I’ve had good experience with the Neighborhood Kids with a Lawnmower Lawn Service. When I was living in Pirateville, my ex was the first to hire the NKWAL and the rest of the neighborhood saw what a good job they did with our yard. The next year the NKWAL had a booming summer business.
I adore my animal family, but ohhhh it’s so hard when they go 
I’ll miss you, Handsome, my sweet, happy boy. I can’t count how many times we said, “He’s just a nice cat” and meant it in the most admiring way. It’s always too soon for my heart to say goodbye even when my head and your tired body knows it’s right. Rest well, my dear friend.
I’m so very sorry for your loss.
Nice cats are one of the best pleasures of life. I’m so sorry.
Sometimes it seems there are no google results that work. I want a couple of decorative tins that hold about a quart and are square and TALL. All I can find a squat round tins. It’s very frustrating.
Use this for your search:
square quart tall decorative tins
It seemed to show a bunch to me. Whether the decorations are to your liking is a matter of taste.
ETA: Here is one:
By my guess they aren’t quite quart sized, probably closer to 25 oz, but I like how they look.
Huge pet peeve: sellers who don’t give dimensions on their web site.
Sure, you’ve taken the time to shoot a dozen glamorous photos, but you can’t take thirty seconds to type the size? Either inches or centimeters or quarts or liters, anything!
This is true of big retailers and Amazon, as well as small resellers like Etsy.
Yes, often if I can’t tell how big an item is I don’t buy it. Otherwise it’s just gambling.
A few years ago I needed to buy a small end table. Got it from Amazon, and fortunately they gave detailed dimensions, which were absolutely critical. It had to be small enough to fit into a specific space, but large enough to support a record turntable. There had to be enough clearance between the bottom shelf and the top to store record albums there. One can hardly imagine a case where dimensions could be more critical. And it worked marvelously, as if it had been custom-built for the purpose. Without accurate dimensions the purchase would have been a non-starter. I would have had to visit a lot of brick-and-mortar furniture stores with a measuring tape, and would probably never have found what I needed.
I got an email from the HMO manager today, apologizing for the late response and stating “The matter is closed on my end.”
I assume this to mean that the remaining timbers are acceptable. I’ll be calling the landscaper to get the spikes sticking out of the ground cut down. If I were in better physical shape I’d buy the necessary tool and do it myself, but I think it’s worth the money to pay someone else to do it.
Dropped’em (a more accurate version of the name of one of the big pharmacy benefits / mail order pharmacy groups) strikes again.
I have had GERD all my life. Wasn’t really diagnosed as such until adulthood. Ultimately I was put on a proton pump inhibitor (Prilosec). When that wasn’t working well enough - to the point where people thought I had 24/7 laryngitis - the gastroenterologist put me on Dexilant - a somewhat spendy longer-acting variant in the same class of drugs. It required pre-authorization, which went through with no issues. We tried dropping my dosage at one point, but my symptoms got worse.
Then, about 2 months back, Dropped’em decided that this stuff was No Longer Covered. Doc filed an authorization request, which was basically met with “Hey, just hurry up and die of esophageal cancer already”. A bit of an exaggeration, but not much. I can file an appeal - which may well boil down to “So, cover the newly-available generic version, or pay for a fundoplication surgery; which do you think is cheaper?”.
So we’ll switch to a twice-a-day dosage of the precursor to that med, and see what happens. I do not look forward to this.
At that, Dropped’em may well be better than the coverage through MY employer (I’ve currently got it through my spouse’s job). My employer’s pharmacy program went to a “no PPIs covered, no way, no how” approach a few years back.
Why wouldn’t you cover PPIs? They are well established, cheap and have well documented benefits. I’m convinced that all health insurance companies will pick penny-wise, pound-foolish logic whereever they can and only think long term when legally required.
In this same vein, I am also having problems with my health insurance. My psychiatrist increased my dose of Prozac due to the fact that I’m still obscenely depressed all the time. For some reason, this dosage does not come in a single pill in capsule form but it does come in a single tablet. Unfortunately, the single tablet is not allowed. Oh well, no big deal, give me a 3 a day capsule please. Ok, that will cost $0.50 and I won’t tell you if it’s been filled correctly until you get to the pharmacy. Even though the smaller dosage was 10 times the cost per month. Just trust us. We aren’t trying to make your life difficult.
Mama_Zappa, I had the same scenario, only it’s my main insurer, YouFightIt, who did the dropping. I was on Dexilant for years, and it did a great job on my GERD. But YouFightIt decided not to cover it anymore and recommended Lansoprazole (an over-the-counter mediocre PPI) instead. I’m on Lansoprazole, but it doesn’t do a good a job as Dexilant. I’m back to: if I eat anything other than cream of wheat or soda crackers, I’ll get acid reflux.
YouFightIt also kicked out Xiidra, which was doing a bang-up job of causing me to produce tears, which alleviated my dry eye. So now I’m scheduled to have “punctal plugs” installed in my eyeballs next month. Thanks, YouFightIt.
