I work in a pediatric clinic. The majority of our patients are using Medicaid, although many do have private insurance and several pay cash.
We lost our only Spanish-speaking employee a while back, so it was only a matter of time until a young mother called us about her child, having no one around to help her communicate in English. That happened today.
Fortunately, she had a few words of English, I have a few words of Spanish, we got the problem taken care of. At least she seemed to understand what I told her and seemed content with the information I provided.
Like an idiot, I stumbled along that way, instead of zipping over to Babelfish or another good translation website! How dumb is that?!?!?
Well, my excuse is this: there are very very very tight restrictions on 'Net usage at my workplace, so I hardly ever poke around online. It just didn't occur to me...
At least I made the attempt! None of the other girls will even try. They all speak slowly and loudly into the phone when a Spanish-speaker calls, telling him (in English) no one there speaks Spanish, and that he needs to go get someone who speaks English to help him.
So, anyway, just off the top of my head, below are the phrases I use on the telephone all blinking day long every day. It's too much to hope that the other girls might actually try to use it... But at least I'll have it.
Well, Grandpa could have gotten Grandma to the hospital early this morning, without me, just fine. I'm not sure why he called for my help, other than just to have some backup if she did, bless her heart, kick the bucket on the way?
I'd already dropped off my husband at his job, before dawn. I brought my son to school and tossed my work clothes into the van. I called Grandpa from the road to tell him I was on my way, and I called the lady at my office to whom I report my schedule, to tell [i]her[/i] I'd be late.
Then I got to the in-laws' and found Grandma in pain, of course, but coherent and dressed in the Xmas nightshirt and extra-warm fuzzy robe and pretty pink underwear I'd recently given her. (You know how the older generations like to dress up for the doctor. My poor doctors have to be content that I take a bath before I see them, never mind me wearing coordinated clothing when I'm sick.)
So -- off they went to the emergency room, and I trailed along in my vehicle. (Would you believe, even with Grandma's mobility issues, she can climb her little stepstool high up into Grandpa's big diesel truck pretty well, but can only crawl and struggle into my mini-van "by the hardest", as my Daddy says?)
I left there, picked up the Spouse, who'd anxiously left the shipyard and started walking down Grand Caillou to meet me, he was so anxious. (He has been sure for the past 20 years that his Mom is hanging by a thread, and he's right, when you consider all her health problems.)
Back we went to the hospital ER, where I saw the cardio people hooking Grandma up to the usual octopus of monitoring wires, and the radiology people wheeling in the portable X-ray machine.
Good-byes all around, me back to work, Spouse out to Bayou Blue to pick up Daughter to feed her lunch, bring me lunch at work, and take Daughter back to stay with Grandma while Spouse & Grandpa took care of some business.
I got off work at 5, was picked up by the menfolk -- back to the hospital to see Grandma, settle Daughter with her for the night, and Spouse drove Grandpa home to get a decent night's sleep. (Which he only ever does when Grandma's in hospital.) I picked up Spouse -- He and Grandpa were watching the beginnings of the LSU/Ohio game --
Here I am back home at 8 p.m.; Spouse has wandered off somewhere to watch the game; Grandpa is at his house, undoubtedly snoring in the recliner while the game plays; Daughter is with Grandma, helping to ride herd on the hospital staff -- who had, when I was there about 6 p.m., just come to give Grandma a great big dose of insulin but had neglected to feed her all day long. Hmmmm. Well, that's why somebody usually stays with Grandma. She might not speak up for herself about things like that if her pain is distracting her.
Well, Grandpa could have gotten Grandma to the hospital early this morning, without me, just fine. I'm not sure why he called for my help, other than just to have some backup if she did, bless her heart, kick the bucket on the way?
I'd already dropped off my husband at his job, before dawn. I brought my son to school and tossed my work clothes into the van. I called Grandpa from the road to tell him I was on my way, and I called the lady at my office to whom I report my schedule, to tell [i]her[/i] I'd be late.
