My day and the naked ladies statues on a building.

My son is taking jiu-jitsu classes.  He is a white belt.  That is the beginning belt.  They had testing today.  He had to test to become a yellow belt.  I look at the web page and it said his testing was at 11:45.  He told me it was at 1:oo pm, but the web page said 11:45 and since I had to pay $65 for him to take this test, I didn’t want to miss it, so we arrived about 11:30.  We sit there and watch other color belts students doing their test.  They  finished about 12:20.  Then the instructors broke for lunch.  My son’s test was at 1:oo.   

This was kind of cool, how the picture came out an action shot.  The little yellow belt girl had to sling down the instructor.  The instructor girl helped.  I blurred out the faces of the other children.  I didn’t want the world to see their faces.   We get to find out Friday if he passed to get his yellow belt. 

After the class we drove downtown.  It was cold out, 35F degrees.  My husband was told there was a really good pizza place downtown, so we drove around on Gay street.  Yes, it is called Gay street, don’t ask me why.  There are a lot of really old buildings.  I was looking up at one and it had these ornate markings on them.  They had statues, of women, naked from the waist up.  With her arms up in the air, like she was holding up the top of the building.

There wasn’t just one, there were several of them.   I wonder how they got that approved for family, friendly downtown.  We walked around several streets, until we found this old building that was a restaurant that sold pizza.  The pizza was OK, but it is a pain to find parking to go to anyplace downtown.  But hey, I got to see the naked ladies at the top of a building.

These poor doggies were sitting, patiently waiting outside, for their owner, in the cold.  They were still there, after we were done eating.  They didn’t bark, they just sat there………..waiting.

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Update on Jon

This is an update on Jon.   You can read about the accident on the highlighted word. 

 (I painted this picture a few years ago.)

It has been 10 days since Jon got hurt.  He is off his sedatives.  After a couple of days, his brain started to swell.  They had to do emergency surgery in the middle of the night.  The surgery is where they cut out a piece of the skull to give your brain room.  I am told they removed a big piece of bone.  His brain swelling went down after that.  He is still in a coma.  They took him off all meds yesterday and he did not wake up.  He does not respond to anything, like moving his legs or arms.  Today they said he is getting blood clots in his legs.  He has a bed sore.  I read up on those.  They are horrible.  It says you can even die from bed sores.  I think they are treating that.  He is still on a breathing machine.  One brother told us the doctor said he only has a 1 percent chance of living.  That is 99 percent chance that he is going to die.  It does not look good…………….at all.   Poor Jon.    Makes me very sad.    

So hug your parents and loved ones.  Life is precious and you never know when your last day will be.

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Cold sore meds that cost $400

It seems like yesterday, but it was weeks ago.  I noticed a tiny blister on my upper lip, in the corner of my lip.  I knew it was a cold sore forming.  When I get them, they get bad.  They grow, like instantly.  I ran to the bathroom to find some cream to put on it.  By the next morning, I got a big lip.  It was hurting so bad.  I went to the store and bought some Abreva.  That stuff did nothing.  My lip got more swolen and hurt so bad.  I went to the Kroger Little Clinic.  It is not a doctor, some type of nurse looks at you.  It cost $69.  This lady sat at her computer for about an hour.  I have had these cold sores all my life.  I told her, it was infected, I needed an antibiotic and something for the sore like a Zorvax.  She said she would give me a prescription for Valtrex.  She would not give me an antibiotic.  I told her that I needed it or my lip would just keep swelling and get worse.  “Well, I just can’t justify it.”she said.   Stupid bitch, that is what I thought.  I took the prescription and went to the pharmacy.  I don’t have insurance to pay for medicine.  “How much is this going to cost me”, I asked.  She looked it up and said it would cost $390.  That was for 20 pills.  HOLY COW.  I said “You have got to be kidding.”  She was not.  I went back over to the Little Clinic and told the nurse lady, ok, she is a Registered Nurse Practitioner, but basically she was an idiot with a title.  She sat at her little computer looking up different types of medicine.  I told her to just write me a prescription for something else, one that was on the $4 prescription plan. 

