Time to breathe

Time to breathe…

For the last four months my life has consisted of sleep, work and school, papers and deadlines, tests and tax returns and most of all there was no time to breathe. 

This year I worked at least 116 hours of overtime in 2.5 months on top of being away from home for an additional 8 hours a week going to school – yeah, breathing time was not high on the priority list.  My husband was a real champion during this time, not complaining about taking care of Colleen or never seeing me.  He may have been a little fussy one night when I had to call him to rescue me at 11pm from the side of the road because I may have had a fight with a curb and it won, putting a nice hole in the side of my tire – but all in all my time away was pretty uneventful. 

I took my last exam last night, turned in my last paper last week, and now there is nothing to do but wait for grades; not that I really care what grade I make, just as long as I pass.  School is officially out of my mind for the next month and a half.  For the next 49 days I will get to go to work at 9, leave at 5 and actually have time to spend with my family and with myself. 

So my new dilemma – what to do with all this time I will have.  I don’t want to waste the time with mindless TV watching or internet searching.  I want to do something meaningful with my time, something that I will look back on and think it was fun.  I desperately want to be fun…it’s just my non-fun self holding me back.  So I did my traditional “Tanya” thing and made a list…

A few things I really want to do with my time:

1.       DEEP clean and organize my house – I would like to be able to have visitors, however, not being home for the past four months has really done a number on my house work.  Colleen keeps growing and outgrowing toys/clothes as well as her ability to persuade you into buying her more stuff at the store “OHHHH!  Mommy I LOVE THIS!  Can I have it PLEASE?”  Yep – enter guilty absent mommy here and soon you have overabundance of STUFF.

2.       Healthy living – I've been surviving off fast food and junk these past few months, no time to really cook good healthy food or even go to the grocery store so my weight has increased a few pounds – not that I didn't need to gain a few pounds, but my clothes are starting to get tight and after I splurged and bought good clothes I really do not want to have to go up a size. I want to actually plan my meals, exercise, and play outside (which means I will have to brave the bugs) with Colleen and get some color on my pale self.

 

3.       Spend time with Colleen – it was heartbreaking some mornings when I’d leave for work and Colleen would look up at me and say “Mommy, I don’t want you to go to work – can you stay at home with me?”  My sweet baby girl…

4.       Sew/Paint – I know I've been saying I wanted to learn how to sew for years; I have everything I need to do it, except the time.  Now I will have the time to devote to practicing; the same for painting – I really enjoyed going to my painting classes, and while I’m not very good at it, I think I am better than when I first started, therefore I can paint some pictures to replace some of the not so great ones hanging on my office wall – the ones that people keep asking if my child painted…yep – awkward.

5.       Build real relationships – I've always wanted to be the person who took cookies to the neighbors, who people stopped to say “Hello” to, but I’m not that person – YET.  I’m still “Mark’s wife” to the neighbors who even know who I am.  I want to be the dependable neighbor – the one people go to when they need something, emergency baby sitter, a cup of sugar, etc.  I want to have adult conversations with real people and not just post a status on Facebook to have people, who I never talk to, give me their comments on.  I want to have barbecues in my back yard (which means I need to clean up my back yard too – see “What I want to accomplish number 1” and add “Clean back yard”). 

6.       Grow spiritually – I need to discipline myself to reading and studying the Bible, I need to quit relying on my own ability to control things (since we all know how much I like to be in control).  I tend to want instant results in this area – I want to know everything quickly – do everything right instantly – so I guess the first thing I need to work on is my patience.  One step at a time.  I have been able to memorize one Bible verse – mainly because I've written it so many times trying to get it to look nice on my dry erase board…”Don’t be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” Philippians 4:6

Most of all I want to live a meaningful life and not just live life.  I want to be intentional with the things I do.  I want to be different, the good different, the different that people can look at and say “I can take charge of my life too” – I want to quit letting the world dictate to me how I am suppose to be, what I am suppose to do.  I want to be the person to make a difference to those around me and I will accomplish this during my new free time, the time I will use to breathe and live life to the fullest.    

My issues with the health care system...

I’ve had an “AH HA!” moment this weekend while at Sister’s house. It was decided that I had to watch a documentary about how horrible the health care in America really is (which I knew it was bad already) and how other countries are able to provide healthcare to all of its citizens equally across the board and it got me on my soap box in regards to my health care.

