Oh Hellish Day

So the alarm didn't go off, but the dog did. Enter mop.

So we dropped the breakfast eggs on the floor. Enter broom, dustpan; mop redux.

A trip in the parking lot netted one whacked arm, one scuffed knee. Exit trousers, worn once, now out at knee and unrepairable for workwear.

A wreck on Georgia 400. Enter Ms. Packratty 38 minutes late to work. With a cellphone whose battery was on Low.

So "lunch", which was abbreviated also took her to the Target, for a charger for the office (40% cheaper than buying a spare from the cell phone store) and some Alice bands for the niece from the Target $1 racks. Ms. Packratty loves the $1 racks as a place to find goodies for the kiddos.

S0 the day sort of has to get better and at least since 3 p.m., it has. The jury is still out.

Ms. Packratty received her camera bag Wednesday evening, but when she checked the shipping data on the USPS site, it seems the camera, which had shipping scheduled on the 15th WAS ONLY PICKED UP BY USPS ON WEDNESDAY. Gee - does the USPS possibly think this might be why they are continuing to lose money by the long tonne? I mean I read somewhere that for a while, eBay was putting something like 1 million new parcels into the system, many sent Priority Mail and they couldn't make enough to break even with that. With this level of service, they seem to be committing seppukku by idiocy and inefficiency. Like the moronic clerk at the office near my workplace who, while Ms. Packratty was filling out a claim for sewing scissors pilfered from a package sent by her Maternal Parental Unit, called someone in Washington to make sure that it was legal to mail scissors, since they were sharp and might be considered a weapon. I think her brother must have been the TSA goon who was forcing the octogenarian lady in the wheelchair to try to totter, caneless, through a metal detector. Clueless, moronic, totally lacking in common sense.

In another venue, Ms. Packratty is trying to enter into a civilised debate over the health care plans that are being proposed left, right and sideways. One person said that the Obama plan does not call for covering the medical costs of illegal aliens, yet if the issue of illegals using the ERs as primary care and not paying for it is not resolved, the issue of "affordable healthcare" will not be resolved.

And actually, it turns out that if you subtract the illegals and people who are temporarily without insurance - i.e. between jobs - the number of career uninsured is significantly lower. Of course, Mr. Obama does want to have an amnesty for illegals, so once they've been amnestied, they won't be illegals, so technically, I suppose his statement saying the plan would not cover illegals is true.

So it sounds to me that what we need to do is revive our county health departments and the Public Health Service and public clinics with free and cheap basic medical care and screening. And have Urgent Care centers to divert earaches from ERs and then figure out some way to make "bridge" insurance affordable when people lose a job, change employers, graduate college and are jobhunting, etc.

And I say this as someone who did go through a prolonged period of "temping" and contract work and had to buy major medical with a high deductible and pay most of the costs of my routine care. And guess what? Although I didn't have a lot to spare, I could manage and my doctor and dentist both allowed me a lower charge AND time to pay.

The disabled and elderly have Medicare and Medicaid and those programs do work.

Another issue is that regardless of coverage, some people will not get care. I had a co-worker who had insurance, yet is now on disability and Medicare and hoping for a kidney transplant. Why, you ask? Why he had uncontrolled high blood pressure and the night he was taken to the ER near death, he had not seen a doctor in more than 6 years. Yet he HAD insurance. He doesn't now - he's one of the unfortunates that my tax dollars are paying for.

It's a complicated issue - but throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't the solution.