I still have a few plants alive in my garden, so I went outside last night to water them. I was greeted by the neighbor’s cat, which wasn’t very unusual - he likes to show up on my porch for petting, and he likes stalking the birds that hang out in the shrubs. This time though, he was very interested in my watering activities, to the point that he was sticking his head under each plant as I watered them. On a whim, I lowered my water pitcher to his level, and he stuck his head inside and tried to start drinking…the poor thing was super thirsty. I ended up giving him a small bowl of water. I’ve seen him drinking out of the splash guards under the downspouts after a storm, but I thought the cat did that because it was something new and interesting…it had never really occurred to me that the neighbors would let him out without providing a source of water. 
There’s always the chance that he slipped out of the house, but given how frequently I see him in my yard, he must slip out quite a bit.
I’m sure this is completely uninteresting, but the finger is, in fact, broken. She’s in a cast for just two weeks, though. Silver lining: we’re taking piano lessons together and she insisted on going last night anyway. Like a champ she played through the whole lesson with her right hand (the one that is still intact). So that was cool.
Now all I’ve got to do is find out I don’t have a brain tumor and we’re good. For what it’s worth, I had double-vision about a month ago. Since I have a seizure disorder that’s a big deal, though typically associated as a side effect of my medication. But Friday I lost most of my sense of smell. I let my neurologist know and we’re in a wait-and-see pattern, but I’m still visiting my optometrist to check my pressures (apparently your eye pressure can increase when you have a tumor, which makes sense) and I’m getting a full physical with my GP in a few weeks to make sure my blood looks normal.
I’m terrified, but haven’t told anyone other than my husband and am hoping to all that’s holy that I’m just going through some hormonal weirdness or a combination of stress and allergies, but given the year that we’ve all had, shit can go downhill fast. And I don’t want to mess around with my brain.
At least I can work from home.
Gaah.
Stupid frustrating situation. Despite me changing the address for my account about a month ago, the student loans company is still, for some dumbass reason, sending letters to my parents’ address. I’ve double checked their website, and the only address they have listed is my current one, my parents’ one isn’t anywhere on my account.
Added to this, for some reason my parents are not forwarding my post, despite both happily and repeatedly telling me they will. So I’m being sent forms, which I have to fill out or get fined, to an address that I do not live in, despite me giving the company the correct info. Then despite my repeated asking for either my post -which has been one or two letters a year- to be forwarded on, or at least someone to let me know a letter has arrived (either of which is totally fine, not a problem at all, yep, we’ll let you know then send it on immediately!), the forms are just sitting there waiting for the next time I visit -probably Christmas, I’m about 8 hours drive away- with no-one even thinking to mention their existence.
I can get a printable copy online, if I know forms have been sent, but the SLC don’t send any notification, so if my parents just stick them to one side and forget about them, I have no idea there’s anything I need to print.
Just to add an extra layer of utter frustration to this, the terribly important form that they apparently just sent to the wrong address is one asking for evidence of my current living circumstances.
What this means is that I have to prove to the student loan company that I am currently a student, by sending them a copy, which I need to print off their website, of one of their own sodding letters back to them, telling them that they just loaned me some money for the course, despite them actually acknowledging that on the bloody form.
So file a Change-of-Address form with the Post Office.
Then they will forward mail to you, without your parents being involved at all. In fact, the post office address database will show your new address to all big mailers, like your loan company, and so it should get changed that way too.
Hehehe. I never said that I liked the people the party was going to be held for. I actually resent them. They are coming to an area that is just barely recovering services due to nature shitting all over us and expecting a gala costume party because we always have a gala costume party for the stockholders on Halloween. If we could infect them with that terrible mindworm and make it last for a couple of months, that would be great!
overlyverbose I am sorry for your daughter’s broken finger and all that entails. I’m more concerned about your worry about a brain tumor. I really don’t have any advice, but I will worry with you if that helps at all. When are you going to get your eye pressures checked? Please do let us know when you have some news. I will hope that its just all some sort of strangeness going on in the mean time.
I had undiagnosed vision anomalies for years, that I just assumed were due to brain tumor. Got tests back, and… Nope!
