About a year ago while taking Mia over to my parent’s house, I noticed that she had a spot on her eye. It was small, and almost looked like a shadow.  She didn’t seem bothered by it, and since I could only see it when the sun was shining directly in her eyes, I forgot about it soon after.

A few months ago I noticed it again, but it was significantly bigger than I remembered. I asked my vet about it, and she referred us to an eye care specialist. I had no idea they had ophthalmologists for dogs, but I’m glad they do. We had an appointment with her yesterday, and she’s a lovely woman. Sadly, it was not a good outcome.

Mia is going blind.

She has what’s called Pigmentary Keratitis, which is extremely common in pugs. It’s basically brown scar tissue that grows over the cornea, effectively rendering the dog blind. The doctor gave me drops to try and thin the scar out, and an ointment to try and stop the scar from spreading.  According to the doctor, there’s no “cure” for this problem, just options to try and deal with what’s there. She wants to start with medication to see if that decreases the problem, before we discuss surgical options. Surgery wouldn’t be to remove the scarring, however, as that’s too deep into her eye. The surgery would be to reshape her bottom eyelid, so her eyes close completely, therefore eliminating the irritation that is speeding up the growth of the scar. It’s just a way to slow the process, it’s not a way to stop it. No matter what happens, Mia will eventually be blind.

I am devastated. I know it doesn’t hurt her, and that it’s actually better for her (comparatively) to go blind gradually, rather than just be born blind. Her sense of sight is only her 3rd most important sense (smell and hearing being 1st and 2nd, respectively), and there are plenty of dogs that are born blind or who go blind that are completely happy and just as fabulous as if they could see. It’s just hard to know that eventually she’s going to lose her sight, and there’s basically nothing I can do to stop it.

Blind or not, I can take you!

I’ve worked in customer service all of my adult (and partial teen) life. I know customers can be frustrating, so when I’m in the position of being a customer, I try to be very polite and understanding. Especially when I call at the end of the workday, because I know the customer service rep is probably tired and counting the minutes until they have to go home. I’ve been there. But my politeness and understanding wears out quickly when the person I’m speaking with doesn’t have two braincells that function at the same time.

I called my dental insurance company today, just to confirm that the bill they sent me covered the months of September, October and November*, since the bill had no dates on it, just amounts.  The conversation went a bit like this:

Me: Hi! I received a bill from you and I’ve just written out the check for it. However, there were no dates on the bill, so I was calling to confirm that this payment covers everything I owe through November.

Him: Please wait.

<3 minutes of dead silence later>

Him: You owe $XXX.

Me: Yes, I’m aware of that. I have the bill here, and have already written the check. But the bill doesn’t have a date on it. Is the $XXX for the months of September, October, and November?

<silence>

Me: Hello?

Him: Ma’am, you owe $XXX.

Me: Yes, we’ve covered that. Does the $XXX cover me for September, October, and November? That’s all I need to know.

Him: Your account will be current when you pay $XXX.

Me: Ok, current through October? Current through November? I just need to know what months I’m paying for.

Him: Ma’am, I just told you that you owe $XXX.

<lather, rinse, repeat no less than 4 more times.>

Finally…

Me: I’d like to speak with your supervisor please.

It took his supervisor less than 10 seconds to confirm that yes, the amount covers me for those three months. Halle-freaking-lujah! Though why he couldn’t answer that question remains a mystery to me.

*Switching to COBRA from my previous company’s insurance gives me 60 days to start making payments, so I wasn’t past due on my account. However, it took the insurance company 50 days to send me a bill. Think I can wait 50 days to send them a payment?

Since I started buying homemade cards to snail mail to people, I’ve found a couple shops that have quickly become my favorites. Carrie’s Cards is one of those shops, and Carrie herself is as nice as could be. She makes great cards, as well as magnets and coasters in all different patterns and colors.  She’s fantastic to work with too!

