Random Mowing thoughts

I was able to mow today, finally.  As usual, I had some random thoughts while mowing.  First of all, while I was mowing in the backyard I had the thought that the Everglades had been moved to OKC and placed in my backyard.  What a swamp!  I can not remember mowing this late in September with the grass so green and thick.  The other thing that had me thinking was something that some may find crass or gross.  I have rarely passed up an opportunity to be crass and gross so read on at your own discretion.  As I was mowing I looked down and saw dog poop on TOP of the mower.  This was not because it had been thrown there by the wheels, it was because of how high the grass was.  That is no small feat.  If you have not seen Little Al,the "little" is a misnomer.  He is 120 lbs and can do serious damage in the natural fertilizer department.  Some of the landmines he has dropped have brought the phrase "hemorrhoidal discomfort" to mind.  Suffice it to say, the grass had to be tall and strong to hold up under the strain.  Anyway, the yard is chopped down for now and I have had some more goofy random things to talk about.

random thoughts

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Al and Me

Tonight Amber and I watched "Marley and Me." I am always leery of movies about dogs because they usually make me feel very sad. I am sure most people, especially those who feel it is odd to call the family dog "brother" or some other family-based reference, would not be touched by this type of movie. I, on the other hand, am one that sees my dog as my first child and my daughter's big brother. If you think that is weird, so be it. Anyway, "Marley and Me" had us both balling our eyes out. I cried more thinking about when Al dies than from the movie itself. Again, I realize most rational people think I am an idiot for acting out like this about a dog. To answer that I ask you these questions: What friend/spouse/child have you ever seen that was always, ALWAYS, happy to see you when you walked in the door? What friend/spouse/child has never, and will never hold a grudge when they have been wronged? I think of all the times that I have come home and Al is there happy to see me and I flat ignore him, and at some point I will come home and he will not be there. That kills me inside.
Have you ever heard that petting a dog lowers your blood pressure?Let me illustrate like this: Abbie has been struggling with sleeping in her bed in her own room, to help soothe her I asked if she would want to have "brother" in the room with her. She said yes and after moving his bed in her room and coaxing him in there, she calmed down and went to sleep. Not because "the dog" was there with her, her brother was with her. I would not have felt like this when I was younger. But, Al is going to be 10 next year. He has been a part of our lives for almost as long as we have been married. I could go on, but I am sure that most of

you think this is a ridiculous post, and if you do, it is your loss. To the rest of you, "Marley and Me" is a real tear-jerker, but really made me think about my baby boy.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's day (yesterday) to all the Moms out there.  We had family over on Saturday and Sunday and had a great weekend with everyone.  Jami, Scott, Mom and the kids came up on Saturday.  It was the first time they had been to our home in OKC (mom's 2nd).  The kids had a great time playing in the playroom and out in the backyard.  We had a good time, too.  Jami seemed pretty relaxed even with her boards coming this week.  I am sure she will rock the house as she always does.  Abbie was almost attached at the hip to Rosie.  They really seem to be two peas in a pod.  Abbie is a follower and Rosie loves to have a follower.  As they left, I mentioned that the kids would probably be asleep before they left the city.  Mom told me last night that I was right on the money, they had a quiet drive home.  Amber's sister and her family and Mom and Dad came over yesterday after worship.  We ate and played some games and Abbie was definitely attached to Jake's hip.  She just would not give him any space.  I think he liked the attention at first, but it seemed a bit much after awhile.  As far as Mother's Day sentiments,  I was touched at worship by something my brother-in-law said.  He lost his mother when he was a teen.  During the service he was talking about what blessings Mothers are and I mentioned to Amber that it must be hard for him to do that.  At the end of the service he said to be sure and show your mother you love her because you may not always have the chance.  Coming from him, that really choked me up.  I love my mom very much and now that I have a child, I love my mom more and more, because I know how much she cares for me.  OK, I am done with the sentimental stuff.  I hope everyone had a great Mother's day.

The Burdens of being Perceptive

Here is a little glimpse into the aggravations caused by noticing when things are not right.  I have talked before about how I have a fear of writing something on my blog that is grammatically incorrect or even spelled wrong.  I have found another issue.  I really enjoy watching the TV show House.  I like the lead character and the medicine stuff is cool, too.  I was just watching the most recent episode and I caught something that bugged me.  In the episode House is struggling with insomnia.  He (House) asks his friend Dr. Wilson for sleeping pills and Wilson writes him a prescription.  Here is the rub, when House picks up the prescription they show a glimpse of the bottle.  I, being the pharmacist that I am, stop the show and pause it on the label so I can see what it says.  Here is what was on it: Zolpidem 200mg #30 take one capsule three times a day until gone.  Now, any pharmacist will get a kick out of the numerous mistakes with this rx. Zolpidem is generic Ambien and IS used for insomnia, but it is only available in 5mg and 10mg Tablets and would only be taken once a day at bedtime only as needed.  I doubt that 200mg of Zolpidem three times a day was even tried in clinical trials. Also, when House shook the bottle it was full of tablets and not capsules.  I was shocked and disappointed that such an error would be allowed on a show that seems to place a high value on being medically relevant and factual.  Granted, pharmacists obsessive like myself are probably the only ones who stopped the show to read the label.  It is maddening sometimes to have the urge to correct things and make sure what I say and do are correct.  In my job, I am thankful for it, but I feel a little overly obsessive sometimes.

