Well what do you know? I’m really feeling better today. The mild fever is gone, the headache is gone, and I have been blowing crud out of my nose and hacking up nasty stuff all morning. It was definitely a sinus infection. I felt it coming on, and I knew it was going to happen. Gosh golly gee whiz, if I had access to affordable health care, I could have gone to a doctor last week when I knew what was up, gotten some antibiotics, and head it off at the pass. But no affordable health care for me, so I had to spend almost two weeks feeling like crap, a few days feeling like I was dying, and now I’ll be another week feeling weak and crappy as my body heals itself completely. And hopefully I won’t catch anything in the meantime or have any other problems, because my immune system is trashed.

That’s health care in America for the working class. We aren’t terribly poor. We have a house, utilities, cable TV, internet, food. We usually don’t want for the money to pay for these things, but money is always tight. Sure, I could have spent a hundred bucks or more to go to a doctor, but we didn’t have a hundred bucks to spend to get a $15 prescription for generic antibiotics, and if I spent that money on that, well some other bill wouldn’t get paid … and that leads to a cascade effect of things not getting paid. We go through that from time to time, and it is really hell (and stressful).

As I read discussions about the health care system and reform at places like Metafilter and such, I am continually amazed at how many seemingly reasonable people can’t see beyond their “the system works for me” attitude. Sure, it works for you when you are 25 and in prime health. My system of not being able to afford health insurance or doctor’s visits worked perfectly well for me at 25 years old too. At 44? Not so much.

I often feel ill. I’m in the throws of the change of life, and I write most of my complaints off as being a side-effect of my hormonal system being out of whack right now. But how would I know? I haven’t seen an actual doctor in at least 15 years. I haven’t had an actual thorough checkup since I went away to college in 1983. I can count the number of times I have been to a doctor for any reason on my fingers. I don’t even have to use any of my toes. Most of those times were in college when I had access to the university clinic where it was cheap and readily available^†.

There could be something killing me right now, and I wouldn’t have a clue … and I’d just be writing it off as being a middle-aged woman and something that will pass in time. For that matter, it would be nice to get some medical help dealing with the side-effects of my body going through changes so I could tell if something else is wrong, but I can’t afford that either. All my older female relatives went through menopause without any medical help. They just got up each morning and pushed through the day, no matter how awful they felt, and did the best they could. So that’s what I do too.

But many of these women had other things going on they didn’t know about, things they wrote off as being the side-effects of a woman growing older … things that eventually killed them and were found far too late. I try not to think about that too much, but it does cross my mind from time to time, mostly when I am lying in bed too sick to even make myself a sandwich for lunch. I just get up in the morning and get through the day the best I can and hope I am luckier than my ancestors were. Maybe I am. Maybe not. Only time will tell.

So I am happy for the people who are young and/or healthy and think the system and their insurance works fine for them. I’m happy for the people who can break bones in their toes and go see a doctor to get x-rays and painkillers. I’m happy for the people who don’t have to lie in bed feeling like they are dying rather than go get a prescription for antibiotics. Good for them! But I am not even a worse case scenario. We aren’t terribly poor. If something came along and bit me in the ass and it seemed really serious, we’d work out some way to pay for what I needed, and so long as it wasn’t really huge (like cancer or diabetes or something like that), it would just mean eating Hamburger Helper and rice and beans instead of healthier foods and having to juggle bills to make sure the utilities didn’t get disconnected. We’d struggle through somehow.

What about the vast numbers of people below me on the economic scale? The class Lin has managed to pull us slightly up out of? They have even less of a chance than I do, and they completely have to count on luck to stay healthy. For them, it isn’t “we’ll have to juggle some bills, eat less healthy foods, and it will be tight if I go to the doctor.” For them, it’s “if I go to the doctor, the electricity will get shut off, and I won’t have any food.” I know how bad the situation is for myself, and I know how awful it is for them, because that’s where I came from. It makes me sad that anyone should ever have to not see a doctor when they need to, and I wish more people would open their eyes, look around, and see that the health care system isn’t really working so great for them either … before they get sick and find out just how screwed even they are.

