Hi! My day job is a CMA in the Precertificiation Department (I work with insurance companies). I'm a mom to two young men. I've been married to the same man for 34 years. I have a lot to say about nothing. Lucky you.
Of course, I haven’t left my house for three days, I’ve become a hermit, (which I’m okay with, to be honest), and my biggest decision of the day is which color of sweats I want to wear for the day, but I’m loving it!
So, what do I do? I know you’re thinking it …
I still work for the hospital. I know, I sort of can’t believe it, either. Ever since the whole COVID thing I’m amazed that I’m still in healthcare at all.
Though I’m still in healthcare, I’m no longer in a clinic setting. Do I miss it? I miss aspects of it. I miss the people I worked with, I miss the mental gymnastics required to juggle my doctor’s requirements while also taking care of the patients. It was mentally stimulating to me. What I don’t miss are the patients. Sure, there were some that were awesome, genuinely needed help and it was so satisfying to help them, but the majority of patients were looking for a quick fix, something, anything, to make them feel better and an excuse to continue making poor lifestyle choices. They wanted to feel better without taking accountability for their decisions and/or the way they lived their lives. And they were rude about it.
THAT was frustrating.
I’m still working with patients but not directly. I’m sort of the go-to between patients and clinic staff. For example: the physician orders a test, like an MRI, a CT, an Ultrasound, etc., then the scheduled test drops into our queue. We’re all responsible for taking care of certain alphas and right now, mine are M-R. So, any patient cases that come in with the last name beginning with M-R, I take care of.
Next, I get some information about the patient, the type of test being ordered and notes from the provider as to why he/she is ordering it. Then, I sign into the insurance portal, answer some clinicals questions and fingers crossed, insurance approves it. Sometimes it goes to pending, meaning insurance is wanting to review clinicals and other times, they deny it. When that happens, I have to contact the providers and let them know that the test was denied and they have the option of reaching out to the insurance company to discuss, (i.e. fight), the determination and try and get it approved with information only a provider can give. (I.E. more detailed information, that would have been handy to have in their notes but you can’t tell providers that, unfortunately). And contacting the providers is never fun. They are usually cranky, take it out on their clinicals staff, who are also cranky so …. I’m the bad guy by proxy. Even though it’s the insurance’s fault for denying it.
And that’s it. That’s what I do in a nutshell. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it?
But I love it. I love the research, I love the challenge of finding just the right combination of diagnoses and symptoms to satisfy the insurance’s algorithm and that coveted approval status.
And I’m quite good at it. I can dig, read between the lines and get those suckers approved. Not always, but a big part of the time. My secret? I used to work in the clinic setting so I KNOW the clinical side of this equation. When it comes to the ins/outs of insurance plans/policies – nah – totally stupid.
But I get through it and I’ve learned a lot this past year.
I volunteered to become a peer mentor, which is a fancy way to say “trainer.” I really enjoy training. I like showing people the logical progression of learning a job and how it fits into the “big picture.” I feel like too many people get trained with blinders on, they only learn this small portion of the bigger process and that leads to people only doing a half-ass job and/or not fully understanding their job, period. I’d like to be a peer mentor for the whole group, but our group is split and we have different supervisors and I don’t know if the other supervisor would want me to come over and train some of their peeps, but I’m willing!
In the meantime, the UAT (urgent action team), which is my group, is expanding to six people and I’m training our two newest people. Urgent action team, by the way, is exactly what is sounds like, we handle stat/urgent cases, add-on cases, and any cases where insurance hasn’t been done or the patients show up with new insurance.
That happens a lot. Pst, if you get new insurance, can you let your doctor’s office know ASAP? Thanks.
I trained one girl the whole month of November, and now I’m training the other girl this entire month. Eight hours, every day. Talking non-stop. Unless I don’t have a voice, then I’m typing everything out. Which is a challenge, to say the least.
The new girl is with management the first day, getting her equipment, etc., then, she’s with me full-time after that first day. That first week, we go over the programs we use, the insurance portals we use, what we do, WHY we do it, etc.
The second week, the new girl shadows me while I work cases and we talk through the processes, the challenges, etc.
The third week, the new girl works cases with me shadowing. These weeks are usually pretty long as I’m not really doing anything but watching, guiding, advising.
The fourth week, it really depends on the trainee. Is she ready to work cases on her own with me available for questions? If not, we repeat week three until she is comfortable-ish.
I also get a bit more money when I train. Which is another reason I enjoy training. 🙂
I do enjoy working remotely and I can’t ever seeing myself going back into the office, though, if we have to, I’m okay with that, too. It is a challenge to work remotely at times. Especially when you have a group of about 80 women. Women are drama personified anyway, and then you add in text/written communication, which can be misconstrued, misinterpreted, etc., and it can be challenging. I sort of like that challenge, though. I’m a written word geek, I graduated from college with a Technical Writing degree and I’m very good communicating via the written word. I know how to word things without putting the other person on the defensive. I know how to word things professionally but get my point across.
In short, it’s my jam.
But not everyone is proficient in this form of communication and it can be challenging at times.
The precertification department is divided into three groups – and those three groups all have a supervisor and a team lead. The groups are: radiology (including my team, UAT), Cardio, GI, Ortho, Pain Management, Surgery, VA, Med/IV, Oncology, Sleep/Pulm, Therapies.
When the team lead position for my group became available, I was asked, (very strongly), to apply for it. I didn’t. At the time, I was still pretty new and didn’t really know much about the precertification department as a whole and quite frankly, I didn’t want the additional headaches and problems that come with being in a leadership role.
However –
I did sort of promise that if the position became available again, I would apply for it. I’m really hoping the current team lead doesn’t go anywhere because I like what I’m doing now and don’t want to go any further. I’m only about four years away from retiring … do I really want to end my working career dealing with a bunch of overgrown little girls who love drama?
No thanks.
But we’ll see. I did promise and who knows what the environment will look like six months from now. If you can count on anything in business, it’s change.
In the meantime, the hospital is getting ready to switch over to a different EMR (electronic medical record) program and the head boss reached out to me to ask me if I would be interested in participating in the pilot program and being one of a few that will be trained in the program so I can help other people learn the program. This is very close to my Technical writing degree and I’m all about it. I’m really looking forward to starting that process. It means on-campus meetings, and probably endless Teams meetings, but I’m ready. I’m going to make a cheat booklet of how to’s and I’m going to ROCK this challenge. It’s all supposed to start early next year so … I have that to look forward to.
It’s really nice to work from home. Especially on bad weather days. But … sometimes, not very often, I do miss actually getting dressed and going into the office. Actually seeing people face-to-face. Again, not very often, but it does happen. I don’t leave my house the entire week and sometimes that can feel a bit claustrophobic. I do shower and put on makeup every day, I don’t feel “put together” unless I do that, but I’m lounging around in sweats/comfy clothes the majority of the time. The only time I really fix my hair and put a nice-ish shirt on is when we have meetings where we have to turn our cameras on.
Since I sit all day, I do walk on the treadmill for an hour right after I get up in the morning. Then I take my shower, put my face on and I’m ready to face the day. Sitting all day/night is not good for you and I definitely feel better when I walk on the treadmill. Get that blood circulating. I’ve toyed with the idea of buying a standing desk, and I still might at some point, but for now, I do sit all day. I will take short breaks and walk around the house sometimes just to stretch my legs.
I realize I’m very fortunate to have the opportunity to work from home. It’s a luxury, for sure. There are cons, but there are more pros and I’m really enjoying it. Kevin and I are still trying to figure out how to make Starlink work. We would still like to take longer camping trips and have the opportunity to being able to work on the road but our first experience was very poor and now I’m a bit discouraged.
In a nutshell: we went camping at the Diamond Mines in Arkansas and though the campground was beautiful, it was very forest-y and though we could get a signal, and it was a strong signal, we couldn’t KEEP the signal and it was nearly impossible to work with an unreliable signal. We were hard-wired in, we can’t use WiFi because the camper is a converted cargo trailer and in essence, a metal box, so that never works very well. We’re going to try Starlink at home, again, and see what happens. The first time we tried it we had trouble maintaining a signal, not as bad as when we went camping, (the signal would come on for a minute, then be off for two minutes – it was crazy), but it still wasn’t consistent. I’m going to reach out to our IT people to see if maybe there is a conflict with the company VPN.
All of this to say, we’re not giving up on the dream of traveling and working from the road, but we have some obstacles.
The world is spinning too fast, I’d like to get off, please.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but seriously folks – IT’S TIME FOR CHRISTMAS AGAIN?!
Are you ready? I’m not, though I do have some gift ideas. The only people I really buy gifts for anymore is my mom and our boys. Which is silly, because the boys are 32 and 29, but you know how it is when you’re a parent – your kids will always be little in your mind.
We put the Christmas tree up right around my birthday, which is early November. I know, we’re THOSE people. But I don’t care. I feel like we get the tree up, don’t get a chance to enjoy it because we’re so busy with work and other obligations, Christmas happens and it’s time to take it down. Nope. We’re putting it up early November and keeping it up until New Year’s. We get six weeks to enjoy it.
Plus, it’s a lot of work and I hate doing work with little pay out.
What is up with Christmas lights? We’ve had two strands burn out on us so far this year. Kevin just pus another strand on, the tree is decorated and it’s too much of a pain to take everything off, change out lights, then put everything back on again. So. When it’s time to dismantle the tree, we’ll be peeling off about two extra sets of dead lights.
