Becoming a web geezer

I am officially moving at the end of the week to “the web department.”  Have to say, feels kind of weird.  Me, on a web team.  I suspect I should start wearing my glasses more often and maybe purchase a pocket protector for the pens I will start carrying against my will.  :-)

Soon a flurry of holiday preparations will begin.  I opened my mouth and out emerged a voluntary commitment to host Thanksgiving for the in-laws here.  Don’t ask – I don’t know either. 

Friend is getting married next Saturday. My best friend and another and I will be getting together this coming Saturday – first time since this spring.  Well, my best friend and I have hung out but Daniele will be with us again this time.  We all live in a very far-reaching triangle so not often realized treat to all be together.

Catie, James, Linsay and John are coming over for dinner next Friday.  We’re working our way through the rounds of our friends and also co-workers.  Technically I guess we’re actually having our boss over for dinner.  :)

Well, off to bed.

Hospitality

We had some folks over for supper last night which was really fun! I’m working on getting over my inhibitions to hospitality which have been: Our house is not exactly built for large groups. Our table seats 4 comfortably, not 8. Our living room seats 6. We have 4 plates that match. 6 glasses that match. A tight meal budget that doesn’t allow for “fancy” food. So I did spaghetti (and yes, I threw some of it out because I got it on sale anyway and made way too much of it……), we ate off mismatched plates and cups while our plastic 6 foot table from the wedding and our regular table made their way into the living room, where the guys talked and the gals gathered on the master bed. And you know? It was great fun and good conversation abounded. We have another round of dinner guests on Nov. 7 and we’re working our way around the office. Anyway – a hospitable home is a happy one. I’ve always known that. I’m glad to be able to start working on being one!

My child now groweth

My little baby is 14 some pounds now, growing like a little weed and has begun burbling at me, then cackles at whatever she is burbling about.  It is quite a fun stage in life.

I feel extremely tired.  Not sure why, because she’s pretty much sleeping all through the night or at the very least, almost all through.  We go to bed at 10 and get up around 6 or 7 depending on what day it is, and most days she sleeps from 9pm til about 6 – sometimes gets up at 4:30 to eat.  But I am literally about to fall over dead asleep almost all the time.  Yet when I try to take a nap, I can’t.

I’ve read two great things lately which I will share.

1 from Money magazine: People seem to forget around about every 4 years that the man elected will have less to do with the big decisions/changes than this little thing called Congress…..thank you, people!  I am so sick of people acting like whichever is elected will make SUCH a huge difference.  You’re more likely to get “different” if you try worrying a little bit more about your local judges and politicians and then your state representatives.  The city of Griffin, for instance, is run by horribly corrupt politicians.  Yet the people are more concerned with who owns the title “Mr. President” because in their deluded little minds they really believe that THIS time it WILL be different than LAST time…..and the time before…..and the time before….  Yes.  I am a realist and not a pessimist.

2 from Parenting magazine: Ignore the common “rule” of not worrying about the housework when you have a baby around.  Reality is that falling into a state of chaos does not help a new mom’s stress level.  AMEN!  I’m kind of sick of that advice, actually.  That and sleep when the baby sleeps because as I just said, I can’t get to sleep on the drop of a pin.  My body clock says to be awake during the day regardless of how much I wish my bodyclock would go on daylight savings time or something.  lol

I remembered a third thing of interest.  There’s such a thing as a Jane Austen Society.  Guess what I will not be joining?  :-p

Quack Doctors

First, research and other pediatricians have stated that a bilirubin level under 12 on the first day after birth and under 15 on the second day after birth is completely fine and NORMAL. 

Reese had a 9 on the first day, a 10 on the second day.

Also, hospital paperwork itself states that breastfed babies lose up to 10% of their birth weight within the first 72 hours and that this is NORMAL.

Reese had lost 7%.

Stephen Carter was our attending pediatrician. Word to the wise – if you think the dr. you want goes to that hospital because the hospital says he does, check with the dr. so you’re not stuck with the pediatrician that comes in who may or may not be an idiot and a quack…..

Ok. Carter wouldn’t let us go home the first day when she was a 9 saying that was a dangerously high level for a baby and that her 7% birth weight loss was dangerous and scary too. He talked to us for like 10 minutes about how she could have brain damage and that we had to put her under bilirubin lights.

