Archives for February 2009

I’m Not Ready For This

Yesterday, while volunteering at Cordy’s preschool, her teacher let me in on a little tidbit of Cordy’s school life.

“She’s got a boyfriend now, you know.”

“WHA?”

“Yep, she and [boy’s name] have been really sweet on each other.”

At that point my head exploded.

Apparently over the past two weeks she and this boy have suddenly become a couple. They sit next to each other during circle time, arms around each other. He insists on being right next to her at the table and in line. He asks for the same snack she likes to eat, even though he then won’t eat it because he doesn’t like it. If someone sits next to her he will get very upset.

Maybe he’s not so much a boyfriend as a stalker?

Even worse, he’s the “bad boy” of the class. He has massive tantrums, stubbornly refuses to do things, and I once watched him throw his shoe at an adult’s head. Why couldn’t she go for one of the gentle, quiet boys in her class?

I wasn’t expecting to deal with boys for quite some time. Like, say, 30 years from now. Of course, she doesn’t even mention him at home. When asked who her friends are at school, his name doesn’t come up. So while she willingly participates in the love-fest at school, she’s either not that interested in him or is choosing not to tell us. I’m really hoping it’s the former.

At least her first boyfriend is likely to be short-lived. We don’t know his family, and she’ll be at a different school next year. That gives me all summer to teach her how to go for the sweet, quiet guys instead. Or that boys have cooties and she should avoid them at all costs.



Dear New York City,

I send my husband and my car to you for one short weekend, so he could attend a little convention for work, and this is what I get in return:

Where’s the love, NYC? You’re totally off my Valentine’s Day card list.

Signed,

An Ohioan who is thankful our parking lots aren’t full service and employing blind armless monkeys to move cars.



The (As-Usual) Surreal Con Experience

Trying to describe what happens at a blog conference is always so hard. There are so many moments that are touching, strange, funny, frustrating, and inspiring, but they’re all jumbled together and generally are better in person than on screen. It doesn’t matter the conference – all of them share certain aspects. So I’ll try to describe Blissdom without rambling too much about great moments that you’ll read and just scratch your head, asking “What’s the big deal?”

I wanted to do a post yesterday, but spent most of the day staring at this:


Yeah, see, I told you all blog cons have things in common. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered hotels that didn’t realize that a conference full of bloggers really will need internet access for nearly everyone.

Thankfully the hotel did get more wifi access.

Dinner last night was at the hotel, and featured the Incredibly Enormous Salad:


In true southern cooking fashion, asking for a little mayo for my sandwich resulted in enough mayo to make a potato salad for 10.

This morning, we were treated to a sneak peak at the new Yanni DVD Voices. Everyone danced in their seats to the Latin-flavored music and drooled over the guy on the DVD I affectionately named “Frilly ponytail matador vam-pirate guy” – you have to see the DVD to understand. But then, just as we all came down from our salsa-dancing high, we shot back up again when they announced that two of the singers from Voices were here to answer questions. And yes, one of them was “Frilly ponytail matador vam-pirate guy”. After the Q&A, autographs and photo ops were provided.


The sessions today were packed with more information than I can share in one post, so I’ll have to come back to them later.

Chris Mann provided late-afternoon entertainment with his excellent music. Gotta love a musician who is also Twitter-savvy.

Dinner was at the most amazing restaurant in Nashville. The New Orleans Mansion House is a beautiful, elegant old mansion, but the staff were funny and extremely accommodating, and they knew how to actually make a real drink. (Sorry, the hotel drinks were little more than juice and water.) The food? Incredible.


The evening had to end with a bang, and if it wasn’t going to be drunken antics, how about a group of bloggers stuck in a hotel elevator for 40 minutes? I just got word they were freed minutes ago. Had Baby Jessica fallen down the well with a smart phone and Twitter in the 80’s, she would have been rescued a lot faster, I think.

