I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends

A little over a month ago I found out I had a tumor on my pituitary gland, and I had to have brain surgery to remove it. All kinds of things went through my mind when I was given this news, but one of the things that stressed me out the most was how much was this going to cost, not just medically but how much income would I lose? Today I got a partial answer to that question. First a little background: I am still at home and will be until 11/30/15. If you're doing the math, that's over a month away from work. Not to bore you with too many facts, but this length of time requires me to go on Short Term Disability (STD) Most STD plans work in similar ways. You must go through a waiting period before it can even start. Even when mine starts I will only be paid 2/3 of my salary. My waiting period is 14 days. Even using all of my vacation and sick time, I do not have enough to even cover the waiting period in order to be paid for all the time off. Add to that what I found out Monday. CIGNA has not yet approved my STD claim. Translation: I'm not getting paid for anything but the 42 some odd hours of time that I had. Today when I got paid my pay was $500.00 short. I don't know many people who could handle being shorted $500.00 in their pay. I certainly can't. Now, not to worry yet, once they decide that brain surgery is valid to be off from work, the pay will be retroactive, but bills are due when bills are due. When all of this overwhelming news came through to my little family of 3, my sweet girl, Georgi, started a GoFundme page, and my other sweet girl spread the word. We were all blown away as we watched the $20,000 goal grow so quickly to $10,000. Friends and family sent us money in the mail. All out of the goodness of their hearts and with love. That's what it's about....LOVE! I felt like some people may have been judgemental about asking for help. Why? A very good friend of mine said it best, "You only have to ask family once." I am not kidding when I say this. We could not have survived without that money, pure and simple. So, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!! I wanted to use the Beatle lyric as a title, but it wasn't a little help, it was a LOT! I have no idea what will happen in the next weeks. I am relatively sure that my claim will be approved, but nothing is certain. I am surviving because of all of you! I am overwhelmed! I love you all!

First, Let Me Take a Selfie

Last week at my daughter's baccalaureate service, one of the speakers addressed the issue of technology in his speech. He talked about the fact that 30 years ago when he graduated high school, there were no iPads, no iPods, no Internet, and no cellphones. He then made a joke with the last item listed that without cellphones there were no "selfies." Now, I am the first one to admit that I am definitely challenged in the selfie taking department, my girls, however are experts. But, as bad as I am at taking them, I wish I had had the technology to do so when I was in high school or all through my childhood for that matter. Why? Today is Father's Day, and I lost my dad almost 7 years ago. I wanted to post a picture on Facebook of me and my dad together, and found I really don't have that many pictures of Daddy and me together, even the old fashioned kind that had to be taken somewhere to be developed. My dad was not in front of the camera a lot. I guess a lot of that falls on the fact that he was probably the photographer most of the time when I was growing up. The few pictures that I do have of my family of 4 (Me, my sister, my mom and my dad) are when I am much older and usually taken at weddings like the one I included with this post. That makes me sad. My dad was a very handsome man, and I treasure the pictures I do have of him especially since he's gone. I am extremely grateful to have several pictures of my dad with my girls. And more so that they have the memories to go along with those pictures. Even though we lost daddy way too soon, my girls had the opportunity to really get to know and love him. When they look at pictures of themselves with their Papa, they remember, and it isn't just some picture that someone has told them, that's you and your grandpa. I think about my dad today and how much he would have loved the technology of today and really gotten into it. He would have marveled at the speed of being able to obtain knowledge in a matter of seconds at your fingertips with the touch of a button. Truth be told, he probably had the idea in his head for some of the technologies we enjoy today as he was always inventing, he just never took it to the next level. I miss him, and his crosswords, and his Reader's Digest, and his vocab quizzes and his Jumble. I miss our conversations, even our heated ones, and I really miss his laugh! Just recently I found an old cassette tape that was recorded about 40 years ago, and I can hear my dad laughing on it. That was something I'd forgotten the sound of. I was amazed just how much my laugh sounds like his. Happy Father's Day, daddy! I wish you were here to take a selfie of us laughing together.

Johnny Mein

I am 1 of 4 grandchildren, 3 girls, 1 boy. We are like stair steps in age, and I am the baby. The step above me was my cousin John. We were only 6 months apart, and consequently, we were very close. He was the closest thing I had to a brother. He and his sister lived in a town called Seaford, VA just outside of Hampton, VA, so we didn't see each other every day, but we spent every holiday and at least a week in the summer when we were little at one of our houses. When we were elementary age, our visits were spent playing hide and seek, swimming in the pool at his house, making plastic bugs out of goop or sprinkling Nestle Quick on Vanilla Ice cream to create our own special treat. As we grew up to the middle school years and he would come to visit, We listened to the radio together waiting for our favorite songs so we could tape them on a cassette tape. At that time, John wanted to be a deejay, and he would take those cassette tapes and put in his own radio voice over. His radio persona was "Johnny Mein" (pronounced MINE) and I loved listening to those tapes. He had a great sense of humor, and we loved being crazy together. I'll never forget one summer we were listening to the radio, and in those days, the deejays would ask a trivia question for a prize. The question was, "Who played Jackie Robinson in the Jackie Robinson story?" John looked at me and said, "I'm gonna call and say, 'Jackie Robinson'" He meant it as a joke. To his shock the answer was right, and he won tickets to the movies. He loved sports and played just about all of them starting with the Pee Wee leagues right up into his high school days. Those days were when we grew the closest. Our favorite songs back then were "My Sharona" by The Knack, "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen (ironically I think John resembled Springsteen in his early days) and "Bad Case of Lovin' You" by Robert Palmer. We would belt them out in his navy blue '68 Mustang, and he would always yell, "1,2,3,4" just before we would both tear into "Doctor, Doctor, gimme the news..." He spent the week at the beach with my family more than once, and we were always partners for Password against my mom and dad. I don't remember whether we won or lost, but I do remember that we laughed...A LOT! He called me "Tree" My name is Terri and he was playing around one day, and pronounced it [tuh - ree] then said it quickly like that and it sounded like Tree. It stuck, and he called me that from then on. In the past several years we haven't really been in touch with each other. Life kind of got in the way. My sister called today to tell me that John died this morning from a heart attack. I was shocked.  He just turned 50 two weeks ago. I know he will be missed, especially by his 6 children. It made me think today how very precious time is, and we should never waste a day because we never know how many more we will have. Rest in Peace, cousin, and thanks for the memories!