Recently in whiiiine Category

How much does it cost to spend an hour and a half in the ER? 2905.48. That's not including the doctor who bills separately. I have two choices according to the hospital. Pay lots of money each month for nine months, or a little each month for three f'ing years. I'm making a third choice; when i get my tax refund next year, it's going to whittle down the bill. I make one thousand more per year than the max to qualify for the poor people's program that pays the bill for you. I am poor but not poor enough; I am too broke to afford this but not broke enough to get help. Welcome to America. Moral of the story: when you don't have insurance, don't leave home or do anything to increase the risk of injury that might need medical care.

It took far too many pills to make it through today. Migraine meds, more migraine meds, sinus meds, and plain ol' headache pills because of fear of too many migraine meds. Plus, I had to stop in and have a nail removed from my tire - it was

this close

to the sidewall and I had a bit of anxiety due to not knowing how much a new pair of tires for this car would be. But they were able to plug it for ten bucks. Therapy with my Wednesday clients tends to go well, which is good; otherwise it would have been one of those hellish twilight zone days that ends with me under my desk in little knots.

Vacation is over, back to work with me! Had a good time with friends at new year's and took advantage of a few sales, and now it's time to pay the rent again and go see if my office is still there. Sigh.

At the beginning of the week, I said, I will post something witty, intelligent or substantial to the blog! Maybe something about the idea for a novel that I stumbled across while reading up on a topic relevant to the Day Job. Around Tuesday I would have settled for intelligible. Around Thursday, I would have settled for a few words about the cat, with a snarky comment obliquely referring to the madness of the bureaucracy. It's Friday. I'm sipping wine. I have nothing to offer of any use. BAH.

1. Register for a training a month and a half in advance. Four hours, in the afternoon, blocked off in your calendar. Schedule appointments around it. 2. Six days before the training, receive an email that says "please note training x will now be held on the day before the date listed in the training calendar." Rearrange your life to suit. 3. On the Friday before the Monday that is to be the day of the training - "please note that the training will be from 8-12 and not 1-5 as noted in the training calendar. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause." Yell YOU ARE NOT SORRY ENOUGH at the screen. Delete email with a fist to the mouse. 4. Go to the (last mandatory) training. Roll your eyes. A lot. A six line memo could have sufficed. 5. Get to work after the training. Be assigned to a school meeting at a location more or less adjacent to your own home, where you had lunch about twenty minutes ago. Drive across town to the meeting with a notepad and a forced smile. 6. Sit in office for twenty minutes before someone remembers you are there, and why, and actually bothers to check with someone who knows. Receive apologies that they did not inform your department that the meeting was rescheduled to two weeks from today. 7. On the way back to the parking lot, turn to face the school and shout YOU ARE NOT SORRY ENOUGH. Suck it up and drive past yon beckoning home on the way back across town to work. 8. Spend remaining hour of the day on the phone trying to provide billable services. Leave messages. The minute you get a live person on the phone and start a serious and productive conversation, the other line rings not once, but three times. 9. Half an hour later, listen to voicemail telling you "by the way, there is a meeting at X on Thurs -- " and stop when the phone rings. Upon answering the phone, the same voice informs you the meeting is really Friday, hee hee, sorry. Refrain from shouting YOU ARE NOT SORRY ENOUGH at this person who has so far neglected to tell you about two meetings, misspelled your name horribly on every piece of correspondence from her office, and routinely forgotten what department you work for, despite having weekly contact with her for a year. Go home. Sigh. Do it again tomorrow. I want September to go away now.

I went shopping for a bra today. Good GRIEF why do they not make them to fit real people? They squash you, prop you up, tuck you in or just look saggy and wrinkly. And they cost too much - I could spend a car payment on bras without really trying. I'd be tempted to just go without, if not for the way that would become painfully obvious at work. I balanced my checkbook, too. I hadn't realized it had been six months. At least it ended with my having underestimated actual balance by $100. Which I spend on bras. There are days when a mastectomy actually sounds like a bargain.