Fun.
But I suppose that’s like everything else – nothing is made like it used to be. We used to get four, or more, years out of a strand of Christmas lights, now we’re lucky if we get four, or more, weeks out of a strand of lights.
We’re planning a few Christmas parties. We’re supposed to go to Kevin’s family’s party on the 15th, then we’re having my family’s party on the 22nd. We’re having Kevin’s party at his parents’ clubhouse. It’s the clubhouse that everyone in the neighborhood uses. It’s a really nice space that comfortably houses everyone. It comes with a kitchen, too, so it’s really handy. We’re planning on having my family’s party at our house on the 22nd. I think mom would have liked to have the party at her house but our house is bigger.
Hopefully, I have my voice back by then. These past two weeks have been ROUGH for me. I left work/home to drive up to Wal-Mart because I needed a few things and as I was walking into the store, I got THAT feeling. You know, THAT feeling when you start to feel sick? I can’t even describe THAT feeling … just an overall pressure/heaviness that weighs down your entire body. And it came on HARD. I had been feeling a little run down before that and had loaded up on Vitamin C, Zinc and Zicam but apparently it wasn’t enough to stop the freight train that slammed into my entire body. I quickly got what I needed from Wal-Mart and came back home. I felt ok-ish for the rest of the day but by Tuesday, my throat was really sore and I had a dry cough.
Swell.
Wednesday, my sinuses started to thicken up and my voice was raspy, but still, I thought I would feel better by Thanksgiving.
Nope.
I woke up Thanksgiving day and felt like a dog had dug me up and treated me like a beloved chew toy. Yum. We were supposed to have Kevin’s parents, my mom, the boys and Leroy over for Thanksgiving dinner. Kevin had cooked the turkey the day before, but he went ahead and cooked the entire meal, by himself, the day of (God bless him), and he ended up taking food to his folks and having lunch with them while the boys took my mom some food and had lunch with her. It was just me and my germs at home.
Still though, I had a dry cough, I could barely speak, but I didn’t feel that bad, overall. I wasn’t in any shape to be around people, but I wasn’t feeling that bad.
The week after Thanksgiving, my cough turned phlegmy, heavy and loud. I was glad, actually, that meant whatever crap I had caught was finally started to break up. My body had figured out the key to this sickness lock and I had turned a corner. Monday, I could talk but it sounded like I had a cold, Tuesday, it was a little weaker, but I started training the new girl that day and I talked ALL DAY so by the time Wednesday rolled around, I could barely speak above a whisper. I had to train her via text, which was fun … not. (Reminder – I work from home and my company uses Microsoft Teams to communicate with one another). I trained via text pretty much the rest of the week.
It’s a good thing I’m a fast typist. The new girl was being nice, she said she didn’t mind it because it slowed us down, and she was right about that! But still, I felt guilty. I’ve NEVER had laryngitis this bad in my entire life. I felt fine otherwise, I just couldn’t talk.
Friday, mom picked me up and we drove up to the Middle School to set up her Christmas craft booth. It was only a one-day event but we went up the night before to set it up. I was fine until about halfway through the set up and then a wave of nausea hit me so hard I had to go outside, around the corner of the building and throw up. I felt better for about 15 minutes and then, it started to hit me again. Mom said I looked pretty bad so she could tell I wasn’t feeling well, so we left. Mom has a harder time seeing at night, so I drove my dad’s truck back to my house. As soon as we got to my house, I said bye and rushed into the house, straight to our bathroom and threw up two more times.
Dude. I don’t know. Again, I’m NEVER sick so by this time, I’m getting pretty annoyed with myself. I don’t know if I ate something bad? Or if it was because I hadn’t eaten anything before going up to the school and I’ve been pretty sedentary because I’ve been sick and it was the sudden physical activity, or maybe it was because I sucked on a cough drop on an empty stomach, maybe it was a combination of all these things, but after emptying my stomach, I felt loads better and I feel good today.
I have A voice, it’s not MY voice. It still sounds like I have a stuffy nose but at least I can talk, people can understand me and my throat is no longer sore. I had heard, from other people at work, that a sickness has been going around and it was affecting people’s voice boxes … who knows. All I know is I’m glad I’m back to semi-normal and life has resumed once again.
The craft show on Saturday went well. I woke up Saturday, took a shower, got ready and started feeling nauseous again. AAARGH. I ate a piece of dried toast, took a Tylenol, laid down for about 30 minutes and felt like a new woman. Kevin dropped me off at the school shortly after the show started and I was able to sit with mom all day with no problem. Still couldn’t talk very loudly, but I could talk. There weren’t as many people there as we had hoped. It started out busy in the morning but by about 1:00 PM, traffic as practically nil. It was a beautiful day and a lot of people were out, but not a lot of people were at the school shopping for crafts. Overall, mom did well. She sold quite a few things, I sold some of my dorky diamond painting ornaments, my cute diamond paining cow picture and I ended up buying a super cute snowman from mom’s craft neighbor and friend.
I’m just glad I felt better and was able to sit with her. The show ended at 4:00 and we were packed up and driving away from the school by 4:20!! That has to be a record. Granted, I did move her truck up closer to the school about an hour before closing time and we lucked out and got a spot right outside the doors when it was time to leave but we timed it perfectly and kicked butt getting out of there.
Now, to get through the rest of the holidays.
I just wanted to post a little something-something to let ya’ll know I’m still here. I’m feeling the urge to write again but don’t worry, I’m sure it will go away like it usually does. Ha! I’m hoping to write a little more, if not consistently, in 2025, but you know me …
K – time to shift focus and get ready to clock on for work. Since I’ve been training I’ve been working 10:30 AM – 7:00 PM and I sort of hate it. Not the training part but the hours. This right-smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-day shift is for the birds. Not a fan. Boo!
Christmas is right around the corner … are you ready?!
My mom lives for crafts. She has been into crafts since she was a little girl. And she’s very good at them. She has made hundreds, (1,000s?) of things in her lifetime. She’s entered her crafts into our county fair for decades and has won countless ribbons. She participates in craft booths at least twice a year selling her wares. In fact, her Fall craft fair, people recognize her and tell her that they’re glad to see her as they were looking for her to buy her crafts. One of the reasons people like her crafts, other than she has cute stuff, is that she’s cheap. I tease her that she needs to make a sign for her booth – Barb’s Five and Dime.
If you’ve ever gone to craft shows you know that the majority of the booths are nice crafts for a nice price. Mom’s crafts are small and cheap and people love them because they can buy something from the craft fair and take home as a souvenir and not have to skip dinner in order to pay for it. And after doing crafts for so many decades, she has a feel for what sells and what doesn’t.
She’s figured it out.
My mom is a crafty woman. (See what I did there?)
I like crafts, I don’t love crafts. And I don’t really know why. I enjoy putting stuff together but I guess I just don’t have the patience to follow through. I would rather read/write than do something with my hands.
When dad died and mom and I started hanging out every week, I got back into crafts. It gave us something to do together, (after we watched Survivor), and I confess, I quite enjoy it. Not only because of the time I spend with my mom but because it’s relaxing and it’s quite satisfying to complete something for a change. But don’t be too impressed – the “crafts” I do are cross stitch and diamond painting. (Which is paint-by-number with beads – and it sounds as hard as it is). I definitely don’t do any crochet, knitting, painting and everything else my mom does. My sister has gotten into macramé, which is making a comeback, and she’s quite good at it. in fact, look at these cuties that she plans on putting in mom’s booth in the Fall:
I plan on putting some of my crafts in her shows as well. I’ve made quite a few diamond “painting” ornaments and will make a few wall hangings and coasters, too. (I need to get busy though – October is coming fast!!) My stuff is not nearly as cute as my mom and sister’s but they’re small and I’ll price them cheap so someone can take it home and toss it in the trash when they get tired of looking at it.
All of this to say, a craft conference was never, nor would ever, be on my radar. But it was on mom’s radar and when she asked me if I wanted to go to a Pinner’s Conference with her I was like, “say what?”
So, I do what any good person with a world wide web at her fingertips would do – I Googled it.
It’s a conference where you and your friends can hang out and shop crafts all day. Or, you can take craft classes, create something and take it home, or, you can sit down at make/take tables and make a craft and take it home. If you’re into crafts, this is the place for you.
It looked fun and I’m always up for a road trip so I said, “sign me up!”
You have to purchase tickets and if you want to take a class, you have to sign up and pay more money for the class, this is on top of the normal admission ticket. This is to pay the teacher and for the supplies you’ll need for the class. Mom and I took two classes, a needle punch class and a calligraphy class. When you check in for your class, you get a packet of the supplies you’ll need for the class.
Mom and I drove up to the Kansas City conference the night before. When I started searching for hotels, I started to hyperventilate because WOW, the cost of hotel rooms nowadays … wow. I pulled up the venue on Google maps to try and see if there were any hotels near the venue, again, not hoping for a good deal but a decent deal would be nice at this point. And I was pleasantly surprised to see a Quality Inn quite literally across the highway from the venue. And the price was $180 per night, which mom and I split, so it wasn’t that bad, quite honestly.
And we were pretty happy with the room, too.
Mom loved the window seat and took possession of that right away. Ha!
(As you can see, she brought her WIP, (work-in-progress) craft. Mom is NEVER without a WIP. You never know when you have time to craft!)
