Misconceptions Surrounding Hospice Care

Today, Doug Pike interviews Angela Perez about misconceptions surrounding hospice care.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Remember when it was impossible to misplace the TV remote
because you were the TV remote. Remember when music sounded
like this, Remember when social media was truly social?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hey, John, how's it going today?

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Cool? This show is all about you only. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike. Helpful information on your finances,
good health, and what to do for fun. Fifty plus
brought to you by the UT Health Houston Institute on Aging,
Informed Decisions for a healthier, happier life, and now fifty

(00:43):
plus with Doug Pike.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
All right, Wednesday this year the program starts Try now.
Thank you all for listening. Certainly do appreciate it. Our
first legitimately cool day in a very long time, very
long awaited time. Can't really say this past summer was
brutal blow We didn't have that many one hundred degree days.
And for those of you who listen regularly, you know
that that is the benchmark for me. Anything lower than

(01:08):
one hundred degrees is either warm, really warm, toasty, whatever,
But the word hot is reserved for one hundred plus
triple digit temperatures. We didn't have as nearly as many
this past summer as we did the summer before. Twenty
twenty four, and I'm pretty glad, frankly, because there were
a couple of times even this year that I had

(01:31):
to take a break from yard work because I was
starting to feel overheated. It's not fun getting old, I
understand that, and I'm I had to just go sit down.
I felt just felt horribly elderly, not being able to
finish what I thought was a fairly routine task in
the yard without having to take a little break for water,

(01:52):
go sit in the shade and just lean up against
the garage wall for a while. But I made it,
and worth noting. It's it seems that that's just never
really happened to me on the golf course or during
a fishing trip or anything equally enjoyable in the outdoors.
That yard work, though, that knocks me out pretty quick.

(02:13):
And now that I have an eighteen year old son
and not a twelve year old, it's his turn. I'm
gonna just tell him it's like getting in a workout,
picking up all those leaves, raking the beds, spreading mulch,
all the fun things that he's gonna get to do
and not be paid for it, because it's just part
of being contributory to the household, but he's gonna do them.

(02:38):
And between us, my wife is not is not one
to ask him to do much. She tends to do
a lot for him, and I tend to say, no,
he has to do this for us. And so we'll
we'll find our way through it. We always have. It'll
be interesting though. In any event, it appears that the
heat is behind us, in good riddance. Honestly, will embrace

(03:00):
these next several cool days and spend as much time
outdoors as possible, And I highly recommend the same for
anybody who can do the same. If you can't get
out for some reason, by the way, and that's that's
sad but true for a lot of people in our
age group, get somebody to open the windows, or maybe
get somebody. If you have a wheelchair, get somebody to

(03:22):
put you in it and roll you outside and just
breathe some of this fresh cool air. It'll make you
feel better. I'm pretty sure it will. Anyway, I do
highly recommend it. Walking out the back door this morning
felt good to me, It really did. It was just
nippy enough to make me pause. I just stopped there,
and this is way better than it was yesterday, and

(03:44):
the day before. In the day before that, very dry
and cool too, which I like. It's not quite quarter
zip weather, although a couple of the younger guys in
the office thought it was one in particular, and I
gave him a little grief over it. It's not quarter
zip weather. It's beautiful day to be outside weather. On
the other side of that coin, the Ying to the

(04:05):
Yang Hurricane Melissa knocked the ever loving tar out of Jamaica.
If I read right, it made landfall either as the
strongest hurricane ever or at very least the strongest ever
for Jamaica. Either way, it was packing one hundred and
eighty mile an hour plus wind that just absolutely ripped
that island apart. I saw some video this morning somebody

(04:28):
had taken, and there are tons of examples up there now,
but someone was videoing out of a second story window
kind of across what you could barely see of the
little town in which he lives. And just like kind
of like in The Wizard of Oz, the house that
was in front of the of the camera down a

(04:51):
one story house in front of this camera on a
second floor. The entire roof just shakes a little bit
and then rips completely off the house and just goes
tumbling away into the rain and wind and whatever. Our
hurricane hunter planes if to give you an idea how
bad it was. Actually, for the first time ever, had

(05:12):
to back out of that storm twice in recent days,
and that's never happened before, never happened. So the good news,
I guess, is that she's down to a Cat too
storm now moving over eastern Cuba, maybe already off the
north side of that, But a Cat too hurricane is
still a significant threat to anything it hits. Forecast path

