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Booo! from your insurance company

On Halloween I received the scariest thing in the mail. I’d been anticipating it, but it was still a shock.

I got the itemized bill from the hospital for Sassy’s surgery this summer.

Before I share it with you, I’d like to tell you that I’m already making payments on my portion of the Anesthesiologist, Neurologist, Orthopedic surgeon, and the MRIs.

When I opened the bill I laughed, a great snorting laugh of disbelief. The total is a hysterical, unreal number. Five pages of the most outrageous charges. Thanks to the internet, I was able to figure out what many of them are. It was like a reverse treasure hunt.

Here’s the total.

Total

Did you giggle too? It’s ok. Go ahead. I won’t be offended at all. The other option is crying. Can you believe that number? I mean sweet Jesus.

Let’s take a look at the biggest chunk, shall we?

The screws

Look at that – 1 screw for $3,304.30. There are 19 of them all at over $3k each. Then there’s “cap screw” at $382 a piece. I think it’s possible the person who does the purchasing for the hospitals might be the same person who does so for the government, buying $600 screwdrivers and such. I did some Googling about these screws. I found them on Amazon for considerably less.

Amazon

Now, I realize that the ones they put in my daughter might be slightly different from the ones you could get at the Ace Hardware, but they’re still just screws. How different could they possibly be? Look at this. A pack of 25 for $27.22 and free shipping cause I’m Amazon Prime. I could sell the other 6 and make a tidy profit of $2,000 and I’d be selling them at a discount.

Another giant piece of the bill was her daily “room and board” in the CCU.

room and board

Think of the apartment you could rent in NYC or Paris for 7K. The mind reels.

Lastly, she took a lot of pain medicine while she was in there. Understandable since they had just screwed 19 screws into her spine.

oxy

Ever since the days of watching Breaking Bad we’ve all wondered if we could pull off a Walter White. If each one of these Oxycodone pills would fetch $10.70 a fair penny could be made. Maybe not quite a storage unit of cash pallets, but enough to afford a pet tiger.

I count 16 charges for Oxycodone. My sister-in-law says I should call up and dispute one, just for the hell of it. Pitch a conniption and refuse to pay for a random dosage along with those two charges on 7/7 for $1 each. I don’t know what they’re for, but I feel like that’s where I should draw the line.

If you want to see the whole bill, you can click here. It’s like a hospital bill written by Stephen King.

Bill

October 30

5-things12You know, adults shouldn’t be expected to work in an office on Halloween anymore than children should. It’s impossible to concentrate with all the hullabaloo going on around your office. Our team is wearing silly head gear. The one assigned to Amylynn is very Medusa-like. It has devil horns and long red and black ribbons. The Medusa part is from these black mesh tubes that dangle down in front of her face and light up with little tiny red light bulbs. The headband is squeezing her brain to a dangerous degree, but one must suffer through in the name of silliness. Ava’s wearing a tiny, purple witch hat with black netting. So long as we get candy, at some point, it’s all worth it. How are you celebrating? Contemplate your costume and we’re Stay in the houseshare some goofiness.

1. Timely news. As you know, we keep an eye out for these news stories so you don’t have to. We want you to be informed and horrified at the same time. While we do know that a zombie apocalypse can’t really happen, this sort of news story is disconcerting to say the least. A teenager in Oregon has been diagnosed with Bubonic plague. Yep. She contracted it from a flea bite while camping. You can see right there where things went south. We don’t know how many times we need to tell you blue pumpkinpeople to stay in the house. Bad things happen in the wilderness.

2. Timely fruit. Yes pumpkins are fruit. We’re not going to get into the ins and outs of why. That’s a sex ed question for another day. You’re just going to have to trust us because we read it on the internet and they can’t put it on the internet if it isn’t true. That’s not even what’s interesting about pumpkins. Honestly who cares if they’re fruits or vegetables. They’re only good when they’re pie anyway. The most important thing to know is that pumpkins also come in BLUE! Have you ever seen anything quite so nifty? Like those purple carrots. Remember those? And the black chickens? There’s a whole host of magical food we don’t even know about. Thank goodness for the internet Doris Payne– a regular font of knowledge right there.

