I think anxiety meds plus weed dog treats is the way to go! 😁

If he is scamming others for money, fund raising for medical bills or something like that, you could show your proof to the police department. They would be interested, and she would get the news from them, not from friends.

I hate my kindle! 😠 The autocorrect is nuts. And I broke the middle finger of my dominate hand last night! Border cookie works though. I like it. I once cared for a group of llamas, and the new Cria was named cookie. Darn cute little baby. I think typos are going to be the bane of my existence for a few weeks now. How is your wrist? Pain levels okay? My finger is still throbbing like crazy. 😬

I was loading it last evening, was trying really hard to fling a log into the very back, caught the edge of the door which propelled the log right back at me with big force, and it hit me square in the hand (think like jamming your finger with a LOT of force.) The third finger, being the longest, got the bulk of the energy, and it has a hairline fracture. Splinted now, it looks like I am giving everyone the finger every time I go to use my hand. It is my dominate hand so this is quite often. I of course had to eat crow with the organizer of my Sunday zoom mini-concert. So much for playing the piano for a while. I did NOT want to be seen because of covid, but eventually called the band aid station/stitch and ditch due to pain and swelling. The receptionist said they had no one in the ER, and to give her my cell phone number so if that changed in transit, she could let me know to sit in the parking lot until the all clear. I was in and out in record time. But the doc, a violin player who was very concerned about a pianist having a hand injury, padded this splint until it looks like I am wearing a sheep that hasn't been shorn in a couple of years! It is quite uncomfortable and really pushing on the other fingers. I am glad he took it seriously. However, this is not sustainable for the next three weeks until another x ray, so dh is going to unwrap, take some stuffing out of there, and re-tape. I am frustrated. And frankly, hating wood, just all wood, at the moment. Hopefully, I will get over that.

Sadly, there are very few pictures of me. I have always been the one behind the camera. That is quite common for moms. So it is something to think about.

Oh good grief! That is some serious conniving! But I get it. Lewis knows when he has been naughty, doesn't care enough to NOT do it, and then runs into his kennel. I swear he is a perpetual 3 year old child! The smartest and most well behaved dog I have ever known was a standard poodle my friend owned. I have been around absolutely brilliant border cookies before, but this poodle was just amazing. One day I was at her home, and she was watching her then four year old granddaughter who had asked for a piece of cheese. A few minutes later we hear her little voice, "Kessle took my cheese." Friend called him in, took him gently by the chin and asked him if he had taken L's cheese. He actually nodded his head. I nearly fell off the chair! She then asked him if he was supposed to do that, and he shook his head. She told him he had to have a time out, and he voluntarily walked to the corner behind the dining table, turned to face the wall, sat down, and put his nose against the wall. He did not flinch until she finally told him he was done. She then told him to go apologize. He went up to L, extended his paw to shake, and then leaned over and snuggled her. I wanted to take that dog home! She also kept three dwarf goats for eating brush, nd never had to have a fence! Kessle herded them so well, they never left the yard. Can you imagine having goats and no fencing? Crazy. And at night he would put them away in the stable and then wait for his master to show up with hay and water. Best dog in the world! I love my Lewis, but there is no way I could have ever trained him like that. And she told me it took very little effort to train Kessle. I am fairly certain she got the Einstein of dogs.

Oh yes, I have known folks who allowed their teeth to get into terrible shape because they were afraid of the shot in their mouth. And myself, I had a needle phobia (not severe but definitely anxiety producing) most of my life. The car accident and being the medical profession's personal pin cushion (sorry nurses, I know you we're just doing your job but the lab tech can go to hell because seriously DO NOT WAKE ME UP TO BE YOUR VAMPIRE VICTIM!!!! 😁) after the car wreck kind of cured me of it. I guess maybe the messaging should be video images of tubes and wires and needles coming out of covid patients, and someone getting an IV for monoclonal antibodies. Make a nice montage, and put it on during the half time show of the Super Bowl. "You can have this needle and drastically reduce your chances of needing this needle or we can go straight to this!" Have Bruce Willis, worshipped by many a manly man, hold up some gauge needle like you'd use to start an IV on an elephant - just run down to the San Diego Zoo and get one. Then let James Earl Jones do the voice overs and say something like, "Get vaxed or you are going to look like Annakin getting his medical make over into Darth Vader!" Had they run that ad last winter, we might be in much better shape. The CDC's messaging has been total crap. They should put me in charge of that. 😂

I must be old too. That kind of advertising would not win me over. It feels so aggressive!

