Sociopathic Medicine

I remember when the United States stopped controlling the price of gold. Back when I was a kid gold was always $35 an ounce. In 1971 Nixon cut the dollar loose from the value of gold, basically making it desirable for citizens to buy the stuff as the price of gold shot through the roof. I don't know much about economics, but I do know what I pay for things. Gasoline has gone from $4 a gallon to about $1.75 as of our last PT Cruiser fill up. That's a good thing, for me. Not so much for those in the oil business. I don't worry about those folks very much. They can always get a job in the new economy, at McDonalds or Walmart.

Yesterday I went to get the prescription for my eye drops refilled. They come in a little green box with a green cap, and they are preventing me from going blind. So with the going blind thing in the back of my mind, I have never thought about not paying the $45 co-pay every month. It's the price of not having to learn Braille. For years my insurance company has charged me that co-pay, so when  I went to pick up the drops I had $45 on my mind. Imagine my surprise when the nice lady at Walgreens told me they were $244.

"Oh no. That's a mistake. I have a $45 co-pay."

The lady put her glasses on and stared at the computer screen, poked at a couple of keys, and without looking up said, "I'm sorry, but your insurance company now has a deductable that you have to meet before the co-pay kicks in."

I was stunned. I was also a fool for not reading the information pack that the insurance company had sent me. There, if you dig hard enough, it tells me that there is a deductable. The bastards slipped that one right by me. At that price, $244, the eye drops that I need to keep from going blind cost $732 an ounce. Just a  little less than the price of an ounce of gold. Thank you Allergan Pharmaceuticals.

I'm told that marijuana, something that I could grow for free in my own yard if the government would let me, something that I'm told will do the same thing that the $732 an ounce eye drops will do, costs around $200 an ounce. The only drawback is that the effect marijuana has on eye pressure only lasts three to four hours, and then you have to take more of it. I suppose you could call that a drawback.

A Fine Mess

Click here to watch the movie.

One of my favorite Laurel and Hardy movies is called The Music Box. The basic premise of the movie is Stan and Oliver are hired to deliver a piano to a house. The house happens to be at the top of a hill, at the end of a very long stairway. Naturally after getting the piano halfway up the stairs, a series of incidents cause it to go crashing back down to the street below. But the guys persevere, and eventually get the piano all the way up to the landing, right in front of the house. That's when the postman comes by and informs them that there is a road they could have taken right up to the house. They did all that work for nothing.

So as of last Friday my house has been back on the market. If you remember I took it off the market back in October and began a project of sprucing the place up so that it might sell. I spent around ten weeks or more painting the outside of the house. Ten weeks of pain and suffering because within two days of starting, I screwed up my ankle going up and down the ladder. Still, I managed to do the job and it looks pretty good. After painting the house, I drained the swimming pool so that I might patch up some spots and give that a couple of coats of swimming pool paint. That took me four weeks because of the torrential rains that managed to come along just as the patching material was setting. I had to dig out the patches twice and redo them. On the third attempt I used quick setting concrete to foil Mother Nature. After that I painted the pool, two coats, and had a horrendous argument with Mark about whether or not I should do a third coat. That was the argument where Mark threw a lawn statue into the empty pool, shattering it on the bottom of the pool I had just painted.

All in all, it turned out really nice. The house looks fresh and clean, the swimming pool sparkles, and the hundred dollars worth of plantings I put out in the yard make the finishing touch. So bring on the real estate agents, the lookers, those thinking of buying, and the rich investors with money. The house is for sale! Or I should say, was for sale. It took only four days for me to get two offers. Two very good offers at that. The listing is now suspended because I accepted one of those offers. And the offer I accepted was from a guy who toured the place last year but did not make an offer at the time. Here is the kick in the ass about the whole thing. The guy did not come back and tour the house again. He made his offer based on what he saw last year. Last year, before I busted my ass painting the house and patching up the swimming pool. I did all that work for nothing.

Grammy

I think Kanye West sucks. I hate his "music" and I think he is a moron. However, there is one thing he got right. Taylor Swift also sucks. It's like the vacuum cleaner calling the Dust Buster sucky. They both suck. 

