Hearts and A Cute Little Cherub

Hope everyone had a happy over-rated, consumerist, singles-awareness day Valentine's Day.
Joe asked me if I was doing anything special for him for Black Sunday. After moments of deep thought, I said I wouldn't consider holding a pillow over his face tonight while he slept. But just tonight. Tomorrow, well, fair game.

Heh, I'm romantic like that.

But enough of sappy holidays that make me want to yack. I've been up to my ears in heart business, and I'm not talking about the kind with little edible messages.
Apparently my Doctor wants to buy a third vacation home thinks I may have a little issue called arterial fibrillation which, technically speaking, is a wonky heart. It also can cause a stroke, like the one I had a few years ago.
After the stroke, I went through a bunch of tests. One of which required a camera to be shoved inserted down my throat and filmed some sort of horror flick of my heart, which resulted in me loosing my sense of taste for five months (boo!) which lead to losing 20 lbs (YAY!). Unfortunately, after reviewing the footage, the director wasn't thrilled and wanted to re-shoot. Hellz-to-the-no! Plus my blood-sucking health insurance company said if I had one more test, a big guy named Brutus would show up at my house and club me to death. Or something like that.
By then I was also tired of being a human pin-cushion anyway so I cancelled all future tests and decided to just get back to the business of living.

Flash forward several years and now my Doctor has recommended that I revisit the issue and referred me to yet another cardiologist. Last month I had to wear a 24 hour heart monitor. If you've never had the pleasure, it looks like this.

And no, the zebra print boob-tube isn't required.
But the wires, 2lb recorder with fanny pack, and 40 yards of tape is. It's as comfy as it is fashionable, trust me. But besides looking like a terrorist, you can't take a shower and sleeping with it just plains sucks. In short, longest frickin' 24 hours ever!

But now my sadist of a Doctor wants me to be hooked up to the heart monitor for a month! A month of being C3PO! Are you kidding me?! Of course he wanted me to get wired up right before my vacation. Yeah right! Who wants to try to make it through airport security with me? Anyone? No one, eh? Thought so.

Besides, can you imagine the tan lines?

So the Doc scheduled me for a special Valentine's wiring. But before my appointment I called to get a grand total on how much all this fun is going to cost me. Actually, I called several times, over 3 weeks, and the bastards never called me back. Finally I get a call... from the hospital to pre-register. Not only did the lady have no idea I was waiting for a call with a total$, she had me down as a 78 year old widow with no living relatives! What the friggin'-frack? Oh and they even had my phone number incorrect despite the fact THEY JUST CALLED ME. Thank gawd they're just super gluing electrodes to me. Trust me, I'll have serious second thoughts if they come after me with a scalpel!

Several calls and nearly an hour being transferred or on hold later, I finally spoke to someone in billing regarding the cost. The following is the abridged version of the conversation:

Me: So how much is the heart monitor?
Dingbat: $460 Me: A day? Or for the month?
Dingbat: A day. I think.
Me: You think?
Dingbat: Yes. Maybe. I don't really know.
(silence)
Me: So what you're saying is it may cost me $460 Orrrrrrrrrr..... $18,000.
Dingbat: yes
Me: But your not sure which.
Dingbat: Right
(longer pause)
Me: That's a big difference between $460 and $18,000
Dingbat: Yeah, it is.
(FRIGGIN' CRICKETS!!!)
Me: So if you don't know which it is, who does?
Dingbat: I don't know.

After muttering something about the state's 7% unemployment rate, incompetent shit-for-brains, and recommending she connect me to the bitch who writes up the bills and mails them to me because that lady seems to have bionic super powers, I hung up with still no clear answers.

The day before my appointment I made one more attempt to get a price. This time I got the head of billing. I won't recreate that conversation but let's just say she was a passive-aggressive bitch that repeatedly called me "madam" and couldn't fathom why I would need such information and in the end, still couldn't give me a price.

I ended the day with a call to her manager and another to my doctor to let him know I am no longer his patient and why.

