bungalow.  I started school there and we lived there until I was in about the 4th grade.With my poor memory, I hardly remember anything from that time.  One of the things I remember though and this was crazy, the house across a street burned down and no one in my whole family realized until the morning because we all slept through it LOL.

We then moved in with my mother's father.  I think I might have mentioned this before.  It was mostly a one story two family house that shared a bathroom.  However, there was one bedroom upstairs (which was mine)  and a big attic above the rest of the house. Grandpa lived in the front and we lived in the back.  When I was younger we didn't have a dryer and we either had to hang the clothes outside or in the attic.  I still remember getting the clothes down from the attic in winter time and they being stiff as a board.  One crazy thing I remember from this house was the neighbor two doors down.  He held his family hostage for some reason.  He may have been crazy who knows.  I can remember lying on the downstairs bed peeking outside the window watching the police.  I lived with my family  here until I got my first full time job.

When I started working one of the girls I worked with and me decided to get an apartment.  I think I was about 19 or 20 at the time.  I loved it.  After the first year though she decided to move out and I ended up moving as well.  Years and years later, I found out that our tax man owned this building although it wasn't at the time I lived there. He would have been too young.

I went back home but by that time my grandfather had died so I moved into the front part of the house.  It still gave me some freedom so I didn't actually feel like I was living back home even though I was.

I was living there when I met my husband to be.  After a couple of years, I got an apartment by myself this time.  I really wanted the freedom then.

When we decided to get married, I had to move home for a couple of months.  However, by this time my family had moved to my uncle's house which they had been renting out while they were buying it.

After marriage I moved to my husband's which is in the city we live in now.  It was like a condo/townhouse.  I don't know what you call it but they were connected together.  He had a corner one.  So one side was all grass and luckily on the other side was the garage, connected to another garage and then a home.  It was pretty private.  Good thing because at that time, he/we played music very loud LOL.  Coincidentally, I have a friend who lives down the street from there.

About a year later we bought our first home back in Cleveland.  It was a bungalow.  Again we were lucky.  Both of our neighbors on either side had an extra lot that was next to our home.  One had a bunch of fruit trees on theirs and the other one had a super huge raspberry patch.  We always felt ,while we lived in the city but we still weren't right on top of our neighbors.  Also, it was on a very small street.  We lived there until my son was going to start school.  Interesting fact here, this home was only a block and a half from my first apartment.

When we were looking for another home, I always wanted to go back to the city where my husband had lived when we were first married.  We found a home although its pretty much on top of the neighbors but I'm pretty sure its our forever home.  When we bought it we were already thinking that because we wanted a ranch style home for old age LOL.

 How many different places have you lived in your lifetime?

He's not as dumb as he pretends

In the backyard we have this make do fence.  It's made out of old railings from the back porch and some chicken wire (yeah, real classy).  It goes from the garage to the regular fence.  My husband put it up years ago, to keep our dog from getting into the garden and behind the garage because that's also a disaster area (yeah, another classy area) Ha. 

He took it down when we didn't have our dog anymore but then had to put it back up when Corky came.  Last week one day I let Corky out.  A little while later I heard him barking.  When I looked out, the neighbor behind us was there with his little Yorkie standing by the back fence.  Corky was practically trying to climb over the fence to get to them.  My husband went out to get him.  Apparently,  two of the fences that are supposed to keep him out of there are just hooked over each other with something.  The neighbor said Corky just pushed it up with his nose and came back there.

I know I like to call Corky quirky but he's not actually too bright.  Now, I'm thinking maybe it's just an act LOL.

It's little like deja vu

Before we left to see mom on Friday the nurse called saying mom had a fever the night before and was coughing a lot.  The doctor put her back on the oxygen, steroids and she was going to get a chest x-ray. When I went to see her they were keeping in her in the bed for the day but she was alert and no confusion.  They did the x-ray while I was there.

