Bucket of Wrenches

Sometimes life is just a bucket of wrenches. Not that I’m against Forrest’s Mama and her box of chocolates, but the bucket can at least have more uses….like for puking when you overeat the whole box of said chocolates.

Wrench #1 = My hubby has torn his Achilles tendon playing basketball. His surgery is tomorrow. He’ll be on crutches for 8 weeks, then a boot for 8 more weeks, then PT for 6 months. Timing is not so good….Sami’s surgery is in 2 weeks (Wrench #2). Wrench #3 = Neither of us can afford to take time off work (we just now paid off a doctor’s office visit back in Oct to Omaha), neither of us can afford to make it look like our employers don’t really need us by being gone too much, neither of us is sane/patient enough to be a stay-at-home parent (or recovery patient in his case).

So, what’s a college educated gal to do? I’m smart, right? I should be able to handle all of this. And the eureka moment arrives…..I think I finally found out how to use my college degree….it’s time organization. The actual classes were, well, dumb. The Theory of Education did nothing to help me teach 7th graders, but did teach me how to manage my time and what is worthy of skipping (classes) and what is worthy of attention (test dates). You learn quickly in college who takes the best notes (that was actually me) and who is just so good at bullshit they can pull 5 more pages out of your paper to make the professor’s requirements (20 pages on Yugoslavia, really?!?! I said everything I could in 10. Thank you Pat and Karen).

Here’s the plan =
1. Stocking up the freezer. We are not eating restaurant food for weeks on end. I’ve been asking friends and family if they could make a few things for my freezer, as well as making double recipes myself. Target is having a sale on Breyers Natural Ice Cream and I bought a bunch last night (plus you get a $5 coupon if you buy 5). If you’d like to donate to my freezer, I’d gladly accept.
2. Hire a housekeeper. No, I’m not Superwoman; I can only do so much in a 24 hour period. Having someone come 3 times while Sami is recovering will be such a blessing I almost want to cry just thinking of everything being sparkly and smelling fresh without me losing sleep to accomplish it. Yes, this will cost money, but what doesn’t, and my sanity is worth it. My children will thank me later.
3. Finding friends that can visit Sami at home and friends Carter can go to visit someplace else. He already feels that Sami gets a lot of attention so play-dates will be essential for him. It’s extra hard for him with his Aspergers (wrench #4) to understand that his moods are what make others not want to hang around him….not so much that his sister is that great.
4. Do a board game/card game/movies exchange with some friends. After a week, we’ll have gone through all of our games and movies.
5. And pamper myself!! I will continue to play volleyball on Wed nights, finding a “sitter” for hubby and the kids. I’m going to run and do yoga as much as possible. I will take long baths at night. I will get hot chocolates from Quik Trip. I will get my eyebrows waxed. I will hide in the library. Because, let’s be honest, if I go down my family is in a world of hurt. So pampering me is very important!

I’m sure I’ve left something out. It’s probably at the bottom of my bucket just waiting for me to lift one of my wrenches so it can be released to pop up, but oh well. That’s life. It will be another good reason for me to stop, count my blessings, and say “thank you for the lessons…..now get away from those chocolates or you die.”

Heather

Neck and Back Pain

How many of you are in the same boat I am right now……disgusted with yourself for not taking care of yourself to the point that now you’re in deep trouble?

Basically, I’ve let stress and overused muscles go ignored (pushed aside really) and now I can’t turn my head, sleep, or lift anything without my neck/upper back/shoulder/and arm screaming in pain. But, what are the honest alternatives?
1. Rest (hahaha),
2. Non-use (right, having a non-ambulatory child really doesn’t mix with that one),
3. Massages (at $100 a pop, who has that extra money for splurges),
4. Alternative medicine (which I would love to try, but insurance won’t pay for), or
5. Loads of pain meds that will basically deteriorate your internal organs over time.

