2016 in review

So it's December 31, 2016, and this year is ending. As years go, it hasn't been the best.

The list of deaths of influential people compiled by Wikipedia is overwhelming, especially when you realize that it is only to December there. We mourn celebrity deaths because these people touch our lives, but the grief of their families is no different than the grief of the families of the non-famous. The list on Wikipedia is small compared to the number of people whose deaths only affect their families and friends, but no less meaningful. My friends who have lost loved ones, I continue to send my love and support to you.

Politically, we have learned many things. One, we are a very fractured country; two, we have shapeless fears; and three, we value ignorance and our own views much more than we should. Our fault lines are multiple: we break on race, gender, education, location, and economic class. These breaks play into our fears; fearful people are easily manipulated, and our ignorance only makes us more fearful. Whether through school or not, we must educate ourselves back into a people who look at things objectively and then make decisions--we cannot let the Internet choose our news and our views. We must use it as the tool it is, and not allow our fractures to control our access to the world.

On a personal level, my mom now lives here and her dementia progresses as such things will. Hopefully, her medicines help slow things a bit; we also hope that our company and the company of others help slow things down as well. She lives in the here and now, and the very far past. It is very much a one day at a time thing.

I will admit my mother's dementia terrifies me. I fear for myself. My world revolves around words and memories and peoples. It terrifies me that this could happen to me. Not existing terrifies me, but existing but having those things that are vital to me missing scares me. I can only try to prevent this from happening and hope for something better.

Hoping for something better is one thing we can do, but we (or at least I) must also work to make things better. I will not lie and say I see a bright future politically, but I will do my best to work to keep things moving forward.

So its forward we must go and stay focused on going. Regression is not acceptable.

So here's to a better 2017 and a happy new year, and keep up the good fight!

The Insulin Saga, a continuing drama

I am diabetic and apparently, a seriously insulin resistant diabetic. I take Toujeo, a fairly new concentrated insulin, and I take a lot, but it has been working. It's horribly expensive--about $325 for a box of 3 pens. I go through 4 boxes a month. I'll let you do the math. Oh yes, my insurance doesn't cover it.

Fortunately, the company has a savings plan that has been a lifesaver until this week. On Monday, I called in a prescription, and my pharmacist messaged  me back to tell me my card had expired. I thought this was odd, so I called the customer service line and was told I had maxed out my savings. I was befuddled and asked the person on the other end what I was to do. Her option (told to me in what I think of as an accusatory tone) was to find a new savings plan. Well, while there may be coupons online none of them were going to make this affordable.

We contacted my doctor's office who gave me  the numbers for a new savings card, but that doesn't work because the savings are tied to the person not the card. This leads me to different (two) customer service folk who are as confused as I am. My doctor's office is confused too.

My pharmacist finally is able to talk to someone, and we find out what is going on. The company's representative explains that they have changed their policy (on October 1) and they now have a cap on the savings plan, and I have reached that cap. I will not qualify for any help until next April. So October through April so seven months, no savings.  It would have been nice to know this in advance, but nope, no warning had come from the company. Uh, I can't do that.

My doctor's office has come through with some samples until we figure out what to do. My appointment is in November.

My husband in the meantime is making comments on Twitter than the company noticed, so they called me yesterday. They will research to see what they can find to help me.

The upshot is limbo, and a story to be continued.

Update

I notice I seem to blog once a month. Since my online class has ended, I am going to try to find some time on Saturdays to write.

I don't have anything special going on, but life continues as it should. Work rolls along, Mom's ok, the critters are ok, husband's back is doing better.

I've grown very sick of the election process. I've lost respect for many people because of their views. People I genuinely like do not seem to understand several things. One that a government is not a company, so a businessman is not a good choice. Two, having been born rich does not make for a self made man. Three, six bankruptcies and stiffing people who have done work for you are not honorable values. I won't go on, but I just can't with some people.

My ethics class ended, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I was not always thrilled with my classmates; many of them are weak critical readers. However, I did enjoy the exchanges. I wrote a research paper about women and libertarianism. Overall, I liked the class a great deal.

The weather has finally changed for the cooler, and today is a beautiful day. Hopefully, I'll get out some and enjoy it.

Have a good week.

The Document Saga

So ok, since I last wrote much has happened. School has gone back into session, but I'll post later there. I also started making attempts to get Mom some services.

Mom's Medicare was easy to change, The Medicare and the United Health people were great to work with, but then we tried to change Mom's address with Social Security to apply for Medicaid. That was when it got fun.

