Fun with English

Czarina: Yesterday, I saw two people die.
Me: WHAT?
Hoodie Girl: She means she saw a funeral procession with two hearses.


I took Space Cadet to the doctor's because of an upper respiratory infection. I was telling Prince Charming about the medicines the doctor prescribed, including steroids.
Czarina: I thought steroids are bad.
Me: They are bad if you misuse them, like when athletes take large amounts every day to make themselves stronger. They are okay if you use them the way the doctor tells you to, to help you get better when you are sick.
. . . a little while later. . .
Hoodie Girl: Mom? Czarina said you are giving Space Cadet marijuana?

This is how rumors get started. . .

GRRRRR

Last year Space Cadet was approved for SSI (disability) and Medicaid. She could have gotten this years ago, but we figured we would just take care of her ourselves. Well, when Prince Charming lost his job last year, we knew we needed help.

When Space Cadet got her Medicaid card, she was assigned a primary care physician. Since our regular family doctor takes Medicaid, we wanted to switch to her as Space Cadet’s PCP.

Earlier this month I talked to someone from APS Healthcare (the place it says to call on the card) and told them about the change.

Today we went to see the doctor. The receptionist told me that they couldn’t see her because there was a different PCP on the card. I told her I had talked to someone about changing that. She checked with Medicaid, and the change was not recorded in the system.

She suggested I call Medicaid from the office there and see if they would make the switch. I called the number on the card (APS) and they told me I should have called Medicaid (a different number, which is NOT on the card) to make the switch. Well, no one told me that when I talked to APS the first time.

SO, I called Medicaid. Of course all of these phone calls contained the obligatory long phone menus, and time spent listening to how important my call is to them. When I finally spoke to a real person at Medicaid, they said the change WAS in the system (they even told me the address), but that it wouldn’t go into affect until February 1. (Why was I not told that before? And what is the reason for the delay?)

The Medicaid lady said I could call the doctor on the card and ask for a referral to our doctor. Now, why would a doctor’s office we’ve never been to make a referral for us?

THEN the Medicaid lady said that if they got some number from our doctor and a diagnosis code, maybe they (Medicaid) could issue a referral. I asked, how can we have a DIAGNOSIS code when she hasn’t even seen the doctor yet?

Then the receptionist tried to talk to the Medicaid lady. The result was that we would have to reschedule for after February 1.

I said, let’s forget Medicaid for today, and just use our insurance, and I’ll pay the co-pay. GUESS WHAT? We aren’t allowed to do that!

So we’re going back on February 2.

Aren’t you looking forward to government-sponsored healthcare?

Happy Veteran's Day

It was 1960. He was 13, and my birth made him an uncle. I've heard he took great pride in being an uncle. When I visited my grandparents, he always wanted to take care of me.

I remember a couple of Christmases at my grandparents, with him there. One Christmas Eve, he went out for awhile, and while he was gone, Santa came to visit. It was too bad he missed Santa. . .

One night when I was five years old, my parents woke me up to say good-bye to him. Uncle Gary was going to the Army the next day.

I know he got to come home at least once during his two-year stint in Vietnam. It was the week before Easter, and I was shocked to see Easter Baskets for my brother and I. I asked my grandmother why the Easter Bunny came early. My grandmother replied that she had colored the eggs, so we could celebrate Easter while Uncle Gary was home. "Grandma!" I said, "You do a better job than the Easter Bunny!"

A couple of months before he was to come home, our phone rang. I remember my parents crying and telling me. . . Uncle Gary was dead. He was 20 years old. I was 7.

I'm sure I'd been told this, but I didn't remember, and so when I heard this from my brother a few days ago, it was news. . . Uncle Gary died saving the life of a friend. He was behind a boulder, his friend was wounded, and Uncle Gary ran out from safety to help his friend. The friend survived; he didn't.

The picture is the last one he sent my grandparents before he was killed. He is slightly older in this picture than my son is now. I look at that smile, and I understand why relatives used to say that my brother looked like his uncle. (My brother named his son after Uncle Gary.)

Thank you, Uncle Gary. I'm sorry you didn't get to marry, have children (who would have been my cousins), have a career, have grandchildren.

Thank you to everyone who has served or is serving in the armed forces, and thank you to the families who wait at home. Our freedom truly is not free. . . it is paid for by all of you heroes.

I feel like babbling on. . .

BRAIN DUMP:

Prince Charming has been working for CRS (the Canadian company) from home for the past couple of weeks. He planned to drive up to Ontario on Monday, but his transmission died yesterday. Since the car is almost 13 years old and has 136,000 miles on it, it’s not worth it to fix it. So, he will be flying. The room he is renting is 5 blocks from work so he can walk to work, but I know it is going to be COLD at times. He also has to figure out shopping so he can eat, do laundry, etc. Also he’d like to go to church. The closest Nazarene church is in the next town, so he may have to just go to whatever is closest. His cell phone doesn’t work in Canada so he’s going to have to figure that out too. He’ll be back the week before Thanksgiving and hopefully can find a car to buy then.

