Observations

[larryJ]

You would think as we get older and wiser that there some stupid things you just don't do. 

My son and his family have the condo in the mountains and he has managed to get himself on the Homeowners Association Board.  So he has to show up for the monthly meetings in Lake Arrowhead.  The last few times they have had to go up for these meetings they leave their two precious children with us.  Our granddaughter  is 6 and our grandson is 3.  Both of these kids are extremely intelligent.  The three year old can name all the states in the Union or at least he could last time I saw him a few weeks ago.  Their only drawback is that they are allowed to pack their own overnight bags.  Last night after their bath it was discovered that the 6 year old failed to pack any pajamas, but did pack enough clothes for a week.  I need to talk to her mom about this I guess.

Now for the stupid part or the things we don't do part.  My wife decided that since the younger ones were going to stay here we might as well invite our daughter's two girls so they see their cousins.  My wife, bless her heart, managed to get all four to the hair salon yesterday for haircuts and feed them last night and give them baths and figure out where to have them sleep.  All this while still recovering from all her surgeries from last year.  She is doing better but still moves slow.  Next time lets just have the two older ones over for the day but let them go home afterwards.  Or, have them all stay at my daughter's house!

To compound this situation, my sister-in-law who sometimes exhibits the notion that she is one can short of a six-pack has been coming here on Saturdays for the last four weeks.  She decided that why should she go to a laundry mat and pay to wash her clothes when she can go to "Sissy's" house and wash them for free.  This is okay except for the part where she decides to spend the night.  This may be difficult for some of you to imagine but here goes.  She is bi-polar and takes heavy doses of medicines to help her.  And the meds do help her get through her day.  This is a problem how you ask?  She has a schedule where she takes her pills in the late afternoon.  These meds are designed to help her sleep so she goes to bed around six or seven in the evening and wakes up around three or four in the morning.  We have a three bedroom house with a family room.  Since my wife's surgeries I have moved to one of the bedrooms.  My wife has the master and her cousin has the third bed room.  The sister-in-law sleeps on a couch in the family room.  Normally this is not a problem except we now have four grandchildren staying the night also

I program my coffee pot to go on at six in the morning which is about the normal time I get up.  The pot is designed to stay on for two hours before automatically shutting off.  When the Sister-in-law awakes at three in the morning she turns the pot on so she can have some coffee then of course it shuts down.  When I get up the coffee is two to three hours old and cold which requires me to reheat it in the microwave (see above).  The only nice thing about this is that she drinks her coffee and leaves very early. 

Now we have four grandchildren, a cousin and a sister-in-law in one place on the same night.  You would think that someone would suggest the sister-in-law go home rather than spend the night.  Didn't happen.  And because it is my wife's sister I keep my mouth shut. 

I just don't know why when we are so much older and wiser that we put ourselves in this position and then I remember those days in Howard at my Grandmothers when there would be kids scattered all over the floor sleeping.

Hah

Larryj

[larryJ]

So this has been one of those good week/bad week times. 

The good.....the two older grandchildren have finished school as of June 2.  The oldest will be going on to Middle School, what we used to call Junior High School, for seventh grade.  The other will advance to fourth grade.  Both received many honors at the awards ceremony. 

The bad........Now they will be here all day of the days we have them and we have to figure out things for them to do.  This is alleviated somewhat because they both love their IPads and can sit all day doing nothing but that. 

The good.....My sister-in-law failed to show up last Saturday.  Yippee!

The bad.....The last time she was here there was talk of her moving back here because her landlord raised her rent on her tiny little studio apartment.  When I heard this I was shaking my head no at my wife while she was nodding her head yes.  Oh the horror!

The good....The cleaning lady came today and my wife decided that she should pull the refrigerator away from the wall and clean the floor underneath.