3. A newly canonized saint. One of these days the Sisters are going to officially form our church – mostly for tax purposes – and this woman is going to be one of our first patron saints. Meet Doris Payne. She looks like a lovely woman – sweet, grandmotherly, full of interesting stories – except that all of her best stories involve the fact that she’s an internationally wanted jewel thief. Her world wide swath of heists has been ongoing since the 1950s. She’s 85 years-old and remains busy. She’s most well known for stealing a 10 1/2 carat diamond in Monte Carlo and a 33,000 diamond studded ring in Charlotte, NC. She was nabbed this week for shoplifting a pair of $690 Dior earrings from the Saks in Atlanta. The police had no idea who’d they’d caught at first. Maybe the Sisters would car on roofbe bad law enforcement officers because if we’d arrested her and found out about her list of warrants and the crimes for which they’re for, we’d have let her go. If you’re interested, here’s the link to the documentary made about her in 2013.

4. Best excuse ever. Joyce Kingsley was innocently sitting in her house when she heard a giant KABOOM! She thought it was the world’s loudest thunder clap, but it turns out she was way off. What actually happened is that someone lost control of their Mustang on a hill, went through several bushes and trees, even a fence, before landing on her roof in a very thrilling Dukes of Hazzard move. That’s pretty exciting, eh? How do you suppose they’re going to get that stupid car off there? I say they make them drive it backwards. The driver of the Mustang was treated for low blood sugar. Really. That’s the excuse they were going with and apparently the police bought it. Remember that if you’re ever driving through Woodhull Township, Michigan. Maybe they were just happy someone was driving a domestic witchautomobile. We’re using that excuse when we get in trouble in China for touching the pandas. “So sorry. We have low blood sugar.”

5. Where does one get eye of newt? A judge just granted a witch a protective order from a harasser who just happened to be a warlock. This happened in Salem, Mass this week because of course it did. He’s charged with making “incessant phone calls at night and humiliating her on Facebook.” Maybe she doesn’t know how Facebook works. We’re pretty sure that’s what social media was designed for. Anyway, Warlock Christian Day is no longer allowed to pester Witch Priestess Lori Sforza. Our question remains, if she’s a “witch priestess” why doesn’t she just cast a spell on the guy? Make his nose grow or have his feet fall off. Maybe we don’t understand witchcraft or something, but we don’t see the point of being a witch if you don’t get to hex people now and then. We have a long, long list. It’s probably best we don’t understand it after all. Nothing good could come of it.

 

National Cat Day

This is like a high holy day for the Sisters. It’s right up there with National Cup Cake Day and National Ice Cream Day.

Here is our homage to our hairy babies. You enjoy this why we go get the cat hair out of our Chapsticked lips.

Being a cat lover is hell.

Baby collage

You’d think the cat would have more hair. Just sayin’

These guys slay me with their cat-people and dog-people. So incredibly hysterical – the only thing different here is that Jojo Kitty begs worse than any dog, ever.

The tears of a clown

I’ve bared my soul with you about one of my issues before. When I’m nervous I talk. A lot. It’s awful to be in my head when this happens. I absolutely cannot shut up. It’s impossible. It’s agony. Joke after joke come out and there’s absolutely no stopping it.

Apparently, it amuses all the people who know me well. Sometimes Ava thinks it’s funny–to a certain extent, depending on the situation. My husband thinks…well.

My Honey and I had a parent/teacher conference with Bandit’s fifth grade teacher this afternoon. These make me Freight-Trainnervous. I don’t know why. Honestly. I’m not the student here. Nevertheless, I’m off like a shot from a cannon.

