Sunday, October 29, 2006

Being Thankful, Part II......

my daughter and her fiance were here last night, and have just left us to head home....

I feel once again the need to say what a neat guy he is.....

So, once again I'm thankful for good things that are happening in her life....yes there are always life's bumps (see my rant about student loans from earlier in the week), but on the whole, its good!

I'm brought to mind of a lyric in a broadway musical...."...somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good..."

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Student Loans Suck.....

or at least the way they are handled does.

I have spent several hours the last two days trying to help my daughter figure out why, even tho' she is in forebearance on her loans, they have been reported as delinquent any way.

It isn't bad enough that the cost of tuition has gotten so high that most middle class kids can't go to school without taking loans, the way they are administrated after they get out is beyond poor, almost to the point of being a deliberate attempt to financially cripple these young people.

Why tell them they can get deference or forebearance when they have financial problems and need to reduce their payments if you're just going to screw up their credit anyway?

Needless to say, there have been long, detailed letters with explanatory supporting exhibits prepared to send off to the student loan administrators, the credit bureaus and all of her congressional and senatorial representation.

If some candidate for a political office would seriously attack this issue, he (or she) would gain a good number of votes for life from grateful students who would be able to go on peaceably with their lives without wondering what the loan administration is doing to their credit rating this month.

And another thing, it is also my considered opinion that the credit bureas hold entirely too much power over all of our lives. Just who are these little trolls, sitting under the bridges, deciding who the good people are and who the bad people are and making it nye unto impossible to ever recover from any issue rather it is actually of your own making or not.

So that is my rant for today (I'm now stepping off my soap box and donning my flameproof suit!)

Monday, October 23, 2006

Puppy Cuteness!!



At the end of a hard weekend of work at a show.....

The "puppy" (all 65 pounds of her!) being a lap dog to warm her feet and make sure we don't go anywhere!!

Friday, October 20, 2006

On being thankful….

I spent time sitting in a hospital waiting room this week while my husband was having a test done.

While I was sitting there, a man came in and was waiting too. His right arm was in a sling.

As people do, when they sit in such places, we exchanged pleasantries…he asked about the knitting project I was working on, I asked about his arm.

Here is his story:

Last week he fell and cracked the bone right below the ball joint of the arm all the way across. He’s in one of those lovely slings that immobilizes the upper arm so it will heal without surgery (hopefully). On Monday morning of this week, he had to rush his wife to the emergency room, and they ended up admitting her for a heart problem. As we were in the waiting room, the doctor came out and told him that his wife is going to have to have open heart surgery, probably tomorrow.

This whole story made me think about a couple of things.

The first is just how lucky we are that my husband has mostly recovered from his arm injury, that he didn’t have more complications with his gall bladder surgery, that I am still healthy enough to be a help instead of an extra burden.

The second was that I hope that man has someone to help him, be it friends or family, because he’s going to have a tough time for a while. I don’t know his name, or his wife’s, but God does, and I’m sure when I pray for that nameless couple, God will get it right.

I’m grateful for what we have, and especially today, I feel the need to say so.

Monday, October 16, 2006

Juggling doctor appointments and shows

The medical profession continues to tick me off.

Last Thursday the doctor's office called to tell me they had scheduled an appointment for one of the two tests for DH, and they had faxed the info to the other place for the second test. They were very nice, gave me the information they had, and the phone numbers of both places to "pre-register".

Well, today I scheduled out some time to make the calls, and had quite a "fun" time!

First I called the place where we had to set up the time and date, and of course they right off wanted to do it the same day that the other test is already scheduled for....finally got that one (echocardiogram) scheduled for Oct 30, even tho they say they haven't received the fax from the primary care physician yet....hopefully they will have it by the 30th!

Then I called the other place to give them all the information they say they need, and fortunately at the end of the conversation I asked what time he should be there, because they had him listed for a totally different time and if we had gone at the time the doctor's office told us to, we would have missed the whole thing....and the hospital had paid no attention to the information sent by the doctor because they still had the old phone number instead of the new one that the doctor has....

The computer is wonderful when it is properly used, but just like any other tool, it doesn't work if it isn't......sort of like eating soup with a fork!

Anyway, we've managed to get these scheduled and they don't fall on days that we have to set up, work or tear down a show...thank goodness!

Onward and upward I guess

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Bad news and a further rant about doctors

Yesterday morning, I got one of those phone calls you hate to get....my daughter called to tell me that her fiance had been in an automobile accident that had totaled his car.

Fortunately he is ok. And this weekend they will begin the "finding a new car" process.....I don't envy them that project having just done that ourselves.

As a rant about the state of medical care, we are right now very glad we decided to change doctors.

My husband had his first appointment with his new doctor and as she was examining him she casually asked what had ever been said to us about his heart murmur, to which we said "his what!?" His other doctor had never mentioned it.

So he will be going to have an echocardiogram done as well as some pulmunary function tests.

I'm just glad that he was sufficently unhappy with the treatment he was getting to be willing to change!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Further proof that fall is here.....




While my husband mowed the back yard yesterday, I finally got all of the firewood stacked up.

Last year we had 2 piles, a small one in this spot, and another larger one along the side of the house. We decided that this spot is the better one when the weather (ie snow) comes because its easier to get to this.....decks are easier to shovel than dirt is if you don't want to be in snow over your shoes!

Looks good doesn't it!

And this morning, as if to make my point, its much colder out than yesterday.....ok, the next necessary project is cleaning the fireplace so we're ready for burning some of this.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Shouting and turning cartwheels!!

I submitted my first article to the on line magazine yesterday evening.

I was prepared to wait a bit before I heard anything about it, knowing that the editor would be busy with other projects today, but in this morning's emails was a letter telling me it will be published in November's issue of the E-zine!!

I'm excited....and the editor has asked me to "keep them coming".....YEAH!!!!

So, I guess I need to get busy working on more stuff

Friday, October 06, 2006

Announcing Hattie's Kitchen

I have just begun a new blog titled Hattie's Kitchen. (http://hattieskitchen.blogspot.com)

If you have a moment, check it out!!

Fall is here!



This is the view from my back door toward the back corner of our yard. The big pine trees are in our yard, and the tree that has gone all golden is in the yard next door.

It really looks like these two trees are giving each other a big bear hug before the winter comes!

Its cool enough at night to close most of the windows and have a blanket on the bed. And of course, it also means the labrador thinks is a "two people night" and wants to sleep on our bed too. This is not a good thing, however!

Consider this equation: 1 double bed (not even queen!) + 2 adult humans + 1 65 pound, very tall labrador that runs in her sleep = someone on the floor (probably me!). It may be a very long winter!!