Last week started with two food share sessions. That is always gratifying. Only bump in the road was my compulsion to take over when things go wrong. At the second event a woman (who had never before been at a food event where I was working) showed up wanting to put fliers in the food bags . The fliers were recruiting for census workers (I’ve already filed an application) so there was no problem with that. We always start by opening paper bags so the food stuffs can be put in easily. No problem with that. Then the flyer lady decided to open bags. I don’t know where she got the information, but she decided we needed over a hundred open bags.
That was a problem.
We usually see between 55 and 70 folks. Yesterday, probably because of weather, we saw only 56. When I asked her to stop opening bags and just put her fliers in, she was offended.
We ended up having to refold bags.
Oh well …
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Weather is still doing its routine of warm up slightly, just enough to drop the icicles off the eaves and soften the snow, then freeze. Days are overcast, but interestingly enough, the solar panels generate as much power under overcast skies (and sometimes more since they produce better when they are cool) than they do in full sun.
And by sunday most of the snow was gone. I had gotten so used to switching from my Berks to boots when going out that it took two trips out before I “accepted” the information that I no longer (at least for now) need boots.
We are nearly done with January and February had been the real winter month in the past. I keep forgetting to get the cleat snap-ons for my boots, so I’ve added them to the food shopping list. That way I hope to remember. Then maybe I’ll be able to navigate without a ski pole when the next snow/ice hits.
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I have undertaken a seven and a half year project, and I’m already half a month behind. It is a task to read a full page from a particular lesson book every day … 2737.5 days. The challenge began earlier this month, and I am dropping further behind. Maybe I’ll catch up if we get snowed in.
I had anticipated dry, maybe boring, learning and decided that even so it would most likely be worth the effort. Then one day the lessons revolved around peeing, pooping, and farting. Go figure.
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Now I have a question … and a rant.
As most of you know, I was a registered nurse and worked for over twenty years, now retired for twenty-five or so. I am very aware that medical care has changed dramatically. I am now surprised, and not always pleasantly, by some of those changes.
A few weeks ago I had a red spot appear on my right middle finger over a joint. Have I already told you this? Oh well …
Anyhow … I now have four others all on my right hand and all in the vicinity of joints. I tried surface antibiotics to no avail and finally decided to go see my primary care provider (a Family Nurse Practitioner). I don’t need to see him often and so am not a cry-wolf patient. However, the first appointment I could obtain was two and half weeks away. The desk person told me I could go the Emergency Department at the hospital if I wanted.
My option was to wait for an appointment (which will take about fifteen minutes and cost less than a hundred dollars which my insurance will cover) or go to the hospital (which costs close to four hundred as soon as you walk in the door and which has recently stated it will no longer honor insurance coverage by several providers, mine among them). When I called for the FNP appointment, I had two eruptions. I now have five, the first of which has grown in size and gotten white in the center.
I don’t blame the FNP. I blame the for-profit corporation for which he works.
My appointment is this morning.
Is this the way primary medical care should work?
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Through natural farmyard attrition, we’re down to twenty hens …. but we’re getting between twelve and sixteen eggs a day.
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There’s a post on Facebook this morning about the “Code Girls”. I read the book about them recently and find myself wondering how mucg more of WW II’s history we have yet to learn. Code talkers, code girls, Bletchly girls, ???
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Today is Paul’s eighth birthday. He is collecting “Pennies for Paws”. I started the jar with eight pennies.
Now I’m off to the medical clinic.
It’s easy to forget how miraculous this world of ours is, and how important it is to be grateful … to see the world in all its splendour. If we’re not careful, we get so engrossed in our lives, that beauty passes us by.
So