Well that’s interesting!

So I was very displeased with the original Doctor that I was assigned when I got insurance.

No problem! There are other Doctors. At least that’s what you’d think. 

Yes, there are other doctors. So I did some research, asked some questions of knowledgeable people and selected a new one.

I called today to get an appointment and guess what? The first available appointment is mid September.

You’ve got to be kidding me! Oh, they can put you on a “standby list” But September? Really? Oh, and that time frame is for the whole group, not just the Doctor I was assigned.

The funniest part of all of this is, I’m no better off having insurance, than I was when I didn’t have insurance. I can go to a shit head doctor that doesn’t pay any attention to my actual concern or what I’m there to see him about, thereby not getting the care that I need, OR choose a doctor that I can’t see in a reasonable time frame.

WTAF?

For someone like myself, this is totally unacceptable. I don’t need that much in the way of care, but waiting 7 months? Really? Are you kidding me?

This sort of thing is why people like myself just stop trying. When the barriers to getting something done are so high, or the goals posts/rules are shifting in a random fashion people like me just choose not to play. This philosophy extends to Doctors, Lawyers, Job Searches, and virtually every other aspect of life today.

Okay, back to shopping for a doctor.

Once again, I’m reminded why I went to Orange County 70 MILES from where I live, to see a Doctor.

 

On the other hand, supposedly this insurance is a POS, which used to mean that I could walk in to any Doctor that was “In-Network” and the insurance company would sort it out on the back end.

Maybe I’ll investigate that 

Paintbrushes

I didn’t write this with the intention of sharing it. It’s a page from my journal.

But then I thought, maybe someone would read it and it would help them through something similar. Maybe connect them to their feelings in a way that allowed them to see what they’re going through or perhaps someone they know is going through happens to all of us.


I’ve been procrastinating. I know it.

This sounds so stupid, but painting the stairs hurts.

The last time I did this exercise, Jerry was alive. He watched over me to make sure I didn’t fall, or get dehydrated. 

He encouraged me, and made me feel good about it. He appreciated my efforts and the work I put in. He was my cheerleader, and looking back now, he was the reason I got out there even though my knees were killing me, and did the work.

I wanted the place to look nice when he came home, I wanted our home to be nice, neat, & safe. I wanted him to smile when he got home.

Now that he’s gone, it’s hard for me to stay motivated. I have a hard time putting in the work for me alone. For so long it was about him, and I’ve only recently realized how much was about him.

I think of myself as a selfish person, it’s jarring to admit that selfish as I might have thought myself to be, for him… I’d go to any lengths.

I guess that’s how it is for all men, gay or straight, who love their partners, wives, and children. They claim it’s the old cliche “Happy Wife, Happy Life” but it’s more than that.

Having someone you love and being a man that can’t say the words very easily, means you express yourself in other ways.

Expressions of love are; making the yard pretty, tending to the gutters so the lights of your life don’t get wet, taking all the rocks out of the yard so the kids can play safely, making sure there’s no place snakes or other animals can hide, so nobody gets bitten, scared or hurt.

But for me there’s another pain in doing this.

When the coroner took Jerry out of the house that last time. Their gurney took chunks out of the stairs and paint.

Sanding, filling, and painting over that damage feels like I’m erasing Jerry. I’ve been feeling like that as I’ve gotten rid of his stuff. Which is one of the reasons I’ve been so slow about doing it. 

My heart is still broken, and doing this work that I must do, hurts.

I know I’m not erasing Jerry. But sometimes it feels like it. I try so hard not to let it bother me, to remember that he’s in my heart. But seeing his stuff in the trash feels like somehow I, and the world is diminishing his value.

Damnit! He was valuable, he mattered!

If only to me… Maybe that’s enough.

I know that I shouldn’t live in a museum of our lives, or even of only Jerry. It’s not healthy to be lost in what was, when there’s so much that might yet be.

