Haters: Bend, Break or Blow Them Away

Haters: Bend, Break or Blow Them Away

Three days ago I tweeted the following: “You’re gonna’ have haters. Mine are mostly in my own family. You can either bend to what they say about you, or you can prove them wrong.” Besides myself, my worst critics are my father and my brother, followed by all of the idiot family members who actually believe the shit they say. Every day I wish my circumstances were different. I wish I had more confidence. I wish I had pursued music and theatre instead of continually trying to get a “real job”. I wish I were successful enough to tell my family to kiss my ass. Unfortunately though, I married the wrong person (who is also amongst my worst critics) and ended up with the mess I have now. On the upside, as I have noted in previous blog entries, I was there for my mom when she needed me in her final years, which is more than my father or my brother can say. If anything had gone the way I had planned, I wouldn’t have been there for her.

As I have noted in previous blog entries, I have been the primary caretaker for my mother and my father for the past 2 ½ years, making it difficult for me to hold a traditional full-time job. In the first year, we went through more caretakers than Taylor Swift has boyfriends. We even had one caretaker steal from us. Any time there was a problem with one of my parents or their caretaker(s), I was the one who had to handle it. Sometimes this meant that I was late for work. Sometimes this meant I didn’t make it to work at all. Sometimes I had to leave work for a little while to handle whatever it was. No employer in their right mind is going to keep such an employee. I even began keeping a log of every time this happened so that my brother could see that it happens at least once a week. I thought he understood finally. I guess not.

My former employer was a small company comprised largely of Caucasian, Republican Christians and Catholics. The Vice President’s son told me after seeing me out to lunch with a Mexican that I should “stick with my own race”. I did. I am not a Republican and I don’t attend church. As noted before, I sometimes had to inconvenience my employer by having to deal with my parents or their caretaker issues. So, take your pick as to which of these reasons they might have let me go. I believe them all to be viable, but my brother maintains I must have done something wrong. I did my best. Even with the aforementioned issues, I still had better attendance than almost everyone at this company and I definitely had a better work ethic, but I must have done something.

I went back into musical theatre back in April, performing in Annie. This led to an opportunity to teach music in a local school district. I have been self-employed doing music and theatre since April. I have told my brother and my father repeatedly that I am working. Yet, despite this fact, my brother tells people that I am lazy and don’t want to work. He tells people that I just want to hang out with Peter (name changed) and do drugs. My father tells people that he doesn’t know what I do all day because I don’t work and I don’t feed my kids. He used to tell people that I abused him. They frequently treat me as though these things are actually true about me and as though I do not have a job to get to or be at.

Wednesdays are my busiest day. Wednesday has been my busiest day since September. My brother was at the house one Wednesday in September when I returned from work, dressed for work, carrying a bag full of music books and other musical equipment and a guitar at nearly 8 p.m. Yet, he seems to still forget that I am employed. He, like my father, is still in denial. They are so busy pumping up their own egos that it is inconceivable to them that I am actually a good person who did more for them than anyone and who is now employed doing exactly what my father told me years ago I would never make any money doing.

My alarm clock went off at 5:30 this morning. I did not want to wake up. I got up at 6:00 and wondered how the hell I was going to make it through today. I was so tired. I could not see how I could make it through a Wednesday when I was already so tired at the beginning of the day. I got ready anyway. I took my kids to school. I bought a triple latte. I went back to the house to finish getting ready. I went to an appointment at 9:00 a.m. and when I was done, I had to go buy things my dad needed because he refused to let the caretaker go get these things. This left me with 30 minutes to spend with Peter while shopping for the things my dad needed. I took a B vitamin. I picked up my son at 12:30, fed him and myself, picked up my daughter at 2:00 p.m. and then returned home to change for work. When I arrived at the house, the caretaker was telling me my dad wanted to go visit someone whose husband just died, but she needed to check with me first. He wanted to go visit my aunt, whose husband died several years ago. I know where this aunt lives and maybe he does, but the caretaker needs an address because she doesn’t know where she’s going. I texted my brother. He answered nearly 2 hours later. In the meantime, I used a chain of people to get the information to the caretaker while driving to work. At work, my foot was run over by a computer cart. Hours later, it still hurts. After work, I bought burritos for my dad and dinner for the rest of us. Being as I fed my kids twice in this account of my day, I fail to see where I don’t feed my kids as my dad says. I work, so they can’t say that I don’t and be truthful. The only drugs I do are those prescribed to me for chronic pain (Rheumatoid Arthritis, Scoliosis, Spondylosis, Endometriosis) and anxiety. My brother frequently smokes pot. I don’t care. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I do see something wrong with someone who tells lies about his sister.