The bad......This is bad because there is a water line that runs from the reverse osmosis system which is under the sink and goes under the house across to the opposite wall where the fridge is.  This supplies water for the water dispenser as well as the ice maker. Over the years the copper tubing cracked and was repaired by adding a connector.  This works until someone pulls the fridge away from the wall without carefully watching so that they don't wreck the tubing.  Yep........the connector snapped causing me to have to crawl under the sink to shut off the water supply.  Water all over the floor.  The cleaning lady ran to the local hardware store and bought some connectors and had the knowledge on how to put it on.  However it still leaked because now the tubing was bent so she wasn't able to align the tubing on both ends of the connector just right.  So now we have no RO water until tomorrow.

The good....my wife and I agreed that it was time to fix this problem once and for all.  The plumber was called and came within three hours.  He inspected the problem and called his boss and explained the problem in order to get a repair price.  Very courteous and prompt.

The bad...

$1200..............for running a new tubing system approximately eight feet under the house from one side to the other.  Geez.

Reminds me of the old joke about a guy who called a plumber to fix a problem and after carefully looking at the leak told the guy it would cost $1000 to fix it.  The guy said that was outrageous and that he was a Doctor and he didn't make that much for his services.  The plumber replied, "yeah, I found that out when I was a Doctor."

The good........I still have my sense of humor.............somewhere.

Larryj

[larryJ]

Continuing with the plumbing saga........

As the plumber had come late in the afternoon, he could do nothing until he ordered the parts to fix the problem.  Meanwhile water continues to seep from the broken line.  Not too bad but to my wife's paranoid cousin it spelled disaster.  I turned off what I thought was the supply line from under the sink and satisfied myself that the seepage was only what was left in the line and so I went to bed.

Two hours later I could hear the two of them talking in the kitchen, but I didn't move.  Finally my wife came and woke me and said there was water all over the place and they were running out of towels to keep it from spreading.  I got up and told my wife's cousin to go outside and turn off the water valve that feeds the whole house.  When she came back in she asked why it took so many turns to shut it off.  I tested the kitchen sink and the water was still on.  We could do nothing more than try to keep it from spreading.  I went back to bed knowing the two worrywarts would be up all night watching it.  No sense in all of us being sleep deprived I said to myself!

Now for the fun part.  This morning my wife asked for the phone number of the plumber thinking she could get an idea when the guy might show up.  The young lady on the other end of the line mistook my wife's call as a new problem.  About this time my wife who is not known for being overly creative decided that we should put a large pot under the offending leak.  This angered me that I did not think of it.  During the day we received courtesy calls from the company saying the plumber would be there between 2 and 3.  An hour later a different young lady called to say the plumber would be there at 5.  About 2 a plumber came to the door.  He was not the one from the previous day.  We figured out what happened and he went on his merry way.  The original plumber came at 5.  We told him about the shut off valve outside and he took a look.  The shut off valve was shot.

Estimated repair cost (GULP) $1800.  It had to be done because there is some silly law that says homeowners are not allowed to shut off the water from the water meter without permission.  He got permission and proceeded to fix the valve and then came in to fix the original problem.  He then informed us that by law there is supposed to be a shut off valve where the main line to the house connects to the meter.

Estimated cost.........I don't know.  I didn't want to know.  I don't care.  I'm too old to care.  I'm too tired to care and at that time of the day I am too sober to care.   Well, that is in the future.  He will call back Monday with the estimate.

Tonight we have no leaks.  The water runs good from the faucets.  Everyone is happy..........

except this guy who just put $3000 on his credit card.

Larryj

[larryJ]

It appears that 2017 will include quarterly ER visits.  I had one in March and just had another.  A problem with breathing which requires hospitalization to get pumped full of antibiotics because of a touch of pneumonia.  This began at 4:30 AM on Tuesday.

I have mentioned in the past about this area meaning the size and population.  Our town has 40000 plus residents.  There is one major hospital in our town, one on the other side of the freeway about five miles away and one in Glendora a city to the north probably 12 miles away and another in Pomona maybe 15 miles away.  The one here is two miles from my house.  I have also mentioned that we have Kaiser insurance and Kaiser has a major hospital about 8 miles from us.  When we go to the doctor or the lab, etc., we go to the Kaiser hospital as everything is located in one building.

