Just Pay a Separate Fee

The BBC has just put its site on TOR
I'm not sure why the BBC needed a TOR site; perhaps they don't want anybody to catch you reading it.

*TOR is where the 'dark web' is. It's much more difficult to hack into TOR, although the FBI has done it (for child porn and illegal substances). TOR helps avoid tracking by your ISP. You only need the TOR browser. No, you won't see any illegal sites unless you go looking for them.

Stay tuned for Google harvesting your medical information!



I would like to say hello and thank you to whoever in America sent 4537 of their friends here. It was probably a horrible glitch, but I'll take whatever I can get.



In an effort to be more inclusive and garner some positive press for once, Google has decided to allow their speaking devices to use different voices. I have suggestions:

• your nagging mother-in-law's voice
• your nagging spouse's voice
• the president - this will either inspire you or cause a heart attack
• British voice - it sounds like it's correct all the time, even when it's not
• Chinese voice - you can't understand it any better than tax returns
• Ebonics - it axe you way you wanna go, ho?
• Canadian voice - tells you where the nearest hockey game is, eh?
• Jewish voice - Oy vey, you vant to know where are the sales? Your mother, God bless her, should only know...
• Polish - park the car in the bathtub
• Wife - no, the other left

Dear lefty

• Who are some decent alternative presidential candidates?
• my cousin-in-law, who was autistic before it was popular

A new poll has found that a majority of Americans want to rewrite the First Amendment to "reflect the cultural norms of today" in order to stop "hate speech."

Another new poll, based upon the old new poll, has found that we are a nation of morons. Finish this sentence: If Ben Franklin heard this, he'd ................

• I'm shaking my head in disbelief and sadness: there are people against meritocracy (getting the job and advancing based upon your good work). They claim it produces inequality, stifles social mobility(?) and makes even the winners miserable.
• This is horrible parody and I wish it would stop.

Youth is wasted on the young.
When I think back, I regret that I didn't spend more time with people who are no longer around. People I can appreciate so much more, now that I'm an (alleged) adult. People whose wisdom is valuable.   Kids just don't know... I guess that's a good thing.




Today I identify as a dog bowl



We're trying to force life back to (ab)normal, after our loss. Today we took Mom to the mall. Life is always an adventure.. especially after I noticed there was no phone signal in the mall. While the ladies shopped, it became very important to text my friend to tell her there was a guinea pig in The Secret Lives of Pets 2. No signal. This seriously impacted my texting.

The movie itself wasn't as funny as the original, but isn't that always the case? The kids enjoyed it. It was the dog's first movie she actually watched.  It might have had something to do with all the dogs barking. She even stared when the cats meowed. She doesn't understand depth, so sometimes she runs around the back of the tv, looking for the dog or cat she just heard.

So we find ourselves shopping in a store with adult sleepwear in fantasy animal themes. You could put on this one-piece pajama and look like a unicorn. It wasn't enough that the kids wanted one - they insisted Mom get one too. Now the two of them can have a sleepover, dressed as unicorns. Like a small herd or something.

I have the only mother on earth who hasn't been to Starbucks in ten years or more. Even with a limited menu, it took 15 minutes to figure out what to get. Fortunately we had some help from one of the green-haired girls behind the counter. While waiting, we overheard a delightful conversation between Blue Hair and Pink Hair. Blue Hair's brother is apparently scoring with the girls big time, because they're giving him their scrunchies. At my last job, one of my coworkers would come into the office with someone's panties. You can decide for yourself which is the better trophy.

Then it got surreal.
I found myself, with wife and elderly mom, in Victoria's Secret. I know Victoria's Secret: how they get so many to pay so much for so little. The possibilities for being uncomfortable and hysterical were many. Mrs lefty is trying to draw out what kind of underwear Mom wants... they are different languages. Then the color selection started. My job was to hold everyone's drinks - a noble post.

At this time, a very cheerful Annoying Sales Person came by. She didn't take subtle hints like NO, WE'RE OK, WE'LL LET YOU KNOW IF WE NEED ANYTHING. She asked if we had any questions in the meantime. I pointed to the picture of their model Adriana Lima and asked if she was from Brazil. Judging by the look on her face, she had never heard that question before and she honestly didn't know. I had achieved my goal: she was walking away.

