One Problem at a Time

I'm working on getting Norbert to stop shooting litter all over the place.

I'm still puzzling over how she manages to get litter between my sheets, even when I make my bed every morning.

I would love to persuade Norbert to quit biting my toes.

I would be ecstatic if she would sleep between the hours of 10:30pm and 6:30am.

But I've figured out a way to keep my floor dry and free of "kitty litter soup," a mouth watering slime of kitty litter which has been soaked in water dish splashage. Norbert isn't wild about the fix, but she seems to be dealing. (I think she's mortified to be drinking out of something festooned with cartoon pictures of rodents.)

A Very Short Post*

1. Today I saw a man vacuum his carpet with a canister style vacuum with no attachments. He just scraped the bare tube along the floor leaving a clean but thin line of clean behind. His apartment was very small, but it would still take him years to do the entire square-footage of carpet that way.

2. Below is a picture of my new and thoroughly awesome clock. It used to be an old and not very awesome alarm clock until I stripped out the radio, took off the plastic case, and encased it in resin. I had wire up some buttons so I could set the time, and they work. And it works. I'm pleased and amazed.


I'll put up a more focused picture when I'm not trying to go to bed.

*Because the rest of the evening was used up by remotely devirusing a computer. It takes a long to comb through the registry over the phone.

Difficult Delivery

My last delivery of the day was much harder than I was hoping for.

The first problem arose when I got to the patient's neighborhood to discover that nearly all the parking was blocked off because somebody was filming something. I have no idea what it was they were filming, but it involved a flat-black Mini Cooper with a camera crane strapped to the top and roughly 54 cubic feet of bouncy balls which the filmy people were busily loading into 5 gallon buckets.

The second problem was that I had to lug a 75 pound box of gel mattress pad up a flight of stairs, into a little tiny expensive San Francisco elevator and then put said pad on the bed. The patient and care givers poked at it for a while then decided they didn't want it. So I put it back in box, crammed myself back in the elevator, and then hobbled back down the stairs.

Luckily I managed to park close by. I didn't think I was going to be able to at first, because the truck from which they unloaded the huge bouncy ball cage was blocking my street for a half hour or so. But just before I was about to give up and park someplace near home and take the bus, the bouncy truck moved.

All in all it was totally worth it. I got to see a really amazing view from the house (most of the Financial District and all of the Bay Bridge including a very centered Treasure Island), I ended up with a splendid parking spot, and I got to see 54 cubic feet of bouncy balls.

Thoroughly Gross
Really, it is. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My hand hurt. It hurt in the morning when I got up. It hurt more when I took a shower and got shampoo in my hand hole. It hurt last night while Norbert was doing her best to attack my handage. (Hand bandage.) And it especially hurt all day at work as I tried to grab and manipulate things with my hand.

But as I write this post I'm using both hands and typing at normal speed. “How can that be?” you ask. Well, I'll tell you how that can be:

Long about 3 o'clock I took my most recent handage off to discover that some of the non-stick cotton pad had stuck. While tenderly extracting cotton bits, I started to worry that there was something else in my hand hole. Turns out it was just a skin chunk which had turned almost over was sitting in its former home sideways. I righted it and put a band aid on, and now my fingers are flying and fancy free. (So long as I don't make certain movements, some of which I seem not to be smart enough to avoid. Twist off Henry Weinhard's root beer caps, for instance, are a big no-no.)

The moral of the story is 2 fold:

1st Fold) Don't drill a hole in something with one hand while holding it from behind with the other.

2nd Fold) Put any stray skin back where you found it. Your body will thank you.

Short Post

I'm just going to do a short post for now. I had planned a longer one, but I've just drilled a small hole in my right hand while working on upgrading my car's thank you sign. Nothing to worry about, but it does slow my typing down quite a bit. I'll post pictures when it’s done. (Of the sign, not the hole in my hand.)

