I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

bluedahlia

Athena, you aren't going anywhere for a looooooooooong time!  So very sorry for what you're going through.  I demand that the universe be kind to you!

gardengumby

Athena I'm glad the tamoxifen is treating you OK. Be tough. You can beat this damn disease!

RetiredLibby

Athena, I am so happy to see you here and happier to hear that Tamoxifen hasn't shaken you up! Sorry to hear about the pulmonary issues, though ...but very relieved you are getting them looked after. And you aren't going anywhere in the near future, my friend. I will not allow it! :-)



L

bluedahlia

IllinoisLady

Add my good wishes to all the rest Athena.  Sooo glad you are seem to be heading in a good mending direction.

Jackie

Jackie

CherrylH

Great Lioness, good to see you again. Sending good thoughts and hugs for continued recovery. Champagnee all around on the house.

pip57

Athena... sorry that it has been such a rough time. We miss you.

Blue...I am still very jealous of your Grandmother status.  Both are beautiful.

GG...sorry about the house not passing inspection.  That is such a disappointment.  However, you weren't entirely in love with the house so I am thinking that you just haven't seen the right one yet.

Is this a bad time to tell you all that we spent the last couple of days at our own new house?  Just cleaning and prepping for the renos.  We absolutely love it.  Most of the neighbours are going to be lots of fun.  However, on the one side of us is a recently divorced middle aged man who owns a pub in town.  It seems like he uses his waitresses for booty calls.  Yep, he was humping one in the hot tub last night.  We were killing ourselves laughing.  If she showed any emotion, it was pure boredom. We will be putting up a privacy wall on our deck sooner than we had planned.

CherrylH

Pip, yes a privacy wall and ear plugs seemed called for!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

bluedahlia

Hey....free entertainment!

alexandria58

That's my thought, Blue.  And potential internet sales as well.

QuinnCat

{{{{Athena}}}} - so nice to see you xxo.  I'm glad to hear they have your pain under control.  I learn a bit, everytime you write, what strength looks like.  You are one amazing lioness.

pip is peeping  Oh my..he must think the house next door is still vacant.

Had a friend with diverticulosis.  It occured only a year after his routine screening colonoscopy.  They told him to go on his cruise to Panama and when he comes back they'll do another colonoscopy on the diverticulosis.  Lo and behold, they found a stage 3b colon cancer sitting right next to his spot of diverticulosis.  That diverticulosis saved his life.

Had a wonderful and unexpected reunion with an old college friend and her family today, quite by chance and circumstance.  Haven't seen them for over 10 years. I have to say, cancer makes these moments even more cherished.  My friend had BC about 8 years ago and doing well.

Alyson

Have been away four days - so many pages to read!!

lewing

Athena, what a horrible ordeal, glad you're doing better.  What a relief that it's so far, so good with the tamoxifen.

R_R, big hugs to you (feel free to pass along to your husband, too).

Pip, yikes on your new neighbor!!  Alexandria and Blue, you are very, very bad.

Love the picture, Alyson!

OK, got to get my act together soon here . . . will be hosting brunch at noon, hopefully on our building's recently rehabilitated roofdeck -- what a relief to no longer have to avoid stepping on the rotten parts! -- surrounded by our urban garden and views of the F-train and lower Manhattan.  (I don't think I want to know what it is that's been nibbling at the basil and lavender.  In Detroit I would have blamed rabbits, but here???  I hope it's pigeons.) 

Linda

alexandria58

Lewing - invisible deer?

1Athena1

Life has you pridemates, and that alone makes it worthwhile.

Bartender, you have some magic fingers, because I am really enjoying your champagne despite my low appetite for everything except meat.

Oh, and BTW, to anyone who read my bit about lionesses and monsters and dared to think one was rather like the other because of a few photoshoots like this:

 I have this to say: May a plague of locusts infest your home and may your cattle be set to by the Texas fruit fly, built in shapes of the letters "G" "O" and "P."

Finally....here is one lovely craftsman house:

Adorable horse and fawn!!!!!

Alyson - LOL!

IllinoisLady

I could save myself a lot of trouble ( but not as much fun ) by just adding the word SECOND to everything everyone else said. 

Pip.....bet you never thought finding a new house would also be the aperture through which you finally were able to sort of be introduced to Don Juan himself and at the service.   Way, way too funny and yes, rather cheap entertainment that most of us ( me first ) would rather skip.  Loved your description of the recipients response to Mr. Juan's expertise.

Kam....just thinking that most of us think of our lifesavers in such a different way -- like tall, dark, and handsome.  As we age...a spot of divertuculosis will do just fine, thank you. 

Alyson....love your latest pic.  Gorgeous cat.

Jackie

IllinoisLady

IllinoisLady

Litte reminder:

pip57

Here is our plan for Juan.  We are going to plant my 85 year old mother in a chair on the deck that faces his.  Not even viagara could help him then!  After a year of nobody living in our house, we must really hate us showing up and cramping his style.

