Sparks and Butterflies...

But aside from that, she's still completely normal

Crazy Relatives and a Crazy Few Days

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The last week or so have been yucky and crazy. And this week, the kids are on spring break, while I deal with all this with them at home. It’s no big deal – just adds a layer of complication.

So… Let’s see. Let’s go topically.

Joseph

He had two incidences at school last week prompting calls to me etc. I won’t go into the details – at 15, that’s his story – but as a mother, it leaves me anxious, nauseous, worried, and and then I’m unable to sleep, which just makes everything worse.

Logan

Last week, Logan had three separate performances for the orchestra, missing a day of school for one set of them. He made it into a week long summer music camp (awesome) but I think I’m going to have to take him to the doctor to get a medical release (not so awesome – hard to get those appointments). In addition, his IEP for the year (go over this year, prepare for next year) happened. But they did it at 7:15am – meaning I had to get up at 5am, when I had only been able to get to sleep at 3am (see Joseph above). It’s been rough.

AND? I have to take him to the Museum of Tolerance for a required assignment. The assignment was that we could go to a memorial which is 5 hours away, minimum, or the Museum of Tolerance, or do a book report. Logan is on an IEP for learning issue – one main issue is converting his knowledge into the written form to convey his ideas. To do well on this assignment, the book report is a poor choice. However. We are busy on Sundays. They are closed on Saturdays. That leaves the work week. I don’t want to take him out of school, which leaves spring break. Which means, I have to lose a day of pay, and pay $50 to get Logan and Joseph and me in (Joseph is on break so he has to come with us), plus another $20 in parking. That pisses me off. And it pisses me off that the teacher is like, well of course you can spend that money. Um? Yes, he could have done the book report, instead. True. But that wouldn’t have actually taught Logan much in the way he learns. So I’m left paying the price, not to mention pissing off clients for a non-emergency. So that’s happening Thursday.

OB

My brother (currently the oldest since Robert died) has been having issues. I’ll call him OB, many of the issues are legal. Him and his wife, I’ll call OBSIN – it fits, have been sucking my father into their issues. It’s a long story that started about August of last year. I won’t get into it here in case of legal issues. But just a smidge of the drama, in one day and night, I contacted the Sheriff’s department five (5 as in 1-2-3-4-5) times due to her drama. OB spent some time in jail. He then got out on probation (or is it parole? It’s the one where you serve the rest of your sentence, really, but out). But they have significant financial troubles, and have been mostly homeless. I know OBSIN eventually was staying with a niece of hers, but I don’t know if that’s the case. My father’s been helping them off and on, in little bits. He let OB live in the back apartment for like two weeks after jail. All he did was sleep and eat. I tried to give him resources for jobs that take freshly released inmates – he DOES have skills – but he didn’t want them. Whatever dude, you’re 57.

The reason they’re homeless? They were living on his job’s property – the boss let them live in the basement of the place he worked. The deal was OB only, OBSIN was out of the state. Then she came back – and really that’s where it all went downhill. She wanted things her way, told OB’s boss, and OB’s boss was like… Um, no. So she smacked him. So he fired OB and kicked them out. They then tried to turn around and sue for unemployment and unlawful firing. Because that’s how they roll.

Anyhoo… Moving on past conviction, jail, an incident that landed me a 4th cat, the Sheriff, and an OBSIN who wanted to bring up ancient history when she didn’t get her way, and OB is out. Dad actually had all OB’s work stuff (he had his own tools/machinery), and it’s all in the yard tarped up. Dad found out that OB was driving a truck. His license is suspended, and the truck apparently belongs to a dead friend. My dad warned him again and again not to drive, and not to drive that truck.

In the meantime, They have a storage unit of stuff (they stashed stuff in storage all over town, and then we started getting collections calls trying to track them down). It went to auction due to non-payment. OB begged dad to bid. Long story, of course, short, and the auction finally happened yesterday. Well, the night before yesterday, Dad was trying to get ahold of OB. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t having any friends, or OBSIN’s mother, bidding in the auction too – because that would just be their way. Dad never heard from them. So we bid in the auction – and we actually upped Dad’s high bid by several hundred more dollars than he wanted to go, but ultimately we lost the auction – he just didn’t want to go that high, and they are now losing their possessions.

I’m sure that will be Dad’s fault in the end. Or mine, for “talking him out of it.”

