$$$$$ The Real Medical Bill

 It only took four months to get here. That's how long since my first shoulder replacement surgery with one night in the hospital, until seeing an actual itemized hard copy of the hospital bill. It has helped me make a decision.

I've been on Medicare since the day I turned 65, which was a good bit of planning ahead since - unknowing while I made the arrangements over the phone ahead of time - that was the same day my heart landed me in the hospital, the beginning of a long series of hospitalizations for various procedures. Since that time I've gotten 2-page quarterly mailings, listing my medial charges, how much of those Medicare actually allowed me to be charged for, how much they cover of that, and what the balance is. Within a year I signed up for Supplement F, a second plan which covers all the rest of the costs for what happens. It's not cheap, and I've watched its monthly cost creep up, but I was promised a deal, since I signed up so early, of a total cap on the price tag. It is nicknamed "Cadillac insurance", both because it covers pretty much everything else, and it's a bit high priced. It's also no longer offered to new retirees, in lieu of other supplemental plans which cover less, but remains available to those of us who signed up for it years back, so long as we pay the premiums and continue breathing. We're "grandfathered in" if we so choose.

Medical service providers, for those who don't know, get a carrot and a stick if they agree to take patients on Medicare. There is a limit to what can be charged per procedure. But they get paid reliably and promptly. The upside is lots of patients for whom they get paid promptly. Other insurance plans are notorious for fighting charges, and IF finally approved, paying really late. Even after that, the Docs have to wait for further payment from the patients themselves. It can be a long slow trickle, taking up lots of staff hours pursuing payment, and can even include legal costs. Most accept Medicare patients because overall it is to their financial benefit.

Lately I have been wondering if it was worth keeping my supplement F coverage. Was the monthly bill still worth it? The heart's all fixed except for replacing a pacemaker battery, estimated in three more years. The knees were replaced and doing well. The Type 2 Diabetes is well controlled by diet alone. As I put it to others, all the bad spare parts have been removed and the needed ones replaced. Of course, I said that before finding out what shape my shoulders were in while simultaneously finding out just how necessary to quality of life they were. Or discovering what living on NSAIDS for several decades can do to a pancreas.

The bill/report came in a packet of individual pages so thick that I somehow thought I had been sent one of those booklets detailing what is covered and not, like one gets after the annual insurance sign up reminding you of rules and coverage and how to access benefits. Usually that's a full magazine! Steve's annual new insurance plans come like that. My quarterly statements tend to be two or three pages, including one listing all the languages this could be sent to you in, many of which I'd never heard of until those statements. Nearly all the time I pay nothing more, unless somebody in a medical office makes a coding error. Then we have a chat, their office and I. Last time it happened, my annual exam got scheduled 3 days early and I was stuck with about $500! They need to be 366 days apart at least. Visits in between need a different reason, and apparently you can't go back and relabel the bill to Medicare. Their first reaction isn't that it was a mistake. They think fraud.

I started going through the pages, curious about pricing as well as checking coverage. The first item was the hospital stay, one overnight: $60,000! All the numbers are followed by what Medicare allows to be charged, what got paid, what was sent to the Supplement F folks and paid. Finally there's a line of how much I might still owe. That's routinely zeros. I was still in shock over just the hospital costs this time. The surgeon was an extra cost from the hospital, along with the PT, the OT making sure I could take care of myself once home, the meds and supplies used during surgery, separate from those given me in my room, all separate from those sent home with me so I didn't need to hit my own pharmacy before I had access to, for example, the narcotic I already held 30 pills of in my hand. Of course the single allowed refill of that would be from my own pharmacy, and as usual would need to be called in and picked up after signing for. (I didn't bother to refill it.) Those were just costs from that surgery. All other medical costs for a quarter year filled up the rest of the sheets, except for pharmacy, dealt with at the pharmacy per visit per usual.

Of all those things, I owed a bit for the meds I took home since they did not come from the pharmacy my Part D required. I plan this next time to refuse the ones I don't/won't be using, like Tylenol. I still have parts of two bottles! These days I only take it for pain from the second shoulder, presumably to be fixed post surgery and post PT. It's worked that way on the first shoulder, though still helpful while muscles are getting stretched into new positions, and maybe at bedtime when I roll over onto a shoulder in my sleep, waking me up.

