Good and Bad

or at least annoying...

Got the actual denial letter from oxford today. Faxed them a written appeal, which they supposedly will respond to within 15 days. REALLY hope this works, as it already sucks having so many things denied from the last insurance carrier. (Yes, another $700 bill showed up in the mail today. That's brings us to about, oh, 7 or 8 thousand and counting and the baby is STILL INSIDE ME. Delivery apparently shouldn't be that expensive, only 7 grand for the doctor and a minimum of 5 grand for the hospital (assuming a healthy, vaginal delivery with minimal in-patient recovery).

Being a grown-up ROCKS. I am SO HAPPY to be financially responsible for everything that needs to be paid for and am SO GLAD that we don't live in Europe or Canada or ANYWHERE that realizes how crippling private health care costs can be.

On another note, I ended up in a very good mood after my last class on Thursday. No more school until the fall! No more pregnant homework! Yahoo! I now have a little over a month to enjoy all the pre-baby stuff I haven't had time for. I still think I'm going to do some pre-natal yoga. DEFINITELY going to spend some time "nesting." And mostly SLEEP, I think.

Still have to tie up a lot of bookkeeping and tax-prep loose ends, but that seems so much more manageable now that all 15 of my end-of-semester papers are in.

Had a great Mother's Day Weekend with Lance. Saturday we ate a whole cherry pie, napped, and went to see the movie "Baby Mama." It got some good write-ups, but was pretty darn disappointing. Still, it was nice to have a date-night (I had been looking forward to it for a week.) Then sunday, my first mother's day!, I went to the park with Lance and the dog to enjoy the gorgeous morning sun and all of Rozo's friends. Then Lance & I brought lilacs to the ladies at the neighborhood diner who have been surrogate mothering me for years. I also ate a lot of pancakes. Yum. We followed that with more quiet time at home. We read books under the covers, called our moms and my grandma for mother's day, watched the second half of the instructional "Bringing Baby Home" DVD (now we know all about breastfeeding, bathing, swaddling, and post-natal checkups), made a huge pasta early dinner, and ate ice cream while watching another baby mama movie: "Juno." That was MUCH better. Very touching yet still humorous. I balled my eyes out at the end. Oh yeah, and we also went to target where Lance bought me fancy mother's day pajamas with hearts all over them that I wore all day and will continue to wear as frequently as possible, pre and post delivery, and we used gift money from my mom and brian manuel and andrew and hubie and sarah (and chase credit services) to BUY A NEW WASHING MACHINE! It cost a ton more than we wanted it to, but it will be such a relief to get rid of the old, broken one and have a service plan and no more mildew smelling towels. We figured that, since the service agreement guarantees us a perfectly working machine for 10 years, fronting what comes out to $100/year in laundry costs was well worth it. Especially since, before we had a washing machine, every time we went to the laundromat, we ended up spending about 50-75 bucks. So, yay movies, washing machine, heart pajamas, sunshine, lilacs, quiet time and my first mother's day!

Have big plans for all the stuff I'm going to accomplish today. So far, it's almost 1pm and I've eaten breakfast, made a list of pre-baby todo's, updated the target registry (now that I've organized all the new and hand-me-down clothes, it is clear that we don't really need to register for or buy any until parker's at least 6 months old), attempted to check email, and sent the damn oxford fax. Sounds like nap time to me!

xoxo