Anyhow, I wasn't sure if Kate wanted a picture or Norbert standing in her water dish, or of my bleeding hip. And since she didn't post her email address, I can't ask. So here is one of each:

The Scourge of Norbert

It's really difficult not to punt Norbert down the block. Having a kitten is very conflicting with their bipolar swings from cute to really aggravating. She really likes, for instance, to knock her food/water dish around until 96% of the water is on the floor (preferably mixed with kitty litter), 2% is in the food side of the dish, and 1% remains in the dish ready to be consumed. Trying to thwart her efforts to mildew the grout in my livitchen, today I switched her water dish for a Pyrex loaf dish. It's big and heavy and glass and can't be knocked around. It can, however, be walked in. I thought cats were not terrible fond of water. Well, maybe they aren't, because after wading around in her water dish she went to dry off in her litter box, which was apparently a bit too dry, so she went for another wade in the water dish.

Her other hobbies include: Biting my everything, scratching my legs and feet, spreading an even layer of kitty litter over the living room portion of my livitchen, and falling off the futon. I only really take pleasure from 3 kitteny things now: 1) The fact that she seems to like being near me, even if it is only to climb my boxer shorts. 2) When she falls asleep on me. 3) When she tips over backwards and hits her head on something. The last one is a little more revengey than I'd like, but my hip is currently bleeding and it's her fault.

As a last and especially stiring example of the speed at which she can go from cute to evil, last night she was sleeping on my chest while I read my book. Eventually she gave a yawn, a big stretch, opened her eyes, and tried to eat one of my moles.

Being the owner of a large and varied collection of moles, I know for a fact that the purpose of a mole is to give the owner something to monitor for cancerous tendencies. Moles are not, however, under any circumstances, nor by any stretch of the imagination, edible.

No, Really, I'm Right

Today I delivered a mattress pad to a lady in San Rafael. When I was on the phone with her to make the appointment she asked if we had any foam seat cushions.

Me: No, all we have are gel seat cushions.
Her: How much are those?
Me: Around $250.
Her: I don't want gel. I want foam. Do you have any foam?
Me: No, just gel.
Her: Not gel, foam.
Me: Sorry, we don't have foam cushions.
Her: Ok, just the pad then.

I went to her apartment and set up the gel pad, and half way through the 20 pages of Medicare paperwork we got to the following tricky sentence:

"By signing below I waive the right to have Medicare send the payment for the delivered product directly to me."

And she didn't sign it. So I explained that she needed to sign that line so we could get Medicare to pay us for the pad, and not have Medicare pay her, and then have her pay us. That signature saves a lot of time and effort for everyone.

She read the sentence out loud and then said, "See? If I sign this they send a check to me."

"No," I say, "you have the right to have Medicare send the check to you. But by signing this you waive that right and Medicare will send the check to us."

"I don't think so." She said and proceeded to read the sentence out loud again and then look at my with a triumphant expression on her face.

Finally I gave up trying to explain and just said that I really needed her to sign the form, otherwise I can't deliver her pad.

"Okay," she said in the tone of one humoring a two year old who wants wear his underpants inside-out. "I'll sign it, but I don't think you're right."

Weekend

All in all I had a pretty good weekend. I

- Had a friend come visit
- Got a kitten (from the friend. Surprise! Her name is Norbert.)
- Went to see a concert I didn't know much about but thoroughly enjoyed it. (Sufjan Stevens and Liz Janes. Xylophones, ukulele, and banjoes are good instruments despite being difficult to spell.)
- Bought a violin of the street for $12. (It needs a lot of work and may have been stolen. I'm trying to decipher the phone number on the case which has been so efficiently sharpied out.)
- Discovered and bought tickets to a concert I really want to go see. (Turin Brakes)
- And received my 50 ultra bright white LEDs so I can upgrade my thank you sign for optimum day viewing.

So many projects, so little time.



Norbert

Mixed Messages

Sometimes it can be hard to get my message across. This happened to me all the time. Sometimes it's my fault, and sometimes it isn't.

