CafeChatNoir

And I will be eventually, but for the moment, I have a sleeping Carmen in my lap.

Sure, I could move her. But she looks so sweet and comfy and she’s purring up a storm and I just can’t bring myself to relocate her to the sofa.

She’ll decide soon enough that she has important business elsewhere in the house and I can go on my merry way, but for now, the bank can wait.

Despite any indicators to the contrary, he’s very handy to have around. I cannot easily clip the cats’ nails myself – they’re pretty good about it, but I get through one or two nails and they decide they have something more important to do and leave. After Lily caught a nail in her tail the other day, it was obvious it was trimming time again. Donald agreed saying that Carmen had been slicing him up lately. He also later admitted it might have had something to do with boxing matches they were having. (And I suspect he was instigating.)

So, today was, “Donald, grab a cat!” day. Fortunately they like him quite a bit, and they sat right in his lap and he kept them from other appointments, and the feline manicures were done in no time, and we didn’t even have to break out the towels.

In other news, picking out a new cell phone is a lot more involved than it used to be. Granted, the last time I actually picked out a new model of a phone was at least 5 years ago. They have some new features! Everything is enabled for GPS navigation, which is really cool cause I think I would use that a lot. It would be nice to go new places without having to factor in an extra 30 minutes for getting lost. So, it looks like I’ll have a data plan regardless. I could still get the current iteration of my old phone, but if I’m going to have a data plan anyway, I figure I might as well go ahead and get something a little more shiny. It’s down to the Samsung Reclaim (free) the LG Lotus Elite ($30) or the HTC Hero (Android, $100).

I think the Android phone, cool as it may be, may be way more than I’d ever need – tons of apps, but I really can’t think of any phone app I desperately need. So for the moment, I think the Lotus Elite is in the lead, touchscreen and a better memory card than the Reclaim. So, we’ll see.

So, I’m thinking the time is coming for a new cell phone. Old one isn’t holding a charge very well and it’s cheaper to get a whole new phone than trying to replace the battery. (And it seems like they don’t make that particular battery anymore anyway.)

So, if you have gotten a new phone in the past year – what did you get? What do you love about it and what do you hate about it?

Also, did you end up adding a data plan to your package cause of all the shiny stuff that’s now available?

(My current phone just does calling and text messages. Very un-shiny.)

Seriously, just ask her. She is strutting about the house today with the air of one that has seen it all, done it all, and survived it.

The reason for this attitude? (Well, other than being a cat.) Carmen has been OUTSIDE.

Came downstairs this morning, let the dog out, went to the bathroom. Came out of the bathroom, gave the dog his biscuit and then realized I had not actually let him back in, but there he was, in the kitchen. Realize he headbutted the back door open, and do a head count. 1 Moxley. 1 Lily. 0 Carmen.

I walk to the back door to discover that Carmen has boldly stepped outside the confines of her climate controlled paradise to go head to head with Mother Nature. Then promptly realized there was a 6 inch wide concrete threshold right outside the door and laid down on it in an attempt to try and have every part of her body in contact with it. So much for taking on Mother Nature – she’d found something better.

You see, my cat is a freak. Not just any kind of freak, but a concrete freak. If there is a slab of concrete around, she wants to be laying on it. Or rolling on it. Or somehow in contact with it. Whenever she gets into the basement, she races down the stairs, takes a hard left turn to the unfinished side and as soon as she hits that concrete, she’s rolling around on it like it’s made of crack.

I swear, I’m buying her a concrete paver for her birthday.

Upon reading that, I’ll admit that the cynical, sarcastic part of my brain said, “Well, NO SHIT, Sherlock!!”  Then the slightly less cynical and more rational part of my brain said, “Not everyone has the same close up and personal experience with Alzheimer’s and/or Senile Dementia that you do – this might actually be news to some people, and those people might be able to do something about it, so stop being a snarky bitch.”

The article is here: Alzheimer’s costs to soar without effective drugs
The Alzheimer’s Association Report referenced is here: Changing the Trajectory of Alzheimer’s Disease: A National Imperative

Alrghtly then, I’ll attempt defer to my less bitchy side, but I cannot make any guarantees that by the time you finish reading this that you won’t be thinking, “Good grief, this woman needs some intensive therapy on many, many levels.”

The report by the Alzheimer’s Association estimates that “the number of Americans 65 and older with Alzheimer’s will increase from 5.1 million today to 13.5 million by mid-century.” ie, 2050, when I will be 78 years old. Well, again, No Shit Sherlock, we have a Baby Boomer generation who is approaching a little thing called old age, and yeah – a chunk of them will outlive every other thing that could have killed them first.