I managed to paint one rail before I was overwhelmed with… not grief but sadness. It’s probably just as well. The paint is old, painting only one rail allows me to see if I need to replace it. I’ll check the color match tomorrow after it’s cured. 

I kept expecting him to come out asking how it was going or telling me it was time to come in for a glass of water. 

Through the years, I’d be working on some project and sometimes, he’d hand me a beer and inspect whatever I’d been doing. Being encouraging or making helpful suggestions.

When I gathered the painting supplies today, I found a bag of various paintbrushes he’d simply bought and set next to the paints. I didn’t know they were there. Inside that bag were exactly the brushes I needed today.

He’s still taking care of me. That makes me happy, and so sad. 

I miss him beyond my ability to say.

There are times when I think I’m getting better and honestly I am. Then there’s a bag of paintbrushes and tears are flowing down my cheeks.

Wow, That was annoying!

Holy Shit! What a pain in the ass!

So I’m changing doctors. This guy is recommended and far more local to me than the guy in San Diego. I hadn’t switched previously because, well anything to do with the Medical industrial complex is always a royal pain in the ass. I figured I’d spare myself the annoyance until I really needed to deal with it.

Welp, it’s that time.

I initiated the “Get to know you,” appointment. It’s next Wednesday.

The practice sent me an innocuous reminder text. Okay, at least it wasn’t the 3 text reminders, 2 phone calls, and 2 emails that the BMW dealer sent me about the car service I’d scheduled. 

Do people just not keep any appointments anymore?

I clicked on the little link and was taken to their patient portal on my iPad. (I’ll often use my iPad like this as a firewall keeping my phone and computer isolated. Because it’s a lot easier to deal with flushing and reloading the iPad than the other two in the event it’s a scam.)

Their link took me to a patient intake form. Okay, that was reasonable. I could fill out all the bullshit ahead of time instead of doing it on an annoying clipboard in a waiting room full of sick people, wondering what exactly I was being exposed to as however many of them tried to hack up one of their lungs. 

Things were humming along nicely until I got to a couple of screens that presented no exit. Their software vendor had neglected to consider the possibility that a patient would be using an iPad with one of Apple’s Magic Keyboards.

Rotating the iPad didn’t reveal the “NEXT” button because I’d already begun entering data in the landscape format the Magic Keyboard presented data in.

So screwed! I tried handing off the input to the computer, but their wondrous Indian programmers must’ve thought that wasn’t something anyone would do, so they’d locked that out. I couldn’t scroll further up because again, the wondrous Indian programmers never thought about accessibility and what might happen if they’d misread the screen size. If someone had accessibility turned on, with the text being larger, then the user would be locked into a frustrating situation as well.

I reinitiated the session on my computer from scratch. In the full web page I could access the “NEXT” button. Okay… Moving on.

On the full size display they presented a typical “left hand” menu. In fact it was a progress bar not a menu. So while it looked like you could go back to correct mistakes… Nope! You couldn’t. You could restart a section, losing all the data you’d entered but you couldn’t just step back a step.

For example, They asked about hospitalizations, then they asked about surgeries. I couldn’t see the surgeries section until I’d completed the hospitalization section. SO the form is incorrectly filled out because in both cases surgeries were performed in hospitalization settings under anesthesia.

Then I couldn’t go back to actually fix the issue by entering the hospitalization dates followed by the surgery types and dates.

Annoying!

Don’t even get me started on the upload of ID and insurance card. The insurance card had a “Cropping feature” that didn’t work correctly. And the Insurance section did not properly scan the insurance card nor did it allow me to fill in the missing data.

Sigh…

Shitty software really pisses me off. 

It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t doing a LIVE BP reading.

Then they wanted signatures. Which would have been easy on the iPad but I wasn’t filling out the forms on the iPad. 

The iPad and Mac have a nifty function that will allow you to use an Apple Pencil to sign forms displayed on a web page. You can tell the computer to access the iPad for a signature. However the glorious Indian programmers had once again disabled that function.