I gave up on my father a long time ago. I take care of him, but I wish I didn’t have to. His behavior is not a condition of his age. He has always been a pathological liar. I tried to have a good relationship with my brother because I didn’t have a good relationship with my other brother. My brother is the one who chose to not have a good relationship with me. He likes to treat me like I’m the burden on the family, but my parents bought him multiple cars, paid his insurance in his younger years, helped him buy a house in Arizona and another house for his son in Texas, gave his son their car and donated money to a campaign for an office he never ended up running for. Everything I have ever borrowed money from my parents for, I have paid back. So, who is the mooch? My brother unfriended me on Facebook because I would have voted for Bernie Sanders if he had made it to the ballot. My brother tells people I am lazy and don’t want to work when I am employed. My brother tells people I do drugs. What he doesn’t tell people is that I took care of our parents while he travelled the world, sometimes on business, sometimes for pleasure. He doesn’t tell people that I have not had a vacation in 2 ½ years. He doesn’t tell people that he hardly ever comes around. He doesn’t tell people the truth.

On top of all this, I am dealing with problems with my ex-husband and my daughter. My ex-husband doesn’t want to pay more in child support. He has barely paid anything as it is. In the wake of the Department of Child Social Services ordering that he pay more, and just a few months after my mother’s death, my ex-husband is suing for custody of the children and continuing to besmirch me. He has been doing so to his children for the past 5 ½ years. Now he is telling the same lies to the court. My daughter meanwhile is struggling with depression and anxiety, two things I know plenty about. Her troubles escalate when she is around him because he is always yelling at her and criticizing her. She needs to be with me. My brother has one adult child. He doesn’t have to deal with these sorts of issues with his ex or his children. He doesn’t have to deal with our father’s craziness every day. He doesn’t have to deal with people, particularly his own family members, talking shit about him. I could use a break. I could use a vacation. I could use a full 24 hours free of having to be responsible for someone. I could use some sleep.

I refuse to bend. I will not be broken. I am going to maximize my time and my potential. I am going to get some sleep, and in the morning, I am going to embark on yet another day in which I beat all of the odds that stand against me. Again.

Last Year Was My Last Thanksgiving, but It Was Not My Last Time Giving Thanks

Last Year Was My Last Thanksgiving, but It Was Not My Last Time Giving Thanks

Seventeen years ago today, I was given a reason besides the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade to like Thanksgiving. Fourteen minutes after midnight on Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2000, my daughter was born. Prior to this day, I hated Thanksgiving. With the exception of the parade and my daughter, I still do. I have tried over the course of my lifetime to at least pretend I like Thanksgiving. Like answering “fine” when people ask you how you are, it is the simple, expected response. No one really wants to hear the truth.

Five years ago, Thanksgiving dinner became my responsibility. My ex-husband had left the picture and was in Missouri. I never really cooked much before I became a single mother of three, and now I was having to cook dinner every night and prepare these huge meals three times a year (Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas). One year, my dad decided to throw one of his famous fits and refused to eat the Easter meal I had prepared. I retaliated by refusing to prepare Thanksgiving dinner that year. Until this year, I had not ever really thought about how my mom did this for decades, almost entirely by herself, with minimal complaining. She had put up with him and his childish behavior for decades as well. This year, I decided I had had enough.

My kids always take off to spend Thanksgiving with their dad and his family, leaving me to juggle dinner schedules. My mom is no longer with us and my dad’s temperament gets worse and worse each day. My brother and his wife came by today to take him to dinner because I was not going to prepare one. He refused to go. He and I ended up eating burritos today. I don’t care. I was going to prepare a Thanksgiving feast sometime next week, but now I have decided that I will just save it for Christmas. I hate Thanksgiving and aside of the need to make the reason why easier for everyone else, I might as well just throw in the towel now. There’s no need to cook for an ungrateful, crotchety old man who barely eats anything anyway and children that aren’t even around.

Thanksgiving, at its core, is a made-up holiday with dubious origins. The most widely accepted account of the First Thanksgiving is that it was celebrated around 1620 or 1621 in praise of a good harvest and that Native Americans were invited. Over 200 years later, Abraham Lincoln made it an official holiday. Historical records do not indicate for certain whether the fare in the 1600’s or the 1800’s consisted of turkey and all of our traditional side dishes. It seems like these side dishes have increased over the years, as has the list of acceptable desserts. By the end of the day, we could have eaten any combination of turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, vegetables, dinner rolls or biscuits, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, apple pie, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie and drank copious amounts of beer, wine and/or mixed drinks. Then we remark how stuffed we are while watching football and eating snacks. Thanksgiving is a celebration of gluttony at its finest. It also completely ignores the section of history where English immigrants subjugate an indigenous people, take over their land, kill their people, rape their women and begin a centuries-long tradition of continuing to treat them as though they’re the intruders.

