The joys of peanut butter

Every morning I am greeted with this...

Recently I was at my doctors for one of my (seems like weekly) appointments and she jumped me pretty good about my eating. By her calculations I am ingesting about 500 calories a day...I sat like a good patient knowing that no matter what she said there was not going to be much of a change in my diet, not if I want to keep my blood sugar under control. I promised to try and do better, but when everything that you think of to eat either leaves your stomach churning or you feeling very indifferent about food, well what are you suppose to do? About the only thing I can tolerate and tastes decent for me lately is toast with peanut butter. I would say that that is my largest meal of the day and I can usually manage to just fource down half of a piece before I deposit the rest of it with a look of disgust in the rubbish. So this has become my morning ritual coffee - first days injection - one hour passes - toast with peanut butter - 2 other oral meds and I can settle in for my day of barfing and trying to work in between throw-ups.

The choods look forward to this ritual as well, they seem to enjoy following me into the bathroom as I deposit my daily intake in the toilet, I dunno maybe the rug is really soft to lay on in there or they are just sadistic dogs? But before that they have come to anticipate the treat that they get while I force feed myself - I always put some peanut butter on my plate and as I am eating they get a little bit of it as well.

So I was sitting there today watching them as they lick the remanents of the peanut butter off my fingers and then off their tongues and thought this is cute, let me get my camera! Ok so they are not technically very good pictures, but you get the idea and I couldn't fit Rikki in the picture she seems to have an aversion to getting too close to the choods so her 15 minutes of fame will have to wait. I just snapped a few before running to the bathroom for the last part of my ritual and thought I would post them here.

The 2nd thing I would like you to notice in the 1st picture are their feet. I had them groomed recently and I was complaining to the groomer about the sort of grass that "you Floridians" think is grass. How it sticks to dog feet and faces and I am tired of picking it all off. So she suggested poodle feet. They are shaved completely, but the legs are left with that teddy bear look.

I owe her my sanity, clean up after the daily outings has become very easy with nothing more then a quick towel to the paws when the grass is covered with dew, rather then spending the next hour picking off vegetation from their feet as well as vacuuming up after them.

From the world of the Florida bizarre

This is going to have to do for now,one of the medications I am on make me quite nauseous on most days of the week, so until they make a computer that I can operate whilst on my knees in front of the "twah-let" (toilet) I can only manage to post cut and paste news....Oh and for those interested, T-giving was torture for me this year, I cooked and what I ate I had the infinite pleasure of seeing two and sometimes three to four times that day.

Bomb threat was ruse to delay takeoff

A woman in Sunny Isles Beach, afraid that her boss was going to miss his flight to Honduras, called in a bomb threat to delay the takeoff, the Miami Herald reports.

Unfortunately for Claudia De La Rosa, she also sent an e-mail, which can be easily traced, so she was arrested on Thanksgiving.

She thought he might miss the flight because she was late to work.

Flori-Duh

Ok don't get me wrong here, I am not saying that of all the states in our union (Arkansas and Tennessee included) Florida has the most "der-de-ders" walking around...I am just saying.

Incidentally, "der-de-ders" are those who are perhaps 1.5 steps up on the evolutionary ladder from neanderthals, you know the sloped fore-headed knuckle-draggers. Or if you still need help:

Ne⋅an⋅der⋅thal
  /niˈændərˌθɔl, -ˌtɔl, -ˌtɑl; neɪˈɑndərˌtɑl/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [nee-an-der-thawl, -tawl, -tahl; ney-ahn-der-tahl] Show IPA

–adjective
1. of or pertaining to Neanderthal man.
2. (often lowercase) Informal. primitive, unenlightened, or reactionary; culturally or intellectually backward.

Florida does seem to have its fair share of der-de-ders, maybe even just a smidge more then most, especially the upper regions of Florida. I would say from Gainsville north you will find herds and herds of der-de-ders, and they seem not to be listed on the endangered species list anytime soon.

I am constantly bombarded by the news with stories that make me go:



SOOOOOOO I have decided to include a few of them here when I am feeling particularly uncreative.

