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crazy, but happy :-)

Monday, October 12, 2009

Newsflash: Midwives are a smart, safe choice

From a press release from The Big Push for Midwives (a grassroots lobbying group for the legalization of midwives):

In the second segment of PBS’ The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer series on health care reform that aired on Wednesday, senior correspondent Ray Suarez reports that “for the Dutch, a huge cost saver starts the day you’re born.” He goes on to note that the majority of Dutch babies are born at home in a nation where the infant mortality rate is 25% lower than in the United States. Suarez’s report is consistent with a recent study of more than 500,000 births in the Netherlands, which found that planned home birth with trained midwives is as safe as hospital birth.

Read the whole press release here:
http://tiny.cc/cdQu2

Friday, October 9, 2009

Sometimes you've just gotta laugh

I frequently feel as if my life has more small tribulations than most others.  Today was a doozie.

I'm refinancing my house.  Should be a simple process, right?  I'm buying a house I already own, for heaven's sake!  So, about two months ago I filled out all the paperwork, got a preliminary approval pending the supporting documents actually supporting the application.  No problem.  I got the house appraised and it appraised for $3000 more than I expected, so no problem there.  All we need now is copies of my last two year's W-2's because apparently servers are considered "self-employed" and so require more proof of income than the two months of paystubs (because it took so long, I actually ended up giving them July, August, and part of September) and last two year's tax returns I already gave the bank.  Makes no sense, true self-employed people wouldn't even have paystubs, but whatever.  So, the bank orders the W-2's from the IRS electronically which should take a day or two.  This was two months ago and they just got them yesterday.  Fine, the banker looks everything over and says that now they will just need thirty days worth of paystubs from my new employer (the one they have is from my summer job which just ended this week).  Well, I don't have that, I haven't worked for them for thirty days and if the loan had gone through when it was supposed to then the paystubs they have would have been my current employer!  Argh!  I think it will be worked out, but it is so frustrating! 

Well, while I'm on the phone with the the banker, the kids are doing dishes and Paige points to a growing puddle on the kitchen floor.  There is water running out from under the kitchen sink onto the floor.  Doug is here and gets to work diagnosing the problem, which thankfully is just a loose connection on the faucet handle.  Crisis averted.

As he's doing that he asks if I happen to have spare washers to replace the one he's tightening.  I do somewhere, I think on the shelves in the basement.  Down the stairs I go, to the basement, where I have to traverse small rivers of water crisscrossing the floor.  It's been storming for a couple of days and the dehumidifier would need to be related to the shop-vac to keep up with this.  It's not a real problem because I know the basement leaks sometimes so I have everything on shelves just off the floor - except for the two suitcases of papers and other miscellaneous items that I was looking through the other day to try to find my old W-2's and left laying on the floor.  Everything *should* dry out soon.

On a non-house related note, I order my maintenance medication (for the bipolar) from a mail order pharmacy.  I didn't realize until too late that I was out of refills, so I stopped by the doctor's office and they mailed the prescription and other paperwork to the pharmacy which has a two day maximum turn around time and gave me a prescription for seven days to pick up at the local pharmacy.  No problem.  Except that they mailed it on September 28 and today was the last day of pills I have and I still haven't gotten the mail-order prescription.  I called and they say they haven't received it from the doctor.  So, the doctor called in another seven days.  I didn't know this until I started on this medication, but it is waaay more expensive to get just a few pills at a time than to get a whole month's worth.  But, surely the mail from Missouri to Arizona can't take much longer.  Right?

Everyone knows how much I love working at the Pirate and I am so sad that this is my last weekend there for the season.  This weekend is the Harbor Hop which is a big tourist, end of the year, party thing.  I've been expecting it to make up for some of the crappy money nights at Chili's and perhaps have done some premature chicken counting with my spending the last few days because I knew I would make enough to cover it!  Anyone remember why the basement is flooded?  Ah, yes, it's been storming. And cold.  The Pirate is an outdoor, lake-front restaurant.  Joe (head Pirate) always calls if the weather is bad and asks if I want to work or not.  He didn't call and no matter what, I need to work.  I was hoping that I would get there tonight and the girls scheduled doubles would like to go home and maybe some of the night people would choose not to come in so I could handle a larger portion of the guests (even if there were fewer of them due to the weather).  So, I leave my house at 2:45 to get the kids to their dad's and get gas and to work by 4:00.  At 3:57 I pull in and notice that I am the only one parked in the employee lot, but thought that maybe everyone else parked down in the customer lot.  I walk down the stairs to the restaurant and notice there are no cars there, either.  As I'm piecing together this information I hear Joe yell from his porch above the restaurant, "you're going to kill me, Kolbi."  Yup, that's right, they didn't open the restaurant today because of the weather and he called all the day people but didn't think to call me and one other girl who was also scheduled night shift.  She was smart enough to call and ask before she drove in, but that was moments before I walked down the stairs (she was scheduled at 5:00).  I'll try again tomorrow.

I called Chili's on my way home to see if maybe they needed a shift covered or if anyone wanted to go home, but that was a no-go, too.  So, here I sit.

Oh, and for some reason, everytime I turn on my left blinker, my cruise control shuts off.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Jon, my love

I am in love with Jon Stewart.  It's a fact.  I would leave Doug in a heartbeat (don't worry, he knows this and accepts it).  So, imagine how mad I am at Gina Loudon!  (Not following? check this out: The Daily Show zeroes in on 'buycotts' and Gina Loudon)