When I'm talking to someone I don't know, find especially attractive, or both, sometimes I drop words. If I was trying to tell somebody that I like to play guitar it might come out, "I really to guitar." This spectacular sentence either leads to the person doing the old smile-and-nod, or a long and uncomfortable pause where we both try to figure out what the hell I just said. If they smile and nod then I don't always catch on that I've messed my message. I worry that I whatever I just said wasn't as funny as I thought it was, or, if I'm asking a question, how smiling and nodding makes any sense as a response to "do you want anything from the bar?" Either this person is lost in a fantasy about all the treasures that await behind the bar, or I'm not making sense.

At other times the message comes out fine on my end and the it's the other person who isn't holding up their end of the conversation. Take today for example.

People are supposed to have a mattress or a mattress and a pad. Medicare will not, under any circumstances, pay for 2 pads, or 2 mattresses, or buy you a pad and then buy you a mattress later. This lady I talked to today had 1 mattress and 2 pads, and was hoping, the sales guy told me, to replace the whole business with 1 mattress. But she was out of chances as far as Medicare was concerned, so she had to pay for it and wanted to see the mattress before plunking down the cash.

When I got to her apartment with the mattress, I took it out of the box and showed it to her.

She looked at the mattress and inquired, "does that go on top of the rest of this stuff?"

"No. This would replace your current mattress and the two pads you have on top."

"Well the problem, young man, is that I can't turn myself over. Things keep sliding down," she said, flipping the covers off herself and pointing to the mattress.

"Are you sliding down on the pads, or are the pads sliding down on the mattress?" (I asked because if she's the one who's sliding then a new mattress won't help.)

"Whatever," she replied.

"Well, I just want to make sure this new mattress will fix your problem before we put it on because Medicare isn't going to pay for it."

"Do whatever you have to, just be gentle. I'm very fragile you see." She gave a fragile little wave to indicate, I suppose, that she was fragile all over.

"Um, well, you can't actually try it out first. Once you sleep on it I can't take it back." (Also, I thought, I don’t touch patients. Not my job.)

"Oh, then take it away sir! Take it away!"

So I did.

Most of the time, my messages do get through, and then sometimes what comes back disturbs me. More background is involved for this conversation to make much sense: When renting a mattress through Medicare, after 10 months a rental/purchase letter is delivered. If purchase is selected we charge Medicare for 3 more months and then the mattress belongs to the patient forever more. If rental is chosen we charge Medicare for 5 more months and then take it back when the bedsores heal. Once we take it away, we can't give it back because Medicare will only pay for 15 months of rental over a patient's whole span of existence. So for somebody who will have bedsore problems their whole life, the purchase option makes infinitely more sense.

Me: (after explaining the whole paragraph above) Sign here and circle either purchase or rent.

Patient's Daughter and Caretaker: (obviously concerned about service after purchase) If I choose rent than you still come by once a month to check on the equipment?

Me: Well, yes, but if she heals then we'll have to take the mattress and we won't be able to rent it to her again if her sores come back.

PDAC: Yeah, well I can control whether or not everything heals up.

Jesus Christ on a cracker! This lady was on the verge of deciding that a pressure sore here and there over the next 10 or so years of her mother's life was a worth while exchange for monthly service visits.

This situation is exactly the kind of thing that makes me think that people, in general, are nuts.

Work Words

This guy at work, we'll call him Al, the same guy who always sets off his car alarm when he gets into, or out of, his car, and also the guy who came in last week with the top 4 buttons of his shirt undone* (and not wearing and undershirt), sends out thousands of updates per day about where he is and what he's doing.

All of us rental techs are dispatched to our deliveries via blackberries. So it's nice to tell the supervisor (or me when he's on vacation) where you are. Little messages like "Done with Oakland, heading to Vacaville." Then, "Done with Vacaville, heading to Davis."

But Al sends updates about everything. "Going to Walnut Creek." "I'm here." "Done with Walnut Creek." "Traffic on 24E." Nobody needs to know when he arrives, just when he's done.

But once in a while his messages can be entertaining. My favorite extraneous page was when I was dispatching one morning and I had to send him straight from home to a delivery. After several messages back and forth to work out the details, he sent me the following:

I know this place already.
If you can get the address
of the last one I sent you in
Concord? That will be great.
I have to prepare now and
take a bath. Talk to you later.

