For anyone using Dark 3Chemical by rkcorp - a widget theme from Dezzain Studio…

You might have noticed that the italic doesn’t work right - it’s damned irritating and I have been trying to fix it for months.

I mentioned this to my twin brother who, 15 minutes later, had a solution… I both love and loathe him for this.

The solution was so simple that it made me blush I hadn’t figured it out myself - but if you are having problems with it as well, here’s the way to fix it…

Go to your theme editor and choose Stylesheet under “Styles”. Not very far down, in the stylesheet, right after the copyright and the “body” tag, find where it says “em” - change the font-style from normal to italic and then delete all that other crap leaving just

em {
font-style: italic;
}

It’s just that easy!!

Btw, don’t forget to refresh your page when you go to back to the front page of your blog.

I mention the date, in the title, because I just realized that exactly one year ago, today, is when that deer hit the car and totaled it. Wow. Amazing how things change in just one year.

So… a couple of days ago I thought I was coming down with something but I figured I had a few days before it hit, full force… I couldn’t have been more mistaken!

The last two days/nights have been pure hell for me, physically - and to do all that our family is doing right now… trips to the nursing home, filling out Medicaid applications, dealing with nursing home stuff, and with my father’s delicate medical condition… well, it hasn’t helped. I’m exhausted and every time I lie down for a few minutes I get a phone call, a knock on the door, or something that interferes with my rest. It seems like I can’t have a fucking half hour to myself but what someone wants/needs something - and it’s funny how no one else on the entire planet can do a damn thing but me, ya’ know what I mean?

Dan, David and I spent most of the morning at the Department of Social Services - going through the arduous task of filling out paperwork to put my father on Medicaid because if we didn’t then my parents would have to pay about $7,000 a *week* to keep my father in that nursing home. After going over the parental units finances I can see they have a lot more assets than what we all realized - but, at the same time, we also realized that my parents did not plan ahead for anything… I don’t give a shit about “inheriting” anything or what kind of money will be left behind - what I do care about is that the government will be the one taking it all. I hate that.

The other thing my parents didn’t plan for was their deaths. You’d think at 79 and 81 they might have thought about it a little, ya’ know? And, to top it off, my father worked for a funeral home for years (he was a licensed mortician as well as a minister). He, of all people, should have known better. It’s just one more thing that our family will have to do.

Another thing I learned, from this trip to Social Services… we are FAR from a paperless society. Trust me.

It was interesting to see that, at the Social Services building, they have a metal detector that you must pass through in order to even come in… and when someone would empty their pockets and the detector would still go off the security guards wouldn’t wand that person, they’d just say “Are you carrying a gun or a knife?” and the person would say “No.” because who the hell would say “Why yes! I am carrying a gun and a knife - in fact I have several strapped to my body…”

Duh. Well, maybe in up here, in the North Country, they would be no one else, with a half a brain would.

I can make fun of the “North Country” - as they call it around here - because I wasn’t born here. There is a certain mentality to the people that have been born here… and you can tell who they are - they say things like “Yous” as in “I hope yous guys have a good weekend.” and they like to add “es” on to words that don’t require it - mostly store names like the store “Lowes” becomes “Loweses” or “Ames” becames “Ameses”. I know, it’s ridiculous and you could correct them but they act like they didn’t hear you. It’s irritating for those of us who know better.

Anyway… I digress.

Let’s see… what else can I tell you? Oh. I will no longer be restricting IPs - I have found it tedious as my resident stalker/lurker/troll is just finding different computers to access my site with. Whatever. I no longer care except for the fact that I feel sorry for someone who has so little to do that they would go to such lengths. So there you go. Have at it.

So… I finally have a bit of good news to report - for a change.

First of all, my twin brother decided to drive up from Baltimore, MD and lend a hand with all this Medicaid stuff.

Yesterday, when we arrived at the nursing home, the head nurse, for the “station” my father is in, just happen to be in his room - so I introduced her to Dan who, immediately, jumped into action. He asked her if we all could talk. She was too eager but that’s because she’s been dealing with me and she thought this would be easy… HA! Dan basically became a bull dog. He informed her (just like I did over a week and a half ago) that we think our father is depressed and she informed Dan that the nursing home doctor was there *that very morning* and had prescribed an anti-depressant to our father.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think my father could only benefit from anti-depressants… he probably would have been a much nicer man if he had been given them his entire life! But what disturbs me is that they just prescribed this for him and gave it to him without mentioning it to the family. They call me all the time - over the stupidest shit - but they didn’t call me and tell me *this*?! I’m annoyed by that. And the timing is interesting, don’t you think? THAT very morning?!

Dan let her know we were under no delusions about this medication being a miracle cure. We don’t know too much about this type of medication but we know enough that it might take 2 weeks to kick in or build up in his system and we kind of let that slip to her so she realized that she couldn’t shine us on.

