New Years Resolution: Clean Up My Act

In case you thought I was kidding about the "mountain of laundry" - JUST the boys' stuff.

I'm terrible at these things. I don't really make official "New Years Resolutions" because I know they'll be broken before the week's end. But there is one thing I absolutely MUST do this year -  which is clean my shit up.

I am not a naturally organized or tidy person and neither is my husband. Together we're a disaster. And I hate the way our cluttered, messy home looks and impacts our kids. ("Wait a minute honey, we can't leave for school yet because your mother needs to find this very important paper in that pile of chaos over there.")

And this year I really NEED to do something about that. So of course, I turned to the internet for help.

I am NOT a "Flylady" type. I get hives just stopping by that site. But Joslyn of stark. raving. mad. mommy. is my type of woman, and she, in her own, likewise ADD-rific whirlwind of disorganization put out the call for help to her readers (Please Help Me: My New Year's Resolution is to Get Organized).

One of them pointed to this site:  Unfuck Your Habitat (or UfYH for those who don't like to curse - obviously not me). Their tagline is: "Terrifying motivation for lazy people with messy homes" - PERFECT!

I also like their attitude, which is small goals, work for 20 minute chunks, then do 10 minutes of something else. Try for multiple rounds (but if one is all you can do at first, it's OK) and do it EVERY DAY.

From their site: "We deserve to live somewhere with nice things we love, and to have a clean, calm place to be, when we’re not at work or school or any of the fifty zillion other places we go."

AND: "...it’s about motivation, and support, and accountability."

And it's not just about housekeeping, it's universal: "And our homes aren’t the only things that need to be unfucked. Our finances, our jobs, our relationships: there’s no end to the things we can fuck up. The important thing to remember is that there is nothing that can’t be unfucked. You just have to do it." 

So I've found my guru. The kind of inspiration I can live with: ironic, realistic. Written by my people for my people (messy, disorganized, drowning in inertia) with the simple credo of: Do. Something.

And that I can live with.

And I'm starting today. Just 20 minutes, right?

(After I get the laundry put away - TODAY, I promise!)

Monday is... Monday

I like fluffy clouds

Do you ever hit that point in your burnt-out mental and physical exhaustion where your brain goes blank and you find yourself stopping in the middle of sentences and losing your point all the time and your mate and children stand there and finally ask to please please just buy a verb or noun so they can glean some inkling of the VERY important thing you were going to tell them, before you just

stopped

in the middle for no reason, your mind gone blank or distracted by something shiny?

(No, me neither, nope, never happens to me, nuh-uh.)

Do you ever find yourself answering the simple social question of "And how are you?" with: "Hanging on to sanity by a thread, but haven't let go yet" ?

Do you post Facebook updates that read: "Ok, resolving to be less negative and count my fucking blessings. That's 1 fucking blessing... 2 fucking blessings... 3 fucking blessings..." ?

Do you find yourself getting ridiculously pissed off that Words-with-Friends doesn't recognize "scumface" as a word, because it would have given you a triple double word PLUS the all-7 bonus for a gazillion points?

Yeah.

It's been like that lately. 

And I'm not going to go into the details here because if *I'm* tired of my whining, you all are surely quite done.

And unlike in the past, the pressures are not creating beautiful lyrical late-night writing, but rather rendering me useless in my insomniac stupor, cackling away at inane things on "Damn-You-Autocorrect" when I should be sleeping.

Yet I don't want to fade away silently into stressed-out oblivion.

So here I am for the moment.

(Picture waving to you. But HELL no, I'm not turning on the computer camera because then you would see the unholy mess behind me. Plus the stain from Jacob's 1/2 eaten but "all done" chocolate Rita's Ice that plopped onto my shirt in a backsplash when I threw it into the trash on the way home tonight.)

Repeat after me... "2 weeks until they're all back in school."

My mantra of the moment.

All the other things I also need to accomplish in these same two weeks, when all I want to do is enjoy this last scrap of vacation-time with my kids and catch up on some sleep? Not going there, but just imagine a 10-ton dump-truck unloading onto me and that about sums it up.

Catch you on the upside, folks.