The reason that OB didn’t get back to Dad is because he’s been arrested. Again. For that damn truck. He’s currently being held on $25k bail $50k bail – it just got raised. OBSIN’s got the balls to ask my Dad for it (trust me – I haven’t told you half the story – it took serious balls), and Dad said no.

The Damned Computer

We received our tax refund, and we sat down and decided on what were our priority items needed, since we very rarely have a chunk of money. One of the things was a new computer. It would be for me, and Jay would take my perfectly great computer, because his died a painful death. The one that died was one we bought in one day for very little money so I could limp along with work after a cat/water incident. So this time, I was determined to get a good one that had what I needed to grow, and handle what I handle with ease. I finally chose one, and bought it from Amazon.

I got the computer two days ago, on Sunday, and I start setting it up. I have a bunch of different software I use. One thing I also use (because I’ve gotten my ass handed to me in the past) is Carbonite, for backups. So other than a browser I like, that’s one of the first things I tried to install to provide an easy switch for my files on my old machine. It would not – it said it couldn’t connect to their server, that it was being blocked somehow. So – I completely deleted their webstorage (in case that was blocking), the antivirus (I have one I’m installing of my own), and turned off the Windows firewalls. Still nothing. So I contacted Carbonite’s help support. They were very helpful. First dude took me through some things (like turning off the firewall). When that didn’t work, he took over my computer. He did a bunch of stuff, and from what I could see, he was hunting for hidden blocks, like virus scanning software/firewalls that might be hidden. There weren’t any. He finally apologized, and said he needed to escalate me to the next level of help. Story of my life, really.

The next lady was also very helpful, and took over my computer. She went into the system’s error logs. There were a bunch of errors that basically meant that Carbonite could not write to the harddrive. She said that she couldn’t help with that. Ultimately my computer was blocking permissions to Carbonite at the harddrive level, and that I would need to contact the seller or manufacturer. She sent me an email explaining what she did, the process used so I would have the verbiage, and the errors found, keeping the ticket open.

So I contacted Asus. While I purchased from Amazon, I figured they couldn’t help me actual internal tech support. At first I thought they would be helpful. The first person I talked to listened to what happened, and also had me paste the text from the Carbonite support. She went away, came back, and told that I needed to do a factory reset, and gave me the instructions on how. She then gave me a ticket number so I could come back if need be, after the reset was done, and installation attempted.

I attempted to reset using her instructions, but the key to get into didn’t work. Like at all. So I hunted a different way to get to the reset on the internet, and was able to set the computer to factory settings. But Carbonite again didn’t work. So I went back into the support, using the ticket I had. The new person basically said – too bad, so sad. That’s third-party software, we’re not gonna help. Why? Because I had installed something else that went fine. Carbonite is a little different though. It delves a little further into your system (on purpose, it’s meant to). But he said that since I was able to install other software, it’s a software, not hardware issue. I had already internet searched for this issue in regards to Carbonite. Nothing about this issue – and you know darn well, when it’s a software thing, everyone and their mother complains about it. It got heated between us. I said, “So – what you’re telling me is that the software says it’s hardware, the hardware says it’s software, the computer is out the box two days, you get a crapload of money, and I have a nice, expensive brick, and can’t access my work files?” Yes. They would be willing to have me ship them the laptop for a minimum of two weeks while they ran “diagnostics” on it. You know darn well those diagnostics would return as “fine.” I was spitting mad, and wasn’t about to send the machine to them and draw this nightmare out.

So? I called Amazon. I had a hell of time finding the proper contact number – so I just internet searched HELP Amazon phone number, and there it was. I spoke to a man named Charles. I told him what was going on in a basic way. This is what he said. He didn’t know if it was a hardware or software issue. But. He would send me another brand new computer, give me a label to send this one back. Then, at least I’m attempting with another machine. If it was hardware, maybe this will solve it. If it was software, I have another level of information to send to them. I get the new computer tomorrow. I’m not out any further money. He really attempted to listen to the situation and do what he could do to fix it. I specifically purchased the computer from Amazon fulfilling straight from the manufacturer, on purpose, so we wouldn’t have a third party selling issue on such an expensive item, and I’m so glad I did. So I’ll see what happens after I receive the new one.

Moral of the story is, I love Amazon, Asus’ “help” isn’t help at all, and Carbonite tries to help you, in a really nice way.

But for someone who has trouble spending money – all this chaos over a really expensive item is very draining for me.

So – the last week or so has been stressful.