But yeah, I’m feeling better today. It’s a good thing, because had I felt as badly again today as I did yesterday, I would have had to start considering going to see a doctor, and we just don’t have the cash for that at the moment.

1. † And I’ve been to an emergency room once, where I was seriously misdiagnosed. My friends carried me in (against my will, because OMG the bill) after a week of me lying in bed unable to breath without extreme pain. Bless them, they ignored me insisting I could get over whatever it was myself. After looking me over and poking at me for a few minutes and checking my urine, the precious doctor announced I had gastritis and sent me home with suppositories and some antibiotics. I took the antibiotics and didn’t bother with the suppositories. Even I knew it wasn’t my gut causing the problem. Two days later I felt a bit better and went to the university clinic where the doctor freaked out after checking everything. Had it not been for the antibiotics doing some good, I could have laid in that bed stuffing drugs up my ass and died from pneumonia and pleurisy. This incident is, in fact, the point where I started learning as much as I could about health and how the body works and stopped trusting doctors to know much of anything. [↩]

I think I feel better this morning. It’s hard to tell, because I have that weak-from-being-sick thing going on. At least my head doesn’t feel like it’s been run over by a large truck anymore, my bones don’t ache, and my nose is running instead of being completely stuffed up. If nothing else, I am at least on the road to getting better and not worse. Yesterday was awful, and I spent most of the day sleeping. I still don’t have much energy, but at least I don’t feel like total crap for the first morning in over a week.

Looking on the bright side of a week of being sick, because I do always try to find a bright side to everything, I don’t have to cut my calorie intake and start working out like crazy. I’d planned to do that, because a month of not being out in the yard working and sweating my butt off while still eating as much as I was when I was out there every day has lead to some unsatisfactory weight gain. Not much, but on me, even a little regular fat gathering in the usual locations (belly flab – eeek) looks like a lot. But I went and got sick, and now that extra weight is gone.

I don’t recommend a week of being sick as a diet plan, but hey, it worked out well this time. Going forward, fewer snacks and more exercise until the heat chills enough for me to get back to huffing and puffing in the garden every day. I’m not overly nuts about my weight, but I’d finally reached a weight where I felt good and looked good, and I don’t really want to go too much over it … at least not all in the belly area. Most of my wardrobe is designed to show off that particular location, and I am loath to be showing off a huge muffin-top!

No real plan for the day. I don’t want to do too much since I’m still feeling somewhat blah. I guess I’ll putter around the house and catch up on the housework I haven’t been doing since feeling poorly, run to the store for milk (and maybe bread, I don’t know that I feel like making any today), and then if I feel up to it, ripping out the last of the plants in the garden. And I still haven’t played with any of my new yarn!

Right now though, I have to go make my second cup of coffee and move the sprinkler to another spot in the yard. Yes, I am watering the dead grass. I keep watering it, and it keeps dying. Too damn HOT!

It figures. I finally have the truck sitting in the driveway and could get out of the house and go do something, and now I feel so sick, I can’t get out of the house and go do something. Such is my life!

Yes, I am officially declaring myself sick. What was a simple allergy attack last week is now something more than that. It feels like it might be a sinus infection, though I feel worse than I usually do when that happens. In fact, I feel a little like I have … the flu. Needless to say, I’ll be staying home and puttering around the house in a drugged stupor for at least a few more days either way.

In other news, I am beginning to suspect even more strongly that Sasha, the wildish outdoor cat our previous neighbors left behind when they moved, has not, in fact, been de-sexed. Let’s put it this way: she grew overly plump, disappeared for a couple of weeks, and now she is back begging for food with a vengeance and looking very slim and trim. She’s not the sort of cat one can touch or pick up, and there’s really no way to get a look at her belly to see if either she’s been fixed or is feeding kittens. I haven’t seen any kittens, but she comes running from someone across the street as soon as she hears my front door open in the morning.

