A Scrambled Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Er...actually I am still alive....


Just really really busy with life.


So much has happened in the last few months that my brain hurts thinking about it. Best thing is we got a new house and sold an old house within 2 weeks of it being listed and didn't have to make the extra payment on the mortgage. Felt really sorry (not really) for all the other houses that sat on the market for 6 months or more in my old neighborhood. Yeah for us! This felt really great since we had to replace the stupid AC in the old house two months before we sold it. Really sucks when your AC craps out in June in Houston, and you aren't planning on it crapping out in the first place. Puts a pinch in the wallet with all the other things that happened...oh..like our house got struck by lightening in July and fried various appliances, play stations and fried the heater circuit control board...and almost fried me. I was standing at the back door talking on my cell phone (yes i am an idiot) when the house was struck, and the lightening discharged down and hit the back door and knocked me off my feet. That was not a pleasant sensation at ALL. Reminder to self...never ever be on anything that can attract static during a thunderstorm.

On the brighter side, I never win at lottery scratch offs, but for two days in a row I won $100 on scratch offs. Usually I am in the negative on those, that is why I only play them once or twice a month. I guess this means I should high tail it to Vegas....because I did win at poker last month at my friend's house...hmmm...me in a Vegas poker tournament!! Hah!

My son today at daycare (he is 5 yrs old) told one of his daycare buddies to say "poopyhead".

Usually I wouldn't get worked up over one "poopyhead", but this was the second one. The first time I heard him say it was when I was dropping him off to daycare one morning. I sternly told him not to say that in school or anywhere else, because it was impolite. I told him he would get in trouble next time.

So I get a letter today from his teacher about Stephen encouraging one of his friends to say a naughty word. When I asked me son what the bad word was, he said "poopyhead".

I told him, didn't I tell you that wasn't a nice thing to say and not to say it? He said yes and his big brown eyes got reallllllly big and that pouty lip came out...but I didn't laugh and I told him he could get one of two punishments: his mouth washed out with soap or a spanking.

He doesn't like spankings, so he chose to get his mouthed washed with soap.

Now when I was a kid, getting your mouth washed out with soap was not only NASTY, but humiliating.

What did my son do? He blew bubbles and said....can I do it again??

Anyways, strike soap in mouth off the punishment list...

Today marks our two year anniversary of our first date together (and a blind date to boot). Even though our wedding date is a different date and means a lot to me, this day in particular means more to me, because it is the first day that Robert entered my life.

I won't go into mushy details about love at first site or "soul mate", but that was how it felt that first date.....everything went right, felt right and was right.

I wish that we could have spent this day together, but he is half a world away into tomorrow, and all I have is my thoughts and memories of the last two years to keep me company.

Which was just fine, because missing him on this day made me appreciate him even more for all that he has brought into my life.

I haven't posted lately, just been so busy with life, work and kids.

Lately I have had the urge to buy a leather journal and start writing in it everyday. I don't mind posting to my blog occasionally, but I wanted something that I could write in and have it passed down to my children, and possibly their children.

I have noticed in the past few years that my memory is not what it used to be. I try to remember things from my childhood or teenage years, and it all seems fuzzy at times. So I thought I would start writing down the daily things that happen in my life so that in my later years, I can flip through the pages and remember my life.

Some people make scrap books, others blog, some do videos, but I chose to do it the old fashioned way with a leather journal and black indelible ink.

I went to Barnes and Nobles and checked out what they had there, and found my first journal. It is a nubuck leather journal, hand made in Tuscany, with Leonardo Da Vinci's famous charcoal horse drawings on the front. I didn't buy it there, but went online and got a discount online, plus using a 15% coupon and our members discount rate.

So for the last week I have been writing in it everyday, and at the rate I am going, I will need to buy my second journal soon.

I am having great success in getting my patients to stop smoking with Chantix. This is a new drug out on the market that has double the success rate as Zyban. Ever since taxes went up yet again on cigarettes, a lot of patients have found the will to really try and quit. I also have patients coming in and requesting the medication because other family members used it and quit.