She finally wrote me another prescription, but would not still give me the antibiotic.  I got the prescription filled, which took me an hour.  When I walked up and gave it to the pharmacy, they said it would be 20 minutes.  They only had to measure out 28 pills.  I waited and waited, after 30 minutes, I asked them if it was ready yet, because they didn’t call my name.  No, it was not ready, so I waited another 30 minutes.  They finally called my name.  I took the pills when I got home, but by the next morning, my lip was worse.  My husband told me to go to another clinic, so I drove across town to this nice clinic.  They told me it would cost $92 dollars for the first visit.  So I waited, and waited, and then they finally called my name.  I went into a little room and waited and waited some more.  Finally a man came into the room.  I told him what was wrong and that the Little Clinic nurse would not give me an antibiotic.  He said I need one, as it looked infected.  So the Little Clinic nurse would not give me it, because she could not justify it, but the other doctor said I needed it.  He wrote me the prescription for the antibiotic.  I went a filled it and started taking it.  Within one day my lip was not as swollen.  It took about 4 days for the swelling to go down and it finally got better.   He also called me in another prescription pill for the cold sore. He said it is a virus and the medicine would kill the virus. 

My advise to everyone is “Do NOT go to a Kroger Little Clinic.”  They will not write you a prescription for what you need.”  It takes the nurse to type into ther computer.  She didn’t really act like she knew what she was doing and it costs $69 and if there is something else wrong with you, they tell you to go see a doctor, and still collect money for the visit from you.  A regular visit with a doctor is $75, that is $6 over the Little Clinic price.  I will never go back to a Little Clinic again.

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Snowman

School was delayed two hours this morning because the roads were icy.  That was wonderful.  I got to sleep an extra 2 hours, well almost 2 extra hours.  I took my son to school and stopped off at Wally World to rent a movie from the Redbox.  I got the movie Surrogates.  It was OK, not the greatest, but OK.  It is about the future, where people sit in chairs and control robots with their mind to live their lives.  A little strange.  If you got to work, why not get up and go to work. 

A ticket came in the mail.  It said we ran a red light.  It had pictures of our car and our license plate.  I went to the web site and saw a video on it.  My husband was driving and remembers it.  We were coming off the freeway.  The light was yellow, so he went, plus it is a turn on a red light intersection.  He went because the light was yellow, but it turned red, right as we were going through the light.  We could go down there and argue our case, but the letter says if the judge finds you guilty, then you have to pay the fine plus $68 court costs.  I doubt that the judge would go “Yeah, I see it yellow, so you are free of the ticket.”  No, he would say, Pay the fine and the extra court costs.  They are doing this to make money, they don’t want to hear your story.  I read that they even shorten the yellow time so the red comes on when you do go through, so you will get the ticket.  So we paid the fine online.  I told my husband, they would probably make him wait all day in court to argue his case anyway.  They throw in the $68 extra fee if you lose, just so you won’t go argue your case.  SUCKS!

My son came home from school and ran outside and made a snowman.  It turned out cute.

Stripper on stage did what?

The other night, I was flipping through the channels, when I came upon this show called Vegas Confessions.

I clicked on it.  The lady was interviewing this crazy looking lady.  The lady, the one with the bright pink eye shadow, was talking.

She was a stripper.  She said she was performing on stage one time and she was really drunk or high.  She was dancing around and she smelled something that smelled like shit.

She said the guy she was in front of, on stage, started moving away, so she thought, “Something smells like shit, I think I just shit myself on stage.”

The lady on the left, asking the questions looks like “Euwwww”  Then the stripper lady is acting out what happened.  She said she stuck her hand down her pants and felt poop, then she pulled out her hand and grabbed the stripper pole and got shit all over the pole. 

The guy on the couch, he said he had just met her, he was all like “Gross, I am out of here.”  The stripper lady said, “Yeah, I can’t believe I shit my pants, it stunk really bad.” 

That is when the show cut to commercial.  When they came back, they started interviewing people coming out of a strip club asking them what they would think if a stripper shit on the stage.  Most said they would leave.  One guy said he would not leave, he thought that would be OK.      Some people are wierd in Vegas.

Donuts

School was cancelled today. It is supposed to snow. It is supposed to be a huge snow, 12 inches, so they cancelled the school because the school busses would have a hard time taking the children home. It is 12:19, the sky is grayish white. It is cold, 34 degrees F. No snow so far. We went to the store to get an extra loaf of bread and a carton of eggs, in case we do have a barage of snow. The grocery store was crowded. There was hardly any bread on the shelf. I would have thought the store would stock the shelves for the barage of people stocking up on food. But they didn’t. I just checked the weather forecast, the radar shows snow should be here right now, so maybe it will start soon. It says 6 inches is forecast. I love watching it snow. Maybe we can go sledding.