As much as I do not enjoy my vaccine reactions and sore arms, I will be getting in line for an omicron specific vax if they come up with one!

Yes, this too. They have built "for the well off" free standing medical centers for those who can pay more for medical care. These things are palaces. One would think you landed at a resort. These are for "first class" patients. I am pretty certain you need and assets statement on file in order to use them. Meanwhile, my mother who is visiting my sister in France where healthcare is a human right and universal, is paying out of pocket for some things she needs taken care of and can't afford here. She is getting a couple of teeth fixed, and getting more physical therapy for an injury plus some help with a neck issue. She has a $4500 deductible on her Medicare policy and then all kinds of copays, exclusions, etc. and being medicare, a host of really good practitioners she cannot see here. There, she is seeing tippy top of their profession people, and will get all of this done for less than her deductible here. We are talking about easily $15,000 or more US for that care here, for roughly $3000 there. The amount of time the doctors spend with patients is extraordinary. The nurses have time to fully educate their patients. And she does get a therapeutic soak of her ankle, and wonderful therapeutic massage to increase circulation and reduce inflammation before the doctor does her physical therapy. Yes. Doctor. It is not uncommon for orthopedic docs there to directly oversee therapy. Her doctor is shocked at how bad her ankle is, but she doesn't qualify for more physical therapy here. Actually, he is pretty damn angry that she can't get help for it anymore. The facilities in France are simple. They have everything they need, no bells and whistles that cost unnecessary money, and medical professionals are on salary from the taxpayers/government. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty dang effective and a hell of a lot more humane than our system. My sister would be dead if she still lived here. Literally universal health in France saved her life. Post divorce from an abusive husband, she had no health insurance and when she got into some serious thyroid and adrenal gland dysfunction, she couldn't find a single specialist in Kentucky who would take her uninsured. She kept muddling along, went to France on what was supposed to be a one year trip through the University of Louisville where my sister had gotten a big scholarship to work on her master's degree in French, and her host family was so appalled by her health condition, they simply drove her to their family doc who took her back right away, and then had her hospitalized immediately for tests. Multiple specialists, including one brought in from Belgium, and even though she had a deductible on her international insurance policy NO ONE even thought to ration her care. She eventually became a resident, and a few uears later, married. So she is there permanently. She can never move back home because she now needs routine care and annual very expensive US tests but would not have medical insurance here until she could earn enough money to buy a policy on the marketplace, and even then, ability to pay would have an effect on level of care. Here meds here? Over $1000 a month, most of them not covered under any standard prescription policy here. There? Less than $100 a month. For profit medicine is not humane.

Sadly, he is worse than this blog would suggest. He protected a serial pedophioe, someone authorities estimated had over 100 victims of which only 30ish were identified, and then convinced a family in the church to marry their college age daughter to him (at his church he advocates for arranged marriages only) figuring that if he had a female to sexually abuse it would cure him of his desire to rape children. The couple promptly had a baby, and he molested his infant child. Wilson is says she should not divorce him. Beyond that, he is also pro slavery. Anyone who buys Omnibus history from Veritas Press is actively supporting Doug Wilson. He is more than insane. He is positively evil!

Well, they are often competitively skiing, and ya, those speeds are crazy! Skiing for pleasure does not generally involve.quite so much risk. Generally. One time the two ds's, 16 and 18 at the time, and had never been off the intermediate slopes, nor had any formal lessons, accidentally got off the lift at a black diamond. There are ways to get.help.from ski patrol getting off the hill. Nope. Not my boys! They just shrugged and said, "Let's go for it!" They make it down just fine, but I nearly had a heart attack upon hearing it. These are the times when it is just best for me to be in the lodge with a cup of mocha and my nose buried in a good book.

Definitely! And Jack Schapp, and Doug Phillips, and Doug Wilsom, and R.C. Sproul Jr., and Ravi Zacharias, and ......quite the club they have going!