Then I got to the in-laws' and found Grandma in pain, of course, but coherent and dressed in the Xmas nightshirt and extra-warm fuzzy robe and pretty pink underwear I'd recently given her. (You know how the older generations like to dress up for the doctor. My poor doctors have to be content that I take a bath before I see them, never mind me wearing coordinated clothing when I'm sick.)
So -- off they went to the emergency room, and I trailed along in my vehicle. (Would you believe, even with Grandma's mobility issues, she can climb her little stepstool high up into Grandpa's big diesel truck pretty well, but can only crawl and struggle into my mini-van "by the hardest", as my Daddy says?)
I left there, picked up the Spouse, who'd anxiously left the shipyard and started walking down Grand Caillou to meet me, he was so anxious. (He has been sure for the past 20 years that his Mom is hanging by a thread, and he's right, when you consider all her health problems.)
Back we went to the hospital ER, where I saw the cardio people hooking Grandma up to the usual octopus of monitoring wires, and the radiology people wheeling in the portable X-ray machine.
Good-byes all around, me back to work, Spouse out to Bayou Blue to pick up Daughter to feed her lunch, bring me lunch at work, and take Daughter back to stay with Grandma while Spouse & Grandpa took care of some business.
I got off work at 5, was picked up by the menfolk -- back to the hospital to see Grandma, settle Daughter with her for the night, and Spouse drove Grandpa home to get a decent night's sleep. (Which he only ever does when Grandma's in hospital.) I picked up Spouse -- He and Grandpa were watching the beginnings of the LSU/Ohio game --
Here I am back home at 8 p.m.; Spouse has wandered off somewhere to watch the game; Grandpa is at his house, undoubtedly snoring in the recliner while the game plays; Daughter is with Grandma, helping to ride herd on the hospital staff -- who had, when I was there about 6 p.m., just come to give Grandma a great big dose of insulin but had neglected to feed her all day long. Hmmmm. Well, that's why somebody usually stays with Grandma. She might not speak up for herself about things like that if her pain is distracting her.
A young engaged person asked, "Is it sinful to think about sex when it's in the context of your approaching wedding night?"
To which I replied,
"Depends.
Oh, sorry, were you looking for a written-in-stone answer?
There is nothing wrong with the sweet anticipation of something that is supposed to be warm and joyful and pleasant and right.
On the other hand, now --
If you spent all day every day drooling over what you will get to do and what your spouse will get to do, to the point that it drives you into a closet to masturbate 12 times a day, and you lose your job because you are in your closet all day, and you give yourself carpal tunnel syndrome from all that... erm... fun... And then you have to have tendon surgery and you're temporarily disabled and your bills mount up and you fear to bring to your new marriage a mountain of debt so you take your little disability check to the casino and gamble it all away hoping to win enough to pay all your bills off and you stagger out of the casino at dawn on your wedding day having spent your last dime and having no money to pay for cab fare to the church and so have to accept a ride from your gambling companions who are glad to do it but then you have to explain why you arrived at your wedding in the limousine of a drug kingpen accompanied by his Mafia don best buddy and their six outrageously overdressed... ladies... of negotiable virtue... and there's all your family and your spouse's family and all the church people and the preacher and the photographer standing there staring at you with their mouths hanging open as if in a trance and the photographer finally snaps to attention and gets a really good shot of you as you emerge from the limo with the Don and the Kingpen helping you step out and an... escort's... gold feather boa wrapped around your neck and that's the only shot that comes out on your whole wedding day because at that point your underworld friends take offense and beat up the photographer and the preacher tries to intervene and a punch flies astray and accidentally hits him and so your minister stands there marrying you with a great big black eye and a missing tooth and you have to get married in a feather boa and not much else because your smoky whiskey gambling den clothing you wore all the night before was almost all ripped off of you in the free-for-all that developed on the churchhouse steps...
Now, see what evil can happen if you dwell with a little too much drooling on the joys of your approaching marriage bed?
Try to take a lighthanded approach. (Every possible pun intended.)
Read the Song of Solomon. Channel those thoughts into time-tested imagery and keep yer mind out of the gutter. And the casino.
