Just an average Gal, older mom, trying to live a simple life & what happens along the way.
Sunday, June 30, 2024
My Current You Tube Obsession
Friday, June 28, 2024
Frugal Friday....the June 28th Edition
There are a few Frugal wins over the past week.
* I grabbed a few freebies at Walmart this week......
The pads and toothpaste are headed to the food bank. The Winged Wellness gummies, the Mushroom gummies and "Wonder Gut" I am keeping and all had full price rebates on them(well not the Wonder Gut). The Shepherd's Pie was an "The Insiders" offer I qualified for...cost $5.98 and I am suppose to get a $15 electronic debit card.* About those electronic debit cards--seems you can't combine them with another form of payment if the amount on the EDC doesn't cover what you are trying to purchase(at least not on Amazon or Walmart, etc. as I have tried). So you need to track what you spend and find something that, after tax included hits or comes close to but not over the amount on the card. The last time I had one of these EDCs it had $30 loaded on it and after buying 2 items I had $2.14 left on it. I figured I wasn't going to have that card expire with $2.14 still on it(these debit cards have about 6 months of life). I actually found something for $2.14 including sales tax to LA the other day so ordered it. It's something I'll either give as a gift or put in a giveaway box in the Fall(too hot here to mail anything that might melt in this heat and humidity now).
* Every PT session I grab a bottle of water from the fridge there. So free 16 bottles of water total. 8-)
* I went back to the Orthopedist for my shoulders. Still having pain in the left one(PT and continuing to do exercises at home seems to have helped the right one)so I got a steroid injection in my left AC joint. I am bruised and still sore where it was administered but hopefully this will give me some relieve(this and avoided doing certain actions with my left arm). The AC joint is full up with arthritis inflammation, and it's right where my bra strap sits so going braless seems to help as well. Good thing I don't go much of anywhere and can stay home and not wear one of those torturous devices. lol
We did spend on 2 packs of Klondike ice cream sandwiches on sale and with Ibotta rebates, a pack of clearance priced trout fillets for Hubs to make when I am gone(I don't care for trout)and an almost half priced with store coupon hunk of salmon.
Also picked up a 2 lb. of strawberries for $2.88(changed my location in the app to get the best coupon deal)and a 4 pack of Dannon yogurt cups on clearance which cost $1.39 after digital coupon. These regularly go for almost $5 at Kroger!
Here's the "Tote Bag" along with 3 copies of a glossy generic thank you card. Quality control much??
Thursday, June 27, 2024
Return to the Creepy Eye Doctor
If you've been here awhile, you know I went to a local eye doc to have a secondary cataract zapped in my left eye back in March.
When I left there, the doctor handed me a card with a new appointment for June. I assumed it was a follow up to check up on my procedure from March.
So I go in, the tech makes me read off an eye chart, etc., then sticks me in a room to wait for an eye doctor, a different one from the one that lasered my eye in March.
After close to an hour of waiting, the eye doc comes in, greets me, looks at my record and then asks me why I was there? I told her I assumed this was a follow-up to laser procedure in March, which she said it wasn't. She continued that usually the office schedules a procedure for the other eye at that first laser procedure, not a follow-up and she had no clue why I was there.
Now I also had no clue why I was there either! She said to make another appointment at the front for having my other eye lasered. She asked me if I wanted glasses before I left. Yep, this was an appointment just to get me to order glasses. *eyes roll* Nope. My reading glasses work just fine, thanks anyway.
So I made an appointment to get my other eye's secondary cataract taken care of and left.
Besides wasting my time with this non-appointment I was also disappointed that the giant eyeball outside was NOT decorated for the season.
I'll be going back the day before the 4th of July so am hoping there is an Uncle Sam hat or US flags poking out of the top of it.
I did snap a new eyeball artwork gracing the walls inside the building though......
Love this one! lolz
Sluggy
Wednesday, June 26, 2024
Life Lately
I don't know if I mentioned it already(I've been kind of loopy lately)but I saw the new neurologist a week ago Monday. Now I am fully untangled from that crappy health system. rah.
