37 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 7-6-16”

  1. Good morning all. I went to bed early last night so I’ve been up since five….
    Becca had a sweet friend over yesterday and Lindsey brought two girlfriends over–they all swam for about three hours without any issues…It was fun listening to all the laughter.

    Liked by 6 people

  4. Good morning, AJ, Annms, and Chas!

    We are not getting trees taken down yet so Miss Bosley still gets that view.

    I finally talked to the wife of the tree guy. She said their former insurance company that they used for worker’s comp went out of business. They are in between and looking for replacement coverage but the cost is very steep. She said their lawyer advised they could just write a note to say they would be responsible for their workers if anything happened. But I don’t want to go that iffy route. I thought I remembered that they had worker’s comp in the past when my neighbor and I used them before. They just really need that for their workers in such a dangerous field.

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  5. So sorry to read on yesterday’s prayer thread about Kbell’s husband having cancer, too. Definitely praying. Also, for Michelle’s daughter to have her pick of schools and for more lucrative position.

    Liked by 2 people

  6. I feel like it’s important to speak to something Kim posted yesterday: “Now, the way Medicare is set up a spouse goes into a nursing home and the other spouse is left with almost nothing.”

    First, it’s Medicaid, not Medicare. But more importantly, Medicaid is WELFARE – it is not a “right.” As such, only people with “almost nothing” qualify for it. Unfortunately what has transpired is that folks who have made no provision for their old age are gaming the system by dispensing with their money and possessions so that it looks like they have “almost nothing” to qualify for this welfare program where the government pays for the nursing home. There are several legitimate routes for “spending down” your assets and many, many lawyers who are well verse in the process and more than happy to take some of your money to help you do it (one of the legitimate expenses, go figure).

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  7. Linda, you probably know more than I do. My experience was with Mama Ruth. In the time she was in the nursing home it took at least $100,000 that was in a savings account. One of the daughters cashed in a CD that had been left to her, and on Monday before she died on Wednesday I happened to go to the finance office with that daughter who put them off one last time about going the Medicaid route and said there was a life insurance policy that she would pay them out of once her mother died. (Hospice had already said it would be a matter of days). Mama Ruth’s husband had died 2 years before, but what if he had been left at home? If they had gone the Medicaid route they would have had to sign off on all the assets left. As it was there is only jewelry, furniture, and a house worth about $60,000.
    Nursing home insurance looks like a good investment but how long has it been around. Thankfully my stepmother who has now been diagnosed with Parkinson’s has it. None of my people have been around long enough to need it. My grandmother probably should have gone in a nursing home but my Aunt V was hell bent and determined to keep her at home. There was no way she would allow it and gave up 10 years of her life to take care of her mother. It wasn’t a financial decision for her, it was the love of a daughter for her mother. Each of the other siblings gave her $100 a month and 1 or 2 (out of 10) would go sit with my grandmother long enough for V to go to the beauty shop to get her hair done or to the grocery store.

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  8. 😦 Everything is so automated that it’s impossible to accomplish simple tasks.
    I needed to change addresses on my vehicles.
    I went on-line and changed that for my truck. No problem.
    Then, I tried to change it for the car. I got a statement “vehicle does not exist”.
    I kept trying, checking registration and title numbers. No luck.
    I quit and went back later. It said “vehicle must have passed inspection within 90 days of registration”. It was already registered in April. But it gave me a number to call.
    I called the number and spoke to two live people.
    It took about 15 minutes, but the last person changed the address for me.
    No. He didn’t say what the problem was. I worked on that about half and hour.

    Liked by 5 people

  9. What I really LOVE is when your internet connection goes down and you call AT&T or as I like to refer to them THE Great Satan, the hold message tells you how to go on line and accomplish your task. IF I COULD GO ON LINE I WOULD NOT BE CALLING YOU!!!!!!

    Liked by 6 people

  10. Very pregnant youngest daughter and her husband want to take me out to dinner. I said how about at Lake Tahoe? So we will have an afternoon in the mountains

    Liked by 10 people

  11. Jo, that sounds so nice.

    It’s cooler here after the rain yesterday, but that means muggy.