Venting...

I generally try to stay away from griping about work. The past few weeks have me wanting to break that rule. It is not just the fact that we are so busy, some of the things that I see go on make me shake my head in disgust. Unfortunately, my head has been shaking for 2 weeks straight. For about 2 weeks now, we have been averaging more than 450 prescriptions a day during the week. That may not sound like much, so let me break it down a little better. If we fill 480 prescriptions on one day, and we are open 12 hours (9-9) then we average 40 prescriptions an hour. That is less than 2 minutes to fill each prescription. If there is an insurance problem, or a question for the doctor, do you think either of those will take less than 2 minutes to fix? Do you see how the process could get backed up? I could go on and on about how many we fill and the time needed and the drive thru, but I just want to talk about a phone call I had today. On Saturday, a young lady brought us a prescription and her insurance card and said she would be calling to find out the price. The prescription was for Nuvaring (it is a vaginal ring used for birth control-birth control pills without the pills). She called back today to get the price. I had to do some work to get her insurance to work which involved my calling the insurance to get the correct info to bill the prescription. When I had fixed the problem, I called her back to tell her what her copay would be. After her insurance paid their part, her copay was $45 for the Nuvaring. She was surprised by this and told her mother (who was in the background) how much the copay was. Her mother took the phone from her and said "Are you kidding me? They said the price without insurance was $60! Are you telling me that the insurance is not going to pay any more than that to give my sexually active daughter birth control so she does not get pregnant? (to her daughter) Well you are just going to have to hold it, because I do not have that kind of money," click. Since I did not get much of a chance to reply, I have been thinking of some of the things I could have said to her to try and help her with her terrible predicament:

1. This is the good answer, the one I really would have said, had she given me the chance. "If your daughter is able to take birth control in tablet form, there are two that I could recommend to you that would be $9 per month whether you have insurance or not."
2. Now for the answers that the lady made me WISH I could say. "Since your daughter obviously is not responsible enough to remember to take a pill everyday, should she really be having sex?"
3. Two words: Chastity belt
4. Well you might want to find out what the copay is for Valtrex (herpes med) because it sounds like you will be needing it soon and it is really expensive.
5. Since Wal-Mart sells Plan-B for about $35, you could use it afterwards and save $10! (Yeah, that one is kind of harsh)
6. I understand your frustration with the insurance, it is ridiculous for them to make you pay more for a prescription just because there are cheaper alternatives that work just as well, but with less convenience.
7. Did you know that some insurances do not cover birth control at all? Man those moms and dads are REALLY up a creek! How could an insurance not keep ITS responsibility to make sure your sexually active daughter does not get pregnant?

Like I said, I do not like griping because I tend to get on rants. It just does not sit well with me sometimes that I am the fall guy for insurances, doctors, stupid kids, you name it and for some reason someone is chewing me out and hanging up on me. Sorry to be venting like this but I could not let that one go.

Remembering Dad's Toyota

The past few weeks have caused me to think about the pickup my Dad had while I was in middle and high school. It was a Toyota with a little diesel engine and a camper on it. Dad always took care of it (often changed the oil himself) and I think it had somewhere in the neighborhood of 170,000 miles on it when he got rid of it. The reason I have thought of it recently is because of the slick roads and the fact that I had to get new tires on Amber's car. We took that truck up to Kansas City more than once for vacations. Jami and I would ride in the back and other than the noise, it was not that bad. There are many stories that I vividly remember with that pickup. This one I will call "The Snake."

