Friday, January 13, 1984

Two months ago, Love came home from work and told me about one of his co-workers. He said she had red blotches all over the upper part of her body. I told him that it sounded like lupus or something similar. He said she had been going to the doctor for over two months at that time, and she was going to go to a big hospital like Barnes or Mayos. Since I didn't explain lupus to him, he quickly forgot it. Today, he came home and told me that her doctor was going to send her to an arthritis specialist. I said, "Lupus is an arthritis". I also told him to find out the name of her doctor, because if I can diagnose a disease simply by hearing the symptoms, and she spent tons of money, and suffered for four and one-half month, without her doctor suspecting and checking for some type of arthritis right away, I never want to go to that doctor. I wonder where he got his degree, and where he stood in his medical class and how big his mortgage is.

Commonwealth Edison had another explosion at one of it's electric generating plants today. That's the fourth explosion at that particular plant, and the last explosion was just last year. Commonwealth Edison has spent $83,000,000.00 on a nuclear power plant one hundred miles north of here, but because the company habitually has ignored government safety regulations, the government has told them they can't have the go-ahead to finish it. I wonder who will haveto pay for that fiasco. I bet it will be their customers, and we'll pay for their other, closer, power plant, as well! Their other power plant was conceived when the utility company thought that the need for energy would keep growing, and then when it didn't, they just never finished the plant after spending millions of dollars on it. It seems to me, that there is a tremendous amount of poor planning done by this particular company, and we, the people, are expected to pay for it. It's like - if I built a mattress store downtown, my business got pretty good, so, I built another store on one end of town and started building another one down by the river. Well, business dropped off in my main store downtown, so, I didn't finish the store on the other side of town, just let it sit. Then I decided I could make the one by the river a specialty store, but when I was half finished, the health inspector said the building had bedbugs that would never be completely eradicated with pest control, and a mattress company, specialty or otherwise, would never be able to operate there. The only way I can recoup my losses is to charge each of my customers more the next time they buy a mattress for me, and I'm sure they're going to buy their next mattress from me, because I have ae exclusive territory on all mattresses. Where's the competition, and free enterprise system, when you need them?

I bought a woman's magazine today, and found it contained a survey to be sent in, and the results published in the fall. Naturally, I already have it filled out and it's ready to be mailed tomorrow. It covers everything from health to the United States influence on the rest of the world. I hope somebody out there pays attention to it.

Love has fallen off the wagon: he broke down and bought a twelve pack of beer.

I have been doing mental plans for Mom's house, because someday I may live there. I think I could make it extremely convenient and cute. The kitchen needs to be rearranged, and it needs a spare bath, but it could be done. Someday, I'll face the decision of what to do with the major overhauling, and at least I'll be prepared well in advance.