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that Alzheimer’s is what gets you when nothing else has been able to kill you first. (The exception being early-onset Alzheimer’s – 5% to 10% of all Alzheimer’s victims are just screwed no matter what.) My grandmother is 87 years old and she has never had a healthy habit in her life – I don’t have a memory in my brain which doesn’t have her lounging on a sofa with either a cup of coffee or a beer or glass of wine in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. (As one of my cousins once asked at a young age, “Does your Grandma ever sleep?” He seriously thought she was a vampire.) Exercise? Oh hell no, it might have mussed her hair or nails! Eating healthy? That was for hippies! She didn’t have any particular aversions to salads, but “cholesterol” was never in her vocabulary. Honestly, despite the fact that she makes me completely batshit crazy, I love my grandmother, but the fact of the matter is – she should have been dead at least 10 years ago. Having escaped all else, Alzheimer’s has come in for it’s final revenge.

The only thing that will keep these potential costs and # of patients down is that the current BB generation is willing to try new things that might kill them before Alzheimer’s hits, such as skydiving and basejumping. (If I live to be 70, I will be taking up basejumping or some similarly suicidal hobby. I am not kidding.) The other thing the BB’s have going for them is that they know this is a definite possibility for their future and they know the more active you keep your brain, the more you can slow down their brains turning to cement. Kids, keep playing Scrabble and Sudoku and doing those NYTimes crossword puzzles – even if you have to occasionally black out empty boxes to make the words fit.

There is a line in the article that really hit me right upside the head: “They estimate that a drug that delays the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years would decrease the total number of Americans age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s from 5.6 million to 4 million in 2020. And if a drug were discovered by 2015 that slowed disease progression, it could cut the number of people in the severe stage of Alzheimer’s disease in half to 1.1 million by 2020, and 1.2 million in 2050, down from the projections of 6.5 million.”

How do I say this nicely? Well, I’m pretty sure I can’t. The rest of the first of the above sentences is “and by putting off Alzheimer’s by five years, we are going to save some serious coin because there’s a damn good chance that something else will kill them first, and much faster than a terminal illness that takes 5-7 years to run it’s course and requires intervention damn near immediately once symptoms present.”

I can see how some may cry “death panels!!!!!!” But it’s not that. Take a minute and think about it. If you could have 2 years with a loved elderly relative who was in the present and loving life and they kicked off while walking out of a salon with a perfectly coiffed ‘do and lovely manicured nails (as my great-grandmother did) vs. having that relative around for another 3 to 5 years beyond that where they essentially ended up no more than a zombie – which would you choose? And if you were said elderly relative? As much as I’d love to see things from the zombie side of it all, I’m not down with it if it entails my family going through hell on earth.

The part of the report that bothered me the most is the fact that unpaid family care amounts to roughly 20 hours a week per Alzheimer’s patient – with no consideration of what people have to give up to provide those 20 hours a week. If you have a 20 hour a week commitment creeping into your life while trying to hold down a 40 hour a week job, well guess what – in this economy, your ass is going to get bounced out of your 40 hour a week job. So not only are you providing a 20 hours a week, $20/hour service for free, you’ve also lost any income to offset it from your 40 hour a week job. Were my mother still alive when things went south with my grandmother, she would have had to quit her job, and tend to my grandmother at no charge. She would have been down $92K a year. Had I still been working, I would have only been down $72K a year, cause my Mom pulled down more a day than I did. The only reason I didn’t have to quit my job when my grandmother went off the rails was that I had already decided to take some time off from Corporate America due to burnout and the fact that I was still trying to cope with the fact that I didn’t have a Mom anymore. And I was in a situation where I found that I couldn’t even reasonably consider even the most intriguing offers of employment – because I couldn’t say, “Well, I’m kind of on call 24/7 for my grandmother, can you handle that?” and expect any level of interest in my copious random skills. So, while the 12.5 billion hours of “free care” for 11 million people a year may be accurate, the full costs of providing those 1136 hours of care per year aren’t taken into account.

The costs of Alzheimer’s will certainly explode, but I don’t think anyone is taking into true account the cost of not just “free” caregiving by family members, but the cost of caregiving plus everything else that has to be given up to provide said caregiving.