Color selection finished, it was time to wander around. Mrs lefty wanders like a pro, frequently using her power of Disappearance, flummoxing the rest of us. Mom needs to be monitored a bit, lest she leave her purse on a bra or wander out of the store. I was the caboose, charged with making sure Mom didn't get lost, while simultaneously trying to locate Mrs lefty. Normally I like being asked what I think of things in that store (by Mrs lefty, you bastards) but it just wasn't working. We thought everything was free, because we couldn't locate a checkout counter. It was cleverly hidden at the back of the store, where everything was dark and you couldn't see it from anywhere else in the store. The cashier was wearing a tape measure around her neck and I asked if she was required to wear it or did she use it. She described the things it could be used for, specifically measuring women for bras, which women sometimes never have done. I'm chuckling along because I'm well aware of this. I have to give the girl credit: she didn't even flinch when I told her I can correctly size breasts with a tape measure too. This is the kind of employee you want working at your business.

In the next store, Mom went into Panic Mode<tm> because she couldn't find her purse. I ran around to the places she was looking and we were relieved to find that Mrs lefty had her purse, for just this reason. Apparently I need to get out less.

Mom is having fun and it was well-deserved. We enjoyed it also, except when she'd answer a question we didn't ask, then laugh inappropriately.

On the way back, she asked if we would stop at the store to pick up some water, because she was almost out of it. Sure. Translated, this means 'you go in the store and get me some water.' I keep running into this attractive shopper... it occurred to me, by her smile, I should say a few words to her or something, but then I remembered Mrs lefty's strict No Dating Policy and walked away. The wife has absolutely no sense of humor. The sad irony is that I could never figure out when a woman was being receptive or hitting on me... the wife would point it out and I still didn't get it. Now that I can make most people laugh and occasionally pick up when a woman wants to talk, there's the No Dating Policy. I get no reward for learning and growth.

So I am in a foul mood because it's past my naptime and I'm greeted by another Cheerful Cashier. She told me it's service with a smile; she's smiling and now it's my turn. I looked at her and said, deadpan, "I am smiling." The people in line were laughing but the cashier was a little upset. We discussed the vagaries of customer service. My first job was 9 months of Retail Hell, at which I discovered that I never wanted to work in retail for as long as I lived. People weren't my strong suit. The cashier's former job was in public transportation, so being a cashier was a vacation.

When we got Mom home, I put the water away. It was a good thing we stopped for water -she only had six gallons left. So with ten gallons, she won't need any emergency trips for water for at least a day or two.


Meanwhile my phone is still not working. I am still not happy. I'm rebooting the phone as if it had Windows. Still nothing. Still not happy. After the past weeks, I don't have the reserves to fight with my phone, or for any negative news at all. At home I see it's still not working and am forced to do the first level repairs: screaming at it. This failed miserably. Second level is screaming in general, but not specifically at the phone. This also failed. Still napless, I was not in good form. Much technical testing later, I chance a look at my carrier's last text, which said my bill was due a week earlier. As a long term technical person, I immediately put one and one together, equaling three, and get further mad, realizing the bill wasn't paid. You're probably saying to yourself that I must be a real idiot to not pay my bill, but in actuality, it's Mrs lefty's fault. She says 'pay your bill' and I pay it. Since she never said 'pay your bill,' I never paid it, which is why it's her fault. I went to pay it by phone and the phone was still not working. Of course it wasn't. Even after I yelled at it further, and told it I was using the phone to pay my $*#@ing bill. Bloody hell, I'm Desperate and Phoneless. Getting on the computer, it won't let me log into their site.... bad password. I know the bleeding password by heart, plus I keep it in my password locker for this reason. Strangely, I paid the bill and the phone worked again. It was like a miracle.

• Agoraphobes have a much smaller carbon footprint: it's hard to use resources when you can't leave the house.

No thank you, I'd rather express my dog's anal glands





Heroes of the Stupid

A Florida man was arrested after being caught having sex with a stuffed "Olaf" toy inside Walmart.    Well.... was Olaf any better than Elsa? 

An Arkansas hunter died after the deer he shot attacked him.
That deer got 4 hunters last week.


SJW Sentences   (didja ever notice there are always many true SJW stories here?)

Clapping has been banned at Oxford University to stop people being triggered.