Yes yes! Please do! I wanna see it. 😁

Some states are better than others. Here, I personally know people whose loved ones had their hospital care trained down due to being uninsured. The paramedics don't do it. Scoop and run. But once administration finds out there is no insurance, you would be shocked to find out how quickly to seems you are good enough to go home. And not just uninsured. I nearly bled to.death after the birth of my third, and was sent home without my second and very necessary blood transfusion being done because we had an HMO, and they would only pay for 12 hours hospitalization for a vaginal birth. There were so many babies and moms that died back in the 90's due to HMO's that the state legislature passed a law that they have to pay 24 hrs. When our first was born, I had complications and she was badly jaundiced, but the doctor who had personally gotten on the phone to argue with the insurance company discharged us anyway because ultimately the insurance said no, and hospital administrators said we could not stay. This happens a lot in some states. Others have passed quite a bit more regulation so it doesn't happen. But again without a national system we end up with a piecemeal system. Case in point, the hospital had the choice of stitching ds's face in the ER utilizing the trauma doc or bringing in a plastic surgeon. The plastic surgeon was absolutely called for due to the complicated nature of his face injury. But hospital billing came down and said they would have to check with insurance to see if they would approve the plastic surgeon. I told them "car accident, and the car insurance will pay up for the plastic surgeon or I will be suing a lot of people". He got the plastic surgeon. It was NOT approved by Blue Cross, and the car insurance company did pay up. However, if his face injury had not been from a car accident there is very little chance he would have and the proper care.

I think she is taking the fall.

Kids who begin skiing young become adept very quickly. I see kids as young as five or six whooshing down the beginner hill without an adult or older teen. And it isn't even remotely easy to keep a group together on chair lifts. Sometimes when the hill is crowded, ski patrol will limit how many can go down at one time. Kids who are good on their skis get sent down without a chaperone quite often. Around here, when so say they start young, I mean young. Not uncommon to see a two year old standing on mom or dad's feet being skiied down the training hill, and by three on their own skis sandwiched in between mom or dad's skis being guided and taught how to turn, how to get up after falling. By four, going down alone on the training hill with poles while mom or dad skills behind or beside. Five? Down that beginner hill alone. Dh was skiing with his dad when he was 2.5 and soloed at five. Ski patrol keeps an eye on things. The ski resort we frequent has a ton of ski patrol (EMT's and Paramedics specifically trained for winter sports, and search and rescue.)

LOL, I don't think still being married is a positive. They seem like a very toxic kind of couple. Maybe they should go their separate ways and straighten up!

Actually, being for profit there is a lot of competition for patients who will require procedures and hospitalizations that are low ish cost to the hospital but bill out very high. One way this has worked out in my region is that the hospital many in our area use spent a very large sum of money to woo a prestigious orthopedic surgical practice to their hospital. They offered an unholy amount of money to the doctors, and gave them an entire wing of the hospital remodeled to look like the Taj Mahal. (okay. Maybe not the T.am. but you get my drift.) Insurance pays out big time in Michigan on bone injuries, and due to the way car insurance laws work here, as a secondary payer, car insurance picks up ANYTHING billed for medical care post care accidents even if utterly rejected by the first payer, medical insurance. Thus they can bill just ungodly amounts of dollars for procedures and care from that wing, and will recoup the entire cost, and because of the reputations of the docs, everyone wants to go there if they have been injured in a car wreck. In order to afford that gargantuan sum of money (every one of the doctors are getting a half million a year in salary and the PA's for them are getting $275,000) plus the remodel, they gutted two areas of the hospital down to the barest minimum. These two areas are low pay outs and high liability. Pediatrics and Obstetrics. They were the only hospital in a five county area with obstetrics services, but they gutted it down to two small OBGYN practices, and the 5 CNM's who had built it up into a premier birthing center where women from all over were happy to go to have their babies, were let go. Another hospital, much further away, picked them up and now has this amazing birth center. It is also 2 hrs away from some of the counties that the previous hospital serviced. So yes, now a five county area representing about 200,000 people (these are very rural counties) troop to a city of 35,000 people and share six OBGN's and no CNM's. So you can imagine. That whole - supposed to see the doctor every other week and then every week in that last trimester? Ha ha ha ha ha! Not happening. Labor and delivery get busy? You may just be hoping a nurse will stop and catch your baby as she breezes by because you most certainly will not have a CNM or OBGYN in attendance. Is it legal for hospitals to do this? Yup. For.profit.medicine. Hospital administrators run medical care as a corporation, and the quality of care you receive is based entirely on the agreement between the hospital and your insurance. Uninsured? Yes, if you go to the ER, they are required by law to stabilize you. They are NOT required by law to treat you in the long term. So they have to safe your life if they can, and then they can turf you to the street with a life threatening condition, a chronic illness, a horrible injury, and not provide any further treatment. When my son and I were in a horrible car wreck, I begged the paramedics not to take me to the hospital even though I was loaded, ready to go, and suspected of bleeding internally because the state police officer who was trying to find my purse in that mangled mess, had not yet returned with it. I was afraid without my insurance card and a credit card so I could pay our $7500 deductible up front, the hospital might choose not to give my son the best care or would send him to a lower ranked hospital without a good orthopedic department. This is what Americans think about when they think they or a loved one might be dying. I refused pain meds despite being in excruciating pain and refused a CT so I could stay lucid to make sure I could produce that insurance card when it arrived. As it was, dh ended up at the hospital first. My purse was trapped in the van, and it was a couple of firefighters who finally found it and freed it. It is not the fault of the medical practitioners! They are trapped in this system, and a good half of America would prefer it not change because they think any stab at all at fixing it is "communism". People worship at the feet of capitalism.

