Blessings

Before I get into any other kinds of posts, I feel it's important to put up one of thankfulness for the wonderful Christmas that the BTEG family had. There were wonderful gifts, good food, and enjoying being with family. Now we are enjoying being home together, including Mr. BTEG because of the inclement weather. I pray that there have been no great losses due to the blizzard.

Here's a picture of one of the nice gifts that I received, a new bicycle, in pretty blues and pinks. Come spring, I can be walking or bicycling!

Knock knock. Who's there? Doctor.

This house has the freakin' Tardis! On the freakin' front porch! I want one.

Something Different

One of the things I am finding I like about Mr. BTEG's current job, is that people are relatively social outside of work. Tuesday night a group of Mr. BTEG's co-workers and their wives got together at a bar called Happy Dog, in Cleveland. I hadn't been in that area of Cleveland before that I can remember, and there was a very interesting atmosphere, urban, but not scary urban as certain areas of Cleveland can be.

Anyway, a very interesting night. There was classical music, and a trio singing Christmas carols (the bass was sick), all from the Cleveland Institute of Music. I think I'd like to try it when a different music genre was there. I guess I'm totally uncool, but most of the modern classical stuff didn't really cut it for me. Especially one piece where either the piano was wildly out of tune, or there were notes that deliberately sounded grating to the ear. Physically painful, even.

We had a chance to see hipsters in their natural habitat. Lots of them. I took anthropological notes. :D

For some reason, I really found it funny that atop the upright piano, was a bust lamp of Elvis. A very large bust of Elvis. In blues. The lampshade shook when the modern classical musicians were pounding on the piano keys, but Elvis stayed solid.

This bar serves hot dogs, tater tots and french fries, and beer. However, you can get about thirty different toppings for your hot dogs and tater tots. Including mole, the Mexican chocolatey stuff. Which, no.

I found it interesting that the cellist, who looked very Korean, was named Carlos.

A Nice Round Number

I have reached my thousandth blog post! In all the years since 2005(!), I've met a lot of great people, written some things I'm really proud of, discovered a lot of things about other people, life and myself, and generally had fun. A blog is actually wonderful for someone like me, a stay-at-home mom in a world where it's harder to meet and make friends with other moms, especially if you are an introvert. But I mainly enjoy just getting my point of view out, whether it's about being a mom, a wife, a conservative, a Lutheran, bipolar or anything else. At least some of the next one thousand posts are sure to be on watching my daughters reach maturity, as well as making changes in my own life as my mommy duties decrease. Can't wait to see where it's going!

Random Bits

Mom: "Whichever girl's turn it is to scoop the litter box, needs to do it."

Dancer: "I can't remember whose turn it is. It's hard to keep track."

Mom: "That's why I put up the chore chart months ago, with all the days and the chores."

Dancer: "But we never use it."

Mom: face-palm

That look a cat gives you when she is rolling around in some sort of almost-catnip-fueled type abandon and sees you watching her. "Oh. Hai. Didn't see you there."

You know your best friend is your best friend when you give each other the same Christmas gift. And when you can't actually wait until Christmas to exchange gifts.

I'm really tired of having to put paragraph breaks in by hand because Blogger doesn't seem to recognize the return key anymore. Especially when I forget and then go to look at my blog post actually on my blog.

Kinda Sorta Here

In my effort to post more, I am here to bring you this short post of Nothing of Any Substance Whatsoever. You see, on Saturday, the Musician got sick. Every member of the family followed. I was the last to get sick, and am just starting to feel better today. I'm hoping we can get back to normal now. Between Christmas and the Musician's birthday, this is the craziest time of the year for me. And even though most of the chaos ends with the holiday season, I then have to prepare for the Dancer's birthday in early February.

Oh, and I also opened up a huge can of World War III with my inlaws over the weekend.

Waiting for the Lightning

Seems Jamie Foxx recently called Obama his "lord and savior." No, really, Yeah. He did. I wouldn't stand too close to him, in case the lighting bolt from above shows up.

