ReWire Chaos
It’s exactly like when I decide to clean and organize my quilt room; things look worse for a while, even when they are getting better.
My house now:
The good news is that they are finishing up early next week, and the ceiling / drywall man comes in to enclose all the new work. God willing, they will finish soon. 🙂
Long Term Care for The Aged: Hidden In Plain Sight
One of the most amazing things that happened to me while I was living in Doha was a conversation I had with a group of Qatteri and Palestinian women. We were talking about our summer plans, and when it was my turn, I told them I was going back to the US to take care of my Dad while my Mom had a knee replacement. They all looked at me in stunned silence, and I wondered what I had said wrong.
“You do this?” one of them finally asked me, “You take care of your parents?”
“Yes, of course,” I replied, not understanding her puzzlement.
There was a burst of excited chatter I couldn’t follow, and then one of the younger women said to me “but we NEVER see this on TV.”
Things have probably changed by now, with all the cable stations available, with Lifetime and a broader spectrum, but what they think of as America is Dynasty and – well, think of what your favorite programs are, and then imagine an alien culture watching and trying to figure out your culture from what you watch. If you are living with the aliens, they way we portray our own culture on television and in movies is appalling!
Long story short, most adults want to stay independent as long as possible. They never want to be a burden on their sons and daughters and grandchildren. I am willing to bet that this is almost universal. For one thing, from the point of view of the aging, if you live with someone else, you know you will increase their work load, and if you go to a facility, you lose a lot of options to choose. Being able to have someone to come into your own house allows you to remain independent as long as possible. If you live with one of your children, you still get to have home-care, which relieves a lot of the burden on those with whom you are living.
Here is an AOL Health News article on a ‘hidden’ provision of the new health care act which will make it possible to keep our elders at home longer. Believe me, this is a very good thing, if you have ever dealt with a rehab facility, or a residence for the aged.
Health Care Reform Will Impact Long-Term Care
From AOL News: HealthCare
Robert W. Stock
Contributor
(March 26) — As health care reform became the law of the land this week, a huge bloc of Americans with a unique interest in the outcome sat watching on the sidelines.
The 49 million people who care for older family members were hidden in plain sight, as usual, quietly shouldering a burden that so often takes a heavy toll on their finances and their physical and emotional well-being. Many of them — I know a few — are opposed to the new health care law, even though it includes one of the most important steps ever taken to improve caregivers’ lot, especially those of the middle-class persuasion. Of course, hardly any of them are aware of that.
The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, otherwise known as CLASS, provides for a national insurance program to help cover the cost of long-term care — something 70 percent of people over 65 will need at some point along the way. The premiums will be much lower than those for private plans, and you won’t get screened out because you’ve already had some health problems. Once vested after five years, enrollees unable to care for themselves will be able to claim cash benefits for as long as needed.
Joe Raedle, Getty Images
A health aide helps a patient at his home in Miami. The new health care reform law could “transform long-term care” and make it possible for more patients to stay at home, said the chief of the National Council on Aging.
If you’re rich, you don’t require much financial help with long-term care. If you’re poor and can no longer fend for yourself, Medicaid pays the bills, often at a nursing home. For the rest of us, long-term care — at home or in an institution — now requires that we, or our caregivers, choose from among some unpleasant options.
We can spend down our retirement savings until we’re eligible for Medicaid funds. We can protect our savings by taking out expensive long-term care insurance — it costs my wife and me more than $5,000 a year. Or, depending on how dependent we are, we can throw ourselves, or be thrown, on the mercy of our families.
My friend — I’ll call him Frank — was a retired lawyer and in great shape until four years ago. He had just turned 90 when emergency surgery laid him low for months on end. Then his sight and hearing began to go. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” his wife, Helen, told me. “His mind is fine. But he can’t get around on his own — he falls, even with a walker. He can’t make a cup of tea or shower by himself.”
For now, Helen can afford to hire an aide for a few hours a day to help with Frank and allow her to get out of the apartment. “James gives me a life,” she said. The future looks darker.
Surveys show that 90 percent of Americans want to age at home. Frank is no exception, but he never signed up for long-term care insurance. “If I couldn’t keep taking care of him, I don’t what I’d do,” Helen said. “If he went into assisted living, it would use up all our money. It’s very scary.”
CLASS, one of the legacies of the late Ted Kennedy, offers caregivers and care recipients another option. “If it’s successful, if a large enough number of people sign up, it will transform long-term care,” says James Firman, president and CEO of the National Council on Aging. “It will create a market-based economy for keeping aging people at home.”