Saturday morning rolled around and we arrived as they were letting people in. There were a lot of people, but not so many that you felt closed in and gasping for fresh air.
Or, maybe that’s just me.
We walked around and looked at each booth – three times – throughout the course of the day. I ended up buying a small bottle of homemade laundry detergent, (that I’ve yet to use but plan on using it on our towels) and mom bought Cynthia the macramé heart pattern, (that you see she has already made several of in the picture above).
In addition to booths, the Pinner’s conference has classes and they were located against the back of the conference room and in another section off to the right of the above picture.
We went to our first class, the needle punching class,
and though it was fun, I hated it. lol I felt like I was murdering the material by punching large holes into it to get the yarn in and though it didn’t look half bad by the end of the class, (no, I didn’t finish it – we were making coasters), I knew there was no way I was going to take it up again and … sorry mom, don’t read this part … I threw the kit away when we got home. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. But I’m glad we did it and it was fun to take a class together.
But remember, my hand/eye coordination is .. poor at best, so trying to do ANY crafts in a room full of die-hard crafters was intimidating. But I’m glad I tried it.
We walked around some more after our class and we made a list of booths we wanted to return to at the end of the day. We were interested in their stuff but we didn’t want to carry bags around all day. One booth was selling this funky-looking tube thing that you can take on camping trips, or just use outside, I guess, and mom had to try it out.
I was actually interested in it since Kevin and I go camping quite a bit, but it was just too weird and too expensive and I can’t even imagine what Kevin would think if I brought something like this home so I passed on it. But it looked comfy. Mom doesn’t look very comfy here, probably because people were walking by and stating at her, LOL, but she said it was comfy.
Our calligraphy class was the last class of the day and by the time it rolled around, mom and I were getting pretty tired. We likely won’t take a class at the end of the day next year. I didn’t take any pictures at the calligraphy class but I enjoyed it. I do get frustrated by calligraphy though, mainly because I’m left handed and it was hard to follow a right-handed tutorial. Our instructor said there were left-handed tutorials on YouTube so of course I looked it up. Here’s one to whet your appetite if you’re a lefty like myself:
The instructor was entertaining but a bit ditzy, in my opinion, and I started to lose a little patience with her, and the class, after about 15 minutes. But like I mentioned, it was getting late in the day and I was getting tired so that probably had a lot to do with it. We actually got a pot of ink and an actual nub, which I haven’t played around with yet, I’ve always used brush pens, so I thought that was cool. Again, I’m glad we took the class but I could have learned just as much, if not more, watching a YouTube video.
Another thing that was cool at the conference were all the make-and-take it booths. I think mom and I are going to focus more on the make-and-take it booths than the classes next year. (Yes – we’re already talking about next year!) They are a little expensive but they’re so fun as we get one-on-one attention from the vendor and we get to bring home a fun craft. Mom and I participated in a “chalk” painting class and these were our projects:
I really enjoyed making this. (The one on the left is mine). I could see myself doing more stencil projects like this because well, they’re easy. lol
By the time our calligraphy class was over, the place was emptying out and it was time to go back to the hotel. We were exhausted and ready to relax.
It was a really fun trip and it was even more fun because it was with my mom. I’m really looking forward to the Pinner’s Conference next year, (the end of January!) and hopefully we can talk my sister in coming with us. We’ll see. We have a few months to work on her!
(My Reflections posts are more stream-of-consciousness kind of posts so I apologize up front if some of what you read doesn’t make sense. But this is me we’re talking about here so … are you really surprised? Also, I’m behind – again, anyone surprised?)
February 1:
So. In addition to being part of the UAT (Urgent Action Team), I will be continuing to help the VA department import their documents into patient’s chart, (not hard, in fact, it’s sort of mind numbing but it is time consuming), I will be part of another team – getting authorizations for patients who come to the hospital by ambulance and are being admitted to the hospital. They say the requests that come in for this particular group are intermittent and sporadic – some days it may be one, some days it may be six, but the point is, it’s another project I’ll be working on. And to be honest? I love it! Ha! Didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, hold on, let me clarify that statement, I’ll love it when I know what I’m doing. Right now? It terrifies me. However, that project won’t start until February 8th to give us some time to get semi-used to fully taking UAT over. I can do this … I can do this … I can do this …
February 2:
Gah! SOOOO hard to focus today! I only worked till noon. I don’t know if I was having a stroke, or what, but I could not focus on anything this morning. I know it’s because I was super distracted because I was going to pick mom up after work and we were driving to Overland Park, Kansas, but still. When I have days like this I can’t help but wonder – am I losing my mind? Is this early dementia? I need to stop thinking like that, I don’t want to manifest that to become true. After clocking off, I gathered my suitcase, loaded up the car and drove over to pick mom up. The weather was perfect – sunny and almost 70!! In February!! We were really blessed with great weather. After making sure mom’s house would still be standing when got back, (oven is off, etc), we got on the road. I love road trips. But I won’t bore you with recounting the story here, I’ve written about the entire weekend here.
February 5:
Today was hell incarnate. So. I sometimes check my email on Sunday nights just to clear it out so that I don’t clock on Monday with a handful of emails clogging my focus. When I signed on last night, I noticed that it was time to change my password – the hospital requires that you change it every six months. But it’s always a pain to change it because it takes a minute for the other programs to catch up and it causes some glitches. So, again, to avoid a messy Monday, I went ahead and changed my password. And I couldn’t get back into my programs. “Oh well”, I thought, “it will work itself out on Monday”. I signed on this morning at 7:30 and my programs still weren’t coming up, so I clocked on and called the Help Desk thinking, “Oh well, they’ll have this up and running by 8:00 AM.” It wasn’t until 3:00 today that something was decided, IT couldn’t figure it out. In the meantime, I’m literally sitting around all day waiting with bated breath for someone from IT to deem it necessary to reach out to me, (to be fair, they did a great job, it was just as frustrating for them as it was for me), and TODAY was the first day the UAT was up and running, SOLO. I felt so bad for my coworkers!!! They not only had to struggle to figure out a brand new process but now they had to cover my alphas, too. (I’ve been assigned the D-H’s). IT couldn’t figure it out so I told them I was going to go into the office, (which is conveniently located right across the street from the hospital which is also conveniently close to our house – not everyone is as lucky), to see if I could sign on and maybe, hopefully, get SOMETHING done. Because at this point IT didn’t know if it was my account, or my computer. I unplug my computer, because IT was going to meet me to pick it up and work on it and I go into the office. Which is always super awkward because we’re rarely there and people look at you like, “Who the heck are you?” Which … fair. I sit down, sign on and I’m able to access my programs! Okay, so it’s definitely my computer. I contact my IT guy and he advised me to plug my computer into the hospitals resources. I carefully figure out how to do that, (because I’m often technologically challenged) and the MoFo freaking works!!! So, apparently, IT said that once in a while, (and OF COURSE it happens with me), when a person works remotely the VPN disconnects from the hospital’s servers and you have to take your computer up the hospital to plug into their system directly for it to reconnect. That is what happened to me. So, Monday was completely wasted but at least I have my computer back and I can continue to work from home as opposed to having to go into the office until IT could fix my computer. There’s always a bright side!
February 6:
Today kicked my butt. Since I had computer issues yesterday today was my first full day of the new process and being solo and … wow. It really pushed my multi-tasking abilities to the limit. I ended up doing a lot of cases and that, at least, went pretty smoothly. However, as with any new process, we had a lot of work management wasn’t anticipating, so now everyone is scrambling to absorb this unexpected surprise and trying to compensate. I have to give management credit, though, they have been mega involved this entire process and we have a lot of support, that certainly helps.
February 7:
Worked 10 hours today. Got A LOT done but I’m brain dead. That is all.
February 8:
Had a butt-pucker moment today. (You know what I’m talking about – we all have butt-pucker moments, don’t lie). I’m figuring out that mornings are going to naturally be our busiest times. Which makes sense because the clinics are open, the doctors are cranking patients out and sending them for stat tests. It’s mid-morning and I’m like this cat meme:
When my supervisor messages me and asks if I can work on the ambulance transfer request that just came by email. CRAP! I forgot we were going to start taking that project over starting today. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. I was in the middle of things things, (for real, not exaggerating here), I had a meeting in 45 minutes and they wanted me to work on a process that I haven’t even had time to read the documentation for. Suuuuure. So, I flatly told my supervisor that I would have to tackle it after my meeting. (Sorry about the gif above – I wish it would shut off, it’s distracting, but it perfectly depicts my day). After my meeting, management, me and one of my UAT co-workers all worked through the process together and it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. But just add that fat, juicy morsel to my already overflowing plate of tasty job duties. *sigh*
February 9:
Just when I thought it COULDN’T possibly be busier … WRONG. I don’t know what happened today but I’m quite convinced that every single person in the city with the last name between D-H saw their doctor today because my inbox EXPLODED. Again, furiously working away, like that annoying cat gif above and by the time I clocked off at 5:30, (supposed to clock off at 4:30), my brain was M.U.S.H. I ended up working five hours overtime this week. I’m exhausted.
February 10:
Finally got my hair colored today. My hair dresser, actually, I’ve only been to her once but I think she’s the sweetest and we really hit it off, moved to another salon to be more independent, (good for her!), so I awkwardly walked into the place and acted like I owned, “Hello!”. That’s my go to – fake confidence, no one will know that you’re actually trembling inside. It was a great experience, she didn’t charge me as much, but I gave her a generous tip anyway, and I hope she sticks around. Good stylists are hard to find! I went over to mom’s afterward, my sister was in town, and we chit-chatted, worked on some crafts and went out to lunch and dinner. It was a fun day!