A California veterans hospital, visited by women dressed as WWII glamour girls, now wants to approve the outfits before allowing them to visit patients.   No good deed ever goes unpunished

Using proper grammar is a sign of 'white supremacy' says ASU professor.
As someone who spent time in Arizona, I can certify this fellow spent way too much time out in the 115 degree sun, in addition to being a professor.

Why there are no exorcisms in Russia

Yes, Deer...

No, I didn't spell that incorrectly.  More later.

How was your week?  I ask because mine was a real doozy.

So it's Thursday night and I'm waiting for the wife to pick me up from work.  I leave at four.  Round about four thirty, I called her, wondering where she was.  Round about five, she returned the call, apologizing profusely for falling asleep and telling me she was on her way.

Closing in on six, I got another call: she had hit a rock and gotten a flat.  Triple-A was forty five minutes away, so she'd be really late.

An hour later, guess what?  Yet another call.  Triple-A hadn't exactly appeared yet, although she had been on the phone with them for a while, attempting to give directions to the apparently direction-impaired soul driving the truck.

I don't know about you but I'd think that a national auto rescue corporation would have something of a sense of direction or at least a GPS.  Old school maps, maybe?

But no.

Another hour later, another call.  This time she called Triple-A and was told the direction-impaired driver terminated the request, which was her prerogative.  Unfortunately, nobody bothered to tell my wife; neither Sparky the driver nor the dispatcher.  This caused the entire process to start again.

You'd think a national auto rescue agency would have more than one driver in a large metropolitan area.  Still, it would be up to another hour.

Meanwhile at work, it's getting pretty bleak.  The entire crew has left for the day and I'm holding down the fort.  If I were the easily shakeable sort, I'd be terrified.  Instead I was bored.  Horribly bored.  So bored that I had to resort to doing my own work.  And maybe watching a little South Park.

The next wifely call revealed that the battery was dead.  Why?  Because Sparky the Direction-Impaired driver told my wife to leave the headlights on so she could be located easier.  Meanwhile the occupant of the house in front of which my wife was broken down, wandered over to inquire what she was doing parked across her driveway.  Once explained, she was terribly accommodating, offering food and a rest room, just in case.

Eventually a second driver showed up and had the car running in no time.  He was polite, had no trouble finding her at all and really wanted to assist her.

Closing in on ten pm, I was rescued from work.


FRIDAY

My wife said she'd be at Pep Boys first thing in the morning, bless her, to get the bad tire replaced (we had a warranty).  I took the opportunity to sleep late.

Unfortunately so did my wife. Or rather, her alarm slept late.

Off I went to Pep Boys, in a flurry of loving epithets and general four-letter verbal exercises.  Pep Boys, to their credit, jumped right on matters.

I somehow managed to VPN into work, thus becoming the first member of my department ever to work from Pep Boys.

Hours later, I had my replaced tire.  Too many hours, in fact, to efficiently return to work, so I went home.

While home, my wife informed me she couldn't find her credit cards.

Yes, the Tire Incident had morphed into a Missing Credit Card incident. [I am not blaming any organization or person, other than perhaps my wife for not having had them stapled to her forehead].

I had a doctor's appointment at seven.  Something looked odd about the car.  Of course something looked odd - I had a flat.  Yes, another flat - this time on a different tire.

Cursing Pep Boys and the Universe in general, I tore through the trunk, looking for our poor excuse for a spare and the tools necessary to change it.   Naturally the tire was in plain sight but the tools had entered the fifth dimension, which is located either at the very bottom of a car's trunk or the very bottom of a woman's pocketboot.

Continuing to curse, I somehow managed to change the tire with enough time to get to the doctor's.
While there, I inquired whether he had gotten a referral from my primary.

Oops.

Didn't he talk to me about this?  He just went cash-only.  No insurance.

Oh.

Well, that was awkward.
And wasn't his fee exactly the amount of money I had for the week?

Meanwhile, my wife had taken the entire day off and was spending it snoring on the couch.  As she had given up sleep for lent forty years ago, I left her alone.

SATURDAY

Back among the living, the wife took care of her missing credit cards and license, then went back, again, to Pep Boys.  Pep Boys fixed the issue with haste.

I don't know what they did to my car but it tends to veer toward Pep Boys whenever it sees one.

SUNDAY

After a day of rest, we were off to visit friends.

SMASH - out of the supermarket, we were almost hit.
BLORP - fifteen minutes later we narrowly avoided hitting yet another kamikaze deer.