So, here’s the truth. I will not be fixing any more Thanksgiving meals in the future. If my father wants one, he is going to have to bury the hatchet with his son and go get one. My mother was the best actress I know. She played the role for decades and never once broke character. I’m not that strong. There are only three things worth salvaging from Thanksgiving and one of them has absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving: my daughter. The other two salvageable traditions are the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and the act of giving thanks itself.

All this month I have posted on Facebook things I am grateful for: people who are not part of the problem, Caramel Brulee Lattes, my wonderful mom, for getting 10 more years with my mom than my mom had with her mom, for being by my mom’s side as she struggled with Alzheimer’s, for creativity, that I have a car, that tomorrow can always be a better day, that I am not struggling like those in Puerto Rico, that music keeps me too busy for social media and makes me money, for military men and women, for good fortune at Morongo, for days of rest, that I’m not a blonde on days when I don’t have time for makeup, that I’m only a little scary without makeup, for employment, that I’m not as crazy as the cuckoo lady dancing in the street, for overall good health, carne asada, fast food restaurants who sell breakfast all day, music, hearing, ability to listen to and create music, technological progress which has increased access to music, air conditioning and my daughter, whose birthday is today. Gratitude is a worthwhile practice. We can easily get bogged down with everything that is wrong in the world or with everything that is wrong with our own lives that we forget to be grateful for the things that are good. Gratitude can ease depression and anxiety a little. Gratitude can offer hope. Gratitude can put things into perspective. Thanksgiving can be a great time to remember to be grateful, as can the whole month of November, but why wait? There are sparks of joy, fortune, blessing, etc. all year long. Be grateful for those moments in the moment and in the moments in which your heart sinks so deep into your chest that it feels like it’s trying to choke the life out of you itself. You don’t need a special holiday to be grateful for these things any more than you need a special holiday to eat turkey or pumpkin pie or to get together with your family.

Dirty Little Secrets: Opioid Epidemic, Pain Mgmt. and Insurance Companies

The letter below is a letter that I wrote to my insurance company as part of both a grievance and a state hearing that I filed. This past April, I decided to give acupuncture a try to deal with my chronic pain issues. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, Scoliosis, Spondylosis, Endometriosis and chronic tension headaches and migraines. Pain appears in different areas of my body throughout every single day of my life. I wake up each morning with stiff joints and muscles that must be stretched and warmed up in order for me to even be mobile. Sometimes when I have been sitting for a long period of time, I have to stretch out my muscles and joints just so I can move again. Because this process is painful and time-consuming, I sometimes will just stay standing if I know that I will be getting up again soon anyway. My body tends to work best under the premise that a body in motion tends to stay in motion.

In addition to living with daily pain, I subsist on a daily diet of pain medication each day as well. Occasionally I will supplement my usual pain medication with herbal medication. My use of the herbal medication draws more controversy than my use of opiates or high doses of ibuprofen, which are more socially acceptable, and are appropriate for use at any time, unlike the use cannabis. Unlike opiates and ibuprofen however, cannabis is an effective anti-inflammatory medication with multiple health benefits and fewer long-term side effects. In addition to these pain management methods, I have attempted to cut back on sugar and other inflammatory foods, which I have found to be quite effective as well.

This entry isn’t about cannabis, however. Admittedly, while I use it occasionally, I am not at all a regular partaker. This entry is about an effective means of pain management that is undervalued among medical professionals and insurance companies: acupuncture. My insurance company approved 24 visits within a 12-month period; however, they only gave me 18 visits before denying additional acupuncture services. Furthermore, my insurance company has forced me to repeatedly complete paperwork and get approvals for additional visits after every 5 or 6 visits. While I am waiting for these approvals, I am not able to receive acupuncture services, which causes a delay in treatment and regression in my progress. While I am waiting, I end up back in pain, the progress I have made disappears, I end up taking more pain medication… it’s a vicious cycle. It’s a vicious cycle that insurance companies want you to keep repeating. Why? Money, of course!

Insurance companies stand to gain payouts from pharmaceutical companies for keeping you on their medications. Neither the insurance company or the pharmaceutical company gains anything when you find effective alternatives such as cannabis or acupuncture. This is why cannabis is still stigmatized, still illegal in many states, still not regularly prescribed and still largely underground. This is also why my insurance company keeps giving me a hard time about obtaining acupuncture services. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are directly responsible for the opioid epidemic, an epidemic which will not see any real relief any time soon no matter what Donald Trump says or what downright comical campaigns he launches against it. Making it more difficult to acquire opiates is effective, but a more effective strategy would be to raise awareness of and advocate alternative pain management therapies such as acupuncture, diet modification and perhaps herbal remedies such as cannabis.