And between now and then? Expect some more gallows humor, it's what keeps me hanging onto that last bloody thread.

The briefest of updates

Mom continues to be up and down, and in spite of making actual progress with her walking, is now swooning and willfully collapsing while loudly declaring she is going to throw up / have a heart attack / die on the spot.

She fluctuates between being afraid she is dying to wanting to die to being cheerful and rather chipper. Rumor has it she even flirted with a handsome young doctor the other day. (I would assume her teeth were in that morning.) 

Short mom anecdote: taking a 2 minute wheelchair break in the middle of walker-lurching down the hall today, Mom looked up at the two lovely, young, earnest therapists who are accompanying her and asks "Why do I feel so fucking awful?"

"Sylvia" one of them cautioned, "Remember what we said about the cursing?"

Mom: "That it might upset some of the other residents?" They nod, pleased.  Mom takes a perfect thoughtful pause. Then adds: "Fuck 'em."

Tomorrow they transfer her to the sub-acute rehab facility where hopefully an equally earnest and helpful staff will continue to harangue and cajole her into reasonable shape to go home within another few weeks.

Because I don't known how much more of this shit I can take.

Also in honor of Wordless Wednesday (even though I am clearly being wordy) a picture of flowers:

These are from the grounds of place where Ethan goes to summer (day) camp in the city. Taken because I spent some time yesterday running around like a headless chicken and picking up and dropping off overdue paperwork with schools and camps and doctor's offices all over the Upper West Side.

I really have no excuse for the need for this. In sprite of having been a successful and highly organized producer for many years, I apparently now possess the executive functioning skills of your average fruit bat.

Whether this is actual ADD or just my aging peri-menopausal brain remains to be seen.

To quote my eloquent mother: Fuck it!

Up and Down

Beautiful flowers in Mom's room (thanks Bruce, Bern, Rachel & Simon)

I only have time for the quickest of updates tonight; barely a post, more of a postette, postella, postellini. Because I am completely knackered. (For my readers who are not anglo-australo-philes that means totally worn out, tired, broken.)

In fact, I'm pretty much going to recap my Facebook status updates because that about says it all:

When I arrived:

"Mom is having another really hard day. One minute she is admiring the smile of the nurse who has come to take her blood and the next she is sobbing and screaming at me to just let her die, it hurts to much to live and she just wants to be done.

After this, and before going home to children who will be all over me because I've been gone all day? I think I need a drink."

Then, later:

Mom was in better space & spirits by the time I left. I still do not understand how no one figured out her severe discomfort was caused by gas and that she needed a very simple anti-gas medicine (simethicone) to feel like a human being. I should NOT have to have been the one to suggest it!

And in the middle? (Warning, what follows is a bit of a rant. Cursing involved. Because it was one of THOSE days.)

A lot of begging my mother to eat and drink, followed by her taking one mouthful of yogurt, one sip of seltzer, and then holding up her hand, cursing at me when I try to force more.

A lot of running to the nurse. They are growing to dread me at the hospital rehab nursing station, and that's a good thing. Because I MAKE them fucking take proper CARE of my mother, which they are somehow loathe to do.

I tell the nurse my mother in in excruciating pain and she blinks at me blankly "Really, she didn't say anything to me."

REALLY? REALLY? Are you fucking kidding me?

She didn't "say" anything because she is so out of it. The pain has reduced her to the state of an animal, holding her abdomen and moaning about how she is terrified she is dying.

But if you ask her point blank, she will say she's not in pain, that she's just uncomfortable. Because she's so polite and all. Also, at this moment, mentally compromised enough to NOT be a reliable reporter - as I have told the staff a BAJILLION times.

At one point, she turned to me and asked, "They are giving me so many medicines already isn't there SOMETHING they can give me that will take me out of this misery?" And I thought "Damn straight there should be something!" and ran off to the nurse to make sure they'd been giving her simethicone for what was, so clearly obviously to me, severe gas pain.

Nope.

No one noticed, and she didn't request it. I actually may have gotten a little mouthy at that point and said something about how when my babies were gassy and screaming in pain it didn't take a medical degree for me to figure out they needed simethicone drops. And how I didn't feel the need to wait for them to "ask" either.