Our finances are really strained and I am starting to wonder what in the world God is doing, but we are both very grateful the car didn’t die on his way to Ontario!

A local clothing store has a 50% tent sale twice a year. Czarina, Hoodie Girl and I worked there Thursday and Friday for the first time. I am very proud of my girls; they both worked hard and were very helpful to the customers. Czarina could sell a screen door to a person who lives in a submarine. She really should work for commission. They both got commended by one of the bosses before we left yesterday.

Speaking of sales skills. . . Czarina was taking orders for donuts for a choir fund raiser. At church Wednesday night she sold some to the youth pastor. Then she asked his sister in law if she wanted to buy any. Miss Barbara checked her wallet and said she didn’t have any money. Czarina turned to Pastor Steve and asked, “Can you loan Miss Barbara $5.00?” Not only does she sell, she also arranges financing!

WORK ETHIC: The girls were both complaining, after working for 9 hours on Thursday, that some of the teen age boys, who were getting the same pay they were, were just standing around and talking most of Thursday. Well, the bosses noticed who was working and who wasn’t. On Friday, those boys got pulled out of the tent to direct traffic in the parking lot. . . in the rain. As Hoodie Girl said, “That’s a job where if you don’t do it, you get run over!” They both would like to get part time jobs, but first they need to master getting their schoolwork done in a timely manner. Speaking of schoolwork, they have a lot of catching up to do!

After one semester of college when I was 18, I decided I would rather work full time, since I was making almost $3.00 an hour at K-mart (35 cents an hour above minimum wage!) After 3 years my hourly pay had more than doubled, but I realized I did not want to work at Kmart the rest of my life, so at age 21 I went back to school and got a degree in accounting. The past two days reminded me of why I did that. 17 hours and 45 minutes of straightening up clothes and shoes and helping customers left me sore and TIRED.

Space Cadet and Corn Bread Muffin each cooked dinner the past two days. Corn Bread Muffin found a recipe for baked macaroni and cheese online and jazzed it up a bit with turkey bacon bits. It was WONDERFUL!

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME: Hoodie Girl’s science project is how to fix broken and dented ping pong balls. Apparently you can fix them with heat, so she has tried things like putting them in boiling water (worked great) and using a blow drier (not so great, the blow drier overheated). She also used jewelry wire to hang a ping pong ball from the kitchen faucet (it is a very high faucet). Then she tried to use the heat from a lighter to get the ping pong ball hot. She got too close and the ball went up in flames -- about a foot high flame! We have a string hanging over the sink that we use to hang rubber gloves and other things. . . sort of like a mini clothes line. Hoodie Girl quickly got the gloves out of the way and I turned the faucet on. The wire broke, the ball fell into the sink, and the water put it out. No harm done (except to the ping pong ball, but it was already broken.) We both thought of taking a picture, but we thought putting the fire out was more important.

What a difference a day makes.

It is amazing how fast things can change in just 24 hours.

Sunday, to thank our church for their support during Prince Charming's time of unemployment, PC bought a bunch of ice cream for an ice cream social after church. I thought it might be better to wait until he got his first paycheck, but. . .

Yesterday morning, Prince Charming got an email from the company that had offered him a job. . . they retracted the job offer. That was just a wee bit overwhelming!

He almost immediately was contacted by another company. This would be a job he would really enjoy. . . as a matter of fact, he thinks he would LOVE this job. He had an almost 2 hour phone interview last night, and they are working out a time for an in person interview. It pays about 20% more than he was making at Home Depot, and about 40% more than the job he thought he had.

Sound good?

It's in Canada.

Brrrrrr.

So, we were talking about it this morning, and Hoodie Girl said, "I'll need to get boots! Lots of boots in different colors! Because, I couldn't wear purple boots with a green shirt, I would look like Barney. . ."

I am not getting emotionally involved in this whole thing right now. It is too hard to get jerked around by what might happen verses what actually does happen.

TGIF? I don't know if I can handle more Fridays like this one. . .

After 8 months of unemployment, Prince Charming was offered a job this week! The good news is it is in the next town (we don't have to move!) doing something he's been wanting to do for years. The not so good news is it is considerably less money than he is used to (although that could change), and he doesn't start until October 19, so it will be more than a month before he gets his first paycheck. Oh, and no benefits. He will be the first American employee in a German company.

Okay, so. . . we are all relieved he finally has a job! But today was a really crazy day!!!

This morning he had Job Seekers (a support group) starting at around 7:00. Then he was going to go over to where his job is going to be, and officially accept the job offer. He also told our pastor that he would help a new family in our church. They have two young boys with autism, and they are here for 6 months to do a program called Brain Balance. The husband travels with his job, so she is alone with the boys, and she needed someone to watch them while she went to an IEP meeting. She didn't know what time the meeting would be, as they told her they would call her in the morning and tell her. Prince Charming told the pastor that as long as it was after 11:00, he and one of our teen daughters would go watch them.

I took Space Cadet to her volunteer job this morning, along with my daughter Czarina, 15, to do school work while Space Cadet worked. Czarina still needs a LOT of help with her schoolwork, and supervision to make sure she is actually working. The only way I can be sure she is making good use of her time is to watch her.

