Category: Personal

Arguing with a Narcissist

Our HOA president has repeatedly harassed us about parking on the street in front of our own house. I need to summarize how we got here, because there’s a definite pattern.

First, she told me that I couldn’t park on the street because we lived in an HOA, as though that, in and of itself, precluded it. I told her my copy of the covenants said nothing about parking passenger cars on the street.

Second, she implied that I didn’t have the latest copy of the bylaws, but wouldn’t supply me with a copy that she deemed current. So I went to the recorders office and confirmed that my copy is, in fact, the latest legal instrument that applies to my lot.

Third, she told me that the city didn’t allow it. I called the police department, and they said, if there were no signs, there were no restrictions.

Fourth, she told me that the garbage collectors don’t like it. I called the city garage, and they said they didn’t care.

Fifth, she said that emergency vehicles can’t get through if there are cars parked on the street, and says the fire department “reviewed” her rule. I called the fire marshal, and he confirmed that fire trucks were no bigger than school busses, which go through the neighborhood with cars parked on the street, every school day. He also said that if the streets were too narrow for emergency vehicles, the city would ban parking on one side or the other.

Now she claims that, as the president of the association, she has the authority to unilaterally make up rules, under a general safety clause in the by-laws, and that the association’s attorney said this was legal. She hasn’t faithfully represented the positions of any other cited sources, so she’ll have to forgive me if I cannot trust what she says any more. Given the history on this topic thus far, I believe she is either misconstruing what he said, or distorting what he said for effect in the process of relaying it to me.

So I called my attorney. He feels — and I wholeheartedly agree — that any change to the covenants would need to follow the change procedure outlined in the covenants themselves, especially changes to rules that are already covered.

I was ready to dive into all of this when I finally realized…

Arguing with a narcissist is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. You just get tired, and the pig loves it.

Careless Memories

By Duran Duran, 1981

So soon just after you’ve gone
My senses sharpen
But it always takes so damn long
Before I feel how much my eyes have darkened

Fear hangs in a plane of gun smoke
Drifting in our room
So easy to disturb, with a thought, with a whisper
With a careless memory, with a careless memory

On the table, signs of love lies scattered
And the walls break, with a crashing within
It’s not as though, as though you really mattered 
But being close, how could I let you go
Without some feeling, some precious sympathy following

Fear hangs in a plane of gun smoke
Drifting in our room
So easy to disturb with a thought, with a whisper
With a careless memory, with a careless memory
With a careless memory, with a careless memory

Oh, I walk out into the sun, I try to find a new day
But the whole place just screams in my eyes
Where are you now ’cause I don’t want to meet you
I think I’d die, I think I’d laugh at you
I know I’d cry, what am I supposed to do, follow you?

Outside the thoughts coming flooding back now
I just try to forget you

So easy to disturb with a thought with a whisper
With a careless memory, with a careless memory
With a careless memory, look out
With a careless memory
With a careless memory
Look out, look out, look out, look out

Pain and Treatments

My health “journey” continues. I paid $500 for a genetic test that — of course — insurance doesn’t cover. I finally got the first half of the results.

I failed.

Turns out my body is deficient at basically everything related to my current condition… which is probably why I’m in this position. My genes make me both more susceptible to pain AND less able to deal with it, and I have no genes that would make therapeutic treatment of pain or depression easier. All of my mutations related to possible treatments are bad, and will have to be worked around.

NSAID’s are literally cancerous for me. Stunningly, I can’t process opiates. I’ve always thought that they didn’t do anything for my pain, rather just made me care less. Turns out that’s actually true, but I just thought that’s how they worked. No, they actually REDUCE pain for OTHER people (in addition to making them care less). But, hey, that’s OK. Not one of 18 doctors in three and a half years was willing to prescribe them to me anyway.

At least now we can get started with actual treatments, knowing what WON’T work? I guess? Doesn’t seem to leave me a lot of options, though.

An Extra 5 Weeks of Pain

Jumping into the middle of the story, I tried cortisone injections to help with my chronic pain, but they only seem to have made things worse. A friend at church gave me a whole new approach to try, but I needed a referral from my primary care physician.

My PCP wouldn’t do the referral over email. She insisted that I needed to make an appointment, and that it had to be a 30-minute one. Because of the length of the appointment, I couldn’t get on her schedule for FIVE WEEKS. But I thought, hey, I have other requests. Maybe because I’m seeing her, she’ll address them.

I just had the appointment. She was 15 minutes late to a 30-minute appointment, and only used 10 minutes of the time. She told me she wouldn’t address my other concerns, and pushed them on the referral. She agreed that this was a good next step, but added 5 weeks of unnecessary extra time to my journey.

Obviously, I’m in a bad mood, and there’s just literally no comfort or rest to be found. Excuse me while I order a pizza, and stick my head inside a video game until I’m exhausted enough to go to sleep.

44 Years Later

The nostalgia is strong with this. I loved being able to make forms with the glyphs on the Vic-20 and Commodore 64. These keycaps have been “out of print” for a long time, but Signature Plastics is now making them to order. I thought the grey colored accessory keys were going to be more of a lime green color, but that was too bold anyway, and I like this color better anyway. It’s much more similar to the color of the function keys on the original keyboards.

Anthem Sucks, Health Insurance Will Get Socialized, Water is Wet

Once again, Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield has denied me a prescription. It’s like the 4th time in the past couple of years. I spend $10,000/year on all the insurance I can get, while my company pays the other $20K of the mortgage-sized premium. Then I have — whatever it is — $1,500 of deductible, or something. Then I have co-pays. Then I go to the doctor, and he prescribes me something — after looking at their own guidelines, and choosing the worse of two formulations, because they won’t cover “the good stuff” — and then, after ALL OF THAT, Anthem looks over his shoulder, and says, “No, he can’t have it like you prescribed it. You can only prescribe it once a day instead of twice.”

So my doctor submitted a prior authorization, which they also denied. I finally got the letter “explaining” why. Apparently, someone in the bowels of this corporate behemoth went to a government web site which has label information for every drug, and the label for this drug says to take it once a day. Therefore, according to Anthem, a doctor cannot prescribe it twice a day. Period. I’m not sure which is more stupid, this one or their last excuse, which was to steadfastly claim that I have a disease my bloodwork repeatedly shows I do not have.

In the 80’s, when “the bean counters” took over corporations, we made fun of them. We watched as companies who actually built things lost the will to invest in R&D, and abandoned long-term planning for a focus on quarterly returns. It was kind of funny to us at the time, one, because we couldn’t do anything about it, and, two, because the long-term effects wouldn’t be felt for decades.

You don’t have to look too hard to see what it’s done to the American corporate landscape. There’s no heart or soul; there’s only a question of how can they extract another dollar from the operation to return to the shareholders, whether by squeezing the customer or the employees. (I saw a comment the other day that this trend started with Jack Welch of GE fame, and I think that’s probably true.)

When it comes to, oh, I don’t know, making mufflers, this whole attitude and approach is one thing, but when that capitalistic machine gun is aimed — not at health insurance — but actual health care — well, this is what we get.