A stich in time is fine, but this is ridiculous....

With only a week to go before Halloween is upon us, thoughts are naturally turning to Valentine's Day. You think I'm kidding, don't you? But I'm not. If the marketers had their way, we'd be stocking up for next summer's barbecues and buying fireworks for the Fourth of July, too. At the pace we are going, we will soon lap ourselves, and will be able to plan ahead for next year's holidays before we have even experienced the one currently on the horizon. Remind me again, which holiday is coming up?

What prompted this little bit of ranting about the dubious marketing mayhem we are currently experiencing? Last night, I saw a commercial clearly aimed at the Christmas gift buying season, that retail time of year where anything is possible via Santa and a red hot credit card. I suspect that this year's offerings may be slightly less spendy, however, since most people's credit is tightening up, and with job losses on the rise and income on the wane, even the grandparents are having to take a hard look at what is realistic and what is needless waste.

The marketers are not stupid, of course. They don't actually mention Christmas at all. They show lots of festive colors in the red and green line, and they toss subtle hints around our subconscious to remind us, oh so gently, that Christmas, which about 80% of the people in the US celebrate in one form or another, is just around the corner.

They don't leave out the Jewish contingent, either. There are always some dark blue offerings with candles strategically placed, just in case someone of that persuasion should have forgotten what time of year it is, and how suddenly, it's all about what we get, instead of what God gave us.

Naturally, they also want to remind us that Valentine's Day is conveniently located on the calendar shortly thereafter. And by the way, if you really want to get on jump on things, let's not forget the Easter Bunny is currently painting it's whiskers into a knot on those chocolate eggs he will be throwing in our path, so perhaps we should just plan on picking up a few trinkets for that holiday now, while we are at it, and still have money in our pockets. And birthdays come at all times of the year, lest we forget, so perhaps we should stock up for that while we are in the store, anyway. Just to be on the safe side. Tree shortage, you know. You never can tell when paper plates and napkins will no longer be available.

Life is not a DVR, that we should be fast forwarding through it like a manic on a binge, so busy getting to tomorrow that we forget to enjoy the day today. I find it sad, rather than inspiring, that Christmas lighting displays have already turned on in some shopping areas. Yesterday, I saw the Halloween candy on sale, as if the holiday purchasing period was already up, and it is now time to move on, even though the festivities themselves are still a week away.

It reminded me of how I went looking for a swim suit last July, only to be told I would have to go to a specialty store, because they had been clearanced out at the end of June. A statement which went along with a funny glance from the clerk, who apparently was under the impression that I was the one that was out of touch with the times, expecting a swim suit to be available in the middle of summer. What was I thinking?

I know these are old complaints, and have been heard for years, but they are rooted in my genuine desire for the world to slow down a little and enjoy the today we actually have, rather than anticipating the tomorrow that may never come. I think that is a good life goal, regardless of whether we are talking about credit or holidays, or even tomorrow's dinner.

I remember as a child, back in the days when we weren't so regulated that we barely dared put a match to our barbecue grill, to say nothing of a burning pile of leaves, when fall meant crisp air. Do you remember the smell of ripe apples, hay being cut, and the pungent odor of the flames licking at the rapidly consumed leaves? Those are my fall memories, and they put me in the mood for costumes, for the holidays to start, the anticipation to build.

I was reflecting over the last few weeks that I have no motivation to put out my Halloween decorations, even though I have many, and I really enjoy looking at them once a year. I have pondered what is inhibiting me from making the trek to my lower level and bringing up the little box of treasures, many of which are fun and enjoyable to see. I have flashing pumpkins and some flashing skulls, but in a friendly purple color so they aren't too frightening for the little tykes. I have luminarias to light the path to the front door where candy will await the little ghosts and goblins that come to trick or treat with me. What then, has stopped me from doing this task that is mostly enjoyable, one which I have planned for the past month, and haven't made the time to do?

I think it is the feeling that it is simply not worth it any more. No one cares about Halloween, because it is not a holiday about spending money and buying gifts. Therefore, the marketers have declared it a holiday non grata, an unoccasion to remember. And so, like everyone else over the age of ten, I have mostly forgotten it.

In all fairness, I must make a disclaimer here. I have never been a real fan of Halloween to begin with. Perhaps it reveals me for the old fogey I truly am, but Halloween is an anomaly to me - an opportunity for kids to go from door to unknown door, demanding candy loot from their willing victims, while the other 364 days of the year you are telling them not to socialize with people they don't know, and to never, ever, under any circumstances, take food from a source that didn't give birth to them. Or at least have the parental stamp of approval, anyway.

