Keeping track

One of the things that I really love--okay, one of my obsessions--is calendars. I love them, and I'm picky about them. When I find one I really like I want to keep getting it every year, but sometimes that causes some anxiety. I used to start getting really anxious when the calendars came out around September each year, wanting to be sure that I could get the ones I wanted.

Then the big bookstores--when there were still big bookstores--would have them for half price or less after the end of the year, so I tried to wait for that, and I was lucky for awhile. Then they got smart and stopped carrying so much inventory, so by the end of the year all they would have would be "History of Shoes" or "Sharks of the World" or The Simpsons.

Bob has gotten me Llewellyn's Witches' Calendar for several years now for Christmas. The last couple of years he hasn't been able to get it locally, so this year he went right to the website and ordered it, and then, of course, he went to Barnes and Noble and they had it. That one hangs next to my desk/sewing machine.

Then we have a calendar in the bedroom, and for several years that has been a Spirit of the Far East calendar. And I bought the "Zen Cat calendar for work last year and really liked it, so I wanted it again for this year. I didn't even try to get them locally, though, I just ordered them from Amazon.

I also ordered my favorite datebook, We'moon Gaia Rhythms for Womyn. I know. "Womyn." But I love it. It's perfect. I think the first time I bought it was in a gift shop in Sarasota, but I've never seen it anywhere else. Since then, I've ordered it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble, wherever it was cheaper. I tried to not buy it this year, but I caved and placed the order on Christmas Day. It looks like they probably won't arrive until after the first, but that's okay. I'll try to not wring my hands too much.

Bob also has a calendar he needs every year, the Trout of North America calendar, and I ordered it for him from Amazon, too. It's an odd size, and fits in his bathroom on the wall between the toilet tank and the shelf above it. Oh, and we always have one in the kitchen, but I don't obsess over that one. If someone gives us one, that's cool, or I'll pick up a cheap one somewhere. We always used to get one from my uncle's service station, which was neat, but he passed away last year, and we don't get that anymore. (I ended up getting Charles Wysocki Cat Tales at Joann on the clearance rack last week.)

Barb got me a mini Japanese Wood Block Prints calendar for Christmas, and that goes by my "writing" chair. So I think we're pretty well set for calendars!

For the past few years I have successfully kept myself from buying Franklin Planners or similar; I love them so much, but I just can't justify them anymore since I keep my calendar on the computer. And they're heavy, and I get tired of carrying them around, but they're useless if I just leave them at work, so I try to resist. The We'Moon one is a compromise. I probably don't really need it, but it's lighter than some, and not too bad to carry around, or at least that's what I tell myself.

Weekend

I didn't feel like I accomplished a lot this weekend, but I did accomplish some things.

I don't usually do a huge shopping trip all at once, partly because it's too expensive, and partly because I can never really plan, since Bob doesn't work a regular, set schedule.  Some days he goes in at 6:30 a.m. and works until 3:00, some days he goes in at 1:00 and works until 9:30.  So I tend to go to the store a couple of times a week and just buy what I know I need.

Yesterday I asked him what he wanted for dinner (this was a day when he was working until 9:30 at night), and he said hobo dinners.  I had gone out earlier in the day and gotten my nails done and had lunch, then I had come back home and fallen asleep in my chair.  I didn't really want to go back out, but I needed to.  I needed to get potatoes, onions, and ground beef.   I decided I wanted to go someplace different, just to be a little more interesting, so I went to the WalMart grocery store (Neighborhood Market?).  I have been there a couple of times, but I don't usually shop there.  I usually go to Target, occasionally to Price Chopper, and sometimes to Hen House because there's one very close to home.

So anyway, I started walking around, and got the things I needed, then thought, well, as long as I'm here I might as well try to plan some meals.  So I got enough ground beef for the hobo dinners last night, chili tonight, and maybe something Italian tomorrow night, if there isn't enough chili left for chili dogs.

I also got stuff to make vegetable soup, which I did yesterday, and which will be my lunches all week.  I've already portioned it out into individual Rubbermaid containers.  What else . . . I bought peanut butter and jelly, and potato chips and bread, bacon and eggs, lunch meat and cheese, a lot of cans of cat food, and various odds and ends.  It came to almost $100, and filled four reusable bags, which is what it almost always costs anymore--a bag is $25.

