I don’t know what would classify as "adult", but at 23 I went with my mother to her jewelers down on Fairfax near the Farmers Market.  Sam Fisher was his name and he sold estate jewelry.  Well, my mother had a great "appetite" for jewelry - (thanks mom for what you left me) and I found myself running a very close second in enthusiasm.  He had two beautiful rings that I just had to have and since Sam was very fond of my mother, because she helped his wife quite a bit when his wife was ill, so we got great discounts and I came away with my rings very pleased with myself.  I looked on it as an investment.  I have never sold them but I eventually started a vintage jewelry business and even though I don’t have time for it, I continue to make money at it.  Less now, but it still produces.

Sam had a fascinating "slide" bracelet  where all of the charmed slides had beautiful intaglios carved into stones - carnelian, amethyst, turquoise, malachite - I wish I would have bought that, but I was worried to spend more, so regretfully left without it.

But to this day, if I find a piece of jewelry with an intaglio, I buy it (barter as best I can) keep it for a while and then eventually put it in my case to sell.  They always sell, rather quickly in fact, but I know one day I will find the one I truly want and keep it.  

As a post script, a month or so back I went to the Getty Villa in Malibu and they had an exhibit of ancient carved jewels.  Many of them over 2000 years old.  It was exquisite and rekindled that old jewelry hunters flame for that intaglio carved slide bracelet. 

As a little girl we lived on Coldwater Canyon in an apartment.  The building is still there with the white rod iron railings.  The milk was delivered but I remember one time in particular when my older sister and I were bored and we decided to take all the empty bottles and drop them off the second floor balcony.  Boy oh boy did we get it.  I can still remember that spanking.

Does anyone remember the Helms Bakery Truck.  They were "Woodies" the trucks the surfers later used for going to the beach.  Anyway, they had all these beautiful hand made wooden drawers on slides that glided out and were full of donuts.  That truck smelled so delicious.  The donuts were made that morning and the "Helms Bakery Man" would blow his truck whistle and we all ran to get donuts,  and they were so good!  I liked twister donuts or jellies.  

The cleaner also picked up an delivered.  I found out my local cleaners is doing that again which is cool.

The last milk deliveries were at the ranch in the 60’s to the early 70’s and it was the Alta Dena Dairy.  They had those big old trucks - almost like UPS.  He didn’t leave it on the door step, he knocked and came in and put them in the fridge.  We also had a cellar built out of a hillside and there was another fridge in there and he would put the extras in there.  With about 10 kids living at the ranch we needed a lot of milk. WE used Alta Dena because they had raw milk with no hormones.

Deniseann

You have had an interesting career and what a life.  

I like all kinds of clothes and I do like when men and women dress up.  It is fun and I think they look great.  When I worked in companies and not for our business I wore both dresses and pants and was happy for it.  But pants never took over and vice versa.  Now I am almost always in pants - I work at home and exercise or yoga pants are the most comfortable and I don’t care if they get dirty if I have to go out and climb the hill to rescue a lizard from the dog. — LOL 

Rachel

I understand totally.  To me it is an issue of cultural sensitivity and we are classy enough to be that. 

Sara

During the Clinton years it was the republicans that were yelling for welfare reform.  When the dems were routed in 94 and the republicans took the majority they pressed for welfare reform and Clinton was forced to do it.  He didn’t want to.  (I voted for Clinton and like and liked him ) I believe that Rahm Emmanuel worked on welfare reform with the repubs, but it took both dems and repubs checking and balancing each other to get it done.  

I know Willy Brown (a dem) working with a repub governor, led the charge in California, which then led to more prosperity - but that was also dems working with repubs.  When those legislators retired or were retired in CA, the new ones changed it back and bankrupted our state. Budgeted and funded programs with monies they didn’t have.  At the time California was the 6th largest economic force in the world and now it is the 8th and we are going down further, which has never happened before. They made big bureaucratic programs that are sinking this state.  That is one of the reasons I worry about this bill.  People keep saying  "look at California and don’t make the same mistakes."  If only.

I wish on the run up to the Iraq war the dems had been the party of NO.  We would have a very different nation right now.

You and I both know that there has to be change I just think that those guys have lost their way a little. 