QuinnCat

LOL - pip!!  For some reason I picture the actor Jack Nicholson playing the part of the man.  Ok, I would say Terms of Endearment, but maybe not totally appropriate in our situation

crazy4carrots

You and DH, laughing out loud, and continuing it, will soon put a cramp in his style, IYKWIM.

RetiredLibby

Good news for a lot of people. And no matter how hard or loudly or hysterically some people scream, in the end more people will have access to health care. Not that the truth will cause them to stop lying - it just may make more people see the lies and the hate for what they are.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/opinion/krugman-the-obamacare-shock.html?hp&_r=0



The Obamacare Shock

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 26, 2013



The Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare, goes fully into effect at the beginning of next year, and predictions of disaster are being heard far and wide. There will be an administrative “train wreck,” we’re told; consumers will face a terrible shock. Republicans, one hears, are already counting on the law’s troubles to give them a big electoral advantage.



No doubt there will be problems, as there are with any large new government initiative, and in this case, we have the added complication that many Republican governors and legislators are doing all they can to sabotage reform. Yet important new evidence — especially from California, the law’s most important test case — suggests that the real Obamacare shock will be one of unexpected success.



Before I can explain what the news means, I need to make a crucial point: Obamacare is a deeply conservative reform, not in a political sense (although it was originally a Republican proposal) but in terms of leaving most people’s health care unaffected. Americans who receive health insurance from their employers, Medicare or Medicaid — which is to say, the vast majority of those who have any kind of health insurance at all — will see almost no changes when the law goes into effect.



There are, however, millions of Americans who don’t receive insurance either from their employers or from government programs. They can get insurance only by buying it on their own, and many of them are effectively shut out of that market. In some states, like California, insurers reject applicants with past medical problems. In others, like New York, insurers can’t reject applicants, and must offer similar coverage regardless of personal medical history (“community rating”); unfortunately, this leads to a situation in which premiums are very high because only those with current health problems sign up, while healthy people take the risk of going uninsured.



Obamacare closes this gap with a three-part approach. First, community rating everywhere — no more exclusion based on pre-existing conditions. Second, the “mandate” — you must buy insurance even if you’re currently healthy. Third, subsidies to make insurance affordable for those with lower incomes.



Massachusetts has had essentially this system since 2006; as a result, nearly all residents have health insurance, and the program remains very popular. So we know that Obamacare — or, as some of us call it, ObamaRomneyCare — can work.



Skeptics argued, however, that Massachusetts was special: it had relatively few uninsured residents even before the reform, and it already had community rating. What would happen elsewhere? In particular, what would happen in California, where more than a fifth of the nonelderly population is uninsured, and the individual insurance market is largely unregulated? Would there be “sticker shock” as the price of individual policies soared?



Well, the California bids are in — that is, insurers have submitted the prices at which they are willing to offer coverage on the state’s newly created Obamacare exchange. And the prices, it turns out, are surprisingly low. A handful of healthy people may find themselves paying more for coverage, but it looks as if Obamacare’s first year in California is going to be an overwhelmingly positive experience.



What can still go wrong? Well, Obamacare is a complicated program, basically because simpler options, like Medicare for all, weren’t considered politically feasible. So there will probably be a lot of administrative confusion as the law goes into effect, again especially in states where Republicans have been doing their best to sabotage the process.



Also, some people are too poor to afford coverage even with the subsidies. These Americans were supposed to be covered by a federally financed expansion of Medicaid, but in states where Republicans have blocked Medicaid expansion, such unfortunates will be left out in the cold.



Still, here’s what it seems is about to happen: millions of Americans will suddenly gain health coverage, and millions more will feel much more secure knowing that such coverage is available if they lose their jobs or suffer other misfortunes. Only a relative handful of people will be hurt at all. And as contrasts emerge between the experience of states like California that are making the most of the new policy and that of states like Texas whose politicians are doing their best to undermine it, the sheer meanspiritedness of the Obamacare opponents will become ever more obvious.



So yes, it does look as if there’s an Obamacare shock coming: the shock of learning that a public program designed to help a lot of people can, strange to say, end up helping a lot of people — especially when government officials actually try to make it work.



--------------------------- end article



PiP, that is very funny - I like the idea of planting your mom out there. Mine certainly would have gone for it and sat there cackling out loud. Not even Viagra could stand up (yeah, intended!) to that! And Alexandria, I will admit that YouTube was the first thing I thought of, too! :-)



Glad to see you posting, Athena! And yes, that is a beautiful Craftsman. I am happy that some developers are building Craftsman-style homes, or at the very least putting Craftsman-style touches on their plastic boxes.



Happy Memorial Day, all - remembering those who sacrificed to give us what we enjoy today.



