Hot!

It's calling me.

My goodness it's hot today.  Our air conditioning is acting up again.  It's about 85 in here.  That's probably not really all that hot by normal standards, but when you are spoiled rotten to central air it's hot.  If I EVER get done with work today I am going to get in the pool, but I despair of ever getting done.  I overslept this morning and then my sons were doing a lot of talking this morning and the phone rang several times, then the dog had a reaction to his insulin and between all those interruptions, I'm only a little more than halfway done at 4:00 p.m..  It's going to be a long, long day.  Actually, it already has.

Sometimes my work is kind of funny.

This was just dictated to me.  Notice the numbers.

DIAGNOSES:
1.  Rhabdomyolysis..
2.  Equivocal cardiac enzymes.
2.  Permanent pacemaker.
3.  Hypothyroidism.
6.  Diabetes mellitus.
8.  Hyperthyroidism.
9.  Hypertension.
11. Advanced age.
9.  History of normal echocardiogram.

Seriously, he numbered them this way.  I didn't, of course, on the report, favoring the more traditional 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,  numbering system myself.  :-)  I think it's kind of interesting that he ended up with 9 at the end, which actually is correct.  Next time you feel kind of dumb about something, remember this guy.  He has advanced degrees in medicine.  We all do silly things from time to time.

This guy also never, ever, ever codes a report as the right type.  He always puts the wrong number in when he dials into the system, so I have to listen to see what in the world he's dictating.  This particular one was a consult coded as an echocardiogram.  I guess it keeps it interesting?  

Not AS bad.

I know this is supposed to be a homeschooling blog and this week it's been all about my oldest son's job, but this is actually a stage in his educational process, the time in his life, when he learns that he really wants to further his education so he won't have to work so darn hard.  :-P.   I think even MY job is starting to look good to him now.  His night's work last night was not as bad, helped, I'm sure by the fact that he got 11 hours of sleep yesterday.  He really, really needed it.  Also he only got assigned to the most difficult work task for a couple of hours, instead of all 8 and the other hours he got to do the easier job that he was actually hired for.  One more night and he'll have the weekend to rest and contemplate his life plan.

Being helpful.

One of the doctors I type for is very helpful.  He spells the word S-E-S-T-A-M-I-B-I for me very carefully every single time he dictates it.

Unfortunately, he spells it S-E-S-T-A-B-A-M-I.

The work thing.

I got the work thingy straightened out this morning after a couple of emails with my supervisor.  It turns out that they had a temporary rule that we had to send all blanks to the editors, but now it is back to what it was before, anything more than 3, which will pretty much totally eliminate my need to send anything to them.  I am relieved.  I know this doesn't mean anything to anyone, but since I whined about it earlier I thought it would be a good idea to update it.   Back to life as usual.

Updates.

I always have New Years resolutions and this year it was going to be exercise.  Trouble is, I haven't started yet.  I've postponed my New Year's resolution until after Easter. I think that's reasonable.

Yes.

I do.


Anyway, onto other things. 

Work is driving me kind of crazy.  First they want one thing, then another.  A month or so ago they were whining that we were not putting the dates on the reports.  Then I challenged them and they found out that their computer system was somehow removing the dates after we'd put them in.  My co-workers would thank me, I'm sure, if they had ever heard of me!  When you virtually commute, you don't know your co-workers, it's weird.  Anyway, during that time, they said that if there was any question about the date, if it was not dictated, that we should not assume the date of service and the date of dictation are the same, that we should leave it blank and send it to the editors to fill in.  So now we do that and now the latest thing is that we are sending too many reports to the editors and we must justify why we are sending things to them.  It goes on and on, but I'll spare you.  I sent them a report of all my blanks and the reasons for them last night (which I was not paid to do) and I thought about putting this P.S,

P.S.:  I haven't had a raise in 10 years.

But I didn't.   Actually, 10 years is how long I've been with them, other than my 2 month break a couple of years ago, which they may count in calculating how long I've been with them.  Anyway, you know that by harping on transcriptionists to justify blanks, they are encouraging us to be sloppier and guess at things that we cannot hear, for fear of losing our jobs in this tough economy. 

But enough about that.

I'm going to focus on the good.
1. We got a really cute outfit for my daughter last night.
2.  We have cupcakes.
3.  I still have a job.  :-/
4.  My daughter has to sing with me on my Easter special, because she got drafted too.  Ha!  That's what she gets for volunteering me.  :-P

Blah, blah, blah.