I normally don't like to do this, and I avoid blogs that just C&P Headlines or news stories, but gosh darnit some of these are just too good NOT to plagerize.

So here is todays Flori-DUH story, erm.....enjoy?

Fart rage: don't cut the cheese at his table
> Posted by Barbara Hijek on September 18, 2009 06:15 AM

Two Volusia County men were having dinner when one of the men passed gas on the other man's food.

Definately not a polite thing to do.

Anthony Stevens, 37, told his friend, 28-year-old Tervoris Baker, that it was rude to pass gas and Stevens kicked his food onto the floor. Baker became angry and started chasing Stevens who said he was laughing because he thought they were playing, reports WFTV News.

Baker said he was going to get his gun. Stevens ran out of the house and said he saw Baker with a bat. Baker then began breaking the windows of Stevens' SUV.

Stevens flagged down a deputy.

By then Baker had shattered every single window and dented the body of the 1998 Ford Expedition in a fit of rage.

Baker was arrested and taken to the Volusia County branch jail where he later posted a $1,500 bail.

Probably should have spent it on Beano.

Is that a bird? A plane? no its the space shuttle Atlantis!

Just cause I thought this was cool its just the vapor trail

You can see the dual rocket fire in this one

As always remember you can click on the picture and it will come up a bit larger on your screen....

Ok so maybe I am a little overly pleased with myself over these pictures, after all its just a fire ball with some smoke trailing, but trust me this is the space shuttle Atlantis as she launched on Monday, Nov 16, 2009 from Cape Canaveral.

I am on the gulf side (western) coast of Florida, Cape Canaveral is on the Atlantic (Eastern coast) of Florida, so I wasn't sure if I would be able to see much of it when it launched, especially since it was day time - a night launch, yeah maybe, but a full daylight launch ey, maybe not so much, but like the true photogeek that I am I had my camera at the ready just in case.

I set it up about 15 minutes prior to launch in the back yard - zoom lens pointed in the part of the sky I guessed might be where it would show up - if it was going to show up at all, manual focus to optimize everything and then I came in and sat down to watch the NASA channel.

The launch was set for 2.28pm EST and like any well run and oiled machine it went off like clockwork. So I was watching in the house ready to run the few short steps out the door to my camera in case I could see something. I watched and watched on TV, kept glancing out the back nothing yet. They were giving stats, "the space shuttle Atlantis is now XXX bazillion feet in the air, traveling at a gozillion miles an hour.." and so on. I was just about ready to pack it up and lick my wounds for not being able to get any shots and then there she was arching through the sky just a few degrees more northerly then I had guessed!!

Quite a sight for a small town girl from Arizona. I remember as a kid Vandenberg air base in California used to do various rocket launches and at night the vapor trail was visible to us, but this was amazing, to know there were actual people on board and to top it all off the space shuttle program will be scraped in the near future so if you dont see it in the next six tries, you never will.

So that was my excitement for the day well could be for the week or maybe the month even! The stats for these shots, I am fairly sure that the shuttle was traveling at around 4000mph (according to what I was hearing in the house on the TV), I didnt catch how high she was though.

Of course part of this little adventure only supports my theory that I need a stronger zoom lens for my camera - which is a little depressing lol.

Walking pill bottle

I remember not too awfully long after my father died (maybe a few years I can't remember) I would take my mother out to the marine base in our city, the one that my dad worked at when he was active service - the very one that brought us to "the middle of no where" Arizona, way back in the mid 1960's, so that she could go to the dispensary there to get a refill on her medications. One of the perks that my mom and dad got since my father devoted most of his adult life to the military in one form or another is to get their meds for free as long as they refilled them at the military dispensary. Occasionally she would have to get something out in town, because the military dispensary didn't carry it, but basically I think that most all of it she could get on base.

I remember sitting in the car waiting for her to return with her booty and watching her walk out of the doors with, sometimes, two paper bags full of medications. I remember her complaining sometimes that she just hated taking all those medications. I am not sure how many she was on at the highest point, but there were a lot of bottles in those paper bags. When she would mention how tired she was of taking them, I would silently think, but you NEED to take them, the doctor would not have prescribed them if they weren't needed!