The Happy Shimmies Belly Dance Hafla went absolutely perfectly stupendously well.
But of course my plan to sort of devote the day to myself went to Hell.
I was gonna style my hair just the way I wanted it, which would have required washing and air-drying and setting and schpritzing and doing all sorts of stuff to it, maybe a total of two hours' work stretched over half the day.
I was gonna paint the toenails and plan the make-up just right, and come up with a sort of decorative henna thing on the backs of my hands and down my face... I was gonna do all kinds of stuff, for myself, it was gonna be MY day from start to finish...
But you know it didn't turn out that way.
The boy needed a trip to the doctor. Not because he was especially sick, but because his stupid school won't believe he was and let him make up the work unless I pay a doctor to see him and tell me to do for him the things I already know he needs done.
The husband called me and actually wanted me to trot all the way across town to being him a doggone fruit peeler for his lunchtime mango.
How dare he. I shoulda told him to gnaw his way through the peeling. I shoulda told them all to be off with themselves.
Hmph.
So, after my final errand pre-Hafla, in the final available half-hour of the day, I threw on several disjointed pieces of costume and about 20 pounds of noisy flashy jewelry, and made up my face rather boringly as I would for any stage play.
I had not arranged anything for my "props" -- It was a Basket Dance, and I needed a) a basket and b) something to stuff in it.
I though about sticking Earl the Tomcat in it but I doubted he'd stay. So I just grabbed some silk flowers I'd had languishing in the van since Mama's funeral, tossed them in there, and off we went.
Us beginner types had a lot of fun and seemed to pull off our dance well.
The "performance troupe" (more advanced dancers and instructors) had a couple of dances, one more traditional, and one avant-gard thing, set to some scary industrial-construction-site music -- both were beautiful.
Of course none of MY guests took any photos... not even with their cell phones, dang it. But I should have access to some other photos and certainly anything that gets put up on the group's website.
(Gaaaaawd, I hate MySpace... I hope there's more available soon than the cutsie little MySpace site that Happy Shimmies had before their recent re-organization...)
Will definitely share piccies when I get my hands on some.
And of course you know I didn't get to rest on any laurels or anything. Hubby loaded me and the boy into the van and off we went to get some groceries he needed, jingling and jangling with every switch of hip and flash of half-exposed phosphorescent belly. Thank goodness this is South Louisiana; there's always some sort of costumed event going on, so I wasn't especially noticed.
Grandma Carolyn is doing very well. That cut across her forehead was bone deep; the staples are out now, and all the swelling around forehead and eyes, etc., gone down days ago.
You can tell how big a flap it was, cut loose, though. No doubt that would have been hanging over her eyes if she'd not been pressing the wound up and closed when I saw her that night.
She sits in her wheelchair a lot. That's probably a good thing. She doesn't enjoy her new stand-up recliner very much -- you've seen the commercials for those on TV -- not that she doesn't enjoy the way it would help her up if she needed it, but the chair itself is rather firmly cushioned. Not all broken-down and with hollows and lumps in all the right places to feel comfortable to her, like her old chair. (Grandpa gleefully got rid of the old chair -- which was, really, a love seat. Next on his agenda is that tatty old sofa...)
Things are working to eventually have the in-laws sell or donate or sign over -- however is easiest, best, quickest to do it -- the house to Mike. That's Grandpa's hard work, and Grandma & Grandpa's life together, that bought and paid off the mortgage on that little house, and the Spouse is their only child. All those half-brothers from Ma's first marriage would each get an interest in the house if she and Grandpa died, however. Hubby would get Grandpa's half-interest plus an additional fractional interest just like all his half-brothers, as the inheritors of Grandma's half. So, Hubby would be in majority control -- but would still need all those brothers, and all the offspring of the deceased brothers, to agree and sign off to accept their portion of the money if Mike wanted to sell the house, or forgo interest in ownership and let him alone.
He'd rather abandon his interest in the house altogether, than to wrangle over the details with any of those relatives, some of whom have had significant drug and alcohol abuse problems, and some of whom are "long lost", nowhere to be found.
