Waste Not, Want Not

I ended up staying home most of the week to take care of Karen because she's been having muscle spasms, and on Tuesday, she spasmed on over, and into the fireplace. Well, not into it, we're not staging Hansel and Gretel; more onto it. She wasn't especially damaged, but she was still having spasms which made it hard, and a little dangerous to move around on her own. Anyway, after three days, I was restless and bored, the paralegal called from Mt. Sinai and said, we probably have a case, but under Alaska law, we can't collect damages, or at least not enough to be worth filing for, and after that, I was cranky, but still bored. I didn't want to waste the moment, so it seemed an apt time to pay bills and do our taxes.
 I ended up with two problems in TurboTax. I spent an hour and seven minutes "chatting" with 17 Bernadette. She told me that I could solve my problem by filing online from my mutual fund's website. I told her I had already bought, and paid for(!) TurboTax, and I didn't want to start over and also buy it again. She looked further into it and told me I had to talk to the mutual fund's Tier 3 support, which I guess I did, and they fixed it. But then, another problem developed, and I couldn't face chatting with 17 Bernadette again, so I went to TurboTax's online community, which is where the real help is, but making your customers  be your tech support seems just wrong. And also, since it's slow and just people talking, it's like playing Zork with the IRS.

To Riff On Something Leah Said, The Universe Is Like A Geriatric Parrot. It Keeps Repeating The Same Things And It's Getting Old

Last summer, friends recommended that Karen see an attorney about a CT Needle Biopsy that went awry and left her tilted to the right. I was writing to them today:

I talked to an attorney's office last summer, per Robert's advice. The attorney had been recommended by a nurse at Karen's pain clinic. The paralegal wasn't very encouraging, and so I let the matter drop for awhile. Eventually, I got a letter from them saying that since I had been so dilatory, they had closed my file. I hadn't realized that they had even opened a file! As Robert predicted, Karen's tilt got worse, so I scanned some documents, and sent them to the attorney. I got an email reminding me that they had already closed my file, and recommending a different attorney. I contacted them and received a call Friday, and now the paralegal will approach the attorney in his tabernacle and see if he thinks Karen has a case. She certainly has a tilt. She fell over because of it recently, and hurt the shoulder that she broke a few years ago. We went to the doctor that set it then, and x-rays don't show a break, but because of the angle of the shot, he said that certainty would require an MRI. Of course, MRI's are a problem because the magnets turn off her pump and it takes an excruciating hour or so for it to turn itself back on. We may still have to do it though, since it's hard to hear the TV over the clicking sound that emanates from her shoulder when she moves her arm.
In a somewhat related note, I'm reading Why Does The World Exist, and so far, not one good reason.

I've Looked At Clouds From Both Sides, Too

Did you know that Joni Mitchell wrote that song, Both Sides, but Judy Collins had the hit with it?Really, what I mean is, did you know that they weren't the same person?
Anyway, clouds, every silver lining has its own dark cloud. I've written that, and so has virtually everyone else whoever wrote about silver linings. But the converse isn't true. I've been inside clouds, and they're not silver, they're not even lined. It's just fog.
My cardiologist, and here's another aside, "my cardiologist," it just rolls off the tongue doesn't it, like, my gerontologist, or my undertaker, so, my cardiologist told me to start taking aspirin, and since we already had a bottle from Costco with 500 tablets,  he said I could take 325mg a day or four times the normal dose for heart health. Which I've been doing for almost a year. This morning I read that people taking aspirin are much more likely to develop macular degeneration which is exactly the kind of degeneration you don't want to develop. So, the silver lining for taking aspirin for heart health is that aspirin also protects against some cancers. The dark cloud is, I guess, literally, a dark cloud.

Hypocrites Rejoice

How many of the people celebrating the removal of full body scanners are Facebook users?

I Don't Know If You Will Be Interested In This Since It's Not A Whiny Complaint About My Life, And Believe Me, After Yesterday I've Got Some Whiny Complaints

Avoiding the Wars That Never End, is an article from Stratfor about a change that seems to be happening in America's strategy, and, about time, if you ask me, which you wouldn't because, I'm not a strategist, I'm a mailman. But that's why you might want to read the article because they might know what they're talking about.

Irony Abounds

As you probably know, we're clinging to our place in the lower middle class. Just. But, clinging. So, it was a shock, just before Christmas to have someone appear on our porch, and thrust a holiday food basket at Leah, and then leave before she could say, "Thank you," or even, "What the..." Surprising, because we didn't think we needed food aid, and disappointing because it wasn't like a turkey dinner, it was Cup Noodles and Top Ramen. Apparently they thought we were poor, but not, you know, the deserving poor. We've been moving the bag from room to room trying to find a place for it until the letter carrier's food drive in May.
When we came home from shopping yesterday (I'm not showing off, we do shop for food) we found that the dogs had crawled into the bag, and eaten their way out, and then spread the leftovers around the house. Truly, a doggy bag, as it were.  While I was talking to the vet ER, Karen was reporting new discoveries. Ultimately, the dogs didn't go to the ER, but did get checked out by their regular vet today where we spent around two hundred dollars on non-emergency pet care.
So, the thing that was supposed to ameliorate our poverty, has only served to increase it. It's like the reformed Scrooge sent a turkey to the Cratchits and it pecked Tiny Tim's eyes out.

What's Sauce For The Goose, M-m-m, Sauce

If I were a goose being turned intoPâté de Foie Gras, I'd have one advantage over my current state. We'd both still have the fat livers, and, based on my experience, new difficulty getting upstairs, but at least I wouldn't have the guilt of knowing I did this to myself. Anyway, I'm back on my plan, and as usual, because of all the salty snacks, I'm carrying a lot of fat weight. Not good now, but according to this article, I soon may be a potent weapon in the fight against big oil.

Someday Always Comes

Yesterday we made waffles from a mix provided by Polly's Pancakes. Polly does a lot less of the work than the good ladies of Krusteaz. And I ended up cracking a lot more eggs than the recipe called for. Now I have egg separation anxiety.
Even though it's on TV, so it seems glamorous, yesterday I also learned a downside to the hoarder lifestyle we've embraced.  We hoarders always claim that someday this thing, whatever it is, will come in handy, but we ended up shopping specifically for things that I know we already have, but it was faster and cheaper (psychically, at least) to just go buy them than to continue to root around here looking for them. But now I know we've got them if we ever need them someday.

I Probably Could Have Put This On A Twitter Feed, If For No Other Reason Than It Was A Chance To Say, "Feed."

Newly published studies confirm that being slightly overweight makes a person slightly less likely to die. After this vacation, that still isn't over, I should be slightly immortal.