And a dose of simethicone and a couple of trips to the bathroom and bedpans later (no gory details I promise, even though I got to live them, you won't have to) and she was back in her mind, able to converse, aware of the world outside her body.

So I arrived to a mother who would not eat a bite of her lunch and who responded to my entreaties by pounding on the bed and yelling "Yes, yes, I want to die, I am ready to die, just get this OVER with, I can't take any more!"

And I left a mother who was actually eating dinner, slowly making her way through the fruit salad and asparagus, the first solid things she had taken in, in days.  And a mother who was holding my hand and thanking me for being there.

And it was so hard to leave her, not knowing how she would fare in the night. But my children across town needed me too.

And I don't know who I am going to find in the morning, the pain animal or my rational mother. Hoping for my sweet mother, but willing to do whatever it takes to get her back, in any case.

Shoot Me Now (singing the health insurance idiocy blues)

Me? I am not by nature a brawler, a fight-picker; someone fond of my own angry self. I'm a conciliator, a peacekeeper. I really dislike confrontation, have been accused of avoiding it by sidling away, like a smiling crab doing the side-step.

But somehow, as I sit down to write a lovely "just write" post tonight? I can't do it. I have no lyrical in me. I find myself steaming and gunning the throttle. Again.

Maybe I need to start a theme day...  Cranky Rant Tuesdays.

My tag line? "Come visit my blog on Tuesdays when you want to feel better about YOUR life by reading about all that's gone pear shaped in MINE!"

Think it will catch on? Hmmm.

So, you may be asking yourself (those who aren't backing away slowly, that is)... What has my knickers all in a bunch? My panties in a twist? My... well, you get the picture....

Health Insurance idiocy. Also Big Pharma greed. And Chain Pharmacy stupidity and incompetence.

OK, now it's time for my Canadian/English/Irish/Australian/Norwegian/etc.etc. friends and readers to snicker and gloat. Yes, all of you who live in those godforsakencommunist countries that have - GASP! - socialized medicine.... go ahead, I'll wait.

OK, done now? Good, let's get on with it.

First the set up: My son Jacob takes a number of psychoactive medications. He's on a "cocktail."  Sounds fancy, but it's not. He's just... complicated in his neuro-biological differences. And so the help needs to be complex, too. Really.

And with a very intelligent intelligence at the wheel, prescribing and tinkering. We (very luckily) have that.

And the 3 different medications he's currently on (very low doses, all, don't worry)? Are keeping him rolling along beautifully right now. Calm, happy; NOT riddled with anxiety and gnashing his teeth; NOT crumpling into a sodden weepy heap over a dropped pencil. And also WITH increased concentration and attention; able to really listen and learn better than ever. (Spitting over left shoulder 3 times and warding off the evil eye.)

So, we recently needed to change health insurance policies (due to an expiring COBRA situation). My husband and I are both freelance / self-employed. We pay for our insurance ourselves. You can see where I'm going here, yes? There really are only lousy overpriced policies available for people like us. And we picked the best of that bad bunch. But still...

We are now in the situation where the medicines that Jacob has been prescribed and HAS BEEN TAKING, the ones that are demonstrably working for him, are needing to be "pre-approved" by the insurance company.

Yeah, that's as much fun as that sounds.

And the approval process? So NOT what was described to me by the pharmacist: "Have your doctor call this number and explain why it needs to be, and they'll approve the medication." As if.

When the doctor called me back after my frantic message, I could hear the stress, the weariness in his voice. He told me that it's not just "a phone call" that's required, but rather it's TEN phone calls. And being transferred from department to department, and being put on hold, and hung up on. And then calling back, and being transferred again.

"They make it hard on us doctors on PURPOSE, to discourage us from prescribing certain medications -- the newer, still patented ones. They think we'll give up and pick something older and cheaper -- even if it's inappropriate for the patient -- just to avoid the hassle and time drain. It's harassment and coercion, pure and simple."

And then this time it wasn't just a conversation, but FIVE full pages of paperwork he had to fill out - questionnaires and ESSAYS to write to justify giving this medication over others which are in the same CATEGORY as the one the doctor had prescribed but are truly DIFFERENT medicines.