She didn't know this other neurologists name so she thinks he is a resident....a doctor with training wheels as it were. That would partly explain him never answering my messages through the patient portal or the many phone calls logged into the Neurology Department. He's too busy being pulled to here to there like all resident students. And it would explain him calling me in the evening from his dorm or whatever his housing situation is.
Anyway, I now have a full fledged Neurologist who knows her shit AND can be reached if needed. I watched as she went through the 50 pages of my neurological medical records the other healthcare system sent over(remember, this is the same system that gave me to a Pediatrician when I went seeking a Primary Care Provider)and she was circling stuff and marking through stuff, while shaking her head and I might have seen a few eye rolls too.
Basically Mr. Resident was woefully under medicating my Essential Tremor! New Neurologist DOUBLED one medication dosage and increased the other by a quarter. She also told me if this wasn't enough to control them fully, she would add another medicine that is often used with my main medication, as those two sort of work in tandem to control ET.
I also let her know I was going to Virginia to possibly have FUS(Focused Ultrasound)procedure and she was all for that. 8-))) Even if I get the FUS it will only help my dominant hand and I'll still need medications to control the other side. After 9 months to a year patients can have the other side of their brain done if needed but I don't know where we will be a year down the road. I can still go back to Virginia to that particular Neurosurgeon if I want. I probably will because if we relocate to PA the closest one now to that part of Pennsylvania who does this procedure is in Philly and we won't be as close as staying with my brother in Virginia would be.
I've been to a couple of webinars on FUS and ET with Neurosurgeons and they both say there is no way to know how long the FUS procedure is effective for(your experience may vary). I may end up back with the ET on the treated side a number of years down the road but I feel it's something I need to try. I hate being on all these drugs and if this gets me off them or at least lessens how many I need I am all in.
I'll leave you with a nice sunset we had the other evening. The sun sets at the back of our property.....
All the trees back there obscure the whole view but it's nice anyway.
Tomorrow maybe I'll talk about my return to the creepy eye doctor's office too. That was a royal cluster but what can I say.....I am being held hostage in Louisiana and what passes for competence here. lolz
Sluggy
Monday, June 24, 2024
This Week on the Dining Table....the June 24th Edition
The "What Makes America Great, at Least in Louisiana" Edition.....
Sluggy
Sunday, June 23, 2024
2023-The Year of Trauma Causes Hair Loss
I went through three major traumatic events last year. One began on Christmas Eve of 2022 when I nearly sliced my lower leg off. At least, Sissie's husband, who tended to my wound until the paramedics took me to the hospital in an ambulance, told her later he thought for sure I would lose that leg. He was a battlefield medic in Afghanistan so he would know a thing or two about wounds.
We got home and shortly thereafter I got sent to Wound Care. Being power washed to remove dead skin was no picnic. And then the people they had putting multi-layered bandaging on me didn't know how to do it, so after about 24 hours these bandages would come undone and fall off.
Luckily eventually I had a great home health nurse and she DID know how to administer these multilayered wraps to help close up my wound. All in all it was a sucky time in my life and with this wound I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without help.
Then as I got past this injury my son decided to become Mr. Hyde. He married a deceitful woman and she insisted that he do her bidding, which included turning on his own parents. He became a totally different person, someone we don't know. He began to lie to us and it all culminated at Christmas when we made a torturous 3 day car trip to see him, his wife and our granddaughter. We weren't allowed to touch her, hold her and when we took a photo, son's wife went ballistic! They lied that nobody in the family(her family since that is the only one they spent time with)was allowed to touch/hold her. They mentioned that they had gone to have photos taken with Santa earlier that day but we assumed one of her parents had held her for that. And 2 days following our visit they were taking the baby on a plane to Florida because wife's brother(who is a music teacher)had the school marching band performing at some Bowl Game down there. Who takes an infant on a germ filled plane in the Winter but doesn't let her own grandparents touch her? Oh, and we were required to have certain vaccines before the wife would allow us to be in the same room with our granddaughter.
We brought gifts, including this cute baby romper I bought at the Tower of London......
See the Queen's corgis on it? lol We got no thank you either in person or in a text/email/phone call from either of them. Son dropped a generic gift card in a card and shoved it into Hubs hands. Does this generation not have any manners.