Finally, I have to add that the hit of the weekend seems to have been my new itty-bitty Dell Mini. It’s a 9″ laptop with only the stuff you need for a conference, and it’s so lightweight. I wish I was getting commission for all of the Dell Minis that will be purchased from the Dell Outlet this week – I’m sure a few will be finding new homes with these bloggers.

Small-fry

PS – All photos provided by a spiffy Canon Rebel XT that was on-loan to me from Midwest Photo Exchange. They’re a Columbus company owned by a great guy who is practically family. I’m sad to have to return this camera, but I’m still saving to buy another from him soon. (He rents cameras, too.)


Haiku Friday: Traveling Edition

Haiku Friday
On the road again
Tonight in Cincinnati
Tomorrow: Blissdom!

Two days of blog fun
in Nashville, then breakfast at
The Pancake Pantry

I’m really excited to be heading to a blog conference this weekend. Heather picked me up as she drove down from Cleveland, and tonight we’re staying with Shannan before grabbing Amy and continuing the roadtrip tomorrow. BlogHer rocks, but only once a year is not often enough. Blissdom will give me the chance to reconnect with old friends, see others I’ve never met in person yet, and meet new PR folks to work with. It’s technically work, but feels more like a vacation.

To play along for Haiku Friday, follow these steps:

1. Write your own haiku on your blog. You can do one or many, all following a theme or just random. What’s a haiku, you ask? Click here.

2. Sign the Mister Linky below with your name and the link to your haiku post (the specific post URL, not your main blog URL). DON’T sign unless you have a haiku this week. If you need help with this, please let me know.

3. Pick up a Haiku Friday button to display on the post or in your sidebar by clicking the button at the top.

REMEMBER: Do not post your link unless you have a haiku this week! I will delete any links without haiku!



I’m Famous! Well, Sorta…

I’d like to welcome everyone who is visiting me from CNN today. And for my regular readers, go check out the CNN article – it’s got useful information for nearly anyone who isn’t self-employed. Of course, I thought that someday I might be featured on CNN for something I’d accomplished, and not because I have no health insurance. But hey, gotta gobble up those 15 minutes of fame somehow, and it’s better than being that guy on TV in his undershirt, holding a beer and talking about how the tornado tossed his trailer around like a tin can.

As a follow-up to that article, I’ll add that we tried to buy private health insurance when Aaron began his contract job in November. I researched, got advice from those who buy their own insurance, and then settled on a provider. After filling out the mile-long application, where I had to list every stuffy nose we’ve ever had, including full dates of illness and symptom, we then endured weeks of back-and-forth with the insurance company.

They insisted on bloodwork for Aaron because it had been too long since his last routine tests. The CNN article recommends not having tests run when you have a limited time on insurance, because it could hurt your chances of getting private insurance. However, I can tell you from experience that it doesn’t matter – they’ll get the information one way or another.

Apparently they found something in his tests, but wouldn’t give us the details. (Nice, right? You’d think we have the right to know about our own health.) Instead, we were told that he was denied any prescription drug coverage. He takes no prescription meds currently, and only took one for a short time in the 11 years I’ve known him. There were also several “pre-existing conditions” based on everything we reported to them, none of which were covered for the first six months. Seeing how I was planning to need this insurance for a year at the absolute most, I thought paying that much for next to nothing wasn’t worth it.

So at the moment our family has no health insurance, and unless we can find another job by the end of the month, we’ll be unemployed again. I’ve been saving anything we can spare from each paycheck to help us pay bills the next few months. Cordy and Mira can go back onto the SCHIP health insurance plan next month, too. I graduate from nursing school in June and will hopefully find a job with full benefits quickly. Then we’ll be back to where we were before Aaron was laid off last June. I can’t wait for that point – I’ve never been without health insurance before this, and this has been one of the most stressful times in my life.

I hope the layoffs across the nation begin to slow soon. No one should have to go through this stress, and no one should be without basic access to health insurance in this country.

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