At some point a few years ago, I think she got to chatting with her sister ( my Aunti), who was a nurse in her career, about this whole prescription dilemma, and I think they both came to the conclusion if she wanted to stop then it is her right to do so. (Disclaimer: I THINK this is how it went down, since my mom reads my blog I am sure she will correct me if I am wrong and if she requests I will post the correct details here)

So She stopped them all, every last blood pressure, postassium supplement, female hormone and just about anything else you can cram into a brown papaer bag. I thought to myself - this is NOT good. But I have always had the opinion (contrary to what some others in my family believe) that my mother has a right to do as she wants to do, just by virtue of respect of age I think she is owed that at least, and so when everyone else is yelling at me to get her to do or not do something ( take her medication) I ignore it and defer to her wishes. There might come a time when that is not a good thing to do, but she is quite cabable of making her own decisions now and so that is what she should do - at least in my eyes.

So as I was thinking, Oh no this is not good, I had to temper that with "if that is what you want to do mom, then do it" and she did.

So here it is some years later, I don't think she takes anything prescription - if she does she has a doctor somewhere who will hand out scripts without appointments to check on her, I KNOW she has not been to see a doctor in quite sometime...and she is none the worse for wear it seems. Oh she takes the occasional over the counter med for one thing or another, but she is off all the so-called life saving medications. What she did, seems not to have harmed her, at least in the short-term, long term who knows? But for pity sake the woman is nearly 83 years old. At this point old age will get her before any of the medical conditions she is diagnosed with - I think.

Now here I am 50 years old and I found myself walking out of the pharmacy the other day with two plastic bags full of prescriptions ( they did away with paper bags at some point - brown paper seems to be an antiquated notion, unless you are buying a bottle of Thunderbird at the local liquor store, then I think they will give you a paper bag to hide the contents from prying cops eyes) and all I could think of was my mom and how she must have felt and I haven't even been taking my pharmacy full of meds as long as she did!

It seems like every time I go to the doctor she is adding yet another medication to my list - I used to like to go see her, now not so much. She is nice and she has very valid reasons as to why she has me on one thing or another, but wow, enough already. True though, I am diabetic and that has its own sets of issues, and truthfully at least half of the meds I take are in relation to diabetes, so I don't think that is a negotiable deal...I don't take my medications for diabetes I am setting myself up for a system wide failure that is not reversible.

The latest medication added to the growing list is blood pressure medication. My BP is not astronomically high, in fact I think it is within acceptable ranges for the most part, it runs a bit high at the doctors office, but when I do it in Walmart or some other BP station is is always pretty good (120's/ 80's or so) the last one in the docs office was 145/94 so she put me on an ace inhibitor which has a two-fold effect and she explained she sometimes puts her diabetics on it anyway (high BP or not) because in addition to keeping BP under control it has the effect of protecting your kidneys from the damage that having diabetes might have on them. Well ok sounds reasonable to me.

Next appointment we will be going over my 3 month labs and if at that time my cholesterol has not improved she might put me on one of the cholesterol reducing drugs. Oh goody.

Right now I can't have my husband get my pills for me, used to be he had them memorized. I have a set now I take in the AM and a set for the PM. He is losing track with all the new additions, so if I am lazy and ask me to bring me either set, he has to read out the name on the bottle and I tell him yes or no. IF/when I get alzheimers I will be in real trouble, of course I think they have a pill for that now too so it might help me to remember to to take it.

Now that is a vicious circle, if you have Alzheimers you have to take a pill to help you remember to take a pill for it. I think I need one of those now.

I rattle when I walk, and it appears this is going to be a way of life for me for sometime to come...well at least as long as I have insurance and perscription coverage. If the day comes when we don't, I can't afford to take any of these medications...at least not at this point...but enter Obama to save the day! HAH.

Finally a positive about Florida

I am sure there are some who read this and think to themselves "Florida is not/can't be all that bad! She needs to be more positive about it all, life/locations/situations are just what you make of them" Or "Good gawd, enough already!"

