Works for me: Medical records

It's been a very long time since I've found something to share on Works for me Wednesday - so long that I forgot how to do the linky and put my information in correctly! (Look for #81 - the one with no title!)  But I am back with something that does work:  my medical record sheet for doctor visits.  

This is one of those ideas that seems so simple I'm surprised more people don't do it.  But judging from the reactions I get from doctors and their assistants, people don't.  And I've been seeing a lot of doctors lately with one of my kids, so it's gotten a lot of use.

Every time we have a doctor's visit, whether for a well-child checkup or a problem, I take a medical record sheet to hand to the doctor or assistant.  They love it!  It has all the information they need without having to go through a question-and-answer process with me or the child.  Here's what it contains:


Child's name and date of birth.  Every time we go to the doctor they ask for DoB.  I was answering that question for one of my kids so many times that once when asked for mine, I gave my 14-year-old's! I got quite the look when I said "1997."


Current medications, including prescriptions, over-the-counter meds, supplements and even "therapeutic" foods such as probiotic yogurt and raw local honey.  When one of my kids was seeing a few different doctors for gastrointestinal problems, I got tired of being asked if he ate yogurt. With the information at hand, the docs don't have to ask anymore.

Recent previous medications prescribed or suggested by a doctor that we've discontinued for whatever reason.  One of my kids was seeing a specialist last fall for gastrointestinal issues, so I listed the antibiotics he'd taken over the past year as I suspect they may have been contributing to his sickness.  One doctor had prescribed something for nausea that made the kid dizzy; we stopped using it but I kept it on the list for future reference. 

Current symptoms - why we are in the office that day.  The doctor quickly scans this and then asks more questions, but it gets us beyond the basics quickly.

Previous illnesses that I think might be relevant to the current problem.  I keep these records in a file on my computer, so I can update as necessary and easily copy/paste information for each doctor's visit right before we go.  I don't go all the way back on this: I wouldn't list my 45-year-old tonsillectomy on my records sheet.  We want to keep this to one page!

To help with keeping it short, use bullet points, not chatty sentences.  It's very easy for the nurse to review when she updates the medication record, and for the doctor to scan to review symptoms.

This has streamlined our doctor visits and helped me keep track of everything I want to tell them.  Our doctors love ii!  It works for us and for me!

Get more ideas that work on Works For Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.

Meet my new friend Dana

Dana is a wireless keyboard. A laptop word processor, you might say. 

You can type things into her. Grocery lists, the Bible passage you're trying to memorize, a novel. Then you hook her up to the computer and transfer what you've typed into a text file.

She's wonderful.

I first heard about Dana in an indirect way. Barbara Frank introduced me to Neo, Dana's sibling. Or cousin, maybe. I thought that was interesting but not really relevant to me. But then came NaNoWriMo. My kids and I are going to write our own novels next month. Exciting!

But we are three people who share one computer. Please. Tell me how we can each spend an hour-plus each day writing with only one computer, unless one of us (me) does all the writing in the middle of the night.  The boy said he would write his out on paper, but really, how long will that last?   And at some point it has to be typed up anyway. 

Then I remembered Neo, and started looking around. Being broke cheap frugal, I was searching for a  bargain, and found one on Ebay.  I think Dana had belonged to a school and was being replaced.  There were quite a few available. 

Of course now the kids and I are fighting over Dana.  No one wants to use the "big computer."  And there are still three of us sharing two keyboards.  I'm toying with the idea of another Dana, but then the kids will claim both of them and I'll just have the stodgy old desktop.  Who wants to use that?  Sometimes I get the feeling we are the only people left on earth who use a desktop and don't have a laptop for each member of the family.

Maybe I'll just have to buy three. I can picture the three of us looking oh-so-authorly, hanging out and writing together in a coffee shop. Or out at our favorite arboretum.

Who wouldn't find inspiration here?

If the seminarian came along, he could bring his laptop.  See, we do have one.

One of the nice things about Dana is the lack of distraction.  There is no internet, so in the middle of writing, I can't say "oh, I need to look that up."  I can't see that I just got email.  I can't decide to take a break and go check my reader to see if there's a blog post I must read now.  It's just Dana, me, and the written word.

Don't you want a Dana of your own?

I'm linking up to Works for me Wednesday because even though NaNoWriMo hasn't started yet, Dana works for me.