But even that is not my real, deep down problem with Halloween. Somewhere in the depths of my inner self, I have always suspected that Halloween is a ruse, perpetrated by the crafty moms of the world, who use this opportunity to show up the rest of us for the creative slackers that we truly are. I have seen costumes at my local elementary school that would make a Hollywood director weep for the beauty of it all, produced with no more than a yard of fabric, three pipe cleaners, a roll of tape, and a little mental energy, all for the mere outlay of $356 dollars. Plus tax.

I will make my declaration of independence right here and now. I am not, never have been, and never will be, a crafty mom. I am hopeless, in fact. I am capable of sewing together a skirt or a simple shift dress, but if you give me anything with legs, I will guarantee you there will only be one opening by the time I am through with it. I find pipe cleaners to be more difficult to handle than real pipes that I handle with aplomb. I am certain that glitter and glue are foreign objects destined for little eyes that will certainly cut your capillaries and cause you to go blind before they will cause you to shield your eyes from the sparkling beauty of them on the costume. In short, I am not a costume queen, and I generally end up looking bad on the parental creativity scale.

Things were different when I was a child, of course, because I was blessed with a mother who is crafty in the extreme. Each Halloween was an opportunity for her creative juices to flow freely, and she came up with outfits that were legendary. The upside down person was a winning entry in the local school contest, and along with a few ghosts and other costumes, my brother and I were usually outfitted with the best of them.

But I think her crowning glory came the year she made my dog and I matching Checkerboard Squarecrows. [If you do not know what that is, discover Google and learn a valuable skill, which will be far more useful than reading silly blogs all day long.] It was a master craftsman effort, and needless to say, I won the silver dollar prize, a small but heady nod in her direction from the Lion's Club powers-that-be that ran the local school party that our town used as a substitute for trick or treating.

She made my little rat terrier-chihuahua mix a jacket, a hat, and little pants that had space for her tail to stick out of. Then she took blue jeans, a jacket, and made a matching hat for me. It was an amazing burst of mindful magic, and the outcome was everything you could hope for. We still have that little doggie costume, by the way. I remain amazed that she was able to make an outfit for a dog, complete with tail hole, and probably in less time that I spend threading a needle.

So, in the face of that kind of parental pressure, you can well imagine my own panic at goblin time. I crack under the pressure, simply can't think at all. The brain gears creak to a halt, and I am paralyzed by the fear of failure. Well, okay, that's probably a bit much. But it is a fact that I simply cannot come up with an idea in my head that I can translate into a reality, no matter how hard I try.

The only really decent costumes my kids have ever worn were the creations of WalMart, or my mother's pity. My daughter stopped asking for help as soon as she was old enough to hold out her hand for the money it was going to cost me, and just directed me to the correct store where she would put her own look together. Works for me. She is crafty and thrifty, and usually ends up with a new wardrobe item that gets used far beyond the holiday in question, anyway.

So I know why I want to fast forward past the ritual of Halloween, but I don't want to fast forward through fall. We skip over Thanksgiving like it doesn't even exist, and except for the turkeys and the football, it almost doesn't any more.

I have a tradition of decorating my house for Christmas on Thanksgiving Day, because it puts me in the holiday mood. I put on my Christmas carols, and while the house is filled with the aroma of delicious Thanksgiving food permeating every corner and cranny, I am putting up my cherished reminders of Christmas past.

I enjoy the limited scope of a holiday season between Thanksgiving and New Year's. I like it that Christmas always comes too soon. From the moment I drop my cards into the mailbox, always the first thing I do every year to kick off my holiday season, until I put the last decoration away in January, I enjoy the sensation of the Christmas spirit. I don't want to celebrate the holidays before their time, because then, when it is time, I am tired of it and ready for something new.

In our fast forward culture, we are constantly looking ahead to the Next Big Thing. We are rarely satisfied with the here and now, the present, the moment. I enjoy living in the moment, enjoying each minute, each hour, each day, for the gift it is, because God has not guaranteed us that we will have any more than that.

I am going to get those decorations up today, and try to avoid the feeling that I am somehow behind the times, a slacker, so late it is virtually pointless to even bother. I am going to revel in the idea that a week before is enough time to enjoy the holiday for what it is, and to get myself in the mood for the fall harvest festival that Thanksgiving should be. I am going to enjoy the day, appreciate the warmth of the sun that is still shining in the sky, and stop and smell the leaves on my lawn and the fresh crisp air that is blowing them around.

And when the first ghost comes to my door, I will cast my mind back to that day so many years ago when my dog and I had the best costume in town, and I will smile mysteriously as I hand over the loot.

