Well, it's not going to kill you

The answering machine

But first let me say I swear to God the wine cellar is warmer than our bedroom.  The thermostat for the heater is not working so we have no heat in there.  Luckily we have a heated mattress pad and a down comforter - it's just that getting out of bed in the morning I'm dreading.

Now on to the answering machine.  Larry likes to make our message, well let's just say creative.

While Shrub was still in office the message included things like we were attending a class on waterboarding and ended with power to the CIA.

When Obama was elected he changed it.  Now it includes that we are attending a class on Hope and Freedom.  It absolutely astounds me how many people don't get that it's satire, including my MIL.  Now I'll admit that she's not a particularly sophisticated woman but come on, the message has been on the machine since January you think she'd have figured it out by now.

Same thing with a couple of our tenants.  One actually left a request that we call after we got home from class.

For richer or poorer in sickness and stupidity

I can't recall ever being so angry at him (Larry).  The trainer told me today that we should feed Colin by hand the next couple of weeks.  I relayed the info when we got home as Larry had stayed home to give the cats sometime to hang all over him.  They really miss their connection with Larry because Colin is always there.

So he (the asshole husband) feeds Colin tonight.  He puts the dog dish down and I say NO. No Mike said we should feed Colin by hand the next couple of weeks so he understands who's in charge.  Larry just shrugged and rolled away.

I am so angry I could spit.  I'm seriously considering saying fine you take him out for his walk tonight.  Walker, wheelchair I don't really give a F@#K.

Stay tuned for the next "I'm going to kill my husband" update.

But it better news

I'm finally beginning to feel like a normal human being.  I was sustained by adrenaline rush for so long after Larry's "what in the fucking hell were you thinking" accident that I felt burned to a crisp.  I told Dr. Sanity it reminded me of one finals week in college where I had an organic chemistry, physics and calculus final all in the same week.  It left me physically and mentally drained.  One of those "great" college memories.  My mental health had taken a hard blow and I regressed so far it feels as if I'm starting from zero again.  But start I will because staying in this place is not an option.  Oh gooody I get to scrape myself up off Dr. Sanity's carpet again just to get back to were I was.

Last Monday she sent me home early from our session because I was so tired, so tired in fact that I almost fell asleep driving home.  When I came into her office on Friday she said "you look like you".  Of course I had been sleeping 28 hours a day in the week in between.

Sleaze ball tenant has FINALLY left the property, the garage is full of her stuff because she and her none too intelligent friends burned out the clutch on her car.  Instead of backing the trailer up to the house they pulled it past the house and managed to get it stuck in a ditch.  They decided the best way to solve this problem was to pull the trailer up the hill - unfortunate problem there is a car in the way.  They decided to solve this problem by pushing the car back into it's storage space, uuumm guess how successful that was.  So they decided to just try to pull the trailer out of the ditch by doing who knows what that resulted in trailer still in ditch and no clutch in the car.  She's promised she'll have her stuff out by the 3rd.

Last we heard her "friends" who were part of a gang of thieves were seen hitchhiking out of town.  YES!

We think we rented the house today.  To a very nice, very trusted young couple we met through friends.  He's a handyman type which would be wonderful to have on the property.  There is SO much to be done and Larry just can't keep up with it anymore, especially from a wheelchair!

The tenant wars down at the cabins continues but I don't care because all that stuff is back in Larry's lap.  Unfortunately our best tenant is moving out.  The young couple came up today to look at the place but there was no way to get in.  He changed the lock on the front door and super glued pennies over the locks in the back doors, in addition he put a lock on the inside of the gate to the backyard and booby trapped it.  Larry needs to track him down because we're putting an ad in the paper tomorrow.  He also gets to tell the tenant that I told she could have the place that she can't.  He's decided no more Section 8 housing than we already have.  She's section 8, still hasn't paid her deposit or the $25 she borrowed for gas over 2 months ago.

Actually in worked to our benefit because when they looked at former sleazy tenant's house they really liked it.  Now they just have to negotiate with their current landlord's to get out of their lease.  Better yet they'd like to rent the entire house which includes the currently trashed apartment.  He's willing to refurbish the place as well, sometimes dreams do come true. 

Guilty Pleasure

It' so decedent to sleep all day when your doctor orders you to do it!  Thank you Dr. Sanity.  She sent me home early from our session again yesterday with a GO TO BED AND STAY THERE because I was so tired words were disappearing from my mind before then were even spoken.