February 11:
Chores. Sundays are boring for me. I save all my housekeeping chores for Sundays because I just can’t be bothered during the week. Kevin got another part for the treadmill, this makes his fifth try, and though he’s closer to getting fixing it, (it’s not sucking power and causing the lights to flicker anymore), it’s still not working. He’s not giving up on fixing it, (Kevin is a BULL DOG when it comes to this kind of stuff), but he’s finally agreed to buying a new treadmill. So. We’ll start seriously looking, (I have my eye on one on Amazon), and make the leap. I’m ready. I NEED to walk again. I do WAAAY too much sitting.
February 12:
It snowed today! Big, fat, wet flakes. It was beautiful, really. And it was one of those days that I was really glad that I was working from home. It was nice to look out the window and not have to stress about getting out in it. But we were fortunate, it all melted off by the afternoon – my favorite kind of snow. Management is helping with our UAT flags. They are trying to figure out why we’re getting so many requests. And they are figuring out that there are some that are being sent to the pool that shouldn’t be. In essence, our pool is becoming a dumping ground for the crap that no one else wants to take care of. NOPE. Not happening and I will continue to point this crap out and bitch, in a professional way, until it stops. Not happening. Met mom and my sister for dinner after work at Fazoli’s. We ate, chatted, and laughed for two hours, it was nice. My sister goes back home tomorrow. Boo.
February 14:
Happy Valentine’s Day! Yeah, I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t care, per se, but my thinking is, every day should be Valentine’s day. You should show the ones you love how much you love them every day, not just a designated day of obligation. Anyway. My impressions of my co-workers: you can read that post here.
February 15:
And of COURSE, I was Voluntold to train one of the new UAT girls. We have two girls that are currently being trained for the job, one of them is doing great, the other one is not doing that great. Guess which one management stuck me with. *sigh* Why, WHY?!? But being the team player that I am, I said I would be glad to help and today was our first day. She’s very nice and she seemed to know what I was talking about. She was also an MA in her previous life so she is familiar with clinicals and insurances, etc. But she’s not familiar with our system. No worries, I can work with that. But I confess, this is taking more patience that I’m capable of having right now, so I’m struggling. But we got through the day.
February 16:
Kevin put the treadmill together! I felt bad for him, it weighs 200 pounds and he really struggled bringing into the house. I couldn’t help because I was still working so he did it all by himself. He was going to call LeRoy but as he says, “I can’t rely on LeRoy all the time.” So, he dragged the thing in from the garage, all the way to our bedroom, put it together and by the time I clocked off, it was ready for me to sync up and unlock. I had to sign up for an iFit account, which … meh, we’ll see, I get the first 30 days free, then we’ll see if it’s worth paying for. But after making an account and syncing up my phone, it unlocked. I can’t wait to use it! I’ve done nothing but sit for the past month and I’m ready to get back to it. We’re going to keep the old treadmill, Kevin thinks he can fix it and with enough time, he probably can. It’s become a challenge for him now. I wish I had his problem-solving patience and skills. The reason I was still working when Kevin was bringing the treadmill in was because everyone else left early so I was LITERALLY the last person on the clock and guess what? Crap came in that had to be worked. I went into overdrive and I got crap done, ya’ll! That was the fastest I’ve worked at this job so far and it was exhilarating but I wouldn’t want to do it very often. Also, I was annoyed that management didn’t think to have more than one person AFTER 3:00 PM!
February 17:
Mom came over to our house today. We ate at Schlotzskys for lunch, came back, finished Season 4 of Survivor, (the person I wanted to win, didn’t win), had some coffee, snacked on the strawberry cheesecake she brought over, along with the Snickerdoodle cookies I made, crafter and listened to the audio book “The Shack” Which isn’t bad, but has taken a weird turn. I worked on my diamond painting until I got tired of that and then switched to cross-sticthing an angel Christmas ornament, and poor mom worked on undoing a mistake she made on a plastic canvas project. I love my Saturdays with mom. Afterward, Kevin and I went out to eat at Whole Hog Cafe, (BBQ, yum!) and watched “Awakenings.” Which made me cry. I hate crying.
February 18:
Worked five hours today. Yes, it’s Sunday. Management has approved overtime and I’m taking advantage of it. I worked on importing VA documents and sending those documents to offices so our Vets can get appointments. Our VA department is always behind and I feel bad for the Vets who need to be seen. Also made two banana loafs today.
February 19:
Frustrating day at work. One of my co-workers seemed mad – or maybe not. It’s really hard to gauge people’s moods or deciphering tones because we communicate exclusively by writing. I don’t have the advantage of decoding facial expressions or listening to the way people say something to know exactly what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. Had to coach one of my co-workers today – I just don’t think she’s UAT material but that decision is above my pay grade.
February 20:
Head down and focus kind of day. I ignored Teams pretty much the whole day and that really helped. I ended up covering 8 alphas today. I loved it, but it was a lot. Did some more admits – really not digging these admits. It’s primarily because no one knows what’s going on or what to do and I HATE not knowing what I’m doing or understanding WHY I’m doing something. Talked to Brandon today – it was his last day of the job he hated. He starts his new job next week and he’s looking forward to the change. I hope this new job works out for him. He’s had lousy luck with jobs.
February 21:
Management is going to give the new girl the admit/transfers. Thank goodness. Pretty sick of the daily meetings. I appreciate management being right there and available to talk about issues and work on solutions but these daily meetings … too much.
February 22:
I’ve lost track of how much overtime I’ve gotten this week. It’s been crazy trying to keep track of the crap that is being dumped on us. Now that Ciox is gone and we’ve taken over full time, it’s really been an adjustment for everyone. We’re realizing that a bunch of stuff was dumped on UAT when Ciox was here – I guess they just did it – but that’s going to stop. UAT is not a dumping ground. If the test isn’t scheduled and it’s marked stat/urgent, how do we know it’s really stat/urgent? To be fair, how do we know it’s NOT? Starting to get burned out and something is going to have to give. Can’t keep this pace up indefinitely.
February 23:
I’ve been running the work flow through my head, trying to come up with a workable solution. I wrote down a possible flow and presented it to management. Who knows if they go along with it but it helped to just write it out and get it straight in my head. UHC’s website was down today and everyone FREAKED OUT. We have a lot of patients that have UHC insurance so it was a real struggle to work those. We had a department-wide meeting today, basically, to tell everyone to chill out and consolidate your UHC cases so that when you call, you have several to check as opposed to being on hold for 30 minutes waiting to check one. It all seems so common sense to me but I guess people truly don’t have common sense anymore. It’s exhausting and I’m exhausted.
February 24:
Weekly get together with mom. Watched Survivor, worked on some cross-stitch Christmas ornaments, talked to sis on Google Meet. We’re coming up on Dad’s one-year anniversary of his death. I can tell it’s starting to take a toll on mom.
February 25:
Booked another camping trip today. It’s in the boothill – we’ve never really been down there before. It’s in the middle of nowhere but it has sewer, is a state part and I’ve seen some good reviews on it. Can’t wait to go camping again!
February 26:
Quiet today. Would have been great but management voluntold me, (I seem to be voluntold for a lot of things lately) to speak to some woman about the UAT processes. I think she’s trying to meld our processes with the hospital’s processes. She was very nice and I enjoyed talking to her but … we’ll see if anything really comes from it. I have mixed feelings on management “asking” me to do these types of things. On one hand, it’s flattering to be asked and that they have confidence in me but on the other hand, I really wish I was one of these personalities where I could just sort of fade into the background. Alas – I am not that person.
February 28:
The pace is starting to slow down a bit. We’re not being sent some stuff like we were before so I think everyone is getting the hint – don’t send us your crap. Management doesn’t seem to be as focused on UAT as they were in the beginning. I think they are shifting their focus to other departments and I’m okay with that!
(My Reflections posts are more stream-of-consciousness kind of posts so I apologize up front if some of what you read doesn’t make sense. But this is me we’re talking about here so … are you really surprised?)
January 1:
And so it begins, another year. Let’s make it a good one! I have two words for this year: simplify and determination. I bought a sign from Amazon that I plan on hanging on the wall behind my desk – it says “Don’t Wait,” but then the n’t and the Wa are crossed out so it really says, “Do it.” I bought it to remind me, every single day, that time is ticking, no more procrastination, and for it to show up when I start a podcast. More on that later. (I hope). I have discovered, (or more like verified), that I focus better when I have a few things going on at once. For instance, I have a gamer’s stream on in the background while I type this. I don’t know why this works for me, or what it might say about my personality, but it seems to work for me. Took the Christmas tree down today. (That’s about the only decoration we really do around the holidays) because 1. I’ve had it up since the second week of November and I’m sick of it and 2. I didn’t want to have that chore nagging my subconscious all day, (“I really need to take the tree down – I’ll do it in a few hours.”), you know, eat the frog first thing in the morning mentality. I’m striving to eat more frogs this year. Now it’s down and done. Feels good.
