When the world bites back.

OK, I think it was Wednesday when I got that bug bite on my right index finder. On the middle digit, it was red and only itched slightly.

Then Thursday morning comes along and we were looking at an entirely different ballgame. The itchiness of my finger was super intense and swelled up on the second and first digit almost to the knuckle. I drenched it under cold water after feeding my old cat and then I took my normal hot morning shower and it exploded with itchiness and pain. I gave myself what amounts to a Indian burn, gripping that right index finder and twisting it with my left hand back and forth until the itchiness subsided. Went to work, ran it under some cold water in the women's restroom longer than it would normally take for me to wash my hands for the times I had to go relieve myself and got through the way without too much distress. Came home and found mt Cortizone 10 cream and found it was not expired (yeah) slathered that right index finger with the cream and kind of babied it for the rest of the night.

Friday morning, I had swelling from the nailbed into the knuckle of the right index finger. The mid joint was so swollen front and back, I could not bend the finder without a considerable amount of pain. I decided this bug bite issue was getting worse, not better, so I better go to a walk-in clinic to see if they can help this situation along so we can IP it in the bud and to have it progress into something much worse. I read on the internet trying to look for answers that it could become infected, turn into sepsis/death. From a bug bite. I'm not having that.

So I was released from work two hours early on Friday due to the Labor Day Holiday weekend and I drove my sorry ass to the UCI Health Center where Dr Nguyen is (who takes Aetna-my health ins), but some to find out UCI Health does not so going to be seen there is considered "Out of Network" which made me mad, but at that point I just wanted to be seen. Which I was by a nurse practitioner. This place since it opened has been my go-to for care. They asked a lot of questions including ones about my mental health at which I'm still kind of creeped out about, but that's what they have to do these days. And then here's the new info that I really never thought of before. I has described what the bug bite looked like and progressed to and she examined what it looked like at the office, and she told me to take pictures of the affected area to ensure that it's getting better and not worse. She tried to prescribed predisone and I was oh no no, that makes me psychotic, I had it before when I has my last surgery for illitius and I had to stop using it because of the side effects, please something else. So she then prescribed keflex and a couple of different antihistamines and topical cortisone 2.5 cream ( my son called it "the good stuff" ) and I was sent on my way.

I went home, took a nap, and by that time after I had to reset my password for the CVS app, I found out that the prescriptions were ready for me to pick-up. No text. Grr. And I needed gas in my car, so I went to the new gas pumps at the little Costso in Tustin and they were busy busy busy on the Friday night before the big three-day holiday weekend. That fucking exit after you pump is an accident waiting to happen. They need to change that. And then made my way out of the Tustin Marketplace and drove on the 5 Freeway because going south was not stop and go mess like the northbound 5 was and got off two exits later at Jeffery. My preferred CVS is at Jeffery x Alton in Irvine.

I had to push the customer service button in order to buy non-drowsey claritin which was suggested by the doctor to help stop the histamine reaction in my body that's irritating the bug bite site. So I bought a 24 pack of that and found a bottle of my vitamins and bought those too and then I headed to the pharmacy counter to get my three prescriptions... the creme, the keflex and the other antihistimine that is so strong I was told it's going to make me drowsey and that I cannot drive using it which make me think I should maybe just take that one at night time.

So here we are. It's Saturday morning. I have taken my second dose of Keflex and just burnt my right thumb a little putting foil over the potatoes I just took out of the oven and I swear all of this jibber jabber was leading up to the photo of what my bug bitten index finger looks like this morning, 09/03/2022 at about 8AM. The skin is still red, the knuckle is swollen to the point where I cannot make a fist, but overall it's not as swollen and irritated as it was yesterday when I went to the doctor.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rBChhXTTrMCATpAM6

https://photos.app.goo.gl/rBChhXTTrMCATpAM6 

It's Covid time! My experiences with a disease that can kill, but I survived.

So for two years while the world was shut down and other people were working from home, I was laid off of work for 6 months and then working in the office and never got sick!

I've been vaccinated (J&J) and boosted (Moderna). This is a brief journal of what it was like for me when I got COVID. I know it could have been a lot worse, but it went down like a bad case of the flu.

7/09 -  I had to take my cat to the vet and I was forced to wait for treatment. I know I got my case of Covid 19 from the vet's office. I sat in their waiting room for 8 hours. (Note to self: the emergency vet is a vector because everyone and anyone goes there. Like the hospital or the store.)

7/10 - felt nothing different. I have Crohn's disease and typically am a low-energy person.

7/11 - Monday as I was walking to the car, I had pains in my joints (hips and legs) and I thought that was odd. Later at work, I felt like I had a dry cough coming on and general malaise, so I left work early. Was there 6-1030AM.