    My first Black-eyed Susans are blooming. The drought has made for sparse yellow petals, but the black eyes full of seeds look perfect. That’s God’s sense of conservation.

    Liked by 1 person

  13. ATT is especially unhelpful
    Customer service is the reason I dumped ATT U-Verse.
    We got Time-Warner.
    It may be worse. I would like a TV that doesn’t require two remotes.

    Liked by 3 people

  14. Kim, I wore my new Bernie Mev blue shoes to church Sunday. They are great.

    Art and I watched the movie Last Chance Harvey with Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson over the weekend. It had good characterizations and a positive message about considering priorities in life and what it takes to get out of ruts and make changes. It is worth a watch.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. I have a question about grass mowing. Ours is growing and growing and growing. I mowed it Saturday or Sunday and it already could be mowed again!
    Somewhere along the line I picked up that you want to mow on the medium setting so that you don’t make your lawn “bald”, that if you cut it too low it isn’t good for the root system nor the grass in general. The other problem is that I have to wait until about 6 or 7 pm to mow it as I have to work from 8 to 5 and 6 or 7 AM would be rude to my neighbors.

    What height should I cut the grass?

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Oh, and while I am by no means ancient,the above mentioned grass cutting has made me realize that I am not 25 anymore and can “just do it”, it is hotter’n hades out there. There have actually been a lot of heat strokes reported in the news lately.

    Liked by 2 people

  17. One of my uncles sent money to the county his mother lived in and received help from temporarily. It was years after she had the help and she had died. Still, he felt he needed to reimburse them for the help she received. He didn’t have the money when she needed the help, but had it later. That is a far different generation and thinking than we generally have today.

    People are urged to use these programs. Everyone down the line gets paid from the taxpayer. Still, I would rather see ordinary citizens helped, than the politicians who wine and dine on our money in a thousand different ways.

    Liked by 4 people

  19. Chas–you probably need a young person to put it all on one remote. They seem to be able to do that with no problem. We can use one, but I do have a separate one for a cd/vhs player.

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  21. Kim, under Medicaid, the spouse is permitted to keep the house – it is not at risk.

    Also, when a person dies, what they own stands for what they owe, period. That daughter need not have cashed in a CD that was in her name, nor did she have to pay the bill out of the life insurance if she was the beneficiary.

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  22. I also have 2 remotes, I don’t think there’s a way around it — at least that’s what the Uverse guy told me as he was setting it up, he was hoping to get it on one remote but in the end said it couldn’t be done. I assume if it could have been done he would have done it. But you get used to it. Kind of.

    We’re getting a spate of wonderful weather here, lots of marine layer action in the morning and night with temps in the 70s in between (with cool breezes). Very comfortable.

    Loved the pics of Miss Bosley! 🙂 She looks pretty coyote-safe to me.

    Just saw another post today about a cat found torn in half just down the street and about a coyote having to be chased out of someone else’s front yard this morning. Grumble. This just doesn’t feel like a good “co-existence” deal to me anymore. Coyotes not doing their part to be good neighbors.

    So editor thinks the next coyote story should look at the animals’ nature, how and why it’s so hard to get them to play nice with others. We keep trying to humanely deal with all of this, as we’ve successfully done with other species, but they’re a stubborn bunch.

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  27. Kim, my thought on the grass is that if you are getting plenty of rain you can go shorter. If its really dry, if you shear it too short, it will dry out too quickly, die, and make bald spots. It is pretty logical, and you will learn to be a good judge.

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  28. Kim, you can find a cooler pack to wear around your neck so you won’t overheat. I do not know what they are called, but they consist of fabric over a substance which must be like blue ice that will help keep you from having a heat stroke. As for me, I take lots of water breaks, a few baby aspirin to ward off aches, and try to take in a breeze from a fan.

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  29. You are supposed to cut no more than a third of the blade each time. But, in the Spring, I can’t keep up with that so it gets more cut. I don’t like a sheared lawn, but I like to be able to see the snakes and perhaps dissuade them from even coming in. Fortunately, our lawn has a plentiful supply of weeds so it is more difficult for them to hide. The rabbits enjoy the weeds.

