Peach Cobbler for Cody_K

This is the simplest recipe in the world. You need four medium peaches or three large peaches.
Peel and slice peaches

In a mixing bowl combine:
1 stick melted butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup flour
Mix well and pour contents into baking dish
Gently add sliced peaches evenly
Bake in 350 degree oven until golden brown.
(roughly 45 min, depending on oven)
Let cool on rack.
Serve warm with ice cream.
Yum!
Cody_K I ate your serving and enjoyed it for you. Your hips will thank me. My hips will hate you next time I get weighed at the doctors office.

It's Boob Squishing Time.

This morning I had a mammogram and a bone density test. I have no reason to suspect any problem, but this is part of the early warning system for a lot of women. If I still used the thing, I have my vagina looked into to too, but sadly, it no longer exists. It is true, if you don't use certain things they just close up shop, so to speak. Anyway, whether you use it or not, get your vagina checked out and you boobs squished and if you're old enough to be concerned about bone loss, or have had eating issues, get a bone density test. It's called preventative medicine. If your health insurance doesn't cover preventative tests, it's worthless.

I have medicare, so all this yearly checking, is part of how we keep healthcare costs down. Private insurance companies are all about making money on your healthcare. They know they're going to dump you when you get really really sick and finally need them, so why do preventative tests to catch costly illnesses early? You need to start thinking about this industry whose primary duty is to shareholders, so you can assess how good a job they do taking care of you. You need to examine the books. How much do they pay top executives? How do they come up with record profits year after year? How much do you pay them to deny coverage for your medical needs? Is it worth it?

Medicare does a very good job taking care of me. I've never had better healthcare coverage, and my last experience was with United HealthCare. I was paying them $1,000 a month so they could refuse to cover the specialists I needed to see to stay out of the hospital. Insurance companies don't like the sick.

I Want Some TARP

Jack Cafferty on Tom Delay's Dancing

Snark Alert!

"People are saying mean things about Health Insurance Companies."

Why Georgia

For my friends in Georgia. I woke up to news that Atlanta is under water. If Atlanta is under water, you, Lisa, Mathman and the spawn, and you, Kevin, might be having problems with rain water runoff and might be in trouble too. I hope you're fine, sitting high and dry. But just in case, I'll be thinking about you today. If you want to talk give me a call or look me up on twitter. I'll be here rewriting the novel or chatting on twitter.

Love,
Peggy

Outfoxed!

A Shout-Out For All You Right-Wing Values-Voting Rednecks

More Teabagger Insanity

My Healthcare Story and the Insurance Company That Bankrupted Me

United Healthcare was the insurance company I bought coverage from. I was considered contract labor so I had to provide my own healthcare. United Healthcare was the only insurance company providing coverage for individuals at the time I needed coverage, so they had a monopoly and could and did charge exorbitant rates. My coverage started at $325 a month one person and increased every four or five months. I got sick and needed tests. My insurance went up to $500 a month. I got a diagnosis they didn't like and my premium doubled. I couldn't afford $1,000 a month for coverage of just me. And every time they raised my rate they raised my copay and deductible. Every charge was denied and had to be fought. I couldn't work because I was too ill. I couldn't fight with my insurance company because I was too ill. I didn't have to money to keep paying $1,000 a month while refusing to cover anything. Then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and they dropped me. I was hospitalized for two weeks and put on four very expensive drugs. My only option then was to put medical charges on credit cards. I was late with a payment, my interest rate doubled. I got behind on making my minimum payments and the credit card companies came after me. After two years of struggling to make minimum payments while being called a deadbeat twenty times a day by the credit card companies I filed for bankruptcy. Finally I applied for disability. It took two years to get disability, but finally I had coverage for my medical treatments and prescriptions. Medicare has never questioned a test, or change of medication, or treatment by a specialist or a drug order. This is the public option I want for all of you

The Smoking Woman

Ms M takes a photoshop class and uses my photographs to experiment with. I heartily approve. This is now my new twitter avatar. And I think I want this hair-do back. I still have the lipstick. Now if only everyone would wear the proper filter I'll look just like this.

An Award From A Soul Sister

Right from the start I knew I was going to like her. With a name like Menopausal Stoner what's not to like. I was sure we could just sit down and start right up like we were such old friends we had real history that got us through the worst of times and made us want to share the best of times. She's my kind of broad. Yet how is it possible she lives on Park Avenue and I live in a State more backward than Texas and not half as fun? Where's the justice in that? I'm good in New York. Everybody loves me. But here, I'm the reclusive old woman who talks politics at the grocery store. Well, make that everywhere, since I do believe that everything is political and what better place to talk about Utah's horribly regressive tax on food. Yes, really, food!! In the land of big families, and I mean really big families. Where better than standing in line at the pharmacy to talk about healthcare reform to Mormon men picking up their viagra which their insurance covers, but not the twenty something's birth control just ahead of him in line. This is how I amuse myself in the land of Zion.

So she gives me an award called the Kreativ Blogger Award. Funny to me that I spent a good part of the evening talking about my bad spelling. I've tried so hard to learn the difference between bear and bare, between bate and bait. Why can't I remember these things? I so envy those of you who just know. Oh yes, I was taught somewhere along the line, but like most things that require certain kind of memory I just keep having to have them pointed out to me. I have blamed it on a type of dyslexia, but I'm not sure that's it. I know I'm not stupid, but those little errors mar my writing.