That’s an important “if,” since the program, by law, must be self-sustaining. Premiums will generally be collected as part of workers’ payroll deductions unless they opt out. The younger the worker, the smaller the premium.
There is a vicious circle built into the current arrangements. Many caregivers must hold down a job and maintain their own separate family household while also watching over an aging parent. That kind of pressure can have consequences.
In recent studies, workers 18 to 39 years of age who were caring for an older relative had significantly higher rates of hypertension, depression and heart disease than non-caregivers of the same age. Overall, caregivers cost their companies an extra 8 percent a year in health care charges and many more unplanned days off.
In other words, the strains of family caregiving can hasten the caregiver’s need to be the recipient of care.
CLASS bids to crack if not break that vicious circle. Its benefits would make it much simpler and less expensive for families to make sure Mom gets the support she needs to be able to spend life’s endgame where she wants — in her own home. Good news for Mom, and good news for the future health of her caregivers.
In the last few days, I’ve conducted a poll of a dozen friends who have been closely following the health care reform debate. I wanted to find out how much they knew about CLASS.
Not one among them had even heard of it. It somehow seemed fitting that this major program, just like the caregivers themselves, was hidden in plain sight.
Publix Helps Us Cook At Home
Through blogging, I became a fan, and then in the way things happen in this wonderful virtual world, a friend of another blogger, John Lockerbie, who writes about many things, my favorite of which is Islamic design. He writes about the architecture, the boats, development in the Gulf, and behind the blogs, we have had our own correspondence.
Recently he commented on the post I wrote about how American health problems are mostly self-inflicted, and could be turned around with proper diet, exercise and preventive visits to the doctor to deter the serious illnesses from showing up. He sent me a reference to a speech made by Jamie Oliver, when he won the TED prize, on changing one small thing in the modern world – teaching us to cook once again in our own homes instead of eating out, eating highly processed, highly salted, highly sugared and highly fatted foods.
There is a Florida chain of supermarkets called Publix, and they are marvelous. Publix is making it easy for people to cook at home. They have a program where they do cooking demos, give out the recipes, and have all the ingredients gathered in one place – at the same price as throughout the store, just located conveniently in this one place – to encourage people to cook at home.
All the ingredients for several recipes:
Close up:
The signage:
Pick a recipe!
I find I am enjoying cooking a lot more here, where shopping is so easy and everything looks so good. Oh yes, and the prices are so low!
Which Bank????
Don’t you think the name of the bank might be relevant to this story? Don’t you think it might alert other bank customers to check their statements carefully? Why on earth would the name of the bank be concealed if it is stealing from its customers?
Bank accused of embezzling customer funds
Web posted at: 3/15/2010 5:58:51
Source ::: THE PENINSULA DOHA:
In a rare and unprecedented incident, a local bank faces accusations of embezzling customer funds and committing financial irregularities in managing the accounts of some of its customers. Noting that there were some deductions in their accounts without being notified and without such deductions being valid in the first place, the affected customers reported the violations to the bank which could not convince them of the nature of the deductions or the transactions shown in their accounts. The case was reported to the judicial authorities and was ordered to be investigated via the public prosecution. After investigations the public prosecution decided to file charges against the bank. The case was referred to the court of first instance.
Rapist Given Reduced Sentence
This is from the Gulf Times Court RoundUp
Life sentence commuted
A Doha appeals court has commuted to five-year imprisonment the life sentence given to a local teenager, who was convicted of raping a Sri Lankan housemaid.
Two Sri Lankan men in their late 20s were sentenced in absentia by a Doha court of first instance to 15 years imprisonment for helping the accused to perpetrate the crime.
The court heard that the two Sri Lankan accomplices who worked in a car washing facility told the main accused about the woman.
The rape took place soon after midnight on August 14, 2007.
According to the chargesheet, the main accused impersonated as a policeman and dragged the victim to his car, before they drove to a remote area.
“The two accomplices were paid money for their help and they left the car leaving the teenager with the 25-year old maid alone in a remote area.”
The court heard that the woman was too weak to resist the rapist, which was why no trace of violence was visible on her body.
“I shouted for help but in vain,” she said.
Explaining the commutation of the sentence, the court said that it took into consideration the young age of the convict and his clean record.
OK. So two Sri Lankan men tell a ‘local’ man about an Ethiopian house maid, and they plot to kidnap her, take her far out into the desert and to rape her.
Their plot succeeds, only somehow, they are identified and actually brought to trial.
