Have I already talked about Last Tango in Halifax? (Netflix link) My mind is so scattered these days. I carry a little notepad with me in my scrubs pocket when I’m at work, because I know if a client says she wants a salad with ranch dressing with her dinner, and then before I leave the room she has me help find her glasses, that by the time I get to the kitchen I won’t remember which dressing she wanted with the salad. The pocket notebook has been so successful, I’ve been keeping an eye out for cargo pants so I can carry a notebook with me always. Or maybe I should wear only scrubs tops now. Or perhaps it’s time to consider the fanny pack.

Good thing I wrote Last Tango in the paragraph above, or I would have forgotten what I was here to tell you about. You know, that is the solid advantage of written communication: so much easier to keep track. I could, for example, just go to my archives and LOOK UP if I’ve already discussed this show. But, eh. Languid hand movement.

Anyway, I love the show. I love it so much. I don’t want to oversell it, because that is just the worst way to start watching or reading anything: assuming it’s going to be amazing. But OH I LOVE IT. I do appreciate and enjoy the storyline with the couple in their seventies, but my favorite is the storylines with WOMEN IN THEIR FORTIES. People are attracted to them! They have relationships! They fall in love! They deal with their teenage children! This is just what I was looking for.

I’ve finished the available episodes, so I’m about 5 seconds into Downton Abbey, which I’ve been meaning to watch. My appetite for BBC shows is so WHETTED by Last Tango. I’m going around thinking (not saying) words such as owt, nowt, summat, lad, arse.

This post is for people who play Candy Crush. You know how periodically they have special events where if you create a crazy number of color bombs (50, 150, 300), you get rewarded with a bunch of the special pieces such as lollipop hammers and so forth? If you also play the night levels with that silly owl who can’t even trouble himself to tip a wing for his own balance, level 202 is GREAT for creating color bombs, because there are nineteen of them on the board to begin with, and they count the same as if you’d lined up the pieces and actually created them. I play the level over and over, and it’s no trouble getting up to even 300 color bombs. MAD PRIZES.

To everyone else: I’m sorry this makes no sense.

I will just say this: that when we drove half an hour back to the lab that made me cry to try again to get Edward’s blood drawn, they said oh, sorry, this test can only be done Monday-Thursday. We were there on a Saturday. They knew the last time we were there what test we needed done, and they didn’t mention that it could only be done on certain days. There would be no way we would know that without being told, or even know to ASK if it could only be done on certain days. I am starting to feel as if they are punking us.

BUT. We went back again on a Monday-Thursday, and although he threw up (the technician was trying to be nice, but she kept TALKING to him what was happening, and it made him focus on it), the blood ended up in the tubes. I am half waiting to find out that oops, they forgot to send it off and it needs to be drawn again, or oops, they mailed it without the cooling pack and it needs to be drawn again.

This is the only lab our insurance will cover in our area, which makes me hate our insurance company.

We have a creepy sky going on right now. If I look to the right, it’s a gorgeous bright blue with white fluffy lamb-clouds. If I look to the left, the clouds are so thick and dark they look dirty, like they’re full of ash. I tried to take some photos, but they completely failed to capture the WHAT DOES THIS BODE?? quality.

I am starting to think about Christmas stockings. Last year I kind of blew it: I kept thinking it was too early to think about it, and then suddenly it was too late, and I basically filled them with candy and snacks. That would have been MY dream stocking as a child, but the children were surprisingly keen on the one or two non-candy things I DID put in, such as new gloves. So THIS year I’m putting in some things I would have bought for them anyway as they needed them, just in regular shopping trips:

* new gloves again
* new winter hats/earmuffs
* new socks (but more fun than plain white)
* new crayons/markers
* more stuff as I think of it

For example, one child complained he couldn’t find a protractor, so he and Paul and another child are all getting protractors in their stockings. Basically, anything a child needs/mentions between now and Christmas is going to be put in a stocking. My mom remarked that this makes for expensive stockings, but it actually makes for CHEAP stockings, since it’s going to be a lot of stuff I would have bought ANYWAY. I won’t go so far as to give them cold medicine and paper towels, but this older-kid stage has been harder than the days when I could fill stockings with clearance party favors and small board books and new bath toys.

I’m also preparing the children that this year I’m planning a repeat of the “one book gift, one clothing gift, two gifts’ worth of things you want” system. (I like the catchy “Something you want/need/wear/read” poem, but have trouble putting it into practice exactly as recited.) It was gratifying how excited they were last year about new clothes when they knew to EXPECT new clothes as a gift. That is, opening new shirts when you were hoping for a video game = sad. Opening Minecraft shirts when you were expecting boring shirts = AWESOME.