As we walked out the door, I said to My Honey, “I can’t make it stop.”

He knew what I was talking about, this jokester tirade. “It’s like a freight train.”

“It’s out of my control.” By now I’m gesturing like a wild thing as we make our way through the quad towards the parking lot.

“It’s kind of exciting,” he says.

I look at him aghast. “You know you could step in. You could stop it at anytime be speaking.”

“I’m just waiting to see if the train hits a curve.”

“Wow!”

“Well, maybe you could try swearing a little less. You know, in front of the teacher.”

Oh my god. I can’t even remember half of what I’ve said. It’s like I’m in a comedy fugue state. “Oh lord.”

“Also, maybe stop cracking jokes about the option of beating your child to get him to do his homework.”

Oh my god. Oh my god.

 

 

 

 

Fuzzy hugs

It’s been a while since I posted this. It’s been much too long. Way too long.

This will make everything much, much better – whatever ails you.

racoon hugging cat1racoon hugging cat2

 

racoon hugging cat3racoon hugging cat4

October 23

5-things12Can you believe Halloween is next week? How is that possible? Time has just sped by. One thing that is still exciting about this time of year is costumes. Even at the Sister’s advanced ages, we still feel like kids when it comes to trying to figure out what to be for Halloween. The options are nearly endless. Should we be scary or cute? One of these days Amylynn wants to be Cinderella but she refuses to do it until she has an actual Cinderella ball gown. Not one of those cheapy things at the costume stores. A real blue and silver ball gown with underskirts and sparkles. It will cost a fortune to have it made but that’s the deal. No ball gown = no Cinderella. Also, a zombie could be appealing but we suspect that makeup is really itchy. Now that we’re in our bronze years (not silver and certainly not golden but old enough to know better) we mothcan see all the advantages to a comfortable costume. We look forward to eating about a hundred stolen Butterfinger minis over the next weeks. Here’s some stuff to mull over.

1. A moth by another other name… There is an auction on Ebay to win the rights to name a moth. We went on to Ebay and couldn’t find this listing, although we did find lots of other stuff of interest. The gist of this auction as we understand it is as follows. An entomologist named Eric Metzler found a new species of moth in White Sands, New Mexico. We can’t understand how these bugs stay hidden for so long in some place like New Mexico. It’s not like it’s the Amazon jungle or something where a bunch of its inhabitants are probably never going to be discovered. Nevertheless, it’s a new moth – a tiny one weighing in at less than an ounce and measures about an inch. It’s been eight years since the Amanciodiscovery and still no name. Hence the auction. We’d like to nominate something classic and a bit funny considering the thing’s size. How about Mothra? Give the bug a little ego trip. Seriously, consider it.

2. The world’s richest man. We’re talking richer than you can ever imagine. And yet, he’s photographed wearing this shirt. ***eyeroll*** What do we know? He was probably on his own yacht whereas we may be wearing cute shirts today, we still went to our crappy jobs in Amylynn’s 10-year-old SUV. Anyway, he’s the guy that owns the European clothes dynasty Zara. We’ll be the first to admit we’ve never heard of him, but again, what do we know. We think we bought the shirts we’re wearing now – cute as they are – at Target. Anyway, at the time of the article this morning, Amancio Ortega had a fortune of 79.8 billion dollars. BILLION. As in a bunch more than a million. The article also stated he made over $4 billion over night and that’s how he overcame Bill Gates. OVER NIGHT!! While we were sleeping in our too-old nataliemattresses on sheets from Bed Bath and Beyond that we got with a coupon. It didn’t last long. Bill’s back on top, but you shouldn’t worry about Amancio. We’re pretty sure he’s going to be ok. We’ll also bet he lets his wife have a dog when she asks nicely.

