Despite not owning a pet, I live in the "pet section" here in Sugar Creek Mobile Home Park. Owners in this section are allowed to have dogs - little dogs, that is. On leashes.
Now I don't mind that these little dogs pee on my mailbox post and poop on my lawn near the sidewalk. But lately, little dogs have been leading their owners into my side yard and up to my front windows where they proceed with their doggie business.
So yesterday, I'm sitting in my lanai - yeah, that one - when an owner follows his dog up to the window next to my La-Z-Boy. The dog poops; the owner scoops and scoots. "God," I pray quietly, "damn them!"
To my considerable surprise, there's a peal of thunder, and a biblical Voice booms, "WHY?" Oh, crap! It's God.
Me (after gathering my wits): Whaddaya mean, 'Why?' That little dog was way up on my lawn.
God: Little dog? Is it cute?
Me: I suppose, but . . .
God: Wait, cute dogs are the Wife's department.
Me: What? I didn't know . . .
Mrs. God: What's the matter, dear?
Me: Um, it's that little dog walking away from my place. He just . . .
Mrs. God: Oh, isn't he cute!
Me: Cute or not, the little darling just pooped under my front window!
Mrs. God: Oh, We didn't know that. I don't do poop; that's My Husband's responsibility. Dear?
God: What now?
Me: That little dog just pooped on my lawn.
God: Well, why didn't you say so in the first place? Are We supposed to know everything?
Me: Actually . . .
God: Don't get smart with Me, boy. It's not always easy to keep up.
Me: Sorry. But can You just send that little dog and his owner somewhere besides my lawn. Maybe somewhere warmer?
God: Dogs don't go there.
Me: But owners do, right?
God (sighing): All too often, boy, all too often. We had to add a special wing down there. Do you know what brimstone costs at Hell Depot?
Me: So that settles it?
Mrs. God: If We do that, who will take care of that cute little puppy?
Me: Oh, I didn't know You were still there.
God (interrupting): Do You want another puppy, Pumpkin?
Mrs. God: Oooh!
God: All right, that does it. But You have to walk him, Sweetie.
Mrs. God: Luckily, We don't live in a trailer park.
At that point, the little dog and his owner disappeared around the corner. I haven't see them since.
Newt
Monday, June 27, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
My Deadbeating Heart
I love what Mayo Clinic did last year for my syncopated heart. Every morning now I wake up to that sweet lub-dubbing that says that this day will be a pretty good one. Cardiac electrophysiology (gosh, I love saying that I have a cardiac electrophysiologist on call) is Mayo's strong suit. Billing accuracy, not so much so. (Gosh, I hate the coolly ubiquitous phrase "not so much." This linguistic bastard is one word short of idiomatic English.) But I digress. (I had a perpetually frustrated mentor once who erupted into foaming incoherence whenever he caught me indulging in parenthetical commentary. Sorry, John.)
Anyway, I have this great health insurance plan that pays for everything after I surpass a near-astronomical yearly out-of-pocket maximum. Since my darling Judy is a conspicuous consumer of all things medical, we routinely exceed that threshold before St. Swithin's Day each year. Accordingly, when Mayo worked its electrophysiological magic on December 27-28 last, the entire -- wait for it -- $75,000 was covered. So I thought.
Mayo thinks I still owe it about six grand. That in itself is enough to pump a few extra lub-dubs into my personal mix. God help me, I have entered into that twilight menage-a-trois that exists at the unhappy intersection of me, my insurance company and my hospital.
Once a week at dinnertime, "Gladys" phones me from Mayo, calls me a deadbeat, and demands that I pay up or return all those rhythmical cardiac contractions that so brighten my mornings. This nearly always pisses me off.
Rushing to my aid, Ironically enough, are those annoying HIPPA laws -- the ones that generate all those moronic forms you have to sign before a doctor will unsheathe his stethoscope. You see, before Gladys can talk to me about my specific consumption of medical services, she always has to ask for my date of birth. Now, I am pretty sure that Gladys knows my DOB and does not need me to confirm that information. So when I admit who I am but refuse to provide my DOB, Gladys is beyond flummoxed. The balance of our conversation occurs only in some legal state of limbo, since Gladys cannot verify that someone with the same phone number as me is not for some nefarious reason pretending to be me. You would think anyone nefarious enough to answer my phone could find out my DOB.