That's what I feel like today after listening to the same (very bad) physical therapist dictating all day long.  He pronounces words so badly that I have trouble differentiating things like core and quarter.  It is extremely frustrating.  Also, he has not dictated in about 6 weeks and is catching up, so there are a ton of them.   I am downloading right now and if there is another one of his, I will scream.  So brace yourselves.  I've had about all of this guy I can take.  Yes, for the most part I like my job.  I like the hours and the location, but sometimes it just frustrates me to no end.  Sigh.

I wish I could just be a stay at home mom instead of a work at home mom.

I need a break.

Vindicated.

I have been having this problem at work.  The company I work for said that I was sending reports through with the wrong dates on them.  Now I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good at checking the date.  I'll park my cursor there and wait until the doctor says the date and then I'll type it in.  Last week, I was fined 10 dollars by my company for putting the wrong dates on 5 reports.  The funny thing is though, the dates were correct on my end. The files that my computer keeps had all the correct dates on them.  No mistakes at all.  I send an email to my boss explaining that I didn't think that I had made these mistakes, but she dismissed it.  Then today I got an email again saying that I had messed up a date.  My husband was here and is very techy and we started discussing it.  He said that I could send them my file and a log/record from my computer to prove that I had not modified the file and I could prove I hadn't messed up.  So I sent another email explaining this, this time to the boss of my boss (who was the one who emailed me this time).  A few minutes later, someone called me and said they had a "glitch" and they'd pay me back my 10 bucks.  Yay!  It's not the 10 bucks so much as being believed.  You know?   Well, that and all the future 10 bucks.  It could have gotten expensive. 

Also while we were looking at this, I got a call and I won a 25 dollar gift card at the 4H fair yesterday.  Cool! 

Murphy's Law?

It's not been the best day.  Not terrible, just kind of annoying.  I got up feeling all dizzy and went to the doctor thinking I probably had an inner ear infection.  I had one maybe 6 months ago with the same symptoms and she treated it with an antibiotic and I got better.  This time, she only gave me an anti-dizziness pill.  Since my dizzy episodes only last about 5 minutes or less and this pill is for the symptom, not the underlying cause, I don't know that it's gonna help.  Then I came back home and had to finish work.  I had a particularly irritating, really, really long report ended up being 7 pages, single spaced typed and at the end, he said that he wasn't sure why he'd been consulted because this patient's problems were outside his specialty.  I still get paid for it, but otherwise, what a waste of time.  Then I took the kids to youth group, ran a bunch of errands, came home and spilled an entire gallon of tea when I was trying to get it out of the fridge.   The towels we used to clean it up are in the washing machine right now and I am going to relax quietly for 1 hour before bed.  Sigh.

Work, school and life lessons.

It's Friday and I wonder at how fast the weeks just zoom by.  I am not feeling great today due to a bruised tailbone and an aching neck, but I am working.  I pretty much never take a day off, but I would sure like to today.   It is surprising what physical demands a job like mine places on the body.   It's a strain, sitting and typing all day.  One of these days, I'm going to have to do something else.  Maybe soon. I'd kind of like to get a standing desk, but I'm not sure what I'd do about the foot pedal.  I use a foot pedal to play, rewind and fast forward the recorded dictations that I type.

The youngest kid got up this morning at 6:00 a.m., did all of his school work and then fell back to sleep on the couch.  Now he's got the afternoon off to do as he pleases.  The girl got up at noon, as usual (beauty sleep!) and is doing her school work now.  She's got a guitar lesson this afternoon.   Time management is one of the things they are learning, I suppose.  Her Dad took extra time with her this week on math and she's back up to speed and doing fine.

I learned a lesson on envy yesterday.  There's this woman I've met online whose life I have kind of envied.  They are wealthy.  They have traveled and adopted kids from overseas and were starting a nonprofit to help others. She seemed to me to have it all together.  Then yesterday she went public with something that gave me quite a shock and reminded me that no one's life is perfect and made me very thankful for the life that I have.

Perspective.     

I don't feel like it.

I'm going through one of my spaced out times.  I do this every now and again.  I feel like I'm just going through the motions here in a daze.  I feel like I work all the time.  Yesterday I got up at 9:00 a.m. and immediately started working.  I had a doctor's appointment at 2:30 for which I had to leave at 1:50, so I did that and got home around 4:30.  I did a quick visit to my mom since I hadn't seen her on Sunday as I planned, then came back home and started work.  I worked until 8:00 p.m. last night.  I realize that there is a significant gap in there, but from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. is the time that I had things to do that had to take precedence over everything else, the housework, meal prep, relaxing ... everything and therefore, it really felt that I worked for hours and hours and hours yesterday.  Today I hope to get done by 3:00.  My heart is really not in it though and this is not the kind of job where you can just kind of piddle around and wait for the hours to pass, you have to do the work and get the lines.  Period.  Sometimes I just don't feel like it.