And … something chewed off half my fennel seedlings and all my tomato seedlings. I’ll probably pop some more seeds in this afternoon. Not that it will do any good, as whatever it was –I suspect birds– will just chew them off again anyway.

I have some things I could rant about this morning, but quite frankly, my head is throbbing entirely too much to think that hard about anything. I think I’ll take some aspirin and have some coffee and maybe knit a little. I still haven’t played with any of the new yarn! That would probably be a good no-brainer thing for me to do today.

So much for going to take a nap. Lin just announced he needed me to go to his office with him so I can bring my truck home. I may be feeling like total crap today and would really, REALLY rather take a nap than drive on a highway, but having the truck sitting in the driveway when I want to use it will make the added suffering of driving with a migraine worth it. Not that I expect to want to go anywhere this week, feeling as completely badly as I do.

But … the truck is coming home!!! Yippee!

I’ve been sitting here for hours writing a post. All the insane blather about “death panels” and “euthanasia” being bantered about in the health care “debate” the last few weeks has been poking at old scars on my psyche. Painful scars acquired during the last day and night of my father’s life. I got to a point in the post where I found I couldn’t go on, so I thought I would take a break from it and clear my head. Then my mother called, and that just never makes anything better.

I may or may not finish the post I started in the wee hours of the morning. I may or may not post it. I may just keep it to myself, or I may delete it and go back to not thinking about it, though I do believe I have something to say that people need to hear concerning end-of-life care and the decisions so many people have apparently not faced in their lives … if the lunacy I hear coming out during the recent conversations about the subject is any indication. But for now, I will post the quote and link to a blog post that set off my desire to discuss the situation and my own personal run-in with end-of-life care and the health care industry.

You have no idea what it’s like to be called into a sterile conference room with a hospital administrator you’ve never met before and be told that your mother’s insurance policy will only pay for 30 days in ICU. You can’t imagine what it’s like to be advised that you need to “make some decisions,” like whether your mother should be released “HTD” which is hospital parlance for “home to die,” or if you want to pay out of pocket to keep her in the ICU another week. And when you ask how much that would cost you are given a number so impossibly large that you realize there really are no decisions to make. The decision has been made for you. “Living will” or no, it doesn’t matter. The bank account and the insurance policy have trumped any legal document.

If this isn’t a “death panel” I don’t know what is.
–Southern Beale

My father’s situation was a little different, but only because of choices I made, but never should anyone believe that financial matters didn’t play a role in is every decision I confronted, because that’s what health care is in America when you lack millions of dollars in the bank and a Cadillac insurance plan. In the end, whether someone lives or dies always seems to end up being about money.

Last night while we were flipping through TV channels trying to find something interesting to watch, Lin ran across a show called Defying Gravity (official ABC site with auto-playing video/sound). We’d missed the first few minutes of it, and it wasn’t the premiere, so we felt a little lost. Then I remembered I had downloaded the double episode premiere from iTunes just the other day for free, so I loaded it up on my iPod and fed it to the TV while we recorded the current episode.

Defying Gravity is a sexy, provocative thriller set in the very near future against the backdrop of our solar system, in which the eight astronauts from five countries undertake a mysterious six-year international space mission on the spaceship Antares.

It’s kind of a weird show, but it’s science fiction, and we do love us some science fiction programming. Though it’s weird and mysterious, it sucked us in, so it must be at least somewhat well-written, well-acted, and interesting. I find myself looking forward to the next episode.

We don’t often pay much attention to the major networks, so sometimes we miss hearing about interesting new shows they might be showing. Not that they put out interesting new shows all that often (which is why we mostly ignore the basic networks). Thought I’d mention this show, in case someone else hadn’t heard about it. It may very well be worth watching.

Currently, the two episode premiere as well as last night’s episode is available for download (in both HD and SD) at iTunes for free, and all three episodes can be watched at Hulu. I suppose they can be watched at the ABC site too, but it wants me to install a plugin. I can’t be bothered.