What with everything going on around here and having to shoulder most of the burden (or at least THINK I have to shoulder the burden, I've burned myself and my brain to a royal crisp!  As in I'm thinking one word and type another kind of burned out.Larry's getting better so I passed most of the tenant work back to him which is good because he's now as seething with anger as I am.  I passed it back to him but told him I'm going to do backup so he does not slip back into his sweet guy mode, because he is MUCH nicer than me.  I've worked extremely hard to get the tenants to recognize that we are 1) only their landlords and 2) they live in very old houses that bear no resemblance to living in a current era apartment and cannot always be repaired to their standards.  Please don't even get me started on windows because if I hear from a certain tenant ONE MORE TIME ABOUT HER FRICKING WINDOW I will loose my mind.

Dear Tenant,

Your house was built in the early 1940's without a foundation.  The house has settled over the intervening 60 some years.  The window CANNOT be repair to your exacting standards.  If you are unable to cope with this fact please feel free to take you and your whining self and find yourself a new place to live.

signed,

At my wit's end your landlord.

ps you are not going to be raped and murdered ( especially when you have a gun which reminds me I need to call Susan Chief of Police to see if it's legal for you to have a gun because you are a serious nutcake), there is no need to create drama where this is none or use that pathetic, whiny, oh woe is me, no one loves me voice every fricking time you call either.  It just makes me more pissed off.

I would really, really love to post this letter on her door but Larry frowns when I call the tenants nutcases to their faces.

Yes, it's been a long time

Things have been a bit crazy around here what with Larry, the wheelchair and the walker.  The almost evicted tenant that is unclear on the concept of her rent and her power bill being 2 different things and me trying to keep all the plates spinning - remember Ed Sullivan.  

Last Thursday I went to a luncheon honoring my former oncologist Dr. Fun otherwise know as Helen Collins MD.  I also went on Wednesday but I was the only one there.  Does that give you a small idea of what's going on in my brain?  I did have to leave halfway through the live auction because I couldn't take the chaos.  Good thing I didn't spring for a Catwalk ticket, I probably wouldn't have made it into the tent.

I Friday then had my usual appt with Dr. Sanity.  By then I was so tired all I could say was I'm so tired I don't know what to do with myself.  She sent me home 10 mins early because, while I had thoughts I was too tired to articulate them.  She sent me home with permission, nay orders to sleep the entire weekend.  I have to get up to take Larry's leg brace on and put it back on, otherwise SLEEP.  And sleep I did.

I feel much better today.  Woke up to tenant hell but at least I had the resources to deal with the raving lunatic.  I'm being cruel to her because I expect her to pay both her rent and electrical bill.

So all and all the Carey household is running fine.  We have out first big adventure out with wheelchair and walker because Larry has an appointment with his ophthalmomologist that (as you can imagine) has been canceled several times.

Wish us well, it's a practice run for the first of many doc appointments I'm sure.

When last we left our hero

He was in the ICU at Memorial Hospital, a hospital I've been in once before just for a few hours to get my port installed.  Amy is a Sutter Doc, Charlie is a Sutter Doc, most every doc I know is a Sutter Doc so we were is new territory here, although I did find out by listening to the person sharing the trauma bay with Larry that I could invoke Amy's name and get attention damn quick (that's what happens when your doc is the best FP doc in the county if not the state.  It's always amazing what happens when you mention Amy Shaw is your doc).  Unfortunately Larry is a Kaiser patient.

When he was transferred up to ICU I had to wait while the got him settled.  I was pretending to read a magazine when I glanced up and discovered my beloved Dr. Sanity standing in the doorway!  I walked out of the waiting room, said I can't believe you're here, she hugged me and I fell apart.  We made a couple of circles around the floor so she could calm me down.  She asked me if I'd eaten, I actually had to stop and think!  Umm, no.  So she drags me down to the cafe, makes me order food and sits to make sure I eat.  I'm still in awe that she's there "It's on my way home and I decided I couldn't wait for your phone call"  God bless Dr. Sanity.

Of course being a Kaiser patient means that Kaiser doesn't want to be paying Memorial any more $$ than is absolutely necessary.  By Friday morning we'd discovered that the trauma surgeon at Memorial couldn't get Larry on the schedule until Monday, major bummer.  There are 3, yes only 3, surgeons in Northern California that can preform the surgery that Larry needed.  The one at Memorial and 2 at Kaiser but not our local Kaiser.  Kaiser in Oakland, 80 fricking something miles away.  Over our vehement objections he was transferred to Kaiser Oakland Friday afternoon because if we'd refused the transfer we would have been liable for the bill at Memorial,  the most overpriced hospital in Sonoma County.  Because it was the holiday weekend he was worried about me getting in an accident so we agreed I wouldn't come over until Tuesday.  We'd just talk on the phone which was how we handled things when I used to go on business trips, not ideal but it works.

