Posted on by LA · 79 Comments

You and Your Doctor

  1. You go for your annual physical. You, as a patient, feel fine. You have no complaints about your health. The Doctor does a routine blood panel. When the results come back, the Doctor doesn’t like one or two of the numbers. Doctor asks you to do a follow up and another test.

Do you refuse to do the follow up? What are good reasons for refusing to do the follow up tests?

2. A few months after your Doctor visit, you do start to feel off. You go to another Doctor, who agrees that you should follow up with the same tests that the previous Doctor recommended.

Do you follow the advice of two Doctors and get follow up tests? Or do you look for a third Doctor to get advice from?

3. After six months you agree to take the tests that the first two Doctors recommended. You find out that indeed there is something that needs to be taken care of. You get a course of treatment, but you don’t like the course of treatment as you think it’s too aggressive.

If you don’t like the treatment that a Doctor suggests, do you have the right to refuse?

4. You go to another Doctor who confirms the diagnosis. This Doctor also recommends the same course of treatment as the first Doctor. When you say your don’t like that course of treatment, the second doctor gives you an alternative treatment that is less aggressive.

How do you make the decision to go with an aggressive form of treatment or a less aggressive treatment? What would factor into your decision?

5. Eight weeks into the less aggressive treatment, you are not achieving desired results. The treatment is working, but not as quick as you’d like.

Do you blame the Doctor for not forcing you into the more aggressive treatment? Do you try to start the more aggressive treatment in hopes of getting a quicker result?

For today’s discussion:

  1. how would/do you go about making medical decisions?
  2. How much do you trust your Doctors?
  3. How much googling do you do when it comes to learning about what ails you?
  4. Do you take another person with you when you are getting a diagnosis so that you have a back-up/sounding board?

Please answer any or all of these questions. I want to know how you would handle this.

Posted on by LA · 82 Comments

Driving Monitor

Watching your parents age is tough. Those people who loomed larger than life, who seemed to be able to solve all of life’s problems, are no longer what they once were. There is neither bad nor good to this: it’s just life. Aging sucks.

But what about your elder parents and driving?

I don’t think any of our four parents should be driving as they once did.

There. I said it.

I don’t think any of the parents should be on highways or driving at night.

I’m guessing this would be an unpopular opinion for anyone who might be older than me, but really

  1. slower reflexes
  2. eyesight not quite as good
  3. thinking they can make turns and merge the same way they were once able

I’m not being mean, or petty, I’m just stating the facts. I’ve been in cars with them. I will no longer get in a car with any of them driving. Period.

So this leads me to my next point:

I understand that it is not feasible to have people over a certain age take driving tests. Plus, I get the whole age discrimination thing…

but…

Should people over the age of 75 be required to have some sort of dashboard monitor or app to monitor their driving?

While I get that accidents happen to everyone of every age, and that those between the ages of 16 and 20 are most likely to get into accidents, there is a case to be made that older drivers do get involved in more accidents than those who are younger (meaning 50s and 60s)

I’m aware that you can anonymously send a complaint to DMV stating that someone should not be driving, and that DMV will ask for a retest, but is that the best way to handle the issue?

What do you think about people over 75 driving? Do you think there should be retests after a certain time? Do you think drivers over 75 should be required to have a driving monitor?

Discuss

Posted on by LA · 36 Comments

Satire

I wrote a post on Friday https://wakinguponthewrongsideof50.com/2023/01/20/anything-can-happen-friday-unlikable-female-protagonist/ that talked about a trigger warning in the Hulu streamed film Not Okay. After one of my blog friends pointed out that the film was supposed to be a satire, (which I disagree with completely) there was discussion that the trigger warning was satirical. So lets talk about this.

WARNING- THERE WILL BE SPOILER SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW PARTICULARS ABOUT NOT OKAY, READ NO FURTHER. I’LL FORGIVE YOU

What is SATIRE?

Per New Oxford American Dictionary– the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize stupidity or vices

Does Not Okay fit that definition of satire?

I don’t think so. I think the opening scene does show an ignorant character. She does say some stupid things. However, I did not view it as the filmmakers being satirical- I found it to be a judgement more than anything else, more of a mock than a satire.

What is to mock?

Per New Oxford American Dictionary– tease or laugh at in a scornful or contemptuous manner

Is there a difference between mock and satire?

I think to satirize is to exaggerate something so people can see how ridiculous something is- I don’t necessarily think it is done with spite or malice. I think mocking is mean spirited and passive aggressive nasty.

Why do I think the movie is not a satire?