First we called the local office, who told me they couldn't do it, and they didn't "take" Power of Attorney (POA). They said we needed to come to the office or set it up online. I opted for going to the office. We went to on a Wednesday, which happens to be the day they close early at noon. Well, they see us, and they tell us sure, until we give them Mom's Louisiana driver's license. It turns out to have been expired, and un acceptable. Mom's Medicare card is not allowable because SSA issued so it doesn't count. Off we go to see about getting an Arkansas ID.

We go to the Tax office and wait a few minutes. It turns out that the expired ID means no Arkansas ID for now. We will need a birth certificate.

So we go home, and I look up how to obtain a birth certificate and a marriage certificate. This should be easy. I also decide to set up an online Social Security account for Mom. Well, that doesn't work because the identification questions are odd, and they indicate stuff on her credit history which should not be there. I check out Mom's credit reports, and the questions make no sense. So no online SSA. I try phoning them, but I can't wait the hour on hold so that was a no go. I am stuck waiting for the certificates, so I order them.

Jeff Parish gets me a marriage certificate right off the bat. We learn, however, that they gave my dad the wrong birth date and made him TWENTY years younger than he was. Oh dear. I also realize I have screwed up the birth certificate request, So I Priority Mail a new request.

Three weeks later I get mail from the Office of Vital Records. Two letters one a return on the screwed up request, and the other the birth certificate. However, the birth certificate is for some guy born in 1973. AT this point, I'm like, of course. It's worse I have Mom's Medicaid phone interview the next day.

I start fixing the birth certificate issues, but there won't be any Medicaid right now because I need family to live in the house or to sell it. Siiiiiiigh.

Good news, we received the corrected birth certificate, so at least, we can get the ID to get the address changed. Everything else, we continue to work on.

I have a new respect for Kafka now having walked through bureaucracy hell. At least I can laugh.

Summering with Mom

At the beginning of June, a storm did some damage to my mom's house knocking her out for about a week. My family let us know this happened and wrung their hands while we traveled down to the New Orleans area and got the roof and electricity fixed. However, we also realized mom was not up to living by herself anymore. 

My mom is 87, fiercely independent, and was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2015 (though it may have been coming on for longer than that). She was rather adamant about not moving and not needing help, though it was obvious to everyone but her that she did. 

So once her house was fixed, we brought her up her. Now we had discussed before leaving her home that this was a permanent thing. She agree to think about it, but I don't think it sunk it. Nope, I know it didn't sink in until recently because, she has fussed and argued about it several times. Lately, it's sinking in because now she talks about going back getting some of her things. 

Another reason it is sinking in has to do with moving her Medicare and Medicaid around. Good lord, if ever you need to realize that a one payer, centrally run, health care system is a necessity try to figure out how two different states do services! Heck, even the companies that provide services through something like Medicare don't offer the same plans in different states. It's utterly stupid. 

Listening to me try to figure out these silly things and fill out applications (which always makes me grumble) has convinced my mom that this move thing is happening. Though she might not remember that tomorrow. 

We also moved her elderly dogs up with us. She dotes on them, but we could also see that they were not doing well either. I can say they have improved up here. They may not like being stuck in the more limited space (5 cats live here and they don't like cats), but they love the yard. 

So while we are still figuring things out, what we'll do with my mom once I go back to work, it looks like things are working. That is a big plus, though I think the jigsaw puzzle and puzzle book industries may realize much higher profits considering the way we're going through those things!

Sorry for being absent

I'm sorry for being absent, but dealing with my mom and her dementia is time consuming. It's depressing actually on some days and funny others. It's always something.

I'm also trying to put stuff together for her Medicaid/Medicare and my work and the classes I take. Oy.

So while I work, here's a post I had to write for one of my grad classes dealing with questionsof inequality.

Rosary

               The problems of inequality and justice are too broad, too vast, and too complicated for a mere three hundred words, but the readings and media we were assigned this week make me feel angry, frustrated, depressed, and often impotent. Then again I also identify as a proud feminist with Marxist leanings.

               The media referenced this week makes me angry because these have been the arguments of my entire lifetime. I was born in 1965 a time of turbulence and optimism. What angers me is that now in 2015 when I will be fifty years old, we seem not to have moved forwards, but to in fact have regressed. Income disparity is at level not seen for a hundred years or so; racism still permeates our culture and discourse as does the violence it calls up; and women’s bodies are still a battleground.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 designed to promote and safeguard the civil rights of all was basically gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013 when they ruled states no longer needed federal approval before changing state laws that affected voting. Yet, we constantly hear of voter fraud and polling place bullying, but the law is now fairly unenforceable. We also have now so many Voter ID rules that we have basically reinstituted a poll tax. This makes me angry.