I watched a little bit of the Grammys last night. I wasn't that impressed. Too much bad music gets rewarded. How on Earth can somebody who uses so much canned, synthesized music, win over a talented band like Alabama Shakes? I know, music is subjective. Everybody likes what they like, and as usual I don't always like the most popular stuff. As for the Grammys, I have never had any respect for those awards. It goes all the way back to my teenage years when the most boring music was given a Grammy. It was as if they were afraid to acknowledge that rock music existed. For instance, in 1964 Album of the Year went to Stan Getz. Record of the Year, The Girl From Ipanema. Not bad, but 1964 was the year of The Beatles. For Krissakes, the only Grammy those guys won was for Best Performance by a Chorus. In 1965 The Shadow of Your Smile won best song of the year. 1965 was the year of Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones, Michelle by The Beatles, and Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds. Back then the Grammys were handed out to please my parents, not me. Now they seem to have flipped completely. They're giving out awards to please twenty two year old women and fifteen year old boys. Yuck!

Valentine's Day Message

I am not a fan of Valentine's Day. I am not fond of forced, outward displays of affection and love. I'm not so fond of private displays of affection and love either. So the fact that I have to buy a card, flowers, candy, and dinner to show how much I am in love, just sucks. My dogs know I love them without celebrating it on a certain day each year. Why can't a human be as good or better than a dog? Just know that the fact you aren't in a kennel, in some shelter, or weren't gassed a long time ago, means that I probably don't hate you. If you have a place to sleep in my bed, I don't hate you. If I acquiesce to your nagging once in awhile, I don't hate you. Luckily for me, this year Mark gets it. I didn't buy any crap for him, I didn't take him out to dinner, and he wasn't pissed. I got a free pass. Of course the fact that Mark has been ill for the last week and feels like shit, might account for the lack of his Valentine's Day expectations. Even if Mark had wanted a whole, big "I Love You" celebration, I have a get out of jail free card. It was on February 14th, 1988, that I had my first chemo treatment for cancer. I vividly remember being wheeled back into my hospital room after the treatment, and being overwhelmed with nausea. I projectile vomited across the room, hitting the wall near the sink about five feet away. That was the first of twelve weekly trips to the hospital for my chemo. So now, every Valentine's Day, I can pretend that just the thought of all that Valentine's Day hoopla brings back those horrible memories.

"So Dear, can't we just forget about it this year? I'll take you out to dinner some other time. It'll be fun."

The Donut Test

Mark and I were sitting in his doctor's waiting room yesterday morning when a thought came to me, a mental picture. So I turned to Mark and asked him, "Did you eat that donut this morning that was sitting on the plate, on the table next to the bed?"

"Ummm...   No."

"Well then, did you move it to the kitchen counter?"

"No."

"Do you think it will still be there when we get home?"

"Why wouldn't it?" 

Why wouldn't it? In a house with a dog that can scale heights like a mountain goat, he asks why would a donut left on a table disappear? Not only would the donut disappear, but anything else nearby with the aroma of donut on it would disappear.

"I'll bet you that donut is gone when we get home. If Bette doesn't walk across the bed and onto the table to get it, Chandler will simply walk up to the table and gobble it down. It's at his eye level. And that napkin I gave you while you were over there eating, that'll be shredded and strewn across the floor and bed."

"Do you really think they'd do that?"

"Yes, I do."

That's when Mark looked up and stared straight ahead while muttering, "Oh, and all those tissues in my waste basket...  "

Yes, Bette loves tissues, and the tissues in Mark's trash basket are like a super dog toy to her. On more than one occasion we've come home to find the bedroom trashed, with shredded tissues everywhere. Oh, and did I mention that the reason we were at Mark's doctor is because he's been under the weather. You know, blowing his nose a lot and coughing up phlegm into tissues. One more thing. When we got home, the donut was still on the table. There were no shredded tissues, and best of all, Bette did not even pee in the house. Good doggies, this time.