January 2:
Back to work! Morning was a bit slow but I had some cases and problem solving issues to work on late morning. One of the current UAT members was out today and they the UAT team was SWAMPED with requests. If it’s like that again tomorrow, I’m going to message my supervisor to see if I can work some of the cases and help them out. I’m a bit nervous but I would rather help now and get a feel for the pace than wait until I don’t have a choice but jump in with both feet. At least this way, I can dip in a toe. Back to walking on the treadmill today. I ended up walking four miles. I walked one mile when I got up this morning, 5:30 to 6:00 AM, another mile mid-day, right before lunch, and then another two miles after I clocked off. I sped walked after I clocked off and got sweaty – the other two miles were nice and easy. So, I ended up walking 14,000 steps today. Hopefully, that worked off a bit of the junk I ate over the holiday.
January 3:
Woke up to a cold house – it was 56 degrees in the house this morning. I don’t what is going on with our heater but I HATE it. We’ve had so many problems with the stupid thing; we just spent $1,000 replacing some electronic gadget a few months ago and here we are again, no heat. Kevin looked at it and it will ignite but it won’t produce a flame. It’s like there is a gas disconnect, yet, we have hot water. So, we called our HVAC guys – they know us pretty good between the number of times they have had to come over to our house and our rental house across the street. In the meantime, I’m wearing a t-shirt, hoodie and hoodie jacket, two pairs of socks and gloves because my fingers feel like they are going to fall off. Thankfully, we have space heaters, so I’m holed up in my office with the space heater cranking and that IS working, thank goodness. The HVAC guy arrives about 1ish and I’m by myself. Kevin had to take his dad to an audiologist to have his hearing checked, so I read Kevin’s text to the guy, “tell him that the igniter is clicking but there is no flame.” When I told the guy this, he nodded and said, “I think I know what it might be.” But what I heard was, “awesome – we’re gonna charge the crap out of these people.” He was very nice and it only took him a moment to figure out what was wrong. When he was telling me what was wrong, Kevin came home, perfect timing, and he fixed out problem. Somehow, a wire got cut, severed, something, and was disrupting the connection. He was able to resplice it and just charged us the service fee of coming out. WOOHOO! I was okay with that because it was a minor fix and didn’t I didn’t have to sell my last kidney. So we have heat, just in time for snow on Friday. Sweet. My supervisor contacted me today and asked if someone in our group, (we’re the red group), could work a case that had expired and needed an updated authorization for the test that was scheduled for Friday. I volunteered and got it quickly, about 15 minutes. I think, (hope), my supervisor was impressed – she gave me a clapping emoji so I’m assuming she was pleased. It’s the little things, folks, that keep me going.
January 5:
It snowed today. Sort of. White flakes definitely fell but none of it stuck, thank goodness. I love snow, if I don’t have to get out in it, or none of my loved ones have to get out in it. I always worry about the boys driving in the snow, even though they are grown men, but if you’re a mama, you know, you never stop worrying about your children. Snow is coming, though. Tuesday’s forecast is calling for snow, but then it’s supposed to get up to the 40’s the next day so if it snows, it won’t stick around. I’m more worried about next Friday – 2-5 inches forecasted and the temps are not supposed to be over freezing for the week following that. So, if we get snow, it will stick around for a bit. This is how I view the winter months – how long will it stick around? It helps to plan. Especially since we were caught with our paints down during the infamous ice storm of 2007. (We were without power for 11 days and were so unprepared for the hardships!). By the way, do you like the puppy banner on my blog? It’s one of my favorites and melts my heart every time I look at it. And I’m not a dog person. Wait. Back up. I like dogs, if they belong to someone else. Come look at it if you’re reading this in your email. I had a butt-pucker moment today. (I don’t care who you are, everyone can relate to butt-pucker moments). One of my supervisors messaged me asking for my daily totals for the month of December. Oops. I honestly forgot to keep track. Also, I was embarrassed to keep track because – WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING? NOTHING! Well, not nothing, just not the volume that I know my co-workers are getting. Why? Because I haven’t been assigned anything specific yet and I’ve been stealing from other people’s folders. Though to be fair, I have 50 cases lined up to work on my desktop, but they’re all dated a few weeks out and I don’t want to work them too soon. So I end up working about 6 cases a day because of my theft. Anyway. She was very understanding but I’ve been asked to keep track of my cases from this point forward. Which, I have been, but again, I’m embarrassed. I’m tempted to “remind” her that I haven’t been assigned anything specific yet and am sort of a “freelancer” at this point in time. Though, I do feel like I made some brownie points today – the ECHO requests have been a little out-of-control and it doesn’t look like anyone has really been working them. Some of the girls complained about it and the team lead told everyone that the people that have been assigned the A-L’s have been really busy. So, I privately messaged the team lead and offered to help out. Which, I’m happy to do – WORK. I’ll take it. But it also didn’t hurt that I reached out and she was very appreciative – pst – pass that along to the supervisors, will ya?
January 9:
Big, fat flakes are falling from the sky right now and I’m not happy about it. I don’t mind snow, per se, as long as I, or anyone in my family, doesn’t have to get out in it and/or drive in it. Because I don’t care how old your children get, they are still your children and you worry about them being on slick streets. I know they can handle it, that’s not what makes me nervous, it’s the idiots out there that drive like weather doesn’t affect them the same as the rest of us mere mortals. Luckily, it’s supposed to be over 40 degrees tomorrow so it will melt off, however, we’re supposed to get 3-5 inches of snow Friday and the temps won’t be over freezing for nearly a week so if we get that snow, it will stick around. Ugh. I subscribed to a gamer/streamer today. His name is Casey and he remind me so much of Blake … he even looks like Blake. And if Blake ever started streaming like this kid does, I would hope people would support him. He also reads a random Bible chapter before each stream. Who does that?? I admire his courage and his willingness to spread God’s word through his talents – and that happens to be through gaming. It warms my heart and gives me hope that there are decent people out there. I’ve also been really hooked on the Wendy Bell Radio Program. He vlogs live on Rumble every day from 8:00 to 11:00 AM and not only do I like what she has to say, and I enjoy her passion, but it’s interesting to watch behind-the-scenes of her radio show. Highly recommend. Had an impromptu Teams meeting today. They want the UAT (Urgent Action Team) to work on some VA documentation. I’m down with that! Whatever they can give me, I’m on it. Not only will it give me something to do but I’ll get more experience in the various precertification duties which will come in handy if/when I ever apply for a Team Lead position. See? Always thinking ahead.
January 10:
Today started off by breaking the treadmill. I hopped on at 5:30 AM, started it up and the belt suddenly takes off and nearly throws me off, then there’s a power surge and the thing shuts off. Scared me to death. Kevin thinks it’s a capacitor thing-a-mig and he thinks he might be able to fix it. And he might, but my point is, how much time will it take him and how much will the part cost us because I can get a decent treadmill, on Amazon, for about $300 bucks. We’ve had this monster treadmill since 2007. And Kevin remembers this, (because let’s face it, I don’t remember squat, EVER), because we had just bought the thing right before the infamous ice storm of 2007 and wasn’t able to use it for two weeks because we were without power for nearly two weeks. So, it’s been 16 years – the thing is probably worn out. And no, we didn’t use it every day, every week, but we definitely got our money’s worth out of it. I’m ready to throw in the towel and get a new one but I have to wait on Kevin to get there – it will take a few days but I predict he’ll throw the towel in at some point. Ha! I got called out at work today. People finally figured out I was stealing work from them. New alphas were assigned to everyone and some girl asked, “what is Karen doing? Is she helping all of us?” which was really code for, “I see you taking my stuff – now stop it!” I responded with, “I’m hanging in the wings until UAT gets up and running so, yes, I’ve been everywhere.” Which sort of shut everyone up and then to my pleasant surprise management had my back and basically said the same thing. But it doesn’t really matter now because I have what I need to start working on the VA project they wanted me to help with and we have a meeting tomorrow, just the UAT group, so I’m assuming we’re going to get this ball rolling since we now have about four weeks before the old UAT contract runs out and we take over. We’ll see. All of the snow melted off today. It was sunny and nearly 50 degrees! Mom goes over to Aunt Susie’s tomorrow to help her and I’m grateful the weather is supposed to be nice again. However, we are forecasted to have negative degree weather this weekend so …
January 11:
My brain hurts. More than usual, ha! I worked ten cases and it was pulling teeth getting an authorization, (though one was denied), from the insurance companies. And then, I started working on the VA project. Which is not bad, at all. In essence, I am putting authorizations into the patient’s charts and notifying the offices so they can schedule the patient. I’m shuffling documents. Not hard. But learning the process, navigating a few programs I’m not familiar with was time consuming and consumed a lot of brain power. And we all know, I have limited resources there. But today, TODAY, was more like it. I’m used to being busy. I’m used to being challenged and having a lot of work to do. It comforts me to have 50 things to do on my desktop because I know I’ll be staying busy. Having things caught up? Not what I’m used to. So though I’m looking forward to tackling the UAT very soon, it’s also designed to work fast and be caught up. I’m used to working fast and not being caught up. It will be an adjustment, but I’ll just have to find my new normal. Since my hand was slapped for stealing other people’s work, (I’m really okay with that, btw, I knew I was pushing the limits), my desktop is dwindling down. I had 50, now I have 35 and it makes me nervous. Am I weird for wanting to be buried in work? That’s makes me weird, right? Yeah, I thought so. Kevin took the treadmill panel off last night and removed some control board, electronic thing. He’s ordered a few parts for it so we’ll see if he can fix it. He fixed the treadmill he bought at a thrift store for cheap and it’s at the rental house – he uses it a few times a week. We could buy a treadmill at a thrift store, I would imagine that’s one of those things that people throw away barely used because intentions are always easier than actually carrying out the task, but then you run the risk of getting a crap machine that Kevin would once again have to spend time and money on when you can buy a brand new one and not worry about it … for a while. But I don’t trust the reviews on Amazon anymore, they seem to be so skewed, and I know they’re paid for a lot of times, so … can I trust buying a treadmill from Amazon? Not really. Let’s see if Kevin can wave his magic wand and fix it.
