November | 2009 | Artificially Sweetened

Be careful what you ask

November 12, 2009 at 10:02 am | Posted in M'ijo | 6 Comments

Me, somewhat anxiously: What’s that in your mouth P’ito?

He, opening wide and displaying a lovely yellow thing on his tongue: It’s a booger, Mama!

Me: Well, I guess that’s not a choking hazard…

Apropos of absolutely nothing

November 6, 2009 at 1:32 pm | Posted in I really couldn't come up with a category for this | 4 Comments

There seems to be something that draws unusual vanity plates to the block in front of my work. Seen in the past few months.

PLZVOTE

S1NG 1T

HDSHRNKR

SENILE1

And on a tow truck nearby: NEXT WEEK

Spotted closer to home: SIDE JOB2 – makes me wonder – what is side job 1? And did side job2 pay for the car? I assume that’s the story behind the car I see parked in our neighborhood with the vanity plate PKRMONEY.

What is the best vanity plate you’ve seen?

What would you put on a vanity plate if you had one? (Or, what is on your vanity plate, if you’ve got one?)

One very small example of why we need healthcare reform

November 3, 2009 at 4:30 pm | Posted in AdoptThis!, The Sweet Life | 9 Comments

About a month ago, I checked online to see when my supplies were coming from Minimed.

Everything looked fine, except for the test strips, which said “cash pricing” $360

Every other time I’ve ordered them from MM, they have been covered by insurance.

I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with a representative from MM who finally assured me that yes, they were covered.

Guess what happened next?

Test strips arrive, I start using them and… then

Bill. For $360. I call Minimed back (another 30 minutes on hold) only to be told that at some point this year (in the middle of the year) my insurance coverage had changed and Minimed was no longer covered as a supplier of perscription supplies, only durable medical equipment. Ergo, use a different supplier for test strips.

I estimate that I’ve devoted about an hour and a half of time I should be working, not counting the time spent blogging about this (ahem), to fixing this problem, and it isn’t really fixed yet. I have to get a new script for strips (phone maze at the endos office, at least another hour), send it in to the appropriate mail order source, wait for the strips to come, and then*return* the strips I have not used from MM (paying out of pocket for the others).

The impact that dealing with this crap has on our national productivity cannot be underestimated.

Oh, and further aggravation: I just got a phone call from the adoption agency. The social worker who is going to do our homestudy is concerned that I have diabetes and wants a letter from my endo stating that I am healthy enough to parent, before she will do the homestudy visits. I am overdue for an appointment, and if we have to wait for that in order to get our homestudy done, I am going to scream. The reason she wants a letter from the endo is that we saw her to take about our options for this adoption, and I had a low – just your average run of the mill, stuff a glucose tab in my face low – while I was in her office. This translated to “and she said that you had an ‘attack’ in her office, so she was concerned about your health.”

ETA: 2 phone messages left, over 2 days, still no endo appt scheduled.