Dreams....

What do you think dreams are? Can your dreams be pictures into the future or the stuff Disney songs are made of? You know... A dream is a wish your heart makes when your fast asleep.... I know for sure bad dreams or scary ones, are not a wish that my heart makes and usually they are triggered by some type, of disturbing movie I have recently watched or even grisly news that I have seen on TV or read about. I can almost always find something in my bad dreams that I can link to something I have recently seen, so I can easily figure them out and put them into perspective. But my good dreams I'm not sure about, I'm not sure if they are just hopeful wishing on my part or if they are really trying to tell me something. Usually I don't dream very often but lately I have been, and I think that like alot of people I am looking for any reason to be hopeful, for the future and that my dreams just may be wishes I am hoping for, but it sure would be nice, to believe that these dreams are a hint, of better times coming. We all need to believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope is something we all need to hang onto.

Weather Ride

So on Sunday we woke up to a surprise snowstorm and had up to 8 inches dumped on us. Tuesday and Wednesday we had temps in the upper 40's to even the lower 50's and the snow has been melting like crazy. Today we woke up to a very heavy blanket of fog and and a 3 hour school delay. This afternoon the rain is supposed to start ( up to 1 inch is expected) and maybe even some thunderstorms tonight! Then right behind that its supposed to turn very cold immediately and we may even see some snow flakes again this weekend. Spring is definitely coming, as we are starting into our roller coaster ride of transitional weather, with extremes from one end of the spectrum to the other. Indiana has long been known for very unpredictable weather, we get hard, long,cold and snowy winters and alot of the time winter doesn't want to let its grip go on us until well into Spring, we often have ups and down clear till May, then as the past years have shown, we go from being very cool to being exceedingly HOT! We seem to skip over spring alot and the same is true with fall, we don't always get to enjoy a nice warm colorful fall, we often go straight from summer to cold. The weather is never boring here that's for sure! But it sure makes it hard to try to know when its truly safe to put plants outside.

WHAT's going on????

The weather forecasters have been way off the last 2 days and definitely not in our favor. At midnight on Friday when we turned the TV off, we were still under a winter storm warning with 5-8 inches of snow to be on the ground Saturday. The snow was to start by 4 am they said and was to be at its heaviest by 7:30 am, so after hearing this, I cancelled the 1 hour trip south, we had planned Saturday morning, for a meeting about a scholarship program, my daughter is involved with. Instead we get up Saturday and by 7:30 am the first flakes were just starting and the snow warning had went away and thru out the course of the day we only got a couple of inches. Mind you we were not complaining about it as we were very happy that it looked like we had missed the brunt of this storm.

Then Saturday night again, we listened to the news and weather and at 11:30 pm ,the weather person said we were only to get a dusting more of snow overnight, due to lake effect snow wrap around, but nothing to be worried about. Instead we wake up to several inches of new snow! So my better half is out plowing now. He says we have at least 7- 8 inches out there all ready and we are still getting bursts of snow falling off and on. We read one report this morning that said we will end up with a total of 9 inches today.

Come on Spring.... March is only 6 days away.

Cobra Coverage-- Changes coming, We maybe able to afford it????

Being recently layed off I got my packet of info about 2 weeks ago, informing me that I could continue my same group medical, dental and vision coverage for the family, on for an additional 18 months. Sounds great but I now have to pay the full premium of these policies. $1350.00 a month. Who on earth could afford that??? I knew that our premiums were going up starting January 1 and that our employer was going to make us pay more out of pocket before I was even let go and my significant other and I had decided we just couldn't afford the coverage even when I was still an employee. The cost as an employee was going to be almost $800.00 a month, that was a huge chunk out of my paychecks every month, so we had started looking for outside coverage before I even knew I was going to be layed off. I am Life and Health insurance licensed but I have not actively sold insurance for almost 5 years now so I know there have been alot of changes but I know enough about the industry to know that $ 800 was too much and we could do better elsewhere. The problem is that my employer only offered 3 plans and you had no options to pick and choose from certain benefits from within the 3 options so you were forced to to pay for benefits that you may not want or need but since it was group coverage everybody got the same thing. also the insurance premium for the employee themselves is pretty good but when you try to add 2 children and a spouse onto the policy the premiums just go thru the roof! We definitely were paying more out of pocket for insurance than we ever were using in benefits. We could have easily self insured ourselves for less but then you run the risk of a major injury or illness and then you could be in trouble from huge medical bills. Its always better to be safe than sorry and just have insurance. BUT always shop around and make sure you are getting the best coverage for the best price.