I really hated to spend that much all at once, but I shouldn't have to go to the store any more this week unless it's for bread or something like that.  I never plan meals for the week, but this week I could:

Saturday - Hobo dinners
Sunday - Chili and biscuits
Monday - Chili dogs
Tuesday - Italian casserole
Wednesdayt - Ham sandwiches and tortilla chips
Thursday - Grilled cheese sandwiches and potato chips
Friday - Bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast

When I was making the chili tonight, I was opening cans of beans and tomato sauce and tomato paste and whole tomatoes, and breaking up the tomatoes in the pan, and I wondered why I always buy whole tomatoes.  I always do, and it seems like maybe they are better, but I don't know why.  Why not try diced ones, or better yet, crushed ones?  I guess I do it because that's what my mother always got.  But it made me think of that old story about the new bride who made a pot roast and cut off the ends first.  Her husband asked her why she did it that way, and she said that was the way her mother did it.

The next time she saw her mother, she asked why she did that, and her mother said it was because that's the only way she could fit it in the pan!

So maybe the only made  cans of whole tomatoes when my mother made chili.  I don't know.  I guess I'll just keep doing it that way, though.

I also bought a new electric skillet this weekend, because the non-stick coating was coming off the old one, and a cookie sheet, and got prescriptions filled and went to Costco to buy coffee for work.  Just a bunch of normal errands, but kind of a lot of running around.  And I read a couple of books, which is always nice.

Oh, and listed a few things on Etsy.  So yeah, I accomplished some stuff.

Christmas failure

I always feel like I'm a failure at Christmas. I have all these grand plans, and don't live up to any of them, really. I intended to sew for Christmas -- I had plans to make pillowcases for everyone. Something that everyone needs and uses, and I have all this fabric already, so it wouldn't take any money, just time. But I can never seem to do anything ahead of time. I kept thinking I still had time, but time got away from me.

And then I had all the dental issues, and my mom went in the hospital, and things were just basically awful, and I didn't get anything done. I started out with such good intentions, but I didn't even get Christmas cards out. Maybe I'll just go ahead and address them now, and mail them next Christmas.

We had a nice Christmas Eve with Bob's family at his brother's house, and we had our family Christmas at my sister's boyfriend's house on Christmas Day. We stopped to see my folks briefly on the way there. One of my nieces was sick, her whole family was sick, so we didn't see them, and Bob's sister and husband didn't come because they live out of town and she had to work (in a hotel) on Christmas Day, so we didn't see them, either. And Bob's mother is gone, so that still seems weird to me, and my parents don't really want the whole big deal holiday anymore, which I completely understand. I know we have to make new traditions, and we're working on it, it's just really hard.

But we will all survive, and I will just try -- as I always do -- to do better next year.

Old Dog ≠ New Tricks

(I had to go look up the code for the "not equal to" symbol.

I ran across a pattern that I really wanted to knit, but when I opened it up, saw that it was charted, and was very disappointed. I know that there are people who like charts, and maybe that's the wave of the future, but I don't like them. I Googled "how to read knitting charts," and honestly, reading most of the links I found made it seem more complicated. The thing that I thought I might never get the hang of was that on one row you read the chart from right to left, and the next row, left to right. I'm pretty sure I would screw that up.

So I sadly put the pattern away, and then I thought, I could translate it. So this old dog, instead of learning a new trick, wrote the pattern out in words. Or, not really words, I guess, but knitting shorthand, i.e., K3 M1 K20 SSK K2. I guess if you learned using charts, it might be easier, but it isn't for me. Oh, and crochet charts? Forget it.

When I was a teenager I crocheted Barbie clothes, edgings and doilies out of crochet thread and steel hooks, using old pattern leaflets. I crocheted them by reading the patterns line by line. Looking at crochet charts makes my head explode.

I suppose, like anything else, I could learn to do it, and once I had practiced awhile, I'm sure it would come to be easier, but I just don't have that motivation right now. That's why I love the multi-directional diagonal scarf pattern -- I can knit it on autopilot.