Perhaps I will even play a trick on someone. Maybe even you. You never know. But hopefully you will now enjoy thinking about the holiday that is, instead of the holidays that are to come.

Housework hell....

Today I am visiting that special section of hell reserved for those of us who are, shall we say, housework challenged. I am not there by choice, obviously, since I avoid housework like the plague upon humanity that it is. At this particular moment, I can think of roughly 8,492 other things which I would rather be doing than vacuuming, cleaning, doing laundry or whatever. Which explains why I am writing my somewhat delayed blog at this moment, instead of doing what I should be doing.

On my rather lengthy list for the day, I have to call a customer, sand a front door and side panels, finish the refinish of a table that I cannot seem to finish off, vacuum the entire house, wash all my clothes (which has now moved to urgent status, I might add,) and just clean up generally.

Oh ya. I also have to go back to the paint store to pick up the paint that they were custom mixing for me to match a particular color that my customer wants, and they just couldn't quite seem to get it right, for some reason. So, in the less than ten hours left to me in the day, and the four daylight hours left to me, I have a lot to get done.

Naturally, I have approached this situation with my usual calm, collected approach. First, I have created my achievement list. Wait, you say. You have not done anything but make a list. T'is true, but getting yourself organized is half the battle, my teachers all used to tell me in school, upon seeing the condition of the interior of my desk.

While I may not have been overly structured in my desk arrangement approach, going through it was always an adventure, because I never knew what long lost items I would find in the yawning abyss. I am sure that many of my now successful classmates had everything beautifully arranged in their classroom home, able to find everything at all times with ease and aplomb, but I was not organizationally blessed.

Truthfully, handing things over to me is something akin to throwing it into a black hole. I never seem to be able to lay my hands on anything I need these days, nothing is ever where I left it, and the whole thing just gives me a headache. Worse yet, even when I think I have gotten something in hand, it is generally the wrong thing, or not what I think it is.

Case in point. Yesterday, I went to the grocery store. I distinctly recall reaching for the package of Berry Blast fruit snacks, but somehow managed to come home with Razzle Dazzle Red, or whatever it was. I KNOW I had that berry one in my cart, I can't imagine how the red one ended up on my kitchen counter. But there it still sits, like a reproach to me every time I walk past it, my disappointed daughter just unhappy enough to leave it there while she decimates the interior.

Then there is the little matter of the crackers I like. They come in two flavors, sesame and Artisan Cheese. I do not what kind of cheese artisans like, but obviously, I am not one, because I don't like that kind at all. The two boxes are virtually identical, with only a small color change to indicate which is which. Well, of course, other than being labeled on the front, back and sides, but who reads these days? I have now picked up the wrong flavor not once, not twice, but three times. I am becoming alarmed at my disconnectedness from my own life.

Today, I feel like I am outside my own body. I have the floating above my life disjointedness that hopefully everyone experiences, because I frequently do, and I would hate to think I am the only one. But I like to step outside myself and look in, like an observer in my own head, and evaluate my progress over the last few years.

In short, I have a long ways to go. It is now night, and I still haven't done a lick of housework. I haven't washed clothes, which means I may be off to the store in the morning. I haven't even had dinner, and apparently, I am falling down on the whole motherhood thing, as well. I still need to study for an exam for which retention is key, and apparently an unobtainable objective. My list is going in the wrong direction, it's getting longer, even as I attack some of the jobs on it.

But there is a good part for me in all this. At day's end, when I have done nothing on my list, and accomplished very little, I am still master of my own universe. It may not seem like a lot to some people. But on this day, for me, it is enough.

This year my high school class held the 30th reunion of the day we were all foisted upon an unsuspecting world. Although I graduated with them, I did not attend the reunion, therefore, I did not celebrate thirty years of not being a kid any more.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider that fact to be a particular cause for celebration, since, in short, it means you are now old enough to have been out of high school for 30 years. It is hard to argue that you are still young when you can say that about yourself, since it requires you to be closer to 50 than not, and let's face it, even for a Baby Boomer, 50 is still middle aged.

Although, I must point out, one of the arrows thrown at both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin is that they are too young and inexperienced to be in the White House. Since I'm about their age, it's nice to know I'm still too young to do something. Although I'm going to be completely honest here, given the wide range of criticisms available for me to lob at both sides of the aisle, too young to do the job is pretty far down my list. But, as usual, I digress.