What they in their infinite wisdom had not disabled was the ability to hand the web page displayed on the computer to the iPad so I pushed it all back to the iPad and provided the requested signatures.

Moving On…

Later in the process I encountered the “Next” button issue again. But guess what? I couldn’t had the iPad data back to the computer.

Okay… reinitiate the process on the computer and hope that the entered data had actually been posted to the profile.

Most of it was saved, so back to using the computer.

Moving On…

Finally I got the whole shebang filled out and figured I’d correct whatever was fucked up when I got to the damn appointment.

Then, they wanted me to download their patient portal app on my phone. OH GOD…

That went fairly smoothly, since I knew what kind of bugs were likely to crop up.

On the phone app, instead of a password, they wanted a 6 digit PIN.

I ask you, what the fuck is the point of a PIN when you’ve already saved a perfectly good password in the apple passwords application, and that application is more than capable of presenting that password across all apple devices? Just another fucking thing to remember!

There’s 2 hours of my life I’ll never get back, but it’s done. 

This kind of thing is exactly why you need a manual tester to actually look at software before you publish your bullshit to the world.

There are a lot of people my age for whom this would have been too daunting to complete. I also have to ask, “Why did I give all this information to their clerk when I made the fucking appointment? None of it was entered into their system!” Equally I’m curious why medical expenses are so high if I’m doing the keyboard entry for them. I ask the same question using self checkout at stores.

I’ve started not paying for bags, even though I use them. If I’m doing the work of a cashier, the least they can do is let me take my earnings in a couple of bags.

While I was off the hill the other day getting the car serviced I took care of another little medical annoyance.

I needed to pick up a RX from Walgreens. I’d chosen the Fontana location since it was relatively close to the house. It was a cluster fuck of EPIC proportions. 

I’d placed an RX request via their application on Monday. They sent me an email saying it would be ready on Wednesday and there I was on Thursday trying to pick it up.

They had it, one bitch had it in her hand, a full 90 day supply but even after taking my insurance info, confirming that I could have the RX, they told me I’d have to come back one hour later because they were closed for lunch. Uhhh I was right there, they were right there, the medication was right there and it was 15 minutes till their lunch time.

Their whole process was a complete clusterfuck. Fine! I had lunch, paid $3 for a bottle of coke and $11 for a mostly bread sandwich and waited.

When I was done with lunch, I wandered around the Walgreens, sizing them up for other supplies. I picked up some Flonase while I was there. Then waited in line for another hour to get my ZERO charge bottle of meds.

The delay put me in shitty traffic all the way home.

Walgreens, is probably not going to be my pharmacy of choice. Or at least not THAT Walgreens. It was 107° down there. By the time I got home I was drained. I couldn’t think, or concentrate.

So I lost another day.

I need to find a way to get 90 day prescriptions because I don’t want to have prescription anxiety. You know, “Oh I can’t leave yet, I have to wait for the RX to be authorized and I’m allowed to pick it up,” every month.

I intensely dislike going to pharmacies. I hate everything about their officious “See we’re medical people in our scrubs, we can make you dance hahahaha, we’re so important,” attitude.

No, you pack of idiots, you count pills from one bottle to another bottle. The hardest thing you have to do is decide what size paper bag to put those pill bottles in. The pharmacist is only one of you who has completed higher education.

Perhaps I’m just cranky! 

Next week is the Doctor’s appointment and we’ll be revisiting the BP meds, and other issues.

All I can say is this guy better live up to his reputation and the recommendations. Otherwise I’m going to be really cranky!

Ahhh, The end of Pride month…

Articles have been appearing about large sponsors pulling out of Pride events all over the country. Almost unilaterally these articles blame Trump and his war on DEI.

The Atlantic put a predictably negative spin on it.

To boil it down, most articles imply that corporations are afraid to sponsor Pride events due to Trump. They seem to want to paint Trump as the boogyman. 

I think this is disingenuous and wrong. Many of these companies supported Pride through multiple Presidencies. Regan, Bush I & II, Clinton, Obama, Trump, & Biden.