I discovered that the PT I had been doing after my arm was out of the sling was not paid for by anybody. Medicare didn't allow it! For whatever reason they were not allowed to charge me for it either! So now I feel guilty about all those weekly visits working to get it back into usable shape. The staff there are such nice people! I had inquired once months earlier after needing to cancel one visit whether that cut into my therapist's income if they couldn't fill the slot, even despite the usual need to make appointments four weeks ahead. She informed me that she was paid on an hourly basis, so cancellations didn't cut into her income. I'd felt better from knowing that after one icy day when nearly all patients cancelled last minute due to roads, especially since I was one of them. But if nobody is paying for me going there, how do they get paid? Should I feel guilty for going there, especially since I plan to go again this summer after the other shoulder? After all I know the exercises and could do it at home.

(As a side note, my therapist and I had long chats during the PT. Once you get directions for what to do and are simply repeating a movement a number of times, it can get boring otherwise. So we discussed gardening, among other things, something both of us do. Her garden is much larger, and she likes many of the same flowers I do. But it turns out I have a lot more color varieties in some plants she likes. I promised when my two purple daylilies bloom again so I can tell which are which, I'd get her one of each, a Grapette and a Nosferatu, one short, one tall. Both came over from Paul's house last year  from where I'd planted them several years earlier. They can use thinning occasionally anyway. Hey, I brought some balloon flower seeds into their office a couple weeks back and the staff all wanted to share. Since there were a couple hundred tiny little things, I trusted them to leave some for my therapist, and later heard they had. So.... maybe not too guilty about my insurance not paying.) Still....

As for that decision, I had been wondering if it was still worth it to carry my "Cadillac" policy. I'd never gotten such a complete listing of my medical expenses. Had I listed them here we'd still only be on page 3. As I said, there were many more pages, and I was only on the hock for some pills, which I promptly paid. I still have the same thing, opposite side, coming up, next week in fact, as well as a couple diagnostics my Primary doc still wants me to catch up with. (I will after mobility returns. Who wants a mammogram requiring one to lift arms way high, before the surgery that makes that bearable?) And who knows what might be next? Now that I have some hard numbers, you can be assured the extra coverage will remain on the monthly bills list.

I do still wonder what those 4 days in the hospital for our "vacation"on the North Shore last summer would have cost. Never did see a summary bill, telling me I owe nothing, all was covered. Having seen this one, I'm not in a big hurry to ask.

Thoughts On Health On A Cruise Ship

I have been on one. Overall it was fantastic. The experience was a gift to me from my mother-in-law, a retired teacher/librarian who spent her healthy retirement years traveling the globe. We'd routinely get small presents as souvenirs of the places she'd been, like carved ebony from a trip to Africa, tiny baskets woven from pine needles from a visit to the Copper Canyon, small framed needlework from China from a trip including a visit to the Great Wall. As a retired teacher she had access to group travel discounts, and was blessed with fairly good health until extreme old age.

One of her trips was a combination cruise/land trip in Alaska. She had planned to share the experience with a friend but that woman became ill and had to cancel. She invited me to accompany her instead. I actually had to think about it! At the time I was divorced from her son, working a low paying job, not getting child support for three kids, and couldn't figure out how to afford it even with her paying all my trip expenses. My parents stepped up in taking care of the kids, I scheduled the vacation, and wound up with the experience of my life! We flew into Fairbanks, and did land activities as a large group from there to Seward, boarded a cruise ship, and enjoyed some kind of off-ship expedition at every port stop until Vancouver, when a bus took us across the border to the Seattle airport to fly home.

I had little in the way of properly thanking her, until I got my pictures developed. Yes, digital cameras were newly available but I had a Pentax K1000, budgeted buying 36 rolls of 36 exposure film, somehow managed to afford developing them all before Christmas that year. I divided them into two piles of nearly identical photos, split each half into a photo album, and gave her one for Christmas to enjoy our trip over again as many times as she wished.

That is my one experience with a cruise. The cruise line was Holland America, the ships were enormous, and the only illness we heard about was when a couple members of our group became a bit seasick after a couple days when winds created barely perceptible motion on the ship. Mostly the route was along the inside passage, so it was actually quite sheltered from waves.  Knowing I had gotten seasick as a young teen on a family trip along the west coast including being out on a small fishing boat (caught a small shark instead of the wanted tuna), I'd started the ocean part of the trip with medication to prevent a repeat of that misery, and had my sea legs by the time any waves kicked up. I was fine.