7/12 - Tuesday was the worst day. It was the day of fever and chills and I couldn't rest and couldn't get comfortable. I went from the bed to the couch to the bed again. No matter what I drank, I urinated twice as much.

7/13 - Wednesday I'm not hungry or tired. I can't breathe, so I took pseudoephamephine (tiny red pills you sign for at the pharmacy) all day. I'm breathing, but I'm numb.

7/14 - I woke up at 2AM. I ate a bowl of noodles for dinner. I wanted peach jello, but all I had was cherry. My son was amused (because I do not like cherry flavor and he knows the story why), but compassionate.

7/15 - Woke up at 3AM. He came home from work with 3 boxes of peach jello for me. I made a little chicken and veggies soup in the instapot with lots of knoor chix bullion so I could taste it. Because who wants to eat if you can't taste it. My taste buds are not fully functioning yet. I have not needed to take the decongestant pills today. Once I ate a little, I napped on the couch twice, although I did not feel tired, I knew I needed some extra sleep.

As the mortgage world turns

...and burns. Sprout Mortgage closed yesterday, 7/6/2022. And it wasn't pretty. And it wasn't kind.

The way this company left it's workers out in the cold is what makes people run away screaming when someone says ' mortgage job'. Harry Santos trying to make amends to the I don't know how many countless people affected post on LinkedIn was commendable.

Let's Kick the Problem Down the Road for Others to Deal With

 As I was working on a genealogy profile early this morning, I was drawn to search for a death notice published in the Detroit Free Press in 1996. Although I was unsuccessful in my endeavor, I came upon a retrospective article marking the fact that the American Auto Industry turns 100 this year (1996).

Never in modern history has one invention been so impactful to so many and yet so damaging to our environment. Paved roads heat the planet, smog chokes our breathing, accidents happen that take their toll on the lives of families, and our finances and their remnants sit in museums, garages, driveways, on the side of the road, and in junks yards that litter our country. And besides gas, all of the fluids that support running any vehicle are poison to humans as well-coolant, brake fluid, wiper fluid, transmission fluid, battery acid. Engineering allows us to drive around "safely". Until one brilliantly stupid human does yet another thing no one has thought of before to screw it all up for the rest of us.

And here we are now in 2022, 26 years later and we, as a country, are being weaned off of the gasoline teat because Russia supplies a significant amount of crude to the world oil market and they are at war with Ukraine. Don't forget, we have to "save the planet" and ourselves. Crude oil is a byproduct of the dinosaur age and it's a finite resource and expensive. Barrels of the stuff are refined into any number of fluid products and plastics! (that get thrown away in landfills and microparticles get into our oceans and our food chain and not enough is recycled further polluting the earth, but that's a different bandwagon). We still buy gas every day we need it, but we seem to need it a little less when it's priced at $6.35 per gallon.

California has had to put into effect some of the strictest clean air quality legislation to get the smog under control in this freeway-driving car culture society we live in, but the rest of the country hasn't caught up yet.

The rub is that if electric generating plants are being fueled by coal, are all those EV electric plug-in vehicles really making a difference in our quality of life? Not for the people who live in the vicinity of a smokey coal-burning plant. Even the by-products of a cleaner coal-burning plant ( no coal plant can ever be 100% clean for the environment), are not healthy for the groundwater. And everybody has to drink water. An EV car is still a car, just without a gas tank.

We can thank the industrial revolution for making our lives what they are today.

But are humans the evasive species of planet earth? How long will it be till we have to colonize outer space or another planet to sustain our existence? I would like to be able to think positively about it, but an almost 2-year bout of COVID-19 in society proves to me that 1) humans can't stand to be cooped up in one place over a long period of time, and; 2) no one gets out of here alive. And now that mother nature has "thinned the herd" with yet another mutating virus, there are fewer of us on this planet. You'd think it would be easier, but it's just the same bunch of problems on a different day.

The baby boomers have kicked down the road the fact that social security won't be there for my generation, that there are not enough immigrants and locals willing to take low-paying thankless jobs in home healthcare for the elderly. And now the conservatives in the Supreme Court just took away the federal constitutional mandate for abortion rights. I think if you are a woman and not of breeding age, you have no right to tell me what I can and can't do with my body. If you're a man, and don't believe in abortion, you better believe in adoption because that number will only rise when it comes to states rights and the poor. 

President Biden is right when he said this November, you'll be voting for the people that want gun control and abortion rights.

We need to make ammunition expensive as hell because that's what actually kills people. Have all the guns you want, but if a bullet is $200 each, with a serial number and your name is attached to the purchase,  you might think again about using it to kill another human being.