So now that I am not working we were put in a new delima of what do we do now. Until unemployment kicks in we cant afford to go buy coverage anywhere and the $1350.00 a month was not an option.... Until the Economic recovery bill was signed into law this week. Please note I am not an expert on this and there are more pages and items included in this plan than most of us will ever see or understand, so I can only tell you about what I have been told on this subject concerning myself only. So I can not guarantee the following info is correct for everyone or anyone other than myself. But I called my former employer yesterday and was told that yes part of the bill President Obama signed this week will in most cases allow the government to subsidize 65% of the cobra premium for up to a 9 month period. The package is still too new and my employer said that they do not have all of the details yet but they will be mailing info, to all former employees that will qualify for this new lower premium when they get all of the rules and regulations sent to them by the government. This is the info tht they had at this time, subject to change as they got more details. Apparently if I had all ready signed up for Cobra( which I hadnt yet, thank goodness) and had been paying the higher premiums all ready, they will not go back and refund anything for prior months, it is only for payments starting in March or April and going forward for 9 months. Also if you have been recently layed off( guidelines of that time frame were not known by my employer)and chose not to accept the cobra coverage at that time, you may be given a window of opportunity to sign up for Cobra coverage. Again this is only info I got from my previous employer concerning my specific case so please contact your former employers if you think you may qualify for this or if you have additional questions. Its definitely worth looking into. As we can probably afford Cobra coverage at this lower cost, for 9 months and that may give us enough time to find coverage elsewhere or give us time for one of us to get a job that has good coverage.

4 weeks to Spring!

Oh please hurry up spring, 4 weeks can seem to be a very short time frame or it may end up feeling like it is dragging on forever. Especially since another winter storm is taking aim at us tonight and tomorrow. I have heard varying reports, depending on exactly how the storm tracks, of 5-7 inches of snow. BOOOOO! We just had gotten to the point were we could see the grass again. Sigh........ Why couldn't we get a little help from Mother nature and she let us have a mild end to this winter and an early warm spring? I could really use the break in the heating bills.

Blog Love Award!!!!

Christy from At the Creek, just gave me this award. I am very ecstatic as this is my first award!!! Yahoo! That was so nice of Christy and I am pleased to accept it and pass it on to some of my blogging friends.

Here are the rules attached to this particular award:

* When you receive the Blog Love award, you should place the logo on your blog proudly!

* Link to the blogger that awarded you the love.

* Nominate your friends and bloggers you read regularly, as many as you like.

* Finally, let them know you’ve nominated them to receive the award.

I am still fairly new to the blogging world and there are so many great blogs out there that I like to visit, so I had a hard time deciding who to give this terrific award to, there are so many wonderful blogs all deserving of this award.

Drum roll please...I am passing this award on to the below blogs, that I follow frequently and love:

If you love "The Bachelor" show then you have to check out this blog! Stacey B is the best!

Hair 4 my Princess If you have girls in your life and they love to have their hair done, then this blog is for you!!! Some of the most original and cute hair designs are shown here, with step by step instructions!!

All Things Ribbon Another must site to visit if you have girls. Some of the most beautiful hair bows and dresses are featured here. Check it out, you wont be sorry!

Thrifty Creativity One of my favorite blogs to visit and one of my top droppers! Thank you!! I always find a useful tip to use here!

Half Price/Full Pantry A blog not to be missed! Love this blog. A topper dropper of mine and always has a positive comment for me!!

Cell phone nightmare!!!