That being said, I will still sell everything I have to make sure my grandmother has the care and comfort she needs in whatever time she has left on this mortal plane. I just don’t like the idea of anyone thinking it is “free” in any way, shape or form. It takes it’s toll not just on checkbooks, but on everyone’s mental health and well being that is involved.

And yes, were there a magic drug that could have staved off Alzheimer’s until some other ailment quickly kicked my grandmother onto the next stage of whatever it is that comes after life, so she could enjoy her time left on this earth without being paranoid about her taxes and bills being paid and terrified if there was ever a mistake? I’d be calling her every day at 5PM to make sure she took her pills.

Well over 50% of the underlying issues with last night’s insomnia was the fact that I could not shut my brain off, and tonight, I feel like I’m right in the same place.

Part of the reason I’m not feeling particularly optimistic about the sweet escape to dreamland is that my brain has been going about 150MPH all day today, and it’s only gotten worse as the day has progressed into the evening. It’s been a day where every self-doubt, every question of choices made, and the rest of my mental flotsam and jetsam has decided to come bubbling up to the surface.

I was talking with a friend earlier about a mutual friend who had gone off and tried something new and potentially terrifying. Granted, it was a no-lose situation, but he went outside his comfort zone to do it. And we were both proud of him for the attempt, regardless of the outcome.

There was a time where I told The Universe, “Bring it on!!” Which she did, in spades. (Yeah, tempting Fate in the first place ain’t the greatest idea.)

But she’s winged about as much as she could at my head, and I’ve managed to survive it.

However, it’s left me ridiculously gun-shy. And I really hate that I’ve become a rather timid person for it – for no other reason that I’m tired of the fact that the Fates decided to have a psychotic break while cutting my strings.

But I just don’t want to discover that The Universe has more fun and games in store for me. I’ve had enough at this point, thankyouverymuch.

When you can’t convince yourself that anything new won’t end in spectacular disaster, it’s hard to psych yourself up for anything new and outside your comfort zone.

It’s quite an annoying spot to find yourself in.

I am one of those incredibly lucky people who rarely has insomnia.  I go to bed and I am out within 15 minutes.  It’s a wonderful thing.

And then that bitch of insomnia shows up last night.  I had a great plan – I was going to go to bed early, get a great night’s sleep, get up and conquer the world today.  The fact that I am talking about it likely indicates that it didn’t work out.

First, I stayed up WAY too late being a couch potato and watching TV.  Which in and of itself isn’t the worst thing in the world, but I was mildly annoyed with the fact that I’d not been paying a whit of attention to the time and turned off the TV at 3AM.

Went to bed, nice and tired, and could NOT fall asleep.  I’d start to drift off, and then I’d hear a noise.  Or some random thought would pop in my head.  Or Lily would be jumping up on the high boy again (which she knows she isn’t allowed to do) and I’d be awake again.  Then it was 4AM.  Then 5AM.  Then the Metrobuses started coming through.  The last look I got at the clock was 6AM, and I was briefly contemplating just getting up and going out for breakfast.  Apparently I finally fell asleep before I could attempt to follow through on that idea.

What sleep I did get was total crap as it was filled with odd dreams and when I woke up, I felt a bit like I’d been hit by a truck and with a mental state I’d graciously describe as cranky.  On top of it?  Craptastic weather!

It’s not a confluence of events that is particularly conducive to productivity.  I think the trip to the store should wait until there is a smaller chance of my bitch slapping a clerk.

Just got off the phone with Tom at Sierra Wireless who conveyed on many levels what I had been needing to hear, which was in essence, “Holy crap it did WHAT?”

He agreed that an exploding battery was not good, not normal, certainly unsettling and they genuinely did want to look into it and figure out what happened.

They’re sending me paperwork so I can send the whole thing back to them so they can test it and see if they can’t find out what on earth went wrong here, and they said they’d keep in touch with me to let me know what they found out.

What an exploded and flaming battery looks like after you’ve dumped about 10 ounces of Coke on it to extinguish the fire and then dumped it in water to make sure it’s really out:

So, I was sitting here a little while ago, minding my own business and paying some bills. An average day.

Then I hear a hissing noise coming from the right side of my laptop table. At first, I thought it was the soda can. Then I saw what appeared to be steam or smoke shooting sideways from the vicinity of my AirCard, but I still couldn’t really figure out what exactly was happening.

Then I heard a pop. Which as it turns out, was the battery cover to my AirCard being shot across my coffee table. Then things started happening in a rather rapid and disturbing succession.