Most insurance companies will not pay for it, but the cost is equivalent to a pack of cigs a day. (I really hate insurance companies. They will pay for all the medications that a patient will need to be on to treat their chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which costs thousands of dollars over their lifetime, but will not fork out $500-600 dollars for smoking cessation).

Anyways, any smokers out there who read my blog, if you have been thinking of quitting, now is the time to ask your doctor about Chantix.

It rocks.

My daughter has been having a hard time in school this year, particularly in honors math and honors language arts classes. She has ADD and OCD takes medicine for it, but the work has been piling up and now it is a roaring avalanche of paperwork that threatens to smother her until the end of this semester.

Her main problem is that she is paralyzed with fears of failure, so much so that she just withdraws into her room and doesn't speak to anyone. Lately she has been lying to us and telling us that she has completed her work, but then I get emails from her teachers that paint a different picture. When I confront her with the evidence, she cries and says she can't finish them because she is afraid of getting a bad grade. I point out that if she doesn't attempt to complete them, then she will get a zero, and that is a definite failure. Isn't it better to try and get a partial grade then not do it at all? I am scratching my head on this behavior, it doesn't make sense to me, how can someone be so afraid of failure that it keeps them failing?

So this weekend is basically devoted to helping her get everything done. On top of this, she has band recitals, and a competition plus concert on Monday and Tuesday, along with a book report, essay, science and math homework.

One thing that she is having a lot of trouble with is writing. For some reason, she has the preconceived notion that she can't write anything. Just a few years ago, my daughter was the star pupil in any writing class that she took. She was the only kid in her school in fourth grade that scored 100% on her TAKS writing test.

Now she can't string two sentences together without having a major anxiety and panic attack. I have talked and talked to her about this, but her fear of writing and failing is entrenched in her mind and I can't seem to help her with it.

She is also having trouble finishing math and science.

What has happened to my bright and intelligent daughter?

I think the main thing is her hormones. My daughter in the last year has gone from a five foot girlish awkward girl into a five foot six, tall and *ahem* buxom young lady. She is breaking out in zits and caving to peer pressure. God, the agonies of 7th grade! She is only twelve and looks like she is twenty one!

She went from not caring what people thought of her to being obsessed with her appearance and being "perfect" in clothes, jewelry and hair style. She talks more of these things than what she is learning in school.

Her hormones are hitting her hard, her anxiety levels have increased dramatically, and at the same time her level of concentration and deductive reasoning have tanked. Her self esteem is below zero, and I can't seem to find any reassurances that help her at all.

I tried to remember if I was this way at that age, and I can't remember being that obsessed with what people thought of me. So I talked to my Mom and she says nope, that I didn't care what people thought and basically did what I wanted and damn anyone who didn't like it. Hmmm..well maybe I wasn't like my daughter when I was young, but I definitely had some "issues".

Maybe this is why I am having such a hard time in understanding what she is going through. All I can do is be there for her and encourage her as much as I can, but it is getting harder each day. Why? Because she never listens and does the exact opposite of what I suggest. So I keep my mouth shut, but then she gets mad at me for not helping her. These unreasonable fears she has are wearing me down, and I am getting migraines, neck pain and feeling like crap. I have been sick off and on for four weeks now. I know it is because my immune system is down from all the stress.

I have taken her to a counselor, but all they did was label her oppositional defiant.

So here I am this weekend, yet again, helping her with assignments that should have already been completed and turned in.

I hope she gets through this phase without any major damage to her self esteem and self worth. I don't know about keeping my sanity intact....

Another report here of police who just don't give a rat's ass about people with a record.

Oh, so your pregnant and having a miscarriage, aaaaaaww isn't that too bad? So sorry, can't help ya, we need to book you on these offenses before you can get medical care (hahaha...if you get it at all).

What the hell?

I can't even imagine what this woman felt when she sought protection after her rape and was jailed and refused proper treatment. Not only did they jail her, but they stopped the investigation of her rape. I guess when you have a record you can't be a victim? Jesus H. fooking Christ!