3. Diet with proven results. This comes from the brilliant and skinny Natalie Schafer. You might remember her as the charming Mrs. Thurston Howell III on Gilligan’s Island. She claimed that she could lose three pounds in five days on a diet she invented. She called it the Ice Cream Diet, and we think she’s a genius. The plan goes as follows: She ate a quart of ice cream a day. cheese2First a bowl of vanilla with her coffee in the morning. Then two bowls of different flavors at lunch, a bowl of any flavor as an afternoon snack and then two bowls for dinner. Honestly. We’re pretty sure that’s a diet we could stick with.

4. Very important scientific studies. While the Sisters do think that scientific study is really important especially when it comes to space exploration, curing cancer, and figuring out why we’re fat, we’re very appreciative that there are still exciting studies like this one just published in the US National Library of Medicine being funded. If you’ve ever been concerned that you’re addicted to cheese, you probably are. Apparently, the University of Michigan wondered about it enough that they tested 500 students against the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Turns out cheese is highly addictive because it has an ingredient called carsein. It’s in all milk products so don’t panic. During digestion it releases opiates called casomorphins. That explains the cheese stuffed mushrooms, the fried cheese, the quesadillas, the fondue, the pizza, and the cheese and crackers we ate forspotify lunch. Still not more addictive than cupcakes. Wait, we might have figured out why we’re fat.

5. Spotify. We love our music. Not everyone agrees. In fact our children are the President and CEO of What-is-That-Crap-You’re-Listening-To? Club. But here’s the thing, we love the music we love. That doesn’t mean we want to buy a whole album of that stuff. Thus the glories of the electronic age. We play the hell out of our Spotify with our electronic singles of the classics. Of course we only have like three songs on there because we have to get our kids to help us load more music and then we have to put up with their criticisms. So we’ve played Papa Was a Rolling Stone and House of the Rising Sun about 75 thousand times. If things don’t work out with mortgage lending, we’re fully ready to go on the road as back up singers.

Spitting isn’t very adult either, but mercifully it hasn’t come to that–yet.

You know when you become an adult you don’t get to yell at all the people you want to.

You can’t yell at the people in the grocery store whose cart takes up the entire aisle.annoyed Dwight

You can’t yell at the people at the gas station who don’t pull up to the forward pump.

You can’t yell at your boss when he’s been a complete dickhead all day long – nay, all month long. Or seven months long.

Well, you’re not supposed to anyway.

I’ve been suffering in silence for months. I’ve been gritting my teeth and avoiding eye contact so as to keep my temper in check. I’ve been dodging him and, instead when I was feeling near my breaking point, I’d go down to Ava’s office and shriek at her. Sometimes, just to mix things up a bit, I corner one of my teammates and flail my arms in their direction for a while. I yelled at My Honey every night when I came home from work. I employed the tactic of ignoring his most egregious emails since I couldn’t reply to them in a professional manner that didn’t end in an enormous STICK IT UP YOUR ASS in italics at the end.

hissy fitThe whole thing has been frustrating and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of impotence.

I considered drinking, heavily. I told another coworker that I was considering drugs but, I know when it came down to it, I’d chicken out and just eat a bunch of jellybeans until my stomach hurt instead.

Today was my breaking point. He’d messed with me one too many times and I lost it. There was yelling, finger pointing, and the slam of a door. It felt good. One of my teammates was right outside the door when it happened and she raised her hands in a silent cheer.

“How did he respond?” Ava asked me when I finally found her so I could tell her of my triumph.

“He didn’t. In fact he looked quite stricken. It was glorious.”

The rest of the day he was insanely nice to me. I am not fooled. His retaliation will most likely take the path of passive aggressive torture. Wheeeeee!

 

Newest mantra – don’t get attached

My kids have both started watching The Walking Dead via Netflix on their phones. They’ve done this independently because I certainly never would have suggested they watch it. I’ll be the first to admit that zombie-fest isn’t for The_Walking_Dead,_Season_1_Casteveryone. My Honey doesn’t get it; the mystique is lost on him.