(05:33):
parallels our entire East coast still is a hurricane by
the way, almost all the way up to Canada, but
it stays far enough out to see not to be
a real threat to any of our coastal states. There'll
be some good surf, There'll be some very nice surf
over there, I would imagine, for the next week or so,
but we will be spared at least the worst of that,

(05:53):
and it'll go out there and fizzle out, just like
the rest of them have this entire season, which is
not bad at all. What do we have left here too? Will?
I can do this in business news and Vidia, now
the largest company on the planet, depending on how you
gauge these things, but just by evaluation first to reach

(06:14):
five trillion dollars in worth, Apple made four trillion yesterday
to join Microsoft and in Vidia then at that level,
and then I guess in Vidia just said like, hold
my beer. Yeah, yeah, four trillion. Oh that's that's all
you've got. Oh too bad, check our number again. And
so somehow overnight in Vidio went from four trillion to

(06:39):
five trillion, and that's a lot of money. Three or
four indicators I watch were up a fair chunk, and
the russell was flat, so it doesn't even count. Gold
picked up about forty six bucks an ounce around it
was around ten o'clock. I haven't looked since then finally
climbed back north of four thousand dollars an ounce. That's
a lot of money for an ounce of gold, and

(06:59):
it doesn't take much to make up announce either. We'll
see where it lands later in the day and tomorrow
we're gonna talk to Brad Schwice from Houston Gold Exchange
to get his take on just what's going on that's
driving that price up and down the way it is.
There's got to be something pushing it or pulling it
when it moves by large chunks. But I don't know

(07:23):
what it is, but Brad will for sure, so we'll
talk to him. Then let's get this break started so
we don't run out of time and the rest of
the show, because I got a lot of stuff to
unpack and a good interview coming up, by the way,
with Angela Perez in the third segment of the program
that'll be at twelve thirty. We're gonna talk about hospice care.
Not a lot of people know much about it, but

(07:45):
after experiencing it myself with my mom's passing, it's something
that I'm glad we had available to us country boys roofing.
There's something else that's available to all of us where
it looks like I'm we're past the storm season now,
which means there's really nothing to see there. I hope
you never know with our weather. In any event, though,

(08:08):
it's a great time to have country boys come out
to your house, bright sunshine, nice cool day. They're happy
to stand up on your roof and walk it from
front to back, side to side to make sure that
there's nothing nothing standing in your way. Should we get
some more crazy weather a lot of wind, the other day.
And if a limb falls out of a tree and

(08:29):
hits your roof because the wind was on it pretty hard.
It's a big enough piece of wood. It could damage
your roof and end up causing a little leak if
we got a bad storm. It doesn't always have to
look like just a whole torn off piece of roof.
There are very subtle things that a roofing expert from
country boys will see that you and I wouldn't, especially

(08:49):
just standing on the ground and taking a look around.
They'll come out. They'll look it all over. If it
can be fixed with what they carry on the truck,
which is a lot of stuff. Actually, they'll tell you
how much and how long it'll take, and what they're
gonna use to fix it, and how long that'll lasts.
If you need an entire roof, which hopefully you won't,
but sometimes you do. If you need an entire roof

(09:10):
and you happen to be an educator, a first responder,
or past or president military, John Aiman, the guy who
owns the place, will give you fifteen hundred dollars off
that full replacement roof, and if you don't qualify for
any of that, he'll take a grand off just for
throwing my name at him. Hey, by the way, John
Doug sent me up thousand dollars off. That's all. It takes.

(09:32):
Country boy's roofing country with a K, boys with a Z.
For you younger audience members, And if you're old school
like me, go back to your third grade spelling class.
Spell it the same way you would to win that
spell and be in the third grade. Missus Turner, I
think is who was teaching mine? Countryboysroofing dot com? Countryboysroofing
dot com? What's life without a net? If I suggest

(09:55):
you go to bed, sleep it off.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
Just wait until the show's over, sleepy act that Doug
Pike as fifty plus continues fifty.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Plus, thanks for listening. Certainly do appreciate it. I want
to get to a story out of Montgomery County in
case you haven't seen it yet, because it really it
caught my eye the moment I saw it, because it's
really really important, because it's potentially dangerous to any of us.
This is not the first time this has come up,
it won't be the last time it comes up. But