I have found, though, a doctor who says posture is really the number one problem and I have to admit mine is horrible….has been since I was a kid. I wanted to fit in so bad that I hunched over to 1. Not be taller than the other cute, petite girls, and 2. To hide the fact I had no boobs. Now that I’m an adult and I fixed those self image problems, the bad habit of slouching is hard to break, especially when I’m dead tired from taking care of the kids. I carry my stress in my upper back and I’m sure there’s a huge blockage of chi going on there as well. I wish I could say that yoga was helping, but it hurts too much to do it.

So this week, besides applying heat pads, I’m consciously reminding myself to line up my head, shoulders, and hips. Guess what, it actually helps!! At least at work where I’m sitting….being home with Samantha is a different story. Healing my muscles will be a long and slow process, I understand that, but I’m hoping to be feeling better by Sami’s surgery in May – and I hope to not slide back down the healing ladder with the stress and overuse that surgery and recovery bring.

This is a prime example of the fact that I didn’t take care of myself first, so now I’m suffering big time. I’m just disgusted with myself for breaking my own rule. But, as usual, I’ve learned the hard way and have had to let many things go so my stress level can come down.

Here is the Neck/Back Pain article I read in case you are wondering…. http://www.drbookspan.com/NeckPainArticle.html

To your great health,
Heather

C'est La Vie

C’est La Vie. That’s life. Besides being one of the only phrases after four years of high school French I can remember, and a popular song by Robbie Nevil, it’s an extremely hard concept for Americans to grasp.

Let’s just be honest here. As a nation, we are very uptight people. We like answers, all the answers, in a neat little box with a bow on top. We are sex obsessed, yet aren’t having any, and despise those who do. We are very prudish about natural things and discourage any passion in our lives. Fear and Guilt are our biggest emotions and Cleanliness is almost Godliness. Our lives are full of extremes – all or nothing, black or white, heaven or hell, “he loves me, he loves me not”, success or failure, St. Theresa or Lady Gaga, prom queen or porn queen. We have no middle ground, no gray areas, no mystery, no pleasure in just being. Living as the days come just isn’t allowed here because it means you’re not in control.

So we are back to c’est la vie and living with what comes. Facing real life, not the extremes of reality show life. I’ll admit this is a hard concept for me too. It’s very ingrained into children to be perfect and the disappointments of not living up to expectations are overwhelming. And what are we afraid of? Not being liked. We aren’t raised to not give a shit, to have confidence in ourselves through our own accomplishments, to be self-possessed. We are raised to double check with everyone before making a decision on what we should wear.

I recently spoke to a lady who will become a grandma in May. The baby has OI, just like Sami. The mother, who I haven’t spoke with, seems to be going through a very hard time of adjustment. This I can relate to completely. There is a lot of grieving that happens for many of us for the loss of ideals, dreams, and the “perfect” life your friends are living. Being the mother of a fragile child is daunting – I won’t lie to you. Being on alert 24/7 is taxing on your mind, body, and soul. So there is a lot of readjusting of how you think about yourself as a woman and mother now that life has thrown in the wrench. This grandmother is in complete denial of what her child (the mother) is emotionally going through, constantly saying how blessed Mom is, how Mom won’t need any more help than what family will give her, and how Mom’s strong faith will cure everything. Ummm, that’s not real life, that’s reality show life….hell, that’s actually a Donna Reed and June Cleaver life.

Who can truthfully say they are blessed each time their innocent child breaks a leg? Geez! Yes, Samantha and Carter are both huge blessings to my life, but their disabilities are a pain in the butt. I’m not afraid to say that, it’s true. Does that change how much I love them? NO. Does it change my “glass is half full” mentality? NO. My money and my time schedule? Quite a resounding YES! C’est la vie, so be it. I live with the reality of everyday life. I’m a damn good mother who makes tons of triumphs and mistakes every day. I like my shade of gray life; some days more blue, some more silver, some days no fractures or questions about death (or Pokeman), some days full of tears from other kids’ teasing, some days the house is clean, some days I cry in my closet from exhaustion and binge eat Girl Scout cookies, some days I get to park in the closest parking spot. I admit having the answers would be simplier and nicer, but not as much fun.