“Zombie shows are stupid,” he says. No matter how many times I tell him TWD isn’t about zombies. It’s about people, the fall of civilization, how people deal with it. The grossest zombies ever just happen to be in it.

Maybe it’s because my kid’s friends all watch it and talk about it. The Bandit has even played the video game.

So now they’re attached to their phones even more than usual.

Carl in the houseThey keep reporting what parts they’re in. So far, both are in Season 2. They also keep mentioning character names.

“Who?” I say. I don’t remember most of the people they’re talking about.

They get mad about it. “How can you not remember them? How?”

“Oh honey,” I say with a pat on their arm. “Obviously they didn’t live very long.”

I’ve been watching all along, from the pilot episode that Halloween oh so many years ago. I’ve learned that you don’t get attached to characters on that show. It’s not as bad as Game of Thrones, but it’s pretty bad. One thing that’s fun though is remembering things like the Well Zombie, or how many damn times they said, “Carl, stay in the house.”  (OMG AMY!!!!  How can you just gloss over the well zombie?! You know how I feel about him – he’s the finest zombie ever created!  If zombies were ever real and one fell in a well, he’d look EXACTLY like that. EXACTLY. Bravo to the zombie makers on TWD!)

Sassy and The Bandit do know the mantra, “If Daryl dies, we riot!” though. I’ve told them I’ve extended that sentiment to include Carol as well. Honestly, she’s such an epic badass she gives Daryl a run for his money.

Are you a Walking Dead fan? Who is your favorite character? Are they still alive?

 

Then, sadly, they took a picture for the year book

I got to go to Bandit’s fifth grade class today. It was my fervent hope that I’d embarrass him, but I’m not certain it really worked out that way.

The reason I was there in the first place was because his class is participating in NaNoWriMo next month. They’re each writing a 10,000 word story in November. I’d read about it in his teacher’s weekly newsletter and I wrote her to say NaNoWriMo younghow excited I was for the kids to do that project. Once she found out I was a published author she asked if I’d be interested in coming to the class.

“Sure!” I said. How much fun! She asked me to talk about how I plot my stories, to give advice on dialogue, and explain how I create characters. I said I’d be happy to answer questions. I really hoped they’d have questions. I admit to being a little intimidated about talking for an hour. I don’t know why I worry about that so much. For God’s sake I talk all the damn time. This time, I was worried about talking over their heads, or being boring, or something worse. I don’t know what’s worse to 10-year-olds than being boring, but I didn’t want to be it.

I showed up with copies of my books and a lot of my worksheets and such to show. I didn’t have to show nearly 1/2 of it because these kids had A LOT of questions. Really it was like being at one of my grownup writers group meetings and doing a manuscript clinic.

They’re smart – and the teacher has done a hell of a job introducing them to building blocks. They know point of view, dark moments, climaxes, scene structure. They knew more than I did when I started writing.

They wanted to know how I constructed a believable villain. How many scenes I wrote. What was the secret to crafting believable secondary characters. Seriously, they asked that.

A girl wanted to know how much of me was in my characters. Was it alright to model plots points after events in your own life?

They quickly became obsessed with how many words I written. Then one kid wanted to know how many letters that equated to.

My boy sat in the back and fed me questions like Ava does when I talk to a group, helpfully filling the dull spots like a champ.

“How many times have you had to rewrite a book?”

“Why don’t you get to pick your titles?”

One kid found the idea that all my stories end with a Happily Ever After deplorably dull, the pinnacle of boring. He said, in his story, no matter how hard the hero tried, he’d never be able to defeat the villain.

“It’s all going to end up with the world exploding,” he said, mimicking the explosion with his hands.

“Well,” I said, “You’re not going to leave you a lot of room for a sequel then, are you? You’re publisher won’t like that very much.”

I’m going back next month in the middle of NaNoWriMo to check in on their progress and tell them how my 8th book is coming along. I’m feeling the pressure to get words to the page like never before!

 

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