When we got married last year, we had no idea how long it would take us to get to this point. First we had to sell his home, and then save enough money for an adequate down payment (20%), plus closing costs and costs of fixing my house to bring it to market. On top of that, we still needed to have money in savings to fall back on in case one of us lost a job while paying two mortgages. We seemed to have reached that goal and have been looking for a home to buy.

We found out soon enough that homes on the market for resale have gone up quite a bit, and that building from scratch might be the best option. Some homes that we looked at that had been built twenty or thirty years ago, were quite literally falling apart and would need major funds for repair. What amazed us was the asking price for these homes. We also looked at homes that had been recently built, one year to ten year range, and discovered that the asking price for these homes was about the same or more than having a home built brand new.

One of the things that restricted our choices was that I wanted to stay within the same school district (we have two children). So we were limited in our options, and had a hard time finding properties that matched what we wanted. Eventually it came down to two different builders, and we finally made up our mind and signed a contract today. Hopefully we will have a new house this summer to move into, and I am keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well and there aren't too many delays. I am also hoping that we can get my house fixed and on the market relatively fast and sell it quick. I hate paying two mortgages!

Some of you who read my blog may not agree with me on this one, but I think tobacco should be banned in this country. Ever since I started working in medicine and got a first hand look at what this deadly addiction does to people, I have felt that the choice to smoke should be taken away from people.

Eating in moderation doesn't kill people, neither does drinking alcohol in moderation. But smoking even a couple of cigarettes a day is just as deadly as smoking two packs a day. The number one killer of smokers is heart and lung disease, not cancer. The most expensive health care cost of smokers is chronic lung disease. "Texas taxpayers spend about $1.5 billion a year for treating tobacco-related illness in the Medicaid program for low-income people," that was from a Chronicle report in December. That is only in the medicaid program, you can imagine how much the private health insurance industry spends on smokers.

The numbers spent are staggering, the human suffering intolerable. I have personally seen my patients slowly suffocate to death even while on oxygen, weak and gasping for air, while they need an electronic scooter just to move in their house. A few months ago one of our patients died this way, after being in and out of the hospital seven times in the year before his death. Last month one of our patients came in to get her yearly referral to her lung doctor to follow up on her lung cancer that she had removed four years ago. She still smokes. This woman lost an entire lung from LUNG CANCER induced by smoking, and she still smokes. Her excuse? I can't quit, it is too hard. She has "tried" everything, but cannot quit. People who smoke around their kids are the worst. If you choose to smoke then fine, but don't force your child to suffer the same fate you will just because you cannot say no. I have a lot of patients who never smoked, but suffer from chronic lung diseases because their parents smoked around them.

Studies have shown that nicotine addictions are just as powerful as cocaine or heroin, but yet it is still legal to smoke. I don't get it.

Or maybe I do. I guess the government thinks they can still make more money in taxes on tobacco than what they pay out in health care. Stupid thinking, that worked 30 years ago when people were dying much more quickly from smoking related diseases. Now they aren't, they just linger on and rack up millions of dollars in health care. Who pays for that? All of us, not just the smokers. Who inherits the bills? Our children. How are they going to pay for it?

There is a new drug out on the market that helps people with smoking addictions. Chantix hits the nicotinic receptors in the brain that gives a person the same pleasurable feeling as if they smoked a cigarette. I have encouraged all my patients to give it a try, the success rate Pfizer advertises is impressive. It isn't covered by insurance, and cost about the same as buying a pack of cigarettes every day. You would think that this is affordable, but most of my patients complain that it costs too much. Uhmmmm....you can afford to smoke two packs of cigs a day, but cannot afford this medicine to cure you of your addiction and thus save you a lot of money, not including what you would have spent in the years to come on your health care? You do not smoke when you take Chantix, therefore you substitute the cost of the cigarettes for the cost of the medicine. It is simple. Really.

The problem is that most people with addictions do not think logically about some things, and the most important thing they do not think about is their health and how it affects not just themselves, but everyone else, including their children.

Sometimes the rights of the individual should not exceed the rights of the greater good. Bottom line, it costs too much money and causes too much suffering in the end.