Chickens are reasonably smart! Ducks are not. Ducks have a winning personality which is why people like them. But they are a rung below sheep for mental ability, and that is really just about the bottom of the livestock ladder 😂 Then there are the llamas. Really smart! Also only slightly less evil narcissist than rosters and drakes. I don't blame your friend for bringing the chickens in. These windchills are terrible, and the wind is blowing fiercely. It is hard for them to stay warm even with a couple of warming lights.

He wasn't a total stranger. He was from the area, and our neighbor behind us who was a really great person said it was okay to let her go with him, that she would be fine. Our neighbor was the kind of person who could be trusted, and he knew everyone. We didn't know anyone beyond our streey, but I swear he knew everyone in the whole county.

So to sum it up. Playboy blames every bad decision he ever made on mommy and daddy, but particularly mommy, and then his whole world comes crashing down because wifey poo, and he was in bed with scam bag Michael Cohen, and he needed to self destruct in order to leave daddy's business so he could be his own man, and woe is poor Jerry but none of it is really his fault. My eyes rolled so hard, they may have herniated! Same old schtick! Bonus ridiculous points for thinking that listening to Rush Limbaugh's narcissistic raving on talk radio makes him sound sincere. I have a feeling that Granda's book and Hulu movie is going to be like a few episodes from The Tiger King!

It is a shocking level of willful refusal to face facts. I cannot wrap my head around it. I just don't know what it takes to get through to people. I feel very done trying too.

So sad. The young associate pastor around the corner just informed me that their five year old has been hospitalized. The whole family tested positive for covid this week. The little boy went down hill fast, and their doctor - overwhelmed with patients - couldn't seem him nor could anyone's else. Urgent care waved them away due to overrun, the stitch and ditch said they couldn't even begin to treat him. They devolve into the city, and the third hospital ER they came to said they had no bed and no doc available, but they would put him on a gurney in the hall with oxygen, and one of the parents would could stay to keep the mask on him and tend him, but the other would have to leave. They said that someone who is helping call around to find open beds in the state or even out of state would try to get a bed, and he would be taken by ambulance if he remained fairly stable or by chopper IF they could get one. His wife stayed, and he came home to be with their other child. A grandparent reluctantly came to stay with their 2 year old. But while she was heart broken over her grandchild, she was also pretty freaked out as a 72 year old to be taking care of a still positive and symptomatic covid toddler. She only had a cloth mask! 😱 If they had called me before they left for the hospital, I would have donned my KN95, scrubs, lab coat, and gloves, and taken care of that child myself, then showered, bleached the clothes, and wore a mask around here for several days to protect dh. I could sleep separate as well though we would still have to share a bathroom. It is an effing nightmare out there! I am staring darts of pure disdain and rage at all of the let it rip people! He was crying on the phone, and it just broke my heart. I cannot imagine how terrified they must be, and given how overrun Michigan is, if is entirely possible that child could be sent out of state alone! I.can.not.imagine. Despite the advances of modern medicine, we are experiencing the collective trauma of The Black Plague! How our nation comes back from this, I do not know.

I don't know. We have had the following breeds in the course of marriage: cocker spaniel, black lab, collie, sheltie, border terrier, springer spaniel, and basket hound. We were fine with everyone but the basset. She was, without a doubt, the dumbest animal I have ever had in my life. I have had goldfish with higher training potential than her. Lambs are total idiots, and yet, bottle fed bum lambs were NEVER the problem that basket was. We were hosting a garage sale one day and a guy came along and asked if she was for sale. I told him she was his for free, and off he went. Turned out to be a guy who owned 40 acres and lived on it in a pop up camper. She was definitely better suited for outdoor life so maybe he got along with her okay. I couldn't bond with her. Neither could dh. It was like trying to bond with a rock. I have to say that the experience left me thinking, "There will never be another hound in my house ever again in this life time!" Yeesh!