Sunday, June 21, 2009

Big Boy Bed

Unfortunately it's not nearly as effective at trapping the boy in his room until a more respectable wake-up time. He sweetly greeted me at 5 am. He wanted to snuggle. After rolling on me and elbowing me a few times, he said he wanted to snuggle in *his* bed. So I moved into his room, where he continued to elbow me, poke me, pet my hair, and (loudly) whisper all of his thoughts in my ear. Most frequent comment? "Mommy, what are you doing?" Like he couldn't tell that I was just trying to catch a little more sleep. I'm really a grouch when I want more sleep.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Lithotripsy

The bruise from my lithotripsy looks kind of like a bizarre Asian graphic tattooed on my lower right back. Yeah, a tramp stamp.

The pain from the post-anesthesia headache is worse than that from the blast site, thus far. And I'm super-happy to be able to drink my morning coffee and eat a bowl of Special K this morning. Not eating breakfast yesterday was really tough - particularly the lack of coffee (said the coffee addict).

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Health Insurance

Changing health insurance? Stinks. Dealing with in-network and out-of-network and new paperwork and other assorted crap is giving me awake-at-three-a.m. anxiety (okay, it's 4:30 a.m. now, but I've been up for over an hour). I've jumped through so many hoops to get things approved by our current insurance, and now that I think I finally have most of those things done, I get to do it all over again with a new company that has new rules. I know, I should consider us very fortunate to have health insurance at all. And I do appreciate that.

But few things make me feel like an angry cat with fur standing up, ready to bite the next person I see, like the absurd bureaucracy of health insurance. Medications that aren't covered without prior authorization because some executive somewhere thinks s/he knows better than my doctor. Tests and procedures that have to be coded correctly in order to be covered, cross your finger and hold your breath, and even then it might be denied if someone in claims woke up on the wrong side of the bed. One of the doctors I've come to love, with whom I've built up a good working relationship, is no longer "in network" and thus may become a lot more expensive next month. Never mind the fact at an in-network dentist doesn't even exist within a generous driving distance of our town. I just hope I can get my mysterious kidney stone issues resolved before the new plan starts. And I'll steel myself for more hours spent in the coming months on often fruitless phone calls to get the care that I need...

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Did Dave Ramsey watch a lot of Dragnet?



Envelope budgeting, made famous by Dave Ramsey, makes a cameo in a 1968 episode of Dragnet. Hubs and I have been watching Dragnet and Emergency! episodes on RetroTV lately and I starting laughing when I saw the envelope scene between Friday and Gannon early in this episode.

Monday, June 1, 2009

My pretty, pretty garden

All of the little plants coming up in our veggie garden delight me. The blossoms on the tomato plants - those in the garden and the pair planted here, in front of the house, make me smile as I explain to the kids that the actual tomatoes will develop there. We even have a couple of itty-bitty green tomatoes on a couple of plants! I'm excited to eat food that I've grown myself, but also really eager to see if the gourd plants produce some gourds that I can use for birdhouses. And I really hope that some of the sunflower seeds I got for free grow up to produce flowers - the kids will enjoy them, and my grandmother was also thrilled when I told her I had planted them. Everything's small now, but there's so much promise!