Go ahead - tell me it's not personal.

Happy Belated Birthday

to Graham Chapman, of Monty Python fame, who would have been seventy-two yesterday.


Urinus Interruptus

So I'm minding my own business, in the bathroom, when the door opens.  Of course the door opens - it's the cat, mortified by my human desire to eliminate alone and with the door closed.  I suspect this need of ours for solitude somehow offends felines, who are smart enough to figure out bi-fold doors.  We thought we had outsmarted him (and the dog) by installing the door backwards but this took only a day to figure out.  For both of them.


The Car is Back!

After only three weeks and a day, our beloved car is back from the collision shop, fully repaired.  For those of you keeping score, it's deer zero, us one, insurance four thousand, rental car seven hundred.  It's most fortunate that I'm independently wealthy.

The wife is beyond joyous; she loves her car.  I'm happy to not be paying for a rental, even if the seats were nicer.

Let me say something nice here about State Farm: they've been great and fast.  No crap, no fuss, it's done.  All insurance should work this way (take notice, health insurance).


A Word from the AntiSports

I don't usually bother but I came across this little factlet on the radio the other day: hockey is about to start again, after the lockout.  Philly is the city with the least amount of ticket refund requests, at two-hundred.

Seriously, Philly, you are a huge, dirty city of enablers.  You put up with crappy team performance and greedy millionaires.  What do you do?  You line up to pay them some more.  You deserve what you get.  You pay an egregious amount to simply park at football games, not to mention the now standard TSA-style groping.



In closing, I urge caution on the forced national panic about guns.  There is obviously an agenda here.

Good Riddance, I Say

It's still 2012 and we're all still alive.  There was no apocalypse and my crew somehow managed to survive.  It wasn't easy.

I have been struggling with a way to describe this past year.  The title of this post will serve for now.  We have been struggling in general.  This has not been a happy holiday season.

It would seem that there are but a few groups who aren't struggling now.  One of them is Congress; currently busy not struggling with a way to save us money and benefit its constituents.  Instead, the traitorous bastards struggle with ways to get us to pay for their misdeeds and usurp the Bill of Rights.

Another group not struggling is rental car centers, or at very least, the one near us.  We're on week two of our rental, with nary a word on the body work of our car after the deer committed suicide with it.

Deer are another topic entirely.  My friend, the deer hunter, told me he had a clear shot at a deer a few weeks back.  He shifted, the deer heard it and ran.  If their hearing is that good, how does a deer miss a loud 35mph Hyundai at night with lights?  I suspect it was suicidal after all.

Some tell me this is deer season and they're about.  They sure are - they're decorating hoods all over the place.  And trust me, you don't want that kind of hood ornament.  Last weekend we were near the scene of our accident and came upon someone else's fresh accident.

Do we need to aerially spray the neighborhood with Prozac for the deer?  Are they that depressed?  Others speculate that they're just horny.  I'm just horny too but I don't go leaping in front of moving vehicles (unless that vehicle is Eva Longoria).  Some organization or other is talking about deer contraceptives, which brings me to my next point... what in the world is the pope going to say about deer condoms?  He sure as hell doesn't like them for humans.  My only thought here is that since the pope doesn't believe animals have souls, perhaps it's all equal in the end.  Perhaps if we tell the pro-lifers that we're giving abortions to the deer, they'd guard the roadways.  This way we won't actually have to touch the deer and the deer won't be able to get to the roads to leap in front of random cars.  Everybody wins (if we assume the deer aren't depressed in the first place).

HOLIDAYS

Holiday time is supposed to be a happy time.  Supposed to.
It seems that happiness took a few days off during my recent break from work.  It had gotten so bad that I cancelled xmas entirely (for myself).  As for everybody else, depression crashed into bipolar disorder, which sideswiped dream therapy, causing horrible nightmares for children.  Neuroses played table tennis with grief.  Not to be outdone, multiplicity sulked behind the scenes and refused to effectively communicate.

That aside, everything else was fine.


SOMEONE ELSE'S MIRACLE

Bro and Sis-in-law's mom had to go to the hospital for tests.  She walked in, had tests and became half paralyzed.  Brain cancer.  Then full paralysis (I strongly suspect the hospital, not cancer).  Days later, with many diagnoses, she was alert, awake, and oriented.  A transfer to hospice that was a death sentence got commuted to extended care.  My wife (the nurse) proved to a doctor that he had no idea what he was talking about.

