Flippy - I Rant, You Read
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
the wee hours
The Move Is On
Well, it looks like Freddie Mac doesn’t want to sell our house back to us at fair market value. They’ve even gone so far as to take it off the market. So, we’re now looking at homes in Pahrump, NV. It’s a smallish town about 90 minutes outside of Vegas, where most houses have an acre or more of land, and where the only big shopping to be done is at the grocery store (they have two chain stores), Wal-Mart, or Lowe’s. Oh yeah, and they have a pet/feed/gun store, where we can get some of our pet food, and our, uh, weapons, I guess. We’re hoping this works out, because Freddie Mac’s representatives are very unpleasant to deal with. We’re being evicted for not paying rent…so they’re returning the rent that we last paid. Yeah, sure, that makes sense. They say that we didn’t cooperate with the agents trying to sell our house, yet we let them in every time they knocked at OUR door. They said that we didn’t cooperate because either someone went to the wrong house or they were just setting us up for eviction because it’s easier to “show” a house that’s vacant. When you have dogs that yap at every sound someone makes in front of your house, you KNOW when someone supposedly spent 30 minutes knocking on your door. The dogs would’ve told us, plus WE WERE SITTING HERE WAITING FOR THEM! We cleaned up for them and everything. We wouldn’t have done that and then sat still for 90 minutes to see if the person was going to show up, if we were going to cancel. When we wanted to change one date, we asked. Once. We agreed to every other date. Funny though, they don’t want to sell the house to us. They’d rather it sat vacant, without even renters, than sell it to us. Why on earth would they take it off the market, if they wanted to sell it? It’s all so very, very weird. So, we’ll go buy a cheaper house that’s newer and has more land, and more opportunity to rescue animals. I hear there’s a family in Pahrump that takes their goat with them wherever they go. I like goats. 
the wee hours
Study Finds Severe Chronic Pain Increases Death By 68%
While this study isn’t a big surprise to people who live with chronic pain, I’m sure it’s a surprise to those who don’t. What I liked best about the posting of this study though, is the comments. When you grow up being Jewish, you kind of feel like you’re a member of a small group who either knows each other or at least knows someone who knows someone else, and then somehow you feel semi-related. It was the same when I realized I was gay. It’s the same small group around the world who understands what your life experiences might have been. Well, now we’re part of the chronic pain group, and the comments on the study are like comments we could’ve written ourselves. I wouldn’t have thought that it would be so difficult to find people who could empathize with people who are in pain, day in and day out, but it really is hard to find them in your regular everyday life. People often think you should suck it up or quit complaining or they think it can’t be that bad…and those are the people you want to magically feel that chronic pain for at least a couple of weeks, where you feel like it’s never going to go away. Everyone knows what acute pain feels like, but most people just heal from that pain and move on, never thinking that other people are in that kind of pain every single day. So, anyway, the commenters on the study are more of “my people”, like Jewish people and gay people and, well, people who think Joss Whedon is genius or that Siobhan Magnus should’ve won this season of American Idol.