I talked to him Saturday only to discover that he was having surgery the next day.  Wait I'm not ready!  I still have to deal with the Aryan Brotherhood visitor of one of the tenants who's threatening another tenants Mexican heritage children, another tenant who's convinced she's going to be raped and murdered and a third who is hitting on the 17 year old son of her neighbor going so far as to try and climb in the kid's bedroom window.  I'd discovered all this lovely information when I'd come home from the hospital the night before when I ended up spending 2 1/2 hours on the phone with tenants.  After all this talking I was really scared.  I'm here alone, the cats are not very good guard animals and I possibly have nutcases with guns on the property.

I called my friends Rob and Erin to see if they could come spend the night.  Thankfully they could.  The next day Rob helped me with a notice and went with me to distribute them.  YEA, only one tenant was home and at 5 pm she was already wasted so no conversation was necessary.  Being a landlord SUCKS!

I map quested directions to the hospital.  Apparently Map Quest is not aware that there was a major earthquake here in 1989 and the freeways in the East Bay were severely effected.  So I tried to follow the directions.  After driving around Oakland and Berkeley for an hour I did what I should have done in the first place, call the hospital for directions.  Half an hour later I was still driving by this time it's close to 11 pm and I am going to see Larry if it's the last thing I do.  I called the hospital again, sobbing this time, talk to the floor nurse, explain what's happened and she assures me I will still be able to see him even though visiting hours end at 8 (WTF visiting hours over at 8 pm?) just go in through Emergency.  I arrived and found his room.  I cannot tell what a relief it was just to touch his cheek.  I didn't stay long because of the late hour, he had not yet heard what time his surgery was scheduled so we agreed I'd be at the hospital at 10 am.  My sister Jan came up to be with me during his surgery.  I think it's the longest time the 2 of us had time to sit together and talk since Marissa was born : )

My friend Rob had been very lucky and secured me a room at a very sweet hotel just a block down the street from the hospital.  Lots of visiting nurses and docs stay there, it's family owned, they live on the premises and $45 a night - IN OAKLAND!

I'm going to stop this entry now because it's getting a bit long but I will post the rest of the adventure tonight.

The day Larry tried to make the Gator fly

This is a Gator It was not entirely successful.  It did in fact fly but only because it was totally out of control.  He landed sideways across the drive way and flew down the hill, hit a redwood tree and was tossed out.  Fortunately there was a wire fence that stopped him from rolling to the bottom of the hill.

One of our tenants and a friend noticed smoke (live in the forest, smoke REALLY gets your attention) and went to check it out.  She found the Gator still running thus the smoke.   They also discovered Larry.  He'd been done there for about an hour before they discovered him.  That was a very good thing because I'm used to him running around the property all  day so I wouldn't have gone looking for him until  about 6 pm. 

They called 911 and then came and got me.  The paramedics and firefighters arrived, got his neck safely contained, got him on a backboard, up the hill to the ambulance and across to our neighbors property which was the only place the helicopter had to land and flew him off to the local trauma center.

There it was determined that he broke his left hip, pulled the ball from the socket The femoral head is the ball, the acetabulum is the socket, and had a partial fracture of the left knee.  The trauma surgeon put a pin (really used a drill and shot a bolt, I was told I could stay but when they showed up with an actual drill I decided to leave the room.  On one hand I was fascinated on the other they were doing it to my husband) through his knee and added weights to it in the hopes it would pull the ball back into the socket.  He was then sent to ICU.  As it happens one of my cousins is a nurse in that very ICU.  By a twist of fate Sue was working a half day the next day.  She spent time talking to Larry and discovered I wouldn't arrive until after she left.  Incredibly wonderful person that she is, she waited 1 1/2 hours after her shift was over just so she could talk to me and assure me Larry was doing fine, explain what the coming processes would be and told me to call if I had any questions.  She's so adorable she said "I've been a nurse for 23 years (wait how in the hell did THAT happen) if I can't answer your medical questions by now I can find some one who can."

I'm fast running out of steam and this could get REALLY long so I'll finish it up tomorrow - sorry to leave you hanging but the ultimate result is that he'll eventually be ok.

This is getting out of hand.

Will someone PLEASE make the Dugars stop,  baby 19 on the way.  Oh and their son & daughter-in-law who have only been married a few months are expecting as well.  Maybe they'll have a contest to see who can pump out more babies.

Yes babies are beautiful, cuddly, adorable little people and the world is lucky to have them but these "we'll let God decide how many babies we have" people are just selfish and irresponsible.  God gave you a brain and she expects you to use it, like the people who invented birth control - they used the brains they were given so the rest of society could benefit.