I dreamt Freddie Mercury was singing this to his cats in the morning.

https://www.onlinepianist.com/virtual-piano

Chorus

Today is gonna be a good day

A#3 c4 d#4               F4     D#4  C4 A#3

Today is gonna be a good day

Today is gonna be a good day

Today is gonna be a good day!

I woke up... six feet above the ground

to the sunshine, some coffee, and my cats all around!

And my friends, they called me on the phone

telling me the show last night was the best they've ever known <--work on this?

It's Perfect

 

All of my hard work finally paid off and as of Friday, I have perfect credit.

Clouds are parting, choirs are singing and I see rays of sunshine and a rainbow in the sky.

I did it.

I'm so Bleu

 

I found Bleu by listening to NPR one night driving home from work during a long commute. Then I found his bleutopia website online and was surprised when he replied back.

He issued three albums before moving to California:

1. Headroom (2000)

2. Redhead (2003)

3. Bing-Bang Holiday (compilation)

Bleu Concerts attended:

1. At a bar in the Mission District in San Francisco when he moved to California. I think this is when I bought the red sock t-shirt. August 2006.

2. King King in Los Angeles

3. Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles ( L.E.O.)

4. Silverlake Lounge (lost some hearing in my right ear over this concert)

5. Zoom Online  - record release party for 6-Tape.

6. 20-year anniversary of Redhead - Livestreamed from Boston.

Gen X Retirement Woes

 

If born in 1966, you're a year 1 Gen X'er who was told you're supposed to retire at age 70 so says SSA, but that's 15 years away. If social security is going to run out of money in 12 years, the government must step up to stabilize this fund.

Social Security trust funds now projected to run out of money sooner than expected due to Covid, Treasury says

PUBLISHED TUE, AUG 31 2021 2:45 PM EDT UPDATED TUE, AUG 31 20215:23 PM EDT

Thomas Franck

@TOMWFRANCK

KEY POINTS

*The Social Security trust fund most Americans rely on for their retirement will run out of money in 12 years, one year sooner than expected, according to an annual government report.

*The circumstances, which were exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, threaten to shrink retirement payments and increase health-care costs for Americans in old age sooner than expected.

*The financial outlook for Social Security and Medicare, two of the nation’s preeminent safety net programs, has deteriorated over the past year.

So you want out of your timeshare...

 

This is how I did it.

You want to get out of your timeshare? Just stop paying all payments and assessments. Then they (either the servicer/trustee) will contact you and you tell them you want out. Then they will send you a packet of paperwork to sign before a notary and sent back. You will forfeit all the money you paid into it. It's called walking away. And that's the ugly truth.

I lost $7K plus all assessments paid over years. I had a notary friend who did the notary for me. And then I was out.

Dream Journal: 6/15/2021

There was this tiny poor foreign country [eastern block?], I don't know where or what it was called, but it and its people were oppressed by its dictator. The only good jobs in this country are working for the dictator. 

There is an attorney that works for the dictator that secretly is in love with the one lady [ main character] who is the housekeeper/cook for the dictator that always wants to talk to him about getting papers from him and her leaving the country so her family can have a better life, but this attorney really doesn't do anything to help her to leave because he doesn't want her to go away because he secretly loves her. He's considered bumbling and inept in her eyes continually leading her on about getting all the papers together she needs, but he knows exactly what he's doing.

The dictator suddenly dies and the country becomes free. (Audible group "Yeah!") All the workers rush out of the front of the dictator's home? (fan out between huge shortish white columns) once the news is announced that he died and their country is now free. 

The one lady who now used to work for the dictator as a housekeeper/cook is out of a job and now looking for work, but it's still her dream to be able to live a better life and move away... more than ever now that she doesn't have the good job with the dictator anymore. I don't understand my role ( tourist/journalist?), but I have the ability to hire this woman but I refuse to because she is appointed to be a diplomat to the US for the brand new country ( the country never needed one before because everyone had to go through the dictator, right?) which means she can now leave and travel on the country's payroll... to have her better life like she always dreamed.

The country is happy for her because her friends and family all know about her dream/passion to leave all her life. The attorney is desperate to have her stay because now he's under scrutiny for whatever (a number of different charges) he was doing wrong while working for the dictator and he thinks that by telling her he needs her to be a witness in his ( long drawn out legal) case will keep her in the country. 

Her mother is happy for her, too, but fakes all these different illnesses so she doesn't want to leave. Her best friend is happy for her, but keeps planning stuff for them to do together, so she is constantly postponing and rescheduling her exit trip.

Pitch: Beloved former maid turned diplomat gets her wish for a better life, but her plans to leave are always thwarted by something or someone.

... and then I woke up.