I’m not going to quote from the study. If you’re interested, you’ll go to the link and read it. If you’re not interested, you’ll skip over anything I quoted anyway. However, knowing what chronic pain (and fatigue) has done to my life, I’m not at all surprised that people with chronic pain die sooner than those without. Some of those deaths, I’m sure, include suicide. I’m one of the lucky ones who has found a pain management doctor who isn’t afraid of pain meds and understands that people can take opioids responsibly, without getting addicted and without getting high. Like one of the commenters said, our pain meds DON’T make us high, they go straight to the pain receptors and work there. I can honestly say that I’ve never been high from my opioids. Not once. The meds either work and relieve the pain without any sort of high or they do absolutely nothing. (Opioids Relieve Pain with Little Addiction Risk - and when they say “little addiction risk”, they mean it - .27%, yes, point two seven percent, as in way less than 1%) Oh, and the very first time I had my dosage increased, they made me incredibly nauseous and I, uh, lost those pills very shortly after I took them, if you know what I mean. The sewer system full of anti-depressants suddenly had some pain meds added to their mix. You know what drug made me high (for a few days anyway)? Lyrica. I was woozy and had to hold onto the railing when going up and down the stairs. Lyrica also made my feet swell like balloons and made me fall asleep at the drop of a, well, anything. And, Lyrica didn’t do diddly for my Fibromyalgia, so I quit taking it after a month or two of very unpleasant side effects. The “high” was gone after a couple of days, and it ws also an unwelcome high. I just wanted pain relief and I wasn’t getting it from Lyrica. I’m glad Lyrica helps some FM sufferers, but I’m not one of them. It just gives me Fred Flintstone feet and doesn’t allow my shoes to fit. It was a lot of money to pay for a drug that made me sleepy and swollen. I’m glad that I’ve found a combination of medications that help me feel somewhat better. Unfortunately, they don’t make me feel like the old me - I’m still in pain and I’m still exhausted. But, at least the pain is more manageable, because if I didn’t have any pain management, I wouldn’t be sticking around and hoping for an answer to both the pain and the fatigue. I’d be one of 68%. I know that for a while, I had high blood pressure, which had never been a problem for me. It’s fine now, so I assume it was during an extra bad pain/fatigue period.
I still think Siobhan Magnus should’ve won American Idol. I think she got kicked off based on some of that fine print that allows the producers to do whatever they want with the voting results.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
mid-afternoon
The Fun of Losing Your House To Foreclosure - Part (too numerous to keep track of)
Last week, I received an email from the realtor who has been trying to sell our (former) house for the outrageous price of $194k (we’ve had one person look at the house in two months), telling me that the house was going up for auction on April 24th. Great, another auction for the house. They really want to get rid of us, I guess. The fun part of that was that they were insisting on three open houses (12- 4p) before the auction date. Yes, four hour open houses with an animal sanctuary in the house. It sounded like tons of fun. Obviously, it was just stressful finding out about the auction, but adding the open houses to the stress was above & beyond. I received an email a couple of days later saying that a Fannie Mae inspector was in the area and needed to inspect the house that afternoon for the auction. Well, since I don’t usually pick up my email until the middle of the night, he was out of luck. Several days later, I received another email from the realtor telling me that the auction had been cancelled. Could we really have been that lucky that I pick up my email so late and that the house wasn’t able to be inspected on that particular day? Did they cancel the auction because it wasn’t inspected with a certain group of houses?
Our goal has always (well, almost always, I guess) to attempt to buy our house back with the help of an investor, and to then rent it back from them. Or, we were hoping to be able to figure out some things to sell or to maybe possibly hopefully get my disability case finally settled (after about 9 months of waiting for them to get all the records they wanted, my case has finally gone to the medical examiner) and use the backpay as down payment on the house. There is NO way that in this market that this house is worth almost $200k. Not even close. Fannie Mae paid $135k for it, and with broken pool pumps, flooring that needs to be replaced for someone else to live here (unless, they too, have a parrot room where they want linoleum), a leaking sprinkler system, a collapsed cabinet in the garage, and our big (granted, broken) hot water heater that was replaced with a tiny one w/o the recirculating pump that we used to have, etc. Geez, I didn’t realize how long it took to get hot water without the recirculating pump - man, what a waste of water. Anyway, for someone else to live here, the house is a big fixer-upper. There are lots of extras that we paid for to upgrade the house, but those will just be our little secret. They’re things that aren’t immediately obvious, and we’re not about to make the house more appealing to someone else.