Note: Apparently in the near-future the story is set in, abortion has been completely outlawed. I found that sort of interesting in a “why’d the writers decide to do that” kind of way. I don’t think it’s any sort of a political statement (though it could be). Instead, it seems to be a plot contrivance.

Orly Taitz, the Queen of Birthers, apparently got some death threats after her fanatical appearance on MSNBC last week. Well, not exactly death threats. More like someone suggesting she be tried for sedition and hung for treason. Not quite the same as someone saying “I’m going to kill you.” But if Orly can find something to be dramatic about, she will be dramatic about it.

Anyway, one of her fans figured out who had been sending these threats … narrowed it down to an address with a person’s name and other personal information … all from the IP address from whence the email was sent. IP addresses are useful things, but they aren’t terribly useful the way this person used it. Of course, it’s only useful if one is certain the address is the actual address from which something has been sent. It’s not like an IP address can’t be spoofed.

With that said, let’s follow the steps he used to find the sender of the emails, shall we?

First he took the IP address from the emails and searched at IP Address Locator. It conveniently searches for your IP when you visit the link, if your browser happens to broadcast your IP. This search spits out some information related to said IP address. One of the bits of information is longitude and latitude coordinates.

Using this information, he then searched Google Maps for the coordinates. Google Maps does its best to resolve this to a physical address. Unfortunately, not only is an IP address a poor way to acquire GPS coordinates, Google Maps does a poor job of locating exact residences using GPS coordinates. I can enter the exact numbers for the exact location of my living room, and it consistently shows those coordinates as being a few doors down from where I actually live.

But wonder-boy finds himself an address, so he heads over to The White Pages Reverse Look-Up and searches there to find out who lives at that address. Now, of course, because the information put in was crap, the information it spit out was crap … i.e. someone not at all related to the person who sent the email, their only crime being living in the same city or neighborhood.

I followed these steps with my own IP address, just to see what it would lead to and not because I thought it would actually work. Of course, it didn’t lead to my own physical address. Not even close. Miles away from being in the same ballpark. I wish I lived at that address. Looks like a much nicer neighborhood, what with its sidewalks, curbs, and proper rain drainage systems (and really nice houses). Using my actual coordinates at Google Maps, still brought up the same wrong address it always does, and entering my actual address into the reverse look-up brought up exactly nothing. I guess that means my house (and I) don’t exist at all in Birther World. I can live with that.

All I can say is that I hope nothing bad happens to the people living at the address these idiots have determined are the source of the email threats, and I wish these Birthers would get some education.

I’d link to the posts about this on Orly’s blog, but Google has determined her site is full of dangerous code, and Firefox throws up warnings as well. She either doesn’t know this, doesn’t care, is implicit in the spreading of trojans and viruses, or is too stupid to realize why no one is visiting her site or commenting anymore.

I am never again stepping foot in a grocery store on a weekend. I don’t care if that means we starve or have to eat fast food every night of the week. Today was my last official shopping trip on a weekend … EVER.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Anyone remember years ago when Bush was on his tour of America having town hall meetings trying to sell his plan to privatize Social Security? Anyone remember how law-abiding, ticket-holding citizens were sometimes removed from these events or not allowed to even enter them (some even arrested), because of slogans on t-shirts or bumper stickers on their cars? People who weren’t shouting or being disruptive or carrying placards of protest, but just sitting or standing quietly but opposing the current administration with simple non-offensive messages on shirts or stickers? I remember it well.

At the time, a great many of us rejected the notion that publicly-funded governmental events, such as town hall meetings and speeches by elected officials, shouldn’t be open to any member of the voting public who wasn’t causing an actual disruption. Many people from both sides of the political fence agreed. Many people from one side of the political fence didn’t have any problems with people being ejected or arrested for something as innocuous as a t-shirt bearing the slogan “Love America, Hate Bush.” Lawsuits were filed, and eventually those were either dismissed outright or quietly settled by the federal government for many tens of thousands of dollars. I remember.

I remember many things happening during the Bush administration that were free speech travesties.