Bilirubin lights are medieval torture instruments. When a baby is most vulnerable (first 2 days after birth) and need warmth and swaddling and cuddling, our poor baby was instead required to be naked under bright lights, thus also requiring her to have a scratchy mitt over her eyes that was too big and thus she was always pushing it off. I will hold that guy personally responsible if she goes blind from UV ray damage at 10!

He almost wouldn’t let us go home the second day, stating that because her bilirubin level was rising, she was very dangerous and needed to be monitored by a doctor at the hospital. We pushed back because I had called someone who told me what the true concerning levels were, and he came back and said we could go home IF they could get us bilirubin lights to come home with us. We had to stay an additional 5 hours in the hospital while they attempted to find us these lights – but the insurance company wouldn’t pay for them because her level was not a dangerous one thus the lights were not required.

So we finally get home, and the only requirement is we have to get an additional bilirubin test the next day to make sure she’s ok.

Guess what?

First, we get a bill from the insurance company for “partial” payment for the two additional bilirubin tests. Why? Because they were not required tests because she was not in a dangerous position at all. Basically we were just curious to see what her level was and that’s why we had two more tests done. (By the way, just ask what it feels like to stand in a room while a nurse uses a razor to cut open your baby’s foot and then squeezes on it for 10-15 minutes trying to get blood out while your 2 day old baby cries piteously.)

Second, the hospital sends us more bills to pay for the remainder of those bilirubin tests (so we’re paying 100%) because the insurance company now claims that these were to go under Reese’s account which meant another $1,500 deductible, even though she supposedly is under my account with my already paid $1,500 deductible…..

Third, the quack doctor who put us through all this and caused us another $400 in costs, sends us a bill for $50, which is the cost of his two visits to us.

Add in that I’ve been on the phone with the insurance company for 2 hours and 27 minutes about one situation or another, waited at the hospital for over 30 minutes two different times for those additional tests, the additional 29 hours we had to be at the hospital, the two torturing tests done to my poor baby, and the horrible lights she had to endure.

ALL because one doctor out of the whole bunch needed an adventure and think that her perfectly normal self was dangerous. 

Oh yes, and when I complained heftily that day I was told we could go home IF we signed a release saying we were leaving against medical advice (which is an immediate insurance won’t pay one penny situation).

Lovely?

Stay away from Stephen Carter! He is the reason I will never go to a hospital for a birth. It is also a sign to me that I should have listened to my intuition and my research and ignored the “free” hospital birth option and simply gone with a midwife at home.

Five Things I Do and Do Not Love

Five Things I Love:

(in addition to my husband, baby, dog, friends and coworkers)

1) Swiss Chocolate; thinking of Joan I nearly added the remaining 4 as Belgian chocolate, French chocolate, English chocolate, American chocolate…..but I will refrain.  Chocolate is basically the idea of this favorite.

2) Football on a cool crisp evening; I miss John and David’s games when Bekah and I would roar our praise and encouragement from the sidelines as we rummaged up and down the lines losing our voices…needless to say, Carol would be quite disapproving of our unladylike behavior.  :-)

3) New unwritten leather bound journals with nice neat faint lines to write upon;  I’m a sucker for them.  For anything leather actually.  

4) Organized living;  I love reading about it, how to do it, ideas for doing it better, and trying to do it. It’s my favorite section at Barnes and Noble, too, incidentally.

5) Weather that requires neither heating nor cooling apparatus; it saves money, which would be one of these top 5 only I’ve run out of numbers.

Five Things I Do Not Love:

1) Gas prices and shortages and the very necessity for having gasoline in the first place.  I know horses clouded up the atmosphere just as bad or worse and that everything stank back then, but please, I just want to ride a horse everywhere.  Cars are over rated.  Except in summer.  And winter.  And rainy weather.  Ok.  Never mind.  I’ll stick with the car.  But can we PLEASE figure out an alternative option to gasoline that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg?  

2) Rude people; there is really no need for being rude unless someone is being rude to you.  As in, if I am rude to you, then feel free to be rude to me.  But if I’m being nice, then for the sake of all decency, BE NICE BACK!  

3) Photographers who cannot photograph.  Especially those at a family attracting business who appear to hate children and babies and have no idea how to deal with them nor take photos of them.

4) The smell of raw meat cooking.  Once it’s cooked I’m fine, just the smell that is emitted during the process of edible-izing is ghastly.

5) Warm Coca-Cola.  It explains how it could once have been thought to be medicine instead of ahhhh…refreshing!