In 1973, Roe vs. Wade was decided, I was eight. The majority of my lifetime has seen the abortion issue debated and thrown around. This, too, makes me angry. What makes me even angrier are all of the recent attempts by legislators to limit, to repeal, and to control women’s reproductive rights. This makes me angry.

When my father died before my third birthday, my newly single mother raised me, and we lived on Social Security survivor’s benefits. I know what it is like to be part of the “welfare state.” When I hear people say things about how the poor don’t work hard enough, how they have opportunities if they only took them, I become angry. When I hear people condemn fast food workers for striking to have a livable wage, or when I hear the trickle-down economics blather, I become angry. I become angry because I watch my students who try to raise their children on these minimum wage jobs struggle to have an education which might lead them to opportunities that they can barely imagine because our nation, if not our world, has limited their dreams to what is appropriate to their income, their race, or their gender. I grow angry.

Unlike the Incredible Hulk, however, I cannot let people not like me when I am angry. Anger motivates but it does not solve. What does solve? Well, Emma Watson’s speech before the UN shows us one way—to talk to each other, to discuss these issues. Openly discussing these issues is uncomfortable; these discussions make people wiggle and avoid committing, but we must have them. When we see each other as people first and not as income, race, or gender, we can then begin to find the answers the solutions.

Obviously as an educator, I believe educating people on these issues is important. As we learn from our past how we have treated each other, how people have felt about that treatment, we can learn then to respect each other. In respecting each other no matter income, gender, or race, we can begin to see the solution.

I do not have a solution. This is a problem bigger than me, but I am at heart a Utilitarian: That which is good is that which does the most good for the greatest amount of people. All people, not just one or two groups, all. Until we can see, accept, respect, and talk with one another equally, I will remain angry—an angry liberal feminist with Marxist leanings, who wants to see and to work for a forward movement on these issues in the next fifty years of life.

 

Life Events

Sunday, two weeks ago, we received a somewhat frantic phone call from my uncle telling us that my mom (she's 87) has roof damage causing her electrical power to go out. The damage was so bad the company would have to shut off her power until it was repaired. Picturing the worst--huge gaping holes in the roof--my husband and I pushed our visit to her up a week, and arrived at  her home on that Tuesday (a six hour drive away).

We found my mom working outside of her powerless house. She kept wondering why she didn't have power. My mom has dementia; she was diagnosed about 7 months ago. This was going to be an interesting adventure.

The first thing we realized was that we were lucky. Yes the house had damage, but it was not nearly as bad as my uncle had made it out to be. Thanks to facebook, old friends, and the internet, we were able to find a contractor to be at the house on Wednesday, and he got us an electrician. They both worked tremendously hard to get everything fixed by Friday. They were a blessing. In the meantime, we stayed at a hotel because it was 95 during the day with a heat index of 102 or so.

During this time, we realized that while we need to get the house fixed up and made safe. We can't let mom live there anymore. We actually knew it, but having to see it and face it was different. So my mom is up "visiting." She's been here a week, and she may have very little memory, but lord, physically, she's is fairly decent shape for an 87 year old. She's had a cleaning like mad. Our poor garbagemen may have heat stroke when they see the amount of trash bags we have out.

We've told her we want her to stay permanently, but she still asks about going home. Sigh. She can't, and no matter how often, we mention it, it doesn't stick.

In the meantime, life goes on. I need to transfer insurance between states. We now have to take care of two houses (one out of state). We have to take care of ourselves. It's definitely a day by day situation. Errands must be run, bills paid, classes planned, and all the stuff we do.

I find myself looking for patience more than ever. It will all work work out has become my mantra because I have no choice but for it to work out.

On the title

One of my favorite quotes from literature comes from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." A large rambling anthe of a poem, "Song of Myself" covers a wide span of ideas and concepts, but my favorite line (and there are a large number of them) is, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes.” I love this line because it speaks to human potential. 

I chose it for the title of this blog because we all contain multitudes. We contain a multitude of selves, ideas, concerns, loves, and so forth. I know I certainly contain multitudes, and often contradictory ones. For instance, I am both a teacher and a student. I am a wife and staunch feminist, and so forth. I think this is the human condition to contain multitudes. 

In this blog I hope to share some of the multitudes that make up this one human. Your multitudes may vary. I may post essays. I may post snippets. I may post photos. I may post papers I write for class. I may store ideas for teaching. I may ruminate on many things. My ideas and my thoughts may be contradictory, so what? HUman do hold contradictory ideas because as Whitman posits we contain multitudes. 

Test post

This is a test post so I can see what I am getting into.