Battered woman

I haven't posted in a long time- what can I say, I've been busy! But lately I've been feeling battered by politics and I have to vent. As a polysci major I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss the days of apathy. I long for the days when I could go a whole week without having politics forced into my conciousness. It's completely stressing me out and there's no where I can turn to get away from it all... unless I become a hermit and don't even talk to my friends.
I don't have regular health insurance, I can't get regular health insurance. I get minimum care through the VA, but it's hard to get to see a doctor because the waits are so long. Our clinic has been way too small for more than 10 years, but every time they talk about expanding someone else decides that the VA doesn't need all that money and takes funding away. So I can't just make an appointment if I'm sick because by the time I saw the doctor I'd either be better or dead. My only option is to go to their sick call and wait until I can be seen. The last time I did that I got there at 8am and wasn't seen until after 1pm. I'd like to have an alternative to that, but due to preexisting conditions (carpal tunnel syndrome- thank you US Navy! and hypothyroidism, both of which have been and will be cared for by the VA) I can't get insurance on my own without paying an exhorbitant amount of money. Even without listing preexisting conditions insurance for myself and my family is over $1000- twice our mortgage and about 1/4 of my husband's annual salary. The only way we can afford insurance is if we stopped paying most of our other bills and only paid for health insurance. And that's not including dental, which is the health coverage my husband and I really need.
So we go without, and we hope that reform passes, and we do what we can to tell other people why we want reform passed. And yet what do I get shoved in my face day after day? People who tell me that it's my own damn fault that I don't have health insurance, that they have great insurance, that I don't deserve to have health insurance, that they aren't paying for my health coverage, that they don't want one cent coming out of their pockets to help keep me healthy. What I end up hearing is- you might as well die because we don't care about you. As a human, as a Christian, I just cannot understand that attitude, especially when the people saying it are supposed to be Christians!!! It makes me so incredibly depressed that as a nation we have gotten so selfish that we would rather watch other people get sick and die than be willing to give up a couple of dollars out of our pockets to help care for them.

Happy Holidays (ho ho phew!)

Christmas is over. I think the dividing line between childhood and adulthood is one's feelings about Christmas. One year you're excited, can't wait, full on positive. The next year the dread creeps in. That's when you really know you're an adult. "What do I get for ________?" "How am I going to get to three different houses to open gifts and how am I going to haul all that crap around without giving myself a hernia?" "Why not just go away for Christmas this year?"
That last one is the one that always gets me. When I step over the line from dread into the quicksand of avoidance. Sucks me down every year around about the 15th. This is when I suddenly take an interest in spending quality and quantity time with the kids, when vegging out in front of the TV suddenly seems like a goal rather than something only other people do, when getting the gifts and doing all of my other ninety million chores becomes Mt Everest and I'm not even up for the foothills. And you know nothing good is going to come of it. And yes, folks, I did find myself in Target on Christmas Eve day, swearing that I was never going to wait until the last minute to buy these damn presents and next year I was going to shop online- and get it gift wrapped, darn it. I think next year I'm just going to bring along a mini tape recorder so I can stop wasting breath saying the same thing every year.
But I made it, and this ended up being one of the best Christmases for me, ever. Not only did my parents get me a fabulous present but no disfunctionality presented itself in a major way and my husband was there, was present, and didn't do his patented 'I hate Christmas' routine. My daughter tells everyone about the kitchen grandma & grandpa got her, my son actually plays with the toys he got, I bought the presents my husband gave me so I didn't have to pretend to like something I hated, and I managed to cram everything back in my xB and get it home in one piece and actually unpacked. So no more finding a grocery bag six months from now and discovering snack size Hershey bars from a stocking melted into little chocolate rocks at the bottom. Yeah!

Stupid frigging camera!!!

I hate Fisher-Price right now. Since my husband's not going to be home at Christmas (he's a truck driver) we decided to have a mini-Christmas yesterday. My daughter got to open her present from her "uncle" (one of hubby's best truck-driving friends). It turned out to be one of those new Fisher Price Kid Tough cameras. She loved it, took pictures all day until it got filled up. So I decided to use the so-called super easy upload feature and get the pictures on my computer. Ha! No driver, software can't tell the camera's there, different size cable from my wonderful Kodak so I can't even try to sneak it on the one that's already installed (probably wouldn't work that way anyway, but a girl's gotta try). Did a search online and couldn't find a driver- just found a bunch of people in the same boat, all of whom seem to have contacted Fisher Price only to be told "the driver's on the disk". Uh... no it's not, I looked. There's no way to email them and their phone service hours are limited and obviously not during the time I needed them to be there.
Now we're going to the zoo and instead of being able to take pictures I have the choice of either deleting all the pictures she's taken or spend another 20+ bucks to buy a memory card. AARRGGHH!!!