Ok so to those this might satisify you... let me put this in context a little bit, first...I originate from a place on this earth that no man should ever have been allowed to inhabit. The only things that live there are cracked and parched, including the people and their attitudes. The middle of summer is like living in the face of the sun both day and night. The indigenous creatures are just about all poisonous, so if the heat doesn't get you they will...or so the saying goes.

Side note: I once saw the greatest t-shirt and kick myself every day for not buying it. It was in an airport gift shop, so of course with inflated prices they charge, I vowed not to buy it, surely I could find it somewhere else - no such luck, anyway it had the words "BUT ITS A DRY HEAT" on the front, which seems to be the mantra that most NON-desert dwellers like to fall back on when you are trying to describe the life sucking effect that 120+ plus degrees has on the human body, It also had a cactus or two on it, then scattered all around, various skeletons of different sorts of creatures and people.... It was funny!... guess you had to be there.

SOME TOP REASONS YOU KNOW YOU LIVE IN THE DESERT:
You wake up with a 6" Tarantula, several lizards and a horned toad in your house during 'Monsoon Season' and think nothing of it.

You have to drive your car with oven mitts on

Most of the restaurants in town have the first name "El" or "Los".

You've signed so many petitions to recall governors that you can't remember the name of the incumbent.

You run your air conditioner in the middle of winter so you can use your fireplace

You (and the businesses in your area) dont know the meaning of "customer service"

It is to this last reason I want to speak and the reason that I started this post lol, but my attention span is like that of a nat so I tend to go off on little side roads, so lets get back to the point shall we.

Yesterday was a rare treat for me, I got to have the car for the day and decided to do some exploring. It was a cold day, but the sun was shining so it was nice to be out of the house for a change. I actually drove myself to the doctor, the pharmacy, stopped in at Petco and had a nice chat with the grooming dept in anticipation of the choods next beauty day, and just had a nice look around the area. I am starting to notice something that I am not used to coming from Arizona, specifically Yuma and that is the idea of REAL customer service.

Yuma, is pathetic in customer service. IF (and that is a huge IF) you manage to get a clerk, cashier or other business person to acknowledge your presence, you are met with the attitude of "what the hell do you want, can't you see I am busy" Inevitably ALL fast food, and many sit down restaurants get your order wrong. My husband could eat for free for the next couple of weeks for all the complaint letters he has written to places like McDonalds and Applebees over bad service or wrong orders, and we are not picky, we simply want what we ordered and a smile goes a long way. Complaint letters usually result in some sort of apology from the home office and a coupon for a free meal, or part of a meal, hence why he could eat with very little money for the next few weeks. Oh and I might add that IF you can get the clerk/cashier/store help to notice you, if that person speaks english you have stumbled on a shopping jackpot!

So this is all that I know. Real customer service does not exist in Yuma, Arizona...and really not so much in most of Arizona. There was a huge controversy some years back when Olive Garden was wrestling with whether or not to build a rest. in Yuma. The results of their in-depth analysis of the area? Basically Yuma is not up to the "standards" of the employee base that Olive Garden likes to hire from - meaning Yuma has unintelligent and rude people in it. LOL you can bet this started a firestorm in the community, but I had to agree.

So back to my outing. I noticed something really odd when the clerk in Petco actually took an interest in me... not so much hoovering over me as I just walked around knowing I had only $10 to spend and not finding much for that, but making sure he was available AND accessible to me should I need anything. Strange I thought...he must be bored. I managed to find a little tennis ball and some treats for the dogs that would fall within my budget and made my way to the registers. Said clerk quickly came to the register to check me out, he made pleasant, but highly informative conversation with me. He informed me of all the good things that Petco does in the area with adoptions and donations. He got me signed up for their little rewards card thingy, he got me paperwork for all the upcoming events for the store including "Santa and your pet" photo day and then pointed out the grooming area. I told him I was very interested in that so after we finished the transaction, he escorted me over to the area and introduced me to the groomer on duty a very edgy looking (tattoos, emo hair) looking young man who was about as pleasant a young man as I have had the pleasure to talk with in a long LONG time. He was informative, seemed to really know his stuff and eased my concerns about the patience that he and his staff shows to newly started pups and young dogs to the whole grooming scene. I have a real fear of my dogs (especially the choodles, since they are very young. Rikki my older dog knows the routine and she always gets glowing reports from groomers who groom her) being mishandled by a groomer so as to ruin their grooming experience for the rest of their lives. This is a result of after taking them to Petsmart in Yuma for thier first time and was met with a frazzled, frustrated young woman, who told me that they were a "real handful" I was pissed and let the manager know it as well as the young woman who fancied herself a groomer.