Heather

Challenge Results

Okay, I’m laying it on the table. The “Eat 5 Fruits/Veggies a Day” challenge kicked my booty!

WOW!!! I never realized how much protein and grains I eat a day. I had to consciously think about eating my fruits and veggies to get all 5 in and only made it on one day. Usually I got to 4. I wasn’t counting juice to make sure I was getting all the rawness I could handle.

So, I’m doing it again this week and being a better planner about it. Granted, last week was semi-hell with Sami’s broken ankle, birthday cakes, and Easter (how do you eat carrots when there is so much chocolate?) I found that if I have the stuff already cut up, I’ll nibble on it throughout the day as I go about my business. If I don’t, I’ll find something else to eat while I’m moving from one thing to another. Unfortunately, I don’t live in France and can’t take the time to sit while I eat for longer than 10 minutes. Yes, I know this is a huge issue, but I’m tackling one thing at a time here. (Think that wolfing food comes from our school days of only having 17 minutes to eat and socialize….now it’s a habit.)

How did you do?
Heather

Spring Food Challenge

Spring time makes everyone want to chuck things and decluttering is a great habit to be in….but here’s a little something you can add into your life. Try this week to eat (not drink) five straight-from-the-garden fruits/veggies each day and journal about it. Believe it or not, this is a tough one for many of us grain lovers. You don’t have to give up your sandwiches, pasta, cereal or crackers – just make sure you eat your five real, natural fruits or veggies as well. Plus, it’s only for one week, so I think you can mentally get yourself to reach this goal.

If you are already whimpering, and trying to find ways to get around this challenge, let me tell you that ketchup and spaghetti sauce don’t count unless you make them from scratch. Same goes for fruit smoothies. What we are doing here is going for RAW food = the least amount of touching to Mother Nature’s perfectly packaged gifts of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. The great thing is that you probably won’t have enough room in your belly for the grains or processed stuff after you get the good stuff in first.

Part 2: I also want you to journal this week as well. Write down what fruits and veggies you consumed and how your body feels. You don’t need to journal all the bad stuff. We are taking our life changes one step at a time so I don’t care about all the other junk right now. We are working on a pace to snowball into the life we want. Just write down the good things: number of fruits/veggies, if you worked out or parked farther away to walk, if you took a long bath or pampered yourself in anyway, things you are grateful for, if you threw out a bit of clutter….anything and everything you feel is a positive addition to your life.

Next week’s blog I will share my journal, and some of your entries, in order to inspire us to go further. This will be a solid piece of evidence that you can look back on when you need a pick me up. It says for seven days you proved you are a great person and contributed to the betterment of the world around you. Who knows, it might become one of your wonderful habits in the future.

In peace this week,
Heather

Health Care Reform

It’s all the buzz this week. Healthcare Reform is everywhere in the news, all over Facebook, and getting people rankled. There isn’t a news media outlet you can trust with all the facts because they aren’t given all the facts to start with or they want to skew the facts so they look good. The Democrats and Republicans in Washington are fighting like kids on a school playground: just trying to win and not really caring about the central issue. Yes, I know they all say “we care about the people of the United States” but let’s just be honest for a few minutes and say they long ago forgot what their real jobs are, and are now only feeding their own egos. If they weren’t, there wouldn’t be any pork added into anything….every item up for vote would have its own line, no bundled votes. Time consuming, yes, but then again, isn’t that their jobs? What else do we pay them to do?

The second biggest issue I see is the ability of the insurance companies to do whatever they want as a group monopoly. It’s just like the gas companies. Technically they are all separate companies, but in reality they work together to set prices and policies. As a group, they don’t have a single company who stands out by not denying claims and paying for benefits without hassles. On the other hand, I understand the insurance companies’ primary job is to make money. They really aren’t a service organization.