This was long before anybody heard about the norovirus. Years later when my best friend and her husband took a cruise west coast to east via the Panama Canal their trip was made miserable by that, a combination of cabin quarantining and sick guts for days. It became common in the news, and even if I could afford such a trip, I decided it was not my choice to go on any cruise again. Occasionally one hears about it again, often enough to confirm my choice. 

When covid made the news, keeping ships offshore until somebody decided passengers could finally leave, I was simply confirmed in the wisdom of my decision. As a snowbird, travel was limited to automobile and either motels or family visits. The first year vaccinations were available, national parks were all but deserted and photography opportunities were exceptional. Covid is still with us, but so is norovirus, occasionally making the news for plaguing cruise ships. I still treasure the experience, but with no plans or wish to repeat it.

Now there's hanta virus reported on cruise ships. Everybody acts shocked by such an unlikely thing. 

Unlikely? Seriously?

We all heard about hanta long ago, spread by rodents in the dry desert southwest. It wasn't reported in rainy climates, or if it was, no longer made headlines. We  knew how to treat it... most times. It could still be a killer. But it was "over there," not "around here." True, cruise ships are in wet areas, if that is the only consideration.  But rodents? On the ocean?

Apparently everybody has forgotten our history. From the time humans set sail their ships were plagued with rodents, aka rats. I use "plagued" advisedly, since they literally spread plague from port to port, carrying fleas everywhere they went. I also have a friend whose ancestors came to America long ago in a rat-filled ship and "lost" all their children to rats. They managed to restart their family once on land and were able to work their farm in central Minnesota.  We want to believe we've "fixed" that rat problem. But we happen to be a pretty arrogant species. Perhaps it's time to start keeping cats on board ships again, eh? Not the spoiled ones overfed on special kibbble, but the proven hunters. 

Or at least until somebody comes up with a hanta vaccine and people aren't too stupid to take it.

Happy Mother's Day!

 To all of you mothers out there who visit my blog, whether or not you celebrate Mother's Day on this particular date that America set aside for it or not, whether you still have a mother to share these with or not any longer, I wish you the best for this day. 

 

A bit of history from my personal perspective: it was designated as such back in 1914 to fall on the second Sunday in May. That happened to be the 10th. The reason I will always know that as long as I can still keep track of any kind of a date is that a particular woman, Jane Elizabeth Maxson, gave birth for the 7th (?) time on that particular day... to my father, John Dufty Maxson. It just happens that once again it rolls around to the tenth of May.

I thought I'd send you all, whether you celebrate or not, whether you be mothers or not, some flowers, all of which have meaning to me, since at one time or another I had a hand in planting or growing them, and of course in shooting each picture.

May these give you as much pleasure as they have to me over the years... and still do, thanks to a camera. I don't still live in all the places these were shot. But I can carry these around with me wherever I go, and share with whomever can appreciate them. The critters some of them come with today are long since dust, but still yours - and mine - to find.

Crex In Early May

 May the 4th be with you. Of course, that was yesterday, but it was a busy day, starting with checking on the possible need for a building permit for some specific repairs (no), waving at local union strikers, getting my super-short haircut before upcoming surgery when I won't be messing with it for a few weeks, and getting my spring oil change. OK, clowns, the car's oil change!

In the middle of all that I took a friend up to Crex to check out which critters had returned, what changes had been made since last time, and just taking a few hours to relax. I drove, she made lunch: chicken salad on a bun, swapping some kind of tater topper for boring mayo. Yummy!

Our first stop, as always, was the information center. It's always good to talk with staff and find out what's unique this day, as well as hit the restrooms before a couple hours without any access to them. Photos were different from last month's visit, of course,  with different cloud cover, high winds most of this visit, roadsides starting to sprout the tall grasses soon to lower visibility of water birds, and a very recent controlled burn of the oaks sprouting up so the needed prairie/marsh habitat could be maintained. It needs to be stable for certain birds, including my favorites sandhills,  among others, and an increasingly rare butterfly, the Karner blue. (No. I've never seen one.)