I started buying from Carrie in March when I went through my obsessive card buying phase, and I was always really happy with the cards I got from her. I’ve steadily purchased from her ever since then, and I’ve never ever been disappointed. I recently purchased some more Thank You cards, as I’d almost exhausted my supply and I was planning on sending them out for anyone who’d donated to Step Out.  I contacted her to ask if she would be willing to make a couple more cards in a couple different colors than she already offered. I could not have been more surprised and thankful when she generously offered to donate some cards to me, since I’m sending them out to anyone who donates to Step Out.  I received the cards today, and WOW are they fabulous! I cannot wait to send them out!

I want to thank Carrie again for her generous donation, as well as thank all of you who’ve donated so far. If you haven’t donated yet, you still have a little more than a week to do so. The cards are first come first served, so don’t delay! Not only will you be helping to find a cure for Diabetes, but you’ll be getting a beautiful handmade card and my sincere thanks for your help!

Also, if you’re in the market for great greeting cards of all types (and really, the world could use more happiness spread through snail mail), check out Carrie’s shop. She’s great!

Last year I participated in the Riverside Step Out to Fight Diabetes Walk, and I’ve been asked to participate again this year. Kyla, who is Donald’s niece, is the team captain, and basically the person we’re all walking for. Kyla has Type 1 diabetes, which, for those of you who don’t know, is the ugliest of the major types. She has to count her carbs every day, and give herself insulin injections all the time. She’s been doing it all herself since she was diagnosed in 2006. I can’t handle having someone else stick a needle into my arm once a year, but this amazing girl does it multiple times a day. Did I mention she’s only 12?

The Step Out walk will take place October 17, and we’ll be accepting donations until then. I know money is tight for everyone right now.  Trust me, I know. But still, I’m going to donate my money and time, and ask you for donations anyway, because I think this is a great cause. And I couldn’t face Kyla knowing that I didn’t try my very hardest to do whatever I could to make her life better. So I’m asking you to donate to find a cure for diabetes. If you don’t do it for Kyla, do it for your kids, or your friend’s kids, or any adult that you know who has it, had it, or might get it. You could be saving their life, or at the very least, improving the quality of it!

The link for donations is here. A dollar will help, if that’s all you can spare. Every single penny counts. And! As an added bonus, you will receive a personalized thank you card via snail mail (yay!) to show you my appreciation! (Provided of course that I already have your address, or that you send me an e-mail with it. Addresses will only be used by me, and not passed on to Step Out, the American Diabetes Association, or anyone that does not have the name Denora on their birth certificate. I promise.)

Thank you for your thoughts, encouragement, and donations. I appreciate it, as does Kyla and everyone suffering from this disease. Let’s find a cure!

Donald, Kyla & Denora – 2008 Step Out

I want to thank everyone for the great e-mails and comments of support. It really does mean a lot to me.

One of the first things I was worried about after losing my job (aside from the complete lack of income and my desire to stay fed and sheltered) was figuring out what to do with myself and all my free time. I didn’t just want to sit on the couch and watch TV while feeling sorry for myself. I also didn’t want to gain a whole bunch of weight by not being active. So I’ve made a schedule for myself. I make a mental list everyday of things I want to get done. Exercise, cleaning, running errands, writing letters or postcards, whatever it takes to stay busy. Last week I decided to start learning to cook. I made Challah (Jewish bread) from scratch, and it looked and tasted awesome (if I do say so myself). I’ve also made meat loaf and mashed potatoes from scratch, and both turned out to be fantastic. I’ve always collected cookbooks, as if that would somehow make me a good cook, and now I’m finally getting to use them. It turns out that I really like to cook (and based on the comments I got when I posted that info on Facebook, everyone who knows me has a cracked jaw right about now). I’m just not all that fond of the cleaning up part. I keep trying to learn to clean as I go, but I get frustrated when I clean and put away things that I take back out 5 steps later. Measuring cups for example. Do you have any idea how many times you have to measure things while cooking? People on the Food Network never seem to measure anything, and I sure hope someday I can get to that point. Because I’m pretty sure my measuring cups are going to fall apart at any moment.

