It's Always Something

We spent 5 hours in the emergency room of our local hospital here in town. Long story but he wasn't admitted. He will see his primary care physian in the morning for further tests.

I've been busy, busy, busy lately. Taking care of my girlfriend's cat and garden while she's in Alaska visiting her daughter and grandchildren. She's been gone a week but will be home on Friday but I don't know what time. She didn't say and I didn't think to ask. So guess I'll still go over on Friday to do the chores unless she calls or emails that she's home.

And I've been knitting up a storm. I started my first pair of legwarmers a few days ago and I have one completed and I started the other warmer last night. I'm using Andean Silk from www.KnitPicks.com and that's a very soft wool and silk blend. I also have a wool and cashmere blend from the same yarn source that I am turning into a beautiful scarf. I love the pattern. Very sophisticated and expense looking. I wish the blend had more cashmere. I would gladly pay more for more cashmere. Anyway I'm just finishing up my first ball of yarn and it's time to start the second ball. I thought for sure that I could get a scarf out of 2 balls of yarn but it's going to come out quite short if I don't order more balls. I could make it short and give it to my hubby. Men's scarves are most often shorter than those for women. But I was so hoping to claim it for myself. My #1 granddaughter has asked for a pair of legwarmers to use when she goes snow boarding with her husband. So it looks like I'm going to have to buy more yarn. What is it with knitters in that almost everything we make goes to those we know and love and rarely to us???

I've just about got Christmas projects finished. Had to ask #1 GD if her hubby would wear a particular item if I knitted it for him and she at first said no and then she saw the photo of it and she said that he would indeed wear it if I made it for him. [I am being very vague because my family checks my blog occasionally and I don't want to give the Christmas gifts away.] Then I have a few more things to do to finish up some of the gifts like sewing on a button, etc. Feels good to have almost everything done. I still need something for my nephew and his wife and my niece. Oh, my goodness I just realized that I haven't done anything for my son yet! Now I've got to figure out a gift for him and get busy with it. Seems like the projects never end. Now that I think about it, I do have my nephew & wife, and niece taken care of. But I sure haven't taken care of my son yet. Oh boy! Guess I'll need to get busy and look through some books and come up with a gift idea.

We got a real shock in the mail the other day. Our health insurance changed our deductible (share of cost) from $158 to $832 a month. The $158 we were managing but there's no way we can come up with $832 every month. This is crazy! Pure insanity!!! That's 50% of our monthly income. I had no share of cost until last year when I went on Social Security. That's when I went from no chare of cost to $158. All this is as of Sept 1st. My meds have been on automatic refills and I've had to go down to my pharmacy and tell them that as of Sept 1st I won't be taking any of my meds. Which is absolutely insane. I saw my doctor last week and told him that I won't be taking my meds and he said I had to do something. But what can I do. I'd love to continue with my meds but I will have to pay full price for them until I've paid out the $832. One prescription alone is worth twice that and then I have one for $458 and another for $375. Rationally and honestly there is now way in the world that we can come up with that kind of money. We are both on limitied-fixed income. My SS check is only $500 a month as it is. Now how am I supposed to pay that money every month when it's over $300 more than my total income???
We have asked for a hearing. Now we are just waiting to hear when and where the hearing will be. But it's true: it's always something.

We are slowly bringing mama cat indoors. She came with the house when we moved in 7 years ago and she's always been an outside cat. But we love her so much we've decided we don't want to risk losing her to a cayote or fox or hawk or an automobile for that matter. Our other two cats have accepted Mama but I'm not too sure about my little dog, Pepper. He's very jealous and that will take time.

Guess I'll go ahead and post this and try to get some sleep tonight. Hubby is still up waiting for the medicine they gave him at the ER tonight to kick in. But I think I'm going to go in and go to bed and see if I can't get some sleep. It is already after 2:00 in the morning. I'm tired and I've run out of things to talk about. I thought I had a lot of ideas but when I sat down here at my computer, the ideas just evaporated. It's always something! Until next time...

Mikey's Home!