Anyway, to get back to the award, it comes to Menopausal Stoner from Liberality. I miss you Lib. I know, it's a two way street, but I have been neglectful of all of you, so don't take my absence as anything but preoccupation. I'm rewriting and wondering if I'll ever finish writing what was, last we talked about such things, Maggy. It is now, this month, The Narcissist. Is all this rewriting making it better or just an elaborate way to avoid writing a good query letter? Is all this talking just a way to avoid making a list? Oh who knows? Maybe I need the freedom to express myself in more than 140 characters. I have become a twitter junkie. Today I passed 700. A couple of weeks ago I had 349 followers, today 700. How addictive is that for a writer. Readers who converse with me about politic and other things, but mostly politics all day long. We are tweeting things before they've been reported in news stories. I am mastering the art of the retweet. Oh yes I am. Can't spell, but I can retweet.

Back to the list of things I love, but not about people. This should be a piece of cake.
I. I love cake. Dr Zaius and I have a special bond in our love of ice cream and cake. Also he comments on my poetry now and then. I especially love chocolate cake. I love devil's food cake. I love brownies with walnuts. And I always have ice cream in my freezer. The mark of a civilized woman is a well stocked bar plus cake and ice cream.

2. My dogs are the creatures I actually talk real spoken words to most days. They seem to understand me just fine. In fact I have better conversations and receive more appropriate responses with them than I did with any of my three husbands. The dogs are more honest.

3. My little house and the big house and the great yard. Yes, I bitch about them, but I love this sanctuary in the middle of the city. It's like a forest in here and very quite. And the minimal income I get from renting the big house makes it possible for me to eat. I do not have to leave home to toil for others. Don't hate me for this freedom. I earned it the hard way.

4. I love to hear the words "Payggy! Payggy! Can you come talk to us?" These words are spoken by the four year old and her twin brother who live next door. I know they are people, but still it's the little ritual we perform to keep in touch that I'm talking about, and so is really about words, my element. I have a fence that runs between our properties and just by my deck there is a tiny gate in the fence about two feet off the ground. It's like a window in the fence. They love it, and I listen to what they say as probably no other grown up does. They tell me things that someone needs to hear. So often parents and caregivers of small children get so tired and overwhelmed and overloaded that they don't really listen all that carefully. I'm like a grandmother who lives by herself, but can be summoned for a chat.

5. Twitter. Yes, I admit it, I love twitter. I love following 15 conversations at once. I was once quite good at a cocktail party. Only on twitter it's okay to talk about politic and religion. I saw TheMom there today. It's also easy to find any kind of network you desire: writers, agents, publishers. It's so easy.

6. I love blogging, though you wouldn't really know that lately. I'm not getting around much and twitter kind of ruined my comment style. I say it fast and in as few words as possible. I miss you. But blog reading is a real commitment. Twitter is a flirtation. Does this make me shallow? Perhaps, but I think Dr. Zaius would say anyone with cake and ice cream on hand all the time can't be that shallow.

7. I love the neighborhood I live in. It's quite chic for Salt Lake City. Good restaurants, an honest-to-god Art Theater. Nice shops. Good schools.

This next part is the hard part. I would like to give this to Freida, Dr Bee, but I'm not sure if it's okay to link to her. She's a bit undercover or was last I wasn't lost in twitter land. I'd also like to give it to Lisa, but she's too busy with real life at the moment. I'd like to give it to Vigilante but I've never seen him agree to this sort of self revelation. In fact most of you men think you're too serious to engage in memes. And since I've been absent as a visiter to most of your blogs I'd need to reintroduce myself. So I think I'll take this opportunity to give this to some the saints who follow my poetry with no encouragement at all. You can't imagine how surprised to find that I have followers on my poetry site.

1. I'm betting someone else got to Randal first, but if not, it's you Randal
2. Rusticana. I'm sorry it's take me this long to let you know how much I appreciate your interest in my poetry.
3. A.J., your site is gorgeous. It's a sensual feast. I highly recommend it.
4. Jang Chub-Ozer Who inspired a poem and has two of the most extraordinarily opposite blogs. Bogus Zen is my favorite, and that is the link here.
5. Kayleigh, who is going through hell right now and might enjoy a distraction.
6.Up4More who is one very incredible writer and who shows her inner world by showing us the real drama of the day to day.
7. Daryl is an artist who defies categories. She does a bit of everything and does it all with great style. You should follow her home.
8. EizzyK gave me one of my favorite awards--Humble Scrap. I loved it's workmanlike design. It's like a shingle I'd hang over my door. It came here from Uganda. I see it here and there in my travels, so it has fared well once passed from my hands.
9. JoJo is another woman I wrote a poem for but don't know how to contact except through my poetry. I'll try to contact her there. To my knowledge, she is not a blogger.

Even Hitler Hates Kanye West

Anderson Cooper Sucker Punches "Tea Party" Leader

Billionaires for Wealthcare

Thanks Fran, I needed this!

Let's Save The Status Quo

Stolen from No Blood For Hubris

Hitler Finds Out Michael Jackson Died

Hitler Finds Out Untied Breaks Guitars

Yes, I'm Still Here

I don't have burn out or any other loss of desire or time. I'm just working elsewhere. I've been rewriting the novel. It's an entirely new frame for the story. So much of the material is written, I still need to work on almost all of the chapters. I'm now doing that at the novel site. It is no longer called Maggy. It's now called The Narcissist. I'm begging for feedback so if you feel like reading, please let me know whether this is working or not.

I apologize again for not visiting you. For the time being the muse is with me, and I need to take advantage the opportunity to work with her again. I'll be back. If not here, I'll see you on twitter. Don't be shy.

Young Turks React to President's Speech