That said.......In the case of respiratory difficulty such as the one I was experiencing the protocol for the fire/rescue people is to take you to the nearest hospital no matter what insurance you have.  So when the paramedics came I was taken to the local hospital ER.  There they do all the tests, blood, X-Rays, etc.,, and give me a breathing treatment.  They put in an IV and begin the antibiotics.  I get the needed relief.  Now it is just wait for the antibiotics to finish and then have Kaiser transport me to their ER.  I had arrived at 5 AM and it took until 10 AM for the transportation to arrive.

To digress....I have also mentioned that you see all kinds of things in such a large area.  As I am laying in my cubicle I have a wonderful view of the nurses stations and other desks.  In the first fifteen minutes a lot of yelling was taking place and a man strapped in a wheelchair was pushed through by a police officer.  He was flailing as much as he could and screaming gibberish.  I don't know where he went as I never heard him anymore.  The Doctor who took care of me had a computer desk just to my left.  After a while I noticed that there was a young lady who had a computer on a wheeled tray and when the Doctor moved she moved.  I couldn't decide if she was recording everything he said and did or if he was writing a book and she was taking the notes for it.  Then the police were back with a woman.  I couldn't tell how or if she was injured but they spent a lot of time talking to her in a cubicle across the hall.  I couldn't hear what they were saying.  Then there was a young lady dressed in scrubs maybe 18 years old that constantly walked around the interior of the room.  I decided she was assigned to make the rounds and look at each patient to see that they were okay. 

Anyway, transportation arrived.  This week the temps have been in the high nineties here and by 10 AM it was already warm.  The EMTS loaded me into the ambulance and took me to Kaiser.  Once in Kaisers ER it started all over again with the blood work and X-Rays, etc.  I did have paperwork detailing what had been done at the local hospital, but they just want to do their own thing I guess.  Of course, they can bill the insurance and Medicare for all that.  Once they are done with all that and another antibiotic hooked up I am left in peace in a tiny room with no view and no TV.  Now the Doctor has decided that I need to spend the night for observation.  Now it is a matter of waiting for a room in this seemingly five star hotel hospital.  Sometimes there are long waits.  Believe it or not it took 8 hours for them to find a room.  I wanted to go home but they wouldn't let me.  I stayed the night and up until 6 PM yesterday before being released. 

I don't care much for spending the night there.  There is no cable on the TV, the food sucks and I am tethered to the bed with an IV (more antibiotics) and a oxygen tube and calf muscle squeezers to came the blood flowing in my legs. 

That has been my week so far.  I am glad to be back home to my TV and my computer. 

Life goes on, gratefully.

Larryj

[W. Gray]

I have had Kaiser for about 35 years and I really like it.

Here in Colorado, Kaiser has a number of clinics scattered around the area for primary and specialty care. Kaiser tried to build a hospital near us, but they were voted down by the area hospitals association that controls the number of beds in the area. As a consequence, Kaiser has a contract with a Denver hospital for those members needing hospital care.

A few years ago, I took my wife to this contract hospital emergency room on a Saturday night, which was filled with all kinds of people waiting to be seen and things were going slow. She had a serious but not life-threatening condition. So, we were triaged and began to wait our turn.

As we were waiting, in walks a Denver policeman escorting a perpetrator in handcuffs. They both walk to the attending nursing station and are immediately taken in for a doctor to look at whatever was ailing the outlaw.

This caused quite a commotion from those who had been waiting for a while.

When our turn came, I asked one of the doctors about it and he said they have a contract with the city of Denver that requires immediate attention to police escorted criminals. This allows the policeman to get back to his job as soon as possible.

Kaiser now has a number of contract emergency rooms in the area.

The formal name of Kaiser is Kaiser Permanente. The Permanente stands for a creek in California where Henry J. Kaiser and his wife kept a retreat and named their medical organization after

[larryJ]

Here is an interesting one for you.