L

crazy4carrots

The comment is in response to Krugman's piece, posted here:http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022907399 

My wife and I have single payer healthcare here in the States, and we love it. It cost $110/ month each, and after that, the only costs are for prescription meds, and the costs are negligible. No co-pays, no deductables, no caps, no pre-existing condition barriers. We select our doctors, which means suberb doctors in enlightened Seattle. 

Are you interested? It is widely available, but you have to enter the system before you are around 30. It also provides a generous COLA protected pension, which starts when you retire, even at age 38. 

Too good to be true? We are covered by Medicare and Tricare. Tricare is enabled by serving a minimum of 20 years of Military service. It has no connection with the VA. I retired as an Air Force colonel 33 years ago as a colonel, though Tricare benefits are identical for all ranks and grades. My wife and I both take Nexium. Cost for a 90 days supply? $3, and that includes the cost of mailing it to us. Unlike Medicare, Tricare can bargain for drug costs. 

We have seen the future and it works. We believe that healthcare is a basic human right, and that our government is the ultimate employer when all else fails. 

Am I a socialist? Not really, but I wouldn't dread it. I am an Eisenhower Republican, who will likely never vote for another Republican. 

Today's Republicans hate Obamacare because they fear it will be a huge success. Dr. Krugman once again hits the nail on the head. 

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/opinion/krugman-the-obamacare-shock.html?comments#permid=23

crazy4carrots

My DH has a cousin in Florida who hates the very idea of universal healthcare because, as she says "Why should I have to pay for anyone else's healthcare?"

To which he responds "Then by your logic, why should you have to pay for anyone else's use of the roads you use, or the police or firemen, or your armed forces, or teachers  (and yep, she's a retired high school teacher)".

"Oh, but that's different," she replies.

Then he says to her "But aren't you paying for the healthcare of those without insurance who have to use your emergency departments?"

No answer.  There are none so blind as those who will not see........

pupmom

CfC, that is so typical of the brainwashed right!

OT, OMG, is this a "fashion" statement???

QuinnCat

CFC - how does she think health insurance, or any insurance for that matter, works?  It's one big pool of money dependent on some using it and some not.  (Insert - preaching to the choir here.)  Like term life insurance - they bet you're going to live long and you bet you're going to die young.  Creating large communal (now doesn't that sound like communist lol?) pools of money is how we all get through these unexpected medical events, like breast cancer.  I know my health insurance has paid out more for me than I've paid in at this point in my life....I'm sure some old healthy Tea Partier (is that an oxymoron?) has paid for my health care and he/she has paid more in than taken out.   Why do they not complain about insurance?

Anonymous

HL - cheered when I read it, and thank you CFC for reminding me to read the comments - that one made me cry.  In appreciation for all the really GOOD people who understand the role of government.  Maybe when some people speak about "going back to the past" it's THAT understanding they're hoping to bring back to life.  When Bob Dole speaks up for the understanding of COMMUNITY, and responsibility to each other - not as a socialist program, but as the basic decency he knows it to be - well, I still have a little hope.

I also have HOPE HOPE HOPE when I read Pip - and have the most delicious case of the giggles, Pip, your suggestion for having a certain person sitting on your deck, is really, hysterical. Alexandria, Blue, LOVE IT.  So mny options for this new situation.  Hey, have ya considered free passes to his bar?

The pictures, so wonderful - cat in the birdhouse is nearing my Top 10 list

Athena, I really WANT that house - it is my real fantasy.  Have always loved William Morris - Liberty of London used to have so many of this fabrics, don't know if they still do.  I also adore Collier Campbell, just got a gorgeous book, a retrospective of their work - goes well in my little cabin, as their prints are on the day bed ( duvet) and pillows, scarves, even window swags ( too cheap/lazy for curtains) as only the bears, deer, wild turkeys are out there.

Lewing - I gotta tell ya I don't think it's deer.  When I lived in NYC a million years ago, I remember crossing Park Ave ( in the really posh part) and making the mistake of looking down at the median divider. WOW, WOW, WOW.  This was in the 1970's b4 it was planted with tulips, etc.  they look like larger than you can imagine cats, but with strangely long skinny tails.

The pic of the loving animals, so sweet.  Hope all are having a GOOD day...Jackie, thanks for the pics too...

pip57

You ladies are so smart.  Not only could we sell the videos but we could blackmail him for free booze too.  Love it.

CherrylH

Pip, I think you should have a gathering at your house and we'll sit on the porch and "rate" his performance.

crazy4carrots

You've got it (and him) covered, Pip!!!

Kam -- Insurance is a good example to use -- except, of course, that it's a for-profit industry, so then it would be perfectly okay in her eyes.....

I too love the craftsman style, but far too much time and effort would be spent painting outside woodwork and dusting and polishing inside woodwork for my taste!  Getting very lazy as I age, I'm afraid!  But that style is really a joy to feast one's eyes on.