Explosions and Underwear

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We had a bit of a kerfuffle. Jay and I were sitting in our office, and all the lights dimmed and brightened again. We just paused a moment, wondering if the power was going to go out. It didn’t and we moved on with our night.

An old photo of the chandelier I found.

An old photo of the chandelier I found.

Later that night, Jay called me into the bathroom asking if I could smell anything. I did. It was this awful scent of burned plastic mixed with electricity. We start hunting the smell down, because the last thing we need is an electrical fire smoldering somewhere. We tracked it to the chandelier

in the dining room. It is original to the home, when Dad bought it in the fifties. We don’t know if the chandelier caused the surge we saw earlier, or if we had an electrical surge the chandelier couldn’t handle (chicken/egg), but one of the bulbs was completely scorched all the way down into the base.

We turned off the chandelier, and I took the bulb to dad. There’s this strange annoying phenomenon. When there’s an issue… say the car is doing something funny, or the water in the house is doing something funny, when dad tests it it works perfectly fine for him. It’s incredibly annoying. So I took the scorched bulb to him so he could see there really is an issue. Dad comes over the next day to check it out. Jay’s asleep (he works nights). We’re in the living room. He tries a new bulb, turns on light, nothing happens. He turns off light, takes bulb out, and removes the outer casing of it, and the shaft next to it, so he can see if anything’s different. There is some scorching. He tells me to turn it on and I do. Nothing happens. Then he goes to manipulate it.

The damn thing exploded twice. Once, scorching dad, and then another time, then the whole thing went up in flames. I start screaming, Jay leaps out of bed running into see what’s the problem in his underwear, and I leap to turn off the electricity. Once I did, the flames went out on their own immediately. Dad was fine – although I truly thought his hair would have been standing on end after his zap – and he had a scorched fingernail. Thank God he didn’t think he could fix it.

Sometimes I think Tim “The Toolman” Taylor was based on my father.

“… So I rewired it!”

Anyway.

This is the story of how I eventually got a ceiling fan in my dining room, which has always been sorely needed in the summertime.

The new fixture.

The new fixture.

Potential Conclusion to our Insurance Nightmare

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in February of 2014, I wrote a post detailing our medical insurance nightmare.

Here’s a the timeline:

  • November 2008 – Leave job with great insurance knowing Jay also had great insurance.
  • February 2009 – Jay loses job to lay off, we all lose great insurance.
  • February 2009 – July 2010 – Pay out the nose for Cobra, then cannot afford it anymore, lost insurance. Get kids insurance through Healthy Families, Jay and I go without.
  • July 2010 – Jay gets new job – we still can’t afford employer’s insurance as premiums = 80% of take home pay. Kids still on Healthy Families.
  • Sometime in late 2011 – Healthy Families is discontinued, kids absorbed by Medi-Cal.
  • Late 2012 – Affordable Care Act comes into play. Kids up for renewal on Medi-Cal. We fill out forms to add Jay and I. Kids renewed, Jay and I in some sort of limbo.
  • January 2013 – Call Medi-Cal, “What’s going on with me and Jay.” “We have no record of you.” “But we were on the same form as the kids you just renewed.” “Sorry. Not Sorry.” Forwarded to Social Worker. Three weeks of phone tag ensue.
  • February 2013 – Social Worker can’t find my paperwork. Give social worker new paperwork. That takes me a week because you have to give them EVERYTHING to steal your identity. Copies of DL, SSN card, Birth Certificates, Paystubs, Bank Account Statements, Federal Tax Returns, etc. In hardcopy form.
  • March 2013 – Send paperwork certified return receipt. I get a voicemail. “While I got your paperwork, we are not allowed to look into Medi-Cal cases until we receive the paperwork from the state. We don’t know when that will be. Goodbye.” So – find out she lied to me. I think she had me do all the extra work (I’d already done on the original forms) as a delaying tactic.
  • April 2013-April 2014 – Call monthly. No word. Start receiving paperwork in Arabic. Correct it. Be told that Jay has “immigration issues.” “How do we correct that? He has to have an annual FBI background check for his job… Pretty sure he’s good!” “Don’t know, he’s listed as ‘other.'” Do not pay tax penalty as the fees were waived for 2013 taxes.
  • May 2014 – Call monthly. Find out we’ve been being bounced from Covered California to Medi-Cal and back again. They look at income differently and we’re right on the border line. Covered California says we make too little for them, bounce to Medi-Cal. Medi-Cal says we make too much for them, bounce back to Covered California. Finally get approved for Covered California for insurance. Pay premium. Receive cards. Go to look up a doctor and my login no longer works. Find out that insurance has bounced us out – literally kicked us out, no refund on premium. “Medi-Cal believes you may qualify for them! You’ll be reviewed in the next 30 days!”
  • May 2014-May 2015 – Call weekly to monthly trying to figure out what’s going on. Oh, there was a computer glitch. Our technical team is working on it. Months go by. It’s fixed! But you need to do a new application with Covered California. Oh, too bad so sad, the enrollment period is over. Pay tax penalty – like it’s my fault that they’re all screwed up. Insult to injury.
  • May 2015-Present – Apparently that insurance we had for 1 whole month saw us during enrollment. But our case looked SO WEIRD in their system that they passed it to their Covered California liaison. This liaison contacts us. They work for the insurance company, not Covered California, however, they work WITHIN the Covered California system. They listen to our whole story. They fix us. We now have insurance.