(10:24):
it's just another example of how people are. This world
has just changed. Okay, two employees at a library up
in Montgomery County, recovering now after being handed damp pink
flyers by some woman in the parking lot. Here you go,
and there's a picture accompanying the story. It click to

(10:45):
Houston of what was on there, and it looks like
some sort of religious pitch, religious solicitation. I didn't read
the whole thing, but the bottom line is this. These
little damp pink flo about thirty minutes after these women
touched them, caused them to become dizzy, little shaky, hot flashes,

(11:11):
and they finally took this stuff to a lab found
out it was laced with fentanyl. Words to the wives here,
never never, never take anything from strangers, no matter how
convincing their story may be, no matter how sad their
story may be. Oh woe is me. Look at these
pictures of my babies here, they're starving. You got to
help us out, got this government shut down going on?

(11:34):
My babies need food. Look at these pictures here. Take
a flyer and the next thing you know, you're getting
stuffed into a car and taking god knows where. And
so you know, Montgomery County law enforcement still hasn't found
that woman. There are some really, really really sick people
in this world now, and they're playing really deadly games

(11:55):
with strangers' lives. Somebody tries to hand you something, if
it ever happens to me, I'm so on alert now.
I was on alert before. And I'll talk to people
in parking lots. I'll just be friendly, and I refuse
to be unfriendly like a lot of people are these days,
and just ignore someone who passes me. I'll nod and

(12:19):
say hello, good afternoon, whatever it is, and almost always,
fortunately out where I live, they'll do the same back,
no matter who they are. So I'm really encouraged by
all of that. But then you got to remember there
are these little outliers out there who would just like
nothing more than to reading the headlines that they had
sent me to a hospital, or worse, playing their little game.

(12:42):
If they push something toward you, when they come up
to you, tell them no, and if they don't back off,
scream no and start backing up so they can't rush
up to you and rub the stuff on the back
of your neck. Non't ever think that wouldn't happen, because
it probably would. I hate having to be so fearful
of strangers. I really do, but we have no choice.

(13:04):
Paper on your windshield or your door handle, get something
besides your hand to pull it off there with, find
a plastic bag or something similar to that, or just
leave it on your car till you get home and
then go out and find something to take it off with.
And here's another idea. And I don't know what would
exactly work to neutralize whatever that is. But if there

(13:26):
is something on your door handle now, or on your
windshield wiper now maybe I don't know, a disinfecting wipe.
I don't know what would work, but whatever it is,
research it, find out and then keep some of that
handy that's just and wipe everything off before you touch
that space again. Because I don't know how long fentanyl

(13:47):
lasts on something, but I suspect long enough to be
a problem if you touch it. Oh gosh, I hate
stuff like that. I really do. Let's do something a
little bit lighter. By the way, some of today's little
tidbits are are Halloween themed and some are not. Game
three of that Dodgers Blue Jay's World Series on Monday,

(14:08):
by the way, a record setting six hundred and nine
pitches that works out to about seventeen pitches per half
inning and a whole lot of tired arms. That next day,
both teams just exhausted their bullpens. Both teams did their
level best to win that game, and Dodgers came out

(14:29):
on top. The Blue Jays rallied last night even without
George Springer and took care of business in a good fashion.
I was quite glad by the way. Thank you MLB,
Thank you Major League Baseball for starting a game in
LA before nine o'clock at night. I couldn't stay up

(14:50):
and watch that first one. There was no way. I
had to be up and going in the morning pretty early.
But yesterday I hadn't even paid attention to what the
start time was. And I actually when I turned on
the game, when I turned on the TV and look,
they were already in the third inning. This is great.
I made sure i'd looked up in the right hand
corner at top right corner of the screen, just to

(15:12):
make sure it wasn't a replay of yesterday or the
day before his game. But it wasn't. It was exactly
what I was hoping for and the outcome was the
same too. Or show how Tani is best baseball player
on the planet. There's no question about that. And I
like watching him play, even much more so than Aaron Judge.

(15:35):
He's also a towering person and an outstanding hitter. But
Otani does things on the he's he looks more comfortable
on the mound than he does in the batter's box,
and so in either way, either place you put him,
he's pretty much number one. So hats off to the
hats off to the Dodgers for having him and getting
as far as they have. And who was that Freddie?

