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a journal |
 This book is intended as a place to blog about my life and things I'm interested in and answers to prompts from various blog prompt sites here on WDC, including "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  and "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" I'm not sure yet what it'll turn into, but I'm going to have fun figuring it out. |
| Talk Tuesday! What's something you do because your parents did it? And what something you don't do because your parents did it? One aspect of my heritage that I blame on my parents is the fact that I sing. My father’s parents were both teachers, Grandpa in physics and Grandma in music. She taught for years until she got her PhD in music education and educated herself out of the price range of most of the schools in the area. But she had six kids (Dad was the fourth and first boy) and taught them all to sing. One of the last times we got together for a family reunion, she worked up an arrangement of a song and had us all sing in her church—imagine, seventy odd people (they had thirty-seven grandchildren plus the in-laws and the great-grands—we are a huge clan) including a four part men’s verse—well, we were impressive. Mama’s family is smaller and less musical, but when she was young, she learned how to read music before she learned to read words. Grammy wasn’t musical, but she knew that Mama needed training, so she arranged for piano lessons, and Mama took to them. She taught all of us the piano. It only really took for two of my sisters, the one who got her master’s in collaborative piano (while being a full time mother with her first child) and the one who got her BA in music education. Her real instrument was the bass clarinet, but she knows enough that she can supplement her family’s income with beginning piano students. So, we sing. All of us. Even another sister, who doesn’t sing much unless she’s belting (she was in drama) or at home. I started in the church choir when I was eight, mostly because Dad wouldn’t let me in until then, and I did my first solo when I was five (for mother’s day—I still remember the melody and most of the words to that one). We sing in the car together, and at church and around the piano at home, and when we’re visiting my sister (she directs the choir, so last time, we sang with them). I associate family with music. Something that I don’t do because my parents did—that’s more difficult. Not because my parents don’t have annoying aspects to their personalities that I’ve tried my best to weed out of my own life so that I don’t annoy myself too much, but because I don’t notice. I can’t tell you how many times that I take an action and realize after doing it that I can trace the source of that action (or phrase or attitude) right back to my parents. There are some things. Mama got her master’s in linguistics, which can mean that she’s a stickler for grammar (read Grammar Nazi), but I write poetry, where grammar is only as important as the ability to understand a poem. So, that’s a difference in attitude. Dad is a computer engineer. He thinks he knows everything, and in a lot of ways he’s right, because he has studied a lot. However, the most drag down, top of the voice fights that we’ve had have been when he doesn’t acknowledge that I’m just as competent in my field as he is in his. I bow to his knowledge of computers, he fails to acknowledge that I could know more about literature and writing than he does. So . . . that’s a difference. They are good parents. All of us have grown up to be different people. They gave us what we needed to do that. |
| Motivational Monday! Author Philip Roth, born on this day in 1933, once said "I think I write and publish as often as I do because I can't bear being without a book to work on... I don't feel I have this to say or that to say or this story to tell, but I know I want to be occupied with the writing process while I'm living." What do you think? What gets you through the end of one thing and the start of another? Ah, Mr. Roth sounds like a process writer. I think I am too. Like I’m a process knitter. I knit because I want something in my hands. I knit multiple projects at a time because I don’t want to have nothing to do (the boredom thing again), and so I always have projects at various stages of completion. However, once the thing is finished, I’m not as interested anymore. I want to give it to someone or to start wearing it, but the thing itself is no longer interesting. The process is what is important. Writing is kind of the same thing for me, although there are times when I’m less interested in writing than having written. I like getting things down on the page and rewriting and revising until I have something interesting and well written. The process itself draws me. But I’m not as interested once the final product is there. I need to fix that about myself—figure out a way to publish so that I care more about finishing. But why should I finish when writing itself is so much fun and when every time I reread and rewrite, it gets better. Which reminds me. I want to finish a knitting project (double knit scarf) by the end of the month because if I do, I can post it on the “I’ve finished!” thread on the Ravelry forums (which are where the other half of my social media attention has managed to land) and be eligible for a prize—another pattern from the designer. I like the designer. I even have a potential pattern in mind. Which probably means I won’t be pulled in the drawing. My luck kind of runs that way. |
