Really. The stupidity amazes me.

Two months ago, after having some sharp pain in my left ear all day, I woke up the next morning deaf in my left ear. I took me and my deaf ear down to the clinic. I had my chart and request for referral to an ENT from my audiologist. After waiting for a couple hours, a doctor said there was no infection and she couldn’t help further because the clinic doesn’t keep an ENT doctor on staff and didn’t have any partnerships with any in town. She said I’d need to fill out an IowaCare application and then they’d get me seen at the U of I audiology department. I got approved and emailed them my new IowaCare number as soon as I got it.

I waited.

And waited.

And guess what else? Waited.

Two months later, I got a call from IowaCare. She requested my chart, which I had already given the clinic and the clinic should have given them, but ok, whatever. I had my audiologist fax it again.

Then?

Waited.

Oh, and more waited. With a side of waited.

Today, the clinic called and said that the U of I doctor said they didn’t need to see me because they could tell what it was. Apparently, they have a magical crystal ball which miraculously enables them to do this. “They know what the problem is. It’s excess noise,” she said, “and they don’t need to see you.”

“Wait, what? They won’t even see me?”

“Yes. But I know of a program to get you hearing aids.”

*bashes head on desk*

“I already have hearing aids.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Yes. The problem is that I’ve had persistent pain and woke up one day deaf in my left ear.”

“Oh. Um. Well, let me do some more research and call you back.”

Four hours later, someone different called me from the clinic. “An ENT at the U of I can see you on 7-6-09. He comes in around 3pm, but call ahead around noon to see if he’ll be there. Make sure you bring your chart from your audiologist.”

“I’ve already given one to the clinic and one to IowaCare, do they mean a new one?”

“Oh.” *shuffles papers* “There isn’t one here.”

“I’ll get another one, I guess.”

“Well, after this appointment, we can get you hearing aids.”

At that point, my head exploded in a grisly mess all over the floor and walls.

“I ALREADY HAVE TWO HEARING AIDS.”

“Oh, you do?”

“Yes. The problem is pain plus complete deafness in my left ear, making the left hearing aid useless.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll see what happens at that appointment then.”

*deep sigh*

The stupidity? It’s sheer length and breadth and depth astonishes me.

This is life without health insurance. Although, it’s probably not that much better for people with insurance, right? I can’t remember; it’s been years since I had any. 

There’s got to be a better way to help out uninsured folks than this IowaCare nonsense. It makes you feel like you’re not worth anything if you don’t have insurance. We don’t qualify for Medicaid because, get this; we make too much money.

I’m so frustrated right now.
*pitches a hissy fit*
I am ordering a bunch of prints from flickr. (I have bunches of pics uploaded; go check it out.)
I was in “my cart”, I hit “submit”, and an error comes up: “Since you are ordering more than 100 pics, it will take 24 hours instead of of 1 hour processing.”
*sigh*
I was really counting on the whole “1 hour processing” concept to make up for my remarkable powers of procrastination.
So I called ahead because I need these by this evening. The chick says if I bring in the pics on CD, they can get them done. I get there, and each pic is 22 cents each instead of 20 cents each because that’s an online only special. OK. I asked if I enter the order online, will they be ready by suppertime. She says yes. I get on the internet on my little ppc and hit submit. I went back up to the counter and ask (a different chick) if they received the order yet. She says, “Oh no, it can take an hour or two for a flickr order to show up in our system.”
I say very carefully, “For guaranteed one hour processing, it can take an hour OR TWO for the order to show up in your system?!”
She says, “Yes.”
Does this logic make anyone else’s head want to explode???

AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH Calgon take me awaaaaaaaaaay

I’m on my way up out of the black hole that is my depression. Yesterday was seriously a horrible, no good, very bad day. Who else is with me on the Clinical Depression is Real and Drugs Help bandwagon? Tom Cruise is a weinerhead and is SO not invited to my parade.

Man, I wish my point and shoot easyshare with video didn’t die. H and Elli were just playing racetrack and it is pee-your-pants funny. He starts it by hiding around a door jamb and jumping out at her then running as fast as he can with her hot on his heels. After a couple runs between the living room and the bedroom, he can stop and just egg her on by going “Rah!” and lunging to act like he’s going to take off again. She will tuck her tail between her legs and run as fast as she possibly can until she gets so excited she is just a blur tearing in circles on our bed. Why does she have to tuck her tail to gain maximum MPH? I think it may just make her more aerodynamic. I love my little white tornado. But you knew that already. :)

I’ve just discovered Vox’s QotD. It rocks.
What was the last wedding you went to? Were you in the wedding?
The last wedding I went to was in February, and it was a couple people in our CMA group gettin’ hitched. It was a very short sweet wedding with a very informal reception with a simple sammich and salad buffet. I wasn’t in the wedding. I have not been in any weddings, and from what I hear, I’m not missing much. I helped at the cake table at H’s brother’s wedding. That’s it.
If I could do my wedding over again, I would elope to Hawaii. I might see if my sister and his brother wanted to go (they were our maid of honor and best man) but no one else. If I could be granted do-overs, I would have had my hair and make up done instead of doing it myself. I would have said screw that ‘can’t see me before the wedding’ crap and gotten all of the pictures out of the way before the ceremony. I would have went to the groom’s dressing room and told him that he better spit out that gum STAT because if he slipped me his ABC gum on our wedding kiss, he would be involved in the fastest annulment in history. I would have had a back up for the limo that didn’t show up and was found a couple days later 100 miles away driver-less and suspected that its non-appearance was the result of a drug run gone bad. I would have forced myself to eat something so the champagne I downed didn’t make me sick and force me to go lay down for the evening and miss about 4 hours of MY day. Seriously. True story, ya’ll. This is my life.