Saturday they called and said fluid had infiltrated her lung so it looked like the beginnings of pneumonia.  They put her on an antibiotics again for 7 days.  The doctor was supposed to come and see her.

Sunday when I saw her she was pretty alert.  Her legs looked really good and there were no signs of swelling.   I guess the doctor thought she was pretty good.  Hopefully, after the antibiotics she will be in tip top shape, at least for her. 

Random thoughts

1.  I saw a commercial for V again looks like its going to be on at 10 p.m. on Tuesdays.  Same time as Parenthood.  I missed the first half of Parenthood this week but watched the second half and still liked it.

2.  Time change.  So its changing this weekend.  It still seems too early to me.  I wish they wouldn't have changed it a couple of years back.  I wonder how much energy its saving since they fiddled with it for that reason.

3.  I need something new for my header and put up the birdhouse again.  I can't find any decent pictures that I took to replace it.  I have to put on my thinking cap and figure out something.  I'm too cheap to have someone else do it LOL.

4.  I'm almost caught up with at least my computer stuff although I still have a lot of email to get through - Not so much with the house.

5.  I think I'm in a blogging slump.  Help!!  What do you do?

6.  There is one blog post I'd like to write but I'm not sure what angle to go at it or if its even worth it.  There was something that happened on a blog I read.  I was very disappointed. It makes me think of that line from the movie You've Got Mail - it's nothing personal, just business.  I'm still going to think on it.

7.  I  really love Alphabe-Thursday.  I thought it was going to get easier but it is getting harder.  I'm liking the challenge though.  I think its good for my brain LOL.  I love each persons take on the letter.  I can hardly wait until Thursdays to see what everyone comes up with.

8.  Mom's still pretty much the same.  Although she seemed very tired on Wednesday but she still seems somewhat confused to me.  I hope this just isn't the dementia getting worse. It's a little depressing.

9. Wow, we reached 70 yesterday.  I even had my patio door open for a little bit.  Oh mother nature - you tease ;-)

10.  Unless something earth shattering happens, have a great weekend.

Alphabe-Thursday

For the letter H I chose Health care relating to cancer since that's something I know about.  This might be a blog post that I might be hating myself for in the morning but hopefully, it won't be too controversial.  I'm not meaning for it to be.  Honestly.

In May of 2004, I went for my regular gynecological exam and it seemed I was healthy.  In August I went for my mammogram.  I was home a couple of hours and the doctor called saying I needed to get to a surgeon right away. You can imagine how horrified I was. The next day I was at the surgeon's office getting a needle biopsy.  The following day, I was told I had breast cancer and would need surgery. The day I had to go in to talk about what kind of surgery, I felt hopeless and hysterical inside. It was a good thing my husband and friend went with me.  Also, the wonderful surgeon I had let us tape the whole conversation so I could replay it one hundred times or more just so I could understand what happened at that meeting.  I realized also if it wouldn't have been for that mammogram who knows when I would have found out because you couldn't feel it.

The real cost for my surgery (mastectomy) , doctors, tests. was approximately

$14,871.57

Because we had an HMO paid for by my husband's employer at the time the cost to the insurance company was

$5,704.16

The cost for my cancer treatment, tests  (not counting the pills I had to take during chemo and am still taking after chemo) was approximately

$28,073.25

HMO cost was

$13,653.21

I was lucky in some respects with the cost of my cancer treatment because I only needed 4 chemo treatments and no radiation.  If I lived in another state the cost may have been more or less.  This also was in 2004, I can only imagine how much the prices have gone up. 

I can't help but think while people are debating health care and what to do about it what would have happened to me if I had no health insurances or was under-insured.  How would I have paid for it.  I know there are people out there grappling with this now.

I know a lot of people think health care is not a right in America but there is just something wrong to me that some people can't afford it.  Just sayin.

Go over to Jenny's and see what others picked for their H words, I can't wait.  H was again a very hard word for me, but I would imagine its not as horrendous as I is going to be.  http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com/2010/03/alphabe-thursday-h.html