The two Sri Lankans escape, and are convicted in their absence. The ‘local’ man is given a life time sentence. But wait! His sentence is commuted to five years because of his youth and clean record?
If I were a Qatteri father, I would want to know this man’s name. I would not want a man marrying my daughter who had a history of kidnapping a woman and raping her against her will way out in the desert. This man may be young, but he has already shown himself capable of doing something hugely WRONG, according to his own culture, and the law of the country. He plotted. He went to the trouble of impersonating a policeman to intimidate her into his car. He took her to a place where there would be no help for her, and she endured a terrifying experience, an experience she did not know she would live through, and an experience which will haunt her life and make her feel unsafe forever.
And this unnamed ‘local’ teenager gets five years in prison. Here is a good example of where a female judge might make a substantial difference in delivering justice for the Ethiopian housemaid.
Buying a Car the Civilized Way
“Did you know USAA has a car buying service?” AdventureMan asked me. Well, yes, sort-of, but I’ve been not wanting to think about buying a new car with all the house-buying stuff and paper-filling out stuff and packing stuff and making lists.
On the other hand, every day I have to rent a car is money down the drain.
“I’ll just check it out,” I thought to myself.
It was so easy. You go online and tell the car buying service where you live and what you want to buy. They send your name and phone number and e-mail (since I don’t want car salespeople calling me in the middle of the night because they don’t understand about time zones, I only gave them my e-mail) to dealerships who participate in USAA’s program.
USAA also sent me a list of car dealerships in my area and a Certificate for me to print with their agreed upon price. That simple. The certificate prices were significantly lower than anything I had been offered at the dealership I visited, and these were guarantee.
Within hours, three dealerships had e-mailed me. I chose the closest, worked with a WOMAN to get what I wanted at the price I was willing to pay, and not one item more. She was courteous and helpful and respectful! She got me everything I wanted. She named an out-the-door price that I could live with.
The only downside is that the dealership is 35 minutes away, in Fort Walton Beach. The upside is that they have been known to deliver, and 35 minutes just isn’t that far. Like from Fintas to downtown Kuwait City in heavy traffic, or from my house to the Ritz Carleton in Qatar. I can live with that.
Yes. Yes, Daggero, you guessed it right, I am buying another Rav4, one with brakes that work. I’m not scared off by Toyota’s troubles. It’s like eating in a restaurant that has just re-opened after being closed for health violations; you know it’s never going to be cleaner than it is right now. 😉 I love the way the Rav4 is sort of small, I am sort of small, too. I love that it turns on a dime, and that I am high enough to look over most of the traffic, but small enough to park in a tiny parking spot. It’s an SUV, but a modest SUV, with good mileage per gallon, and a great record for reliability and repairs.
Here is what I love about this transaction. I did my homework. I know what I want. I know what is a reasonable price to pay. I am getting a better price than I expected. There are no games – here’s what I want, here is what I am getting and here is what it is going to cost, and that includes title and licensing. How cool is that? I feel like when you do business like this, everyone is a winner.
And a shout-out to Marisa at Quality Toyota at Fort Walton Beach for making the process easy and non-threatening and civil. Working with her to buy my new car was a pleasure.
Qatar Initiates Solar Energy Plan
Woooo HOOOO, Qatar, for not depending on a non-renewable energy source, but continuing to develop strategies for survival into the future. And Qatar definitely has an abundance of solar power. But then again – so does Kuwait.
Qatar to tap solar power in a big way
Web posted at: 3/2/2010 6:29:33
Source ::: THE PENINSULA/ BY SATISH KANADY
DOHA: Qatar is all set to tap its abundance of solar power. Two leading international agencies yesterday announced their decision to partner with two Qatari entities to produce the green energy in the country.
SolarWorld AG, one of the world’s largest solar companies, will partner with Qatar Solar Technology (QST), in which Qatar Foundation (QF) has a major stake. Separately, the Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, German Aerospace Centre (DLR), will partner with the country’s ambitious Qatar National Food Security Programme (QNFSP).
Qatar Solar Technology marks the entry of QF into the solar energy sector. QF will have a 70 percent stake in QST, with SolarWorld holding 29 percent and Qatar Development Bank the remaining one percent.
The initial investment in QST is valued at over $500m, QF said.
Through the joint venture, solar grade polysilicon, the essential ingredient of solar panels, would be produced in the first phase.
QST will develop a new plant in Ras Laffan Industrial City, in the northeast of Qatar, which will be one of the first operational polysilicon plants in the region. The plant will produce well over 3,500 tonnes per annum of the material and will be designed with future expansion in mind, which will enable it to significantly increase production capacity.