I woke up this morning, all wrapped up in the warm covers. I remembered I had clothes in the dryer that had to be folded up. I put them in the dryer last night and didn’t get them out last night to put away. I like putting them away when they are nice and warm and almost wrinkle free. I walked down the hall to the dryer and pulled them out and stuffed them into the clothes basket. There were a lot of them. I really hate folding clothes and putting them away. I dumped them out onto my bed and sorted them out, folding them up. My son always has his shirts inside out, so I have to sit there and turn them back the right way, pulling the sleeve out. I called him up and told him to hang up his shirts. He didn’t, they are still on his bed, waiting for me to go put them on a hanger. We got dressed and went out. We drove over to Krispy Kreme donuts to get a hot and now donut. I hate their coffee, it is too strong, but the girl made me a latte coffee. She got some milk and steamed it up with a machine. It was good but still strong coffee. Then we went to the grocery store to get our loaf of bread, they had one. I wanted to rent a video, but they were all rented, so no video to watch tonight. I think I will go make me a boiled egg, with a cup of my own coffee, my coffee is the best.

Let there be light.

I told my hubby that I was afraid that I would trip on the stairs at night.  See, I don’t turn on the over head light because it would shine under all the doors and wake everybody up.  (See previous post.)

He went to Home Depot and bought some wire and came home and wired under the stairs and cut a hole for the wall socket and put on a cover plate and now we have light right in the middle of the stairs.  It lights it up really well.

I am so pleased.  Now I don’t need my flashlight but I am keeping it, I might need it in the middle of the night for some reason.    I have been reading that more accidents in the home are from falls.  A tremendous amount  are from ladders, which brings me to what I want to talk about.

Yesterday, my husband got a call from his nephew.  The nephew said his dad had been in a bad accident.  His dad is my husband’s younger brother, by about 5 years.  His name is Jon.  Jon does home inspections and he must have been checking out the roof on a house up on his ladder.  He fell 15 feet off the ladder and the neighbor found him unconscious on the ground, well the concrete driveway.  The ladder was on top of him and he cracked his skull.  They called the ambulance and he is in the hospital in critical condition.   They had to move him from the first hospital to another one with a trauma center.   He is a great guy.  He is alway thorough in whatever he does, so he must have gone the extra mile to inspect that house.  It is stange though, we saw him this summer, we went camping with the family in Michigan.  We went for a walk with him and my husband asked him if he got up on ladders to inspect the roof.  He said no, he uses binoculars and looks at it.  I guess maybe he saw something and wanted a better look.  In that split second, he fell and now he might die.  Gosh, I hope not.  I get tears in my eyes just thinking that he is laying there in the hospital bed, with his head broken.  They say the brain hit the front of his skull from the force, so it is bleeding, but they say the pressure is pretty good but they will have to watch him.  All the family, are there at the hospital.  My husband doesn’t want to go right now, because Jon is in a coma.  They said they don’t want him bothered because if he hears a noise, his blood pressure goes up.  My husband is pretty upset.  He quit smoking 5 months ago.  He told me he wanted to smoke so bad.  I don’t think he should.   He didn’t start again, but he really wanted to.  It is hard seeing someone you love, getting hurt.  I told his wife that when Jon opens his eyes, we will travel there and hold his hand and keep him company. 

Dear Jon, you are in our thoughts and hopes that you recover.

Please pray for Jon.  I don’t know if it will help, but it would not hurt.

New Flashlight

    I have a thing about flashlights.  I love them.  I buy them and use them and then they just quit working.  No it is not the batteries, it must be the wiring.  I was walking down the stairs the other night in the dark.   I don’t like going down the stairs in the dark.  Sometimes my foot does not hit the next step and then it hits the 2nd step and I stumble and grab the rails, trying not to tumble down the steps.  I just get scared that I will miss a step and fall.  Last night, I grabbed my little book light.  The kind you fold all up and when you hit the button, it all slowly unfolds and has this little glaring light, that lights up a circle on your book, but is not really bright enough to light up the stairs.  So here I am with this tiny light, trying to shine it on the steps.  I take a step and then the light starts to blink and then just goes off.  I tap it and shake it, and it did come on again, but then it just went off and totally died.  In the middle of the stairway, total darkness.  I slowly made it down the stairs, holding the stupid broken book light, hoping that it will come back on, but it doesn’t.  Crap.  So I check to make sure I turned off the computer and then stumble back up the stairs.  I get to my knees and go up on my hands and knees.  I am just afraid I will miss a step and fall backwards.  