So I finished my chat with Tommy ( the groomer) and exited the store, but I found myself walking in a daze to my car. What was this new and wonderful experience I had just been subject to???

I sat in the car for a moment and let it soak in...oh that was fun, strange but fun. Brightened my day considerably.

So off to the pharmacy, surely I would feel in my comfort zone there! Walgreens in Yuma is ALWAYS busy, the pharmacists and pharm techs are ALWAYS rushed and rude!

I was met with a clerk with a large and what I thought a very sincere smile on her face. I turned around for a moment thinking she must be smiling at someone she knows or her manager - not me, surely! no way!....I turned around to find no one there, incidentally no lines to stand in either. I shyly told her I was here to pick up some prescriptions expecting to be glared at and a huff as she went to search for my scripts in those over stuffed white tubs that line many shelves behind her. Instead she pleasantly asked my name, looked me up in her computer and then said " Ok, Ms Rodriguez we have them all ready for you just give me a moment to get them!" no really! she said that to me as though she was happy to find them! I stood there for what must have been all of 30 seconds to see her happily skipping (ok not skipping, really) back to me with my prescriptions and rang me up. Pleasant conversation ensued as I paid her and she bagged everything up. "Do you need a consult with the pharmacist for anything Ms Rodriguez"? She blinked her eyes a few times waiting for my answer, as I let my jaw hit the floor - That has NEVER been asked of me before, I have had to request it but never was it offered. "No thanks I have taken all of this before" She smiled brighter and said "ok Ms. Rodriguez Thank you, have a great day!" and she meant it! At least she gave me the impression that she did.

So far I have heard my last name more in the span of an hour then I have in about a years worth of shopping in Yuma. I sometimes forget that I am Ms Rodriguez, and get used to being a number or a "you", seems Florida likes to make people feel as though they are really a person and not just a number rung up on a register.

I stumbled out to my car in that heady dazey feeling that I had when I left Petco. Wow.

Next stop the bank. Ok I KNOW this is FINALLY going to be the downfall. Bank clerks are rude and snobs, at least the ones I am used to are. Finally I will be in my element!!

I find the bank, park and inside I go and my ears are assaulted from all directions with "welcome to Suntrust!" "how are you doing today?" "Looks cold out there, is it?" I mumbled something about it being freezing especially for a girl from Arizona and I swear to you all the clerks, managers and any other bank employee with in ear shot, not helping another customer, gathered around me asking me questions SHOWING INTEREST in me. After I answered their questions and squeezed myself out of the huddle of groupies, I found myself confronted with a bright shining face of the clerk that I was to do my business with..

"Hi! What can I do for you today" she said. "Just two deposits, one into my personal account and one that my husband asked me to make to his business account." I knew that this, of all things, would throw the wheels off the "customer service" train that was rolling through the countryside of my life. " I would be more then happy to help you with that!" she jingled...I swear there were bells tinkling in her voice... sure you would, I thought to myself cynically... now comes the "I am sorry you are not your husband I can't complete this transaction" or "I need some I.D. please" Instead I found two deposit slips being inserted into my hands and the question "is there anything else I can help you with today?" being asked of me. "Well no, thanks. I turned and as I am walking to the door my clerk is wishing me all manner of goodwill, happiness, joy, offering to have my car pulled around to the door so I don't have to be assaulted by the cold ( 70 degrees) weather...ok, ok not really, but I nearly expected her to say that!