| The Sunday News! Rather than me providing you a link and asking your opinion, why don't you just tell us what's good in your neighborhood this week. This just in. I’m not sure what’s good in my neighborhood this week. I’ve not been paying attention to the news. On a personal front, I woke up low in the middle of the night and then had a reactionary high this morning, which has made me icky and tired all day. Icky being a medical term, of course. In personal news, I have spent most of today at church. Regular meetings in the morning, and then back at three for a personal finance course, and then at five, an open house which involved a video and refreshments. A few new faces, but most of the people involved were familiar. In random news, I made a new friend today. She’s from Texas and is in town trying to fix a rental property that apparently got trashed by the last tenants. She’s been naming the cockroaches as she kills them, which is probably not the most emotionally stable thing to do, but when you’re stuck by yourself cleaning a rental property, what else can you do. Madness is a step up. In WDC news, I’ve been keeping up with my "Invalid Item" but I keep forgetting my "Invalid Item" until the last possible moment on a Sunday night, which means the next item in the news is researching Trinidad and Tobago, which I’ve heard of, I think. It feels Caribbean in my head. In other news, we’re having shepherd’s pie for dinner tonight, which sounds good, and cherry pie for dessert, which sounds good, but both together sound like an excessive amount of pie crust. Which is fine. I just don’t eat the stuff. Not worth the insulin. Now, back to your regularly scheduled lives. |
| Creation Saturday! What's your definition of "lucky charms"? And what are some of yours...for personal use, and for the benefit of others? Lucky charms are things that a person does by habit or conscious choice to make a special day go smoothly. Like a bride wearing something old, new, borrowed, blue or a baseball player who refuses to play unless he has a certain pair of underwear on. I don’t remember any conscious lucky charms that I follow. I’m sure I have them. But I never had a certain pen to write with or a certain way to study. I do have to sleep with a little stuffed cat that is curved and fits in the hollow of my stomach. I don’t know if that’s a lucky thing or I want to be able to sleep on my side without my back aching thing. I also tend to do things like take an umbrella so it doesn't rain and wear a coat so that it doesn't get too cold, and do my homework so that the teacher doesn't collect it. Ah, here’s one. When I go out on errands, I always bring the book that I’m reading with me, even if it’s going to be too dark out to read in the car. When I was younger, I called it my security book (like a child's security blanket)—the thing I used to make sure that time passed quickly when I was off doing something that I didn’t want to, like go to the dentist or shop with my mother. If I had the book, than even if it did grow long, I had something to do. Often I would bring two books, just so that if the first book ran out, I would have another to read and I wouldn’t get bored. I really dislike boredom. It doesn’t fit my sense of things. |
| Fun Fact Friday! On this day in 1993, ostrich meat was officially declared fit for human consumption in France. What's the strangest food you've ever tried, or would want to try? Now, I know that this question deals with strange food, but I really can’t remember. I mean, I’ve lived all over the states, and there are places where okra or rhubarb would be considered strange, and other places where they would be a treat. Since I’ve lived in the Southern US, I’ve grown to like fried okra (I don’t terribly like it in gumbo, but that’s mostly the soup factor, not the gumbo itself) and my grandma from Ohio had rhubarb in her backyard, so I’ve eaten rhubarb pie for most of my life (people who live here don’t even know what rhubarb is—when we find it at the store, the cashier doesn’t even know how to look it up). The strangest food I’ve ever eaten that I would never willingly eat again is mushy peas. This is something that I found when I spent eighteen months in England, sometimes eating meals with people I knew, who were perfectly willing to feed me things like Yorkshire puddings and parsnips (which are quite good, by the way, even though it’s hard to find them here) and steak and kidney pie (which I’ve grown to tolerate, although the taste of innards is not my favorite). But then they put this green stuff on my plate, which kind of looks like peas that have been boiled until the skins crack. Then they are canned with mint and served to unsuspecting people who have never eaten peas with mint that have cracked, chewy skins mixed in with the more edible parts. Not my favorite. When I told my parents about it, they couldn’t get over the fact that they are literally called (with actual words on the actual can they are sold in) Mushy Peas. A family favorite that most people consider strange and potentially inedible is a sandwich that my father discovered when he was about nineteen and eating peanut butter with everything. That is a peanut butter and tomato sandwich. Peanut butter on one slice of bread, miracle whip or mayo on the other, and tomatoes in between, and then eat. It’s actually very good—peanut butter and mayo go well together, when they have something between them to separate them, and the tomatoes do that nicely. But I’ve never been able to convince a non family member to try. I’m willing to try anything once. As long as I have a good idea how much insulin to take for it. |