Aside from cooking, I now have time to do all sorts of fun stuff that I was always too busy to do before. A couple weeks ago I helped my sister set up her classroom before school started. This is her fourth year of teaching, but only the first year I’ve been able to help her, since my work hours and her school hours were always the same. (I’d like to take a brief moment to thank all the teachers I had over the years for all the work they did to get things together before we all showed up and destroyed everything. I had no idea how much work went into getting a classroom ready to be taught in. Also, if you’d like to show your appreciation for your local teachers, try donating to their classrooms. I know they can use anything they can get, especially since they’re still using the same text books that I had when I was in elementary school. I’m 30 now, and somehow I think there’s probably more updated material they could be using if they had the money. Seriously.) Jen and Mom and I got a lot of work done while we were there, and I finally got to see all of the fun toys she’s been talking about for the last 4 years. I’m not ashamed to say that I had a lot of fun testing out some of the toys to make sure that they were safe for the kids. Or something.

Last week I also got to have a full day date with my Dad, which is something I can’t remember ever getting to do. We started off with lunch and then drove out to Los Angeles and the Griffith Park Observatory. It’s been a LONG time since I’d been there, but it’s still just as entertaining and educational as it was when I was a kid. It’s also normally a beautiful spot to take pictures from, but since there are huge fires not too far away, it was really smoky, and also really hot. We caught a show inside the Planetarium which talked about the earth and the universe, and constellations. The mythology of the constellations has always interested me, so I enjoyed the presentation immensely. Dad enjoyed a nap instead. Then we drove down to the Dresden restaurant (as seen in Swingers) and had a fantastic dinner.  The Dresden, along with several other restaurants in the area, provides a “Dine & Ride” package if you’re going to see a concert at the Greek Theater, which is right down the hill from Griffith Park, and right up the street from The Dresden. The Greek Theater is known for it’s horrific parking, so we took advantage of the Dine & Ride shuttle service to catch The Pretenders at the Greek. I’d never seen The Pretenders before, but I knew a few songs and liked them, so I was excited to go. The first opening act was Juliette Lewis (yes, the actress) and her band. Juliette was energetic to the point of being spastic, and while she seemed to love what she was doing, she’s not really quite that talented in the musical arena (Read: She. Was. Awful.) I could not wait for whoever the second band would be, just to get Juliette off the stage. Karma, however, kicked me right in the ass for making such a wish. Cat Power was the next band, and where I once thought Juliette was awful, I thought she was phenomenal in comparison to Cat Power. Every single song they played sounded exactly the same: slow and drawn out. And while their name is Cat Power, the songs sounded very much like a recording of a cat in heat, only with the player running low on batteries, therefore stretching the moaning out into long horrible sounds. They did a few cover songs (if you can even call it that) that we only recognized from the lyrics. “Thunder only happens when it’s raining” is a pretty recognizable phrase, and it took me a full 3 minutes of hearing the “song” before I even had a clue as to what it was. By the end of the set, people were shouting at the stage “Play something good!” and mimicking slashing their wrists. In the blissful pause between the end of Cat Power’s set and the beginning of The Pretenders, the only conversation that could be heard in the entire amphitheater was about how bad that was, and how so many people wanted to leave. Dad predicted that there would be more energy in The Pretenders first 3 notes, than in Cat Power’s 11 whole songs, and I’m pleased to say he was totally right. The Pretenders came on with a bang, and didn’t let the energy stop for the entire time they were there. I only knew 4 of their songs, but they were so good that I enjoyed the whole show. Chrissy Hind was amazing. The woman is 58 (as of yesterday. Happy Belated Birthday!) and was bouncing around the stage in killer high heel boots playing guitar like no ones business. As a 30-year old who can’t walk on flat ground in sneakers without tripping, I was impressed with her guitar playing in those kick ass boots. The show was awesome, and I’d happily see them again.  All in all the day was great. I was glad to spend some time with my Dad, even if it did include a smoky day, and a horrible band.  The rest was worth it.

