I’m singing the healthcare.gov blues

Has anyone else tried to sign up for the new mandatory health insurance in the last month?
I don’t recommend it. Not that I’ve had much choice since my COBRA coverage ran out in December.
My odyssey began the first week in December when I tried to sign up for insurance online and couldn’t do it.
Next step, an insurance agent. She guided me through the setup and then told me I needed to send in a 2013 tax return and wait to be approved.
I’m still waiting, healthcare.gov, and I’m getting impatient.
Meanwhile, you keep sending me more computer-generated letters telling me I haven’t sent you enough information. But you won’t tell me the one piece of information I could give you that would let me get all this settled.
So back to my insurance agent I went after suffering through a frustrating toll-free call in which the person “helping” me confessed she’d never seen my file and wouldn’t be seeing my file. And, no, she couldn’t transfer me to anyone who had seen my file.
I apologize, government employee, for venting my spleen because there was some semi-shouting involved by the time I hung up after 45 minutes of non-help.
So my insurance agent and I did a conference call and we got the same run around.
I went back two weeks later to my insurance agent who called again and it was the same story. Nobody could see my file.
Today, over the lunch hour. someone from the health market place called and asked if it would be a good time to talk.
“It’s great,” I cried, thinking I would finally settle this pesky problem.
Turns out, this caller was just like the computer-generated letters. She’d never seen my file but was calling me to tell me I should send more information. She didn’t know what information, just that I should send more. At least this time she told me to have my insurance agent ask for a “supervisor” who would surely be able to see my file.
What a bunch of bunk. I’d like to meet the four or five people who have successfully navigated this horrible bureaucracy. I have an insurance card — I just don’t know what I’m going to be paying for the privilege of using it.
Healthcare.gov, I think you should take the word “care” out of your title because I haven’t found anyone yet who cares enough to get this settled.

SO ANNOYED

So many little things annoy me. Big things, too, but it seems like the little things always crowd to the front.

I just scrubbed the kitchen floor. OK, I used a Swiffer. My hands-and-knees-on-the-floor-scrubbing days are gone forever. But in my defense, I was using a broken Swiffer because I push too vigorously and I can’t just keep buying new Swiffers. But what really bugs me is that I’m probably going to spill something in the next half hour and there goes all that effort.

I hate doing dishes. The actual task isn’t that hard. But as soon as I’m finished someone (yes, that would be me) puts a dirty plate in the sink and it starts all over again.

The same for laundry. As soon as I finish a load there’s a stained T-shirt or a dirty kitchen towel that needs laundering. Where is all that dirt coming from? (Yes, that would be me.)

I hate that I have to push my mattress back in place every morning after I get up. Evidently, my funky old bed frame is a bit too big for the mattress which allows the mattress to slide. My old mattress stayed in place because it was a heavy old thing. But this mattress is lighter, though it didn’t feel that way when I was forcing it around corners from the front door to the bedroom and onto the box spring.

But what I really hate is when someone from the government or a talking head informs listener how low unemployment is and how great the job market is. All that is true if you are working or if you are retired. But I happen to know someone who has been struggling to find a job and a lack of skill on a computer and age have combined to make this a months-long struggle. If you ask that person, this is not a great job market.

I also really hate all this talk about Biden’s age. Since when did growing old equate with senility? In Trump’s case, probably so. If you listen to any of his ridiculous speeches, he’s definitely not entirely with it. But Biden is remarkable. Yes, he’s old (but only three years older than Trump), and yes he sometimes has difficulty with complex sentences. You would, too, if you were a lifelong stutterer. He has to pause and think harder about what he wants to say. Well, shouldn’t we all be doing that? Biden has surrounded himself with really smart, hard-working people and that’s what a good president does. He’s also got decades of great experience and good contacts around the world. More than ever, we need that in a president.

And now I’m going to stop being annoyed and enjoy the sunshine. It’s the least I can do when we are lucky enough to have it.

A cheesy love story

As we wrap up the first day of Lent, I hope everybody had a prayerful Ash Wednesday and a great Valentine’s Day.

At Roncalli Newman this Ash Wednesday, Father Sam managed to connect those two significant days together quite well by wrapping repentance into love. And to do that, he told the congregation that he was going to turn to an expert on love to deliver his message.

He then sang a verse from a Taylor Swift song.

That got a good laugh but it also cemented his message — at least in my mind.

That girl is everywhere and that’s not such a bad thing. I’m no Swiftie, but she sure does behave in a manner that is difficult to criticize. Unless, of course, you are a Republican who fears she will endorse Joe Biden or ruin football by bringing her fans along to the game as she rejoices in the successes of her famous football boyfriend.