January 13:
Didn’t make it to mom’s today. It was bitterly cold. I could have gone though, it was sunny and the roads were clear, just cold. But me, mom and my sister all met up on Google Meet and chatted for a few hours, that was fun. It’s nice to have that option. There is a lot of things wrong with technology, but there are some good things, too. Like being able to see and talk to each other online.
January 14:
Cold and blustery day. Got some snow but not enough to be concerned about – just a coating, really, but it did stick to the streets. But very little ice so the streets are not great, but drivable. I don’t know why, but I’ve been obsessed with molasses cookies lately … and it’s not like I eat molasses cookies all the time, almost never, but mom made some for Christmas and everyone loved them so now, I want to make molasses cookies. I found this recipe online, braved the bluster day, (because that’s how much I WANTED molasses cookies), ran to the store, got the ingredients, (I did end up buying the Grandma’s molasses, which wasn’t cheap), came home, made them, and you know what? They’re pretty dang good! I’ll be making them again. And again, and again.
January 15:
Today was busy, it was weird. I signed on and noticed an email, right away, about a meeting, TODAY, at 8:00 AM. Wow. Talk about short notice. In fact, one of my UAT partners didn’t even see the email so by the time the meeting started, my supervisor had to see if she had clocked on and then message her about attending the meeting. This is the kind of stuff that drives me nuts, the lack of organization, coordination and communication, quite frankly. But to be fair, things are chaotic right now with the resignation of a very knowledgeable team lead and trying to get the new team lead up and running, and then the UAT switch over because it sounds like they want the new UAT using a new program and implementing a new work flow … so, I get it. But then, about 15 minutes into our meeting, it was discovered that me and my team mates didn’t have the option that we needed in order to DO the workflow so they had to cut the meeting short to reconvene. Again, I feel bad for management because how embarrassing, it’s not their fault that the people they trusted to do their part didn’t do their part. So, that was awkward. But we’ll get there. The clock is ticking though, we have four weeks until the current UAT contract runs out. And to top things off, the current UAT all had today off, I’m presuming because it’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. So, they were scrambling to figure out who was going to work the stat and urgent requests. I ended up talking to my supervisor, one-on-one later in the day, she wanted me to go through a folder that someone else was supposed to go through because she claimed she “wasn’t trained, or told what to do” with certain documents. It’s called common sense and unfortunately, not a lot of people seem to have it nowadays. Anyway, it made me feel good that my supervisor singled me out to clean up someone else’s mess. I’m used to that, quite frankly. Still super cold here, supposed to get down to -3 tonight. Our City Utility company left Kevin a message calling for everyone to conserve energy because there is such a drain on the natural gas supply. Though, yes, I agree, we need to conserve energy, (we already do our part, our thermostat is at a steady 65 degrees and we wear layers), we wouldn’t be in this predicament if our “esteemed” leaders hadn’t shut down our coal plant. Because of pressure from the environmental wackos, we now do not have enough energy to comfortably sustain us during extreme conditions. It’s a good thing we live in an area of the country that doesn’t really get this cold often, or for long periods of time, because it sounds we would have brown/black outs if so. Another stellar government decision, eh? We also paid off the balance for our cruise in May. It’s been four years since we’ve been on a cruise and I PRAY, the Demorats don’t concoct another disaster that prevents us from going, again. (We had planned our 30th wedding anniversary with a cruise to Europe that was supposed to take place in September 2020 – of course, it didn’t happen).
January 17:
Did I tell you I’m still keeping a journal? I gave up on Bullet journaling, though I did maintain it for three years – that’s gotta be a record for me – but now I’m using a weekly/monthly/planner that I’m cross-purposing with a journal. It’s this, if you’re interested. I feel the need to write something about my life every day, in some form. So, in addition to writing here, I jot down my thoughts in my planner/journal thingie. I’m on a mission to REMEMBER my life. It’s not that I forget the past, though I am forgetting the past, but that I tend to live for the future. What’s happening tomorrow. Am I prepared? I am trying to slow down and focus on the present and hopefully, this journal, this blog, will help me remember the past. Things are ramping up at work. We’re now navigating, (heh! management speak – i.e. using), a new program that we will be utilizing (using) as our work flow. I’m actually excited about this new program. It directly communicates with the registration people so that together, we can work on making patients’ diagnostic experiences not exactly pleasant, who LIKES laying on a hard, metal table and listening to an MRI machine clank and buzz all around you, but at least a little less painful. I’ve had meetings all week, I have another meeting tomorrow, and another meeting on Friday to “meet” the registration people we’ll be working with – putting a face with a name. Though uncomfortable, I think it’s a good idea to introduce the two groups and reiterate that we’re all on the same side and if we can work together, we’ll be unstoppable! (Okay, a little too enthusiastic there, but you get the drift). Mom wants to go to the Pinners conference in Kansas City in February. What’s a Pinners conference? Good question, I had no idea, either. I’m assuming, based on the title, it has something to do with Pinterest?
Yeah, I wish I had watched this before saying yes. HAHA! I’m all thumbs when it comes to crafting. Why do you think I stick to simple, place a bead on a canvas and call it a painting, craft? But I said yes and we’re going to the Kansas City conference in a few weeks. I’ve already booked a hotel and there is no cancellation policy – if we cancel we lose our money. Luckily, I found a hotel about one mile from the conference center so it wasn’t that much money and mom and I are splitting the cost so it won’t be the end of the world but … let’s just hope the weather holds out. It’s a gamble to book a trip during these months, but we’ll see how it goes. We plan on leaving as soon as I clock off from work on Friday, drive up there, (it’s about three hours), spend the night, spend all day Saturday at the conference, spend the night and drive back home on Sunday. We’ve invited my sister to go, we’ll see if she can make it. I’m excited! I love road trips and it will be fun to hang out with mom for the weekend.
January 18:
Work is picking up. I’ve had a Teams meeting every day this week and one more tomorrow. Tomorrow’s meeting is a meet-and-greet with the preregistration people – putting a face to a name – working remotely has it’s own sets of challenges, but I was on a meeting all day today. We all went over the new program we’re going to be using for our work flow – which is management speak to the place we go to get our cases and record the outcomes of these cases. It was all day because my supervisor had all of us shut off our cameras/mics and work silently, so if there was a question, she was available to answer those questions. It was weird but effective and I appreciated having her available – again, you have to get creative when you work remotely. And though working from home has been great, it is lonely and though staying on Teams all day was a pain, it was nice to know there were other people just a click away. I’m feeling better about this job. I think it’s going to keep me quite busy and a lot of apprehensions I had going into this position has eased up some as the preregistration people will be responsible to getting, and verifying, the patient’s insurance which will be a huge weight off my shoulders. I’m optimistic! Kevin got the part for the treadmill, tried it, and the nothing , it’s still surging, causing a huge drain on the electricity, the lights flicker, speeds up for a second, then dies. He watched a YouTube video, (thank goodness for YouTube – too bad they went woke), and he thinks he knows what’s wrong. He ordered another part so we’ll see when it gets here. I MISS my treadmill! I literally sit all day/night – and it’s too cold to walk outside. Not good!