First stop was behind the information center, where a path and bridge always frame a different mood.  Mostly I love fall shots here. High summer turns the water surface green and mostly non-reflective. This day the water surface was clear and reflective, showing much of the cloud formations overhead. Ripples in the water were the most different this time, not just for their strong presence, but because the wind was moving them west to east. The stream runs east to west. A video - could I put one in here- would make you think it was two different locations. I'm not that tech savvy...yet. Maybe in a different life? Hey, I only recently found the trick to inserting a photo, needing to insert it between lines of text instead of just text ahead of it and empty space below. And even then it was an accident.

If the background isn't unusual enough to make the photo, sometimes just the water is. 

Somehow I never use the energy to follow the path in the first photo as far as it goes. I save it for driving and shooting as much of the rest of the 30,000 acres as I can, and by the time I near the end I'm both out of energy and time for the day. Or maybe just hungry and needing to pee? TMI. This view is always different, from the vegetation to the water, and I try to catch as much variety as I can before the block walk back to the car.

Weather can make a ho hum photo different, if one takes a second to look when weather doesn't seem to even be a factor, even if it includes a very boringly common pair of birds as the assumed subject, Canada geese. It's not the sky reflections that give this water its color. It's the fact that this little pond has been so churned up by the wind that the water is all a creamy orange tint, visibly impenetrable with the mud churned up. Ripples try to reflect sky, at least for the camera, while the naked eyes just catch the muddiness. The color lines up on either side of the wave ridge as each has different sky it faces.

Out on dry land, in the neighborhood of Dikes 4 and 5, there were clumps of sandhills hunting for whatever they can eat, which, being omnivorous, is practically everything. Most are too far from the car for my zoom, but we counted perhaps 40 in this general location, after having already passed pairs here and there and widely scattered clumps. Photos with a better bird count swap birds for dots: pointless pictures. You will notice browns and greys in their coloration, an indication of how much of which color dirt they had preened through their feathers to rid themselves of hungry mini hitchhikers before settling on a nest. Those we that did see nesting were so brown that one was actually mistaken for a deer in tall grass with her fawn, until its head poked up from the grasses. Yes, they are that big.

I did mention locations in the refuge by the number of a dike. The water levels are managed over the years by opening and closing the dikes at junctions with streams. Occasionally an entire area is allowed to drain almost completely, while other places are flooded as much as the weather and a pumping system allow. I asked once in my early visits why that happened. Phantom Lake that year was mostly mud, with sandhills strolling around where lake had been. Not that I minded the sandhills, but usually it's full of geese, swans, loons, ducks, and so forth. Even occasional strays arrive for a bit, like an ibis one year, while everybody with a tripod supporting a huge lens clogs all the shore space around for unrepeatable shots. That dry summer there were eagles, herons, and ospreys strolling through the mud or perched on branches formerly underwater. I was told the purpose was basically a change of habitat, mimicking natural processes  when nature doesn't cooperate. Apparently the same old same old for too many years isn't healthy enough for the variety of plants and critters needed in the long term.

That's why this sight  surprised but didn't shock me when I saw it. In early April it was a well flooded lake with beavers moving in. Most of the area trumpeter swans have collected there the last couple years, enough off the beaten path though managed by Crex, that numbers were way down in the usual locations. As such a big draw, especially with cygnets in tow, I expect numbers of visitors were down, meaning donations were also down.  This is the view yesterday morning from Grettum Dike Road, a few miles south of Grantsburg, and west of the highway. Strips of water remain, mud flats stick up here and there. Most years it's been solid blue water plus rushes from next to the dike road to the trees way in the background, with the swans way back against the trees, little white dots on the landscape, so far away that nothing entices photographers to show up. The two beaver lodges I saw last month were missing. Water was still flowing rapidly out of the lake to the point where a usual blue heron hangout across the road and lower, a stub of land where a gentle stream curved where it could stand eying passing small fish for its next meal, was flooded and washing out. No heron in sight. That was a dependable photo op. I'll have to be checking back later. I've seen deer watering there as well.

You might think those relatively close large white birds are the swans still choosing to be here and be closer to the road. It may be hard to tell the shape is wrong, the bellies too thin, the necks too short. As more birds flew over, some settling in, some passing, I didn't manage to get much of a decent shot of the several I tried for. Once cropped it was easier to know what they were, even more so when I had to turn the car around a bit down the road where a nicely filled pond exploded around me in startled birds, white, black, and pinks, chaotically filling and setting off the clear blue of the sky to the northwest at that moment. Actively driving through that turn, I had no chance to capture them, a major disappointment. I memorized in my mind the image missed forever, grieving the lost chance as I drove on.