I got home around 11:30 to a phone message from the pastor to Prince Charming. The IEP meeting was at 12:30, quite a bit away, and he needed to know if Prince Charming could watch the boys, which he had already committed to doing. The problem was, he had his CELL PHONE TURNED OFF, and did not know what time he was needed. I left a couple of messages and a text message.

In the meantime, my son, the first semester online college student, told me he'd been locked out of his college account for non-payment of tuition. I had been asking him to please find out how much we owed after his scholarship was applied, as I do not have access to that information, and how I could go about paying it. Well, he kept putting it off, and passed the payment deadline. He has a test he has to take by Monday, I have to proctor it (meaning I have to be in the room while he takes it), and I am gone all day on Mondays. It was Friday, and I knew we had to take care of this before the office closed for the weekend.

So, I am trying to get in touch with Prince Charming, feeling bad for this poor woman with these two autistic boys who DOESN'T KNOW if her babysitter is going to show up, feeling bad for the pastor who is caught in the middle, and can't watch the boys himself because of another obligation, thinking maybe I should do it, but I really HAVE to take care of this tuition thing, and Czarina is behind on her schoolwork (we belong to a co-op and she has deadlines), and I'm frustrated with Prince Charming because he is always committing to things without finding out if he can actually DO them. He wants to help everyone, which is great, except first he needs to see if he is really available.

Prince Charming shows up at 11:50. . . the IEP is for 12:30, and she lives 30 minutes away from us, and I don't know how far from the school. Prince Charming calls the pastor, then calls her to get directions. He tells her he and at least one of his daughters will be there to watch the boys.

Hoodie Girl, 14, is the only daughter who wants to help -- she told him last night she would help. She is trying to accumulate 100 volunteer hours this year for a presidential volunteer award. However, since Hoodie Girl was not told WHEN the babysitting would occur, she was taking a shower. Prince Charming didn't have time to wait for her. Czarina has no interest in watching these two wild young'ins, and has too much schoolwork anyway. Space Cadet? No way, not going to happen. So Prince Charming goes off by himself.

Meanwhile, I have paid Corn Bread Muffin's tuition online, but he still is locked out of his classes. So I call the college and get put into menu option purgatory. The recorded message very slowly and distinctly takes you through 9 number options. Push the number you want and. . . the recorded message very slowly and distinctly takes you through the same 9 number options. I started pushing random numbers, and kept getting the same message. After my 3rd time of calling, I finally got. . . an answering machine! However, eventually we got the problem taken care of, and Corn Bread Muffin can continue his education.

When Hoodie Girl got out of the shower and found out Prince Charming had left her behind, she shook her head and said, "Those boys are going to eat him alive." LOL. Serves him right. . .

A New School Year

Last night was orientation for the new year of our Home School Co-op. Here’s how it works: We meet on Mondays at a local church. After a half hour assembly together, the kids go to classes. There are 4 blocks of classes. Middle school and high school students have choices for each hour. For example during the science block high school students can take Physical Science, Biology, or Chemistry. Students do not have to take classes every block. There is a study hall for students who aren’t in a class during a specific block. The students get homework to do during the week and turn back in on the following Monday.

Parents teach what they are good at, and let someone else teach what they are not so good at. This year I am teaching History to K-2nd graders, and History and Literature to high school students. I enjoy those classes, but I am absolutely abysmal at science, so I am grateful someone else can teach that subject to my children.

This year, Hoodie Girl is taking Physical Science, English I, History/Literature, and French at the co-op. At home, she will be doing Pre-Algebra and Bible. At the co-op, Czarina is taking History/Literature and Pre-Algebra. At home we will be working on English, English, English and Bible.

Last year I taught Middle School Literature. I expected to teach that again this year, but Hoodie Girl and Czarina asked me to teach high school!

And this is one of the blessings of homeschooling. A few weeks ago, when the public schools started back up, I heard and read from parents who were sad because their child was entering middle school or high school. They were mourning the lack of time they had with their children before the kiddoes grew up and moved out. Well, my girls are starting high school, but I’m going to be right there with them. . . and they WANT me to be.

The kids are great. I loved teaching middle school the last two years. Monday was my favorite day of the week! As I got to know each student, it was easy to pick out who, if in public school, would be the class clown, who would be the boy every girl wanted to date, who would be the girl every boy wanted to date, who would be the jock, who would be the nerd, who would be special ed, etc. (The one thing I couldn’t determine was, who would be the mean girl.) In our class of around 17 students, everyone got along with everyone else. The shy students came out of their shells, knowing they were going to be accepted for who they are. The kids were always attentive and respectful during oral reports, and over the year last year I saw the students, especially the shy students, grow in confidence over the year. As a matter of fact, one young lady who started out the year HATING doing oral reports and would speed through them as fast as she could, ended up doing a great job on her last report of the year, taking her time and making eye contact with the audience. When someone was needed at the last minute for a skit at church this summer, this young lady stepped in and again did a great job.

I still have a lot to do to be ready for our first class on Monday, so I’d better get to it!