Currently Colleen and I are the only ones in the house with health insurance and the only reason I am covered along with her is because 5 months before she was born the rules changed and I could no longer get a child only policy, they now have to be on a policy with an adult. So I had to work the figures to see who we could afford to cover with her – because of Mark’s age it was going to cost over $150 more to insure him and Colleen than it would cost to cover me and her, we couldn’t afford to cover everyone. We don’t live an extravagant lifestyle in the least bit, we don’t go out and spend money on things we don’t need either. The only reason I could afford to get the insurance is ONLY because my car was paid off around the same time Colleen was born and I still had to get a policy with $3500 deductible to get the premiums to an amount we could afford. In the first 2 months of Colleen’s birth we already racked up over $6000 in hospital bills because of 2 hospital stays, once for jaundice and the second for what turned out to be a stomach bug – but at 2 months old you can’t not take a child to the doctor when she is having bloody stools and a high fever.

With my policy I only get 3 sick visits a year before I have to pay my deductible in order for them to pay another dime for my care. Last year I ended up developing a staph infection and within one week I used up all of my visits due to follow up appointments so when a few months later when I developed clogged earwax duct, which later turned into a really bad ear infection, I racked up almost another $1000 of health care costs on top of the premiums I already pay. The insurance company paid out less than $900 for my doctor visits last year and I paid over $1500 in doctor bills and co pays (for just me) and that is NOT including the $1900 I paid in premiums for the year. The only good my insurance is for is so that IF something major happens to me I will only have to pay $3500 of the X(thousand) of doctor/hospital bills.

If I end up pregnant the insurance will cover NOTHING for it because I can’t afford to add maternity benefits. We had no insurance when I had Colleen and luckily I had money in an IRA to take out to pay for the birth center where I delivered her. Had I delivered her in a hospital I would have had to pay AT LEAST $10000 but at the Birth Center I only had to pay around $4000. If I had maternity benefits it would cost an extra $250 a month in premiums AND I would have to pay those premiums for a year before they would pay anything for the pregnancy. So in essence I would have to pay $250 for at the bottom end 20 months (the year before and during the pregnancy) which comes to an extra $5000 for a birth that would cost only $4000 if I delivered at the Birth Center again…the insurance company just made $1000 for me to have a baby – how is that right??? Why not build more birth centers and all insurance policies include pregnancy? Who says that you HAVE TO deliver in a hospital? Women have delivered babies at home and with midwifes since the beginning of time – delivering at a hospital is a new development and all it does is drive up health care costs.

How much of the health care costs are going to Doctor’s malpractice insurance because everyone has gone sue happy? How much is going into the insurance companies pockets? Why is it fair that people like me have to choose who in the family gets to have health insurance and who doesn’t? People who make a lot of money can afford to have the top of the line insurance and there are programs for the senior citizens and children of low income families to be covered but what about everyone else? Why is government run health care viewed as horrible? I would rather everyone have medical coverage than only the people who can afford it. People say that the health care would be awful if the government ran it, that people would have to wait to be treated, but what about those who don’t get treated now – how is this better for them? The government even pays for prisons have top notch medical treatment for its inmates but my husband has nothing because we make too much money for any aid and not enough money to cover it ourselves.

Why it is ok for insurance companies to make astronomical profits and the people they insure are denied benefits for any number of reasons is beyond me. Why is it ok for insurance companies to choose who they cover and who they don’t? It’s only ok because politicians are bought out by these companies and nobody can seem to put a stop to it. This is exactly why I hate politicians; they look out only for themselves and who can give them money and don’t give a damn for the people who just try to make a living but end up going bankrupt and lose everything because they got sick.

I’m not one to believe something just because someone told me it was true, which includes this documentary but I know the health care in this country is crap because I live it every day. Not only are my premiums high for the coverage I receive but I’ve had the insurance company deny me coverage the first time I applied because I was expecting a child (not to be confused with being pregnant) and had them deny claims due to my glaucoma being a pre-existing condition. It is apparently impossible to get child covered from day one of birth if a policy is not already in place on the parent which I believe is so insurance companies can deny a baby coverage if they are born with a medical condition that will continue throughout their life –I can be wrong, but I doubt it. Something has got to change and it needs to be more than allowing kids to stay on their parent’s insurance plans until they are 26 – there are still MILLIONS of people who are uninsured and in the same boat I’m in.