(15:57):
What's his last name? Freddy Freeman? Thank you, Josh. Josh
is sitting in He's gonna have to take over for
Will on Friday. Will has some business and it doesn't
matter where it's none of It's nobody's business where Will's
going unless he chooses to tell us. So I'm not
gonna let the cat out of the bag in any event. Yeah,

(16:17):
Freddy Freeman, another guy who he was kind of a
nemesis to us last year?

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Was he not?

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Is that correct? Yeah? I thought so. I remembered that name,
and I remember not liking him for what he did
to the Astros. All right, we got two minutes left here,
Let's move down this list. There's that, there's that. Oh,
here's one of the things that was Halloween related. And
I'm suspecting that my little source for these things is
gonna just be overflowing with them between now and Friday.

(16:47):
One in eight people this I find very hard to believe.
One in eight people say they've lived in a home
that was haunted. Will have you lived in a home
that was haunted? You have? Seriously, did you see a ghost? No? Really, Josh, No,

(17:07):
no ghost. So it's fifty to fifty. Actually it's two
no's and one yes in this room. I don't think
I've ever lived in someplace haunted. Now. Have I seen
shadows and weird things in the house that I couldn't explain? Yeah,
but I just chalk them up to being absolutely nothing,
just something that's trying to make my imagination run wild,

(17:29):
and I don't let it happen. Two thirds of those
people reported here in weird noises, and I think, yeah,
here it is, sixty one percent claim they saw a ghost.
Sixty one percent that they saw a ghost. Do you
ever watch those shows about paranormal stuff? Yeah, the next
one I look at won't be my first. I'll confess

(17:51):
to that. But I can almost always come up with
a rational explanation for what's on the video. Some usually
it's some pretty good trickery moving out. Cedar Cove RV
Resort down there on Galveston Bay End up Tri City
Beach Road, near Thompson's Bake Camp, if you know where
that is, got all the amenities you could possibly wanted,

(18:13):
a place to park yourself, your family in your RV,
your motor home, your pop up trailer, whatever it is,
for a week, a weekend, or just maybe for a month.
The way the weather is right now, Cedar Cove's got
everything you're gonna need to. They've got a convenience store,
first of all, because nobody goes on a road trip
for more than an hour and a half and doesn't

(18:33):
forget something. There's electric, water and sewer hookups at every
site there are. There's free Wi Fi. There's a bathhouse
with a shower, but it'll be taking your radio in
there and listening to Wi Fi in the shower. That
would be kind of weird. I guess it would be
finally getting this good weather. It's finally gonna be really
really nice to be out there sitting around a little fire.

(18:54):
Maybe that you or your barbecue. You do a little
cooking out there, maybe the fish you caught that afternoon
walking right out of your RV and over to the water.
And by the way, if you don't own one of
those things and you want to experience the lifestyle, Cedar
Cove will rent you an RV for the week, for
the weekend, whatever, so that you and your family can
figure out whether you like it, and you will Cedar

(19:15):
Cove Rvresort dot com. That's the place. It's beautiful too.
Just imagine the breeze just blowing through those palm frowns
and a little lap of water up on the shoreline.
Cedar Cove Rvresort dot com. Yeah, they sure don't make
them like they used to.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
That's why every few months we wash him, check his fluids,
and spring on a fresh coat of wax. This is
fifty plus with Doug Pike back fifty plus.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Thanks for thanks for listening. Certainly do appreciate it, and
thanks as always for listening. We'll talk in this segment
about something a lot of people don't understand well, and
that's hospice care, which most people think of is kind
of a short term precursor to death, which I guess
in a way it is, but it's not a bad
or unpleasant process. And I speak from experience, and with that,

(20:03):
I'm gonna welcome Angela Perez from Divinity Hospice. Thanks for
your time.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Angela, Hi, how are you today?

Speaker 2 (20:09):
I'm well, I really am. Knock on wood. Hope it
doesn't change. My mother spent the final we talked about this,
spent the final several weeks of her life actually in
hospice care, and looking back, I would have to call
that experience a good one. The people who watched over
her were very kind, they were very patient, and they
answered all of the family's questions about what was happening.
So let's talk first though, about when someone becomes eligible

(20:33):
for hospice care. What are the guidelines for that?