The character says stupid things and is ignorant of many things, including her own privilege. You do chuckle at her in the beginning, but her behavior after that is more contemptuous. You don’t like her and it’s no longer funny- it’s just not a character that you want to like. Not liking a character because she makes poor life choices and decisions is not satire.

If a movie is a satire, does the theme need to carry through from start to finish?

When I think of Dr. Strangelove or more recently Don’t Look Up or The Menu, the theme is carried through from start to finish. There is no doubt what you are watching is satire, and at least in the case of Dr., hilariously funny. The movies end in the most ridiculous ways possible. In Not Okay, the ending is sad. There is no funny or satirical overtone- it is straight up contempt for the main character, the unlikable female protagonist. Can it be a satire if it doesn’t end satirically?

If the content warning was supposed to be a joke, should they have included TRAUMA in the warning?

This is why I think it was done intentionally: trauma is something that would be put in a content advisory, because there are people who really want to know this. If the unlikable protagonist was supposed to be funny, wouldn’t it have been in bad taste to include them in the warning together?

Your turn:

  1. How do you define satire?
  2. What are the best satires you’ve seen/read?
  3. Do you think because someone says that something is satire, that it really is satire, or does it have to pass the smell test?

Posted on by LA · 45 Comments

Grooming

Spoiler alert: I’m going to complain about dog grooming. I know some of you don’t realize what a hot button issue this is, so be prepared.

My dog has hair, not fur, so she doesn’t shed. While this is wonderful for my couch, in reality it means that she needs to have periodic haircuts.

There are a decent amount of groomers in the city, but oddly, I am not a fan of many of them. Awhile back I regaled you with the story of one groomer I met who was incredibly rude. Besides the personality, these appointments are not cheap. So finding a reasonably priced service that does a good job and where the groomer is nice is often a challenge. https://wakinguponthewrongsideof50.com/2021/04/21/yelp/

But I found a place.

One of the things about this establishment is that you are supposed to book your appointments on their app. Well, I think we all know that sometimes apps are better in theory than reality.

Betty needed what is referred to as a “touch up”. This means they bathe and brush her, trim her nails, and trim the hair around her eyes and what they refer to as sanitary (I’ll let you guess what they do). However, the app does not list the touch up as a service. So I call the place and they tell me to book a bath and brush, but put in the comments what she needs trimmed.

Fine. I book bath and brush and enter in the comments, like they said.

When the appointment came, as I dropped Betty off, I repeated what I had listed on the comments.

Of course you know that if I’m writing this, they only did the bath and brush…

The people who work at this salon are really sweet. They are very good with Betty. So I didn’t read them the riot act…

But…

It turns out that no one at the salon read the comments before the appointment, so they scheduled a brand new groomer, to take care of Betty, someone who is only ready to do the bath and brush because they haven’t reached the next level of grooming care- they are apprenticing.

Do I have a right to be annoyed because they didn’t do what I asked them to do? That they didn’t even check the comments, even though that was what I told them to do?

How would you have handled this situation?

Posted on by LA · 46 Comments

Virtual

My local gym used to have a ton of classes: spin and body conditioning and yoga, etc. Then pandemic, and gyms shut down for a bit. When they reopened, my local gym had very few classes on the roster. This was a problem for me as I am a big fan of classes. I need motivation to work out. Period. This is neither good nor bad, it’s just me. While I can and do go to the gym and jump on the elliptical five times a week, I love a class.

Slowly my gym has begun adding more classes. But a few months ago they started having virtual spinning classes in the facility (as opposed to the Peloton model where you can do the classes at home).

I was not happy about these virtual classes. I like doing things in person with a live instructor. However, a virtual instructor was better than no class, so I began attending two spin classes a week.

I hate to admit this, but I loved it.

The teacher was teaching live at a studio, and there were four other gyms taking part in the same class, and we all participated by watching a huge TV in the cycling rooms at our own particular location. We could see the instructor, but she couldn’t see us. However, the instructors were able to monitor our bikes, and our progress, from the studio where they were filming. The class was set up so that my gym would be “competing” against the other gyms. Throughout the class, our stats would flash up on the monitor: how on pace we were with how the instructor was telling us to go, and how much power we were using. (FYI- I was awesome at pacing but really lousy at power)

My competitive nature clearly came out, as did the competitive nature of the others in the class. As we were cheering ourselves over “beating” the other teams, we would be laughing at ourselves for how all out we would go for this meaningless tribute.

I was working out and having fun. I really enjoyed the class.