Letter:

Saturday, October 21, 2017

To whom it may concern,

This letter is in regards to all recent correspondence regarding acupuncture services. Since I have begun receiving acupuncture in April of this year, I have had to get reapproved for services a number of times, each time having to fill out a one-page form explaining how acupuncture is helping me. This one page form is rather inadequate for explaining the benefits of acupuncture, particularly as it applies to me. Additionally, I believe that perhaps those making the decisions about these approvals are not familiar with how acupuncture works, otherwise they would not approve only a few visits at a time, causing a disruption in the flow of services. The purpose of this letter is to inform you that acupuncture is benefitting me, how it is benefitting me and how your system of approving only a few visits at a time is inhibiting progress rather than benefitting me.

I have recently been officially diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis, a diagnosis I knew existed long before my doctors ever thought to test for it. Prior to this official diagnosis, I had been diagnosed with simple arthritis in a variety of locations. I also have been diagnosed as being flat-footed, which was causing tremendous pain in my right foot and which made it difficult to walk. Within a few months of beginning acupuncture, the pain in my right foot disappeared completely and I am able to walk painlessly again. The pain in my lower back, for which I had begun to be treated in the beginning, is also mostly gone, though it reoccurs from time to time. As for my RA, it pops up in different places all the time. I experience pain in my neck, back, shoulders, left hip, left leg, hands and feet daily. Some days only a few of these things hurt. Some days all of these things hurt. My pain levels in each of these areas are dependent upon a variety of factors including how I slept, diet, climate, activity and when my last acupuncture appointment was. This brings me to your system of approval.

When I am able to receive acupuncture services weekly, I experience considerably less pain overall, am able to fix certain ailments such as pinched nerves in my neck (which occur frequently) immediately, experience improvement in my overall condition (such as when the pain in my right foot went away altogether), and use less pain medication. The current system of treatment from doctors and from insurance is to keep me using pain medication, which is fine, but I do not wish to take any more pain medication than is absolutely necessary if there is a healthier alternative. Acupuncture is a healthier alternative. It is working. What is not working is having large gaps between acupuncture services because I can only get a few services approved at a time.

I am respectfully requesting that you reconsider your decision regarding the approval of my acupuncture services. I wish to continue receiving acupuncture services because I have seen where it has been incredibly beneficial. I am also requesting that more services be approved with each recertification period.

Part 2: Update on Lack of Resources in Music Program

Part 2: Update on Lack of Resources in Music Program

Today I returned to the school which served as an impetus for my M.S. Education thesis and for my blog entry “Lack of Resources and Opportunities in Low Socioeconomic Schools”. On Tuesday, the company I work for sent someone to fix the guitars and ordered some keyboards as the ones they presently have are broken. Tomorrow, they will be getting a new full-time music teacher. I will be there as well.

I brought my guitar tuner and tuned one of the acoustic guitars. One student played “Seven Nation Army” on an electric guitar. Another student played “Fur Elise” by Beethoven on their one working keyboard. Yet another student attempted to play “Chop Suey” by System of a Down on drums. This is not an easy song to play and the guitar set they have at this school is inadequate to play this song, but she gave it a solid effort. She’s not quite ready for this song, though. She needs to play faster and her rhythm needs to catch up to her speed, but with practice, she will get there. This is precisely why we need adequate music education in schools.

In this case, I spoke up for these students and got them the resources they needed to have a functional music program. Other students at other schools are not so lucky. The arts are always the first programs to have their funding cut and without programs like the one that I work for, those schools suffer without the benefit of a proper music program. The administrators in charge of the budget do not understand the importance of continuing to fund arts programs. These arts programs can boost the test scores they are so worried about, improve grades, increase mathematics comprehension, raise self-confidence and lift student morale.

I honestly never thought that I would be teaching music, let alone advocating for music programs in schools. I was encouraged to study something other than music and get a “real job”. I tried to do all that. I have two master’s degrees (English and Education). While in college, I took Calculus while other English majors were taking Algebra. I have taught everything from preschool to college and everything in between. I taught at the university level for 5 ½ years and think I will likely return in the very near future. I have several friends who are musicians as well, many of which were also good at math, science and technology. A few of these friends have degrees in computer science related fields and have good careers in those industries. They are all evidence of the benefit of music on overall education. As much as the mind is a terrible thing to waste, so too is talent.