In this past year Sharon and I have
had to come to the realization that our sons are growing up. They now think
they are more knowledgeable than we are in all subjects. We finally purchased
one of those flat screen TVs this year. We can now watch TV on a large screen
with our age impaired eyes. One evening when I turned it on it asked for a
password for the parental controls. I did not know there was a password on the
TV for parental controls and all I wanted to do was watch public television. I
asked Sharon how to get past the password and get the TV to let me view channel
11 our local PBS station. She did not know the password either. That was when
the remote was taken from my hands by my sons and they put in the password and
allowed us to watch TV. When I asked what the password was so if it needed to
be entered again I could do it, I was told “ you don’t need to know the
password, Dad”. Now I understand the parental control phrase. It is not that
the parents are in control. Oh, No, it means the parents are being controlled.
Matthew playing soccer.
Micah is a junior in college this
year (he reminds me of the statement about king Saul, from his shoulders up he was taller than all the people). He was adding up his bank accounts just before he went back to school and
low and behold the numbers added up to less in his accounts than a year ago.
How can that be when he is paying for college? I seem to have that problem
every year and I have a job. Turns out he was keeping paychecks in his wallet
and he was better off than he thought. I diligently searched my wallet but I
found no uncashed paychecks, all I have are unpaid bills in my wallet. Somehow that seems unfair to me.
We fed the soccer team at our house before the Oskaloosa game
They came, they ate, they left.
We had a couple of Dordt college
choir members stay with us overnight after their concert in Pella one evening.
I was driving home through Oskaloosa and stopped at a red light. This red light
has a turn arrow for left hand turns before the light goes green. Being
distracted by keeping the 2 choir members in the backseat entertained with a
running monologue that I am sure they were enjoying immensely and would have
begged for more if I had stopped talking I, of course went on through the
intersection when the car in front of me turned left. Half way through I
realized that the light was still red. You know that sinking feeling you get in
the middle of an intersection when the light is red? Oh, well, at least there were no police
around. You know, I still have no idea where that cop was when I went through
that red light because a couple of blocks later there were those lovely
flashing lights behind me. The nice lady officer asked me if I knew why I had
been stopped. I answered yes I just went through a stop light that was red. She
slapped me heartily on the shoulder and said, “that’s’ the one.” License,
registration, and insurance paperwork please. But she was nice and ran the
paperwork, found out I was not wanted on any outstanding warrants at the moment
and sent me on my way without even a warning. Got to love small towns. I kinda wonder what those choir members thought about my driving ability. They were only to eager to have Matthew drive them to meet the bus the next morning. Nah, I am sure there was no connection.
Matthew graduated from Pella Christian High.
Matthew drove from Oskaloosa to
Pella the first of the year to attend Pella Christian High School. He would
sometimes car pool with other students. One morning as he was riding with a
friend, he had a phone call asking if he was still in the parking lot in Oskaloosa. "No", he said, "why"? Well your car is here in the parking lot with the motor
running and we wondered where you were. Yea it is a good thing I was the one
paying for his gas to get to and from school in Pella wasn't it? When I think of all the times I sat in a cold car waiting for my sons, too cheap to run the car and heater while I waited, I am relieved to know I have paid to heat an empty car.
Late spring evening meal on the patio.
Hopefully I have refinanced our mortgage
for the last time now. I did it once more this year which after the last time
when every odd thing in the world happened including getting other houses
appraised instead of mine you would think I would have learned my lesson and
just stayed away from mortgage companies. But no, lower interest rates beckoned
with that seductive call. I dutifully sent in all the information that was
requested. Then I waited, and waited, until the loan officer called and said “we
have a problem”, you need to contact the IRS. Your application has been turned
over to the fraud division. Oh Yeh!! Those are
the words everyone wants to hear. It seems even though I reported my
salary to the IRS and they accepted tax payments, the IRS did not record a W2.
The transcript showed a W2 income but the actual W2 was not recorded and on
file. That of course had the auditor of the mortgage app. seeing red flags all
over the place. I know if you are like me you quite often report phantom income
to the IRS just to pay taxes you do not owe. I had to spend over an hour on the
phone with a representative of the IRS, who assured me that although they were
quite certain it was a mistake on the part of the IRS, there was nothing they
could do about it. And here I thought they were a kind and caring government
agency, and I know you all would agree that just the thought of the helpfulness of the IRS leaves you with warm fuzzy feelings. The bank did accept a letter from me stating what the IRS had told me
and approved the mortgage. I guess the bank didn't expect much from the IRS either.
Nothing like having a cougar show up in your back yard to keep small children away.
I know I am going clear out on a
limb here but I am sure I cannot be the only person in the United States who
believes that our health care system might be broken. Our health insurance
company who in an effort to keep health insurance costs down allows me to pay all
our medical bills except for the part that they have negotiated down with the
medical providers. You have most likely seen this on your health care
explanations sent to you by your insurance company.