Now I regularly see videos of town hall meetings completely disrupted by shouting, screaming, pushing, placard carrying protesters with no intent at all of either taking part in or allowing anything resembling a free exchange of ideas and speech, and I do not see any of them being ejected from the premises or arrested. I have to wonder … why the hell not?

Let them wear their t-shirts and even carry their signs, but if they can’t remain civil and disrupt a meeting with protesting and shouting and screaming … out they should go. Anyone pushing or fighting should be introduced to local law enforcement officers.

As I imagined, the heat continues to rise at town halls, minor violence is beginning to begin, and because no one has the balls to take control of the situation and have these people tossed from said meetings or to maintain order in any way, town hall meetings are now being canceled. Elected officials are even getting death threats. Death threats over a difference of opinion on health care?! Can’t blame them for canceling those public appearances.

I hope the violence won’t continue to escalate, but this situation is still a powder keg waiting to go off, and it feels like the fuse has already been lit. It’s not going to get better unless some law and order is restored and some people learn how to have civil discourse (and act like adults).

Personally, I think acting like fascists worked pretty well for the Bush administration and likely only ended up costing the government a million dollars or less in settled lawsuits. I say toss some of these asses out before they get the “Just say NO!” out of their mouths and toss them in some of those Free Speech Zones we used to have far from any of the action. Worked for Bush and no one seemed to have much of a problem with it.

You don’t think anyone would have a problem with it now, do you?

Let’s talk about diplomatic immunity. There seem to be a small group of loud people who have no idea at all what diplomatic immunity is. For example:

“Is Obama thumbing his nose at Americans who want to see his birth certificate because he knows his back is covered by UN diplomatic immunity?”

It’s a comment from a Birther, of course. See, if Obama isn’t a citizen of the US, then he’s a foreign citizen, and therefore he can do any illegal thing he wants to do, because diplomatic immunity will get him off the hook … or so the argument goes. What they fail to observe is that even in some alternate universe where Obama actually is a foreign born citizen –the universe we do not live in– he would still just be a foreign citizen and not a foreign diplomat. Obama, in this alternate universe, would be no kind of diplomat at all.

In order to be considered a diplomat of a foreign country, and eligible for diplomatic immunity, a foreign country would have to recognize him as one of their diplomats (for which there are, of course, a stack of rules). Well, he’s not a foreign ambassador or any such thing, is he? Even in the alternative crazyland of the Birthers, no one is suggesting Kenya or Great Britain consider him one of their diplomats and recognize him as such (or would even consider doing so). Thus diplomatic immunity wouldn’t do anything to save him from repercussions due to illegal activities. The US puts foreign nationals in prison for crimes all the time.

Furthermore, diplomatic immunity doesn’t really save someone from truly criminal wrong-doing. We don’t live in the movies. Lethal Weapon II was fiction.

We also don’t live in the above-mentioned alternate universe. In this universe, Obama is an American citizen, and he is the President of the United States of America.

EXTRA NOTE: The day the latest fake Obama birth certificate was totally debunked, I told Lin I bet the Birthers would start arguing the birth Australian certificate from which it was forged was actually the forgery. I always do hate to be right about these kinds of things, but it’s true there are still people arguing for the veracity of the latest forged Obama birth certificate, and one of the loudest arguments is the Australian “original” is actually the fake.

Livejournal, Twitter, and (I think) Facebook have been experiencing issues today. From what I hear, they are under DDOS attacks.

Twitter being down doesn’t bother me. I mostly just use it to let people know I made a post on my blog, so the only problem it’s caused me today is the error message my web site pukes out when I make a post. I’m not on Facebook, so I wouldn’t be bothered by it not working at all. Livejournal not working, on the other hand, is totally annoying me. Not only does it cause the occasional error puking when I post to my web site (due to the crossposting plugin), but I can’t seem to make filtered or private posts at LJ, and I do that at least once a day. You know, stuff no one else would be interested in reading about (boring crap like what I ate during the day or tracking migraines) and the kind of stuff I only share with people I know pretty well (like gossip and griping about family members). So I hope LJ gets things sorted out soon. I’ll burst if I don’t get to gripe about family members to my friends much longer. I have intense and personal bitching to do, dammit!