I feel the injustice of something this morning, and it is that middle-aged men can grow beards to hide their soft underchins and increasingly saggy necks, whereas middle-aged women cannot. These two inexplicably stealthy and fast-growing recurring chin hairs are not going to cover it.

Oh, this reminds me. At a recent get-together with friends, I noticed a friend had a stealth chin hair. I wondered if I should say something and offer to get it for her (I keep tweezers in my pocket AT ALL TIMES now), but I let uncertainty/anxiety stop me. Since then, I’ve wished I’d gone for it. It seems to me that, first of all, it falls securely on the safe side of the line Miss Manners has drawn to determine whether or not to mention something to someone: Is it easily fixable on the spot, or is it something they won’t be able to do anything about anyway, and so it will just make them feel awful? In this case, easily fixable.

Secondly, and more importantly so perhaps this should have been firstly, the conversation in this same group has turned to stealth chin hairs before, so I know that she is aware of them and that she is keen to remove them and that she has a sense of humor about them.

Thirdly, I would want HER to tell ME. I just HATE the way I sometimes don’t see one until it’s, like, half an inch long.

Fourthly, it seems to me that such a thing falls into the category of friendship-increasing activities. That is, once you have helped a friend tweeze a chin hair, is there any way to avoid that making the two of you closer than before? I think not.

[Edit: I wish I’d asked commenters to divide themselves first into groups of “Would you have loud, uproarious conversations with your friends about chin hairs, or not?” Because what I’m wondering is, are the people who would want to cry/die ALSO people who would joke loudly? Or are we in groups of “Would never joke about it and would cry/die if someone pointed it out” and “Would joke and would want someone to point it out”? My group of friends is one that has had the loud uproarious conversations, so does that mean I’m safe to let them know? Or does it mean there are participants who would scream with laughter on the topic in a general way, but then die of mortification if it came up about their own personal chin hair? I really can’t picture this friend crying OR dying. I can picture her saying, “Eww, eww, get it, GET IT QUICK!!!” I’m not planning to point out chin hairs to strangers, or to people who have never had loud laughing conversations on the topic with me.]

I don’t know why people think of DOGS when the subject of heroic pets comes up. Why, just this morning, one of our cats realized he needed to throw up and, with Indiana-Jones-like reflexes, immediately emitted an unearthly yowl to alert the sleeping household to the emergency. As I was still trying to figure out what time it was and how to walk without falling over, he realized something even more serious: he was on a HARD FLOOR! With no thought for his own safety, he ran as fast as his plush paws could carry him down the stairs to the only carpeted area of the house. Just in the nick of time he reached the bottom step. It was a very close call, but he managed it. A true hero for our times.

I have not yet thanked you all for your responses to the Frustration Crying post. I kept seeing comments and thinking, “Yes. YES!” Then I’d start to respond, and feel like I was just repeating myself—or worse, repeating the comment itself. And then it seemed as if it would seem as if I wasn’t responding to OTHER comments because they WEREN’T good, rather than because I didn’t have any response other than gratitude and relief and comforted feelings. Anyway, the whole incident threw me for a bit of a loop, and in a loop like that everything seems impossible to figure out, so let’s just leave it at THANK YOU FOR ALL THOSE GREAT COMMENTS.

Today I am continuing to have this “WHY IS THE LEAST-KNOWLEDGEABLE PERSON IN CHARGE??” feeling about doctors and insurance and so forth, because over the weekend we received two letters. One was from our insurance company, saying “Referral? What referral? We never received any referral, so here is a heads-up that you will have to pay the entire $400 specialist fee yourself.” So I will need to call about that. It’s possible that there WAS a referral. It’s also possible that the pediatrician’s office forgot to send it over. If the pediatrician knows there needs to be a referral, which they do know, and if the specialist knows they need to receive the referral, which they do know, and if the insurance company knows everyone knows this, then WHY OH WHY do I have to be the one to call this morning to ask the pediatrician to send the referral to the specialist, and to ask the specialist to send it to the insurance? Why can’t THE PEOPLE WHO ARE PAID TO DO THIS be the ones to do this??

The second letter was from the specialist, saying that because we have no insurance information on file, they are giving us their uninsured-patient discount. Well. That is very nice of them, and it’s a surprisingly nice discount: it takes off about half the charge. But since I stood at a registration desk for OVER TWENTY MINUTES giving them our insurance information and trying to answer questions such as “When did this insurance coverage start?” (I don’t know, like five years ago I guess, THIS IS NOT INFORMATION I USE BRAIN STORAGE SPACE FOR), and telling them Paul’s Social Security number and birth date, and letting them scan the card, I don’t know WHY I now have to call them and give them all the information again.