| The Wildcard Round! This week's winner, chosen from all eligible entries by the Virtual Dice, receives 5000 GPs! Pick three words that sum up your week so far (and tell us why you chose each word). My week so far has been sleepy. Something about daylight savings time does a number on my head, and all of a sudden, I need about three extra hours of sleep per day. I’ve been going to bed earlier and getting up later and I’m still sleepy and kind of headachy. My week so far has been productive. I’ve put in job applications and gotten my credit card sorted and talked to the pharmacist and read books and did blog entries and found poems that I liked. I started taking a class on personal finances (that will run twelve weeks) and haven’t spent any money (or brought any in) to put on the budget we’re supposed to do this week as homework. I’ve knitted some and played some and slept a lot, so I’ve done a lot this week. My week so far has been surprising. About six months ago, we had to pack up the house (bedbug situation, long story, but my father is no longer allowed to help people move if there are bedbugs involved). My life fit into about forty boxes, half of which were full of books. Well, this week, I unpacked about three book boxes and regained possession of some old friends. I didn’t order the books very well when I packed, so unpacking as brought me some surprises—welcome ones. Also, in the surprising category, this week has been full of family news, my sister has been painting (and making chocolate muffins), and my mother has been knitting socks for another sister (the one in Germany who is apparently coming to visit in August), and my brother called with the news that they’re pregnant (this will make seven children) and he just lost his job (which is worrying, because six and a half kids), another sister is coming to visit with her four children next week (which means next week, the key word will be: busy), and the final sister hasn’t said anything yet, but I’m sure that surprises are around the corner for her as well. You know, I’m not sure that surprising is the right word for that. Maybe overwhelming. Or unexpected. |
| War Chest Wednesday! From a previous challenger... What is your "philosophy of life"...something that guides the way you live? Why that? I have never sat down and thought about what my philosophy of life is. I actually have a hard time trying to come up with a pithy saying that encapsulates everything that I believe. I mean, as soon as you do, you find some exception. So, perhaps that’s my philosophy. Every rule has an exception. Except when it doesn’t. Which doesn’t say much about how I choose to live. I do try to live my life so that someone looking at what I do would be able to tell that I’m trying to be a good person. Why? Because I’m trying to be a good person, and I want my life to reflect that, without hypocrisy or guile. There are times I fall short, especially when I’m dealing with my family, who know best how to annoy me enough to forget about anything else. I also try not to be judgmental. I mean, if I choose to live my life one way, it’s my choice, and no one else has to do similarly. Just don’t try and make me change how I live so that you’re more comfortable. I also tend to be confused—I find that living in a state of perpetual confusion gives me an opportunity to be surprised and to react in such a way that I am seldom bored. I dislike being bored. I was one of those young children who would play with a toy long enough to figure out how it worked, and then abandon it because it had no more wonder to offer. So, I try to live life in such a way that I’m not bored, and that comes with an attitude of confusion (you could call it wonder) where I’m willing to look at everything that comes my way as if it were new. Except when I don’t. |
| Talk Tuesday! Ever thought there was something going on in your life that you should've talked to your parents about, but didn't? Only to realize...you maybe should've, and it wouldn't have been a big deal in the first place? This one is complicated. I’m sure there were times (and there are times) that I haven’t talked to my parents about some emotional something or some financial something. Generally, it’s because I shouldn’t have talked to them about it. I was always pretty good about talking over the big things with them. So, I don’t have any major emotional events to share. But I didn’t like to get into trouble, and so there were a couple of times I can remember when I didn’t tell about something when I should have. Both major times I remember, it involved me getting hurt. First, when I was five or