When I was in high school and my first two years of college, I did lawncare and a few odd jobs to make money. One time a lady from church asked if I could come out to her place to mow down weeds, weed-eat around the house and do some general cleanup. I thought it sounded cool to me and I must have made arrangements with Dad because I took his truck. The first thing that should have tipped me off was the location of the house. She lived out by herself, miles away from just about anything. When I got there, she said she had some trash in barrels that she wanted me to load in the truck and take to a different spot on her property to dump. When I say trash, I mean the partially charred remains of trash that has been burned and left out in the elements, and when I say barrels I mean large metal barrels that have rusted through in spots enough to create holes. Well, I went ahead and started loading the trash in the truck until I started to hear a noise. The noise sounded like a rattle and I caught a glimpse of a snake in one of the barrels. I was not sure what kind of snake I was dealing with, but the rattle kind of concerned me. When I told the woman about it, she decided to burn the trash some more to either kill the snake or drive it out of the barrels. So she lit the stuff on top on fire and after a short time it burned out. After the smoldering was done, I had to go through the remaining half-burned, half-wet mess that was left. I sifted through the trash and then loaded up the truck with it. When I say loaded the truck, I mean loaded. There was not too much room left in the camper once I had all the trash in the back. Now that we were loaded up, she and I got in the truck to take the stuff to the dumpsite. The problem was that it was on another part of her property, so there were no roads, really not even a path. The toyota was a great little truck, but it was not a 4 wheel drive. Also, at the time I was using it, dad was just about ready to get rid of it. It had 160,000+ miles on it and the rear wheels (the drive wheels) had 110,000+ miles on them. The back tires were slick to say the least and we are getting ready to go "off-roading". We got stuck less than 100 yards from the house before we even made it out of the "yard". Then things really got weird. Since we were not near anything or anyone, we had to wait on a "neighbor" to come pull the truck out. While we waited we had bologna and mayo sandwiches, oh man it was a feast. About an hour later the neighbors pulled the truck out and we were on our way again. Surprisingly, we did not get stuck again. Once we made it to the dumpsite (which was just a ravine in the middle of a pasture) I started to pull all the trash out of the back of the truck. I had almost everything out when I caught a glimpse of the snake in the back of the truck. Somehow, I had loaded the snake in with the other trash and it was still alive and now in the truck. He decided to coil up in the one of the front corners of the truck bed and I was frustrated enough to start throwing large rocks into the bed at him. That did nothing but make a bunch of noise. I pulled just about everything out of the truck and we headed back to the house. The lady said she had something at the house that she could take care of the snake with. When we got back to the house, she came out with insect killer in a spray bottle. She opened the windows on the side of the camper and started spraying the snake with insect killer. The snake almost seemed to smile at that and just sat there blowing bubbles in the spray. I finally was done with the whole thing and told her that I would go home, take care of the snake, and come back tomorrow to mow. On the way home I left the back of the truck open in the hopes that the snake would just find his way out the back. For awhile, it looked like he was going to. He went all the way to the back and even was hanging half off of the tailgate. But, he decided to turn around and make his way back up the front of the truck bed. When I got home and found a shovel, I was finally able to take care of the snake. He was about 4 feet long and probably just a garter snake, really scary stuff. The best part of the story is that I had a friend go back with me the next day to mow and weedeat and since we split the pay, I made $20 from the two days worth of work.

What would Grandpa think?

Growing up, I was blessed to have my grandparents with me even past my high school graduation. My Mother's father was in the military and was stationed in the Pacific in WWII. I regret not questioning him more than I did about that time, and also that I did not ask my grandparents more questions in general. The stories that I did hear from them have always made me wonder what it was like to be in that time. I often feel like I am in between generations. The time that I grew up in would place me in Generation X, but I feel tied to my parents' and to some extent my grandparents' generations more than mine or the following generations. Granted, if my Father listened to a good portion of my music I think he would shake his head. I guess the values that my family instilled in me make me feel more tied to older generations than the more recent ones. I am not sure where all this is coming from or going, so bear with me. Sometimes I wonder what my Grandpa would think if he were here today. How different are things now than when he was young? Technological advances and cultural advancement (or in some things, decline) are just two areas that are vastly different from years gone by. Notice I say 'different' and not 'better' or 'worse'. It just makes me sad that I did not talk more with Grandpa and Grandma about their lives; what it was like for them growing up, and what they thought about the changes that happen all the time.

Missed Me?

Hello, good evening and "Thanks for making us part of your day." I enjoy listening to Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio and he opens his show with that quote.
It has been awhile, hasn't it? What have I missed since my last post? Christmas was not great this year. Amber was very sick on Christmas day so we did not even celebrate until a few days later and it was a real bummer. So, there is not a bunch to chat about from Christmas. Abbie loved getting gifts and "processing" her gifts much like her father has done before. The bowl season was pretty much a disappointment. The Big 12 did not do well, OSU lost, Missouri looked bad, Tech lost, and worst of all....Texas won. The Championship game was hard, it was a good game and we played better than in the past, but just could not get the job done. It is always tough when the college football season is over. NFL playoffs do give some solace, but they are not like college games. OU basketball is looking good. Blake Griffin continues to impress. I watched the K-State game and he makes plays that make everyone just ooohh and aaahhh. I had to work last night while they whooped Texas on Big Monday, so I missed it. I hope they continue to improve.
Work has been a bear. I have hired another part-time tech and hope to hire another soon, but we are just getting killed. It is tough to get all the prescriptions taken care of to begin with, not to mention all the other things that go along with it. If the flu hits at all, we are in big trouble. We could be in trouble anyway, it is just big time busy. We had a day last week that was slower, and we still filled 400. I am afraid it is starting to wear on me. Sometimes when I come home it is like my head is just swimming for awhile. Don't get me wrong, I am glad we are busy, I always prefer busy to slow.
Sorry I did not post any pictures with this, I will try and get some new pictures of Stinky and post them next time. I am so glad to be off tomorrow. Have a good week.