Times is tough.

Update on the Jeter clan...

Thaddeus is pretty sick right now. The kid who never really gets sick, is really sick for the second time in his life. The funny thing is, it's so hard to tell. Let me explain...

Thad first presented with a little cough about two weeks ago. That's fine. The weather sucks one day and then it doesn't, so I chalked it up to seasonal stuff. As time went on, the cough got a little worse...by last week, it was full on chest congestion. So, I took him to the doctor just to make sure it wasn't in his lungs and we weren't facing another bout of pneumonia.

Little stinker...

His lungs are just fine. His ears and throat, however, were not. He has such a severe ear infection in his right ear, that the doctor warned us it could very well burst his ear drum. And while they didn't test his sore throat for strep, they are treating it as such.

I said, "Thaddeus, why didn't you tell mommy that your ear and your throat hurt?"

He said, "Mommy, I didn't want to have to get a shot!"

Oye.

So we've spent a lot of time these past few days talking about how important it is to tell mommy right away when you don't feel good, so she can help you get better BEFORE we have to go to the hospital. Lol. 

And the poor kid. He's definitely feeling one of the major side effects of antibiotics...so that's fun.

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Tom is currently studying for the Bar exam.

This means I get to see him between the hours of 7 and 8am, and even then I am half-dead to the world, so it's more of a grumbling, "Bye honey I love you study hard see you tonight."

He comes home around 8 or 9, just in time to watch an hour of TV and talk on the couch before he passes out.

I am so ready to have my husband back.

I'm tired of the stress it puts on him, and I'm tired of being a single mom.

I know he would help out more if he could (and believe me, despite being gone a lot, he still helps out way more than he should be right now), but wow. My hats go off to women (and men) who do this whole parenting thing alone on a daily basis.

I'm just thankful that baby #2 is still in utero while I'm doing this stuff alone, lol. I might go cray-cray.

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Things with me are the same.

School is draining all of my willpower to live. Not really, but I'm ready for it to be over. I have my final degree audit in a couple weeks, and then one more semester before I leave that place and never look back.

I still have friends and professors trying to convince me to take the Bar exam. As of now, fine. I'll take it. But if Tom passes the Bar, gets a great job, and life is wonderful...then I won't. Lol. I don't want to practice law unless I have to...

I had a bit of a meltdown the other day when dealing with my new OB and my insurance company.

I had been waiting to see my new OB since I scheduled this appointment in early January. On the day it finally came, they called TWO HOURS BEFORE MY APPOINTMENT to tell me, "Oh, your insurance doesn't cover pregnancy, so you're going to have to pay $800 up front."

I'm sorry...what?

There were so many things wrong with this situation, lol, I can't even begin to tell you.

First of all, thank you for calling me the day OF my appointment with information you have known for damn-near 6 weeks. 

Second of all, we pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for private insurance, and you mean to tell me they won't cover a woman who is pregnant? Isn't that kind of like refusing to cover a woman who gets the flu? I mean...it's pretty damn common, right?

So I called my insurance company to verify. Sure enough - no coverage. For ANY women, not just me. They don't cover a single woman under any plans - you can't even add it as an option.

So, I told the woman on the phone, "Please don't take this offensively, but you work for some crooked fucking bastards."

Not surprisingly, she agreed.

So we were faced with two options - pay out of pocket for prenatal care and everything pregnancy related, or get on Medicaid.

We really did need to think about this decision, lol. I'm so anti-government health care, it's not even funny. But when I found out the price of my high risk pregnancy, from start to finish, was going to be about $30,000, it was a no-brainer.

Thankfully, my specialist accepts Medicaid. But, I am officially a recipient of state benefits.

It kind of makes me ill. But maybe I'll feel differently when I look back on all of this and see that I never got a single bill in the mail.

That might just make it worth it.

After all, isn't that what Tom and I have been paying taxes all these years for?

(By the way, I'll update this post later with some pictures. I think I'm going to pull my camera out, dust it off, and try to get some macro shots of the flower Tom bought me yesterday. What a guy, that Tom Jeter.)  ;)