ONe of the things that upsets me most is that we have to borrow from the CHinese to do this.  The Chinese have 400 million in their country who are not insured or get no benefits.  THat is more than the population of the US.  They are of the old communist workers who are considered not trainable for the new tech and manufacturing jobs.  They have no homes, they wander through china looking for work - they are homeless.  How can the Chinese lend us this money.  THey are heading for a credit crisis like the one we just went through.  So I just don’t see how this bill is feasible.  Crazy. 

deber

I think you are right about the administration making the mistake in believing they had a "mandate" to do whatever they wanted.  I remember after the ‘04 election and Bush was re-elected and there were no recount controversies, they announced that they knew they had a "mandate" to go forward.   I thought "A WHAT?"  No one has a mandate.  The country is almost divided 50/50 so how could that be a mandate.  Maybe if someone got 85% of the votes or something that would be a mandate, but sorry - no mandates in this country, it is supposed to be a democracy.

So now we have the new boys in town Rahm, Axelrod and Gibbs, along with the six political action groups that call into the WH on a daily basis believing they have a "mandate".  Don’t they get it - this country has polled center right for decades - that was Clinton’s lesson and once he started governing from the center we had some changes and prosperity.  So a "healthcare mandate" seems like an odd concept to hold.  The two sides have to work together or it is disaster as we are having now.

I do not want big government in control of my life, they can’t even control medicare fraud.  What a joke.  I just know that the system is broken and something needs to be done. 

Sara

You are right, the concept of health insurance isn’t bad, it is just how we approach it that is the problem.  Maybe if it was not bought through the employers and every family got tax credits for it - or something, I think we would have a completely different situation right now.  More competition in the system.  

Besides Medicare and Medicaid reform which would clean up the fraud, we definitely have to take a look at torte reform.  Reid and Pelosi handed a gift to the trial lawyers with one paragraph in the bill which would deny states that have torte reform, other credits or monies.  The trial lawyers don’t want runaway medical awards to be addressed - so that won’t bring down what doctors charge because they will have to continue buying high premiums for malpractice insurance.  

California has torte limitations on awards and it is slowly changing the environment.  Our problem is that we have a higher percentage of welfare recipients in California than anywhere else in the nation, so our medicare and medicaid costs are enormous.

One argument that everyone makes about healthcare reform is that the US has the highest cost of healthcare in the world. More than half of that cost is due to medicare and $90 Billion of medicare cost is due to fraud in the system.  I wish I knew if the bill addressed that.  

The republicans recently released their bill and it was scored by the Congressional Budget Office.  My husband told me what the results were, but I can’t remember them all and haven’t looked them up.  The CBO scored their bill as bringing down the deficit, would lower healthcare costs and not raise taxes on anyone.  If the fraud is stopped in medicare then there will be more funds for the uninsurable who should be taken care of.

Sara

You make a very credible and interesting argument and I understand the reasoning behind it since I am an employer.  The only point I would make is that the public option is for those without insurance and so, I think we are led to believe, that employers would go on supplying health insurance benefits to their employees.  For a time anyway, until an employer would decide that the fine was cheaper than paying the insurance.  

The government is never competition for industry.  THe state fund Workers comp in CA took over the business several years back and small firms went out of business. Unfortunately, State Comp then became rife with corruption because dishonest people took advantage of the system due to lack of oversight.  There was just a huge budget that paid out claims and charged employers exorbitant premiums.  I know - it almost put us out of business, but we were required to have it so we had to keep it.  

It wasn’t until work comp insurance was opened up to interstate competition that the prices went down - it took time, but ours eventually went down by 75%.   Unfortunately, recently, although we have never had a claim against us ( thank God), our prices have almost doubled because the SEIU (which has had 22 meetings at the WH) made a deal with the President that if Gov Schwarzenegger insisted on continuing furloughs, CA would be excluded from more stimulus funds.  Well, the governor didn’t relent so State Fund raised their prices on everyone because they didn’t want to lose jobs because of lack of funds.  I called them and asked them to come to my office for an appointment so they could decide which employee was going to have to be fired because we cannot afford this.  Now, it seems that State Fund is shooting we the employer and themselves in the foot.  Since unemployment is close to 12% they have lost revenue, so they think, we don’t want to fire more people, we will just make small business pay more.  Isn’t that stealing from me?  Feels like it.  And they can do it too - just like the feds can do with that crazy bill.

From what I have been able to learn, the public option will be run by the current insurance industry, there are always guidelines, but in government, there are always ways to get around a guidelines which eventually bankrupts the system.  If you didn’t see the 60 Minutes segment a couple of weeks ago called Easy Money, you should take a look - it is on the CBS website. Thieves come in and raid the larder of we the people’s money and there is very little oversight or prosecution.  The estimates I have heard regarding medicare fraud are $90billion per year.  It is often said that the US has the highest medical costs in the world but no one mentions that over 50% of our costs are due to Medicare and $90 Billion of that is fraud.  

