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dragonlady7Had today off. Grocery-shopped. Feel like I got nothing else done. I was busy most of the day. But I did take a nap of nearly an hour in the bed in the office, with darling Chita, who snuggled under the blankets and was RIDICULOUSLY CUTE.
I made an f-locked post yesterday, which I seldom do, because I was unable to figure out how to edit the thing to be coherent and not reveal too much about other people's lives. I was hoping I'd have time to sum up today in a more reasonable way, but so far it's sort of not coming. I skived off of practice tonight, feeling tired and un-motivated, when I saw it wasn't a scrimmage-- it's not that I get more benefit from scrimmaging, per se, but that if I am not there, my team is less cohesive, and so I make more of an effort to be there if there is a scrimmage, for completeness's sake. I saw this opportunity and decided to stay home and collect my frazzled thoughts a little bit more.
Tragic things are all around. I am helpless in the face of disasters like Haiti, where aid can't even get in to the damaged port or half-crippled airport; other disasters are beyond my help. A friend's dog is in mysterious liver failure and she has exhausted her meager savings to save the dear sweet creature; I am broke and can't help, but my heart breaks. And to continue that theme, my store manager's dog was hit by a car yesterday, and very badly injured. In her pain, she bit my coworker so badly that she had to get stitches too. Molly, the dog, may yet live but has to spend two weeks in the hospital. I feel awful for both of them.
But there are good things on the horizon for me and mine, so I am trying not to feel guilty. Z starts his new job... well, the holiday party is tomorrow, and then they have Monday off, so he's starting Tuesday. He's looking forward to it immensely.
And meanwhile, I have tentatively been offered a full-time position with the company I've been working 27-39 hours a week for for the last 7 months. The difference is that I'd get health insurance. Free. Instead of the $215-a-month "insurance" I have now that doesn't cover doctor visits, prescriptions, mental health services, ambulance rides, gyn visits, dental care, or the first $5,000 in medical bills of any kind per year. I put it in quotes because if it doesn't cover any of those things I don't see how it's "medical insurance", but it fits the criteria I'm required to have for roller derby, so I've been coughing up. The small but relatively substantial raise that goes along with the change in status is actually much less significant to me than the insurance. There's even dental. I can't explain how much this means to me. It's not even the money, it's the knowledge that I am allowed to actually see a doctor if I want to, and that if I do wind up one of those statistical minority of people who play my sport and get seriously injured, if I do get a tooth knocked out or something, I can actually afford to get it fixed, instead of getting the minimum of medical care (i.e. a diagnosis of whether it's an organ, a joint, a muscle, a bone, or a tendon, so I know what not to do) and then treating it at home with ibuprofen, a heat pad, bits of felt, duct tape, and an ice pack, like I've been doing for the last... is it two years now? It's got to be over two calendar years.
I won't lie, this has affected my game play. It has made me afraid to get hurt. I have not jammed, even in practice, in two seasons because I know it's riskier and what if I get a shoulder to the face and lose an incisor or a canine? I could not afford to get it fixed and would spend the rest of my life with a gap-toothed smile, one of the clearest indicators of poverty or lower-class status in modern America. I could conceivably, invisibly be denied jobs or a slot in a graduate program because of an interviewer's prejudice; people everywhere from policemen to potential romantic partners or friends would make assumptions about my background and character based on my appearance. I know the kinds of privilege I have, but I also know how fragile they can be.
I really think about things like this.
It's not enough to make me stop skating because skating is the only thing in my life keeping me sane and healthy. It's the only therapy I can afford. Though if you figure I'm only paying for health insurance in order to continue... well, I can't really afford it. But I have trouble classifying health insurance as a luxury... except what I've had, which, as I said, isn't really "health insurance" so much as it is "paying ransom to an idea"... Anyway, paying out-of-pocket for a psychiatrist and a gym membership and a nutritionist would probably add up to about the same, and the operative limiting factor is that I would never buy myself those things, so I'd be dangerously out of shape and suicidally miserable and that's that.
So it's really a huge deal, and whether it's finalized or not, I still feel I should mention it. I am in that gap in our society, where I make too much for the government to offer me any help in navigating the murky waters of "health insurance", but have not had any hope of help from an employer, and make too little to strike out on my own. $210 a month is usually more than I make in a week; up to this point, my paychecks after taxes have been approximately $180-215 per week. If I did not live with someone who didn't care if I contributed equally to the rent (which is ridiculously low and we know how lucky we are), if I did not have a car I share that has been paid off for two years, if I did not dislike shopping (I'm wearing work pants from college), if I did not live with someone who makes enough not to mind if I pay precisely half of the grocery bill, or use his Internet-- well, you figure out what you would do if you made that amount of money and had to devote a quarter of it to these payments that don't let you see a doctor or have medicine.
(If I reliably made less than $205 a week I could qualify for Medicare, but a single paycheck over that amount in a month disqualifies me. Sweet!)
Anyway. That's the deal with me. Still not the most coherent, but it's better than it was. In theory.