There is severe overcrowding on out planet as it is.  People are starving to death every day, children dying of disease now unknown in our country.  These Quiverfull people seem not to understand or care that every extra baby they have takes away resources from another child who desperately needs it.

And the message they send is that women are just broodmares just popping one baby out after another.  How do you make time to give a single child the love and attention he or she needs when they're one of a herd?  How do you teach them to be an individual in their own right?How do you teach them that women are more than baby factories?  That they're not automatically the one who does the dishes or the laundry or the grocery shopping?  How do you teach them to respect women as human beings?

I could go on but I won't because I'll really get to ranting and none of us need that.  Besides I think I did a similar rant when they annouced #18.  These things bother me.

Stabiity

Can sometimes be greatly over rated.  Like when your husband spent 4 days in the hospital last weekend with a terrible infection, you actually screamed at an evicted tenant (which Dr. Sanity assures me they deserved and I should not feel bad about it, but I do anyway), you did your budget for Sept and realized you will have $13.33 left at the end of the month.   

When someone as good and powerful as Ted Kennedy, the champion of healthcare reform dies and you figure there goes healthcare reform right down the toilet.

When you go look at the damage the evicted tenant did to their rental unit that was pristine when they moved in and now not only reeks of smoke (cigarette and other), but also looks as if a barnyard full of animals lived there.  When you simply have no idea how you're going to pay for all the repairs that need to get done which include replacing the front and back doors because the sheriff had to kick them both in to get inside to arrest said tenants.  Ripping up the wood flooring said tenant put down with out bothering to measure to see if he had enough flooring, he didn't the moron and replacing the brand new carpet that had been installed just before they moved in because he tore it up to put down the wood floor.

Paying said tenant to move off the property so we would have to go through the court eviction process that takes approximately 90 days (God only know if the unit would have been standing in 90 days).

Dr. Sanity assures me that I am strong and I can take it all and as usual she's probably correct but I have to question her sanity today.

Besides that it is totally fricking HOT here today which does not put me in the best of moods at the best of times.

So much for my tale of woo for today.  Sometimes it just all piles up at the same time and I lose the ground beneath my feet for a couple of days.

And yes Eliza I know I did the cardinal sin of mixing tenses but just pretend your not a literature genius.

Healthcare hysteria

As you can imagine health care is a very big issue in my world.  It always has been as I was "blessed" with being allergic to almost everything at a very young age - except food, thank God for that - but just about everything else on God's green earth makes me itch or sneeze or break out in a rash.  I decided long ago that if my allergy wanted to be here it was going to have to live the life I wanted, like it or not.  This does makes me a slave to the pharmaceutical industry which gets more out of control each day but fortunately courtesy of American Express screwing up my life years and admitting it I have very good but damn expensive medical and drug coverage (yes I'm pretty sure that qualifies as a a run-on sentence).

But back to the basic issue - healthcare. Mine is fairly reasonable and covered most of my biopsy, surgeries, chemo, radiation and doctors visits.  For a little view into history this is how it was 3 years ago tomorrow.  The memories are as fresh as the day they happened.  You would think they would fade over time but no.  Everything I go back to my archives it's like reliving the entire process.  Side tracked again sorry.

So healthcare today  is the insurance companies basically have all the control and they hang over your doctor's shoulder telling him/her how to practice medicine. And mental health care, let's not even go there.  I cannot tell you how many times Amy has had to put in a special request to get a certain drug approved because it didn't meet their formulary.  And then there was in infamous out-of-network refusal to pay for emergency surgery in Hawaii because I didn't contact them first.  Hello, emergency, chance of dying, contacting my insurance company was not on the top of anyone's list especially mine.  It was a 16 month battle to get them to pay.  What Larry should have chartered an air ambulance and flown me back home?  I'd have been dead by then.

So then why are people like Sarah Palin, let's face it not the brightest bulb and why is she still around anyway, are ranting that Obama's plan will order her parents and disabled son killed, unclear on the concept of a living will.  Why does some woman at a town hall meeting call and say she understands that once health care reform passes a government employee will be visiting the home of every elderly person in America asking them how they want to die?  Because they are ignorant, stupid, uninformed and believe everything Rush Limbaugh to Americans for Prosperity and all it's evil little off shoots tell them to believe.  I mean why bother to do any sort of research when you have all these wingnuts to do it for you.  Based on their beliefs I figure Larry and I would be put out on some ice flow.

I have a book in my never ending pile of books to read by the name of Idiot America: How Stupidity became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.  It some how seems quite appropriate based on what's happening today.

There you have it my rant for the day.