If you ever read Ace of Spades, you are well familiar with the Let It Burn concept. The idea that this country is too far in debt and has too large of a lazy, self-centered populace that likes to be ignorant and plans on staying that way, means the country is at some point going to collapse. So, let's get the party started now. If you believe at some point this house of cards is all going to come down, then why delay the pain? And part of Letting It Burn is destroying the entertainment and media industries. If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that during the run-up to the election, an enormous majority of celebrities may not have been calling our current president their lord and savior, but they are certainly behind him, and quite happy to demonize anyone who isn't. If you're a reader who knows me from Martin Loopers, you probably don't watch much television already, and may not have cable. I'm trying to persuade Mr. BTEG to at least cancel our Sirius satellite radio subscription, if not our cable. I want us to avoid as many movies as possible, especially the ones where the more vocal Obama supporters are stars. Tell me why any of the liars, tramps, sluts and thieves in Hollywood deserve my family's money. Let them feel the economic depression/recession just like the rest of us.

Spelling Tip

Since the election, there has been a lot of discussion among people who still wish to live under the rules set out in our Constitution, and who suggest breaking away from the United States to form some new country. The only thing I am going to point out here, is that this would be a secession and not a succession. I've been really frustrated seeing the wrong word used over and over. That is all.

Cravings

The week or so of solid gray skies and steady rain that came as a result of Hurricane Sandy made one thing clear to me: I do have Seasonal Affective Disorder. By the end of the week I was barely functional. My brain worked well enough to click a computer mouse, and that was about it.

I've always suspected that I had SAD. After all, winter is the hardest time of the year for me, emotionally. February was the month when I reached an breaking point bad enough to land me in a mental hospital. But the bad weather last month compressing it all into a solid week really convinced me. I've been pretty good about upping my Vitamin D consumption in the winter, but since we are blessed enough to have very good health insurance coverage at the moment, my psychiatrist is supporting me in trying phototherapy. Mr. BTEG is working through the insurance channels/hoops to get a light box. I'll probably update when we get one, after I've used it for a while.

My other struggle, besides craving sunlight, is craving carbs. I haven't talked about it here, but late this summer, I started eating less, trying to cut back on carbs, cutting out as much high fructose corn syrup as possible, and walking. I did manage a little bit of weight loss. But now my ankle injury has messed up my walking habit, and as winter comes on I find myself craving carbs as I haven't in a long time. Mr. BTEG, who did some research on light boxes and SAD, tells me that craving carbs in the winter is nature's way of putting us into a sort of hibernation. Well, I was certainly in hibernation mode after that week of gray and rain. But I can't do that all winter. Maybe the phototherapy will help with the carb cravings.

Oh, and Mr. BTEG also discovered that light therapy can cause someone who is bipolar to go into a manic state, or a mixed state. Swell. My mixed states are the worst ones of all. I guess we'll have to play that one by ear as well. Happy Winter!

Confession Time

I am finally giving in to responding to this article. I really didn't want to, because I'm not going to get anywhere, or change anyone's mind, but I've been turning it over in my mind for awhile, so I'm writing it down here and moving on.

My name is Barb the Evil Genius, and I am a terrible parent. I homeschooled one daughter for five years, and the other for four years. The reason why the Musician was only homeschooled for four years was because she was fighting my attempts to homeschool her, and we put her into an online school for a year, rather than put her in a school district that we were planning on leaving in a year.

Now both daughters are in public school, happy and doing well. This obviously means that I am a poor parent, since even after many years of homeschooling, my daughters prefer being smothered and subjugated in a public school. They enjoy being around, and learning with, large groups of their peers, even though many of the peers are sometimes unkind, selfish, lying, thieving, have emotional issues, do drugs and sleep around. To be honest, my girls can be thoughtless, tactless, selfish, and lose their tempers. My youngest occasionally resists the urge to inflict bodily harm on her classmates when she finds their stupidity frustrating (what can I say, she's my little girl,) and yet she prefers public school to homeschooling. This makes me a terrible parent. They should prefer being at home with just the other sister, and having the one-on-one interaction with me as their teacher.

When my daughters were homeschooled, they were not intrigued to find out how birds built their nests, nor interested in becoming Mozart-like composers, learning open-heart surgery, or welding a scale-model Eiffel Tower in the garage. If given the opportunity, my daughters would spend a great deal of their time surfing My Little Pony memes on the internet and playing Super Paper Mario. This obviously makes me a poor parent.