The battery on the AirCard then shot out of the battery slot, ON FIRE. Not just smoking and threatening fire, actually shooting out FIRE in several directions. I’m then jumping up, cursing in several languages I never knew I was fluent in while half my brain is screaming PUT IT OUT, PUT IT OUT!!! While the other half of my brain is thinking, “Dear lord, my life has just turned into the ‘Caravaning in Dorset’ episode on Top Gear.”

I then upended a near full can of Coke over the entire thing. (Guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking vodka.) Then dumped it in a large glass of water in the kitchen. Then stood there for a while just wondering WTF had just happened.

Guess it’s time to see if I am eligible for an upgrade on my AirCard.

So, we have a new Supreme Court Justice nominee. I’ll admit I don’t know a ton about her yet, but I’m quite sure the pundits on both side will let me know a lot in the near future. I do know that Elena Kagan is the Solicitor General and was a dean of Harvard’s law school, so I’m fairly certain she’s not stupid.

I was in the car listening to the announcers talk about the nominee with a couple of commentators about it. Some worries that she hasn’t been a judge, which were quickly countered with the point that there have been several justices and chief justices that weren’t judges. (Apparently all on the court today have been judges. I don’t see an issue with throwing someone a little different in the mix. I don’t think we have a Harriet Myers situation on our hands here.)

I was a bit amused by a comment that came from a Congressman (I think) about the Supreme Court not being academia and “not a place for flights of fancy and intellectual debates.” (I may be paraphrasing a bit, I can’t find the quote online to confirm.) Well, heaven forbid there be any intellectual debate taking place on the Supreme Court! We certainly can’t have that.

Then one of the announcers asked if there would be questions about her sexuality.

This was where I almost ran off the road. Wait, her WHAT?

It seems she’s 50, single and has never been married. Well, I guess we all know what that means.

It means she’s 50, single and has never been married.

Please, PLEASE tell me that no one on the Judiciary Committee is going to decide that because she’s never been married that she must be a lesbian and then decide that would make her too liberal or otherwise biased. Someone please tell me there isn’t anyone on that committee or in the media would go down that road. We’re all better than that, right?

I spent way too much time today attempting to buy a pair of jeans. My old jeans still fit, but are on the brink of falling apart, so it’s time to get another pair into the rotation. Because the old ones still fit, you’d think it would just be a matter of getting the same size, wouldn’t you? Well, apparently that makes you quite the delusional consumer.

There used to be a time when I could walk into the Gap and grab any style of size 4-Long jeans, try them on to make sure they weren’t mismarked, and off I went. Then the designers and sizing people all started doing some serious drugs. My size now could be anything depending on the day of the week. But despite the fact that I need to drop 5 pounds, my size is now a zero. 0-Regular. From a 4-Long. Today I tried on the same size, same style as the jeans I am attempting to replace only to discover that apparently my legs are now two inches shorter than they were the last time I bought these jeans, so I don’t even need a 0-Regular now, I need a 0-Ankle. And according to the saleslady the ankle length is only available online. (Except that it’s not – they don’t even make an ankle length version in size 0.)

So, according to the folks who determing sizes at the Gap, in the past 10 years I’ve gotten shorter and skinnier. Except that I haven’t.

And I still need another pair of jeans.

Quite the odd dream last night…

It was the end of senior year in high school (or maybe into the next year – we’d definitely been done with school for a good six months) and we still had to do some final thing with the drill team and marching band before we’d all officially graduate. (It was a county wide thing and not a big deal, more of a pain in the ass than anything.)

But, there were several people around from high school about that I didn’t really have any desire to interact with, but they were there. And all staying in my home. Not just in the guest rooms, just everywhere. Beds, couches, floors, all covered. I was not pleased, and recall telling some girl that I’d slept with her boyfriend. (Which never happened, I simply said so out of some spite that is obviously buried somewhere deep within my psyche.)

If that’s not a sign to skip my 20 year reunion, I’m not sure what is.

Then there was the argument with my parents. Seems that in the six months since classes had ended, I’d gone and done a semester of college and I wasn’t particularly pleased about that. Something along the lines of “I could have taken the classes anytime, this was supposed to be my six months OFF and I want them back!” Why, yes, there is still a touch of residual pissiness over the fact that I won’t be able to get back the two years I spent tethered to the phone trying to convince my grandmother to get real help instead of relying on my absolutely incompetent assistance. Seems my brain hasn’t quite let go of that one just yet.

Then the trash trucks came through and that was that.