The Boomers are going kicking and screaming into senior status, and although I am not exactly your traditional Boomer, in fact I rather pointedly do not identify with them on most things, I agree that I am much too young to be middle aged. I cannot quite fathom how it has happened, or where the years went. Was I asleep? Did I miss some years in there? Sleeping Beauty I am not, and in fact, it seems the years went by without my really noticing. [My children would point out that I miss noticing a whole lot more than that, but it's my blog, so I will just ignore their chatter and continue.]

My oldest baby is now 23 years old, yet another way of being reminded, constantly, that you are no longer a youth yourself. Of course, he was born 30 and acts about 55 now, so if you average it out, I'm actually younger than he is. Oh wait. That's his dad's math, and I don't want anything to do with that. I guess I'll have to be older than him after all, then. So never mind.

More alarming is that my youngest baby is now 16 going on 27, and I am a virtual antique by her standards. I am afraid not even my nearest and dearest would make the claim that I am in the groove of today's youth oriented culture, although I do try to be current, whenever possible.

Heck, I even have a facebook page. I have eight friends now. Virtually all of them either my children or their friends, and all of whom obviously have taken pity on my pathetic lack of online people power. Which just goes to show you how nice my children and their friends are.

I am sort of fascinated by the concept of class reunions, although I have yet to attend one. I am sure it says more about my lack of star status in high school than anything else, but I can't really see why people who barely acknowledged my existence in high school would find it interesting to spend time with me now. If you didn't like me at 17, I'm fairly sure you wouldn't think much of the 48 year old model, either. I am both very much the same, and very different, all at the same time.

The intervening years, when I am forced to think about them, are an interesting road in review. The path has been pretty uneven, I'd have to say, because I appear to be one of those people to whom things just happen for random and unfortunate reasons. I am the one for whom the [para]phrase [my mother reads this blog, so I will amend to preserve her sensibilities,] "Stuff Happens," was coined. However, I must add that I have been informed, mostly by people for whom life has been one long joy ride, that it has not been my luck that has been at fault, it is my attitude.

Interesting perspective. So apparently if I am just receptive and upbeat enough, if I run around radiating positive attitude, I will have no more odd happenings in my life? I'm all over it, home free.

I am willing to accept my dad's premature demise as a fluke. I mean, seriously, he was only 50, two years older than I am myself at this very moment. It can happen, but it's not likely, so why it happened to him is beyond me. He was a jogger and fitness nut before it was The Latest Fad, even before Jane Fonda made 60 look like the new 40, except for the leathery skin from the overtanning and the ropey veins that make her look, well, 60. So I'll take that one as a fluke. Upbeat attitude at the ready. Check.

Colon explosion at 40? Well, that's more than a fluke, but still, could have happened to anyone, right? I will spare you the details, but after 12 days of dealing with me, the nurses were begging me to check out. Take that however you want to. I don't think they cared any more, just so long as I wasn't their problem.

That was a pretty fascinating adventure, all in all. I remember going through the ultrasound prior to the surgery, when they all still thought it was my appendix. There is an ultrasound-ologist with whom I have a bone to pick over it all, by the way. He kept insisting that I was feeling less pain, despite the free fluids clearly floating around my insides, because my appendix had obviously burst, thereby reducing the pressure, or whatever his theory was.

I'm not clear how a burst appendix would be an improvement, but I definitely wasn't feeling better. Mostly I was just resigned to my fate at that point, and I said so. He continued to tell me that my attitude was the problem, that I was just not accepting that I was feeling better. I do recall allowing that while he may be the expert, I was, in fact, the person in pain, but my opinions cut no ice with him. I wonder if he was ever advised that it wasn't my appendix that had burst? He was lucky, though, because I was on the very verge of getting testy with him, and then I can be a terror. But happily for all, I remained in positive mode. [Please note my coy refusal to mention what I was positive about. I am a model of self-restraint today, it seems.] Check.

I can understand how getting divorced was my own fault, of course. If you choose unwisely in the first place, you are unlikely to have a happily ever after. So I certainly accept the responsibility on that one. Smile is intact. Or is it in tact? Either way,check, check.

Starting my own business 25 seconds before the recession went into gear was just bad planning, I guess. Who knew? Certainly not me. But obviously, I should have foreseen that recession would happen the moment I declared myself a business owner.

Absolutely no one who knows me was surprised to learn that there was a recession on, since my very livelihood depended on lots of disposable income and poorly thought out credit decisions by people with no time and too much money. I would feel bad about it, but I'm too busy feeling guilty about having brought down the entire world economic system by having been so foolish as to start my own business.