so, my parents bought their first house. It was in Connecticut and had two stories with a long hill of a driveway and a deck/balcony out back with arcadia doors and steps down to the ground. We lived here from ages five to eight (and I’m the oldest), which means I had two younger sisters when I got there and a brother who came while we lived there, all under eight. There’s something fascinating about stairs and rails and the outside of rails, especially to young children. So, my parents put chicken wire up around the deck to keep us off it so we didn’t fall off. Do you remember that scene from the beginning of one of the old superman movies when Clark and Lois are at Niagara Falls and an idiot kid is on the outside of the rail, switching hands? Well, I think I was doing something like that when I fell. I landed on the grass, and got up, hurting a bit, but not broken or bleeding, so I decided that I needed to keep quiet so I didn’t get into trouble. I don’t actually remember the rationalization process. Maybe I thought that they already knew by some parental radar and so I shouldn’t need to tell them. Two weeks later, Mama asks why I’m walking funny, and I say that my back hurts, and she asks why, and I say something like from when I fell off the deck. She asks when, and I say a couple of weeks ago. Fast forward in time. I’m eleven or twelve and we live in New York. I have three sisters, now (and the brother), the youngest of which is two or three and playing outside, probably without her shoes on. This is important. Remember the lack of shoes. I am just finished walking the dog and go inside. We have a door with glass panes on the top half. Instead of shutting the door by the wood, I use the pane. I don’t punch it or anything, I just push it, and push through it and suddenly we have a door with eight instead of nine panes and broken glass. I look at my left hand. I can tell I have some little cuts on my wrist (and up the pinky side) but they aren’t bleeding bad. My sister is outside. Remember the shoes? She’s going to come running in and cut herself on the glass. I have to clean it up. I go to the bathroom but can’t find the bandaids. I wad up some toilet tissue and put it over my wrist. Mama comes downstairs. She’s about to take a bath. I put my hands behind my back and talk to her for a couple minutes, applying direct pressure to my wrist with its wadded toilet tissue bandage. She goes in and runs the bath water. I go and clear up the glass and throw it away. At this point, I look at my wrist. It’s started bleeding. I apply direct pressure. Doesn’t help. I need something better than the tissue. I know that. I go and knock on the door to the bathroom where Mama is taking her bath. “Mama, do you know where the bandaids are? I can’t get my wrist to stop bleeding.” In less time than it takes to write this, Mama is out of the tub and decent enough to unlock the door and take a look at my wrist. I explain, “I broke the window in the door. But I cleaned up the glass so the baby will be all right.” My poor mother. She says that if I’d told her before, either time, it would have been the hospital. I don’t terribly like going to hospital, by the way. So, I'm glad I didn't go. But I probably should have told. |
| Motivational Monday! Legendary author Jack Kerouac , born on this day in 1922, once said "Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion." What do you think...is this true? And at what point did you stop caring about something being trendy or popular and just started to fully enjoy it solely because you liked it? Absolutely, I believe this. Fads and trends are something that tries to bring behaviors to a norm, an average place. So, every year, the fashion industry for example, says that the trending color of the year is some random color—which is good. Most of the clothes that season are echoed around that color and the other trends that the industry sees. So, for a season, all the skirts are long and cut on the bias and focused around a single color story. And some people go out and buy a whole new wardrobe because they want to be at that cutting edge of fashion where people look at them and say—there is a person who has bought a new wardrobe, what amazing discretionary income this person has. And then the trend changes and the person buys anew because her tastes (or rather that cutting edge) have changed with the trend. Now, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with wanting to be in fashion, whether with clothes or with catchphrases, phones, music, tastes, or sensibilities, but the problem with trends is that they are designed to be average. They’re designed to be what most people are doing or wearing or thinking at a particular moment in time. Average does not create greatness. Greatness comes from being who you are as intensely as possible. It means, if you like green and the color of the year is purple, you still have a favorite color and it’s green. It means when you write, you don’t care that vampire lit is selling right now, you are going to write the story that has been in your mind and heart. It means finding what you like and are good at, and then exercising that until its more and better. I’ve never really followed trends (nor am I an anti-trend person—have you ever noticed that non-conformity has a uniform as well?). I just try to live my life and do what I like. If the world likes it, I don’t care, I’ll still do it. If the world doesn’t like it, so what? |