More Thorns, More thorns, OUCH!! I just looked at our cell phone bill that came in the mail today and My better half just about had to give me CPR and pick me up off of the floor! I have heard about parents getting scary cell phone bills but it had never happened to me until today. If you remember I just had called my cell provider and had our plan reviewed and made changes and saved almost 65.00 a month, well that savings is gone...... Our bill was 3.5 times the normal this month!! No flowers here for sure!!!! For the last 8 months we hadn't even been using 25% of the minutes on the plan we had, so our account rep, during the account review, suggested we drop to a smaller plan and save ourselves some money, sounded good at the time but now its not looking so good. Even if we had been in the original plan we still would have been over in minutes but not by as much, but the bill still would have been alot higher either way. We have free nights and weekends and free long distance and free mobile to mobile with our carrier and free unlimited texting so how on earth could the bill be over??? A teenager who got overly chatty last month, thats how. And all of her calls were before 9pm , when the free nights kick in and alot of her friends are not with our carrier so the free mobile to mobile was useless. So we were charged for every minute over our plan minutes at .40 cents a minute! So after a very long talk with her and and a call to the cell phone company we are at least sitting up and breathing more easily. They are going to put us on a payment plan and break all of the extra charges up over a 2-3 billing period time frame. Needless to say my daughters cell phone usage will be heavily monitored for awhile and she is going to help pay for the extra charges.

Valentines

Our Valentines Day plans sound a little odd, according to my teenage daughter but I don't believe so. My better half's, Aunt and Uncle are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary tomorrow! Now what could possibly be, more the definition of Love and Valentines day, than 50 years of marriage? Like all couples they had their up and downs in their younger years, but they are truly in Love with each other after all of these years. Unfortunately in to days world 50th wedding anniversaries are somewhat of a rarity and should be celebrated, a big party and a nice meal and dessert are planned at a reception hall. While it may not be your typical valentines, where you think of just 2 people spending a special day/evening together, it is still a date for my sweetie and me and a nice meal out and being surrounded by family and friends, that's a room full of LOVE!

Happy Valentines to everyone!!! Do you have special plans?

Ahhhh....Perfect!

Day 10 has rolled around again and so round 2 of my friendship bread baking began. I went back to my original recioe and it turned out perfectly. Yummy! So that other recipe goes in the trash!

Back to reality

The short burst of warm weather is over. Not good! It is so cold and windy today and they are saying we may get measurable snow on Saturday. BOOO! we just got all of the snow melted off. Even thought its cold today we are still seeing signs of more wildlife out and about. We had a few geese and even 2 swans land on the pond today and hang out for awhile. The swans are the first we have seen this winter, so spring is surely still just around the corner... right??????

Wildlife

This morning I had 4 very large turkeys in the field behind my house! The warm weather seems to be bringing all sorts of wildlife out and about, as I just noticed that my friend Christy has a picture of a possum, on her blog that she found today, in her chicken coop!! You can check out her picture and blog by clicking on her AT the Creek Button on the side of my page !

THANK YOU!!!!!!!

I want to thank everyone that has commented to me, about my blog concerning my first mammogram. I appreciate all of the positive comments, it really does make you feel better to realize that so many other women have had the same scares that I went thru and they really understand where you are coming from. The end result though is that no matter what, we have to take care of ourselves and have any test done that we can to protect our health. Thank you for the support, all of us Women need to stand together and help each other out!!!

I also want to thank everyone who has given me such positive feedback about my job lay off. I really appreciate the concern, support and positive feedback that I have gotten from so many people thru this blog and outside of this blog. It is so sad to hear that so many people are in the same boat. I will keep positive thoughts in my heart and in my prayers for all of us!

Rain

What an odd thing to hear last night, Rain.... After listening to the winds of winter howl around the edges of the house for so long now, it was a very nice change to hear light rain falling on the roof as we fell asleep last night. Now tonight they tell us we may hear a thunderstorm , that doesn't thrill me as much though. BUT anything is better than more snow!

62 degrees ?????

I cant believe it , its supposed to be 62 degrees today! yahoo!!!!!!!! I believe this may be mothers nature way of saying hang in there things are going to get better. I sure hope so, any little thing to feel good about makes everything seem a little easier to take.

First tease of spring...

The snow is melting!!! Yeah!!! I can actually see my driveway again, all the ice and snow pack cover, we have had for soooooooooooooo long is finally going away. In its place we are getting lots of puddles of water and wet muddy ground, but who cares, we are actually starting to see the grass again!!! ( Mind you I say that now, but after having to clean up wet, muddy dog paws before thy are allowed to come, in the house, will get old fast too) Looks like most of the next week is to be very mild for us, so all of this snow should be long gone!!!! The air even has that hint of warmer and better things to come. I realize that this warm spell will only get us thru the middle of February and I'm sure we aren't done with all of the snow and cold yet, but its so darn nice to finally get a reminder that Spring truly is just around the corner now.