Yes, Mikey's home on leave and how wonderful it is to see him again! A lot of things have been going on but none of them worth writing about for the most part. He got home last Saturday evening looking ever so spiffy in his dress blues. We had a party at the lake for him yesterday and was that ever fun! Of course boys being boys got him an eyeful of mud that required a little medical attention but other than that everything went smoothly. We stayed until after 4:00 which made for a long day for us but it was just so good to see Michael again. What a great kid he is. He'll be home for the better part of a month and then it will be off to Alaska for him. I've got my fingers crossed really tightly that he will like Elmendorf. He should. Everything I've read about the base and the area has been highly recommended. He enjoys snowboarding and that's the perfect place to snowboard. I think just going to a new place has him a bit worried. But I think he'll find out that he likes it up there and yet he'll be able to catch a flight down to Sacramento fairly often. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

My blog create page is still in Aramaic (or whatever it is) so I had to set up in the blind for this post. And I was about to give up on getting to the correct page when I happened to (almost by accident) find the create page. I had tried several times to open it that way and it had refused to let me in. But I think I was entering my addy as a dot com rather than a dot net because it just opened after I changed to dot net. I'm so upset that everything for me is in a foreign language and I can't even see how to enter my blog site and must rely on my memory for that. Like my memory is dependable!!! I wish I could read enough to get it back to English. I had 5 comments on my last entry and I couldn't read any of them because of the language problem.

I helped my son and his wife move back up to the foothills. He liked being closer to work but neither of them liked being so far away from family and friends. They lived in Cameron Park for a year and that was a year too long as far as I'm concerned. This is much nicer having them so close. It's a nice duplex that they rented in Jackson. I spent all day Sat. babysitting their sick dog while they drove in to SFO to pick up Mikey. They hit traffic like they'd never seen before but they got back before it was completely dark and I had daylight to drive back home for at least part of the way. Then Mon I met them at their new house and we all unloaded the h-u-g-e U-Haul truck. Lots of work but it's nice getting them up here again. I plan to go back over on Fri to help Tam unpack a few boxes. I'm just happy to have them so close now.

I finished another scarf. In fact I've knitted several in the past week or two. I'm also about mid way on GD#2's Christmas present. I hope to finish it before the weekend. I've ordered really nice yarn for a pair of legwarmers for me and some nice soft cotton yarn for a shopping bag I'm going to try to knit as soon as I can squeeze it in. I started a new baby afghan but I don't care for the pattern. It's one of those that has a stitch that looks like an error. I figure I make enough mistakes on my own. I don't need to be intentionally entering them! I also have yarn for a pair of slippers so I've got several projects in the making. I will rip out the afghan and start another one in it's place. It would be nice if I could find a new pattern with the exact number of stitches but that's sort of asking a lot. I like to have several projects going at the same time. That way if I get bored with one I can just switch to another one and eventually finish them all up.

I purchased more fabric Monday so I have things to sew too. I'm going to finish up my DIL's gift and then start on another apron. (I have fabric for 4 new ones I think.) And that should give me enough aprons to go around come Christmas. I love being able to sew when I'm resting my fingers from knitting. And I'm hoping to make everybody something picked out just for them in mind. I wanted to make different style aprons but patterns are expensive these days so I decided to make them all the same, save for the choice of fabric. I found some really nice heavy weight material at WalMart that I sooooo wish I'd seen before. I like my aprons to be a bit heavier-duty than the regular cotton fabric and of course I didn't see this material when I was buying all the other apron material. But they had it stuck in the end of an aisle 2 aisles away from the rest of the fabrics.

I know this is very short but I just have enough time to get ready for my hair appt. I'm glad I thought to call on check on the time because she wrote my appt down for 11:00 but gave me her card with 12:00 written on it. I called because I almost always go in at 11:00 and not 12:00. So I best get on the stick and get ready to go. I also have errands to run and chores to do so I'm keeping this really short for today. I will do my best to enter when I have more time and can write a decent blog but I wanted to enter quickly that Mikey is home! See you all soon...