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yes, yes, thank you so much for inviting me. It's
a pleasure being on this show. So the guidelines are
whenever it comes to a point that there's an illness
that the diagnosis says your expectancy of life is six
months or less. Okay, but that usually goes for cancer,
which you know everybody on that misconception of hospice is

(21:00):
only for cancer. However, for elderly people, especially for people
that have Parkinson's or that have congestive heart failure, or
have some type of renal failure, or even Alzheimer's and dementia.
Those diagnoses are considered constant declines and so depending on
where the person is at in the illness, whether it's

(21:25):
beginning or far end, and with the recommendation of a doctor,
they can be eligible for hospice services a lot sooner
than later. Most times you consider hospice as towards the end.
But because it has comfort care and because it has
all you know, a nurse and an aid and then
you have a doctor that is you know, with you

(21:46):
through the whole process. There's times we will get people
on hospice and then they will graduate because they get better.
But then you have, you know, the people that are
approved and qualified for hospice and that could be in
the services for up to two years, maybe sometimes three,
depending on you know, the constant decline. For example, you

(22:08):
and I had a conversation about people with Alzheimer's. People
with Alzheimer's, they are eligible sooner than later, and they
can be on services for up to two years.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
And to address the elephant in the room. When you're
talking about all these people and all this time under
hospice care, who's going to pay for all this.

Speaker 3 (22:27):
Exactly? So Medicare for the sixty five and older when
you already all automatically qualified for Medicare, Medicare covers everything
at one hundred percent, so there's nothing that a person
sixty five and older, you know, has to pay out
of pocket. Sometimes cancer patients or somebody with an illness

(22:49):
that they're under sixty five certain requirements they can get
Medicare and they can get Medicaid and those are also
covered at one hundred percent. Under commercial insurance, of course,
you know, there is a co payment that you have
to abide by because it's commercial, and then it's you know,
the sixty five and under. However, some companies, because we

(23:09):
understand the situation that you're in, sometimes they will accept
the co payment. Then sometimes they won't because we don't
want to burden the family with additional charges or cost
that you're already in a situation where hospice is already
tough in itself, and we don't want to put no
more burdens on the family. So sometimes, depending on the company,

(23:30):
they won't ask for that twenty percent or that co
payment just you know, under certain circumstances. But what about
Medicare will cover at one hundred percent?

Speaker 2 (23:38):
What about somebody in my situation, For example, I'm on
my company's insurance, but I'm older than sixty five, so
who's paying?

Speaker 3 (23:46):
So yes, So even if you are over sixty five,
you are still in the insurance of your company. However,
you still have access to Medicare, Okay, So anything, even
though let's just say you have ARP as a manager
care insurance, it transitions automatically into Medicare. So it doesn't
matter what kind of insurance you have, whether it's an ARP,

(24:09):
A Blue Cross, Blue Shield, a Signa or anything like that.
If you're sixty five and over and you're under a
managed care because that's what those insurance are doing, it'll
transition into Medicare. So it doesn't matter what kind of
insurance you have, it'll cover it at one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
Wonderful. I recall an interview I did many years ago
about this, when when I learned that a hospice patient
who has the resources can even travel with his or
her hospice provider to see something or someone they maybe
want to see one more time before they pass. Is
that still the case.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
Absolutely. We had a case recently with our company where
the patient was in Houston and they wanted to travel
to Dallas. You know, I don't remember. I don't recall
if it was a birthday or a wedding. So what
we did is that we just transitioned services from Houston
to Dallas. And and it's the same thing. You know.

(25:02):
Of course they have to take under consideration that they're
going in a car, but as soon as they would
get to the city that they were supposed to go to,
then automatically the nurse will come and do an assessment,
make sure that everything is right. You know, we send
them with enough medication for them to be on you know,
with the medication or whatever is needed like a wheelchair

(25:22):
or something, just enough whatever we can we can take
to them. But you can travel from one city to another.
It's just finding either the same company that has services
in different cities, or find another hospice company that is
able to take you for two or three days and
we just transfer service.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Well, boy, well, if I ever hit that stage in
my life, somebody's going bone fishing in the Bahamas exactly.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Recommendation. One recommendation really quick is don't be afraid to
ask questions to your primary care physician about hospice. There's,
like I said, we were talking about the misconception those doctors,
you know they're iffy about hospice because I respect all doctors,

(26:09):
and you know, there's always a question about that, the
misconception of like, oh, they're just going to go ahead
and expire really fast. So ask questions. Ask doctors, you know,
when is appropriate. And if you don't find a local
hospice company, call them, ask them questions. Says, hey, how
can I be eligible? And then we're going to go