My youngest daughter takes medication for her ADHD. This is to help her concentrate on her work, sit still and be quiet. Definitely I am in the poor mom category here. ADD and ADHD are just made up labels to force brainwashed children to mindlessly behave in a stifling system. My daughter would learn so much more if she was homeschooled. Talking non-stop and doing cartwheels through the backyard to work off her energy would serve her so much better. At least she could concentrate while she was playing Super Paper Mario.

So when you hear, "You can homeschool your kids too! Public school is always the worst choice!", just remember, that is only true if you are a good mom. My name is Barb the Evil Genius, and I am not a good mom.

Hobbling

My foot is still in pretty bad shape. It's been a week since I injured it, and new bruises are still appearing on it. I can drive, with some pain, and walk fairly well. Stairs are a little more difficult. I will try to update tomorrow; I have been doing some knitting and some deep thinking while I've been mostly laid up. :)

Curve Balls

All of us here in the Evil Genius household now have the cold that Mr. BTEG acquired at work last week. So the girls and I are hanging out here at home, me nagging the girls to do a little bit of housework in between My Little Pony episodes.

Not only that, but in an illness-induced haze the other night, I tripped badly getting out of bed and have barely been able to walk for the past few days, with rather impressive bruising and swelling on my left foot. To add insult to (literal) injury, having a left-foot injury and having a stick-shift car means I can't even drive, even if I could limp out to the car.

On a related note, one of my favorite catch-phrases has been: "That's part of the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom." Because being a stay-at-home mom is such a luxury, or at least that seems to be a popular opinion. I've also seen a couple of things lately that made me realize that lots of people think that non-automatic windows in cars are a thing of the past. Well, only for those who don't have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom.

Yet Another Reason

to believe that Gaia worship is a religion: the LA City Council is encouraging its residents to avoid eating meat on Mondays. For some vague, feel-good ideas about saving the planet, contributing to health and avoiding illnesses. If we say the right things, do the right things, perhaps the Nature God will favor us with plentiful "plant-based" foods, good health and no natural calamities. In the end, it's all about what we do, though. Like so many other religions are.

You know, abstaining from random sex and not having a lot of sexual partners, whether hetero- or homosexual, would "reverse some of our nation's most common" diseases. I guess temple prostitutes are cool with Gaia.

Sending Out a Dove

Yesterday around dinnertime we got power back, after having it out since Monday evening. We survived, although we have now have a larger laundry and dishes backlog than usual. The Dancer and the Musician had school off yesterday due to power outages. Only the Dancer is at home keeping me company today.

There has been damage in the area, mostly due to downed trees and the inevitable flooded basements. I don't see any reports of loss of life in this area, which is a blessing. Areas south of us got snow. I think Lake Erie is still too warm for us to get any snow -- yet.

Halloween trick-or-treating has been moved to Sunday evening, which is also a good thing. Otherwise, all the girls, at least, could have been dressed like Mary Poppins: carrying umbrellas and being blown by the wind down the street.

Having no power all day, we went out to dinner last night. The restaurant we chose was totally slammed, but considering that the biggest shopping metropolis in the area, Crocker Park, was without power, I doubt we could have avoided a crowd anywhere else. We did get a free appetizer and an extra salad out of the deal due to confusion. I hope the servers raked in a higher than usual amount of money for a Tuesday night.

A Warning

Supposedly when your kids start getting older, you don't need to spend so much time with their care, and so you have more time for yourself. DO NOT BELIEVE THIS! It is a lie! They just get into more activities, so you have to spend more time driving them around. Of course, also supposedly, kids who are in the upper grades of high school can get their driver's license and save you endless hours by shuffling the younger siblings around. This does not take into account having a sucky president, a lousy economy, and a husband underemployed for the last several years. Thus, a family may have a lot better places to put the few hundred dollars required for the driver's ed needed to get a license for those under the age of eighteen. Weird things like clothes and stuff. My only hope is that if Romney is elected, the economy may improve to the point that our daughters will not be living with us forever. My main regret is that we do not have a basement.

So Simple

Even a scarecrow can do it.

Or do you think I'm just setting up strawmen? XD

I Called It

Over a year ago, I predicted that, in this economy, "green" products that were more expensive would not sell well. Well, guess what? According to recent research, "consumers have become less willing to pay for environmentally friendly products." Even the overwhelming percentages of people conserving energy and water could easily be doing so to save money. Who wants to write a bigger check to the electric company? Probably all those millionaires who swear they should be taxed more.