You may have noticed that I was sort of speaking in the past tense. About six weeks ago the gym decided it wasn’t going to do virtual classes anymore. We don’t know why they stopped because we get absolutely no communication about what is and isn’t happening. But I was a little sad that virtual spin was over.

Luckily, my gym added some live, in person instructors so that there are now a few more spin classes. In fact, I was sitting on bike 19 at 6am today.

When I scheduled this post a few months ago, I thought I would be telling you about how virtual spin class was awesome- but instead I’m giving you its obituary. In a blink of an eye, things change. I guess that’s the lesson of today’s post…enjoy things while you can because nothing lasts forever.

Posted on by LA · 75 Comments

Anything Can Happen Friday- The Scam

So my Mother called me the other day…

She received an email from one of her neighbors. The email said that this particular neighbor was having a rough go and needed my Mom to get her a gift cardfor either Amazon or Apple.

Now, I know most of you are thinking the same thing as I thought about this email…

But my Mom…

My Mom can be a very trusting and helpful sort of person. If someone is in trouble she will try to help. She has a sort of Capraesque view of the world, where good wins out over evil and all the other stuff. She assumes that people are good, and that no one tries to take advantage of another.

In theory I guess it would be nice to be that trusting. But you know…I’m a realist not an idealist…so most of the time I’m looking for the angle.

Is this real?

Can I trust this?

What’s the possible downside?

My mother emails back, asking how she can help. She gives her “friend” her phone numbers in case her “friend” can’t find them. And then she proceeds to try to figure out how to buy the gift card.

Now this is a time when I am glad that my Mother is not tech savvy. She couldn’t figure out how to buy the gift cards.

My Mother then calls her friend, to tell her that she can’t buy the cards…

You probably know that the friend’s email account was hacked.

My Mother called me, worried that these scammers have her phone number, and she responded to the email. She was worried that accounts could be opened up in her name using her phone numbers. Honestly, I don’t know anymore what people can and can’t do with information, any information, so I told my Mom to watch her statements and she uses one of those companies that call you when an account is trying to be opened, so I told her to just monitor things…

After I got off the phone with her I heaved a big sigh. While I have got over scams with my daughter ad infinitum, I never thought I would have to go through this with my Mother. I assumed that my Mother would just know when something seems off…But now I really have to worry that she will think the Crown Prince of Nigeria really needs her help.

I love that my Mom is trusting and wants to help others, but now this is a new worry that I have to contend with. Realistically I know that I can’t protect my Mom, but it sort of crushes me that I can’t stop bad people, bad things from hurting her. This is the part about being a daughter that no one really talks about- when the child becomes the parent and the protector.

I sit and try to figure out where to go from here. Is there anything I can do to help my Mother than I hadn’t thought of? Is there any way to prepare? I have to remind myself that there’s not always a solution to things: that there are things that I can’t write as a list and check off the things I’ve done and look ahead to what comes next…

I realize that this is where I need hope: hope that things won’t be too bad, hope that I can fix whatever happens, hope that life will be pleasantly uneventful.

Hope. Sometimes it’s the best option.

Posted on by LA · 43 Comments

What is Love? Ha Ha Ha

Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.

J. D. McClatchy, Love Speaks its Name as quoted in Conversations on Love by Natasha Lun

In her book, Lun states that sustaining of love is to create a space for simple moments and then to notice them. Seems so simple, right? But is it?

The incident Lun refers to is about cooking a meal with her partner- being present in the moment and just enjoying each others company. To be present with one’s partner…

What simple moments have you shared with a partner in the past? Do you recall those moments with a sense of peace? Are they pleasant memories?

It doesn’t have to be romantic love though. It can be love of a friend, love of a child. When I think about my closest friends, the thoughts that always pop into my mind are of simple moments of just being together, or talking about nothing. A few months ago we got into a day long text chain about staplers. One of my friends remarked that day that this is why she loved us: because we could spend an entire day talking about staplers. And now, when I see a stapler I think of my friends and the thoughts are happy- it’s about a silly conversation that just sort of captured all of us in a perfect moment of togetherness.

It’s your turn: Is love the quality of attention we pay to things?

Is love noticing the small moments that make up life?

Discuss:

Posted on by LA · 81 Comments

What We Miss

My daughter is about to go back to college (for her final semester if you can believe that!!!) It’s always bittersweet when I give her a hug as she lugs her bags into the cab to take her to Penn Station to catch the Northeaster to Union Station… There are parts of me that will miss her, and their are parts… not so much.