(26:29):
through a process like an interview. You know what's going
on with the patient. How can we assist you? Are
they at home? Are they in an assistant living community?
Are they in a facility? Are they wherever the patient
is at, that's where the services are being going to
be given. So just ask questions. Don't be scared to
ask questions about home health. Don't be scared to ask
questions about hospice. Don't be scared to ask questions about

(26:52):
what other options do I have so I can get
services at home for myself or for my loved one.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, I know, after the fact, when all was sudden
done and my mom had passed. I look back on
hospice as a very positive experience. I really do, and
it can't help my sister and me get through that
a lot more easily, and my wife and her husband
and all of us. It really really helped we. Unfortunately,

(27:20):
Angela are out of time. Angela Perez from Divinity Hospice,
How can they get hold of you real quick?

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Yes, so you can go onto the website of Divinity
Hospice and just look for the phone numbers. Since we
do have offices all over the Houston area. Our main
office is Alpha NASA Road one, so that would be
the office that I direct you to. But like I said,

(27:47):
we have offices all over the Houston area, So just
go to Divinity dot com and then just select the
area that you're at and then just call that number
and we will be more happy to answer any questions
or concerns that you might have.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Angela pez thank thank you so very much. I really
appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Thank you for your time.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
All right, we got to take a little break here
on the way out. UTA Health an amazing collaborative. It
is as I've told you for about ten years now
of providers from every medical discipline who have gone back
upon on their own dime, on their own time, and
learned more about how to apply their specific field of
knowledge of medical knowledge to seniors. And that's a handy

(28:28):
thing for us to have. Every one of us who
either qualifies for or walks around faking it and talking
about being senior, needs to see someone who understands what
makes us tick. If you've got something wrong with you,
if you've got something that's ailing you, and you've had
a doctor or two already tell you, I'm just not
really sure what to do for you, well, get in

(28:49):
touch with one of these providers at the Institute on Aging.
And the first step toward that is going to the
website really to look at all the different services and
resources that are provided there. Then when you figure that out,
figure out how to what you can navigate through that
site to find one of these providers. Mostly in the
medical centers I've always told you, but almost all of them,

(29:11):
not all of them, but almost all of them also
do a little work outside of the med center. For
people who don't want to go there, they go to
outlying hospitals and clinics and offices all around town the
Greater Houston area. This is one of only a handful
of resources of this kind in the entire country. UT

(29:32):
Health Institute on Aging the website. Go check it out yourself.
Ut dot edu slash aging uth dot edu slash aging.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Old guys rule, and of course women never get old.
If you want to avoid sleeping on the couch.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
H h think a good plant. Fifty plus continues.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Here's more with Doug.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Thanks for listening. I certainly do appreciate it. Going into
this final segment, We've got a few minutes left. It
looks like about eight or ten. I'm not really sure.
Maybe more, maybe fewer. We'll see. We covered the fentanyl
thing that was really important. I wanted to get into that.
And on a much lighter note, HID has put restrictions

(30:18):
on which schools can and which schools cannot celebrate Halloween.
I guess on Thursday, and how they can do it.
High schools and middle schools out no costumes, no celebrations.
I guess, no, nothing, although you can almost bet that
some of those kids are going to be dressed in
some sort of different attire, and I wouldn't blame them

(30:42):
as long as they just don't make a fool of themselves.
High schools and middle schools out, some but not all,
of elementary schools also out, but where they can wear
costumes and where celebrations are allowed, there are specific rules
about how long these little parties can last, what they
can do. And when we were in school, all the

(31:03):
way through high school, really it was okay to dress
in costume for Thanksgiving Day as long as it wasn't
offensive to anybody, and that covered most of what you
could get at a costume shop or put together from
mom or dad's closet, going for that retro look. Maybe,
just maybe that was because there was still some time
left to have a little fun after learning. Is what

(31:26):
is now called STEM science technology? What's the E? Engineering? Yes,
thank you and math? I don't know why a trip
over the E. Anyway, there was time when we had
studied and finished with all of that because there was
no time set aside for indoctrination. Maybe that's what it was,

(31:50):
Maybe not, How would I know. Ol West California Governor
Gavin Knwsom got some really harsh criticism of going to
social media to talk about his hard scrabble upbringing. It
seems to me an increasing number of Democrats who who
may or may not have had a modest, maybe a

(32:12):
middle class or maybe even a little bit lower middle
class in upbringing. They want to go in and tell
you how hard it was. They're just there might as
well be three or four little violins playing in the background.
He talks about how his single mom after divorced, by
the way from an attorney for Getty Oil, so I

(32:34):
suspect that he was making pretty good money. He talks
about how his mom had to hustle extra jobs to
keep gabbing in mac and cheese rough life. I'm sure,
at least the way he remembers it, but I suspect
that he's not really sure what it's like to be
truly poor. Sorry, Gavin, I'm not buying into that one, Ben.