Cost of Procedure
|
Health network savings
|
Amount you are responsible for
|
$23,835,892.32
|
$23,832,153.68
|
$3,738.64
|
If you noticed a strange omission there, good for you, you
can now apply for a bookkeeping job at minimum wage. Ha, Ha just kidding some
bookkeepers are paid at least 100.0025% the minimum wage. For those of you who
did not notice, there was no payment by your health insurance provider to the
actual medical provider. All the doctor or hospital received was notification
that the insurance company was aware that the bill had been padded to the
amount of $23,832,153.68 and the insurance company was not going to be gouged
in this manner. The fact that you are paying insurance premiums and the medical
bill is of course much too complicated a thought process for what the health
insurance industry kindly refers to as the “brain dead idiots that allow us to
automatically withdraw funds from their bank account every month” The health
insurance industry, of course, does not call its “highly valued customers” by a
politically incorrect name such as the above. They use the acronym BDIs.
Anyway
the reason for the above totally unkind rant on my part is one of our
encounters with the medical profession this year. Sharon had the wisdom to
contract an infection during office hours at our local medical center. It was
just so out of the ordinary for our family over the last 6 years that for a
moment I was wondering if I had somehow slipped into a parallel universe. “Calm
down everyone and put away the party balloons and cake this story isn't
finished yet.”
Sharon
quickly made an appointment to see a Doctor. They of course were all busy that
day but there was a nurse practitioner available. If one knows that you have an
infection and all that is required is a prescription for antibiotics, anyone
who can legally write a script will do. At least in the normal world one would
think so.
Well
instead of writing a prescription the good NP sent Sharon to have an ultrasound
to rule out a blood clot. OK seems stupid to me seeing that Sharon was on
Rituxan which lowers your ability to fight infections and she had a history of
getting this particular infection, which eats muscles and is quite deadly, but I
can understand wanting to rule out the blood clot prior to treatment, (OK, no
truth in that statement). Remember the part about quite deadly and eats
muscles, to me that would mean that time was an important factor. Well the good
NP sent Sharon home to wait until she decided on how to treat.
So just
to recap here, Sharon goes to the doctor’s office before 9 am. Calls the NP at
2 pm to ask if she can get an antibiotic. NP calls back at 4:45 to say, “No I
can not write a script for an antibiotic because your liver enzymes are
elevated. (Of course it only took about 5 minutes on the internet to find that
your muscles release liver enzymes as they break down. Boy, a flesh eating
bacteria couldn't be the reason for that could it?) The NP said she would
contact Sharon’s oncologist in the morning to find out what she should do.
Sharon asked, what do I do if this gets worse? “Go to the emergency room,” was
the NP’s answer. Ah, now we are back in my universe, never have a medical
problem during office hours. How crazy was it to even bother going to a
doctor’s office to start with. We should have just gone to the emergency room
right off the bat and given them our bank account information so they could
withdraw funds at their pleasure.
Of
course she went to the emergency room that night and began a 5 day regimen of
intravenous antibiotics. Instead of an office visit at the doctor and a $5.00
copay for the antibiotic, (not to mention the pain and everything else that
went with the flesh eating bacteria), we got to see those wonderful
explanations from our health insurer how they were saving us money by not
paying the hospital except for the portion that the insured (that would be us)
owed.
Although
I do want you to know that the NP did send Sharon a nice hand written letter
explaining how it was not her fault. As the commercial says Treatment $2,683.24,
letter from NP, priceless. I know you are all jealous and want a letter like
that now. Well I will sell you the one Sharon has if you send me the exact
amount of the medical bill.
We took Tony to see the SAC museum
I am still employed by VG Farms but
I have to wonder why occasionally. One day when they were short on labor I was
asked to drive a bus full of just weaned pigs to a nursery. Well I hopped in
the driver’s seat of that old school bus and took off down the road. As I
turned onto the highway the bus listed off to the right. OK so it more than
listed, it felt like it was going to tip over and came to a dead stop.
Seems I might have taken the corner a little too sharp and had dropped the back
right wheels of the bus into the ditch. The front of the bus was on the highway
blocking a lane of traffic. The rear of the bus was setting firmly on the
gravel and the wheels were turning ever so freely and happily in the air. Of
course the bus was twisted just enough the door would not open so I could sit
there while all of the labor force that was not available to drive the bus
could come to point and laugh, while I was flinching and cowering down every
time traffic on the highway would slow at the last moment and swerve around me.
After a while a wrecker came and pulled the bus out, funny thing is though I
have not been asked if I would deliver any pigs in the bus since then. For
those of you who are wondering I couldn't have planned it better myself.
Tony, real name Zou YiShuan
We have had a Chinese international
student living with us this year. He had a couple of friends stay overnight one
weekend. After breakfast the next morning, one of them saw our family picture
on the wall. He asked how long ago the picture was taken. I said about six
years ago. He said “you looked a lot better then.” Wow and here I thought I
look just as young and handsome as I did when I was twenty.
I am always willing to help Tony
with his homework, even though he never asks. I try to be helpful and give him
answers to his calculus questions, but for some reason he doesn't believe me
that the answer to every problem in calculus is “12”. They must have learned a different math in
China.
On our front porch.
I was out for a walk one night when
my phone rang. I answered it only to have a woman yelling at me “why do you
even have a phone if you are not going to answer it?” I said “well I am
answering now. Who is this” I’ll never know because she had hung up. I thought
about calling her back to see if she answered her phone but thought, Nah, let
her think she straightened up whomever she thought she was yelling at, and
seeing as this is already four pages long I had better stop before more people
I don’t know are yelling at me.
Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year.
Christmas 2013
Our rock flower beds. After the past couple of days, this looks very nice.