     I went to Home Depot today and while my hubby was at the checkout counter, I saw this bucket of long tube like flashlights.  It even glows orange on the end, or blinks orange, or is just a flashlight.  I bought it and it works great, for now.  It even has a whistle at the end.  I don’t know why, but it has it.  I took a neat picture of it, in the dark, all glowing on my table.  Now I have to turn off the computer, take my flashlight and go upstairs.  It shines bright.  I am happy.

PS:  The light is lifegear.com and it says you get free replacement batteries and it is supposed to work for 200 hours.  Probably on the 201 hour, I will be going down the stairs,  in the dark, when it quits.

Snow

It was predicted to snow on Thursday.  I checked the school website and there was a message flying across the page saying school would dismiss 1 hour early. 

It was really cold and the snow started and immediately stuck to the road.  They were tiny flakes but it covered the road and the drive way.  It did not get deep but it was frozen. 

It is hilly where I live and the road is rather steep.  We drove to the store yesterday and the main roads were free of snow.  They had been salted. 

We have a 4 wheel drive vehicle, so we could drive on the snowy roads around our neighborhood.  We were going home on a road to our house when we came upon two tow trucks stopped in the road, blocking both sides of the road, with their hoods up.  They put up orange cones to stop traffic.  There was a car that had slid off the road, down in a ditch among trees.  They must have slid off the road in the morning. 

We turned around and went to another road to our house.  A car was backing out of their steep driveway.  They saw us coming so they hit their brakes, but their car just kept sliding down the drive, partially out onto the road.  Then when we went to turn onto the road to our house, there were cars stopped all over the road.  They could not make it up the hill, so they just left their cars in the road.  They must have been there all night because they were covered with snow, had ice hanging off the car and someone had written on the car window  4×4.  There was even a police car parked there.  They could not even go up the hill to go home.  I should have taken a picture, but I didn’t. 

On the news, was a story about a 14 year old boy, who was sliding down a steep hill on a plastic trash bag.  He slid onto the road, in front of a pickup truck.  The truck tried to stop, but the road was icy and he slid and hit the boy. 

So if it snows, don’t let your kids sled down a hill into traffic.  I think the cars will kill you. 

 Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr, it is cold.

My dinner roll…..experience

I got up this morning with the thought that I would make these rolls I saw on Foodwishes.com.  Go look at that picture.  Perfection. 

I followed his recipe.  Chef John wrote it for a cook book he is writing.  He usually makes a video on how to make the recipe, but this time he wants people to just follow the recipe.  I have made bread a lot of times and it always comes out great.  I even once made beautiful rolls from my Betty Crocker cookbook (I love that cookbook). 

I was measuring out the flour and then got the milk and honey and butter (see recipe on the above link to the Webb site.)

The yeast got all  frothy and high.  It all came together good.

Really good.  Then I put the ball of dough in a bowl and let it rise.
It rose…..double in size. I punched it down, well actually you don’t punch it, you push it to let the air out.
I then weighed it. I weighed 1 pound 14 ounces. I cut each piece about 1.8 ounces and made them into balls and let them rise again.
I cooked them and took them out of the oven.

They looked good.
BUT…….they were really hard. Like little bricks.
To be honest, I don’t have a stove yet. My husband took it out and we donated it to Habitat to Humanity.
I am using an Oster Toaster Oven. I don’t think it is too great for cooking a bread item……like rolls.
But I have cooked other things in the oven and it cooks them good. I don’t know why they came out like that. I sawed them open and ate some anyway. Tuff, really hard crust…..but it had a good taste. It was not flaky and soft on the inside though.
I wanted soft, fluffy rolls, like little puffs of goodness.
 I have read comments on his blog and people said theirs came out great.
It’s probably my crappy little oven.   Maybe when I get a new,  big oven, I will try them again.