(32:57):
I think there's some truth in maybe his mom working
two or three jobs at least for some period during
his childhood. But the whole thing, if you laid it out,
probably would look pretty good to a lot of people
in this country of ours. Right now, speaking of California
and things that are hard to swallow from Fox News,

(33:19):
a new law in that state now mandates inclusion on
the menus of any restaurant chain with twenty or more locations.
You could probably name off most of them out there.
They are going to have to entry by entry, item
by item list whether it does or does not contain

(33:41):
any of nine major allergens. That's peanuts and all just
all the things. You can imagine people being allergic to
glue coat, what is it gluten, all of those things.
On the one hand, it makes a little sense, you think, oh,
that's good, it'll keep people with allergies from having problems.
But it's not really a menu. And this this was

(34:03):
in the Fox News story. It's not really the menu
that's gonna protect somebody from potential cross contamination. It's the
kitchen staff. That's where the protection for customers begins, not
with the government mandating that they change the change the
menu every time something changes an ingredient. The law as

(34:23):
it's written, should anyone actually have an allergic reaction too,
opens these businesses up to just huge lawsuits and could
create a false sense of security even among diners in there. Well, yeah,
it says it doesn't have any eggs in it, or
it doesn't have any of this A or whatever, and
who knows, maybe a supplier changed brands. Well, now that

(34:46):
company's got to print entirely new menus for every one
of its restaurants, for every one of its customers. And
it's just it's just another way that that newsome in
his out there are pushing people out of that state
as fast as they can. It's very similar to what's

(35:06):
about to happen up in New York too, ho Lee
cow over on the East Coast. A full quarter of
New Yorkers now say that they will consider leaving the
city if Mom Donnie is mayor, and they better get
started packing too, because it's not going to take long
under his rule. If he gets the nod as he's
expected to get, it's not going to take a whole
lot of time for the Big Apple to just kind

(35:30):
of become a mudhole. Once his policy has become the norm,
even more people are going to bail out to Like
I said yesterday, I think I got to it. There's
money to be made, honestly in renting a fleet of
moving vans and hiring a bunch of strong young men
to help people leave that once magnificent city after the election.

(35:51):
It's sad it's really sad, but this is looking more
and more like kind of like a soft takeover and
conversion of the biggest city in this country. Wants the
best city in this country to rules that are quite
in contrast with traditional American laws and ethics and values.

(36:13):
He's trying to He's trying to turn it into a
socialist little side area, a socialist area where nobody's gonna
notice until we really get it established. I'm sure that's
what he's thinking, but that's not how it's gonna work out.
I don't know if there's anything that can stop him
now either, because he's got the whole Democrat Party on

(36:34):
his side. AOC jumped in, Hakm Jefferies jumped in, they're
all supporting Mom Donnie Now who just says, straight up,
New York City's going to be socialist and that's that's
not gonna I don't think that's gonna work out. I
really don't. I really don't light it up for the end. Here, Oh,

(36:56):
there's a new world's record heaviest pumpkin. Two British brothers
scored the record after they harvested day punkin I'm rereading
here now that weighs two thousand. There's the ton eight
hundred and nineteen pounds and four ounces. I don't know
why they bothered with that. I'm sure nobody's gonna come
up and roll one out. That's twenty eight nineteen and

(37:18):
a half. Anyway, they nicknamed it muggle for some reason.
At least that would be a pumpkin nobody could steal
off your porch, and in more power to them if
they could. Um, Josh, while you're in here, I'll give
you the choice between breast milk and National Cat Day.
To wrap it up, God, the makers of breast Milk

(37:46):
ice cream are bringing now to us. You're gonna be
sorry you did this. Booger candy, it says here, not
with the real things. They let us know. That's nice,
but nonetheless they're kind of looking like and it's kind
of nasty. I'll tell you yeah, I'll tell you about

(38:06):
the other one tomorrow. It's pretty interesting. Thank you for listening, Josh,
Thanks for sitting in. I'll see you Friday. Audios