Here's a fun plan

When I went to the dentist to have the temporary crown fitted, he said that there was a growth or something on my gum that hadn't been there two weeks before when I had my first appointment with him. He was very careful to tell me that he didn't think it was anything to worry about, but that it could be in the future, and he thought I should have it looked at. So after the next appointment, when he put the permanent crown on, he gave me a referral to a periodontist. I had the appointment with her today.

I didn't really know what to expect, except that the dentist said the periodontist would probably remove it (it just looks like my gum is kind of swollen or overgrown or something in one spot). So today she just looked at it, and poked and prodded around in my mouth, then said she was going to go make some notes and would come back in and talk to me.

After awhile, she came back in and her office assistant had apparently called my insurance company, and they had come up with this whole "treatment plan." She said that she needed to remove the thing, and send it to the lab for biopsy, and she "would be shocked" if it was cancer, but it could be, in which case we would have to talk about a treatment plan. But she assured me that she thought the likelihood of that was small, but still possible.

She said it could be a couple of things, one of which is caused by hormones, and if it's that thing, then even if she removes it, it could come back, but she won't know until the labs are done. And then she said I probably grind my teeth at night because I have some gum recession, and my bite isn't ideal, and my teeth are crowded, and in order to fix that, she thinks I should have braces (aside: her husband/partner is an orthodontist), but I would need to have them before I get an implant for the tooth that was pulled, because an implant won't move, blah, blah, blah. I kind of tuned out at that point. I'm sixty years old, I'm not going to get braces. But I nodded, and said, okay, okay, okay.

Then she showed me how much it is all going to cost, and my head sort of exploded.

And, while they will submit bills to the insurance company, they expect me to pay up front, then have insurance reimburse me, which I have never had done. I said that, and she said, well, we're not in network, so they won't pay us, which I know for a fact is not true.

So I said, well, okay, but I'm not prepared to pay for this now, today, and she said, oh no, it won't be today, I'm not doing anything today, you'll have to make another appointment. And I said, okay, but even then, I don't see how I'm going to pay for this in one lump sum, and she said, well, talk to the office assistant, maybe you can work something out, and she shook my hand and left.

Oh, and if you pay in cash, they give you a 10% discount, which, I'm sorry, that just struck me as odd. I made an appointment for the first week in January, and the office person reiterated that I wouldn't get a discount if I didn't pay in cash, but if I gave her a credit card number she could divide it up into three payments ("we don't usually do that for such small amounts, though," she said) and they would auto-charge it ("we don't send out invoices").

I know that it's a business like any other, and they weren't mean or anything, and of course they expect to get paid, I understand that.

And there was apparently a charge for the consultation today -- she didn't tell me how much it was -- she said she would submit it to insurance and have them send the check to them, and then bill me for the remainder, so obviously what the doctor told me earlier about insurance not paying them (and what the assistant said about not sending invoices) wasn't true.

I went out and sat in the car and cried. Bob was off today and he was out Christmas shopping, and he called to see how it had gone, and I couldn't even really talk. He was walking around Costo, and he was giving me a running commentary, trying to cheer me up. He's so good about stuff like that. I know I'm kind of crazy sometimes, but he's awfully good to me.

I had told my dad that I might come out this afternoon if I felt like it after the appointment, thinking that they were actually going to do something other than upset me, so I drove out there, pretty much crying all the way, but trying to get it together. He made me lunch (chili) when I got there, and we sat and talked, and I teared up a little bit when I told him (and I am now, thinking about it again), but it wasn't too bad.

Mom is doing great -- she's back home now -- and while I was there the visiting nurse came, so I was glad I was there for that.

My inclination about the periodontist is to call and cancel the appointment, and think about finding someone different. I didn't dislike her personally, but I just don't feel right about it. And the whole thing, of course . . . I know it's not my fault, but really, it kind of is. If I had kept up going to the dentist all along, maybe it would have happened anyway, maybe it wouldn't. No way of knowing, but it's like now I have this whole lifetime plan of going to the dentist every two weeks and it's awful.

At one point she said, I know it seems like a lot, you go along for a long time and everything is fine, and then everything sort of happens at once. But you can save for it . . . and I thought, wow, yeah, I really want to start putting money aside for dental work, that sounds like fun.