UPDATE: I just found another Dana on Ebay.  So each child will have his and her own to use.  If we do any writing in a cafe or park, I'll just have to use actual paper and pen!  

Potato salad

I was pondering a side dish for tonight's dinner while  I rinsed out an empty mayo jar to put in the recycling. And right there on the label there was a potato salad recipe that sounded perfect so I decided to make it right then and there.  It is called Bobby Flay's Green Onion Potato Salad and here is the recipe for your dining pleasure.

One note:   I am out of red potatoes so used russets; I prefer the more waxy reds for salad but hey, we must persevere through these trials.  It is still fabulous.  I think I ate my serving just sampling.

One more note: I often come across recipes that call for jalapenos, so now I buy a bag at the produce market and freeze them. I just cut them open, take out the stems and seeds, flatten them out, and put them in a ziplock bag. I pull out what I need when I need them.  Very easy and helpful.

Hey! This worked for me so I'm linking to Works for me Wednesday!

Works for me: emergency dinner

Today is another day when it seems that nothing is working for me.  The washing machine is leaking; the health insurance company is billing me incorrectly;  the car is in the shop.  But here is something that does work:  our favorite emergency dinner.  It's for those days when I forget to to take some critical action to actually put the dinner I'd planned ahead of time on the table.  Maybe I forgot to defrost a big ol' hunk of beef.  Maybe I failed to buy something I need and have no substitute for.  Or maybe I just ran out of time.

But we'll always have burritos. Or tacos.  Or some combination of tortilla/protein/cheese/condiments. If we ever run out of the main ingredients for this dinner, we're in big trouble.

Tortillas are a must.  Flour or corn, your choice.  We keep both on hand.

Refried beans are pretty standard.  Many people make them from scratch.  I like Rosarita brand!

Cheese:  pepper jack, monterey jack, cheddar...

Meat is optional.  Could be ground beef or turkey cooked with spices or some leftover chicken, pork, or steak.   Skip those little packets of taco seasoning mix; use a recipe like this one instead.

Condiments are nice.  Sauteed onions and/or red bell peppers (some people like green), jalapenos, tomatoes, lettuce, avocado,sour cream...  I usually have a jar of pickled jalapenos in the fridge and some "fresh" ones in the freezer.  (Just cut jalapenos in half, clean out the seeds, flatten them and put in a ziplock bag. This works with any sort of chile pepper.) 

Salsa and chips are nice too.  I sometimes make chips by cutting corn tortillas into 8ths and baking them. My family doesn't like those as well as commercial chips, but they will eat them all up.

I put the big griddle on the stove and let everyone make their own burrito, quesadilla, or taco the way they like it.  Easy.    

Even if you don't have a green salad on the side, it can be a healthful dinner if you go light on the cheese and heavy on the veggies. 

Stop by We Are THAT Family to see more of what works for people.  But first tell me about your favorite emergency dinner.

Works for me: pocket portfolios

Last night I contemplated a post for Works for me Wednesday and was in despair because nothing is working for me. This morning I was too busy to think about it.  Other things got in the way - you know, caring for the family, homeschooling the children and all that.

This morning we started studying the US Constitution, something I've been planning for a long time. We read, discussed, and copied out the preamble, and I realized we needed a place to put our paper so we don't lose it by tomorrow when we move on. That's when I remembered that something does indeed work for me:  pocket portfolios with fasteners (or brads) in the middle.  These guys:

We use these all the time.  They are much better than binders for most of our uses.  They take up less space, stack much more easily, and are cheaper. They're easier to decorate, too, if that's important.

Believe me, this is just the start of the decorating.

You can buy these in any office supply store, or at Amazon, of course!

Yeah, something that works for me.  See more at We Are THAT family.

Works for me: School crates

Everywhere i go people are talking about workboxes for organizing homeschool work. I've seen some beautiful pictures and descriptions of school days using them: time is not wasted looking for lost books; students know exactly what to do and in what order; Mom's time is freed up.

But it always seemed too complicated to me. And I just don't have space. So I stole a similar but smaller idea from a friend, and it works for me!

It's just a crate designed to hold hanging files from the office supply store. One per child. Hanging folders labeled with each subject area. Materials needed for that subject in the folder.

They do collect dust and can be hard to keep clean.  But we are a dusty, dog-hair family. 