I love having my daughter around because she is intelligent and we have great conversations. She is well versed in current events and culture, and has a mind of a sponge because she remembers things that were taught to her in years past. Yesterday we were at MOMA and as we looked at an exhibit she recalled things her 8th grade social studies teacher did as a lesson that correlated with the work we were looking at.

When she leaves I miss the conversations.

My husband doesn’t eat cheese. When I say this I mean that he doesn’t eat nachos or cheese fries or a charcuterie plate that includes cheese. While sharing cheesy tater tots isn’t an activity to base a marriage on, his not eating cheese and most things dairy can be difficult to plan meals around and takes away some small things that I find pleasurable. My daughter eats cheese.

When she leaves I will miss having someone to snack on cheese with.

My daughter will pretty much try anything cultural. Off beat play? She’s in. Weird art? She’s in. Foreign film? She’s in. Golden Girls themed dinner? She’s in.

I will miss having her around to see things and discuss things.

My daughter likes to stay out late. She doesn’t do this every night, but one or two nights a week she is out late. If she’s not home I don’t sleep well. Just can’t.

I will not miss being bleary eyed because my daughter was at a club till 3am, and then had pizza.

While my daughter is highly intelligent, she is also mainly book smart. She lacks life experience and a certain amount of maturity that only comes with the years. Because of this she can be righteous. Oh boy can she be righteous.

I will not miss the righteousness.

She asked me the other day if I missed her being younger- she said there’s been a lot of TikTok’s about how parents miss their kids when they were younger, when they had trouble walking in snowsuits and mispronounced words and just generally the things we find endearing about the not so fully formed humans. She asked if I ever wished she was five again…I told her that while I have many fond memories of her younger years, I have appreciated every stage of her life: but, I don’t wish she were younger or had stayed frozen at any point in time. I have enjoyed the journey of parenting her from being pregnant (ok- not morning sickness) to toddler to preschool, elementary to middle to high to college, and now as an adult. The memories are wonderful but I don’t want to live in the memory. I’m ready to close out the undergraduate years and look forward to watching her as she encounters the next step on her journey.

When you say you miss your kids, what is it that you actually miss? Do we really miss kids as they were, or is it just a little wistful to look back at time and see how fast it really goes when you’re not paying attention?

Posted on by LA · 40 Comments

I Came, I Saw, I Ate, I Lived-1/8/23

Museum of Broadway- I am a huge fan of the great white way, (they used to line the street with white globe lamps!) and this new museum fit the bill! So many amazing costumes!!
Conifers at Brooklyn Botanic- and I passed that lovely memorial plaque on the way out!
Galleries 703, 704, 705, 706 and 707- Metroploitan. I know- a little obsessed with the teapots…
Shadow of a Doubt is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies!!***As seen in New York City
Louis Vuitton 200 Trunks- to celebrate 200 years of Louis Vuitton Trunks
Viand makes one of the best patty melts in the city***Bohemian cocktail at Capital Grille***Gordon Ramsey – chips and sticky toffee milkshake
Posted on by LA · 65 Comments

Ten Things: 1/7/23

I’m trying something new this year. A few months ago a friend emailed me and asked What’s Up. I responded with ten things about my day, both good and bad. I had fun writing those ten things down, and I came up with an idea that instead of journaling in the morning and evening, I would write five things in the AM and five before bed. To be fair, I was getting tired of my morning pages habit that I got from Julia Cameron after I read one of her books and became very disenchanted with her and her methods.

So…

On Saturdays I am going to randomly pick ten things from my weekly writing and post them. There will be gratitude and angst and happiness and sadness, as well as all the other human emotions that we often pretend that we don’t have.

  1. Old neighbors of our moved, but we were still invited to their traditional New Year’s Day brunch. everything is new and modern, but it took five minutes to figure out how to flush the toilet
  2. Saw Shadow of a Doubt at Film Forum, one of my favorite Hitchcock’s. Alas the daughter and the husband did not like it as much as I did.
  3. My gym recently added a relaxation station. What this amounts to is three massage chairs. Now I go to the gym to use the chair as a reward for the workout.
  4. Made spaghetti (homemade) and vodka sauce (homemade) for dinner. Both came out great. I realized that with fresh pasta you can start cooking it in boiling water but finish it in the sauce. So good.
  5. Giants shockingly make playoffs. Jets not shockingly don’t.
  6. Annoyed that I just missed the bus both coming and going
  7. Looking forward to playing pickleball again- so much fun
  8. Beat my family at Trivial Pursuit
  9. Happy that all the holiday decorations are put away
  10. Sad that a coat I like has a frayed collar because I don’t know if it can be fixed. It was old but I liked it.