My wife and dogs got to see me running through the house yelling “It’s naaaaaht a toooo-mah!”
May you get to wheel out your bad Ahhh-nahld impersonation…
Two years ago today, I put new tires on my wife’s Subaru Outback. The top-rated tires in Consumer Reports were fairly pricey Michelin tires, but I got a decent rebate, so I bit the bullet and had them installed.
Late last week, with only 23,000 miles on the tires (about halfway through the treadlife), her tire pressure sensor actuated. The problem turned out to be a slow leak due to a screw embedded at the edge of the tire and into the sidewall. It was not repairable, of course, so I had to replace the tire.
What was maddening, though, was that I found out that due to Subaru’s all-wheel-drive (AWD) design, all four tires must have equal tread depth (within a variance of no more than 2/32 inch). If you install a tire with tread depth difference greater than this (and therefore with a slightly different tire diameter), you run a good chance of ruining the transmission. Tires are cheaper to replace than transmissions, so I had to replace all four tires. :smack:
I did at least keep the three half-used tires. If this happens again in two years, I should be able to match the tread wear with one of these.
Except that’s not how the system works here. There is no Change-of-address form here, you have to change addresses yourself. You can pay for a short term redirect service, but I’m not paying over £30 every 3 months to get one company to send mail to the address they have on their own system. Everything else I’m at all bothered about is updated, and arriving here.
Aside from anything else, I haven’t actually lived with my parents for about a decade. The only reason my they were getting SLC letters at all is because the system had an option for ‘permanent address’ as well as ‘temporary address’, and the SLC only sent me one statement letter a year until I decided to go back to uni. As I was travelling overseas and living in short-term rental places, leaving the ‘permanent address’ as my parents’ was, until now, a much more reliable way of making sure I got that one letter a year.
But just at the time they’ve started sending me more letters, and letters that I actually have to do something about, my parents have bizarrely decided that more letters=less important.
In the US we get most mail forwarded for free for a year I think.
You guys have healthcare, though.
Wanna switch?
<Hurrying to get in on the Sept rants before it’s too late>
I went to the doctor (oncologist- followup) this morning, and as per usual, an aide or LVN or someone escorts me to a place where they weigh you and take your b.p. Okay. No prob. Today the young woman (I’ll call her Mary Lou) who was charged with this task had a colleague with her (also a young woman). Mary Lou and friend are busy chatting about their work schedules and upcoming days off as I follow them down this looooong corridor. I get to the room with the scale, etc., and Mary Lou checks my weight, and has me sit down to do my b.p.–all the while chatting up a storm with her friend-- they are looking at each other and making frequent eye contact. WTF. As she’s pumping up the cuff, I say, “Could y’all wait to have that conversation til you’re done with me?”
Mary Lou was not offended–oddly, she was completely astonished at my request. Like it was the last thing in the world that ever expect a patient to say. It’s as if she was checking my dog’s blood pressure and couldn’t believe that he had sat up and requested a cup of coffee in perfect English.
When she was done and took me to the examining room, she apologized, which was nice. I guess most patients don’t speak up. Now that I’m old, I ALWAYS speak up. :dubious:
Referencing the posts right before mine about anger: I hear ya. I’ve been very cranky and feeling ignored and dissed by my “friends” IRL. I haven’t gotten a phone call or a personal email in the last week. If I had died last Wednesday, no one would know. Or, frankly, care. This makes me cranky. And yes, I did call/email two people to see if they could have lunch this week, but neither one replied.
When you go to the doc’s office, they give you a questionnaire to fill out asking if you’re depressed, having trouble sleeping, have lost interest in stuff-- a screening for depression, clearly. I usually lie on the form and say everything is hunky-dory. Today I didn’t; I came clean. And when the nurse came in, I pointed that out to her. She didn’t know what to say. I said, I usually lie, but today I didn’t. She said, “Well the only reason we have that form is because Medicare wants it.” I said, “Okay, then in the future, I’ll go back to lying.”
You can also have a new tire shaved down to match the diameter of the older tires, but they probably did not want to emphasize this, as they were in the midst of selling you four new tires at the time.