Why my Christmas is going to be relatively stress-free

Because compared to getting ready for Walk To Bethlehem this will be a piece of cake- even upside down and step by step (post a comment if you know what movie that comes from). I'm just happy the whole thing's over. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, it was worthwhile, I'm glad we did it. But boy oh boy was it stressful. I think the biggest thing was the fact that it was brand new. That combined with the fact that I'd never been in charge of any volunteer thing before and now it was plopped in my lap and I felt totally unprepared for the challenge made for a total stress fest. And now I can relax, buy the ten or so presents I still need to get, attend all of the other functions I need to attend (none of which I am organizing- yeah!), and keep my kids from ODing on candy canes. Easy peasy could do it in my sleep.
And heck, I've got until February to get ready for the Mardi Gras Ball! AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Cliques and money

Remember high school? Remember the cliques in high school? They may have been different from mine, but the still boiled down to two categories- have, and have-not. If you were a have then you got it all. If you were a have-not then it meant things like not getting a limo for prom, not getting to go to all the cool concerts, not getting a car for your 16th birthday, and all kinds of things like that. Lately that whole high school mess has come back at me almost 20 years later.
For one thing, I have a great group of women at my church that I could be real friends with, but I made the mistake of going to some of their houses- haves! There's no way I'm going to reciprocate and invite them to my house. Even leaving aside what a mess it's been since my son's been born, it's a cruddy townhouse in a cruddy neighborhood and I'm just too damn embarrased to have anyone over. Call it a pride issue if you want, tell me to get over it if you want, it's still not going to change anything. I could be part of their clique, but because I'm not a have I can't let myself fit into their group.
And then there's my online friends. Great group in a forum- yeah, the occasional butthead, but they just add spice to the mix. But then one gets upset and decides to make his own forum. Great. And his website is based on a level of Flash that my computer can't handle, so I'm excluded- and I don't have the money to buy another computer. Even if I could, I'm not sure I would. It ticks me off that he's created this 'members only' forum that sounds like another high school clique. And our usually lively forum is now dead. I don't know if they're posting on his forum (since I can't get there I can't tell), but the timing is suspicious.
I'm depressed. And of course since I'm depressed everything is going badly. Don't know how I'm going to get myself out of this funk, but I better do it soon and it better not cost me any money.

Ups and downs

Ups- husband's been home a couple of times
Downs- he's only home for a couple of days (which could also be seen as an up, since both times were good and happy times, not even a disagreement to mar it)

Ups- pastor loves the idea of a Walk Through Bethlehem
Downs- it's morphed into something completely different from the original vision and I'm not sure we'll be able to pull it off

Ups- finally got some publicity material together for MOPS- and got the newsletter in on time
Downs- now I have to distribute it- and start on December's newsletter so I don't end up leaving it for the last minute

Ups- figured out that if I designate M, W, F for school board and T, Th, S for MOPS then I can prioritize and get things done
Downs- couldn't figure out a way to include a set day for housework unless I want to give up my day of rest (not!) so I'll have to keep working on it

Overall the Ups are winning, although it may not look like it from this. The irony of all of this is that if I didn't have kids I'd have so much more time for all of my commitments, but if I didn't have kids I wouldn't have these commitments!

I did it

I did it. I put myself out there. I sent in four ideas, now I have to wait and see if they're good enough to be pitched. Haven't sent my baby in yet, I want to get the treatment done first. If nothing comes of this I don't know what I'll do- this is a real good way to destroy my creative self-esteem. At least someone thinks my writing is okay- thanks German! I know it's not much but heck, better that then nothing. I haven't really written anything but school papers since my early 20s. I guess being a mechanic and getting stuck in a bad marriage did more to me then I thought. Then when I went back to school I spent my time perfecting my nonfiction writing skills. But something happened, I'm not sure what- I think it may actually have been committing myself to sending these ideas in- but the proverbial dam broke and now I want to write creatively. Heck, if I don't hear back on one of the ideas I may just turn it into a book after all! Who knows? And yes, I am feeling very optimistic today.