We went to the meeting bearing gifts in an effort to reconcile but son's wife would have none of it! She was hell bent on being vicious and mean toward us and withholding our granddaughter like a weapon. Even my younger son saw and said that. While older son just goes along with wife's agenda. I was so disappointed.
So we finished that visit and 2 days later drove to VA to spend time with my brother and sister-in-law. Sister-in-law was somehow still friends with my son and his wife on FB and started showing hundreds of photos the wife had posted there(after she had instructed us not to post any photos of the baby online). Including a photo with Santa, where they had plopped that baby in a complete strangers lap(neither of them had held her!)!!
When confronted with this they continued to lie to us and sister-in-law got unfriended on FB(like everybody else). Hubs blew up at son and I told him he was no longer my son. He had destroyed any relationship we had with his deceits and lies and I just couldn't take anymore of his backstabbing. He has caused me undue stress, anxiety and emotional disturbance that whole year. I feel part of it's his wife making him lie to us to cover up her deceits but who knows for sure. At any rate, I no longer wished to be part his life, even if that meant never seeing my granddaughter again. I wasn't going to make him chose between his wife(who has made it very clear she hates us)and his parents, who loved, sacrificed and did a lot for him. So basically I gave him the gift of peace by no longer being interested in being in his life. That meant I'll never get to see my granddaughter but I will make that sacrifice it it brings him peace in his marriage to that witch.
Then my daughter, who we dragged our lives down here for, because she begged us to be near her, started acting strangely and distant. Over that first year down here, she had slowly been withdrawing from us. But I think older son had told her lies about our visit to PA and she refused to talk to us and get our version of what happened, so I confronted her about her behavior and other things I don't want to mention here and she basically blew us off. She refuses to have anything to do with us now. I gathered a box of her things from childhood(like I did for the other two kids)and went to her house around noon on a Sunday recently to give it to her. Even with ringing the doorbell, knocking loudly numerous times on the door and her big dog barking her head off, daughter refused to answer the door. And I know they were home as both cars were in the driveway.
I had typed up a note, just in case, so I taped it to her door, and left the box on the front porch.
So that has been a large emotional and anxiety ridden part of last year. We sent baby gifts(some where never acknowledged)and we brought more things to PA for the granddaughter and her parents refused to acknowledge them.
Then I had to run a medical gauntlet here of incompetent health care, an orthopedic surgeon who led me on and lied to me about doing my knee replacement(he kept offering me steroid shots in the knee, knowing full well, that would put me off for 3 more months). So I hobbled around until I found the orthopedist in Ohio would did an excellent job on my TKR.
When I returned, after recovering from a PCP/Pediatrician assigned to me who abandoned me via some unknown to me person over the phone at that facility(and yes I reported her to the health system's CEO and the LA Board of Medical Examiners), I found a new PCP and a physical therapy place to help me recover the use of my knee.
While at that PT one day, I happened to look into the mirror while doing some exercise. They had a mirror covering one whole wall of that place. I was able to see that I had bald places on the back of my head where hair should be! WTF?!?!
This was taken in January when my hair was still colored. I had long hair before this.
My forehead today..........
My hair was so shockingly bad that I had to wear chemo patient type headwraps when we went to PA at Christmas.....
I can't believe that my husband never mentioned to me that I had numerous bald spots on the back of my head that whole time! I guess men don't notice stuff like that, huh? I went all around the British Isles on a cruise ship in that semi-bald state and now I feel a fool.
Now with the prospect of that Focused Ultrasound procedure ahead the part most women dread, having to shave your head for it, is not a big deal with me. I am halfway to bald now so why should I care?!
Via Good Buddy Anne I found wig manufacturer and since then I don't go out in public without a wig on.......
2023 was the Year From Hell for me, between medical issues and 2 ungrateful children who stabbed us in the back. Both of which caused me major anxiety and depression and caused me to lose my hair and question my sanity.
Sluggy
Saturday, June 22, 2024
Liar Liar Pants on Fire
Friday, June 21, 2024
Frugal Friday.....the June 21st Edition
There are a few Frugal wins over the past week.