Oh for fuck’s sake!! Facebook is back to doing that shit where, when scrolling through my News Feed, it says I have ‘Add friends to see more’ (paraphrased). Stop fucking with things Facebook!! And while you are at it, fix the things that are broken instead of adding more little doodads and shit that is bound to break and fuck it all up again.
I haven’t seen that (yet). I hope I don’t.
On the plus side, lists are back!
Right, I actually asked about this, but neither the tire dealer nor the Subaru dealer were willing to shave down tires. (Both looked at me like I had two heads and professed to never having heard of such a thing. For that matter, so did my wife.)
The only place I found that will do it is Tire Rack, but you have to do a special order for this, wait for it to be delivered, and then find someone to install it for you.
The tire dealer was actually perfectly willing to sell me only one tire, and did this. They told me that as long as it was the same type of tire with the same tread pattern, I would be fine. It was only after I did some research and talked to the Subaru dealer that I found that I had received bad info. I then went back the next day and had the three remaining tires replaced so as to match the first.
You better go back and get all 4 done again since you drove on the one new one as now it doesn’t match the three you got the next day.
It’s a never ending cycle!!
Now that I’m officially a Senior Citizen, I get the questions about “Do I feel safe at home?” and “Am I being mistreated or abused in any way?”
I guess they’re good and appropriate questions to ask, it just feels weird. Yes, my husband is physically stronger than I am. Has been ever since I met him. If he hasn’t beaten me any time in the last 35 years I really think I’m safe.
Though, maybe… Does he get asked the same questions? After all, he’s two years older than me. Maybe he’s now frailer than I am now and now’s my chance to wreak vengeance! Bwah-ha-ha!
Thank Og that I’m having the opposite happen to me. Now that I’m in my 60s, I’m realizing that I just don’t care as much about what others think of me. Which is huge for someone who was insecure all his life…
Hey, I had a free weekend! I’d proposed dinner and a concert to a group of friends, but no one that I texted got back to me, and I haven’t heard a peep for months from the people that I’ve stopped texting.
Oh, did get one call on Monday from a couple saying “Sorry we never got back to you – too busy!” I appreciated that, but as for the others, no big deal – bet they were too busy, too.
And if they had time, but decided that they just didn’t want to put up my “oh so clever about politics and music and old TV shows” schtick, well, that’s fine, too.
I got to sit all by myself (in a park, staring at a lake with a pile of books next to me)! Ahhhh…
They probably do ask him. Mr. Helena had a scary incidence of high blood pressure last year and we ended up in the emergency room. They asked him if he felt safe at home several times. They should’ve asked me to leave! If someone were being abused, would they say they didn’t feel safe with the abuser right in the room?? I was really frazzled and upset that day or I would’ve said something.Come to think of it, I’m going to email the hospital.
Well. Apparently they did cut the checks on the 22nd, but they didn’t mail them till yesterday. DAMMIT! If they had just said, “You will recieve your checks aroudn the end of the month” that would have been…not fine, but we could at least allow for it. Instead, we’ve been thinking that the check is coming any day now for two weeks straight. It’s stressful. Husband and I are both royally pissed off.
I had a long discussion with my PCP when I first started in his office, and had to explain that I had PTSD from being abused previously, and that while I was really tons better, I still was having maybe 4 or 5 anxiety attacks a year [frequently caused by someone showing up and knocking on the door when I wasn’t expecting anybody. Unfortunately thanks to the damned house fire two freaking years ago now I have panic attacks if I am trying to go to sleep and the freaking neighbors have a fire going in their chiminea and I can smell smoke, or if I see flickering of about the same value orangeish of the flames [asshat next door owns a tow truck and will sit it in the damned drive with the flashy lights going] but short of tranquilizers, I have no idea how to deal with it other than boosting sessions with my therapist from once every 3 months back to alternate Fridays sigh
So I get to report every time I do a medical appointment that no, I don’t freaking feel safe at home, I freaking have PTSD that keeps getting freaking triggered. sigh At least my PCP and therapist understand what is going on, I really don’t want to have an impromptu visit to an ER or different doc any time soon.