Nothing much going on around here today. I’ve been a slug. I’m still not feeling so great, and earlier today a migraine was threatening to kick my butt –on top of the allergies which are already kicking my butt. I definitely look forward to feeling better soon. I’ve been down and out most of the week, and that means I not only haven’t been getting things done I need to get done, I haven’t been getting to do anything I want to do or have fun either. Yup, mostly just walking around in a drug-addled daze, sitting and staring at the TV, or taking naps. I’m sure some people would think that doesn’t sound like such a horrible way to spend one’s time, but as lazy as I am, I do like sticking to my schedule and getting things done. I also like enjoying myself from time to time. I’ve been feeling so blah I can’t even knit, which means I must be feeling pretty poorly. I always feel like playing with yarn!

And I have been sleeping like crap. Can’t stay asleep for more than three hours at a time, and that really does wear me down. Tonight after dinner, I’m going to take an allergy pill and announce to Lin that no matter what is going on or where I am when I fall asleep, leave me where I drop. If I have to miss our usual TV shows and sleep on the couch all night in order to get at least 8 hours of sleep, so be it. This worked a few nights ago. I’m hoping it works again. I am feeling completely worn down.

I am going to try to finish the silly hat I have been working on tonight or tomorrow morning. I am so close to being done with it. It’s annoying to be so close to finished and not getting the thing done. I certainly can’t wear it yet, what with the high temperature today being something like 105ºF, but I want to take some silly photos of me in the silly hat … so we can all laugh at how silly I am.

Well, I’m going to go to the kitchen and be boring with nothing to say while stirring the chili I’m making for dinner. Yes, I am making chili on a beastly hot day. I’ve been craving chili all week, and by gosh, I am having chili tonight!

UPDATE: I’ll answer my own question!

Twitter is down.

Livejournal is experiencing databases problem.

Am I the only one who can’t access Livejournal or Twitter this morning? I keep getting page load errors saying the server is taking too long to respond. I’d like to know if it’s something widespread or just Roadrunner having a brain fart again.

Last night, I meant to be outside at sunset to watch our new streetlight come on, but I was busy making dinner, then eating dinner, and then not thinking about streetlights. I remembered at about 9 pm and shuffled to the front door to have a look at the new better-lit view.

Wow. I love it! I’d been a little worried it was going to be one of those bright white security lights. Not that it would have mattered too much, since it’s in a location that won’t bother us in the house, but I prefer more muted lighting. White light makes me crazy, especially at night. But that’s not what we have on our power pole!

They put up a regular small streetlight with a nice soft orange glow. It’s bright without being BRIGHT, and the location is perfect. The ends of our driveways are nicely lit, and the light falls off quickly to a low glow that provides just enough light to see, but doesn’t create dark shadows or seem glaring. It make a very pleasant light. It also doesn’t reach the back yard at all, so I still have my completely dark back yard to look around in.

This morning, I took out the trash and wheeled it to the curb, well before sunrise, and I could see what I was doing and where I was going. My porch light was never any help at all, so it’s really nice to be able to take out trash without killing myself, or run out to the truck and not need a flashlight to get the door unlocked … or be able to peek out the window when I hear something odd and be able to SEE if something (or someone) is moving around out there.

So I am very, very happy with the new streetlight! Yippee!

The city guys are outside right now installing the light on our power pole. I guess tonight we shall see how I like having a streetlight in my front yard. I think I will like it quite well. It’s at the corner we share with the Latinos next door, between our driveways, and it’s on the opposite side of the house from the bedroom. I doubt we’ll even notice it’s there, except when we go outside at night and can actually see beyond the front porch. Our street is so dark. If we lived in the country or an area with really low crime, I would like that, but we don’t. Light can be nice.

I can’t wait until sunset to see what the new light is like!