I think the government should clean up medicare and after saving some money try to come up with a better bill that will actually do something to bring down costs.

The reason Rasmussen are sometimes at odds with other polls is that they poll likely voters, not just everyone.  This election cycle they did not poll the 18-25 crowd because they usually don’t show up for these cycles.  They are highly respected in the industry for their work and accuracy.  Although, I am no fool, any pollster can get whatever info they want by how they phrase an idea or question.  They all do it.  I get telephone polled by political groups a lot and mail polled by the ACLU.  It is interesting to see how they phrase questions to get the viewpoint they want.  Sometimes the questions are unanswerable and I tell the pollster or write in the margins to the ACLU. LOL  

Here is a summary of the repub’s plan:

 http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/summary.pdf

 Health Care - GOP Solutions for America - GOP.gov

deber

You’ve said a lot, but I can’t agree on a lot of it.  I don’t see how the republicans did any better.  The prosperity of the time was a false prosperity and no one was watching the fox in the hen house.  I think that more and more the political parties are more interested in securing power with legislation than really cleaning up government or spending.  

I think that Barack Obama has been good for the country because he has not let healthcare debate drop, many presidents would have.  The bill, in it’s current state, will be a bureaucratic nightmare and bankrupt the country, but at least the president has kept pushing at the issue because something definitely needs to be done to lower costs and provide the uninsurable with some kind of relief.  I hope they toss this bill and maybe start over, but I don’t know if I am that lucky.  

I have read the republican’s version of a healthcare bill and there are many things on it that I have been blogging about forever- here and elsewhere which is good to see, but I believe it continues to lack some fundamental things.  They have not addressed the uninsurable that make too much so cannot receive medicaid.  They have not faced those who will fall through the cracks.  They are citizens and have been paying taxes for a long time, why shouldn’t they get help?

Are the dems too inclusive to the point of bankrupting the nation, and the repubs too exclusive to the point of forgetting about some that suffer and cannot get help elsewhere?  We are a rich and generous country.  There must be a way to solve this.  But, as I said, I don’t think either party has the ability to change - they keep trying to apply the same old ideas and think that some of those things - that didn’t solve it before - will solve it now.

Helen

As to the Insurance companies gaining more power, I think they hold the cards right now.  They helped write a lot of this bill. I think that at this point it is a mess. I heard today that Reid now says they won’t get on it until January.  I want something done to bring prices down and supply health care for those that can’t afford it.  

Just think what would happen if everyone on the country gave up their health insurance in protest of the current debacle in the system and high prices.  (I know, crazy huh?)  It would bring the insurers to their knees.  They would be so out of business they would have to change.  

Eye laser surgery is not covered by insurance, and neither is plastic surgery and things like botox, and those prices have come down through the years as more doctors provide the services because they compete with lower prices.  

I think the first mistake that America bought into was health insurance.  They turned that industry into a God in our lives. Especially since it was provided through an employer that paid part of our premiums so we got disconnected from actual costs and therefore didn’t take the time to find good doctors at a better price - it let the market do whatever it wanted.  Remember when there was the small town doctor or country doctor, as well as doctors that made house calls?  People paid them at a much smaller rate.  

There are some industries that have opened up clinics for their employees and it has cut the medical costs of everyone involved.  

It seems to me that the republicans and democrats have the same problem.  They devise legislation more to secure power than to really solve problems.  And neither party knows how to change.  Not really.  They just keep doing things in the same old way with the same old methods.  Isn’t that the definition of insanity. 

Deniseann

Thanks for the loving advice.  That is pretty much how we handle it.  He has been in the army for almost 8 years and and had 3 overseas deployments as well as Katrina.  He had some hard spells, but we work through it.  We are just so grateful that he got out of Stop Loss - I really don’t think he could have taken another deployment without it creating a great disappointment about life for him.  I just take it one step at a time.

Yes, I love a woman in a well tailored dress or jacket and skirt, but some wear it better than others.  I think it must have something to do with the way she sees herself in dresses.  I get the feeling she thinks she looks better in pants.  I don’t know. 

Chromie

She is 70 and he is 54!  I love it.  What a way to go.  She sounds like she has a great attitude.  My friend I spoke of above lives alone, and she gets tired of it sometimes, but doesn’t want someone there all the time.  I understand it well. 

Hi Phyllis

Just think if she hadn’t worn the headscarf - all the media agencies would have run with it and it would have distracted from her efforts at diplomacy.  Cultural sensitivity is a sure bet. 

I agree, show of respect.  What is wrong with respect.  If you want to be respected than behave respectfully.

I don’t know about Jews kneeling in Catholic Churches, but I agree with the rest.