So… We finally have medical insurance. I literally waited two months, paying the premiums, before making appointments because I was afraid they were going to kick us out again. We have both visited the doctor for the first time in 5 years. What’s going on with us medically is another story for another day. But for now (and I’m not holding my breath), the saga is finally over.

Our Medical Insurance Nightmare

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Let me be clear… This is not a political post. I have no idea how much of this is due to “Obamacare,” although I know at least some of it is in part.

When I was still working for Warner Bros. we had great, I mean GREAT health insurance. When we decided I would come home to be better able to be available for Joseph’s issues and my mom’s issues, we took the health insurance in mind… But it was fine because we had Poe’s. And then he was laid off three months later.

Poe was out of work for two years. For as long as we could, we paid for Cobra. But thousands of dollars later (while on unemployment), we went through all of our savings. After we exhausted Cobra benefits, Poe needed serious, emergency dental surgery. There went all my retirement savings from 18 years of age. Two decades of savings.

But my kids both have medical issues. Forget about Joseph’s doctors and therapists – his meds alone are over $2k per month. Logan needs EKG’s and Echo’s annually, and eventually will need open-heart surgery. And so… I found a program called Heathy Families. In California, it was an alternative to Medi-Cal. I felt better about using it, because I paid premiums, according to our income, rather than being totally “on the dole.”

Eventually I started my own business, but it’s not a corporation, it’s just me as an independent contractor. Poe eventually found a job in security instead of his chosen field of CADD design. As a contractor, I don’t get employer insurance. Poe is offered insurance… The premiums for which are about 80% of his take home pay. So – we cannot afford it. Even after the updates due to Obamacare – now it’s about 85% of his take home pay. We still can’t afford it.

Eventually, Medi-Cal absorbed Healthy Families, and we were officially “on the dole” due to our income level and my children’s need for insurance. Don’t like it, but I have to take care of my kids’ medical needs. Poe and I haven’t been insured in years.

So here’s a bit about my private parts – so if it’s too graphic for you, I’ve put it below the fold:

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Update on All the Things

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So, yeah. We were outta commission on the blog due to malware, and that’s fixed. But we were also outta commission because because of dealing with family stuff. So let’s do a general update on the last 6 months shall we?

All the Death. My mom died June 16th. I wrote about that. In terms of the logistics and practicalities after a death, that part was easy. I saw more clearly than my father did that the end would come sooner than later, and so I pushed for him to be prepared. My mom had some extremely unusual health conditions all her life. She was even written up in medical journals at one point due to an extremely rare (for the time) surgery she had on her heart. As a result, she wanted to be donated to science. I was able to find a reputable organization that did that, and made all the pre-arrangements for that. In case you’re curious, they take a complete health history, and then match the person to various studies that their donation will be appropriate for. Then, when your loved one has passed, you call them instead of your local mortuary. They make arrangements with a local mortuary for transportation. They speak with whomever your official “declare” person is. In our case, it was a hospice worker. Then the mortuary comes and takes your person to the science center. They do their tests and studies, and then about 8 weeks later, they cremate your loved one and return their ashes, along with a summary of the studies they were a part of, and what good those studies are for, so that you know what their contribution did. It’s only a summary though – getting details, apparently, is a security thing for the studies (there are rules about releasing details of studies currently in process). In her case, my mom was totally and completely against having a funeral. She hated them, and didn’t want one, and so we honored her wish. That was difficult for the kids. So, when the anniversary comes around, I’m going to arrange for a tree-planting or a bench or something that’s tangible for the kids.