Because a bunch of accountants' opinions about what medicines my autistic son needs to be taking count SO MUCH more than those of his highly regarded pediatric psycho-pharmacologist who has been practicing for a bazillion years and regularly lunches with and picks the brains of the guys who literally WROTE THE BOOKS on most childhood psychiatric & developmental issues and are at the forefront of all the cutting edge research.

(Sorry, I shout a lot in ALL CAPS when I'm truly peeved. And I'm truly peeved, in case you hadn't noticed.)

This was all today.

Yesterday it was me showing up the local D-R pharmacy counter at 6:15 to pick up a medication we had run out of, that Jake needed THAT NIGHT to find a long line of unhappy people, EVERY ONE having trouble with their prescriptions being filled properly.

And I was only AT the motherfucking D-R because they (and other big chains like them) had effectively closed down all the small family run pharmacies in the nearby neighborhood where the pharmacist KNOWS you and gives a rat's ass about your family.

Now, being all sensible-like, I had called at 5 PM and spoken with the pharmacist there to make SURE they had gotten the script called in and that I could pick it up right away. I was told yes, definitely in. He had me hold on while he checked to make sure it was in stock (it was), told me they were busy and to come for it after 6. Took Jake's birth date info.

But when  I get to the front of the line? No filled bottle waiting for me, no prescription sitting in the in-box waiting to be filled. Seemingly no record of it being called in at all. Questions of my sanity ensued... am I CERTAIN it was THIS D-R and not the one up the road? YES!

And not only had they no record of my doctor calling in the prescription, but they had no record of my son Jacob in their computer. Which is quite odd since we've been having prescriptions filled there since the boys were BORN, 9 years ago.

Oh, what was that? Since they merged with another Pharmacy Giant and put in a new computer system a few weeks ago it WIPED OUT all their patient and medication data and now EVERY patient is considered a new patient and they have no history on anyone. Nice going, guys. Well done!

Would I please step aside and wait while they try to find Jimmy Hoffa my son's prescription.

Finally the pharmacist that had taken my call and gone off shift at 5:30 returned the page and straightened it out... the prescription (unfilled) was sitting on the back counter, face DOWN. Because it couldn't be entered into the computer, because they didn't have Jake's info in the computer, because he's a "new patient."  Riiiight.

So it's going to take ANOTHER HALF HOUR to get him into the computer and get the prescription filled. And can I stand over there with the growing crowd of fuming customers to wait, please.

And then? After that fun-filled 1/2 hour?

THAT'S when I find out that it's not automatically covered on our new, stinky plan. That it needs to be "pre-approved" with a call from my now-closed doctor's office to the insurance company's bean counting gate-keepers. 

Or? I can pay retail... $266.

Motherfuckers.

And do you know? It's really not a new medication at all. It's a new formulation of an OLD one that has been around for years. But someone figured out how to make a really good time release delivery method for it. So THAT'S the part that's patented. That's why it's so much $$.

And if my son is going to take this medication, he really needs a steady supply in his blood stream, I really can't give him 6 pills a day at four hour intervals, waking him up in the middle of the night for meds now, can I?

So, yes, he NEEDS this expensive time release formulation. Which is THIS expensive because... they think can get away with it.

AND THEY DO.

My son needs his evening and morning dose.

I get them to break up the prescription and sell me 2 pills at retail.

I go home, crisis averted.

And yes, I may have exploded a few times in the drug store. Especially when they pretty much accused me of hallucinating the 5 pm conversation with their other pharmacist.

And, yes, some of this is my own damn fault for waiting until the very last minute to get the refill, turning something that should have been an annoyance into a crisis. That's ADD's calling card there, folks.

And did I mention that during all of this the kids were being watched by the upstairs neighbors, because Jake was still finishing his dinner and they really didn't want to come out to the store with me, and I was only going to be gone 15 minutes?

Yeah. I owe them. Big time.

OK, rant essentially over. Jets cooling now....

And that concludes today's edition of Cranky Rant Tuesdays at The Squashed Bologna.

Tune in next week folks, to hear all about the "check engine light" in our 1997 Toyota that just won't stay off.

(Don't you just wish you were me, now?)


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