I had to wait for my laptop at home to do some severe cropping of the best of the earlier shots to capture a few of the hundreds or so, now identified as pelicans which were formerly strangers to this part of the refuge.  I'm not going to argue the dike system of property management Crex uses. 

I will be heading back to try to locate breeding swans, however. Maybe next month when I'm legal to drive again and Steve is more independent after his surgery. Ever notice how things flip after retirement? Before, you have bosses who pay you for things needing to get done. Afterwards, we pay the docs for things needing to get done.

Why Haven't I Read These?

 In the move two years ago we went through the entire home library, three walls of shelves floor to ceiling (or window in one case) and sorted out the ones to keep from the ones for a garage sale or donation. There were boxes and boxes of them packed up for the move, though they turned out to be a minor fraction of the books we had collected through the years. Mostly I selected by author: who did I want to read again and again, especially when they wrote with a continuing character or set of characters. If I hadn't gotten bored with the author, often by a character's failure for any personal growth however badly needed, as did happen, the books were packed for the trip north. The unpacking took a while, not just from higher priority items topping the to-do list for sheer comfort and practicality of setting up a new home, but also because the old shelves had been built in, so left in place as part of the home. Buying new shelves was something put on the back burner with all the other needs of a major move.

Eventually we purchased a new shelf unit once we had our furniture arranged in new spaces and could tell what we needed that could fit what space was left. Most of the shelves had books crammed in them until they were hidden behind a front layer of books, either by the same author or by the same topic. There they sat.

For those following this, you are aware it's been a very inactive winter for us. It's been a fairly boring one in terms of TV offerings as well, with many favorites getting discontinued, a plethora of new sitcoms trying to impress us with stupidity as something funny (epic fail in this family), and a super-abundance of sports programs spoiling the way our timers were set to record the shows we have enjoyed watching. We still get timers that are supposed to adjust for actual air times but pick former times to record, or even when the timer starts later the sport program delaying their start lasts even longer than planned. Who cares about half a program when it's a mystery and you want to find out who-dun-it and that last half is lost unless it pops up in reruns... if the DVR system even records reruns, or the program hasn't been replaced by something else for the summer, some breaking news, or permanently?

Back to the library then. Pick a favorite author, dig out a list online showing what order the books were written in, save the list, rearrange the books to match, and start plowing through from the beginning. One such set is the Hillermans' series, started by Tony and continued after his death by his daughter Anne. If you get the right TV channels, you can find newer stories (to us, not the timeline as they go back before the books started) under the title "Dark Winds". There are deviations from some of the characters' story lines from the books, some cultural mores lost, but they're still enjoyable, and a great encouragement to dig back into the books, in order written of course.

Another favorite set of books (with no TV spin off that I'm aware of) are by Dana Stabenow, mysteries set in Alaska, with Kate Shugack as the primary character, Mutt as her loyal dog/wolf hybrid,  protector & problem solver with her sharp nose and teeth, together in a community of continuing characters throughout the series... with the caveat that some die. They are set over a number of years, have some elder characters, and even without a crime or mystery, old folks do what all old folks eventually do. Every death has repercussions of course, from needing to solve a mystery, or learn history of the area and how it made them who they were, or the story of how those left behind need to heal and adjust... or don't. The mysteries change in every book as do the people dealing with them, and I highly recommend these to those who haven't had the pleasure of reading Stabenow yet. If you can, read them in order. I've read the first 20, and still find some parts of them hilarious, especially "Breakup" where certain logical consequences are unforgettable.

What surprised me in going through them this time was finding several books I had managed to collect but never read. I don't know how that happened, but it turned out to be a gift! For a few weeks there were new Stabenows to discover. I know it wasn't that I'd read them and forgotten them, which can be easy enough with a lot of authors. But there was new-to-me history, new characters, different slices of subsistence culture I'd no familiarity with, changing challenges as traditions warred with western ideas of progress. And with mysteries the second run through, I usually know what the ending is in general terms, and along the way there recall who might have a baby or moved or found a new romance or a new career. For several books there were none of those familiar hints I'd been here before.