And so the main crux is upon us as a country. Do we want to be sure everyone has basic needs like a socialist society or do we want to preserve capitalism in its most pure form of Survival of the Fittest? Or wait - can’t there be a middle ground with healthcare? We already have it in the postal service and in education. You can use the US Post Office or you can go to UPS, FedEx, or Goin Postal. Public and private working in the same market. You can send your child to the public school or pay for a private one. The choices come in what you consider your priorities. Of course the basic system isn’t as well funded or fancy – that’s the definition of basic. I agree we need improvements in our basic systems, but at least they are there and that’s really a different topic altogether.

So the rest of today’s blog is a fact day from Factcheck.org. No opinions (except mine). I figure this will help in our effort to come up with some real discussions and solutions without the extra ego crap getting in the way of progress. This is our country and we need to take care of it. Let’s begin our education with the recent Health Care Reform Bill just passed in the Senate. Please remember that not everything in this bill starts the minute the President puts his signature on the paper. Some of these are years in the future.

1) The Congressional Budget Office (CBO as their friends call them) thinks that for those in the group market — those who get insurance through their employers — premiums would largely stay the same (which has been a steady increase each year for many years). The average premiums for those who buy insurance on their own would go up, however, by 10 percent to 13 percent. The reason is that benefits could become a lot better for this section of the market under this bill. Also, most people buying their own coverage could receive subsidies that make their net costs for these plans substantially lower than they otherwise would be. Those people, though, could not be on Medicare, Medicaid, or on their employer’s insurance plan.
2) Despite the fact that the federal health insurance plan (a.k.a. the “public option”) is now gone from the bill, Republicans and conservative groups have continued to claim that the bill institutes a system like the one in the United Kingdom, Sweden, or Canada, or otherwise amounts to a government takeover. It doesn’t. A pure government-run system was never among the leading Democratic proposals. Instead, the bill builds on our current system of private insurance, and in fact, drums up more business for private companies (as if they need more money) by mandating that individuals buy coverage and giving many (but not all) subsidies to do so. There would be increased government regulation of the insurance industry, however, not enough to really help the overall situation the industry has sunk our country into in the first place. These “government-run” claims have also included heavy criticism of health care in Canada and the U.K. = such as the assertion by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop that seniors would be “too old” to qualify for artificial joints and pacemakers in the U.K. If that is true, why are the majority of those getting joint replacements and pacemakers in the U.K. seniors? Someone is qualifying.
3) “If you like your plan, you can keep it.” Obama has repeatedly made this claim, and it’s true for the most part. But not for everyone. Employers could still drop coverage under this bill — just as they can do now. Basically, this is just talk because it changes nothing. Though all employers with over 50 employees must provide some kind of health insurance for their employees, it really could be cheaper for them to just pay the fine ($2000/employee) annually…and that only counts if an employee has to use the federal subsidies to get their own insurance. I can see a ton of ways to get around that fine. Another time…
4) Medicare cuts or Medicare savings…whatever you want to call them, it’s a $500 billion reduction in the growth of future spending over 10 years, not a slashing of the current Medicare budget or benefit. It’s true that those who get their coverage through Medicare Advantage’s private plans (about 22 percent of Medicare enrollees) would see fewer add-on benefits; the bill aims to reduce the heftier payments made by the government to Medicare Advantage plans, compared with regular fee-for-service Medicare. The bill also boosts certain benefits: It makes preventive care free and closes the "doughnut hole," a current gap in prescription drug coverage for seniors.
5) As for Medicaid….eligibility level is expanded to $29,327 as a household income. The Federal Poverty Limit for a family of four is $22,050. (Freaking SAD!!!) It’s also stated that some adults with no children will be able to qualify, but not illegal immigrants.
6) “The health care plan would be the largest middle-class tax cut for health care.” Note the “for health care" part of this claim that has been made. This may be technically true, given the qualifier. But who would even maintain a list of the biggest “middle-class” tax cuts, since there is no agreed upon definition of who is “middle class.” (The vast majority of Americans say they’re "middle-class," making this a popular buzzword for politicians.) This grandiose-sounding assertion, however, is only being made about tax cuts for health care. The bill includes about $460 billion over 10 years in subsidy money. Incidentally, President Bush’s 2001 tax cut totaled about $1.3 trillion over 10 years, with about 42 percent of the benefits going to the middle 60 percent of all income earners, according to a breakdown by the Tax Policy Center. That amounts to $566 billion over 10 years, a bigger cut for the middle earners than the health care tax cut.
7) Economic studies simply do not support the claim that medical malpractice suits are a major driver in health care spending. Many Republicans strongly back limiting liability awards in medical malpractice cases, and it’s true that doing so would save some money = about 0.5 percent (roughly $11 billion in 2009)." That’s real money, but it’s a very tiny part of the more than $2 trillion spent on health care annually in the U.S. There’s disagreement over what exactly the biggest drivers of spending are, but medical malpractice doesn’t top the list. About 75 percent of spending, for instance, goes to taking care of chronic disease.
8) Here’s a bit of hub-bub about the “Union/Cadillac plans”. The bill places a tax on high-cost employer-sponsored plans – specifically there’s a 40 percent tax on the value of plans above $10,200 for individuals and $27,500 for families, starting in 2018. The tax falls on insurers, but we all know it would be passed along to policyholders one way or another. The thinking behind it isn’t to raise money by slamming workers with a 40 percent tax…the existence of the tax will supposedly prompt employers and employees to choose less expensive health plans (as if there are some to choose from – see second paragraph). In lieu of the higher cost benefits, employers would raise salaries. And that’s how the government really makes its revenue here: on payroll and income taxes on those higher paychecks. My question is…who said the employers will raise salaries for the commoners? And if given a choice, would you rather have greater benefits or a higher salary? Those healthy youngsters without kids want money, where most moms and dads are begging for benefits. Again, it’s all about your priorities.
9) The insurance companies are getting a bit of a slap on the wrist in that they can no longer deny coverage for children with pre-existing conditions, and starting in 2014 can’t deny coverage for anyone at all for a pre-existing condition. WOO HOO!!! That’s not saying they can’t charge you into premiums and co-pay bankruptcy, only that they can’t deny you coverage.
This is nowhere near the whole of it. As usual, the bill is full of crap that really has no purpose or bearing on healthcare but is bribes for votes. Disgusting, I know. It’s not a Democrat or Republican lonely practice, they both do it every day. As you might tell, I wouldn’t do well as a politician. “Kids need healthcare? Well, give it to them damn it! I don’t care if your bonus will only be $1 million instead of $2 million.” I have an attitude problem. I’m okay with that. I like me.
What are your thoughts?
Heather