Also, if they have no insurance information on file, why is our insurance company alerting us that they’ve received a claim and the visit will not be covered?

It does help to realize that most of this is done automatically by computer. That is, it isn’t as if a person at the specialist’s office deliberately ignored our insurance information; there was just some reason the computer couldn’t process it, so the computer printed out a letter. But it also DOESN’T help, because wouldn’t it be nice if a person DID check before sending out one of these automated letters? Just a quick double-check to see if perhaps alllllllll the information was already in the computer and some glitch just prevented it from processing? Since I think we all know how unpleasant it is to receive such a letter? Well. It does no good to think these counter-reality thoughts.

Follow-up: It is only fair, especially after making cynical remarks about reality, to say that when I called the pediatrician about the missing referral (shortly after writing this post) they said, “Oh, yes: the specialist called us Friday and we faxed it right over.” So! The very people I would LOVE to have handle the situation, DID IN FACT HANDLE IT. The specialist’s office saw the issue, understood the issue, and took action! The pediatrician’s office responded by fixing the issue! EVERYONE GETS NEW CARS.

I just got back from yet another frustrating experience at the lab where Edward has his blood drawn. It’s supposed to be much, much better to drive half an hour to an easy familiar location than to drive two hours to the scary big city with all the honking drivers who think everyone should be totally 100% familiar with their scary big city, and it OFTEN IS better, but just often enough it happens that we end up driving an hour round-trip for NOTHING, and ALSO I end up with lots of mental arguments going on in my head as I explain to imaginary technicians why what happened was something that shouldn’t have happened. This morning was one of those times.

I hate to have Edward miss school, but I was working this weekend (insert work-related conflicted feelings here) and couldn’t take him until today, and I was already feeling tense because we should have done it last week. We rushed around so that he and I could leave right after the other kids got on the bus. It’s a walk-in lab, so we waited more than half an hour, and then it was finally our turn, and they said, “Oh, yes, we got the paperwork, but to do this test we need a kit, and we don’t have that kit.”

This is the kind of thing that drives me batty. When they received the orders, and saw the orders would require a kit they didn’t have, why didn’t they call the doctor who faxed the orders and say so? Why doesn’t our doctor know that they would need to send the kit, since, as it turns out, they did send it last time? Why are we, the Clueless Patients, left to figure it all out, when we know NOTHING ABOUT ANY OF THIS? Doesn’t it make the most sense that they should talk to each other and combine their knowledge, instead of having me serve as mediator? Wouldn’t that, in the long run, save a LOT OF TIME AND TROUBLE? But I suppose the time and trouble saved would be the PATIENTS’ time and trouble, so there’s little motivation for the doctor’s office or the lab.

Even worse is that I tried to CALL the lab ahead of time to make sure everything was all set, and all they have is a 2-minute recording (their hours, their location, etc.) that doesn’t give an option to speak to anyone, and doesn’t give an option to leave a message. So the only way I could have prevented this situation from happening was to drive half an hour over there and ask.

Worst of all, when I tried to Use My Words and say all these things in a reasonable way, I started crying. And not just a little crying, but a lot of crying. And I kept crying the whole rest of the time we were there, which was like another ten minutes. It was excruciatingly embarrassing, and it wouldn’t stop. I was just so frustrated with EVERYTHING. To her credit, the technician was very kind at this point, and even sat next to me and gave me a side hug, and said kind things about how I must be so stressed and worried, and that of course made me cry MORE, and arg. Just, arg. And now we will have to go back in a couple of days, and they will recognize me as That Mom Who Cried So Much.

And I am feeling some despair, too, because I always thought that these episodes of frustration/rage-crying (which at least usually are not QUITE so lengthy and damp) would at some point STOP. I had in mind a future where I would be…”old enough,” I guess, not to do it anymore. And there is still hope: apparently a lot of women toughen up after menopause, because of estrogen dropping or testosterone rising or something. But arrrrrrrrrrggggggggggg.

I should have posted this earlier, but I forgot: here’s the link to the “Wait, right now it would be SEVEN o’clock—no, wait, it would NORMALLY be NINE o’clock…” printout.

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I got eight inches cut off my hair and I am so much happier with it:

It’s still long enough to put up, but I no longer hate washing it and brushing it. When I take it down at night, I like the way it looks; before, when I took it down I felt frumpy and oppressed. I’ve even been wearing it down sometimes during the day.

I got some bleachy streaks put in at the same time, and those too improve my hair happiness by a significant amount. I am hoping they will help decrease the frequency with which I am asked if I homeschool.