We’ve been looking at houses in AZ, in an area that looks like it’s on its way to becoming what our area of Las Vegas is now. Right now, it’s the semi-boonies in a suburb not far from Phoenix, where the houses are a decent size with large yards, and the prices are currently 85k-95k for a single story, which would be our preference now. It would cost less than moving across the country, we’d still be able to avoid winter, my disability lawyer practices there in case I need to appeal (in general, most people are turned down on their first try for disability, but I’m hoping that my lawyer’s good reputation will help, so that the SSA won’t want to spend money on an appeal), we have a possible roommate set up to help with the rent, and we also would have help finding new doctors. It’s not as cheap (housing-wise - although it’s not far off for non fixer-uppers, as we’re currently not in any condition to work on a house) as moving to the Mid-West, but it’s also not as expensive to move our stuff, nor would our aching bodies have to deal with freezing winters. And hey, it’s cheaper to clothe yourself in t-shirts, shorts, and Crocs, than buying winter clothing and shoes. Although, it blows my chances of fireflies in my back yard. Oh, you laugh - I once almost moved to Georgia mostly because of fireflies. Well, and it was pretty there, but mostly….the fireflies.
Our goal is to eventually move closer to Leigh-Ann’s family (it’s her turn to see the little ones grow up), and we didn’t want to get there in two moves, but if we can have an intermediate move to a place with an airport, an NHL team (that is actually doing well this season!), an NFL team, a MLB team, and some colleges nearby, that’s not too bad. That’s one thing I dislike about Las Vegas - no professional sports teams. Yes, we have some minor league teams, but it just isn’t the same…and they’re not televised either. So, there are good reasons to stay (although, fewer and fewer these days) and good reasons to move.
Stay tuned for a zillion “30 Second Book Reviews”. We’ve kept our library busy. When you’re feeling crappy, books are not only handy when you’re in bed, but they’re a nice escape. Then again, I’m not sure that I could call “Lovely Bones” a nice escape. I prefer my fiction with less child rape & murder.
Friday, February 26, 2010
late morning
Oh, I’m Going to Miss the Olympics
It’s been a fun couple of weeks…on television at least. There’s nothing Leigh-Ann and I enjoy more than a couple of weeks of Olympic viewing, day and night. The last Olympics didn’t involve such drama away from our television, but it’s been a nice mental break to concentrate on the events. I remember when we first met, we spent two weeks at our friends’ place watching the Nagano Olympics, rarely leaving to even get food. It’s funny how so much has changed, but yet in some cases, nothing has changed. We can still spend 24/7 watching the Olympics and never get bored, even when watching events that we’d never watch at any other time of the year. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Nordic-Combined and Biathalon.
I miss blogging, but I’m not sure what to talk about. I’ll try to think of some good news. Wait, I know - Mack, the German Shepherd that we rescued, will now let me leave the bedroom without jumping over the baby gate to follow me wherever I go. Man, this dog has the worst separation anxiety of any dog I’ve ever met. We adopted him to keep Dante company after Eli died in June, but unfortunately, Mack won’t spend any time with Dante, unless we’re standing there with him. So, poor Dante is still lonely and now we have a German Shepherd added to the already beast-full master bedroom. He’s basically a really good dog, but he must’ve had a really lousy life before he ended up at the shelter. I hope that someday soon he’ll be able to hang out with Dante for a few hours at a time. Dante needs a big dog pal.
Here’s a picture of Mack, sitting in (15lb) Cricket’s bed. He loves to “try” to curl up in Cricket’s bed. He’ll eye it from across the room, and then he’ll literally run right over to it and start spinning his big body to get as tiny as he can, but he always ends up spilling over the sides. It’s really adorable though. If we had extra cash, we’d buy him a big bed with sides, but for now, he’ll have to settle for the two big Orvis beds that are in the bedroom. Poor dog, suffering like that. LOL
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
terribly early in the morning
Daily Rituals
Aw, isn’t it sweet, someone checks my blog almost every single morning around 8 am. Nothing says “time to wake up” like a cup of coffee and a dose of Flippy. Keep checking, I still have some blog entries in mind for you. In the meantime, why don’t you get started reading here and see if you can find yourself. For those of you who are less obsessive about me, you should check out the link, too, but only for pure entertainment value.
