The Finished Floors! Ahhhhh….

Below is just a glimpse of our finished floors. We are still in the hotel so I do not have access to all of our “before” pictures showing the state the floors were in before. Let me just say they were awful. Dark, grungy, stained, deeply scratched in many places. These are the original floors from 1910 that were mostly covered when we bought the house and started ripping up the carpets. We are giddy with excitement at how beautiful they are!

The sitting area in the master suite heading towards the master bath

The sitting area in the master suite, looking into the master bath

A look into the guest room

A peak into the guest room

Going upstairs

Heading upstairs

My heart breaks…today

I lost another patient this week. A kind, gentle older man. He always smiled, always winked at me and always gave me a hug. He wouldn’t leave the exam room first…I always had to, he was a gentleman. Even though he was tired and I could tell it he always asked me first how I was and how my house is, etc. He always said, we’ll do whatever it takes. I told him he needed oxygen and he didn’t complain, we told him he needed to go to the nursing home, he didn’t complain. But, how unhappy and difficult that must have been for such an independent hard working man.

Although I’ve had a break from funerals lately it was still painful. My heart breaks for his family. Before I knew it I was crying and then started crying for my Nana. And, then they played this beautiful song “Daddy’s Hands”. Even though I don’t have my father in my life, I do have my mother and even my in-laws. It is them that I thought of during this song. I encourage you to listen to it & think of your parent(s).

Our Staycation

We are on a staycation of sorts, a “vacation close to your home”. They are re-finishing our floors so we are banned from our house until Friday essentially. The trouble with this vacation is that we are each working each day and there really is nothing vacation-like going on. Besides the fact that the hotel has a tv. If you remember in one of my previous posts we got rid of tv, cable actually. It was SOOO nice to watch the nfl game last night. It’s really weird to have 40 some channels to flip through and, no, there still isn’t anything on.

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What’s even more weird is that the local hotel where we are staying is literally a couple of blocks away from our home. And, its called the “Super 7”, literally. It used to be a Super 8 but was bought by an Indian family (not Native Americans, actual Indians). They are very hard to understand and rumor has it that there are buddha statues and incense in the back room. All of the brochures, etc in the room have the number 8 crossed out with a 7 written instead. Too funny~our staycation that is.

Health Care Reform

So we have all been hearing about Obama’s plans to hopefully “fix” our health care problems. I won’t go too deep into my thoughts other than one itsy bitsy idea I have that maybe SOMEONE could look into a little deeper. The emergency room is HIGHLY ABUSED!

Think of the money that could be saved if parents would no longer bring in their babies for diaper rashes! Or how about the grown man who came to the er at 3am with an earache, and he hadn’t even tried tylenol yet. Or the grown woman that called about her “cold” and I tried to convince her to wait just 24 hours until one of the clinics opened up. I told her that the er is an awfully expensive place to go for a cold, with her response being “it’s ok, I have medicaid”. In other words, it’s ok….you are going to pay for my er visit.

The er definitely has its place…fractures, lacerations, traumas, you name it. But there are soooo many er visits that are inappropriate. I would say more than 50% as just a guess. Did you know that it costs at least $250 just to turn on the lights in the er when you go there. That doesn’t include ANY supplies that I may use or tests that I may order.

Yes there are supposedly programs in place to help curb er abuse but they aren’t nearly effective enough. How to fix this I DO NOT KNOW. But, I do know there is soooo much money to be saved…

And, the problem is that I haven’t heard or read anything in detail yet about Obama’s ideas about this.

The Story of our Current Life

Two men in a pickup truck drove into a lumberyard. One of the men walked in the office and said, “We need some four-by-twos.”

The clerk said, “You mean two-by-fours, don’t you?”

The man said, “I’ll go check,” and went back to the truck. He returned in a minute and said, “Yeah, I meant two-by-fours.”

“All right. How long do you need them?” The customer paused for a minute and said, “I’d better go check.”

After a while, the customer returned to the office and said, “A long time. We’re gonna build a house.”