Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Betel Nut Chew?

I saved this on my phone a while ago.  Maybe I am turning into the cat lady.  Probably not, I only have two cats.  I think cat lady status happens at about 4 or 5, so I have a few more to go.
With all the recent stuff that has happened with purr bucket, Jager, it's going to be a while before we get any other animals.  I have a vet bill I have to pay.  Plus all his kitten shots are coming up next week.
Just hanging out in the boys room.  It's all cleaned out and Jager is loving the extra space to run and be crazy.  This picture exhibits the many chins I have.  I actually have a running joke with one of our derby photographers about the many chins.  He didn't start it, I did.  We always try to capture as many chins as we can on camera.  The helmet strap really helps to create more chins.
Tanner and I made a meal from Hello Fresh last night.
It was the Crispy Cheddar Frico Cheeseburger and it was
delicious.  He made brownies for us for dessert.  Hello Fresh sent us the cutest
little ketchup, I had to get a picture of it.
And yes, Maggie cat is hanging out on the counter.  That's her place.

Alli had her school nurse call me because she had a rash on her face.  The school nurse thought it was poison ivy.  I had Alli send me pictures and after I saw them it looked like contact dermatitis.  That's what I told the nurse.  Alli had her stepmom come pick her up.  The school nurse told her she needed to go to the doctor immediately because she believed she had poison ivy in her eye.  Sigh.  Her stepmom took her to urgent care and guess what it was.......contact dermatitis!  Alli got some steroid cream and an antihistamine.  I have all that stuff at home, but it's okay to have extra.    I wish the nurse would have listened to me though......and not freaked out her stepmom.
Now, I just need to figure out what Alli got in to.

Work has been work.  I've had to explain Medicaid to a lot of elderly clients and they don't understand.  We try multiple ways to explain.  The Medicaid program is difficult to understand anyway.  If an elderly client has any income other than social security, they have a spend down (like a premium) that is pretty much impossible to deal with. For some reason, the state believes people can live off of $855 a month and all the other income is supposed to go to medical expenses.  I'm not going to get into how the whole Medicaid system is so screwy with policies.  It's very frustrating, even for those of us that work with the programs.

Twenty-two percent of our clients are non-English speakers and no they are not Spanish speakers.  We have a lot of Somali, Nepali, Burmese, Karen, Vietnamese, Kinyarwandans and Swahili.
The Burmese people are who I want to talk about.  They almost always have red mouths and their saliva and teeth are red and red coming out of their mouths.  It actually makes me quite sick to my stomach with the spit and the smell of it.  I looked up what it was and found an interesting article. 
I'm all for culture diversity, but I don't think I could try this custom out.
I couldn't look at a client yesterday because he had such a big wad of it in his mouth and was drooling.  I do not have a weak stomach, but spit and vomit just turn it.
What cultural customs of others can you not get around?




3 comments:

  1. Like your kitties - and yes Vet bills are expensive, very expensive.

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  2. Morgan,

    Thanks for visiting today. It's nice meeting you and your chins....I mean cats. lol Seriously, you shouldn't have started the double chin thing. Who wants to be reminded of them anywho? I used to tease my mom about hers when I was a kid. She was such a trooper and never minded. I try to not to show mine off. :) Speaking of vet bills and pets, it's really expensive to keep animals. I don't have any and I don't think I can afford to after reading about the woes of pet owners. I'd love to have a kitten or two, maybe a dog. I guess I'll have admire them from afar.

    Insurance is crazy for anyone but gee non-English speaking people must have very difficult time making heads and tails out of the system. I know every time I have an issue with my insurance carrier I just roll my eyes thinking if it's hard on me, what about the poor folks who are more ignorant than me. I don't have a weak stomach generally either but the description of the Burmese people sounds rather gross.

    Gotta jet, have a good evening. I hope the daughter is doing better soon from her dermatitis. That's so aggravating, isn't it?

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  3. Blecch, I'd never heard of betel nut chew. I checked out the article link and then made the mistake of googling images!
    Weird the school nurse thought Alli had gotten into poison ivy - unless there's a lot of it around. Contact dermatitis seems a lot more probable.
    Chin(s) up! The kitty's on the mend ;)

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