So kudos to you, Father Sam, for the inspiration. But then, at the end of the service you asked us to give up beer and cheese along with meat on Fridays during Lent.

What, no grilled cheese? I need some more Taylor Swift inspiration to get past that one.

Let the music play

I am listening to James Taylor’s “Before This World” as I type this. He’s really the only musician I kept up with faithfully in retirement. He is my first and best love and I have him on vinyl, cassette and CD, which shows just how long I’ve been listening to him.

I am glad to say the one iteration of recorded music I never indulged in was the 8-track tape. It was so annoying when a break would come in a song and continue on the next track. I vowed I would never listen to music that way.

I began my musical journey with a $12 used record player from Goodwill and that fed my music needs for many years.

But then I bought a Sony tape deck. Boy, I felt like I had hit the big time.

To show how little I believed in CDS, the only CD player I ever bought was a combination cassette and CD player. And that’s what I still have to this day. But tonight (actually, very early this morning) I am playing James on the CD player that’s built into my computer’s hard drive. I could never have imagined that when I was playing tapes on my trusty Sony.

I never did graduate to blu ray. It just seemed like that was a technology too far for me and I couldn’t make the leap.

When the music bigwigs predicted the death of vinyl, I refused to give up on it. I had hundreds of LPs and I wasn’t about to divest myself of all that precious music. So I hung onto my records and my turntable and, lo and behold, vinyl circled around again to some popularity.

The truth is, I always loved to hold the album cover in my hand and read all the liner notes. That’s how I knew to demand that my troupe of friends go to see Tom Paxton in concert in Greenwich Village on my first trip to NYC. I had never heard Tom sing but I had seen his name as the author of many of the songs on my Kingston Trio albums. So I dragged the other four in my group to see someone they’d never heard of.

Thank God he was great.

I have had more wonderful musical experiences than any one person could have expected to encounter in one lifetime. I saw Van Morrison live on Harriet Island in St. Paul. And when my brother-in-law caught me singing along to one of Van’s more obscure songs, he asked how I knew the words to a song he’d never heard before.

Vinyl. That’s how. I had all Van’s albums but never thought I’d get to see him in person. I would have settled for the records but instead they led me to a wonderful and unexpected musical experience.

And then there is James Taylor. I saw him twice at the La Crosse Center, once at Summerfest, and in the parking lot of the Mall of America. Even better, on my one trip to Los Angeles I got to go to a taping of the Johnny Carson show and discovered James was the musical guest that night.

However you listen to your music, I hope it brings you joy. And it wouldn’t hurt if it included a little James Taylor.

This and That

I’ve been reading Canadian author Louise Penny and noticed something from my latest read. She liberally uses the contraction this’s in place of this is.

I myself have never used this contraction. I have never heard anyone else use it. And this’s the first time I’ve run across it in literature. And she must have used it at least 200 times.

I don’t know what this means. It’s just weird. I believe this’s the last time I will ever use that contraction.

Also, weird. I can’t remember what I used to eat for supper on a daily basis. I’ve been trying to find things I like and then I eat them night after night. One of those things is the barbecue sloppy joe from Festival Foods deli. It’s actually too barbecue for me so I brown hamburger, mix it in and water it down and then it’s appropriately bland enough for me. No wonder, then, that I am now tired of that.

So last night while I was unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep, I began a review of my childhood suppers. Sunday was always roast beef. I’m sure dad bought the cheapest cut of beef but we all loved it. Now, I’m unwilling to pay $9.99 for supposedly superior Angus beef that is healthier. I need fatty roast beef back.

Mondays were usually goulash or sloppy joes. I’ve got that covered. Tuesdays might be chicken. But that, too, seems to be boring lately. Wednesdays were likely porkchops — bone-in plenty of fat. The thick, boneless porkchops I bought in a two pack at Hy-Vee two weeks ago were a bargain but it took me more than a week of suppers to finish them off. Again, where or where has the fat gone?

Thursdays were likely round steak, which is what I thought all steak tasted like until I ate it in a restaurant in my 20s. Now, I also can’t find the right cut of steak or I’m just not fixing it right.

Fridays were French toast or pancakes and those are way too carbarific to be included in my menu plan. And then Saturdays were leftovers. (How did our family of 12 ever have leftovers?)

We also mixed in hamburgers and meatloaf and the occasional hotdog meal but when I was living at home my Irish parents had not yet discovered spaghetti or pizza. To this day, I won’t eat spaghetti and I only tolerate pizza.