There are better-looking options now. I bought my boy this blue crate, and his sister a hot pink one, for another purpose several years ago. I'm about ready to upgrade to something that looks a little nicer. There are wicker baskets made for the purpose (with rails to hold the hanging folders) but they are a little expensive for me right now. But even clear or translucent plastic would blend in better.

I bought one of these for myself. The lid helps keep the dust and dog hair out.

We do use some books that just don't fit in the crate; those live in a bookcase nearby.

Of course this still requires that people put the books back when they are done. That doesn't always happen, but I guess it might not happen with a workbox system either.

I think the workbox system looks very cool and if it works for you, you should keep using it. This works for me.

Find more Works for me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.

Works for me: Readerware

Once upon a time, our books were a disorganized mess. We had lots of bookcases but had no idea what books were on which shelves or even in which room. There was no rhyme or reason to the placement, and no one seemed to think it made sense to put a book back on the shelf from which it was taken.

We spent a lot of time looking around for books.

We are a little unclear on when we actually did something about our problem by getting Readerware, a book cataloging tool. Was it just before we moved, in anticipation of packing, moving, and then trying to find large numbers of books in a much smaller house with much less bookcase space? We are not sure. In any case, we got it, and it works for me. It works so well I don't know why everyone who has a large home library doesn't use it.

It's very easy to use: type in or scan (it comes with a barcode scanner) a book's ISBN. Readerware finds the book information and loads it into the inventory. Pre-ISBN books can be entered manually. Set up a location (kitchen bookcase, office bookcase, E's room - you get the idea) for each book and you are done. When you need to find a book and it's not where you thought it would be, just search the database and - if you've kept it in its assigned location - you will find it.

The system could be better: it could attach a little beeper to the book so that if someone moved it to another area without updating the inventory, it could be found. But who wants a beeper attached to their books?

Updating locations is really easy. It's all easy.

When we started packing to move, we numbered each book box with large, easy-to-read labels and moved books into the boxes. We tried to put similar books together as much as possible - 107-Box contains mostly ancient history; 127-Box is full of keepsake books. It doesn't really matter, though; it was more important that the boxes be full to the top, as they were going to be stacked.

No, we don't have 165 boxes of books. We always start our numbering at 100. I don't know why.

I don't remember how we decided which boxes would go straight into the dungeon (crawlspace) and which would stay accessible for unloading into bookcases. But now books move in and out of boxes all the time.

Some boxes got pretty beat up in the moving process. Some got too crushed and had to be recycled. That was mostly because they weren't filled tightly.

When I need a book for homeschooling, or sewing, or cooking, or just something to read, I search by title, author, or subject and find my book. I update the location of each book I debox. If I'm smart, I find books to put into that box, after updating their location too. When we decide it's time for a book to leave permanently, we change the location to "out" rather than delete it altogether. I used to delete the books, but then I'd start thinking about something and... "don't we own this book?" "Yeah, I think so." "But it's not in Readerware." "Did you get rid of it?" So now we keep track of the discarded books too.

This system even lets you keep track of loaned books. It won't get them back for you when you want them, though.

This is something that works for me just about every day. If you have a lot of books, and can't always find them, check out Readerware.

And check out more Works for Me Wednesday posts at We Are THAT Family.

Works for me: foldup tables

For the past few weeks I've been looking at Works For Me Wednesday posts and wondering what to post about. Is my life so chaotic that nothing works for me? This morning I saw it: my collection of foldup tray tables.

Photo: walmart.com

These are still called TV tables in some places. Remember eating TV dinners while watching the family's favorite shows? I do. We had some rather ugly metal ones with some sort of design in black and beige, if I recall correctly. They'd probably go for a bundle in a vintage shop now, if there had been a way to get the rust off. The set I have now is similar to the one pictured. $8 a pop at Walmart on sale one day.

Our tables are in use a lot. Or, they're folded up snd out of the way. Right now there is one acting as a temporary kitchen island holding a cookbook. (I have a counter space problem.) When we have company we scatter them around the living room so people have a place to put their coffee cups and dessert plates. I can set one next to the computer and stack books on it when I'm doing homeschool planninng or updating our book inventory.

Sometimes we even use them as TV trays!

I would love to get some cuter tables someday. But the cute ones are just a bit more costly than my utilitarian ones. Imagine using these to serve tea at your garden party:

Photo: tvtraysetc.com

What works for you? Check out Works for me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.