And frankly, although I understand the reasons behind community property laws and inheritance laws the way they are here in Louisiana, in a case like this they sure are a pain in the bee-hind, and not especially fair. So I am glad that the in-laws approached their son and me about buying the house.
Also about moving into it. It needs major cosmetic renovation, and some practical remodeling. Grandpa, for example, wants to cannibalize a closet, a hallway, some unused space in the utility room, to make two full baths out of the 1.5 baths the house has now. Also, he'd like to get rid of the bathtub and have a walk-in shower, or even one of those walk-in bathtubs with a little door, have you seen those advertised?
I really really really do not enjoy a consolidated household. We lived with them a couple of different times over the years, as a very young newly wed couple, and when the kids were in their middle-school years. I couldn't take it. Well, I did take it, but I didn't like it much. Hubby finally had enough of it, and we moved out.
Nothing to do with them. They are great people. Couldn't ask for better in-laws or more supportive grandparents for the little ones. It's just the consolidation of households, I guess, being irritating. Lack of privacy. The amazing little things that get so irritating that you want to scream. Like the 5,000 decibel level Grandma seems to enjoy TV at.
I don't want to blend the households, to move in there again, until the remodeling is done and over with. And neither my Spouse nor his parents wants us to sink a lot of money into remodeling until our control of the future of the house is cemented -- not until Hubby owns it!
Louisiana is not only a community property state, but because of the roots our laws have in the Napoleonic Code (IMO that's why anyway) -- even if the in-laws tried to arrange a will to leave the house only and completely to Hubby, it would either be easily overturned, or at least it would have lots of ways to contest it and tie things up in a wrangly probate for years. They already have a basic will; that isn't gonna be enough.
All Heck could break loose if some one or more of the potential inheritors wanted to contest it -- and who knows how some of those wacky folk might react?
Even if they none of them wanted any interest, it would still take all sorts of hunting down of heirs and advertising for the long-lost ones and waiting waiting waiting to be able to tie up ownership tight and un-contestable.
And, if I am gonna move in there and take over the burdens and bills of that household and help with Grandma (she fell AGAIN this morning - only a bruised knee this time, but she panicked so badly she had to take nitroglycerin) --
If I am gonna do that, there HAS to be at least some basic remodeling done. It ought to have been done anyway, long ago, but they are very independent people, especially Grandma, and used to freak out and have a fit if you went over and tried to help around the place -- couldn't even throw out 20 year old phone books without a major hissy.
And while we would undertake the effort and expense for the in-laws, even if we were not planning to live there or own it or anything -- if that's all that was needed -- I still have no desire at all to undertake the effort and expense to do it up right, only to have Grandma keel over in 6 months for example, just as I finish sinking thousands into the property -- and then I'd have the newly refurbished house lying there in the water waiting for the sharks to circle in for their share.
In other words, we need to arrange things as the in-laws would like -- it's their suggestion -- and as we would like, all four of us --
1. Hubby needs sole ownership (well, by default, I guess I'd own it too.)
2. It needs to be done in such a way that we don't buy it -- we don't have the cash to make a fair price, and the condition it's in right now would not attract a good mortgage. So if we did purchase it it would be for a token amount. Actually, we'd be buying it with our agreement to take it off in-laws' hands and to remodel and live there and help take care of Grandma, all stuff we have a hand in anyway -- but Hubby owning the place would help to make it a break-even deal, or at least not too much of a financial loss.
3. The house needs to be owned -- whether by Grandpa solely, because Grandma transfers her half-interest to him -- or by Hubby -- in such a way, with such timing, and by such an arrangement of donation or gift or purchase, whatever -- However it's done -- It needs to be done in such a way that the action would a) guarantee Grandma and Grandpa could live there; and b) would not interfere with the Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security aspects of their income & health care, should either need to be transfered into a nursing home.
I got my cousin the "domestic lawyer" to recommend her best choice of a real estate practice in town to get advice from. I will be calling them this afternoon.
C'est Ma Vie 
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