I moved here in 1965 from Colorado.  I got a job working at what was billed the world's largest music store.  There were five stores in the SoCal area.  I worked in all of them over a period of time before becoming the manager of the one in West Covina at the Eastland Shopping Center.  This is about 4 miles from my house.  The company and I had our ups and downs over the six years (minus two for the Army) and I was eventually fired for the last time in 1971.  That same year I went on to work for the Los Angeles Times for the next 34 years.  The music company went bankrupt around 1975 or so because of discount stores like Wherehouse and Tower Records.  I always told the boss he should discount the records but he insisted on selling full price and so he went bankrupt.

That said......After a few years BJ's Brewhouse and Pizza Restaurant moved into the Eastland location.  We have eaten there a few times and the food is good.  I had met my wife there when it was a music store and so we go and look around and try to remember where everything was then.  They had converted the space where my office was into a men's bathroom.........fitting I suppose.  The store sold anything and everything that had to do with music and entertainment.  There was a piano/organ showroom, a television/stereo area, a sheet music department, a musical instrument department, a ticket agency selling tickets to upcoming concerts and such and of course the record/tape department.  All the stores featured listening booths where you could take a demonstration record in and listen to it before buying one. 

What brings this up is a news story that came out this last week.  A woman was eating a dinner salad at BJ's the other night and discovered some "protein" in her salad............a frog, a small frog, but a frog.  It was kinda funny looking at the footage of the building on the news.  A lot of memories there.  I don't know that we will be going back there anytime soon.  We didn't go that often anyway.

I will miss the giant gluten-free chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich though.

Larryj

[larryJ]

In my family there were 25 children who were first cousins.  I should say in my generation.  Over the years some have passed, a few before they should have.  I don't keep in touch with all of them as they are spread all over the country and we never had a close relationship anyhow.  One who is three months older than I exchange e-mails once a week.  One is a friend on Facebook and I see his occasional posts. There used to be the Lynam family reunion every year in Howard but since all of my Aunts and Uncles are now gone there are no more of that.  So I did see some of my cousins at those reunions.  We didn't go every year but we went to as many as we could.  Around 1990 one cousin and my brother put together a cousins reunion which was held in San Luis Obispo.  Most of the West Coast cousins attended and a few from other parts of the country.  A second one was held in Las Vegas in 1995 again drawing mostly West Coast cousins and one or two others.  A third one was organized by me to be held in Colorado Springs which brought in different ones that I had not seen in some time.  One in particular was a cousin that I had not seen since she was a baby some 40 years earlier.  There have been others over the years.

I bring all of this up because there is a cousin who lives in Florida.  He held a cousins reunion there that I attended some years ago and his sister held one in Santa Rosa CA about six years ago and I think that was the last one.  It is not unusual to hear from him but not often.  Last Sunday he called and said that he was visiting his sister in Santa Rosa and he would like to stop by to see me on his way home to Florida. 

Why do I bring this up you ask and you should if you have nothing better to read.  This man is now 83 years old.  He is best known for reciting limericks and poems some quite lengthy.  They can be really funny some times and everyone loves to hear them.  He came by yesterday and we all sat around listening to him reciting poems.  Both of my children came over after work to see him.  What is amazing about this is he IS DRIVING THE WHOLE TRIP ACROSS COUNTRY BY HIMSELF!!!!!!!!!!  He stopped in Kansas to see some relatives and made it to Santa Rosa to see his sister and then here to see me.  He left this morning to go to Phoenix to see more relatives and plans to stop in Texas to see another cousin before returning home to Florida.  The man is amazing although I noticed he is slowing down a bit when he recites the poems but he still can do it from memory.  He was going to leave yesterday but it is a long drive to Phoenix and we convinced him to stay for dinner and spend the night here.  He and I both got up around 5 this morning and we had a chat and a coffee and then WHAM he was out the door on his way to Arizona.  There is no way that I could get in my car and drive 3000 miles across country by myself.  Although the thought of such a trip sounds enticing to me.