I am no longer employed.

Writing that tiny sentence is more painful that I imagined it would be. I keep telling myself that everything happens for a reason, but I still don’t believe it. I was laid off from my job of almost 8 years last Thursday, and a week later I’m still not sure it’s sunk in yet. Business has been getting bad, and we’d had a lot of layoffs in the last year. But I’d just heard that we were doing “ok” and so I thought that really meant “ok”. I had no idea it meant I’d be out of a job. I also thought there were people who would go before me. People who have been there significantly less years than I had. I was obviously wrong.

My first reaction when they told me was “How could they do this to me?” and still, it’s the one question I keep repeating in my head. I know I can find another job, so I wasn’t as worried about that. But I felt so betrayed. Still feel so betrayed. My favorite part about my job was the people, hands down. It was family owned and operated, and my coworkers came to be part of my family. We had game nights, we went to the movies, we swapped organs.  So when I was abruptly dropped from the family, I was understandably (in my opinion) hurt. I know I’ll get to the point where I’m not as angry, not as hurt, and can understand that this was a financial business decision and not a personal attack. But I’m not there yet.

For the past week I’ve been waffling as to what I want to do with my life. My first instinct was to go back to school and get a masters degree in something useful. A B.A. in Behavioral Sciences isn’t really something I can use.  So I called my old school to see if I could get in there. They’re not talking admissions for anything before Fall of 2010. So that’s out. I checked the local college, because they have a great sign language program (and being an interpreter has always been my dream job). ALL of the classes are full, but I got on the waitlist for a couple. Class starts next week. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s worth a shot. If I don’t get in, well then I put my nose to the grindstone and find a job.

At least now I know that having coworkers that are “family” is not job security.  Next time I just need to make myself irreplaceable.

8-31-09 Edited to Add: I have never felt, and will never feel that donating my kidney should have given me job security. She is my friend, plain and simple. It also happened that she was technically my boss, but that never came to play in my decision. It was the friendship that we have that made me decide to do it. I mentioned it solely to illustrate the close relationship I have with my coworkers. Not working with them will not change that. We are still friends, and will remain friends as long as humanly possible.

It’s common knowledge throughout a good portion of the blog world that Maggie has this fantastic life list that she’s come up with, and now Intel is helping to sponsor it so she can cross off some of the things on her list. When I first saw her list, I was in awe of how grand and large her plans were. Donate a million dollars to charity? Be conversational in seven languages? Those are some lofty goals! But she seems so positive that she’ll be able to do it.  I’d always casually made comments about how I wanted to do “this that or the other thing” before I died, but I’d never put much stock into actually completing them.  But still, it’s an idea I’ve been toying around with for a long while, so I’m going to try it.  It’s a little daunting to try and come up with 100 things to do, so I’m going to start with 10, and add to it as time goes on. Some will be easy to check off, others will require work over time. But all are things I truly would like to accomplish in my lifetime.

There. Those are the first 10 on my life list. I think that’s a good start, don’t you?

Since my original decision to start sending mass amounts of snail mail, I have steadily sent birthday cards, thank you cards, thinking of you cards, and various other types of cards to every person I have an address for.  I think I get a bigger kick out of writing and sending the cards than I do from receiving them.  While I’m continuing to do that, I’ve also discovered a new obsession.

Postcards!

In a nutshell, you send a postcard to someone in the world, and someone else sends one back to you. My first day I sent postcards to Finland, Netherlands, China, Germany and Belarus. When the first person received and recorded my postcard (via the assigned ID#), my name was given to someone else to send a postcard to me. I’ve yet to receive it, but I know it’s coming! This way you get to send AND receive postcards from people all over the world. It’s fun if you like to collect postcards, or if you like getting mail, or if you just like to learn bits of information about other countries.