For breakfast, Mom used to make a big pot of oatmeal which never excited me, though my brother Tom and sister Mary Jo used to race through their first bowl to see who could get a second serving. Now, once again, I have oatmeal almost every morning. But I would never race anyone for a second bowl.

But back to reading. Contractions aside, I really do like murder mysteries and suspense, which is why I read so much Tom Clancy. I’ve been reading his books for so long that he’s no longer writing them, though his name is on the cover. Now, our hero Jack Ryan is president and his son Jack Jr. is off racing around the world trying to keep us safe from terrorists.

I never heard either Jack Ryan use the contraction this’s, though they may have slipped it in when they were eating spicy barbecue sloppy joes.

SING ME A SONG

As I was pedaling my bike this morning, I was thinking about my pedal pushers. Actually, nowadays they are likely called capri pants. That’s a little fancy for me. I’m pushing pedals so I’m calling them pedal pushers.

But that also got me thinking about fashion, something I think about rarely. But it reminded me of the Parlin Sisters, a not-so-famous singing group whose demise was largely my fault. (OK, entirely my fault.)

It began with the songs — “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and Glen Campbell’s “Try a Little Kindness.” Being in the junior half of the Parlin Sisters, I had no say in what songs were chosen. Mary Jo, the second oldest, probably chose both songs because she played guitar which made her a music impresario in our family.

The problem was not in the song choice but in the songs’ singers — in particular, me.

Peggy and Therese were sopranos and got along beautifully. Mary Jo and I were altos and it is not too far a reach to say that Mary Jo resented me with the burning heat of a thousand suns. I couldn’t really blame her because I wasn’t a very good singer.

Altos are usually the backup singers in harmony. The sopranos take the lead and sing the parts with which we are all familiar. That’s what I wanted. What I got was the shadow harmony in which I had to sing parts of the song with which I was not familiar. That meant I was always wandering over into soprano territory by mistake.

But that wasn’t the biggest problem. Sister Wilhemina, if she was still around (God rest her soul), could have told Mary Jo that I was no singer. Once, during music class at Queen of Angels elementary school, our class was belting out a song when Sister Wilhemina shouted, “Stop, stop, stop. Who is singing flat?”

Though I suspected that was me, I didn’t actually know what “flat” meant, so I didn’t volunteer for public humiliation. When we tried it again, I just mouthed the words, and Sister proclaimed it to be much better.

So Mary Jo wasn’t entirely wrong about wanting to turn the Parlin Sisters quartet into a trio. But Dad said, “No, Geri, no Parlin Sisters.”

So I was in, we were aiming for the 4-H talent contest, and we had to have outfits.

This is where, Peggy, the oldest, took the lead. She decided we would wear matching red-white-and-blue flirts or scorts or whatever they were called back then. ((When I looked this up on the internet, I was given helpful websites for escorts and prostitutes, so I probably have the wrong terminology.) They were shorts with a flap over them that coyly suggested we were wearing very short skirts. Worst of all, we had to make them ourselves.

Since we were all in 4-H, we all knew how to sew — some better than others. In the pantheon of seamstresses, I was sewing flat.

But I did make my red-white-and-blue monstrosity and then we all bought pale blue shirts. I would say they matched but they were pale blue, not navy blue. Again, not my decision.

There was another problem. Yes, bad singing would have been enough of a stumbling block but I also had enormous stage fright. I did not want to be a Parlin sister. I wanted to be in the audience.

Wen it came time to go on stage, Mary Jo tugged me along with her alto strength and we made it through the first two less challenging competitions.

Then came regionals. We are in a larger auditorium, the light was shining in my face, and I had all the expression and movement of a hostage. My body was board stiff and while the others were moving and grooving as they sang “Try a little kindness,” I was standing there with a look of stark terror on my face, not moving at all, and wishing someone would try a little kindness by shoving me off stage.

We did not progress to state.

Mary Jo was not tardy in laying blame where it belonged. I was the evil perpetrator of our downfall.

I agreed.

I shared this story years ago with Morrie Enders when he was director at the La Crosse Community Theatre. He wanted me to do some kind of cameo in a stage production and I had to prove with historical fact how unlikely this would be to ever happen.

He believed me.

So no more scorts or flirts or harmony for me. I like to don my pedal pushers, wheel out the old Schwinn one-speed, and hum to myself as I meander the backroads on the South Side of La Crosse. I’m not winning any competitions, but I like it here as a solo artist on the bike.

Methinks I think too much

I need springtime and I need it right now.