Larryj

[larryJ]

Today, July 7, is a special day for our family.  Ten years ago our son married his wife in a spectacular wedding held in a plaza in downtown Los Angeles.  All of us stayed at the Bonaventure Hotel the night before and enjoyed a dinner which cost me dearly.  My son who is a big baseball fan walked down the aisle throwing bags of peanuts to the crowd much like the vendors at a baseball stadium.  They were married by my brother-in-law who got an Internet license to marry people.  Of course, they had secretly married a few days before in a civil court by a judge.  There was a DJ and food and a photo booth.  It was just great.  The weather was perfect.  There was the red envelope gifting, a Chinese tradition, where the bride and groom kneel before the parents and other relatives and receive red envelopes containing money or other such things like gift cards and such.  What a day!

So how do we celebrate this day?  My son and daughter-in-law came by last night and dropped their children off to spend the night and today.  They are off to Cabo San Lucas to spend the weekend there.  My daughter will take them tonight and they will go to their other grandmothers tomorrow.  I didn't know she was in town.  She spends a lot of time in China.  My son will return on Monday.

Oh yeah it also is my sister-in-law's birthday.  She turning 60.  But she is in Idaho visiting her sons so I don't have to deal with her. 

Next up will be my own anniversary on the 29th.  I am not going to Cabo or anywhere else for that matter. 

Larryj

[larryJ]

It had become time for Sir Charles dog license renewal.  The cost is a mere $7.50.  However, it was time for him to have his rabies shot.  This can be done cheaply by going to the local county animal shelter or if you feel the need to spend more money you can go to your Vet. 

Lately Charlie's ears have been bothering him.  He has been shaking his head a lot.  We try to keep them clean and puts drops in them to loosen up any stuff we can't reach but that doesn't seem to be enough.  Yesterday, my wife's cousin and our oldest granddaughter took him to the vet.  He was sedated and the Vet was able to really get to the stuff that was next to the eardrum.  And he got his rabies shot.

All of this for a mere $410.00. 

Ouch.

On top of all this......my wife's cousin was concerned that he might not be able to find his way to the doggy door to go outside so she left a lamp on in the living room, a light on in the family room where the doggy door is located and the patio lights which light up the back yard enough for him to see where he is going.  There goes my electric bill.

On a brighter note.......some months ago I had been having a few dizzy spells which became a concern enough to go to the ER.  Once there they determined that a medication I take for seizures was causing the problem.  I needed to lower the dose.  A later visit to the Neurologist confirmed that and she lowered the dose and scheduled a follow up visit which was yesterday.  I had not had any more dizzy spells and she was happy with everything and told me to come back in a year. 

Another event.......I haven't been driving for a while.  This is not a concern because my wife used to insist on driving when we went anywhere.  When I have to go for appointments someone always takes me.  I don't do the grocery shopping anymore.  So there is no reason for me to drive.  That said.....I had a van which was just sitting in the driveway.  Recently my handyman asked if I wanted to sell it to him.  I did just that.  Why do I bring this up?  In 43 plus years of marriage we have always had two vehicles.  It seems so strange to only have one.  Of course, the cousin has her car also.  On top of all this my driver's license is up for renewal next month.  In the past the DMV just mailed out a license when it was time.  Now they have decided that maybe I should come see them for the renewal.  Maybe it is an age thing.  Or they want to see if I am still around.  The dilemma here..........Since I don't drive should I renew the license or just get a state issued ID which looks like a driver's license.

All this running through my mind before my second cup of coffee...............!

Larryj

[larryJ]

I am working through my second cup of coffee and waking up........enough to realize that today is my wedding anniversary.  In an earlier post I mentioned "43 plus" where I should had said 42.  Today is 43.

It is not like I didn't know it was coming.  My wife asked yesterday if I wanted to do anything for our anniversary.  I said I couldn't think of anything to do.  I asked her what she wanted to do and she didn't answer and left the room.  So it will just be another day.

I well remember that day 43 years ago.  We had driven to Barstow the day before where my brother was living and spent the night.  The next morning my brother and his wife went with us to Las Vegas to get married in a civil ceremony at the courthouse.  We had a buffet lunch at the Frontier Casino and went home.  It was just another day.

I imagine our children will call or text good wishes for our anniversary.  They always do.  To them it is just another day.

Larryj