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  30. This probably should wait until the Raves thread this weekend but I will forget. We received a bill from the Pain Management Clinic. When hubs called to pay they told him that if he paid in full they would give him a 30% discount. Luckily we are in a position for him to be able to do that and it saved us over $200. You all do remember he is getting the permanent device next Tuesday.

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  31. Sitting typing this with one hand, as Tiny Niece slumbers curled up on my chest. Have been helping Second sibling this week.

    I noticed Karen’s question yesterday about whether women entering the workforce had raised the level of what was a living wage. I just wanted to point out that the majority of women have been working outside the home since, at least, the first Industrial Revolution. Even pregnant women and mothers worked alongside their children in the factories. My great grandmother was a domestic servant in an upper class British house. The working class has always made up the majority of the population, and its women have always worked, so women in the workforce is not a new phenomenon which is affecting the economic structure.

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  32. Roscuro, as recently as the seventies when I was growing up, and in a working-class neighborhood, in most homes the wife and mother was home during the day, though I assume some of them had part-time jobs. I don’t know decade by decade how it all looks, but mothers used to care for their own children at least until they were in school, and since they didn’t tend to have just two kids two or three years apart, it might be quite a few years until the last one was in school. Again, I know that factory work, especially during the war, changed part of that, but I think the idea of putting babies in daycare while mothers work is certainly a fairly new concept. (Though I do know that my mother cared for a few infants in our home, somewhat briefly, when my brother was a baby in 1970-71, so some mothers were indeed leaving their babies for at least a few hours a day. But I can’t ask her the details of that, so I don’t know how that all worked.)

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  33. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, in our neighborhoods, most if not all of my friend’s mothers were stay at home moms….my mother was a stay at home mom. I do believe those mothers who did work outside of the home during those years, did not make a competitive wage with their husbands as some do nowdays. More women go to college, put off marriage and having children as I observe. Two income families seemed to be more the norm as I raised my children…daycare, bigger homes, more “toys”, bigger vacations, nicer cars…all of which we didn’t have. My son shared with me that he always had wanted me to go to work so that he could come home after school and do what he wanted like his friend Jason…latch key kid, watching R rated movies that he would tell my son about at school! Those movies were not allowed in our home, we didn’t have cable, kids had to do their homework after having their after school snack…then they could go outside and play until dinner was ready….boring…. 🙂

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  34. The wage issue turned up circa 1978ish when both husbands and wives’ incomes could be factored into the mortgage qualification. Once both members of a couple’s earnings could be considered, housing prices began to zoom up.

    Some of that, of course, may have been population increases as well, but I remember when that happened–I was a young adult.

    Several of our friends, including a well-educated college anatomy professor, joined the Navy so their wives could afford to be at home with the children. The Navy provided Navy housing if needed, health insurance, subsidized food costs and a job that couldn’t be lost. Pay was regular and promotions were based on years in service. The lifestyle was better at some duty stations than at others.

    We never would have voluntarily been able to, nor probably wanted to, live in Hawai’i, for example, if the Navy hadn’t sent us there. Even as high ranking as my husband was in Hawai’i, and with a COLA, money was tight all four years. Fortunately, we didn’t need winter clothing or shoes beyond tennis shoes, sandals and flip flops. 🙂

    OTOH, if my husband had been a civilian, he would have worked regular hours and been home every night. With such regularity and ability to share driving, I probably would have worked when my children were young (my mom worked most of my life as a teacher), especially if we had lived in Los Angeles.

    I’ve no idea, however, what sort of job I would have been able to find and I’m not sure I would have had so many children. God, of course, knew best.

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  36. My husband has always made enough for us and I have appreciated never having had to go to work. I would not do it well. I love my life, have I mentioned that?

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  37. I have some old letters my mom wrote to her mom when they first moved to Idaho at nineteen. She mentions having a job as a clerk but she would be stopping soon as pregnant women did not work. She never worked a job again. My grandmothers never worked outside the home either.

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