During the Regan years I don’t think these companies supported Pride out of DEI policies, they supported them because A) There was money to be made, and B) It was the right thing to do.

Back in the day Pride was about basic civil rights, and visibility of people who literally were treated as second class citizens because of who they peopled their beds with.

When HIV started killing gay men, these companies stayed in the Pride events because it was right to shine a light on the problem. HIV was being ignored, insurance companies refused to pay for HIV care. Some insurance companies specifically excluded HIV care or hospitalization from their policies Others would cancel an individual’s coverage entirely if they tested positive for HIV.

Back then, gay people of all walks of life were being denied fundamental rights or services. Housing, Medical care, Jobs, loans, and myriad other things that everyone else enjoyed, simply because they chose to sleep with members of their own sex.

That was fundamentally wrong and Anti-American. 

One could make a case that today’s trans people experience similar oppression. I can maybe see their point. But, generally speaking, the LGB community of old weren’t trying to “Gay everyone”, they were simply demanding equal representation and rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights and Constitution.

Trans people cannot, under law, be discriminated against. They may face harsh words, or people who refuse to use arbitrary pronouns, but they have the same rights everyone else has. In other words, the very rights the old LGB movements fought for are granted without question to the Trans people of today.

The Atlantic says young people will lose rights. I’m not sure that I see their point or that what they’re printing is true. 

The Trans movement has gutted the LGB community. More and more “moderate” and even “liberal” gay people are walking away. The LGBTQIA+ whatever community is a confused and confusing mishmash of conflicting goals and seems to be mostly about rage & victimhood.

A Trans person these days will as quickly open up a screaming tirade on an LGB person as they will on anyone else who dares to question them.

They’ve become off-putting and simply too difficult to understand or deal with. It doesn’t help that so many Trans people have in recent years been mass shooters.

Sure, the LGB had Jeffery Dahmer but he was a rarity. He was a cannibal that also was gay, or perhaps it was the other way around. Either way, he was a very disturbed individual who was in desperate need of psychiatric help.

The point is, the trans movement has co-opted the LGB community to such an extent that normal gays are no longer interested. That means they’re not attending Pride, which means that the advertising benefit large corporations derived from being supportive, is diminishing too.

It always comes back to dollars.

Add to it, that most of America, including LGB people are sick and tired of the Trans activism, protests, & conflict, and it makes perfect sense that large corporations are pulling back.

What exactly can’t Trans people do? What rights don’t they have? Name something. Oh maybe you can make a case for a man who thinks he’s Trans to be in a women’s locker room.

The real question is should he be in that locker room waving his dick around at children?

If the answer is “yes” then all locker rooms and bathrooms should be co-ed and at that point who gives a shit?

Along that line of reasoning comes this reality. No-one man, woman, or “other,” can be offended if they’re in a bathroom, locker room, or designated changing area, and they see a dick, hairy chest, a pussy, or tits.

Everyone would be 100% equal and that’s the end of the story. A.K.A. the end of victimhood.

It also means that women will have to clean up after themselves in public restrooms. Because while men may piss on the floor around a urinal, women are traditionally much filthier in public restrooms. I know, I’ve cleaned bathrooms, and I’ll generally take cleaning a men’s room any day of the week.

Trans people have access to medical care, lots of insurance companies cover the hormone costs. The real problem seems to be that the Trans agenda is to transition people as early in life as they can.

That’s a problem.

In most states, someone under 21 can’t smoke, drink, get a tattoo, body piercing, or a host of other things they might like to do because they’re not old enough to make up their mind. They lack the maturity

By that logic, a child shouldn’t have the maturity to undergo gender re-assignment. Yet, the Trans activists push for it. So which is it? 

That’s not loss of rights, that’s something entirely different.

When a person is over 21, they’re welcome to start taking whatever hormone therapies, or undergo whatever surgeries they want. They’re adults, of age, and can make their own decisions.