And those college degrees you worked so hard for? Well, trust me on this, colleges grant, and colleges ungrant, and you may not have a clue why, but they will not have any sympathy at all when it happens. It is possible to write a thesis and defend it all to no avail. A small piece of advice to those seeking higher education. Make sure your degree actually gets recorded. Because if you go back 20 years later, you will find your committee dead or forgetful, and the current management totally unsympathetic to your cause.

And don't even get me started on the IRS. No, seriously. You don't want to get me started on the IRS. Someday I will tell you the tale, but not today. You will think it's funny, because it is, if it didn't happen to you. But if it did, it's not funny at all. Seriously.

I could keep going, but you get the drift. I keep a smile on my face, a song in my heart, and a laugh on my lips [and yours, whenever possible,] to the best of my ability, but Stuff Still Happens.

So if I were to attend my class reunion, what would I talk about? What do I have in common now with people with whom I had nothing in common even when we lived in the same small town and attended the same small school with the same 85 other people in our grade from K-12?

I attended an event some years ago with a few people that graduated from high school with me, some of whom I hadn't seen since that long ago day. They were older, but somehow, still very much the same. It was fascinating, sociologically speaking. In many ways, I felt like I had sat down at a table in my high school cafeteria again, and warped back in time 20 years. It was eerie, how little things had changed.

Through that experience, I realized that my varied life experiences, while mostly challenging, have made me a much different person. I have been forced out of my comfort zone over and over again, and in so doing, I have stretched and pulled and shrunk into a whole new shape [and size. Although I fear that might just be old age, since I've recently shrunk half an inch, according to the records at my doctor's office. I would try to make the joke that they had been doctored, but she probably wouldn't think that was funny. And since she is obviously the best doctor in the universe, I can't really afford to tick her off.]

While still an introvert, I prefer IM to phone calls and e-mail to meetings, I can also stand up in front of someone and talk about the things I know with confidence that I will do a good job.

Maybe I will attend my 50th reunion. We can all have lunch and pretend we remember each other from way back when. Maybe then, I will be able to rewrite history - I will be the popular one, while they can be the ones who brought a book to read during the basketball games while waiting to play in the pep band. Although, on second thought, these days, that probably makes one elite instead of a geek.

I guess my history is mine, and for better or worse, or poorer [forget richer, I'd settle for solvent these days,] I'll just hang on to it. I seem to have gotten lost on the way to the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow, though. So if you find me wandering in the woods, please set me back on the path and point me in the right direction.

National Nut Day!

I learned this morning, much to my amusement, that today is National Nut Day. I simply could not be more entertained by the idea that our nation has a day dedicated to nuts. Since there are so many of them running around out there, it seems only fitting that a whole day should be devoted to them, and that we should honor what is, for most foreign observers, the obvious characteristic most in evidence when contemplating Americans generally. And since the whole world, or at least our little part of it, seems to have gone completely nuts lately, it seems only right that we should dedicate a day to it.

Oh, wait. Apparently they are not referring to personalities, but to the actual item, the fruit of the tree. How embarrassing. And I had so many ways I could entertain myself with the whole idea.

On the other hand, there are many things that nuts have in common with the people who bear that same moniker. For one thing, they come in all shapes and sizes and nationalities, just like Americans. Isn't that multi-cultural of them? That should make them a trendy food, in addition to spendy, which is why I don't buy them very often any more.

From the ballpark to the comic strips to the Presidency, peanuts are America's nut. They have a place in the anthem of America's game, along with cracker jack, which, incidentally, also contains peanuts.

Jimmy Carter, a former POTUS who is kind of a peace nut, grows them on his farm. Isn't it quaint when the very rich call their Malibu mansions "beach houses," and their peanut farms, well, farms? Sort of makes you feel like they are one of us, doesn't it? Except for the fame, and the money, and the 25 people swirling around them at all times telling them everything they do is wonderful, they are just like anyone else, really.

George W. Bush, our current POTUS, is a bit of a nut for baseball, it seems, since he owned the Texas Rangers at one point. Or owned part of them, anyway. I wonder which part he owned? I'm guessing it was right field, myself.

Peanuts can be found in the meal shared by more people across this country every day than any other - the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Peanut oil is used for frying the most tasty Asian food, because it doesn't scorch at high heats. There are plain and peanut M&M's, too. Although apparently they are both peanut, because the plain ones have peanuts in them, even though are called plain. Do you suppose that is why they melt in your mouth and not in your hand?

Charles Schultz is the only true cartoonist I have ever admired, (I don't count Walt Disney in that, because he was something else again entirely, although he did get his start in Kansas City, so perhaps I am a good luck charm in the future for animated or cartoon drawing people, I don't know.) His characters spoke to me personally, like they did to many people, I suppose.

