Old but still cool occasionally

A few weeks ago my insurance company left a long pre-recorded message on my answering machine. I don’t remember it specifically but the gist of it was:

Hey ancient crone! Our records indicate we’ve never had any claims to reject from you for a mammogram. You do realize you are a woman of a certain age and getting older & ought to have your bewbs squished annually don’t you? Oh, we’re not saying we’ll pay for it. This message in NO WAY implies that bewb squishing is a covered service under your policy terms. It might be, but we are not about to confirm that until we absolutely have to. Possibly we’ll have some money left over from fully covering Viagra prescriptions and be able to throw a few bucks your way. Either way, you’re old and should make a bewb squishing appointment with the hospital after referral from the appropriate provider, after getting permission from your primary care physician to see that provider so you can then make the appointment. (Ha ha! That’s $45 in flat fees right there plus 20% of whatever extra little charges we can manage and we are not about to tell you whether the squishing is a $30 specialist fee or $100 hospital fee now because then we might not be able to stick you for more money later). We’re your insurance company and we care about you, so start the bewb squishing process today for your health!

Seeing as how they care so much about my health I took their advice. I’m 42 and by rights, even with the every other year suggestion of my various physicians, I ought to have had at least one mammogram by now. But due to my doc of 10 years leaving the practice to go back to school 2 years ago and the variety of specialists I’ve been to see for my endo, the mammogram thing took a back seat & was overlooked. There was also apparently a typo on a referral form making me 5 years younger than I am, which was only realized at the last OBs.

I was able to do the insurance companies out of their flat fees by making some phone calls. Everyone  had seen me recently enough to just fax paperwork without my presence. HA!

Last Thursday I went to the Medical Imaging Center and waited my turn. Despite my early appointment this naturally took much much longer than anticipated. Fortunately I had brought my Nintendo DS, which is all sylin’ with a black & purple skin and in a black & purple case

Everyone in the registration area thought it was really cool and asked me about the skins. Everyone in the lobby thought getting yourself a DS was a great idea & maybe they’d take Junior’s old one since he was getting a DSi for Xmas and then pimp theirs out too. The techs asked me about what games I play and where I got the skins & the case.

And for the first time ever I felt like one of the cool people, a trendsetter even.

I’ll bet I was the hippest crone getting a mammogram that day.  W00T!

On vacation

For probably the first time in 8 years we managed to get through Virginia without getting lost. Though gas stations remain elusive around Lynchburg. Hotels and restaurants abound but gas stations are hidden from view. I hate going into restaurant bathrooms when all I need is to use the facilities. Like I am committing a crime buy using a bathroom in a place where I buy nothing. Gas stations though expect you to use their restrooms & not buy things.

We did track one down eventually for the boys and then found our way right back to the highway. We managed North Carolina fine, though gas stations continued to be elusive. We were able to get on all the various interstates with no confusion. We  made very good time with little traffic. The boys watched various movies and played intermittently with the DS. DH & I listened to The Color of Magic

We arrived in Walterboro SC, at 10:30pm along with every other mini van on the highway and finally got one of the last 3 rooms in town. Next to the elevator, on the second floor. You’d think with it being 11p and the hotel being full the elevator use would come to a end fairly soon. But no.

And of course the boys were up at 6a. We were greeting the dawn at the Waffle House at 6:45. We were on the road by 7:30.

This time we got lost on I10, which never happens because it is an interstate & all the exits are clearly marked. But somehow we drove 12 miles past it without realizing.  The final area of confusion was at Gainsville, which is not actually on I75 but rather just near it so you have to by/around/through Gainsville to get there. There are some signs saying I75 this way but no mileage mentioned. Google’s directions with their little maps that don’t show anything more than the turning point left us confused as to just where we were. And given neither of us trusts  Google maps all that much, we were fairly sure we were lost actually, though since we were following directions we were not lost technically.

I’m fairly sure there is a better way to get to I75 than Google told us. I’m even more sure that going to Ocala & getting on I75 is easier. I’ll be keeping that in mind in future.

But eventually the long tedious stretch of I75 began. Miles of flat road with palm trees. The thing I find most tedious about I75 is the lack of ice cream shops. ( I don’t know why I associate ice cream & Florida but I always *want* it while I am here. It’s a like a switch in brains says “Oh Florida state line? Where is the soft serve?) All the way down there was a DQ every hour just about, or a Coldstone.But after that first exit on 75, where we had lunch, there is nothing until Ft Meyers, which is 20 minutes from my parents’ house. And we just can’t bring ourselves to stop for ice cream 20 minutes from our destination (after which we will have ample time to go get ice cream whenever we want). I spend the whole 4 hours watching FOOD signs go by hoping for a Dairy Queen and am disappointed over and over again.

We made excellent time though. We were here at 5:40, 2 hours before my parents expected us. We went out to CiCi’s for dinner. I was all for it because there is a Baskin Robbins right next to it.

But they had closed.

It’s now Monday and I still have not achieved a waffle cone or peanut butter milkshake.

Weekly Winners – week 47

Some P365 photos this week.

What is in the fridge?