Much of America seems to have concluded that the Trans issue is something else.

Not because of bigotry, although I’m sure it’s there.

When Trans activists are given copious ink bemoaning that straight men should sleep with them or they’re transphobic, something is wrong.

Most straight men want to have families. A trans person (M to F) isn’t capable of producing the necessary genetic components to satisfy a straight man’s desire for children. So straight men aren’t interested. I’d suggest that straight men aren’t so much transphobic as they are trans-disinterested.

They might go for a quick fuck, but they’re not likely to be interested in a long term relationship. Let’s face it a trans person generally has a lot more baggage than even the most spoiled gold digger woman, to boot.

At least with a gold digger, you know you’re likely to have some kids.

Then people will say, “Well, there are F to M Trans people.” Yep, but most straight men want a woman that looks like a woman, they’re not likely to get turned on by a woman who’s got more hair on their chest than a female gorilla. So that leaves the F to M Trans person sleeping with who?

I’ve seen a lot of them bemoaning that Gay men aren’t interested in them. Well, Duh! A gay man is interested in another man and that means a penis and a male mindset. F to M trans people in many cases don’t meet either requirement.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some straight men who are just gay enough, and some gay men who are just straight enough that F to M Trans people could find happiness.

In neither case, do the Trans people have less rights. They can get married, they might have issues with their ID or passports, but I think there’s existing legislation that allows for changing all ID documents.

I believe where the trouble occurs is when someone hasn’t done the precursor work going all the way back to their birth certificate. I don’t think I can renew my passport with a different gender and name without having the underlying paperwork in order first.

Is that an infringement on rights?

Or do these blocks exist to prevent creating false identities? If identity is no longer a stake in the ground, then why have documentation at all? Bank accounts? Mortgages? Rental Agreements? Retirement accounts? Jobs?

So demanding that you do the work, and alter all your ID to match your new gender isn’t a loss of rights, it’s about needing to work within a framework that ensures there are no complications in making sure an individual’s rights are preserved.

I think the overarching pull backs on the part of large corporations isn’t about DEI. It’s about dollars, and that the LGBT community has become the TRANS community. That’s a community that has become viewed very negatively by a large swath of America and indeed the world.

Even Gay bars had to reduce orders of Budweiser beer. Why? Because LGB people joined in the boycott. What does that say about the Trans?

I think corporations are pulling out of Pride because there’s no percentage in it. Pride has become synonymous with Trans activists.

We’re all tired of hearing Trans this and Trans that. Nobody cares anymore, and I for one look forward to Pride not being a cash cow for the HRC, Glaad, and all the other organizations who should have disbanded once their job was done.

Pride might need to go the way of the dinosaur.

I’m glad Pride month is over. I’d be fine with Pride month being cancelled entirely.

Maybe I’ll go out to Palm Springs in July to sample the prevailing opinion of gay men.

Ahhh what they can’t have, they destroy.

The Transgenders are at it again. Well, they’re attempting to destroy gay male (real male) spaces again. Whether they’ll succeed is another question.

Grizzly Pines gay campground USA 1536x864.There’s a gay male clothing optional campground in Texas. (Who knew?). The place is called “Grizzly Pines” it’s a bit northwest of Houston.

On the website the campsite says very clearly this is a place that caters to Males. You’d think that would be enough, BUUUUUTTTT… It’s not. 

Why isn’t their description enough? Because the definition of Male and Female has been so muddied by Trans Activists. 

Now days a woman can wake up and think she’s a man, (She isn’t). Then she can decide to invade places that are by definition male spaces. Some establishments allow this sort of thing, (They’re wrong).

Even if a woman has undergone all the gender modification surgery and can pass. There’s one thing that will not change, her psyche.

Campit gay camping.It doesn’t matter what she thinks, if she was raised as a female, she still thinks like a female. Most women in a male only, and specifically, a gay male only situation just don’t get it.

Because they don’t get it, they immediately try to change the situation to suit their comfort level.