* Picked up prescriptions at Walmart with no money OOP. Filling that Humira prescription the first time put me in the Catastrophic category so I pay nothing for medications until the year ends and everything resets.
* Every PT session I grab a bottle of water from the fridge there. So free 14 bottles of water so far and counting. 8-)
This penny was found on the carpet by the vending machines at PT. I got there early so used the restroom and spied this coin.
Wednesday, June 19, 2024
Doug Townson...A Legend of a Used Car Salesman in Louisiana
Tuesday, June 18, 2024
To-Do List....How I Did for May 2024
My To-Do List and how I did......
* Pay Bills DONE Always paid first and early or on time
* Have Bloodwork Done DONE Had labs drawn before I saw my PCP in May. Everything was good.
* Start Shoulder PT DONE Started and continued through May.
* Go to 3 Dr. Appointments DONE It seems all I do is go to medical appointments. Saw the PCP, Orthopedic Doc and medical safari to MS to see my Dermatologist.
* List 12 Items to Sell FAIL I just didn't get to this.
* Take Box to One Kid DONE I drove over and left it on the front porch as Daughter didn't even have the courtesy to answer the door. So I taped a note to her front door and she has made no attempt to contact either of us. Sad.
* Finish Arrangements for Trip and Cruise FAIL Well, I finished paying for the cruise but we still have to make plans for the flights out to Idaho.
* List 2 Items on Facebook Marketplace PASS I DID list 2 items on FB Marketplace. I listed the two derelict boats in the back 40 that the previous owners left here. I put them up for free. We don't have the titles to either of these boats but previous owners have not made any attempts to come get them(so they have been abandoned here). I got deluged with folks wanting one or the other or both, even in the bad conditions they are in and one of the boat trailers has no tires on it. So Hubs looked up what is involved with actually selling/giving them away legally and it's quite a lot of paperwork involved so we are going to find another way to get rid of them where we don't have to pay fees and such to the state. So I DID list them but we still have them. 8-((
* Go Through Old Photos PASS I had to go through photos in order to put photos in Daughter's box.
* Contact Lawyer with Changes FAIL Ran out of time before we left.
* Read/Finish Two Books FAIL Just hadn't felt much like reading. Some days it's hard to hold a book still enough to read words with this danged Essential Tremor.
* Buy Stuff for House(Always) DONE Hubs bought something, even if it was just kerosene for the burn pile. lol
* Giveaway/.Donate Clothes That are Salvageable DONE I treated all the baby clothes I've been carrying around since the 1990's with Biz and everything that got cleaned went to Goodwill and anything too stained went into the garbage. I gave each kid the outfit them came home from the hospital in and sent a box of boy clothes to my new Great Nephew, born in March.
As a Bonus I was able to donate some shirts and a new bra to Goodwill too. 8-)
* Have Bone Density Scan DONE That wasn't much of anything other than laying on that hard "bed" at the scanner place. ouch Was done with that within 5 minutes and my bones all look dense and good.
* Take Food to Food Bank DONE
Everything pictured above got hauled to the Church Food Bank in May.
* Edit More Photos DONE I got more photos on my computer edited but, I came back from the cruise with even more of those type of photos. I don't think I'll every get all these done. lolz
* Post About Old Trips DONE Worked on the 2017 Trip Out West and got near the end of that saga(finally).
* Work on Genealogy DONE I was contacted by a 3rd cousin 1 x removed on Find A Grave, concerning some work I had done there putting up some memorials of relatives. I didn't know she was my cousin until we got to corresponding about some errors in my FAG memorial placement. Perhaps we'll stay in touch once we get this FAG issue hashed out. We share my 3x GGrandfather Vassar but her Grandmother's maiden name is Snead and she is my 1st cousin 3 x removed too. See what I mean about having a family macramé and not a family tree. lol
* Buy Poly Mailers to Ship Fabric DONE I ordered and received the poly mailers. Now I just have to photo and actually list fabric so I can sell and ship it. ugh
* Photograph Fabric for Listings PASS I only got 3 pieces of yardage photographed before the month ended.
May turned out to be a busy month and June is about as busy.
Sluggy