In addition to the “official” postcard trading, there is a forum FULL of different types of trades. I am partial to “tags” where there’s a certain type of postcard that everyone wants, so you “tag” the person who posted before you. For example, there was a thread entitled “Flower Tag” and I tagged the person above me, and sent them a lovely postcard with a picture of a pink flower. Then someone posted after me and I was tagged, and I received a postcard with a purple flower. It’s a little like a chain letter, except it’s a public forum, and you’re only sending postcards to one person at a time. And your address is never public. You send a private message to the person you tagged requesting their address, and they send a private message back with their information. Simple!

I’ve received quite a few cards from all over the world, and you can see them here. I keep track of where they came from using the photo location tool. I’ve also sent quite a few out, and am waiting to receive my cards in turn. The sent postcards with the link in the caption are the cards that have been received and recorded on the site. You can see exactly how far they went, and how long it took. The photo locations on those cards are where the picture on the postcard was taken, not where they were sent.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all these postcards, but I do know I look forward to getting the mail every day, as well as going to the post office to send out my latest cards. It’s an inexpensive hobby, and I’m having a great time with it!

Lots of things have happened over the past 3 months, so I’ll give you a quick recap:

• Donald and I finally moved everything in to the new house, and we’re 90% unpacked. We have a few boxes still waiting to find a home (you know that stuff that you don’t want to throw out or give away, but you don’t really have a place for it either?) but everything else is pretty much done. We redid the planter in the backyard (a disaster story for another day) and I finally planted flowers! Some of them look awesome, and others…well let’s just say I’ll be replacing them when the temps cool down a little bit.
• I turned 30 on May 17th and hated every single second of it. I fought it all the way until the night before when a friend said “So you’re 30 now, huh?” I calmly replied “I am 29 for 4 more hours, thank you very much.” I’m not sure why I hated turning 30 so passionately. Maybe it’s because I thought I’d be in a different place in life, or because I’d always (stupidly, yes) considered 30 old. But I’m over that now, and am embracing my 30-ness. (The fact that I am the youngest of my friends, save one, helps me get past my hangups)
• Donald and I took a 9 day vacation in June/July and it was wonderful. We spent 2 days in Arizona visiting three of my best friends (and watching the Angels pound on the Diamondbacks) and then spent Donald’s birthday and the 4th of July out at the river for the rest of our vacation. I love the river. It’s relaxing and fun, and such a great time. Lots of our friends were out there that week, so I did quite a bit of socializing while being lazy. Two of our friends, who we seem to only see during the summer, were there with their 3 boys, and man did they all get cuter over the past year (the boys, not the parents). I had a great time playing with their kids, as well as watching Donald’s newest nephew enjoy his first river trip. (He was 3.5 months on the trip, but seriously looks like he’s 6 or 7 mos. He’s a beefy baby!) We also had the sad experience of watching a fire very close to where we were staying, as it burned on the opposite side of the river. I’d never seen a fire that close before, and it was a little unnerving. But they managed to put it out before it could jump to our side, so we still have a vacation spot to go to.

Aside from all that, I’ve just been working, reading, setting up the house, and spending time with friends. I love our new house, and am very content to stay home curled up on the couch watching a movie, rather than going out and being social.

What have you been up to?

New site, same blog!

Welcome to my blog’s new home. I’ve been working on this move off and on since the beginning of the year, and I finally feel like I’m ready to open the doors. All of my old posts and pictures are here now, so if you’re new feel free to browse through the archives! And if you’re a loyal reader, thanks for making the move with me! If you notice links that lead to nowhere, or pictures that don’t show up, please let me know. I’ve done my best to fix them all, but I’m sure a few got away from me.

I am going to make a strong effort to post here much more often than I used to. Taking a three month break really made me miss blogging, and more importantly, all the people I’ve met and become friends with in the process.

This site is a work in progress, so I really appreciate any and all feedback you have for me.

Thanks!

Denora