Men are by nature predatory. I’ve been in clothing optional situations where it was perfectly acceptable to simply engage in sex without a lot of preamble or discussion. 

Honestly, it’s freeing. It’s comfortable to revert to our male “caveman” nature. For a man to be able to shed the veneer of politeness, artificial civility, and 21st century “acceptable behavior” is one of the most relaxing things a man can experience.

Men are very different creatures when they don’t have to engage in bullshit. Men inherently know what we’re there for. I myself have walked up to another man who was a complete stranger and had my way with him. 

I saw someone that was attractive to me, I went for it and a good time was had by all. Likewise, I’ve been the object of desire for another man. No BS! Hell we didn’t even exchange names.

No dinner, drinks, or small talk. Just feeding our physical needs and then moving on. I’ve seen women freak out about it. They were lesbians who retreated to their rooms then complained to the hotel management.

In that instance, they were told simply, “You were warned that this weekend we hosted a group of men that were going to be engaging in an event when you booked. The responsibility for you being offended lies with you.

The Lesbians checked out the next morning. To their credit they didn’t make a big scene about it, and because they didn’t make a big scene, the hotel charged them a discounted night’s stay and helped them find a more appropriate hotel a block away.

Trans activists don’t take it as well. In fact lately they seem to demand that men who are only into other men, have sex with them. Then when the men are predatory they complain about that too.

Get a group of men together in a situation as I’ve described, and I can tell you something changes. It may be the sounds, the smell of sweat, the pheromones wafting in the air, or whatever, but every man in the group responds to the situation emotionally and physically. 

We all get our freak on and there’s not a lot of talking. Picture it like men eating at Thanksgiving. When the food is on the table, we’re not chitchatting about the table decorations. We’re interested in eating.

In a sexual, clothing optional, orgy situation, our brains turn off and other parts are in control. There’s nothing quite like waking up to the sunrise tangled in a bit of a dog pile on the lawn or pool area after a night of revelry.

There’s no guilt, shame, or discussion. Maybe someone will ask if there’s coffee, or suggest sharing breakfast together after a quick shower.

So it’s with these experiences in mind that I find the whole idea of a Transgender “whatever” trying to interact in these male spaces laughable. I suspect it would go one of a few ways. 

1) The Trans would be completely intimidated, if not terrified.

2) The Trans would attempt to out male the actual males in the crowd. The men would react to that falsehood as men normally react. They’d isolate or shun the liar.

3) The female brain would kick in and the Trans would start telling all the men in the space how they should behave. 

No matter how it worked out, the Trans would be a discordant note in the gestalt of the group. Meaning, no-one would have a good time. Oh, and observing someone’s overly complex pronoun requirement is probably not on the table.

For goodness sake, the Trans folks can’t handle normal males trash talking each other. Where they’ve invaded mens locker rooms they demand men wear towels in the sauna. (I can go either way on that one, but prefer to be comfortable and be able to “Manspread” as the heat loosens my naughty bits.)

Oh and by the way. Men who think they’re women and haven’t had surgeries have no business in Women’s spaces either!

They’re still men. Their brains were wired by the way they were raised and there’s no doubt in my mind that the hormones males and females produce have something to do with the way our brains are wired right from the womb.

I applaud Grizzly Pines for taking a stand and preserving male only spaces. I’m concerned that they’ll lose when the activists take it to court, and we all know they will.

If that happens, the activists will have destroyed yet another business, and they’ll have dictated what someone may or may not do on their own property,  which is fundamentally wrong.

Originally I wasn’t going to write a piece on this. But I’ve seen several articles about it over the past few weeks and it looks like the fight is growing instead of dying down.

The latest article is here

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The LGB community (what’s left of it), must separate itself from the trans community.

Female and Male only spaces deserve to be preserved. In that, the LGB folks have natural allies in the straight community and perhaps therein is the key to all of us being able to enjoy freedom from increasing Transgender tyranny.