I went through the same thing. I also have recently-diagnosed GERD, which surprised me because I didn’t think I had a problem with heartburn, but whatever. Apparently GERD is a trigger for a disease I have called eosinophilic esophagitis. The EoE is something I was struggling with for the last decade until it put me in the hospital with life-threatening symptoms. (I couldn’t even swallow water and would have dehydrated without an IV, and I was aspirating on my own saliva trying to sleep.) An endoscopy of my esophagus saved me but I was put on PPIs as a result (omeprazole, generic Prisolec).
They work because I haven’t had a serious problem since. But after a few months my insurance got fussy about covering them despite have a prescription from my GI.
So fuck them. Instead I now buy them in bulk from Amazon and the price is about the same as it would be getting them with a prescription from the local drug store even with my insurance paying for part of it. And I don’t have to wait for the drug store to call me to let me know they’re available, drive to the store, wait in line, give my info to the pharmacist, wait until they look up my account, wait for them to find my pills, then pay for the transaction and drive home. I get 6 weeks of pills delivered automatically to my door every 6 weeks.
This is reason #3,573 why I despise private health insurers. They’re basically murderous thieves. Out of curiosity I checked the Ontario drug formulary and both omeprazole (Prilosec) and esomeprazole are covered, and they pay 100% except for the dispensing fee. I’ve been prescribed all kinds of cardiac-related medication, including expensive stuff like Brilinta, and all has been fully covered. Also, even if I had to pay for it myself, Brilinta costs about one-quarter or less here than what it typically costs in the US. What youse guys down there need is some good ol’ northern socialized medicine! 
In any case, glad you got your non-coverage issue sorted out!
Bleh. Yeah, YouFightIt is closely affiliated with Dropped’Em - may own it, or whatever (I know I use the same login for both websites). Supposedly Dexilant has just gone generic, but it may or may not be possible to find it anywhere yet. And my insurance won’t even quote me what I’d pay for it if I wanted to pay out of pocket.
Because insurance companies are in the business of making money, not providing service. If they refuse to cover something, you’ll buy it yourself (or die quickly… or maybe get sicker and require a MUCH more expensive treatment, but maybe you’ll be covered by a competitor by the time that happens).
Weirdly, Dropped’Em WILL cover other PPIs - even ones that are available OTC. My husband gets his Prilosec from them. It was the Azure Crucifix / CareLast that dropped all PPI coverage.
I definitely still have issues even though I don’t feel the burning sensation. Occasionally I’m aware of a reflux sensation, anyway.
In addition to EE, another fun possibility with long-term GERD is Barrett’s esophagitis, which is a precancerous condition. I’d managed to avoid that diagnosis despite a lifetime of reflux, until my last upper GI. Good times…
Oh, and speaking of weirdness with health insurance and dosage: I was on 500 mg of a medication. Cheap as hell. Dosage needed to be upped - to 1000 mg.
Insurance said “OHHHHH NOOOOOES - The 1000 mg tablet NEEDS AUTHORIZATION!!!”. Literally weeks of back-and-forth between the doctor’s office and the insurer, during which I repeatedly suggested “just write me a scrip for TWO tablets a day”. That finally got done.
A friend of mine died a couple years back from esophageal cancer as a result of Barrett’s esophagitis which, yes, was caused by a lifetime of GERD.
I subscribe to a page on Facebook that makes fun of old ads, Recently a picture came up advertising the book “Do You Know What I’m Going to do Next Saturday?” with a cover picture of a kid about to use his fork to take up a huge stack of pancakes. Like I said, the sole purpose of the page is to make fun of ads. So I posted, “Stab somebody with fork?” I got a strike from Facebook for making a threat. I tried to appeal, but you have to read page after page of text without ever even getting to any point where you can appeal the strike. Fortunately, it didn’t put me in jail, just gave me a warning. But it’s like impossible to appeal.
Youtuber Corpse Husband has really bad GERD, which makes his voice very deep and growly. As well as playing games, he also releases rap music, which plays so well with his voice. Corpse not only has GERD, he also has fibromyalgia and thoracic outlet syndrome, and problems with his eyes that cause him to have to wear eye patches because or blue light damage from screens. He also has commented about how he has cut himself and has severe depression. His most recent song is about how he feels like he’s dying.
The thing is, when Corpse is interacting with other people on line, he is an extremely nice guy who gets along great with people online, but he never shows his face and doesn’t go outside.
I have to Pit Safeway, or maybe grocery stores in general. It might not just be Safeway doing this.
I’ve been grocery shopping all my adult life like most people. I know about the “manager’s special” in the meat department, where they have food about to expire that they knock off half the cost so it’s not wasted. It’s a good way to get some meat really cheap but you have to be sure to cook it the day you buy it or maybe the next day. It’s a trade off.
Last Sunday I grabbed groceries and bought some ground beef to use for a meat sauce with some pasta. Today I was going to coin it, and it’s all grey. I looked at the ”sell by” date, and it was the day after I bought it (Monday). 
I looked at some kalbi marinated chicken thighs I bought, and while it doesn’t look bad it’s the same deal. Sell by Monday. I am not risking my family’s health cooking expired chicken. Because of the marinade, I can’t tell if the chicken is a weird color or anything. It’s going in the trash.
That meat wasn’t cheap. It was in the regular meat section. But they’re basically selling meat about to expire. And this has happened before recently. I guess I need to carefully look at anything I buy in the meat area because they’re going to try to scam me with expired garbage. What a pain in the ass.