Why isn't my insurance company handling this? you might ask - - Lord knows, I have. When I call the insurance company to inquire, I get "Lucille," who swears to me that I do not owe Mayo a thin dime and insists that I not pay them. "Could you call Gladys," I ask, "and tell her that?" That's where it gets dicey.
Now let's face it - "Gladys" and "Lucille" are made-up names for a couple of guys sitting in some third-world boiler room chewing khat or molesting small animals. For all I know, they sit in adjacent cubicles. Whatever it is they are doing, however, seems to interfere with routine cerebration. To confound matters even more, you can never talk to the same Gladys twice. Calling to ask for Gladys or Lucille by name is a Marx Brothers exercise in runaway absurdity. What's more, it should be obvious to even the casual observer that asking Gladys to phone Lucille raises the stakes to Laurel & Hardy levels.
Lest you were born in a pumpkin patch sometime in the past twenty-four hours, let me assure you that my current predicament is the norm and not the exception. Someone still owes me $168 from the first time the kind folks at Mayo put their collective ear to my chest a couple years gone by. Gladys swears that that someone is Lucille.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, etc.,
Newt
Anyway, I have this great health insurance plan that pays for everything after I surpass a near-astronomical yearly out-of-pocket maximum. Since my darling Judy is a conspicuous consumer of all things medical, we routinely exceed that threshold before St. Swithin's Day each year. Accordingly, when Mayo worked its electrophysiological magic on December 27-28 last, the entire -- wait for it -- $75,000 was covered. So I thought.
Mayo thinks I still owe it about six grand. That in itself is enough to pump a few extra lub-dubs into my personal mix. God help me, I have entered into that twilight menage-a-trois that exists at the unhappy intersection of me, my insurance company and my hospital.
Once a week at dinnertime, "Gladys" phones me from Mayo, calls me a deadbeat, and demands that I pay up or return all those rhythmical cardiac contractions that so brighten my mornings. This nearly always pisses me off.
Rushing to my aid, Ironically enough, are those annoying HIPPA laws -- the ones that generate all those moronic forms you have to sign before a doctor will unsheathe his stethoscope. You see, before Gladys can talk to me about my specific consumption of medical services, she always has to ask for my date of birth. Now, I am pretty sure that Gladys knows my DOB and does not need me to confirm that information. So when I admit who I am but refuse to provide my DOB, Gladys is beyond flummoxed. The balance of our conversation occurs only in some legal state of limbo, since Gladys cannot verify that someone with the same phone number as me is not for some nefarious reason pretending to be me. You would think anyone nefarious enough to answer my phone could find out my DOB.
Why isn't my insurance company handling this? you might ask - - Lord knows, I have. When I call the insurance company to inquire, I get "Lucille," who swears to me that I do not owe Mayo a thin dime and insists that I not pay them. "Could you call Gladys," I ask, "and tell her that?" That's where it gets dicey.
Now let's face it - "Gladys" and "Lucille" are made-up names for a couple of guys sitting in some third-world boiler room chewing khat or molesting small animals. For all I know, they sit in adjacent cubicles. Whatever it is they are doing, however, seems to interfere with routine cerebration. To confound matters even more, you can never talk to the same Gladys twice. Calling to ask for Gladys or Lucille by name is a Marx Brothers exercise in runaway absurdity. What's more, it should be obvious to even the casual observer that asking Gladys to phone Lucille raises the stakes to Laurel & Hardy levels.
Lest you were born in a pumpkin patch sometime in the past twenty-four hours, let me assure you that my current predicament is the norm and not the exception. Someone still owes me $168 from the first time the kind folks at Mayo put their collective ear to my chest a couple years gone by. Gladys swears that that someone is Lucille.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, etc.,
Newt
Monday, May 16, 2011
Lift Off Endeavor
Hurray and huzzah for the launch of the second-to-last Space Shuttle, which is the last launch for Endeavor and the second second-to-last launch after NASA decided that the last last launch would not in fact be last. If the last second-to-last launch is any indication, this will not be the last second-to-last launch at all. We will need to wait several months, I think, after the last launch to be sure that that launch is not also the second-to-last launch.