Caged inside by chilly winds, I want nothing so much as to rake dead leaves, pull weeds, paint garden furniture, and ride my bike.

But, alas, Spring is a fickle lady. She is holding on tightly to winter’s coattails and refuses to let go.

So I think.

I know I should think all the time but I just seem to think harder when I am denied what I most want to do.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about food.

Why is everything I consume about to kill me? Fruit has too much sugar, bacon has too many nitrates, chips have too little of anything good, and potatoes are monsters of carbohydrates.

I read food labels and think maybe it would be easier to skip eating my next planned meal of warmed-up suicide.

So onto thinking about writing and how lazy Facebook has made me.

Facebook tells me when birthdays are and even lets me click a link to write a line or two. I try to send cards but beyond writing the card, I have to hunt up an envelope, search through my address book, find a stamp and go out to mail the darned thing. Facebook, you have ruined me for considerate communication. Shame on you.

I think about the upcoming 50th anniversary of my high school graduation. Classmates have been contacting me to drum up interest in seeing people I haven’t seen in 50 years. I think I did make it to the 10-year reunion but now we’ve all added pounds, gray hair is edging toward white, and careers are now in the past so that when people ask what you do you can only say, “I’m retired.” I wasn’t even popular in high school. I was not the most unpopular person to graduate Pacelli High School, but it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that I was in the bottom 10 percent in the popularity stakes. So why do people want to see me now? I’m the same weirdo I was then but with an even bigger vocabulary.

Please, Spring, save me from all this pondering. If not, I may have to eat a piece of bread.

Best Day Ever

I was sad to read about the passing of Lisa Marie Presley. I was even sadder to see the photos of her from the Golden Globes, which the press was using since that was her most recent appearance.

She looked rough and maybe it was not so surprising, then, to hear about her heart attack.

But I wish they would run some of the pretty, polished pictures of her because that’s how we all deserve to be remembered — at our best.

As a reporter, I was lucky enough to interview people about their passions — their purpose in life, their hobbies, their families. I often caught them at their best moments and was able to present them in the way they would wish the world to remember them.

Was that the entirety of their lives? No. But it was a snapshot of them at their best and I was happy to be able to do that for them. I thought of them as scrapbook moments and I was helping them experience those moments.

One of the special moments I was able to present was for a woman who decorated her home with her collection of copper. It was everywhere. But I didn’t understand how important this interview was for her until she called me to reschedule it. She explained that her husband was going in for surgery and was coming home the day before the interview. She didn’t want to be distracted by caring for him when she wanted to be able to revel in the interview.

Of course, I rescheduled.

Another amazing moment was an interview I did with an orchid collector. He was a busy doctor and the health reporter said it was hard to get a call back from him. But I called and left a message with his son and this busy guy called me back within an hour. And then he went on and on about orchids and how everyone should come to the orchid show and experience it. He was sure everyone who attended would likely start collecting orchids.

And then there was the wool artist. I wanted to interview her because she raised sheep, she sheared sheep, she carded the wool and spun it and then made wall hangings. From beginning to end, she took those sheep to market — not as lamb chops but as works of art.

When I called her she told me she was intimidated by reporters but she was going to agree to this interview because she had been reading me for years and was trusting me to present her in a good light. I think she did not regret that decision.

So, Lisa Marie, I hope I see many pretty pictures of you in the coming days and read about some of your happy moments. It’s the least we can do as we bid you goodbye.

Where have all the flowers gone?

When I woke up this morning it was 1966.

I was humming “Where have all the Flowers Gone” and thinking about the stage in the theater beneath Queen of Angels Church.

Of course, this was at 4 a.m., and at that time my reality is pretty darned altered. Still, that stage seemed pretty darned real. I remember little cardboard stars covered with glitter attached to my hands with elastic straps. I’m pretty sure I was supposed to be an angel in the Christmas pageant, which just proves it was a dream.

Another year I was the serpent in the Garden of Eden. I wanted to think I was chosen for my talent but I was actually chosen because Lori Mittag and I were the exact same size so we both fit the costume and alternated starring on different nights.

Not that I was destined for the stage, but this was pretty much a starring role and as I was scampering through the hallway to my classroom to change, a woman I had never met told me I was a very convincing serpent.

As an actress, I never achieved those heights again.

But back to “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” We sang it at every hootenanny and before every hootenanny we had a potluck. Both hootenannies and potlucks were very big in the ’60s, at least they were in my Catholic parish. I’m figuring that’s where somebody got the radical idea to introduce the guitar to music at Mass. Yes, we were very hip at Queens.