Most importantly, I did not need to know he was about to take a bath. Less importantly, but still perplexing is who takes baths? Especially for the purposes of getting ready for work.

In other word news, my supervisor has been known to get a few well known words consistently wrong. For instance, when he transposes some numbers he'll say, "I'm getting dilexic in my old age." Most of his slips I'm well used to, but today I discovered a new one when he said that tonight he's having polar sausage for dinner.

Sausage made from polar bears? Sausage which aligns itself on the plate, north to south? Cold sausage?

* It remains unclear as to whether or not he did this on purpose. He always has more buttons undone than most people find appropriate (2 or 3), but the whole shirt only has 7 buttons. Have the majority of buttons undone seems like it has to be an accident. The world may never know.

4 Senses, at Least

Last night I had a dream where I went to work, and when I couldn't find my supervisor, I looked around the corner into the bedroom (nope, we don't really have a bedroom at work) to find him almost completely hidden under the covers, and the room smelled like chunder. When I woke up it look a little while for the vomit smell to fade.

I didn't know I could smell in dreams before this. I've had other vivid dreams where spiders have faded from view when I woke up, but never smells. So I can definitely hear, see, touch, and smell. And since taste is 52% smell (or something) I'm more than half way to tasting.

Now that I know I have this skill, maybe I can put it to better use and smell flowers, or perfume, or something. Waking up to the fading smell of puke is not the best part of waking up. Then again, nor is Folgers in my cup. However, Folders* does smell good.

* That was originally supposed to be Folgers. My problem arose when I initially realized I didn't know how to spell Folgers, so I went to Google - my friend, confidant, and special spelling envoy. The first search I typed was:

"The best part of waking up" "is foldiers in your cup"

To which I got 2 results. I was sure Folgers was mentioned more than twice. So I took off the quotes, but in the process accidentally took off "is f" so I searched for

The best part of waking up oldiers in your cup

to which Google suggested that perhaps I meant:

The best part of waking up soldiers in your cup

Just to see if anyone has ever written anything about soldiers in cups, I clicked that I did mean soldiers. Apparently there is a joke which goes:

A grandmother was surprised by her 7-year-old grandson one morning. He had made her coffee. She drank what was the worst cup of coffee in her life. When she got to the bottom, there were three of those little green army men in the cup. She said, "Honey, what are the army men doing in my coffee?"

Her grandson said, "Grandma, it says on TV... The best part of waking up is soldiers in your cup!"

So that's what you get for making fun of my typos - a long boring explanation of where they came from. (When in actuality they came from me not reading my post through thoroughly.)

Buns of Jell-O

Yesterday I went into an assisted living place in San Francisco to investigate the claim that somebody's bed rails would fit on our bed frame. The answer was no, they wouldn't. Not that this is important at all, I just didn't want to leave anyone in suspense and therefore unable to concentrate on the rest of the post.

They guy who was going to show me the rails is a physical therapist, and had his office in the old-people gym. I like the old-people gym. There is no better place to make you feel strong and fit. Some of the various exercises include:

-The two bar station: Carefully let go of your walker and take hold of the two parallel handrails, one in each hand. Now lift each foot, one at a time, set it down and lift the other. Repeat. Do not walk, just lift.

-The pulley rope arm lifters: Two handles, one on each end of a length of rope. The rope goes up to the ceiling, through two pullies, and back down to air above the chair. Grab a handle with each hand and move your arms up and down.

-Grip strengthener: Looks just like a young people's grip strengthener, except instead of thick rubber straps for resistance, the grip is strengthened by two veeeery small rubber bands.

My favorite exercise was being done by a guy in the corner of the room. He was lying on his back on a padded physical therapy table with his knees bent over a cylindrical pillow. In his hands he had a foam covered pipe, with no weight on either end, in a bench press position. I assume he was supposed to be lifting the bar up and down, but I don't know for sure because he was asleep, presumably exercising his unconscious.