With apologies,
Newt
With apologies,
Newt
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Critters
Florida has nothing if not critters. Alligators, of course - splashy, fun and pretty good diced, battered and fried. I wasn't in the state but a short time before I fetched up against the Palmetto Bug crisis of 2009. Like any self-respecting Northerner, I took this personally.
Then came the wretched armadillos. I'm not even getting into the love-bugs fornicating on the grille of my Honda because by now I am a resigned Southerner. But of late there has descended upon Castle Newton a plague of rodents the likes of which has not been seen since the Middle Ages. I check myself daily for buboes.
It's not just the mouse, for what man's hickory-dickery castle has not had the odd mouse lurking? A chocolate-shot-looking turd here; another there. I set one of those fancy plastic better-mousetraps that promises to shield your sensitive eye from the putative corpse-to-be. The mouse left it baitless and forlorn three consecutive nights. Four bucks wasted. Not to mention several dollops of peanut butter. Conventional traps, HAH! I even filed down the trigger on one of those spring traps so it fired off if I so much as farted in the general vicinity. No mouse. No peanut butter either.
Glue traps? Forget it. My exterminator-- yeah, Floridians have exterminators like Northerners have snow shovels -- gave me a big commercial glue trap, which stunk like hell and trapped only a thick carpet of those tiny winged no-see-um gnats that are the state bird of Florida. I folded another glue trap into a hollow box-like affair (insert Tab A into Slot B) with the glue inside, and I slathered it with yet more peanut butter. The Skippy folks have sent me a nice thank-you note. My mouse crapped on top of the box.
Last week, something started gnawing on my air conditioning duct. It only comes out at night. Could be a rat or a possum or an overachieving chipmunk. I tucked three large traps -- one dangerous looking spring-loaded affair and two big glue traps -- into my duct-work. That was three days ago. The peanut butter/cheese bait has gone bad.
And I have already whined enough about the squirrels. Today I bought a medium Hav-a-Hart contraption, baited it with breakfast cereal (shredded wheat, miniatures, unsweetened) and set it out under the oak tree. Screw the peanut butter; the critters don't care a whit about peanut butter. I sent the note back to Skippy.
I keep sneaking over to the window to peek under the oak tree.
Newt
Then came the wretched armadillos. I'm not even getting into the love-bugs fornicating on the grille of my Honda because by now I am a resigned Southerner. But of late there has descended upon Castle Newton a plague of rodents the likes of which has not been seen since the Middle Ages. I check myself daily for buboes.
It's not just the mouse, for what man's hickory-dickery castle has not had the odd mouse lurking? A chocolate-shot-looking turd here; another there. I set one of those fancy plastic better-mousetraps that promises to shield your sensitive eye from the putative corpse-to-be. The mouse left it baitless and forlorn three consecutive nights. Four bucks wasted. Not to mention several dollops of peanut butter. Conventional traps, HAH! I even filed down the trigger on one of those spring traps so it fired off if I so much as farted in the general vicinity. No mouse. No peanut butter either.
Glue traps? Forget it. My exterminator-- yeah, Floridians have exterminators like Northerners have snow shovels -- gave me a big commercial glue trap, which stunk like hell and trapped only a thick carpet of those tiny winged no-see-um gnats that are the state bird of Florida. I folded another glue trap into a hollow box-like affair (insert Tab A into Slot B) with the glue inside, and I slathered it with yet more peanut butter. The Skippy folks have sent me a nice thank-you note. My mouse crapped on top of the box.
Last week, something started gnawing on my air conditioning duct. It only comes out at night. Could be a rat or a possum or an overachieving chipmunk. I tucked three large traps -- one dangerous looking spring-loaded affair and two big glue traps -- into my duct-work. That was three days ago. The peanut butter/cheese bait has gone bad.
And I have already whined enough about the squirrels. Today I bought a medium Hav-a-Hart contraption, baited it with breakfast cereal (shredded wheat, miniatures, unsweetened) and set it out under the oak tree. Screw the peanut butter; the critters don't care a whit about peanut butter. I sent the note back to Skippy.
I keep sneaking over to the window to peek under the oak tree.
Newt
Monday, May 2, 2011
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