Hotmail needs to pull their heads out of their collective butts. They have this new test they call HIP (human something or other) that supposedly protects against spamming, but all it protects me from is being able to send a damn email. Before you can send an email you have to type the letters you see in the picture and no matter how many times I do it, it says I typed invalid characters. Anyone else?

That’s about all my news… further updates as events warrant…

Rip it, roll it, and punch it, dooooood.

O… M… G…… I am beyond embarrassed. Here is your very favorite Graphic Designer- Typesetter- Proofreader- person and I’ve had this blog up for how long? I worked on the masthead for at least a couple hours trying to find just the right pics, just the right font, and then what? Yeah, about a month later, my SIL points out a glaring typo. “Blaming in on ADD since 2001.” Let’s say I meant that I was really into the hokey pokey and I was putting my blaming in. Yeah, that’ll be good. Maybe I’ll just fake it like the cat does when he falls off the back of the chair and then looks at me awkwardly as if to say, “Yeah, I totally meant to do that.” Thanks, Betty. I am a complete doofus.

So in other news… I went to the Iowa Workforce Development Monday. You see, the Evil Garden Gnome decided to fight my receiving unemployment benefits. So I went in Monday with two issues. One, I did my weekly call in and the i711 operator somehow messed up when she was working with the automated system. I brought in the relay call printed out so the IWD people could figure it out and set it straight. Two, I had to correct the phone number for them to call me for the hearing, so they will call me on the number that comes straight to me relay assisted instead of my old number. OK, so I go in and I tell the receptionist (you know, the one that guards the gates and decides who gets a quick pat answer, and who has a real problem and needs to talk to someone else so the lines doesn’t get held up for days) that I need some help, and that I’m hard of hearing, so I need to talk their biggest loudmouth. She chuckles and says she can help me. I tell her my deal, and she deems my problem big enough to talk to someone else. So I wait for Someone Else. I get Softspoken Woman. Fabulous. But, Ok, let’s do this. I give her the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of my deal. I explain that I’m hard of hearing but I read lips very well so if I can see her, I can hear her. She’s cool with that, so here we go. I show her the print out of the relay call, and explain what a relay call is. She turns back to her computer and dives into the depths that are the Underground Cave of Iowa Workforce Development. She fusses and fusses with her computer and keeps asking me questions facing away from me towards the computer screen, and I keep answering, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you”, and she keeps apologizing and repeating herself. About a month later, she sorts through and takes care of that (I hope. You know that sinking feeling in your gut when you’ve just handed your brand new Ming vase to an 18 month old? Yeah? Yeah.) and tackles the next problem. I explain, again, that I am hard of hearing and that the phone number they have listed for me will need to be changed because that’s my old number, and here’s my new number that goes straight to a relay operator who contacts me and does the relay call. She looks at me like I’ve just asked her to put together an Ikea entertainment center with gum instead of screws and only German instructions. I explain again. The lightbulb fizzes a little bit. I explain again. The lightbulb slowly comes up to a full 100 watts. She explains sure, ok, she’ll take care of that, and it may help a lot if I will type up a statement for them to fax to Des Moines, and would I bring it back to her by Tuesday morning? Sure, no problemo. So Tuesday morning I go in with my statement and documents. Same gal, Softspoken Woman, (who, you might have noticed, is not exactly the brightest crayon in the box) takes my papers and looks them over for me. She says they look good and she’ll fax them over, and again makes sure that she has the correct number listed. Good. I’d like to pause the story and recap. We’ve discussed the fact that I am hard of hearing. A lot. Ok. Let’s hit the play button. She asks me in a ‘oh by the way’ sort of voice, “How many words a minute can you type?” I reply 60 words a minute and her eyes light up and she says she saw a job posting that I might be interested in. She goes back in to the depths of her computer and fusses and fusses with it. Finally, she says, “Here it is! This company is URRelay, and this position is a Relay Operator!” and she looks at me like I’ve just won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes. I *blink* *blink blink* and I think no, she’s going to get it in a second. Wait for it….
Still with the Aren’t-You-Excited-To-Meet-Mr. McMahon look.
Oh, man, I’m the one that has to burst her bubble.
I say, “I can’t hear the caller.”
Her turn to *blink* *blink blink* “Oh.”

I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyway, so the hearing was on Wednesday, and they will look at my statement and the Evil Garden Gnome’s statement and decide if I will receive unemployment benefits. If I do, great; If I don’t, eh, it was worth a shot.

Rip it, roll it, and punch it, dude. Word. To your mother.