So my relatives are celebrating and my wife scored some dignity for a dying woman.


THE WIFE'S MIRACLE

I hate health insurance companies.  This is kind of like saying that we hate Hitler.
My wife has been on the same medication for chronic pain for three years.  Because the insurance company is invested in finding new and better ways not to pay for things, they introduced the review/precertification process.  Once a year, the prescribing physician has to jump through hoops to get the medicine recertified so the insurance will pay for it.  The last time was June.

So what happened when my wife went to pick up her December pain meds?  The insurer decided that one year between reviews was no good and decided on six months instead.  Yes, these thieving bastards required another review so my wife could receive the pain meds she's been on for three years. This was made all the more amusing by the fact that her doctor was on vacation for two weeks with no way to reach him and a full answering machine.

The pharmacist, bless him, sat on the phone for twenty minutes with the insurer and got an override for four days worth of medicine (with the full copay, of course).  We had the option of paying cash for the meds, at ten dollars per pill, which we could not do.

For anyone still following, the insurer decided it was perfectly ok to completely stop a patient's prescribed pain meds due to a precert that could not be reasonably performed in one day.  This would cause not only horrible pain, it would cause the patient to go into detox.  But it's ok - this is how the insurance lobbies got Congress to write insurance law.

My wife put on her asshole hat and called the insurance company.  They were quite sympathetic to her plight but checked all the way up the chain and couldn't do a thing for her.  Her only option was to pay cash for the meds, which they would reimburse after the fact, then tackle the doc when he returns and force him to make the paperwork right.

So we're out about two hundred for meds now.  Combined with weeks of car rental, our mortgage company hopefully has a forgiveness program.

Another slew of imaginary points to the wife for keeping herself out of detox.   Notice that I am not sending kudos for bettering herself - just for scraping to get the bare minimum.   Life should not be about scraping for bare minimum.


MY MIRACLE

A few days ago I ventured across the building in search of Coca Cola.  There, in the machine, shining out like brown gold, was an actual row of Coke.  In the Coke machine, which is usually filled with Pepsi.  An xmas miracle!

But luck refused to abandon me this week.  The next day, there were two rows of Coke in the Coke machine.  And as if that weren't enough, there was silverware in the silverware drawer.  I was on a roll.  If I played numbers, this was the week to play them.

Finding soda made me feel almost invincible.


AND IN THE END

The kids were upset.  The pets were clingy.  Gifts sat unopened.  No one was happy.

We decided to hold our own xmas, the night after the other one, perhaps sending out our own metaphorical finger to the universe.

The kids got excited.  The pets got in the way.  The Hess chopper was the star of the evening.
I participated, in spite of cancelling xmas, by giving.

============================

We wish you a very Happy Whatever, dear reader(s).  Strength to those who need it.  Good health for all.  Keep the deer away from us.  Have a safe and happy new year and may 2013 be much less apocalyptic and much more enriching.

Pre-Hollerday Updates and Automatic Weapons

My car, as you might remember, was used by a female deer to commit suicide.  We just found out that the repair bill will be close to four thousand dollars and the insurance will cover it.  So we're just out for the car rental.

Lacking foreknowledge that people and animals would be throwing themselves at my car, I did not get rental insurance.  My wife added it today.  She called me to let me know that I saved us one dollar per month by not having rental.  Don't I feel the fool?

When we get it back, the car will be rebuilt better and stronger.  It will be the Bionic Car.  I have to locate a bumper sticker that says THIS CAR KILLED BAMBI.  And one of those small white deer stickers for the rear window with an X through it.

Merry F-ing Xmas.

--------------------------------------

Last night I went shopping for work's Secret Santa Project.  I have known my target for a long time so the only choice was Spencer's Gifts at the mall.  It was brought to my attention that this wasn't exactly the best time in the world to go shopping but I didn't exactly have a lot of choice.  Hey, I just realized that xmas is Tuesday.

The first thing I noticed, besides not being able to find a parking space, is that Spencer's must have a rule that every fifteen to seventeen year-old child in the township must be inside the store, standing about and not moving.  And not moving loudly.  Speaking of loudly, we also need to discuss the decibel level of the (alleged) music, blasting down upon the teens from the specially-enhanced ceiling speakers.

