Letting off some steam!

I was set to write a post today about the two male pets in my house--George and Marco. They both misbehave so often that I sometimes mix up their names when I'm yelling at them. It's probably a funny sight--me calling a bird by the dog's name and vice versa like a frustrated mother whose kids have pushed her to the edge! Ginger, of course, is the perfect dog and never does bad stuff but the boys in the house are troublesome. Ah well. I wonder what people without pets do for entertainment? There's never a dull moment around here!

Instead, I'm finding myself still stewing in irritation from the work day. It was 50 shades of chaos in the office and by 9:30am I was ready to strangle some of my coworkers. It was the same old thing: too much stuff going on, too many people needing too many things at once, phones ringing off the hook and parents cursing at whoever happened to answer the phone (me), half of the administrators and one of the guidance counselors out sick, and me being by myself handling everything because the two or three people who could've pitched in to help had either disappeared entirely, or were sequestered in their (private) offices with the doors shut. I was so damn mad.

I'm going to have to have a sit down with the principal in the very near future. I've had enough.

I'm also irritated as hell at some of the medical care my husband has been getting recently. He finally saw his doctor friend, a prestigious pulmonary specialist who now sits on the board of the hospital, and he immediately questioned the diagnoses and treatment Gregg's been getting. The good news (and I am grateful for this) is that it's looking less and less likely that he has a blood clot on his kidney and the testing they've done so far has concluded that his heart is fine. The problem is that there's some sort of obstruction in the kidney and they have to get to the bottom of it still. And our doctor friend was very upset when he found out that our family doctor and the kidney specialist she sent us to failed to contact Gregg's oncologist right away. When a patient has a history of stage 3 cancer, the oncologist should be notified immediately of any new health concerns, particularly a kidney blockage. Gregg's been wasting time and taking medication he doesn't need, as well as having lots of expensive and uncomfortable tests run that were probably not necessary. And to top it all off, no one thought to share his information with his oncologist! Unbelievable. And the nurse at our family doctor's office had the nerve to get defensive when Gregg told her that he needed to make an appointment to discuss these new findings! She's probably afraid that they'll be in trouble with our friend since he has so much power and influence at the hospital. And what about people who don't have a great doctor friend looking out for them? What happens to them? I'll tell you what--substandard care. It's despicable and it just burns me up. Not normal "everyone is human" mistakes, but mistakes that come from carelessness. Medical people need to be held to a higher standard.

But anyway, enough with all that. It felt good to type it all out, but I'm not going to let the rest of the evening be ruined. I'm home now, the sun is shining, and the screened porch (and a glass or three of wine) await. Maybe Marco won't screech at ear splitting levels (which he did yesterday when we had him out on the porch) and George won't bark like a crazy dog if the neighbors walk by with their little anklebiter dog on a leash (which also happened yesterday).

Oops...too late. She just walked past, and of course George barked like a hellhound. I went out back and yelled at him to stop. Hey, at least I didn't call him Marco this time!