I was in a great mood the rest of the day, thanks to these people and the little effort that they took to ensure that I knew that they appreciated my business.

I don't think that I will ever be the same, the cynic in me is being strangled and might not survive Florida if I have many more experiences like I did yesterday.

Of money and medicine

Ok so there is A L O T wrong with our health care system, I think just about everyone agrees with that, but in my opinion just about all the health care initiatives, reforms, and revamps are simply going to put a very small bandage over a VERY gapping wound...it really does not matter what the gov't attempts to implement it simply will not be enough and the part of the medical community ( the VERY LARGE part) that wants to make money will find away around whatever is passed and set into motion. If medicine does not get rich on it, it will not last long...mark my words. Just like Wall Street the money pig of medicine will keep chanting "feed me"

Today I had my second experience with the medical community here in Florida. The first one was ok, not the best. My doctor is nice enough, seems to know her stuff and seems interested in her patients. Her office staff maybe not be so much. They have managed to get my birthdate wrong in their system which has brought my benefits to a screeching halt. God forbid the insurance advocate who might push through payment of a bill when the birthdate is off by a digit....oh no that can't happen! So while I deal with that I am continuing with the other things such as a follow up mammogram. The first films were taken in Arizona and the doctor reading them decided I needed additional ones for a complete evaluation...something about nodules and density - I dunno. This was one week prior to my relocation to Florida so doctor in yuma felt that Florida was advanced enough technologically speaking to continue on with the task, so that is what I decided to do.

:insert decision regretting face here:

After suffering through terminal hold, incompetent schedulers, clueless file record clerks AND supervisors, convincing them to mail the medical release form I needed to sign to get my films from Arizona, my husband faxing them back from his work... I finally got my appointment two farking days before my follow up with the doctor, I think she was hoping that I would have had my films by this time and we could go over them see if there really is cause for concern. HAH.

Now you have to understand something here, making an appointment is a touchy thing for me. The facility to which I am to go in this case is about a 30 minute drive from me. At the moment we only have one car and my husbands work is about 20 minutes in another direction, so I had to get up early, time it so that I could get him to work and still make my appointment never mind trying to figure out how to navigate the alligator ponds and sand cranes that cross the 2 lane hwy as we drive out to "nowhere" florida.

So appointment was set and I showed up, 10 minutes early even! I am busy steeling myself for the requisite boob squishing and they call my name.

TECH: "Ms. Rodriguez, do you have your films with you?"
ME: "No, you have them"
TECH: "I don't see them here"
TECH: "I can't do this today if I cant find your films"
ME: "Why?"
TECH "This is a request for additional films to complete the evaluation, I have to be able to see what I am suppose to be looking for"
ME: "you are looking for abnormalities"
TECH: "Yes ma'am I know that, but I need to see why the additional films were ordered and what area I need to concentrate on"
ME: "You need to concentrate on both boobs and look for something that might be alarming to my doctor and me, why am I telling you your job?"
TECH: Ma'am there is no reason to get short with me, I am trying to do my job"
ME: "Well ya see, I am getting short with you because I was told I could fax in my medical release - by-the-way which I did two weeks ago and that you would take care of getting my films. Now someone has apparently dropped the ball here and it wasn't me. Why was an appointment even made for me? If you need my films in hand before you can do this?!"
TECH: "It should not have been made"
ME: I know that, WHY was it made?
TECH "I don't think whomever made your appt. knows, see we have a central scheduling dept over in BFE Hernando County, and then our records dept is over in BFE Pasco County, and I am thinking that your faxed medical release might have ended up at our central warehouse in BFE BFE County."
ME: "WTF? Don't you think this is a critical piece of information that your central scheduling dept needs to know - Not making appts that cant be completed - before the patient drives herself about an hour to make the appointment?!?!"

And so it went to the point that I left frustrated and infuriated and just about fed up with the business side of medicine. There is no one to even call, it is all computerized and if your films are not in the computer, then by god they dont have them!

I get to go through this whole ridiculous fiasco again the Wed before Thanksgiving. If my films are not there by then, then I think I am going to just tell me doc to hack the puppies off they are not worth the stress.