The details were fairly easy, because my parents had a trust, so everything just converted to my father. The only person she actually left anything to had passed (my brother who died several years ago). No, she didn’t leave any items to me. I’m not sure why. I’m not bitter about that, just… confused. I’ve been helping my father with other details… Changing names on the accounts and such.

6 weeks later, my aunt died. She lived in Las Vegas. She didn’t have a “real” will, but she had an unprocessed one so we tried to do what she wanted as far as we could. She didn’t have any assets, so we didn’t have to go into probate. My parents owned her house (she rented from them). So I had to handle ALL THE PAPERWORK for her death. Her bank accounts, her utilities. Her friends for the most part were absolute vultures, and I was so disappointed in their display of the lack of humanity. I’m still dealing with medical bill folks who don’t understand that A) She is dead and B) She didn’t have an estate. Somehow we were able to sell her house in literally 2 weeks. Which meant a whirlwind round trip out of state for our family to clear out her house. And we then had a 3 vehicle (I drove the 20′ truck) caravan to move her stuff out of the house back home. That was fun. (/sarcasm.)

4 weeks later, my mother’s ex-husband died. They had no contact, so this shouldn’t have been a “thing” except that she was still beneficiary on a military life insurance policy. So not only did we not get the money (because she died first), I had to jump through hoops to prove that mom was dead, and so was their son, for absolutely no benefit to us. Yay government.

1 week later, one of my mom’s best friends died.

So – essentially the summer sucked ass.

Joseph eventually totally lost it. He was injured in summer school, then all the death above, lost his therapist, got a new one, lost a psychiatrist, got a new one, lost the new one, and got ANOTHER one. It was too much. He was arrested (There’s a whole story there I simply don’t have the energy for), another 72 hour hold, court… It all sucked. But we finally came out of that with a definitive diagnosis of bipolar disorder. Between the hormones of puberty (which hit like a ton of bricks), and one of his meds stopped working, led to a bunch of triggers, which led to a definitive diagnosis. That led to changes in meds and therapy. Since the end of December though… He’s changed. Either something clicked in his head, or we finally have the right triangle going with meds/therapy, or all of the above… He’s doing really well. I actually got a call from school (which of course makes me hold my breath) but it was a “What happened to your son?” in a good way. They were concerned by the drastic turn-around, which they’ve never seen before. Did we change something at home? No. I WISH I knew what the magic bullet was, so we could continue doing THAT, but I don’t know, and he’s not saying. So, he’s in a really good place mentally. Not so much physically… His thyroid is basically stopping in functionality, and that has nothing to do with his current meds. So… we’re in the process of trying to correct that and the testing process to see if it’s working etc. We’re probably going to sign him up for football next month. Community, not school – his special school doesn’t have sports teams. He needs the physical outlet, and he also needs the structure, and teamwork all that entails. Plus, with his thyroid not functioning properly, and one of his meds lending itself to obesity and diabetes, he needs more than PE to keep healthy.

Logan is… Logan. He ran/walked a 5K. For fun. He recently went to PA for a week with his 5th grade class as part of their American History. He’s easily amused, understands his limitations, tries to work around them, all with a smile on his face.

Poe may be losing his job fairly soon. The location he currently works at is closing and coming under new ownership, which will not use the company he works with as a vendor. Once the transition happens, his company said they’d transfer him, but I don’t trust them, so we’ll see how this goes.

And me. I think I’m finally okay. My mother’s death hit me pretty hard. Harder than I anticipated. I’ve known we were on borrowed time for years, and knew then end was coming. I was prepared for that. Plus, essentially I’d lost her quite a while ago to Alzheimer’s. So, I thought I was prepared. So when the grief hit so hard, it was confusing. And then I had to deal with all the paperwork, government crap, paperwork, and details, and bureaucracy, and red tape with all the deaths, that I didn’t get to grieve. I had to go straight into robot mode. I had all these grieving people to help through the process, all the administrative stuff, the court and hospital stuff for Joseph… It was all too much, and I just shut down. Left right left right. Make this call. Send this form. Not lose clients. Rinse, repeat. For months. I’m finally, finally out of the fog of that. I couldn’t write about any of it since someone decided to hack my site.

But that’s the update. And I’m back.

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