Now before we call me Old Man and have me start yelling "Get off my lawn", I am a musician who plays loud rock and roll through large tube amplifiers.  I love music and I make it loudly.  The music raining down upon us was semi-agreeable but so loud that it prevented things like talking, concentrating and thinking.  Between impaired mental function and wading through Dawn of the Dead, shopping was extremely difficult.  

Oh yeah, I almost forgot the dings.  I guess it was the store's notification or alarm system that kept going DING, DING, DING every five seconds.  This addition to the general din was not a pleasant one.  As I suspected the workers no longer heard the DINGs, as if they were living next to an airport and didn't hear the planes anymore.  I politely offered to kill the DINGer and was encouraged by one of the fellows behind the counter, who was busy trying to launch his printer over the railing, down a few floors of the mall.

Since Spencer's seems to have co-opted several adult novelty stores, there was no shortage of interesting items to purchase.  But since Secret Santa takes place at work, I had to keep it semi-clean.  I found a penis mug and a Fifty Shades blindfold.  Yes, that's semi-clean where I work.

The wife decided to go into Hot Torrent.  This place was playing Rush (no, really) at the threshold of pain.  How one is supposed to discuss how cool their piercings look over that din is unfathomable.  My wife shouted to an employee about changing rooms.  She shouted something back but I couldn't make it out.  Wife tried on some really hot jeans but wasn't comfortable with them only coming up to her nether regions.  We must be old.

Topping off the evening, we ate at Chick Filet, where we established that none of the meat comes from gay chickens.

This is Why I Can't Have Nice Things

For my entire life, I have driven very old, very used land yachts.  With many additional exterior modifications and features (by which I mean wrinkles, crinkles and dents).  One day a coworker made a comment about my car being an external mess and it bothered me for the first time.

Keeping a pair of land yachts was becoming very expensive, especially after one quit completely.  We decided it would be cheaper to pay for a new(er) car.  I thought it was the best decision and long overdue.   The Hyundai was new to me, but low mileage.  And it had no external modifications and features.  No longer would my coworkers make fun of my car... it was a great new feeling (in spite of five $200 tires).

I felt like the king of the world.  For at least a few months, until some uninsured piece of Philly dung rammed into it while making an illegal U-turn.  BAM - a door that wouldn't open, complete with external modifications and features.  Then a pair of rear-enders, for good measure.  Note that none of this had anything to do with the drivers of our car.

Tonight was the coup de grace.  A deer committed suicide-by-car, using our car.  It was in a High-Deer Area that we drive through now and then.  I thought I saw movement in the distance, which I apparently did.  All of the sudden there is a deer ten feet in front of the car.  Have you ever had a very large animal appear right in front of your car, as if by magic?  If we had the time, it would have been most disconcerting.  At about thirty-five miles per hour, we didn't have the time.  We hit it and physics took over from there.   I felt sorry for the deer.

When we made it to our destination, we looked at the car.  We had no idea there was so much damage... we couldn't see it from inside.  I immediately stopped feeling sorry for the deer.  A friend who works for an insurance company told us he's working overtime due to [wait for it.......] an incredible number of deer-related claims.

They really are after us.

Our insurer was a pleasure to work with when the uninsured idiot hit us.  I expect the same level of service this time.  Can't remember whether I have rental coverage but it's academic at this point.

THE LARGER PICTURE

I have to keep reminding myself that Life Is Not Fair.  We'd probably all be better off if we remembered this.  But I can't help noticing that we get more than our share of Life's Little Mishaps.  Four accidents in  two years, two of which caused significant damage.  I'm kinda tired of being an asshole magnet.  I even did a little research among friends and relatives; they agree that we get more than most.

Saying that I'm not exactly an optimist is like saying Hitler wasn't exactly fond of minorities.  Yet I've had to console myself with faux-optimistic nonsense lately because that's all there is.

A deer took out the front of my car tonight.
Well, you're lucky it didn't come through the window and kill you.

I just got paid for playing an xmas gig with the band and all of it went to pay for a new tire.
Hey, at least it was only one tire.

My band played last night and stunk up the place.
But the audience applauded.

Do you see where I'm going here?  I'm tired of having to play an optimist on tv just to get by.  When my wife complains that her fibromyalgia pain is through the roof after the accident, am I supposed to tell her that at least we got home?  Is that the highest level of comfort I can provide?

There really should be something better than this.