I made an f-locked post yesterday, which I seldom do, because I was unable to figure out how to edit the thing to be coherent and not reveal too much about other people's lives. I was hoping I'd have time to sum up today in a more reasonable way, but so far it's sort of not coming. I skived off of practice tonight, feeling tired and un-motivated, when I saw it wasn't a scrimmage-- it's not that I get more benefit from scrimmaging, per se, but that if I am not there, my team is less cohesive, and so I make more of an effort to be there if there is a scrimmage, for completeness's sake. I saw this opportunity and decided to stay home and collect my frazzled thoughts a little bit more.
Tragic things are all around. I am helpless in the face of disasters like Haiti, where aid can't even get in to the damaged port or half-crippled airport; other disasters are beyond my help. A friend's dog is in mysterious liver failure and she has exhausted her meager savings to save the dear sweet creature; I am broke and can't help, but my heart breaks. And to continue that theme, my store manager's dog was hit by a car yesterday, and very badly injured. In her pain, she bit my coworker so badly that she had to get stitches too. Molly, the dog, may yet live but has to spend two weeks in the hospital. I feel awful for both of them.
But there are good things on the horizon for me and mine, so I am trying not to feel guilty. Z starts his new job... well, the holiday party is tomorrow, and then they have Monday off, so he's starting Tuesday. He's looking forward to it immensely.
And meanwhile, I have tentatively been offered a full-time position with the company I've been working 27-39 hours a week for for the last 7 months. The difference is that I'd get health insurance. Free. Instead of the $215-a-month "insurance" I have now that doesn't cover doctor visits, prescriptions, mental health services, ambulance rides, gyn visits, dental care, or the first $5,000 in medical bills of any kind per year. I put it in quotes because if it doesn't cover any of those things I don't see how it's "medical insurance", but it fits the criteria I'm required to have for roller derby, so I've been coughing up. The small but relatively substantial raise that goes along with the change in status is actually much less significant to me than the insurance. There's even dental. I can't explain how much this means to me. It's not even the money, it's the knowledge that I am allowed to actually see a doctor if I want to, and that if I do wind up one of those statistical minority of people who play my sport and get seriously injured, if I do get a tooth knocked out or something, I can actually afford to get it fixed, instead of getting the minimum of medical care (i.e. a diagnosis of whether it's an organ, a joint, a muscle, a bone, or a tendon, so I know what not to do) and then treating it at home with ibuprofen, a heat pad, bits of felt, duct tape, and an ice pack, like I've been doing for the last... is it two years now? It's got to be over two calendar years.
I won't lie, this has affected my game play. It has made me afraid to get hurt. I have not jammed, even in practice, in two seasons because I know it's riskier and what if I get a shoulder to the face and lose an incisor or a canine? I could not afford to get it fixed and would spend the rest of my life with a gap-toothed smile, one of the clearest indicators of poverty or lower-class status in modern America. I could conceivably, invisibly be denied jobs or a slot in a graduate program because of an interviewer's prejudice; people everywhere from policemen to potential romantic partners or friends would make assumptions about my background and character based on my appearance. I know the kinds of privilege I have, but I also know how fragile they can be.
I really think about things like this.
It's not enough to make me stop skating because skating is the only thing in my life keeping me sane and healthy. It's the only therapy I can afford. Though if you figure I'm only paying for health insurance in order to continue... well, I can't really afford it. But I have trouble classifying health insurance as a luxury... except what I've had, which, as I said, isn't really "health insurance" so much as it is "paying ransom to an idea"... Anyway, paying out-of-pocket for a psychiatrist and a gym membership and a nutritionist would probably add up to about the same, and the operative limiting factor is that I would never buy myself those things, so I'd be dangerously out of shape and suicidally miserable and that's that.
So it's really a huge deal, and whether it's finalized or not, I still feel I should mention it. I am in that gap in our society, where I make too much for the government to offer me any help in navigating the murky waters of "health insurance", but have not had any hope of help from an employer, and make too little to strike out on my own. $210 a month is usually more than I make in a week; up to this point, my paychecks after taxes have been approximately $180-215 per week. If I did not live with someone who didn't care if I contributed equally to the rent (which is ridiculously low and we know how lucky we are), if I did not have a car I share that has been paid off for two years, if I did not dislike shopping (I'm wearing work pants from college), if I did not live with someone who makes enough not to mind if I pay precisely half of the grocery bill, or use his Internet-- well, you figure out what you would do if you made that amount of money and had to devote a quarter of it to these payments that don't let you see a doctor or have medicine.
(If I reliably made less than $205 a week I could qualify for Medicare, but a single paycheck over that amount in a month disqualifies me. Sweet!)
Anyway. That's the deal with me. Still not the most coherent, but it's better than it was. In theory.
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no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 09:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 05:48 pm (UTC)And health care reform, even if it passes in a useful form, won't take effect for years.
So I really hope you get full-time credit and health coverage. And dental?! That would really be great!