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I got a little sentimental last night while trick-or-treating. People buy candy, so that they can give it away for free to children who come to their houses. They voluntarily spend a couple of hours being inconvenienced by the ringing doorbell. Some of them even dress up, and/or decorate their houses, and they say nice things to these children they don’t even know. All of this because we are an animal species and we VALUE our community children. WEEP. It reminded me of when I got all sentimental about playgrounds. Grown-ups with jobs spend lots of time and effort to design safe structures for children to PLAY on. WEEP.

Book/movie recommendations, before I forget them:

(image from Amazon.com)

Red 2 (Netflix link). Loved it. I hope they just keep making these movies forever. The cast is obviously having a wonderful time. It reminds me of the Ocean’s Eleven series.

(image from Amazon.com)

10% Happier, by Dan Harris. I thought I would just skim this a little, but I ended up reading the whole thing. As with many non-fiction books, the actual POINT of the book is only the length of a chapter or two, so it has to be expanded SOMEHOW into a book-length; he does this by combining it with a memoir. I thought he was interesting and funny and surprisingly open and frank, and I found his internal thought processes amusingly relatable. Also, I like behind-the-scenes things, and this gives some behind-the-scenes stories about working for the television news.

(image from Amazon.com)

I Am Big Bird: the Caroll Spinney Story (Netflix link). My parents recommended this to me, and I kept not watching it because I always think documentaries are not going to be as fun to watch as movies. But I really loved it. It made me feel sentimental feelings about Sesame Street.

The other day one of my clients wondered why, on a particular prescription bottle, the number of pills was circled. And I used to work in a pharmacy, so I could supply the not-very-interesting answer! I shouldn’t say it’s not interesting, because it IS interesting to ME. I like knowing this kind of behind-the-scenes stuff.

The first thing to know is that in the pharmacy where I worked, pharmacy technicians (that’s an entry-level job) did almost all of what you might picture being the pharmacist’s job: counting pills and putting them into bottles, putting the labels on the bottles. The pharmacist would then verify that it had been done correctly.

At my pharmacy, a circled number of pills was the technician saying to the pharmacist, “I noticed that this number was not 30.” So many prescriptions are for 30 pills at a time, that one of the more common pharmacy errors is putting 30 pills in a bottle when it’s supposed to be 10 or 45 or 90 or 120. So a technician might circle the number to let the pharmacist know that the non-30 number was taken into account.

If the number is 30 and it is circled, I’m not sure what it means. That pharmacy might have a policy of circling all numbers, as a way to remind the technicians to check it every time.

If there is a “DC” handwritten next to the number, it meant the technician double-counted the pills. One reason for counting twice is if the medication is a controlled substance, such as a narcotic. Pharmacies have to rigorously document any controlled substance, and there are regular inspections. If the number of pills in the store differs from the number there OUGHT to be, there is trouble: even a single missing pill will have everyone on hands and knees looking under the furniture. So it’s common for a pharmacy to have a policy of double-counting any controlled medication.

Another reason for counting twice is if there’s a note in the customer’s file mentioning a past problem. If a customer recently received the wrong number of pills, for example, we wanted to be careful not to let that happen again soon afterward. Or if a customer repeatedly complained about getting the wrong number, we wanted to be able to say we had counted them twice. Sometimes the technician would count them twice and then the pharmacist would do a final count, just to be really, really sure. If the prescription is a narcotic AND it’s for a customer who routinely says they were shorted on the number of pills, the technician might count THREE times, and write “TC” next to the number.

If you see initials written next to the number, those are usually the initials of the technician who counted the pills and put them in the bottle. Some technicians like to do this because there’s no other way to know who filled what: if a number of errors are being made, a technician might want to be able to say, “My initials aren’t on this, so it wasn’t me.” Sometimes pharmacies will have everyone write their initials every time; other times it’s optional. Or sometimes only new employees do it, so that the pharmacist knows to be extra careful checking those.

In the pharmacy where I worked, the pharmacist didn’t add their initials because we had only one pharmacist working per day, and the computer added their initials automatically to the labels of all prescriptions processed that day. On the very rare occasions when we had two pharmacists, the pharmacist would write his or her initials after the tech’s: ST/CA would be Swistle Thistle (tech) and then Carla Alamo (pharmacist).

In fact, one reason many of the technicians wrote our initials on the labels of bottles we filled is that the computer ALSO automatically added the initials of the technician who had printed the label. But it was very very common for the prescription to be filled by a different technician than the one who had printed the label. It was annoying to see another technician’s initials on the label of a bottle I’d filled, so I liked to add my initials. “No, it was ME!!” Plus, if I made a mistake, I wanted to know about it; and if I DIDN’T make a mistake, I didn’t want to get blamed for it. Plus, I like writing my initials.