Welcome Spring

Can you feel that Spring is just around the corner? Besides the fact that we just celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, Cesar’s death on the Ides of March, and Easter is around the corner. Walking out of Core Training last week was a new experience because the sun was rising….even with Daylight Savings Time jolting me ahead an hour. Since I started my workout classes January 4th, I’d arrive and leave in the dark, breathing the frigid air. But this week has been different. I walk in through the dark but walk out into the light. I’ve moved down from my “Nanook of the North” 20* below 0 winter coat to a lined/padded 22* above 0 sweatshirt from Old Navy. Things just feel lighter; physically, mentally, and spiritually. (Okay, Saturday’s forecast is for an ugly winter storm. This is the Midwest and our weather has ADHA. I’m enjoying the light sun until then.)

I want to clean and organize. Gather the house and life clutter and recycle. I want to start fresh and move forward without all the past junk holding me down.

I really think it’s time to pull out one of my favorite books, “Throw Out Fifty Things” by Gail Blanke. (http://www.throwoutfiftythings.com) Gail is great at helping you finally part with the psychological side of your physical clutter. And don’t kid yourself, you’ve got plenty, everyone does. Your past is what makes you who you are today, but it doesn’t have a say in who you are tomorrow.

So, what are you doing to welcome Spring? It’s coming and it’s a great time to start fresh on something new.

Heather