“…for the most part the temperatures seem to have been warmer than normal. I’m not complaining because I hate the cold. I just hope that we’re not in for some rude awakening later this month or in January.”
The quote above was taken from a post that I wrote about a month ago. Mother Nature must have been taking notes, because she hit us with a one-two punch. According to the National Weather Service, Chicago had a total of 1.2 inches of snow for the entire month of December, with an average temperature of 39 degrees.
On Thursday, January 11th, Stacy snapped the below picture of our expected snowfall totals for a storm that was moving in overnight and lasting through Saturday.
Fortunately, we only received somewhere around 7 or 8 inches. I don’t think I have ever been so relieved to get 8 inches of snow. That was only about half of what they were expecting, so no complaints here. But Mother Nature wasn’t done with us yet. Right after she finished dumping a bit of snow on us, she decided to adjust her thermostat. This was the temperature at 11:00 am on Sunday morning:
Unfortunately for Stacy, she was scheduled to walk six dogs. She can’t just say, “nope, it’s too damn cold outside, I am not going out there!” The dogs (and their owners) depend on her. She bundled up in layers, took her face mask to cover as much of her skin as possible, and off she went. Although she is paid for walking the dogs, when it’s that cold outside, she tries to keep the walks as short as possible. Just long enough for them to go potty. Then she spends the rest of her paid time inside either playing with them or snuggling with them.
By now I’m sure you’re wondering about James and how he’s dealing with the cold. Well, they went back to school from Winter Break on Wednesday the 10th; they had a snow day on the 12th; they were off on Monday the 15th for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; and school was closed on the 16th because of the cold. So, he didn’t spend much time outside at all. He was at home nice and warm under the blanket that his one-on-one nurse got him for Christmas, watching TV and movies with mommy and Maggie.
She took one of the pictures from our fall photo shoot and turned it into a blanket. How nice is that? Here is the original picture:
You know, James has had three or four really good one-on-one school nurses over the past eleven or so years. They’ve gone above and beyond what we would expect and have taken care of James like he was their own child. The world needs more nurses like that. Scratch that…the world needs more people like that. It doesn’t matter what profession you’re in, or what your social status is, or the color of your skin, or anything else. The only thing that matters is that we’re all human. Can we all just start treating each other with kindness and respect?
Sorry, off on a bit of a tangent there. I just have one more thing to share…
That was what Walgreens was going to charge us for James’ first prescription refill of the year. That is for a one-month supply of one of his seizure meds. Almost $3,000 for a month. Almost $35,000 a year for just one of the meds that James takes. I’d be curious to find out what the total “retail” price is for all of his meds. Have prescription medications always been this expensive, or has big pharma been jacking up prices just because they can? At what point do we say enough is enough?
Notice that I said, “that was what Walgreens was going to charge us.” Stacy called Walgreens to see if they ran it under James’ secondary insurance, and they did not. Once they did, we didn’t owe anything. Thank God!
And that’s all I got for this month’s post. Hopefully I will have more in the next one.