They were always down to earth, similar to real people I knew, and I related well to them. Perhaps it's because he grew up in Minnesota - a thing you never seem to outgrow. Unlike the accent, which is unmistakable, but apparently does fade after 20 years away. I think the values and ideals we learned growing up there were frozen into us, always present, like permafrost. So while we don't grow peanuts in Minnesota, Peanuts was certainly Minnesota grown, and there were roots of the north star to be found in the strip until the very end.

Although it is my first, and only, choice in comic strips, peanuts are not the nut of choice for me. Too salty, and not enough pizazz. Unless we are talking salted nut rolls, in which case, they are just right, and I'll eat the bag, thank you.

There are a lot of other nutty issues that we should address here as well. Starting with the Brazil nut. I don't know anyone from Brazil, so I am not sure if they have a national past time, or if it involves their very own named nut.

I don't even know if Brazil nuts actually travel from there to here before they take the low road on into my stomach. The only person I ever heard of that actually lived there was the mother of another nut, Sarah, Duchess of York, who ran away from home with her horse trainer and moved to Brazil. Or was it Paraguay? Oh wait. It was Argentina. Never let it be said that I cannot keep up with current past events. Oh never mind.

I would like to go to Brazil and see if the real Brazil nuts taste any different in person, but that's probably out of the question.... I would probably just be disappointed anyway, since they probably call them something totally different, and they don't even eat them down there.

My son was supposed to go on tour to Brazil with his college symphony band this upcoming spring break. Although he doesn't like nuts, despite being one, so the opportunity would have been wasted on him, obviously. So it is just as well that it has gotten postponed, [read cancelled,] due to the economic setbacks we have all unfortunately experienced. I am pretty disappointed for him, of course, because it would have been a[nutter] trip of a lifetime.

I would feel worse, but he has already experienced one of those in band, having gone to New Zealand, Australia and the Fiji Islands his freshman year. But anything for my kids, is my motto. That is the self-sacrificing kind of mother I am. And if he happened to bring home some packages of nuts for me, well, I can't help it if my son is generous, right? Although I don't recall any special gifts for me upon his return from the South Pacific, now that I think about it. So never mind on that little sympathy ride. I don't feel so bad now.

Chestnuts are not generally found roasting over open fires these days, because you would probably get yourself a citation for it if you tried. You can't shake a stick without getting cited or sued any more, it seems, so open fire would probably be out of the question. But I wouldn't really know how to roast one, anyway. In the shell? Out of the shell? Too many decisions. I'll just buy them in a bag at Price Chopper and be done with it.

There are pistachio nuts. Is there anything more fulfilling than popping one of those little green pieces of divinity into your mouth? I don't know why they named a candy divinity, which actually doesn't taste all that good, when they have pistachios, which actually are divine, laying around out there waiting to be eaten. They are slightly spicy, and have a flavor all their own, sort of like my daughter. Now that I am poor, I don't buy pistachios any more, because they are too expensive, but I miss them.

When we were in Hawaii a few years ago, macadamia nuts were everywhere, and in everything. It was a stressful trip for me, because I have a macadamia nut allergy, it appears. I eat one, and instant migraine ensues, along with stuffed up nose, hives, and lots of eye watering and sneezing, just for good measure. But, being me, of course I did feel I had to try them. I like to be fair. Which is what I thought of them. Fair.

I think walnuts, while sort of the workhorse of the nut world, are pretty mundane. Same old, same old. Although they go very nicely in a particular salad at Panera with raspberry vinaigrette. I can think of a few people who remind me of salad - not much substance, and they leave you hungry again in an hour, but they look good when presented to you all nice and organized on a plate. I won't name any names. I am a nice person, and if I don't have anything good to say, I don't say it. Well, unless I'm teasing, of course. And then I am willing to name one name, but he already knows who he is, so I won't go into it.

On this national day of nutty celebrations, I would say step out of your shell and look around. There is a whole world of mixed nuts out there, and you never know who you will run into!

I'm old, not stupid....

In my new business of selling insurance, I have learned an incredible amount of information in an amazingly brief period of time. I have learned about selling group products, and have talked to a lot of interesting and diverse people. It's mostly been a lot of fun, and I have honestly enjoyed the opportunity to dialog with people and find out what is on their minds.

While I have gotten my feet on the ground, one of the things I have looked into is selling medicare related health insurance; basically supplemental and advantage policies, for those in the know. I love the over 70 crowd, and I would love to spend my time talking with them and helping them find the right product for their lifestyle. So it seemed like a logical match, and a good fit for me.