January 22:
Today started off with me, on my front porch at 7:00 AM, yelling to who I thought was Brandon walking out of the house to get into his car and go to work saying, “Don’t do it! It’s not worth it!” I nearly fell off our porch with my intensity. It was one of those whisper-yells because I wanted him to hear me but I didn’t want to wake up the neighbors. When the person turned around, it was actually LeRoy throwing salt onto his sidewalk. Why the dramatics, you ask? It was icing. It had been icing all night long and the roads had that eerily beautiful sheen, which, if you live in the Midwest/Eastern side of the states, means one thing: ICE. The streets were sheer ice; the only way to get around was to don your ice skates and skate your happy butt down the middle of the street. And it was continuing to sleet and it wasn’t supposed to stop all day and I had visions of my second-born son having an accident and I didn’t really feel like having a heart attack today, so I hurried back into the house and promptly called him. He didn’t answer. Now I have visions of him on the road, hunched over the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white, his mouth set into a grim, determined, focused grimace and here I am, distracting him with a ringing phone. This is the curse of having an over-active imagination, ya’ll. However, to my surprise, he text back. And then, of course, I immediately thought, what are you doing!?! You’re driving, concentrate!” but he said that he nearly fell in the driveway and hadn’t left home yet. Thank God! He called me and I “gently” advised him to stay home, that our roadway guys were advising everyone to stay home, if possible, and that there were already reports of several accidents around town, it wasn’t worth it. So, he didn’t go to work and I was able to get my heart rate back under control. It was a good call, if I say so myself. It continued to sleet/rain all day. Luckily, the temperatures went up as the day progressed and stayed above freezing, otherwise, we would have easily had another horrific ice storm of 2007 on our hands. (We had an inch and a half of ice in 2007 and the whole city was without power for a week). We had already accumulated 1/4 inch of ice by the time the temps rose so, honestly, we were lucky. God was watching out for us. That’s one thing we get a lot of around here, ice. We don’t get a lot of snow, but we do get a lot of ice. Which is the worst!! Way worse than snow. At least with snow, you have some traction, ice … you’re at the mercy of momentum and gravity. Mid-morning, Kevin calls me and says, “look out the window.” The front of our house faces the front of the rental house across the street and I have a window that is right next to my desk, so, I lean to the side to look out the window. We have five huge Oak trees lined up, standing guard, in front of the rental house. And the tree closest to the intersection, (we live on a corner), had split in two and toppled over into the street completely blocking the intersection.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME, RIGHT NOW?! So, we apparently got enough ice to crack a rotting Oak tree in half, thank goodness we hadn’t gotten more ice. Kevin called the police, but he couldn’t get through so he called 911 to tell them what had happened. He figured help would come sooner than calling our utility people and he was right. A police office dropped by to access the damage and called the utility people to come out and start the clean up. They would only clear the intersection though, the rest of the clean up would be our financial responsibility, which we knew, of course. I’m just thankful the tree hadn’t fallen onto the rental house or ripped down some powerlines. It could have been a lot worse. So, we ended up paying some people to chainsaw the tree and clear it out for a whopping $1,500 dollars. Mature trees are awesome, but they’re also a pain and incredibly expensive and we’re surrounded by mature trees – awesome. Work was also stressful because we were supposed to start our UAT process sans the old group. We learned, very quickly, that we were not ready, which I knew we were not ready but I’m not the boss, so I kept my mouth shut, and we were left scrambling and asking the old group to continue working as usual. I don’t know why they just don’t hold off on the switch off until 2/15 when the old group’s contract runs out because by then, we should be ready to take over – it would be a lot smoother transition, but again, I’m not the boss, so …
January 24:
Still without a treadmill. Kevin got the part he was waiting on but it didn’t fix it and I think I’ve convinced him that it’s not really worth his time, or our money, to fix a treadmill that is 16 years old. But I NEED a treadmill. I sit all day for work and then I sit all night working on crafts, it’s not healthy. Kevin went to Academy Sports, (I always forget about that company, probably because I despise sports), and was texting me pictures of treadmills. The prices are not as bad as I thought they might be so I’m encouraged. We actually saw a Nordictrack on Amazon for $800 as well, but you have to literally put it together and though people swear it’s not that hard and there’s even a video on the Amazon listing that shows you how to do it, we’re still going to check out the ones at Academy Friday night, our “date” night, and hopefully, pick one out and bring it home. I feel like a slug and my energy is low, probably because I sit all day!
January 25:
This is precisely why I wanted to change jobs and work from home. I dropped my car off for an oil change and tire rotation and it was nice to just set my status as be right back and I was able to drop it off and be back home in no time. (Granted, the oil change place was close to home, but still). Now my car is set and road-trip ready for our trip to Kansas City next weekend. They tried to sell me an air filter for $45 dollars, not including the labor, but I said no. But, I don’t think my air filter has been replaced … ever. My car is a 2017 Buick Encore with 28,000 miles on it so it’s not like I’ve driven it into the ground without taking care of it, but changing the air filter is probably a good idea. So, Kevin bought an air filter from O’Reilly’s and will replace it for me. It was nice to just leave work for a minute and get that done as opposed to saving errands like that for only the weekends.
January 26:
Went to Academy sports, Play it Again, Sports and Wal-Mart hunting for a treadmill. Academy actually had a really great deal but they didn’t have any more of the treadmills in stock, probably because it was such a good deal and Play it Again Sports was astronomically expensive – like $2500 dollars expensive. Uh, no. Wal-Mart had the same kind of treadmill as Academy for about $100 more but the only box remaining looked pretty beat up so we passed on that one. I actually found a NordicTrack, the same one I have now, on Amazon for a decent price so we may end up getting that one. All I know is that I NEED to get back to walking. Soon.
January 28:
Found out my husband has a female naked torso in his man cave:
You know how I found that out? I went to Kevin’s Google Photos to find a picture of the tree that split in half and stumbled across this gem. When I asked him about it he said they found the mannequin torso at some thrift store, put some lights in it and hung it on the wall. Why am I surprised by this? Because I haven’t been to his man cave in quite some time so I had no idea what he had in it and now, I don’t think I want to go in there. Ha! But you have to admit, it’s a creative way to spice the place up. Also, his man cave is in the basement of the rental house across the street, the same house that our boys live in so it’s a house full of men – is anyone surprised to find a woman’s naked torso in a house full of men? It’s like a frat house. I guess every man needs a man cave. Oh well, the less you know, am I right? Bought a webcam for my personal computer today. I was gifted an Amazon gift card from my old work peeps and I cashed it in for a webcam today. I plan on recording some videos and starting a Locals page. I would like to talk about politics, cultural madness and maybe post some of my writing over there. I’m looking into Riverside.fm to host the videos – we’ll see how that works out. I’m keeping my blog for my personal thoughts and daily life journal stuff. I figured people who visit here probable aren’t interested in political stuff but if that’s your jam and you want to join my Locals page, we can have a conversation over there about the craziness that is happening all around us. I’ll post a link to my Locals … at some point. Still need to do a bit of tweaking and post a few things there first before I start throwing links around.
January 31:
And just like that, the first month of January is OVER. Gah! Why??? Time moves too fast. Can someone out there invent something to make time move slower?? This week … wow – soooo many meetings. We’ve really been amping this process up. The current UAT team messed up, made management mad and now we’re fully taking over on Monday. S’ok though, I think we’re ready. I feel like we’ve pretty much talked this process to death, it’s time not dip our toes in the water, but someone needs to push us in. I’m nervous, not gonna lie, but there is a lot of support and the pressure is off because if a doc orders something stat or urgent, they are going to get it done, regardless of whether we have the auth or not. We just have to make sure we started the process on the day of the test because insurance companies won’t do “retro” auths, which means, they won’t authorize something that has already been done. So that pressure is off. Ad we have a program now that seems organize everything, so I think we’re ready. My boss did volunteer me for another project, ambulance rides and direct admits to the hospital. Not sure what that’s really about but I’ll be working some requests that come from those directions, too. It will be nice to fully take over – it’s exhausting to follow someone’s work, make sure it gets done, because you’re getting into the middle of something as opposed to knowing what’s going on from the start. I’m just ready to stop with the meetings. I’m done with the video meetings. It was fun at first, now, I’m over them. Friday is coming up soon! Mom and I will take off at noon for Kansas City to attend the Pinner’s conference! I’m looking forward to a road trip with mom. Temps are supposed to be mild but it looks like we’re going to hit some rain. Oh well, we’ll just pack umbrellas. Thanks for reading ya’ll. See you next month!
In what area(s) of your life are you more or less following the crowd, instead of listening to your own intuition?
I’m sorry, have you MET me?
I’m not one to follow the crowd … typically. Case in point, getting the COVID jab. You can read all about my COVID experience here, but suffice it to say, it didn’t make sense to me to get an injection for a disease that a healthy person had 99% chance of recovering from. And then the government started bribing people and worse yet, THREATENED people to get this injection that seemed totally unnecessary?
Yeah – that was, and still is, a hard NO for me.
And that’s the thing. I’ll go along with the crowd if it makes sense. Someone yells fire in a building and people are running in one direction then I’m going to assume those people are running away from the fire, however, if I see that they are clearly running toward the fire yet for some reason continue to run toward the fire because everyone else is running toward the fire, you can bet your bottom dollar I will be “the weird” turning around and weaving/pushing my way through the throng of panicked people and going in the opposite direction.
Same thing when you’re checking out and everyone seems to be in one line but there are clearly other registers open. Why is no one going to an open register? Do they suspect something is wrong with the register? I’ve never understood group think. I will be the person who goes to one of the open registers because 1. it’s open, 2. it’s faster and 3. if it’s not working, well, I know that it’s not working.
People that are afraid to think for themselves baffle me. Is it a fear of being made fun of, of sticking out? Of being singled out? Of looking stupid? Of being different? WHY are people so afraid to step out of the norm when the situation calls for it? Are people afraid of what others will think of them? And why do they care what other people think of them?
Because I don’t care. I don’t know you and your opinion of me means squat. Think what you will. I can’t stop you and I don’t care to. People that are afraid to speak up, to stand out, to separate from group think, are insecure and cowardly. Again, it depends on the situation, but overall? Listen to your gut. If you feel like something is wrong, if something feels off but you can’t put your finger on it, your gut is most likely right. And if you KNOW something is wrong but you’re too scared to speak up or turn around and trudge through the throng of people, ask yourself, why? And then work on that. Because this world needs more independent thinkers and less group-think zombies.
What is your favorite candle scent?
Honeysuckle.
No, Cinnamon.
Or it could be Vanilla Sugar cookies.
The only scents I’m not crazy about are the musky scents. They smell like body odor to me. And we raised two boys – I’m over the body odor scents. ha!
I don’t burn candles anymore. I used to love them but then I noticed my ceiling was turning black from the soot so I stopped. Then I moved on to heated wax cubes, which I still burn occasionally but I can’t be bothered to clean out the dish whenever the scent burns off, too much work, so now I buy the Glade plug-ins. Which aren’t really cheap anymore, to be honest.
Actually, nothing is cheap anymore, thanks to Biden-omics.