Today I ran out of her books. It's not that she stopped writing, it's somehow that I stopped buying. I looked at the book list I'd printed out.  I ran out with 6 left to go, to date anyway. I could hit her science fiction books, I also owned,  remembering I enjoyed them, but DARN IT! I was in this series and want to finish what is available.

OK, then: eBay! I looked up the missing titles, found and ordered them, and should have deliveries in a week or so. I won't read any till each is the very next one in order and in my hands. I promise! There is one new one this year I didn't order yet because I prefer the prices of gently used books. I will also have to look up another of her Alaska series with a different main character, but first have to decide where on earth those can be housed, or whether to just hit the library, put in requests and wait weeks for each next one to become available. Besides I could dig back into James Doss, or Rich Curtin, or see if Spider Robinson still holds the same appeal of decades ago.

I should have lots of time in the next few months for sitting and reading, despite already making some new changes in my small gardens. I'll still be able to pull a hose around in dry spells, pick up leaves blowing through, and bend over to pull some of the weeds out. I'm not sure yet about follow through on cutting back the huge blossom clumps on a couple bushes that invariably flop in a storm and stay bent till fall because some idiot bred that variety for flowers too big for their branches. The idea of cutting the huge ball of petals in half before they reach full size is easy. The need to reach up 6 feet to do so in time to make a difference so soon after my second new shoulder is daunting. Calling it a new variety of PT just won't make it any more likely to be successful this year. Maybe ask for help? Though the prime helper will be building a new set of stairs plus the replacement porch they attach to, since the furnace installation broke the anchor point keeping the railing sturdy and safe.

 I'll probably personally settle for reaching down to plant, relocate, and weed between ground level flowers - meaning the rest of my gardens - being more possible. I did just pull a dozen weeds and plant two pots of red tulips  - Steve's favorites - in a new spot earlier today, where Steve doesn't have to try to walk over uneven ground to the far end of our place to be able to even see them but simply step out on the front porch. Last year's planted red tulips, also blooming right now though much bigger than the ones sold in tiny pots, are quite a hike for him with the bad hip. Now he can still see some. In a couple weeks he'll also be able to see his favorite blue columbine next to them bloom, as they're forming buds already and lasted all summer last year. There is more space there for more ideas. After all, one can't read ALL the time! Not for lack of trying anyway.

Teleported To Waffle House?

 How do I get on that bus? Do I have to go get so drunk or otherwise impaired that I have a lengthy blackout while also managing to, say, take a cab there? Or walk there? I'm hoping you can really teleport there because I don't know where to find one anywhere near here and it might be fun to hitch a teleport ride.

Also, inquiring minds want to know, once teleported in, does that mean the food is free as a reward for the accomplishment? Or perhaps does that mean that such power bequeathed upon one means you also have the power to pick up all the tabs of the patrons present? 

If Waffle House claims that responsibility for you, first could you let me know in advance so I can go order something expensive I don't have to pay for? I'll happily let you teleport me once you've proved it works. There's got to be some fun to be had from such an experience, right?

Second, if you know how to teleport full bodies, can you adapt your machine or whatever it is to just teleport away all the thousands of extra calories one gets from all the carbs and syrups and butter from stuffing oneself with waffles? Be sure to leave the flavor in though.

Third, could you possibly get away with teleporting everybody's Waffle House bills out to the moon? Surely if so, there would be a team standing by to weave all the bills into a brand new flag to be put up where earth mounted telescopes could locate it, get photos of it, and publish them for the next generations of "smarter than their elders" disbelievers to scoff at? They'll be sure to claim nobody ever got to the moon to plant a flag, not the first time with that "giant leap" nonsense, not the next time when one got pieced together from Waffle House unpaid tabs. They'll argue that nobody can teleport, nobody ever did teleport, it's all CGI or AI, and after that nobody who claims they've been teleported to any Waffle House any place on any planet or moon can ever be believed about anything they ever say again just because the doubters weren't watching the TV themselves when - according to them - it was "supposed to" have happened.

Oh, and can I get strawberries in my syrup please? Maybe a little high quality chocolate as well? I mean, teleporting is free, right?

Missed Opportunity

You know there's never a camera around when you really really want one, right?

Like yesterday afternoon when I was returning home from a birthday party for a friend, for example. It was at a good restaurant, so I had a large bag with a couple boxes of leftovers in it. Across the top of those was my purse because I needed my driver's license and credit card, plus bunches of other stuff for "what iffs". The large bag I'd had to walk around the car to pick up since they were on the passenger side floor with the bag handles looped around the parking brake so a quick turn or braking wouldn't spill food all over. You never know what nearby idiots are going to do or when a deer might run out. 