Aftermath of a nor’easter

Our dog was missing for several days. She is back now

New cat bed, or possibly napkin holder

Posing

For more weekly winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

Thanks for stopping by

It’s a destination, not a journey

We’re heading out this morning on the 2 day trip to Naples FL. The car is packed, the dog is at the kennel, the cats have been rounded up and the house sitter has arrived (She brought her netbook, I warrned her about the phone problem)

We’ve decided on the wander through Virginia and North Carolina route for the beginning of the trip and then cut down 301 to Ocala or Gainsville (we almost always miss the Gainsville exit) to meet up with I75 route for the end of the trip. I predict we will get lost in Danville or maybe Lynchburg because it wouldn’t be a vacation without driving 10-15 miles in the wrong direction. Though maybe for variety construction detours around Columbia SC will confuse us into heading west rather than south. It’s been a few years for that one.

The longest part of this 1150 mile drive, mentally, is the 272 miles on I75. Florida just goes on and on.  And it’s interstate so apart from spotting Waffle Houses there isn’t much to do but watch the mile markers go by and calculate in your head how much longer this trip is going to take. One year I counted all the Waffle Houses we passed from Washington DC to Naples. It was an impressive total but I cannot recall it.

The boys have picked out some movies for the trip – mostly Scooby Doos, plus Wall-E, The Road to El Dorado and Ratatoulli. I have Scooby Doo’s complete 3rd season as a surprise for the long I75 stretch.  I also have Mario Party for the DS as a surprise if needed though I’m hoping on keeping it for I95 in Virginia part of the trip back (it’s the longest part of the trip home).

DH and I have some audio books to listen to (the boys have headsets for the DVD player & we set the radio speakers to the front only so we don’t have sound overlap). We have Terry Pratchett’s The Color of Magic and Going Postal. We also have the latest Hitchhiker’s Guide book - And Another Thing by Eoin Colfer. It’s had mixed reviews but listening to Douglas Adams on the trip is a tradition we’ve had since 1994, so we’re giving it a chance. We also have a BBC radio program – Old Harry’s Game, which is very funny. 

We’re hoping to get to Savannah, GA today. Theoretically we should get there about 10pm. I’ll be twittering & updating Facebook as events unfold so you can follow along if you want.

Technology is helping me again

I really wish it would stop doing that.

It’s the phone this time.

Actually it has been the phone for almost two years now but it comes in waves. Sometimes all those wonderful ‘features’ are the problem.

When I grew up (oh here she goes…) in the 70’s, a phone was physically attached to the wall. Possibly if there was a second phone in the house it was ‘portable’ in the sense that you could carry it into another room and plug it into a phone jack there (assuming there was a phone jack there and probably there was not) and then use it, but you were still tethered in place by a cord. Maybe, if you parents really loved you, you might have had a princess phone in your room, which was sleeker and lighter & usually had a longer cord so you could roll around on your canopy bed and hang upside down off the side while talking to your best friend about what this guy said to this girl about this other girl (we didn’t have BFFs back in the day. We had to use whole words). If they really really loved you they might have had a second line put in JUST FOR YOU! My parents didn’t love me that much (no phone in my room, no canopy bed and certainly no second line) so I had to stand in the kitchen, where the phone was mounted, when I was on the phone. Eventually a long cord for the handset was purchased and I could sit on the floor in the hall. But due to the house layout everyone could here exactly what I was saying.

It was hell.

But no one in my family ever stood in the kitchen listening to a vague distant ringing while shouting “Where the hell is the phone?!?!” and sometimes I sorta miss knowing exactly where the phone is. Today for example.

We have 2 portable phones. We got them because it would be convenient to be able to wander around the house while talking, which it is. And there is no jack in the kitchen or the playroom and it' would be handy to be able to just take the handset with us so we don’t have to keep getting up and going to the other end of the house when the phone rings. Which it is. But 75% of the time we leave the phone where ever we were when we finished speaking so we still have to get up and go get it – assuming we can find it. It only rings 4 times before the answering machine comes on and sometimes that is not enough ringing to find even one handset. Especially when both of them are later discovered in the towel closet & no one can remember even being in the towel closet.

One of the helpful features of our portable phone set is that it scan a couple of bands for the best frequency when you answer the phone. One of those frequencies is the one the wireless router uses. So about half the time if you answer the phone you cut off the internet. There is no way to tell it to stop doing this. You can have it rescan once you realize it has cut off the router but there is no way of preventing it.

The problem we hadn’t foreseen at all is one of power. There is no battery back up. The phone unit runs on electricity so if the power goes out, so does the phone. Meaning I can’t call the electric company to tell them I have no power. We only get cell signal in one corner of the house where the cell booster lives and it runs on electricity. So in order to call the electric company I have to go outside in whatever bad weather is happening and stand on the highest ground I can find and hope for a bar on my cell. Also due to a recent weird wiring issue the phone base had to be plugged into the jack in the living room instead of our bedroom. The nearest electrical outlet is one that is on the switch. So we can never turn the lights off completely in the living room or the phone won’t work.

In the past week I have lost one handset completely, even the locator beep doesn’t turn it up. The phone is currently cutting out my internet connection about 85% of the time. I absentmindedly turned the living room lights off twice on days when I was expecting phone calls and only realized when wondered why it had been so blessedly telemarketing call free all afternoon. And the power went out yesterday morning. I asked DH to call me at 9am because I had an appointment & a dead cell phone so no way of knowing what time it was. Both of us forgot it wouldn’t matter if he called me because the phone wouldn’t work.

I swear I am going to go buy one of those old school wall mount phones off of ebay & run a jack back to the spot on the kitchen wall where there originally was a phone mounted in 1978.