I plug one in the kitchen, the living room and my office. I use a Bath and Body Works wall fragrance for the front bathroom because I need something with a little more …oomphf, if you get me. Kevin uses the front bathroom the most and it’s our guest bathroom, too, so I like to make sure it doesn’t smell.
Smells make me happy. Wait, let me clarify – NICE smells make me happy.
Do you love playing any sports, or just watching it?
I hate sports. No. I DESPISE sports. I’ve never really liked sports. There was a time that Kevin and I liked to watch pro football but then the idiots started taking a knee when the National Anthem played and too many athletes started getting a big head and tried to push their wack-a-doodle wokeness on us and I tapped out.
If I were to pick two spots I could probably watch, it would be football and basketball. The two sports you won’t catch me watching are baseball and golf. Too slow for me.
I’ve been to baseball games, because the tickets were free, and I want to say I’ve been to a Kansas City Chiefs game, but maybe I dreamt it – I honestly don’t remember. (Which goes to show how little I give my time to sports, on any level.
I won’t even play sports games. *yawn-drool on side of mouth*
I will never watch boxing or hockey. Any sports where the entire goal is to beat up on each other is just cringe-y. Maybe it’s because I worked with brain surgeons for so many years and saw, first hand, what traumatic brain injuries do to people … nope.
Have I played sports? Sort of. I was part of a basketball team with the YMCA when I was in middle school. We were the Wildcats. I didn’t play very long and I wasn’t very good. I also dabbled in track in high school but I didn’t have the stamina to really keep up so I dropped that, too.
Our boys were never into sports, either. Which I was also secretly glad for because I would have worried about them too much, but if they had wanted to, we would have supported it, but our kids were too geeky to bother with sports.
Kevin played tennis and was pretty good at it. He lettered in high school. We’ve played a few tennis games, emphasis on “few” and he beat the pants off me. Again, no stamina.
Which is a fancy way of saying, I’m really out-of-shape. ha!
It’s hard to believe that we’re coming up on four years post-COVID. In some ways, it seems like it happened ten years ago, in some ways, it feels like it’s still happening, on some level.
I know a lot of people have mixed, and strong, feelings about the man-made pandemic, and that’s okay. We all have unique experiences, we all went through some very uncomfortable, sad and in some cases, horrific times. All I can relay about COVID is my personal experience and my personal thoughts and opinions – feel free to agree, or disagree. We’re all unique individuals and are entitled to process traumas in different ways. My way of thinking is not right, your way of thinking is not wrong – but my goal is to process these sorts of events with my eyes wide open.
I hope you will, too.
To catch those up just joining us, (thanks for the subscribes, by the way!), I work in healthcare. I used to be a medical assistant in Neurosurgery, yes, brain surgeons, and it was the most challenging, and the most rewarding, experience of my life. I did that for 12 years. Now, I work from home with the precertification department, meaning, I run testing, like MRI’s, CT’s, and other testing, through the patient’s insurance company to make sure they know about the test and agree to pay their portion of the bill.
It sounds boring because it is boring, but it’s a necessary step in patient care.
Health insurance – now that’s a topic for another day.
As you can imagine, working in healthcare during the height of COVID was … challenging. Especially since I didn’t agree with the vaccine mandates, and still don’t agree with vaccine mandates, (they have since lifted the COVID vaccine mandate at my hospital – is anyone shocked?). and to me, it made zero sense to subject myself to an experimental vaccine for a disease that had a 99% recovery rate for healthy people. I had to fight the hospital. I filed a religious exemption and was denied. I then appealed it and to my utter surprise, it was approved. I really think that by the time I appealed my exemption, the hospital was bleeding employees, they were leaving because they didn’t want to get the jab, and the hospital felt like they couldn’t lose anymore employees and approved me.
I’m quite sure it wasn’t because I was a valuable employee, it all came down to numbers – let’s not kid ourselves.
Anyway. I ended up staying. Filed a religious exemption against the annual flu vaccination, which is still a requirement to this day, and they approved that, too. And as long as they continue approving my exemptions, I’m happy to continue working for this company.
Now that COVID is behind us, for the most part, a lot of really disturbing information has come out about the experimental jab. “Vaccine injuries,” they are calling it. In many cases, people have died from the complications of the injection, whether you want to admit it not, it’s been happening.
I subscribe to an email newsletter: Coffee and COVID. Jeff is a lawyer and it’s interesting to get a legal slant on the COVID madness surrounding us.
“The pandemic is behind us, but the propaganda, the psyops, and the relentless drumbeat of bad news continues. My mission is to deliver truth and light in an entertaining and optimistic way that you can safely share with people you love who haven’t yet seen the light.” says Jeff.
It’s also refreshing to keep on top of the COVID fallout because have you heard any follow up news about COVID in the, (MSM), main-stream media?
I didn’t think so.
Jeff also writes witty, and informative, opinions and takes on all of the other craziness in the world right now, too. He often brings a smile to my face. I highly recommend his newsletter.
I don’t bring all of this up to scare you, though it is scary to read about, but to inform you – there is a lot of crap that is going on in the world and you can’t count on the MSM to inform you. It’s better to know what we’re dealing with so we can come up with a realistic defense if/when it directly impacts our personal worlds – again.
Ignorance is NOT always bliss.
Here is an interview between Tucker Carlson and Bret Weinstein. I really enjoy listening to Bret, I feel smart if I’m able to keep up with his commentary, (ha!), and though there are some things I disagree with him about, I do appreciate how he takes the time to articulate his point-of-view and with how thorough he analyzes an issue. This interview is Bret’s take on the WHO’s plan to force everyone to give up their bodily autonomy and hand it over to the WHO on a silver platter so they can dictate what is “good” for us and of course, the good of the people in general. It’s scary stuff and something you would read in a story like “1984” and yet, here we are. It’s worth a listen.
A few thoughts:
“Pharma is healthy when people are sick.” A lot can be said for this simple statement but in a nutshell, Pharma is big business and in order for them to stay in business, they need people to remain sick. If that doesn’t rock any trust you might have had in pharmaceuticals, or the healthcare industry as a whole, you’re really not paying attention. It’s a shame that COVID damaged healthcare so much, but perhaps we should have been paying closer attention to what Pharma has been doing all along.
“Pharma created something truly beautiful with the mRNA technology.” Interesting. I never really thought that the technology could be used for good. And perhaps at some point in time, it might be able to manipulate people’s DNA, trick it, into repurposing cells to help the body’s natural way of producing what it needs to produce but for some reason doesn’t produce, like insulin, as Bret suggests. I suppose the question would be, would Pharma be motivated to use their “beautiful” technology for something like that? I guess it depends on how much the profit margin would be.
The part about your heart not repairing itself … didn’t really surprise me but alarmed me. I wonder how many people know this? Once our heart is damaged, it’s damaged forever and if your heart is not pumping at full capacity, then it will ultimately shorten your life. His hypothesis on why these athletes have been collapsing on the fields because they’re likely pushing damaged hearts to the limit makes perfect sense, too. The fact that these “vaccines” targeted the hearts of so many, and that so many people’s lives have been and will be, impacted by this government over reach … it’s truly mind blowing when you look at the big picture. These people that pushed this crap on to us, that ruined so many lives, that killed so many people, truly should be in jail. It’s pure evil what they have done to people.
The fact that Pharma thought they had the media in their back pocket and were confident they could sell us anything they wanted to sell us because the media would have their backs was also very telling. And the fact that it was podcasts, Elon Musk buying Twitter, and alterative platforms and news sites like Rumble and NewsMax that thwarted their plans also demonstrates how crucial it is to have alterative sources to go to. Because if we allow MSM to control the flow of information … think how much power they would have over us. It’s mind boggling, and terrifying, honestly.
“The measures that would have allowed them to silence the podcasters, to mandate various things internationally in a way that would prevent the emergence of a controlled group that would allow us to see harms clearly, that’s the reason I think that people, that want to move on from thinking about COVID, maybe stop thinking of COVID, but do start thinking about what has taken place in respect to medicine, public health, Pharma and ask yourself the question, given what you now know would you want to relive the COVID pandemic without the tools that allowed you to ultimately in the end see clearly that it didn’t make sense to take another one of these shots, or your kids to take the shots, we want those tools, in fact we need the tools,”
In a nutshell, Bret is saying that we had enough tools, THIS TIME, at our disposal during COVID to push enough doubt in enough people and then to spread this doubt, that we were able to push back on the narrative so that it stopped the hemorrhage from being fatal. If we had not had those tools, that dissension, I’m betting our world would look a whole lot different right about now. This is why it’s CRUCIAL that you get your news from different sources. You can’t trust anything anyone tells you so it’s up to you to use due diligence and educate yourself on what is truly happening so that you can make informed decisions when it comes to you and your family.
Pay special attention to what Bret says about what the WHO is proposing to do if/when another pandemic happens. The WHO is trying to give itself authority to tell you what you can and not take, to demand that you take what it thinks you need, to doctor documents so that you may not travel freely if you do not conform to their demands and to box you in so tightly that you can not live a free life. You will be at the mercy of those that are doing what is “right” for the “greater good.” However, because we have these tools, these voices and platforms that dare to speak out, to ask questions, to bring these evil agendas to people’s attention, the WHO was forced to back off and lie to the camera in order to dilute it’s intentions.
For now.
This, THIS, is why we must never forget COVID. Because if we forget what they did, what they are trying to do to do to us when future tragedies strike, it will make it that much easier to squash us under their thumbs like the ants they think we are.
Write From Karen 