| The Sunday News! This week, Martin Shkreli cried in court as he was sentenced to seven years in prison for his part in federal fraud charges. You may know him as the smug Pharma-bro with the punchable face who jacked up the price of a life-saving HIV medicine from $13.50 a pill to $750; I prefer to remember him as the douchebag who made a mockery of his purchasing the single copy in existence of the Wu-Tang Clan's album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin (there's still time to save us, Bill Murray!! ). So this week, my question is "Why should we feel sorry for this guy?", along with "Why are people with access to hedge funds controlling our pharmaceutical industry...instead of, ya know, like, doctors?" I don’t feel sorry for this guy. My life is at the mercy of the pharmaceutical industry. I have type 1 diabetes, which means, in order to live (as in, not die, painfully, because the cells in my body can’t eat without help) I need insulin. There is no generic insulin. Because I’m not on a pump, I need two different kinds of insulin to live, one that lasts all day (it’s more complicated than that—the dose lasts nineteen to twenty-six hours depending on the body in question and the amount of the dose) plus insulin that acts quickly to match the food I eat. Until they find a cure, I will need at least four doses of insulin, every day, for the rest of my life (except if I skip a meal because I’m sick I also skip an injection—I never don’t take the basal dose, though). <rant mode>So explain to me, why do I have to have a new doctor’s appointment and a new prescription every three months? I still have diabetes. It hasn’t gone away (wouldn’t that be newsworthy). I still need the syringes and test strips and insulin. When I go to the doctor, they don’t change anything. I change my dosage (as trained) more often than a doctor has. The doctor should never deny me a prescription refill because I got sick and took four months to get back to her—and when I tell her exactly what to say to the pharmacy, she shouldn’t let her receptionist fill it by saying some random kind of syringe that isn’t readily available at the pharmacy while my syringes slowly run out and I can’t get to the doctor because she’s ridiculously busy and it’s her office’s fault in the first place that the prescription was messed up. That’s irresponsible. I could die.</rant mode> I was diagnosed in 2008 at age 31 (which means, in July, I will have my 10 year diaversary). At that time, when I came home from an eight day hospital stay, my prescriptions were roughly $600 for less than one month of medication. That’s for insulin, syringes, test strips (to check 4 times a day to make sure my blood sugar wasn’t doing something funky—I prefer 8 to 10 times a day: when I wake up, when I go to bed, before I eat to see how much insulin to take, after I eat to see if I got it right or not, and any time I feel off because I might be low and that can kill quickly (as opposed to high which kills by inches)). At this point in my diabetes career, I don’t have insurance again. Just for one month of insulin, I spent $540, which is up more than $300 from the last time I did this without insurance. The kind of insulin hasn’t changed in the past ten years (although there are more kinds of insulin that can perform those two functions now than there were then). I’m still using the same kind of insulin I did then. Ten years later, the manufacturing process should not have changed that much, but it costs twice as much. I can get the same insulin (two kinds for $540 in US) from Canada for roughly $146. We don’t import it from Canada, by the way. So, that’s my personal connection to the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t totally blame the manufacturers because there are hidden costs and everything has gotten more expensive in the past ten years. I don’t know if they’re controlled by hedge fund brats, but the companies that make insulin all have help programs for people who can’t afford their live saving medications that I’m in the process of trying to get on. But I do think they’re partially to blame. And so is the government that has stuck in its tentacles in pharmaceuticals, which it doesn’t know enough about. And so are the insurance agencies that make it more difficult to get the medication I need to live. More problems have been caused by medicare setting the industrial standard (which the insurance companies use to dole out treatment) which means, when there is someone like me, who is willing and able to check her blood sugar more times than industrial standard, I have to go through special hoops to do it. Testing only four times a day is irresponsible. For goodness sake, people should test before they get behind the wheel, if nothing else. And having only 4 strips a day is not reasonable. Test strips cost between $9/50 strips and $1/strip depending on whether you use the walmart brand. Whatever. I don’t know if the RX system in the US can be fixed. But it will require less people like Martin Shkreli (the idiot). |
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