I am here to tell you, it's a whole different health care universe out there in medicare-land. It is a world primarily designed and run by government agencies, who are in charge of everything from when the elder can buy it, to what an agent can say to them about buying it, to how and when an agent can say it. Or not, as the case may be. And it is the case more often than you would imagine.

I have always been one who believed, and I still do, that it is immoral for us as a wealthy nation to fail our citizens by not providing universal health care. Medical crises are the leading cause of bankruptcies in this country, and it shouldn't be that way. This is one of the richest nations on earth. There should not be a single citizen who does not have reasonable access to a decent doctor. People like me, who are poor but trying, shouldn't be locked out of the system, or forced to pay such high premiums, or to carry such high deductibles, it amounts to the same thing.

For all who believe that hospitals are required to provide care to all, including the working, uninsured poor, you should probably check with your local hospital on that one. While it is true they are required to stabilize you, and the key word here is STABILIZE, they are not required to provide ongoing care, and they are not required to forgive the debt, either. So if that is your plan for providing health care to all Americans, think again.

My daughter had cause to use the emergency room last spring. After a CT scan and a few blood tests, I was thousands of dollars lighter in the pocketbook, and that was with the negotiated rates imposed by my insurance company. We didn't quite reach the $5000 deductible, of course, so it was entirely out of my pocket. Or it will be for the next 25 months, because I can't afford to pay for it all at once.

Of course, rumor has it that hospitals, and even doctors, will simply write the debt off if you explain to them your circumstances. So I called the hospital to tell them of my plight, and they could not have cared less if I am poor, broke, and newly employed in a 100% commission position. They wanted their money, even if it meant it would take them 25 months to get it. Because they have their own bills to pay, and they can't do it if they are writing off every ER visit from someone like me.

And while we're on the subject, the insured are not subsidizing the uninsured. That is a myth, spread by those who have never been uninsured, I would guess. The reality is that if you go to the doctor's office without insurance, you will pay probably $50-$100 for the same visit where an insured person will pay $30. If you think the insurance companies are floating the difference, you are hallucinating, and really need to go out and get some fresh air. It's the uninsured who are making up the difference out of their pockets, and it's harder on them than on anyone.

[And just to be clear here, I am not dogging the doctors or the facilities involved. The insurance companies are big business, and they are exercising their free market rights to negotiate a contract that is in their best interests, and that of the shareholders to whom they answer. The reality is that the medical profession has to cover their own costs, as well, and if they can't do it with the revenue from the negotiated rates, they have to find it somewhere. And a lot of doctors do, in fact, give their uninsured patients a break, of course. But they set their base rates for services based on their costs - it is not an effort to screw the poor, and that is not the point I am trying to make.]

The uninsured are, for the most part, people who are working, and who make too much money to qualify for medicaid, but don't have group health available. How important is group health? Well, with a group plan, no group can be outright denied. You can raise the rates on the group, to some extent, to cover the critically unhealthy, but the insurance companies are required to issue some plan, if you agree to the rates.

Individuals have no such protection. I have talked to many people already, in just a few weeks of working, whom the insurance companies declined to insure. Even people who are managing their illnesses are locked out, eligible only for the high risk pool insurance for those who have been declined by two or more major insurers. I have heard that pool insurance is pretty high quality in some states, and reasonably priced, although I haven't looked into it, personally. So perhaps in those states it's not a disadvantage, I don't know.

However, I know from having looked at it for myself, that is not the case in Kansas. It is extremely expensive, and has poorer benefits than most of the individual policies that are available, which generally have lower benefits than the group policies available to most Americans on the job. By the time you pay the premiums, most people can't afford the high deductibles, leaving you almost no better off than if you were uninsured.

So the long and the short of it is that I definitely do believe some kind of insurance should be available to all Americans as a birthright, affording people the freedom to not be tied to a job for the health care, and to make affordable health care available to everyone, rich or poor. However, and this is a huge proviso, having seen the medicare situation up close, I have to be honest, the government should not be left in charge of our health care. I have seen the dark side of government administered health care, and it is genuinely frightening.

My fears are less along the lines of waiting periods or lack of availability - that hasn't happened now, there is no reason to imagine that if government sponsored care is the only type available, that it would significantly change the availability landscape - than they are on the administration of it all.

For those who don't know, medicare recipients are required to make choices during a six week time frame each year, November 15-December 31. Never mind that is the busiest and most compressed time frame in the year. Never mind that every single person over the age of 65 is now making a choice and submitting forms to a government agency at the same time. [Think IRS, another subject I will address some day in the future when I don't have an audit that will apparently never end hanging over my life.]