Hmmm, I guess that might be redundant if one considers deer who cross a highway in traffic are by definition idiots. Puts true meaning into thinning the herd.

I was a bit tired from a non-stop day, which included a stop at a favorite garden center on my way home, just to see if they had iris in yet, and if so, what colors. Online searches the day before of a couple large metro garden centers had no iris listed yet, but this more local place I stopped at has always had a great selection of plants and whatsits, as well as helpful staff. After looking at the amount of walking involved in searching through tiny tags to see what species they even were, much less varieties, I opted for heading inside and talking to the woman at the counter. She looked up their inventory, showed a couple photos of current stock, and then offered to head out and bring me a nice pot of the one I liked best. She actually brought two pots so I could see there was a definite "best" in her choices. It's one of the things I like about these people.

The gallon pot of tiny iris leaves was, like all pots,  tippy, so she gave me a small box to put under it to catch any spilled dirt, which it did. I still had 25 miles left to drive home after buying it, and stoplights were included. So was a gas fill-up. (The pot of iris with seven separate tops poking up was less expensive!) I know you haven't asked, but the iris will bloom mostly pink, with a bit of white and yellow. Look up "Pinkerton".

Anyway, I was just loaded up and ready to lock the car doors when a neighbor stopped to chat. She was hoping I wasn't offended that she stopped by to look at my flowers. Right now there are lots of daffodils visible behind the home, but clearly visible from the paved path that goes between the streets as a shortcut to the community center. I assured her that not only was I not offended but I considered it a compliment! But my armfuls were getting heavier each minute and I needed to excuse myself.

Just as I turned, a little bird I was unfamiliar with hopped across the grass and up into my raised circle bed, looking for his next meal. Seeds? Bugs? The leaves from iris and day lilies are up about 6 to 8 inches at the moment. No clue what this bird was except it was startlingly different and gorgeous. And then gone!

I made a point of noting all the details I could in those ten seconds or so, before heading inside and taking care of what I was toting. Refrigerator for one part, water and a catch tray on the porch for a short time for the other until planting in a newly opened bed now that most of the rhubarb plants have been gifted away. No chance at all for any camera in all that activity, just trying to multitask by remembering the details of this strange bird.

Later I tried looking it up online. I knew what it wasn't. With no name to search for I started with colors and patterns. It was about sparrow sized, larger than a finch but smaller than a robin, mostly black with bits of white scattered through it. Had that been all there was to see, I wouldn't have looked twice. But when its wings were folded down, like they were when it was hopping across the ground, there was a bright stripe of a golden orange - or orange-ish gold - under the wing most of its body length. Not on the chin or under the tail. The effect was spectacular!

Google offered me a robin. Then a Baltimore oriole. I know those birds well, having lived with them most of my years in Minnesota, and as close as in the yard, a nest in a tree or over the front door, or even an oriole encouraging its newly fledged young to hop-fly over a fence and into the branches of a cherry tree for some yummy fruit.

Sorry, Google, epic fail! I tried other ways of describing this bird, different things to stress first, and nothing helped. Not a sparrow, a finch, a meadowlark either. Time to contact a human expert. Considering the time of year and the possibility this bird was strange because it was migrating much further north, I emailed my sister-in-law up in Bemidji. Between her and my brother, they know birds. Lots of other things as well, but between educations and occupations, if it's outdoors, somebody there will know. I just needed to do my best version of describing this bird and what I know it wasn't, however much Google might argue.

This morning I got a quick answer back, looked it up in sources with a lot of photos, and while I found a lot of examples with very inferior coloration (females?) I did find several good photos in the bunch, enough to verify that the bird stopping by was indeed a yellow rumped warbler.  Thank you!!!

But damn, I wish I'd had my camera ready! I might have gotten a shot in during those 15 seconds, right? Let's see, 5 to drop the bundles, or ten to do it without damaging them, 5 to pick up the camera if it had been, say, in an accessible pocket, 3 to turn it on, 4 to aim it, 2 more to zoom, and twelve to make sure it had already left the yard the second I scared it by dropping my armfulls.

Sigh-h-h-h......