You can read the rest of the article, including contributions by Texas A&M, by clicking HERE
Grabbing a Half Day
While most of my time has been spent joyfully grandmama-ing, I was feeling increasing anxiety about one thing. I am flying back to Doha to pack, and then I am flying back to Pensacola to close on the house, and wait for AdventureMan to join me, and then all our furniture and household goods that have been in storage a lifetime – twelve years – will arrive.
Oh oh. Where do we sleep until our bed arrives? We COULD invade our dear son and his sweet wife once again, but don’t you think enough is enough? Would you want your parents and in-laws living with you, week after week, with all our well-intentioned advice, and stories about our son when he was young?
No? LLOOLLL, me neither!
So yesterday, I took an afternoon to myself.
First, I had learned that the Pensacola Quilter’s Guild was having their bienniel (once every TWO years) show this weekend, Friday and Saturday. There is little that can take this adoring grandmama away from her most adorable brand-new grandson, but I will admit it – a quilt show – that is beyond temptation. I had to go, even just for an hour. I went, joined the guild, hurried through the exhibit, which was GLORIOUS! and then I went furniture shopping.
Furniture shopping is not what it used to be. I have some lovely furniture in storage, but not a huge amount of it. Some of it we sent off with Law and Order Man when he went off to law school and needed some basics. Some of it is just outdated – like televisions from the 90’s! I figured I would just look for the basics – bed, mattress and table and chair. We will have a place to sit when we are not sleeping, and we can buy the TV’s together, later, with our son’s help. We need the help of the high-tech-savvy to get us up to speed on what we will be needing, phones, TV’s, cable connections, phone plans, internet connections, oh, it is as bad as buying a new car!
When we were still in the military, we found a dining room table and chairs, gorgeous, at an auction, for $169. We found marble topped antique oak nightstands, gorgeous, at the flea market in Metz, and paid $60 for the pair. We found a gorgeous buffet/credenza in a used furniture shop in Leavenworth, KS for $50 + $10 for delivery, all these are furniture pieces we still treasure. I am telling you this so you will understand what sticker shock I get when I go to look at new furniture.
I am quick and clear about what I want and need, but the prices require me to summon all the courage I can summon when I go to write the checks. I am good at saving. Letting that money go is so HARD. It took me the entire afternoon to find pieces I knew would work for us.
Here is where you will sleep, the guest room bed, when you come to stay with us:
It was on sale. I love it because, with the inlay, it sort of reminds me of the Middle East, of Damascus:
I also bought mattresses. It was difficult, too, because I don’t like these pillow tops. We like a good, firm bed, and I like to sleep cool, I can’t get to sleep if I am too warm, and these pillow tops are too warm. It took me a long time to find a good, firm mattress set for the bed.
Then I went looking for a table and chairs for the family room/ casual dining area. I knew what I wanted. My long-time Chinese friend told me the best table for families is the round table, no one sits at the head, everyone is equal. My sister Big Diamond (Little Diamond’s and Sporty Diamond’s Mom) has a HUGE, gorgeous round table, and I have seen how people love to gather there. So I knew I wanted a round table that would be inviting and comfortable, but not so grand as my sister’s. I have been looking online, checking out a lot of models. When I found one here in Pensacola, at a reasonable price, I was hooked. It is light teak – light in color, heavy in weight. OOps. Then she reminded me I would need chairs. Aaarrgh.
There weren’t any other customers in the shop at the time, so we took our time. As I learned from you, my Middle Eastern friends, we dickered a little, comfortably and amiably – and she gave me a discount, and free delivery.
The chairs are amazing. You would not believe wood could feel so comfortable. The table and chairs together remind me so much of all our times camping and in lodges in Africa, in Zanzibar, in Zambia, in Botswana, where the furniture is both comfortable and well made. But I almost choked, writing the check. Some things are just worth buying new; sturdy, comfortable furniture is one of them.
Here is the guest bathroom:
It has a spa tub and a walk in shower. 🙂
Last but not least, I found some farewell gifts for friends I have had in Doha for a long long time, and a bolt of muslin for a friend who knows I am coming back with suitcases almost empty. 🙂 It was a long day, and a fruitful day, and I am resting easier knowing all these little details are coming together.
Today, however, my son and his wife are taking me to the kinds of places I LOVE buying furniture! The Waterfront Mission Store and Loaves and Fishes! Wooo HOOOOO!
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