I've decided that going on with the business of living was the right decision and I'm not being dissuaded from it. The Doc had already been talking a bunch of smack about putting me on high octane blood thinners that would prohibit me from ever riding again. Hello?! I own a horse farm! In addition, Dr. Buzzkill said no more coffee, no more alcohol, and definitely no more fun. Seriously? Why the hell can't I be restricted from housework, annoying husbands and whining children! FML!

But before you think I'm jumping ship because of no more drinking the "negative effects on my quality of life", Doc's words, it's not. I feel in my heart of hearts (ha!), that this will just be more testing, more expense and not a single definitive answer...again. And frankly, I have better things to do.

Besides, when your time's up, your time's up. There's no gettin' away from it. Even if your sleeping safe and sound in your own bed.

Room To Breathe

Monday, Joe announced only hours before Morgan's dance class that he moved Morgan's dance shoes (TWO WEEKS AGO!!!)"because they needed to be put away", however he doesn't recall where exactly he put them... obviously not "away", but rather far, far away. We searched the house high and low and there's no sign of her dance shoes.

Oh, and did I mention her teacher is Hitler of the Dance? Yeah, there's no way we're showing up to dance without the proper dance shoes. I believe you get shot on sight for that.

So since Joe and his squirrelly ways got "us" into this situation, I suggested he get "us" out of it.

He spent the next 5 Minutes thinking through the situation and the best way to remedy his obvious blunder. He finally concocted the best plan to fix everything... he asked me to take care of it. Not the course of action I was hoping for, but time was ticking and let's face it, if I left it up to him he'd send her to ballet in SpongeBob slippers.
So I spent the afternoon calling around, trying to find the exact shoes required for class. A fifty mile road trip and $80 later I produced the required shoes, no help from the hubster of course.

Fast forward less than 24 hours later. I wake up to the sound of the school bus pausing momentarily at the end of our drive and then continuing on. I look at the clock; 7:18am! It seems as though the prospect of the alarm clock annoyingly waking up my husband bothered him so much that he turned it off before the little bugger had the chance to interrupt sleep.
I rush to get both kids up, fed, lunches packed and each off to their schools. Since Morgan missed most of last week due to our little visit from the Swinethrax Fairy, I felt it was imperative to get her to school on time. I ask Joe if he'd bring Morgan and I'd get Beck. His reply as he calmly enjoyed his breakfast, "I don't know where her school is." and simply continued watching Fox and Friends.

WHAT!?! It's three freakin' miles from our house!!!! Are you kidding me?!!!

Again, like the shoes, I knew if I forced the issue he'd prove he was correct in his incompetence. So to save our daughter from repeating Second grade, I tossed both kids in the car and managed to get them both to their schools on time.

Seriously, I just wonder what little gem of shit will get thrown my way tomorrow. I'm the super hero of others' craptastic blunders!

Here's a video that I'll be playing for Joe while ordering a load of concrete is creepy... hey. it's Halloween.

Plus I love me some Art Alexakis!

Well, That Explains That!

After about a year of Bev nagging me to join Facebook, I gave in. And as intended, I got hooked.

Well, all of a sudden I no longer get e-mail notifications. I checked all the settings, they're fine. But still, nada. Talk away all you want to me on Facebook, I ain't hearing a word. Bastards.

So today I finally try to get to the bottom of this issue (yeah, yeah, yeah I have plenty of other real issues I should be tending to, but whatev.) Anyhoo, I made sure they had the correct address and then the bright bulbs at Facebook sent me this incredibly incoherent e-mail:

Hey,

Someone else has registered and verified the email address Mala's email@comcast.net, which was previously tied to your Facebook account. Because they were able to confirm this email, mala's email@comcast.net has been removed from your account.

You can no longer use this email address to log in, and we will not be sending notifications for your account to that address.

You can still log in using mala's email@comcast.net. (Your same old account password will work with this email.) We will be sending notification emails for your Facebook account to mala's email@comcast.net.

You can change these settings at http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php

Please contact us at info@facebook.com if you have any questions.

Thanks!

The Facebook Team

Hmmmm, now let me get this straight, they've removed my e-mail address from my account and I can no longer use it to login. And in the very next breath they tell me to go ahead and use my e-mail address to login. Oh and I WILL and WILL NOT be receiving notifications to my e-mail address from this time forward.

Perfect.