The Month of April – Total Blur

I would describe our life the past five weeks as a total blur. April is always David’s busiest month of the year professionally for a couple of reasons, but this April (starting in mid-March, actually) was a complete and total blur. So here are some random highlights from the past five weeks.

First Comes the Water

Five weeks ago I looked at the calendar and breathed a bit of a sigh of relief. We had gotten past a whole bunch of things and we had a week of “normal” life ahead of us. I was looking forward to being home, homeschooling, and working. Just a simple, natural rhythm.

On that Tuesday morning the water for my shower would not get hot so I went downstairs to see what was going on. And there I discovered the floor of that section of the basement was covered with water and more was running steadily down the side of the water heater that was only six and a half years old.

On the bright side, the water was running into the sump pump area and our basement is not finished. So there was no ruined drywall or carpet.

On the down side, David was gone for the day and I could not get the water to turn off.

On the bright side, I was able to contain the water so it continued to run down the floor drain.

On the down side, no one could come out to help us until the next day. And the wooden storage rack in the same area was now taking in water along the bottom.

Long story short, we had to replace the expensive, internally-vented water heater which we had already replaced once since we moved in eight years ago. It was just off the warranty (of course) and did not last the 10-12 years most water heaters should last so this was not on our radar. It was also even more expensive this time because Michigan had adopted a number of new laws since the last one was installed so they had to do extra work to bring the set-up to code.

Because the wooden storage rack had water seep into it, there was no way I was keeping it in the basement to possibly mold at some point. So that got moved to the garage.

And because we moved it to the garage, we had to reorganize everything in the garage.

On the bright side, we cleaned out some things that needed to be cleaned out in the garage and it looks very nice.

On the down side, this was just the first thing.

Life After Health Insurance

In the midst of all this we finally came to the realization that we were going to need to drop our privately purchased health and dental insurance. We’ve purchased our own since 2001 when David was downsized out of his corporate job. We’ve had a grandfathered plan with an excellent company that we’ve held onto through business lows, the Obamacare madness, etc. because nothing out there was as good as what we had for the price.

However, in the past eight years it has gone steadily up each year to the point it is now $500 more a month than when we moved to Cute Little Town eight years ago. Because we are self-employed, we have to make that money to pay for it. There is no employer to subsidize at least part of that increase. Even as it went up and became more and more of a strain on our family budget, we knew that we were still with a better plan than many people so we held onto it. The only other option was no insurance.

We had looked at Christian Health Sharing ministries before, but because I have a pre-existing condition, it was never a real option. However, as those ministries have grown in recent years, they have been able to include people with pre-existing conditions to a limited degree.

I’m going to write an entire post detailing what I learned through the process of choosing a ministry, but we are now part of Samaritan Ministries. (We also considered Medi-Share.) Our traditional health insurance will end this month so for the last half of April we have been double covered.

On the one hand, this has been one of the most stressful decisions we’ve made in our marriage but one we’ve considered for many months.

On the other hand, we feel completely calm about it and believe that this is the right thing to do and now is the time. It’s a step of faith for God to provide through members of the Body of Christ if we need it. And we have the opportunity to directly help other Christians with their health needs. Other than the fear of “what if this doesn’t work!?!??!!?” we’re actually very excited about sharing directly with others in need.

So once we made the decision to drop our insurance, we wanted to pack as many covered medical and dental appointments as we could into the last few weeks. Anything we had scheduled for May and June got moved up into April. We’ve also been on cancellation lists, etc. so we could get in and get things done that were covered by our insurance policy. We packed in a lot in a few short weeks.

My Missing Tetanus Shot

When I went for my physical in March, the medical assistant oh-so-casually asked me, “Did you realize you haven’t had a tetanus shot since 1984?” Now I knew there was no way that was correct. I knew I had had a tetanus shot since I had been married because I remember how sick it made me. I also knew there was no way my OB/GYN would let me go through a pregnancy without that shot being up to date. But I went through my files at home and I could find no record of a shot since Caroline was born. (She’s twelve and a half.)

I was also nowhere in the statewide database which is very weird since I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life. They searched every combination of my maiden name and married name they could come up with but they could not find any record since 1984.

So somehow I’ve been walking around without protection from tetanus for at least a few years. Super.

Thankfully I got that taken care of and had only a small reaction. That was a blessing!

Measles Immunizations for 1963-1967

David and I were both immunized as children, but with the recent outbreaks of measles, I wondered if our vaccinations were still valid. I started looking around and discovered there is a set of people in this country who do need to be re-vaccinated. Anyone who was given the MMR between 1963 and 1967 should be checked because one of the lines they used did not work well. I was born in 1967 and David was born in 1963 so we both were tested last week for the measles antibody. Thankfully, we are both immune and did not require additional immunization.

And So It Goes

And so it has gone the past five weeks. Car problems. David teaching two extra seminars. Two product reviews. The Final Four. David’s birthday. Easter.

I reached the point Friday where I felt like my head was going to explode from dealing with details. Yesterday (Saturday) I think I watched seven episodes of Downton Abbey. My brain was just DONE.

It’s not that I can’t organize details. I can do it and very well. But there comes a point where it simply makes me nuts to deal with One More Piece of Minutia, one more important decision, one more interruption, one more phone call, one more form, one more email, one more change of plans due to a cancellation, etc. I’m thankful for what we could get done, but it’s come at a price. All three of us are tired and thoroughly sick of weeks with no regular rhythm.

There were several other things I wanted to write about as they happened, but they will have to come in later posts.

• I passed my one year anniversary of leaving Facebook.
• We made the decision to move to structured, year round homeschooling.
• Due to my own stupidity and the dishonesty of Jaaxy (a company I had previously highly recommended), I lost over two years worth of SEO research.
• I decided to start a podcast (which you already knew about if you took the reader survey) and have already started recording them.

I’d like to look at the coming week and say, “Oh good. A regular week of regular living.” I have to admit I’m scared to do it now. LOL!

But here’s to hoping that life is returning to a more normal rhythm this week.

Because we’re all ready to return to our quiet, simple life.