Also, Dan informed the head nurse that even though I had signed a piece of paper saying we wouldn’t be contesting their decision about Medicare (I had kind of been pressured into it), he intended to fight it. He asked for information on how to contact them (which they immediately gave to him) and no sooner had he done that then all of a sudden we had action. Interesting, no?

In less than 10 minutes we are meeting a woman who is the nursing supervisor for that station and we are informed that she was “away on vacation last week”, which is why we haven’t meet her before. Dan told her that he thought it was unreasonable to ask our father to do physical therapy while doing radiation treatments and during this conversation we, also, found out that they’ve been drugging him up to take the drive over to his treatments and, more than likely, that narcotic has been kicking his ass for the rest of the day and yet they wanted him to wake up and do P.T.? Idiots.

This nursing supervisor said she would look into if Medicare would continue to pay for my father’s stay while he was undergoing radiation treatments and let us know today in the “planning and goal setting” meeting they had previously planned for the whole family today.

Btw, another thing that bothered me… while we were talking to this nursing supervisor she didn’t look at me but maybe once, even when I was speaking to her she was staring at Dan as if the words were, magically, coming out of his unmoving lips. I can’t even begin to tell you how much that pisses me off. I mentioned it to Dan as we were leaving the nursing home and he said that he noticed it and that it didn’t bother him at first but then it started to really grate on his nerves that she was not even acknowledging me. It’s so unprofessional! I’ll tell you what… in that “planning and goal setting” meeting today, if I speak and people don’t look at me I am going to say something about it. Just like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” - I will not be ignored.

So, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I know this but it’s hard to be a squeaky wheel when you are balancing so many things at one time. I’m glad Dan came up.

Also, Dan bought a new Mac laptop (in addition to his IMac desktop) so he gave me his HP Pavillion dv1000. I have often said I’d never own another HP product but, well, I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I appreciate the gift. He said the battery is one he bought from some other third party and it crapped out not long after he bought it so, last night, he found a new one, online and, as it turns out, he got a sweet deal from HP on a 12 cell battery instead of the 6 cell it has now - and he bought it for me. I appreciate that he did that as well.

I, immediately, wanted to call T. and tell her everything that happened because “Woot! Good news for a change!!” but then I remembered she wanted her space because “she needs to take care of herself for a change”… which is total bullshit.

Sorry. I’m a little bitter. Does it show?

The news isn’t all good… I’ve been feeling like I’m coming down with something for the last month - it finally hit me last night and I was so sick. I feel, slightly, better now but I know this sickness isn’t going to just disappear… I might be okay for a week, maybe two, but then it’s going to come back with a vengeance. Something to look forward to… Not.

continue reading "Saliva - Rest In Pieces"

Last night, when I took this photo, I was feeling amazed by the beauty of it all - today I’m still amazed and yet it also makes me feel a little sad.

The only person capable of breaking my heart, did in fact do just that. I know that they didn’t mean it that way - I know that, likely in the next 3 months, they will come back and try to explain it all away - and I know they are expecting me to be understanding, as I have always been, but… being an understanding person only goes so far.

I’m not a very high maintenance friend, lover, partner… whatever you word you want to attach - but when I do ask for help it’s extremely important… I can’t stress that enough because I never ask. But I was blown away when the answer was “I need to take care of me right now.” Wow. All I’ve done is take care of this person - in more ways than I can count. I’ve always been there to lend a hand even when they didn’t even know they needed the help…

I’m hurt. Truly hurt.

This was the amazing sunset we had last night, after a terrible storm.

Today, after dropping my mother off at the nursing home to visit my father for a couple of hours, instead of driving the 20 minutes back to the city we live in, I decided to grab a sandwich and go take a hike - maybe get some photos.

I went to a nearby nature center that I enjoy - there’s never a lot of people there - in fact, the last 4-5 times I’ve gone I haven’t seen a soul.

I got out of the car and was collecting my camera equipment when I heard the unmistakable sound of buzzing around my head. I stopped to listen and do you know what I heard? “Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

My first thought was “Oh shit!”

And then I realized that I had left the car door open all this time and not only were the, very hungry, deer fly buzzing around my head but there were a few dozen in the car now as well. Great.

I spent about 15 minutes, in total futility, trying to coax them out of the car but as soon as you open a window to let 3 out, 10 more come in. Finally I got smart about it and just decided to drive a bit up the road where, hopefully, there weren’t any deer fly around - and then try to get them out. That worked except for one stubborn one way in the back of the car… it’d come up and visit me when I was driving but not when I would stop the car.

I did manage to get that last one out of the car finally but, of course, by then it was it was time to go pick up my mother and I didn’t even get a chance to take my hike. *sigh*

I know, I know… it’s slightly out of focus (he was a bit too close for my 70-300 mm lens) but I, absolutely, love this photo.

I’m not as stupid as you seem to think… I know you are still accessing my blog. How many IP address’ are you going to make me block?

I thought, for sure, I heard a collective “Post one more flower photo DJ, please!!!” so who am I to argue with y’all?