In other news around here, craft fair prep is ongoing.  My daughter is making all kinds of things to sell at the homeschool kids craft fair.  I hope she does well this year.  This year I'm not really helping her at all.  Last year I gave suggestions and did some assembly of the simpler things for her, but this year, she's on her own.  She's making some really pretty scarves, hats and jewelry.

Thanksgiving is almost here.  It always comes before I am ready for it!

A book.

A long time ago when I started doing medical transcription, we used books to look things up (weird, I know) but then the internet came along and now I just look things up on the internet.  With Swagbucks, I even earn gift cards for looking things up.  I have to be careful that the information I am getting is from a reliable site, but I do okay this way.  So anyway, for several years I have been getting a card in the mail telling me that the copy of a certain medication reference has been reserved for me, and if I will just give them my credit card number, they will send it to me.  I've always ignored these.  This year, I actually received the book, not the card.  Then today, I received the bill for the book that I didn't order and didn't want - a bill for 94 dollars!   On the back of the invoice, there was a space for returns and it said that I could visit their web site to print out a shipping label and return the book.  Imagine my surprise when I found out that the shipping label said "affix proper postage here" instead of "postage will be paid by addressee".  Oh I was hopping mad.  I got on the website got into a live chat with a customer service representative and she was very nice.  She said that I could keep the book and that I would not have to pay for it.   Whew.  I guess heads will not have to roll after all.  :-P

Zipping along.

This month is zipping along very quickly.  It's already the 6th.  I finally ventured out today and got some groceries.  I haven't posted much this week because I've just been working and coughing and not much else.  Youngest son took 2 days off due to the cold.  Oldest son didn't get it very bad.  My daughter still hasn't gotten it yet.  She's probably waiting for next week so she can share the experience with Dad.  :-P   I hope the rest of the family can avoid it.  It's not the worst ever, but it's not fun either.   I did up my hours at work now that I am working at home and I had hoped that it wouldn't be all that bad, but it's been kind of awful.  I feel like I am always, always at work.  Today they are begging for someone to work, but I need to keep my days off as my days off or I will be always at work.  That's one of the hazards of working at home.  Funny, the kids are home-schooled and they never, ever are tempted to do school on a Sunday afternoon.  :-P

November already.

Yes, I know.  I always do this.  I can't believe how fast the time just goes by.  Anyway, it's November and we had a beautiful day today, but everyone at my house feels like they are coming down with a cold.  :-(  Oh well. It's that time of year after all.

I am kind of enjoying working at home again, although I'm not sure where I want to set up.  I used to work in the bedroom, but I kind of hate being separated from everyone for most of the day and sitting in a very dark corner with no view.  Right now I am working in the kitchen, which is good as far as lighting goes and handy for the phone and I can get up and load the dishwasher or cook while I'm waiting for work to download.  Also, I'm right near a major path in the house and 3 times today kids have stopped on their way by and hugged me.  I'm also within great nagging reminding range and I can tell the kids to get back to work on school work or to be quieter without getting up.  I think I might stay right here, but I'll need to come up with some way to make this area look neater.  Right now, it's a mess of computer cords, medical terminology books and various junk.  I also have my computer sitting right on the dining room table, which keeps anyone from sitting here and eating, so I might need to get some kind of rolling desk that I could push against the wall when I'm not using it.  I don't know exactly what I'm going to do yet. 

Today, we had a race to see who got done with work first, me or the kids and I won, even though I do a ton more work than they do.  It motivated them and we were all done by 4 o'clock this afternoon.

Tuesday.

We've got 4H today so that means I've got to rush and get my work done.  It's not easy today because I am very distractable.  I've looked at email and Pinterest and Facebook and done several searches for things I've just been wondering about while I'm supposed to be working.  I've noticed that the more difficult the report is, the more I tend to think about other things and get distracted.  I'd think it would be the other way around, that's what I do.  Right now I'm typing this blog post to avoid typing a cardiac catheterization report by a particularly difficult English-as-a-second-language physician.  At least one of my kids shares this trait with me.  I can tell if my youngest son is avoiding math or writing or something because he's doing anything and everything else.  He'll be happily playing with something - yesterday, he was beating up action figures with this big robot thingy he's got - and I'll ask him if he's done with school, that will snap him back to reality and he'll hang his head and say "no."  I know how this feels, but I don't have anyone over here looking over my shoulder and asking me if I'm getting my work done.  I kind of need someone.  I do have a supervisor out in California who looks at my end-of-the-day line count and makes sure I've got my contracted lines done, so that's something. 