Dear Cult Followers

who think that it is cool to post a photo of yourself with a message written on your hands saying why you support Dear Leader. You know what? Writing messages on your hands and arms is really popular here in flyover country, too! At my daughter's high school. For your next trick, try wearing an Obama shirt and holding up your hands to make a heart over it. Also, don't forget the duck lips. For serials.

Is This What Health Care Needs?

Let me start this off by presenting my husband's, and my, needs for health care. Mr. BTEG has about six autoimmune disorders. Since there is currently no medical specialty that deals with autoimmune disorders in an overall sense, he must see a number of specialists that each deal with a particular facet of his issues; for example, he needs a gastroenterologist to help him manage his Crohn's disease, and an endocrinologist to help him with his thyroid issues.

My main health issue is mental, not physical. I am bipolar. This requires a psychiatrist to keep an eye on my mental state and help me adjust my medications accordingly. Thank God, I am currently in a good mental place in general and do not need to see my psychiatrist very often, nor switch my medication around. When things are more difficult for me, I sometimes see a counselor as well. Then of course both Mr. BTEG and I have a general physician, and our daughters have their health care needs too.

All of this brings me to an article about cutting out waste in health care. It caught my eye because the example patient, Harold, has rheumatoid arthritis, which is related to autoimmune issues, and because the author holds up the Cleveland Clinic as a model at the end of his article.

The Cleveland Clinic is, in general, definitely a good place to receive health care. It has a world-class reputation and some of their doctors are at the forefront of knowledge of various diseases and disorders. One of the problems I see in Cleveland, however, is that the Cleveland Clinic and its "rival," the University Hospital system, have largely sucked up most of the hospitals and many of the health care practices in the greater Cleveland area. Competition is good, and I would not want to see either the Clinic or UH completely dominate the Cleveland health care market.

However, having so much of a market controlled by two large systems also has its drawbacks. Both the nearest hospital to our home, and the best pediatric hospital in Cleveland, Rainbow Babies' and Children's, are in the UH system. Our family currently works with many doctors in the Cleveland Clinic system, both because of proximity to our house and because the percentage of solo practices does seem to be smaller. What if there is an emergency and we need to go to the nearest hospital, or one of our daughters, God forbid, gets an illness where a stay at Rainbow would mean the best care? First of all, that completely wipes out one of the advantages that the author above presents, which is computerized health records all in one place and readily available, due to everything being "under one roof." Secondly, doctors were already limited in what hospitals they could work with because of insurance. Would my daughters' pediatrician even have any privileges at Rainbow? But again, I would not like to see monopolization as the answer!

Secondly, we in the BTEG household know a lot about problems with health insurance. Our previous insurance provider would not pay for a very expensive health treatment which would have helped with all of Mr. BTEG's autoimmune disorders, similar to the problems Harold had with paying for Humira and Enbrel, which also work with autoimmune issues. However, Harold is also held up as an issue for waste when his declining health, based on not receiving the best medication for his issues, is mismanaged due to a multiplicity of doctors and lack of knowledge about his overall medical history.

Mr. BTEG prefers to have the freedom to choose his own doctors, whether they are in a particular system or not. Neither his gastro nor his endo doctors are in the Cleveland Clinic system; however, they are both excellent in their fields and moreover, they know each other professionally and readily share information with each other concerning my husband's issues (after my husband's consent is obtained.) Just recently, his gastro passed on taking bloodwork because his endo had also recently completed a blood panel, and "Dr. S is one of the few who knows what to get." Waste avoided, but not for the reasons our author describes. Also important, my husband "clicks" with his doctors. It is equally important for a patient to click with her psychiatrist and counselor. Sometimes it can take a while to find a health pro with whom you can feel comfortable. When it is already work to find the right doctor for you, why be even more constrained by what medical center, if any, they work for?

Is there waste in the medical field? Heck, yes. And steps should definitely be taken to avoid as much waste as possible. I simply disagree with what quality care must look like.

Move Along

This has been a very difficult week here in the Evil Genius household. It hasn't been as bad for us as it has for others, but it's been a very difficult and painful time ever since Saturday morning. And now I'm fighting a cold that I probably caught because my immune system was down from a lot of grieving. And I'm in that place where you never want to be happy again because bad things can happen, and you never know when one will happen next. I think rest and time are needed for the next couple of days.