For me, though, the hootenannies were just a way of getting to the potlucks. I loved potlucks because it was possible to have five or six desserts if Mom or Dad didn’t catch me doing it. But also, Mom also made goulash and I loved goulash.

Great, now I want some goulash.

Guess I’ll have to settle for putting on my Peter, Paul and Mary album with “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” It’s no goulash but it’s a good memory.

Angela, what is the temperature?

I always wanted to be named Angela.

When my sister Therese and I would daydream about adventures and choose fake names, we always argued about who would be Angela.

That’s because of Angela Cartwright, who portrayed Penny Robinson on “Lost in Space.” She was in other things, like “Sound of Music,” but it was “Lost in Space” that made us want to be Angela.

Sometimes we were stubborn enough to both proclaim ourselves Angela, because neither of us was willing to settle for Angela’s sister’s name, which was Veronica.

Because of my yearning to be Angela, I have a hard time remembering to call out Alexa’s name when I want to use my Echo. I hesitate, because the temptation is great to ask Angela for the information I want. But after a pause I give in and finally call out, “Alexa, what’s the temperature?”

“56 degrees,” she will answer in that snotty-I-know-everything voice. If her name was Angela, I’m pretty sure she’d be inquiring after my health, asking what I was going to do today, and offering to go rummaging with me.

As it is, Alexa only offers to tell me tomorrow’s forecast or give me the latest news updates. (Although, she did once offer up a music mix that was a little techno-heavy for my taste.)

So, no Angela for me, though I now find myself craving an episode of “Lost in Space.”

So I asked, “Alexa, how do I watch ‘Lost in Space’?”

“Here are some results,” she answered, but quickly followed up with, “Sorry, something went wrong.”

Angela would never make that mistake.

Getting schooled on the cost of education

All of this discussion about the $10,000 to $20,000 school loan forgiveness program has me thinking of my own university days way back in the hazy past.

Back when I was looking for an institution of higher education to attend, it was a good thing that I was one of 10 siblings whose Dad earned less than $12,000 a year because that guaranteed some pretty good financial aid.

And from the time we knew what college was, Dad made sure we knew that we were going. That meant saving half of anything I earned babysitting went directly into the savings account.

Since I started babysitting at age 12, you’d think I would have had quite a nest egg built up, but I only earned 35 cents an hour. And the later the parents stayed out, the small my hourly remuneration.

Still, by attending two years of community college while still living at home (I paid minimal rent), and the couple of grants I was awarded, I managed to graduate University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire debt free.

That’s right. No loans.

It wasn’t easy. I cleaned bathrooms in the women’s dorm on weekends. (Women were as piggish as men in the messes they made.) But I was determined to make it without loans and that’s how I did it.

It also helped that I qualified for a $2,000 Basic Educational Opportunity Grant in the first year they were granting them. My brother, Jim, who was a year ahead of me, didn’t qualify. That seemed unfair so I gave him half my grant. I also got an $800 a year grant from the state of Minnesota, which I had to give up when I transferred out of state to UW-EC my junior year. It was the biggest stumbling block for me but my very smart Dad pointed out that I was giving up $1,600 vs. the probability of what I would be earning for the rest of my life.

He was so right. When we toured the campus, we were told that 98 percent of journalism graduates were placed in their field. I knew I wasn’t going to be in the other 2 percent.

I graduated with $100 in the bank and Dad helped me buy a giant Thunderbird when I landed a job at the La Crosse Tribune three weeks after graduation.

Back then, I didn’t realize how lucky I was. Yes, I scraped by and ate a lot of peanut butter sandwiches, but I graduated WITHOUT debt.

What college grad can say that now?

So I don’t begrudge the loan forgiveness. But I do think more can be done. Why is it so dang expensive to get an education? There’s something wrong there and that needs to be addressed.

I am also a big proponent of trade schools. The trades are our last defense of exporting our jobs. Hard to get a plumber from India to fix your sewer pipe.

But I also think we have to look at how much we require in college curriculum. Though I loved taking languages and the humanities, does every college student need that? With so much expense, maybe some college degrees could be a three-year course.

In the dark ages, when I attend UW-EC, I paid for 12 college credits but some semesters I took as many as 21 credits. Those extra classes were free! And I was going to take as many as I possibly could because I knew I wouldn’t be coming back.

I want us to have a well educated country, but the kind of education we receive doesn’t have to be the same education for all of us. And it should not require anyone to mortgage her or his future.

Biden’s plan is a good beginning. Now we have to figure out how to do more.