A better day.

I guess it is.  It started out better.  I didn't drop anything in the toilet and that is always a plus.  I am at my mom's house working now and it is going okay.  I'm typing echocardiograms mostly.  My husband has a plan for fixing the Suburban and has ordered parts which we hope will arrive tomorrow.  I kind of hated missing the field trip yesterday, but at the same time, I didn't mind all that much since we've been to that same orchard several times before.  I looked at my blog posts from 3 years ago in October and I had mentioned going there and also we were reading the same read aloud book that we're reading now - Peter and the Secret of Rundoon, a funny coincidence.

I'm still debating whether to take a couple of days off from school later this week and call it fall break and do some fall cleaning and home maintenance.  I keep waiting to hope that I will feel better physically, that maybe my iron pills will kick in and I will be full of energy, but that has not happened yet.  

Thursday.

October is marching right along here, I tell you.  It's already what, the 6th?  Today's the day I had my echocardiogram and Holter monitor for the heart palpitations that are going on with my anemia.  It was interesting having the echo.  I type those things all the time, so it was kind of cool being on the other side of it.  I'm still wearing the monitor because that's a 24 hour thing and I have to turn it back in before work tomorrow morning.  

School's going fine.  The kids work very well on their own now.  My youngest sat last night and re-watched a bunch of biology videos from last year's biology study, because he just wanted to.  I love when they just decide to study something like that on their own.  My daughter has decided to do some quilting and make a quilt so she's been working on that and my oldest is working very hard on learning to play his new acoustic guitar that he got for his birthday.  He's been playing an electric guitar and this acoustic one is really giving his left arm a workout.

This month was supposed to be a month of cleaning, painting, weeding and other work on the house, but I haven't felt good and so we haven't started on any of it.  Maybe next week? 

Last Tuesday and This Tuesday.

Last Tuesday, we woke up in Birmingham and drove to Destin, Florida.  I kind of enjoyed this part of the ride because the view outside the windows was changing.  There were pine trees like the ones  I remember from my cousin's house in Georgia from visiting there when I was a kid, the ones with the long needles and big pine cones. We don't have those here, so I kind of felt like I was going down memory lane.  We stopped and bought some peaches but those were kind of disappointing, not as good as I remember fresh peaches from my childhood.  Soon after that, it seems, we started seeing palm trees.  My daughter had been so excited to see a palm tree IRL.  Finally, we reached the coast and the kids got to see the ocean for the first time.  The gulf coast at crystal beach did not disappoint.  It was beautiful.  They do not exaggerate when they say the crystal clear waters and the sugar white sands. 

Today, we've got 4H and we are going to make fall tea light lanterns out of jars and tissue paper.  I'm going to go to my mom's house to do my medical transcription work in a few minutes and hope that the kids get moving pretty early this morning so they can be done with school by 4H, which is at 3.  Yesterday, someone was still doing school work at 10 p.m.   So, we're back to real life now.  :-)

A little glimpse of my weekend.

I sincerely hope that you are having more fun!

Back to Work.

Today the kids have "play all day day" as my youngest calls it. We don't have to go anywhere and they can finally enjoy their Christmas presents without interuption. Their Dad and I have to go back to work. Joy.

Here are some messages I've gotten from my computer this morning, which will indicate how this morning is going so far.

Welcome. Enter password.
Start downloading information. Please wait ....
.........................................................................
Updates failed. Abort? Retry?
Abort.
Stand by. Turn off. Restart.
Restart. (wait while rebooting)
USB human interface device not recognized.
bong. bong. bong. bong. bong.
(unplug and replug USB human interface device about 5 times with no response)
(sigh)
Stand by. Turn off. Restart.
Restart. (wait while rebooting.)
This time the human interface USB device is recognized.
Welcome. Enter password.
swwooshhshhwwooshhhwoooshhh (sound of dial-up dialing up)
The connection to the server has failed.
Please wait ................................................................................
.............................

One hour and 21 minutes later, I start typing my first report of the day.
Then I get a phone call.
Then my 8-year-old walks in the room and orders a triple decker peanut butter sandwich. Apparently peanut butter is one of your more difficult sandwiches to make and he can't yet do it without tearing the bread.

Sigh.