The worst of it, in my opinion, is that the people caught in this web are required to live with the choice they make for a whole year, no matter how unhappy they are, because that is the only time of the year that they are allowed to make the choice. I had one person describe it to me as sort of terrifying, because you know, whatever you choose, you are stuck with it for a whole year. And if you make the wrong choice, you are toast. I don't like toast, and I always burn it, anyway.

But the very worst part of all is that the government has made up all these goofy rules about what you can say and do while you are selling the insurance to the elder person. I certainly do understand that some of our elders need protection from the unscrupulous who are out there, waiting to swoop like vultures on the vulnerable.

But turning 65 does not signify sudden mental incapacity. I think it's insulting to treat all of them as if they were five, in an effort to protect those that have lost ground. Frankly, my 81 year old mother has more on the ball than some 20 somethings I know, so I don't know why the government thinks it needs to protect her from information that may help her make a better choice.

The very rules which are designed to protect, in fact, in some cases, will actually serve to disadvantage the elder, because they restrict the information that the person can acquire at any one time. I told my mom to check into a certain type of policy with her own agent (no, I am not such a bad agent she can't trust me, she lives in another state and I am not licensed there.)

But I told her to go to his office and meet him there, because he has more freedom if she goes to him than if he comes out to her, or to call him ahead of time and tell him she wants to talk about ALL the options that are available to her, because she doesn't even know about some of the options that are out there.

I'm guessing it's because either they aren't available to her, [Medicare policies are designed not by state, like most insurance, but by county. No doubt it's related to government reimbursement rates, but what on earth kind of system is that, I would like to know?] Or possibly it's because her agent was prevented by the rules from telling her about all her options, and he couldn't even tell her what he couldn't tell her.

And before you go off on the insurance companies, while they are clearly making a handsome profit these days, that has certainly been in the news, they are also spending a fortune on compliance. One seminar I attended included a three inch, three ring binder, one for every single agent in attendance, completely full of two sided pages almost entirely devoted to compliance issues, with only a few pages dedicated to the actual policies available to sell. The penalty for screwing up and violating the rules is an astounding $25,000 per violation, I was told at one point, so there is no margin for error for anyone involved in the process.

The most ridiculous rules have to do with documentation, of course. What would the government be without documents to file and keep for the rest of your natural life? So now an agent is required to send out a form to the elder person to sign and return before they are allowed to go out on the appointment that the elder person had to call them for in the first place, since you are not allowed to call them first, unless they are an existing customer to begin with.

I just know how well that will work out. You will mail out the form, the elder person puts it aside, because they are busy getting ready to go golf or go bowl or it's a form and they don't feel like dealing with it. I don't know about your mom, but mine hates forms. I don't see her jumping on it with much enthusiasm. Then, they have to come up with a stamp and get it into the mail. Personally, I've had some mail sitting for the last three days that I keep forgetting to get out to the box. This does not bode well for anyone actually getting information they need.

For those who are visually challenged these days, however, rest assured, the government is on it. Among the many things they require is that the font size is at least twelve point, so it's legible, on each form. They have also approved the snack list of things you can offer to the elder while they sit through the boring meeting about what their options might be for the coming year. No stone has been left unturned in the quest to control the entire process from start to finish.

The agent is required to have the form before the meeting can occur, so when they don't get it back to you in time, then you have to reschedule. But the time frame is very short, only a few weeks, and most agents are frantically busy during that period of time, because it's so compressed. I wonder how many policies will simply renew without the agent ever even talking to the person? And how is that going to protect anyone, except possibly the insurance company who holds the policy that is already in place?

So while the national discussion on universal health care rages, I would STRONGLY urge everyone to become informed, and to write your Congress-person about what you want, and especially what you don't want, with regard to health care. Don't kid yourself, the president can propose, but the Congress controls the purse strings - always has, always will. If you want to ensure your access to information, and you want to guard the flow of the dollars, Congress is where you need to point your eyes, and keep them focused.

To my elder readers, good luck on your health care decisions for the coming year. There are some terrific options out there for you, so ASK your agent what the full range of choices are, and make a truly informed decision, even if you have to wait 48 hours before you have all the answers. That way you can feel confident for the next year that you have the best plan for you, and not the one with which you got stuck.

And to everyone else, inform yourself. This is the most personal of decisions, how to manage your own health care. Be informed, be in charge, and make sure that your best interests are the ones that the Congress is watching out for. Because if you aren't willing to do it, who else is there?