A big sigh of relief....

So, do you remember I had my very first mammogram last week, because my Dr wanted to get my baseline exam in before my health insurance lapsed the end of January? Well Being the first one for me, I wasn't quite sure what to expect and of course after hearing all of the horror stories and all of the jokes that people make about them, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But I must say it was nothing like I had expected, it was not a long procedure nor was it all painful. At the most you could say it was a little uncomfortable. Alot easier than a pap smear, if you want to compare the 2 necessary evils that women must do to protect their good health. Now I will say that I had a little bit of a scare with my Mammo though, 2 days ago I got a phone call saying they needed me to come in for additional pictures as they had seen some densities on both sides and they needed to take additional pics to verify that it was just fibrous tissues or fatty tissues and not something else. They also said they had scheduled an ultrasound for just in case the next round of pics still didn't clarify what they were seeing. OK that's a little scary, especially since this was my first mammo and I wasn't expecting this. Apparently though this is very common and alot of baseline mammos get called back in for additional pics. They don't have any pics from the previous year to compare to and sometimes the first pics just aren't clear enough. So I was told not to panic and not to assume the worst but my mind started racing anyway. AND it didn't help that my better half got mad at me for worrying about this. In talking to a friend yesterday she said she has known several women who had to go back in, for call back mammos, due to nodule densities and they almost always are nothing and she said all of these women had gotten scared and anxious too. She seems to think men just arent as sensitive to these issues as they should be and that its just their way of avoiding having to think about something being wrong with the person they love. Maybe, but a hug sure would have been nice. All women when we go to get our yearly pap smears and mammos want to hear the words everything looks good we will see you in a year, you never want to hear the words, we saw something that we need to do additional tests on. That's just scary! I am happy to say that after a trip to the hospital, very early this morning and several digital xrays, they were able to determine that I indeed just have fibrous tissues and very very very dense breasts and dense breasts/fibrous tissues are not a precursor for cancer. Thank goodness!! I was told this morning though that since I have such dense breasts I should only have digital mammos from now on. The basic xray mammo that I had last week just isn't capable of cutting thru all of my dense tissues. But there was no way to know that when I had the mammo last week since it was just my first one. For alot of women the basic xray mammo works just fine but for women like me they recommend only digital pics. They showed me the difference from last weeks xrays compared to today's digital pics and it was a huge difference in the picture quality! I could totally see why they had wanted to take additional pics.

Now for all of you women out there who havent had your baseline mammo and or have been putting it off because you are worried or scared. DONT BE! Its a very simple procedure and the few minutes of discomfort are well worth the peace of mind of knowing that you are in good health!!!! Even a few scary days waiting for the next batch of pics to be taken is still worth the worry of finding out for sure that there is absolutely nothing wrong!

So maybe I can actually get some sleep tonight. I'm exhausted today. Today, I definitely found a flower after wading thru several days of thorns!!!

Baking day... Ups and Downs

My friendship bread starter was finally at day 10 so I was all excited to make my 2 loaves of bread today! Unfortunately the finished product did not turn out as well and my anticipation will have to wait another 10 days. I should have stuck to my original friendship bread recipe, as everyone loves that! But No, I had to try a variation on the original recipe that I found online. The differences were so little that I wouldn't have thought it would have changed it so much. The main differences from the original was this other recipe called for 2 boxes of vanilla instant pudding, instead of 1( everyone loves vanilla and more vanilla had to be better right? or so I thought) and it called for vegetable oil and applesauce instead of just veg. oil, and this version didn't call for cinnamon and sugar to be sprinkled on the bottom of the pan and the top of the loaf like my version does. Like I said very small changes but enough to change the whole flavor and texture. Its definitely edible but its just not what I am used to. So back to the original in 10 days. Round 2! Since the bread didn't turn out as well as planned I decided to make up a triple batch of chocolate chip cookies to stash in the freezer for my sweetheart, A cookie monster he is.