Small Town Wren

So about that Mono…I’m starting to feel a lot better. I’m still having my sicker-than-anything moments, but I feel okay more often than I don’t. I finally have enough energy to do more than sit on my sofa in a sad, sick, stupor watching Law & Order reruns.

Which is nice, because it’s just in time for my first spring break! One of the perks of being in a teacher-education program and working in a public school is that I get two spring breaks. I’m out of classes this week, and at the end of March I’m out of work for a week, and most of my classes that week have been cancelled. It’s nice to have professors who work in the same sector.

This whole mono thing started several weeks ago when my sister threw her birthday party at Delilah’s that she didn’t attend due to having mono. We still had the party though, and I went, and had my last huzzah before I got mono. Well, since we’re both feeling up to being people again, we went into the city for a makeup party at Tavern. This was the first time out I’ve ever had to buy a drink for myself. I guess one out of four is still okay, but not what I’m used to. For record: at the first party, I paid exactly $0 and got 2 glasses of wine, 4 shots, and a gin & tonic. I don’t really drink a lot, but when I do, I drink whatever is bought.

Also for the record: the drinks at Tavern are awful and overpriced. Regardless, we had a good time. Lots of friends showed up, a game of impromptu charades was played, and there was lots of random fake-dancing. I also got to show off the arrows I’ve been drawing on my fingers of late at work to help redirect my buddy’s focus.  They were definitely used in the night to point out random things to a bunch of drunk 20-somethings. I’m just glad I didn’t get groped by the bros who weren’t in our group. Random gropings from bros is probably the biggest reason why I don’t go out very often.

I have been neglecting my blog for some time now. It turns out I’m pretty diseased. Considering I’m trying to take as few sick days as possible and still get to all of my classes (one of which is in finals right now), it has left me with very little energy to do much else.

You know it is bad when even your mother is concerned by just how much TV you’ve been watching and not much else beyond it. We’ll see when I make a return to regular posting, but as of now, I’m sick with that dreaded disease Mono.

I either got it from or gave it to my sister. She was even more of a mess than I was for awhile. She hibernated for a week while the whole family moved her out of her apartment. Me? I’ve just felt awful for two weeks now and don’t have the ADD energy level to which I usually have access.

Yes, you heard me. Kill the bill. I, a long standing proponent of health care reform, someone who still thinks we desperately need it, is ready to say kill the bill.

The public option? Gone. Expansion of Medicare? Gone. Ability for the government to negotiate pricing, pharmaceuticals, etc? Gone. Guarantees that insurance companies supply useful plans? Never there. Fines for those who cannot buy health insurance? Still intact.

I’m done. Yesterday’s paycheck told me I’ve earned around $6700 this year. The only reason I’m not on food stamps and in public housing is because my parents are giving me a place to stay and my grad school status allows them to claim me as a dependent so I still have health insurance. My grandmother is helping me with tuition.

Under this bill, I’d be required to pay the government a $1500-$3000 fine a year if I cannot afford health insurance. Considering the status of government subsidies is in peril, it’s pretty damn likely I will not have health insurance unless it is employer supplied. I cannot afford that fine. I don’t even make enough money to survive on my own. Next year I’ll be making even less money due to the legal slave labor of student teaching. Oh, right, it’s in the disguise of accredited classes. This isn’t an internship; it’s taking over someone’s job who is still getting paid for that job to the attune of at least $44,000. But that’s another story.

This bill is fundamentally violent. All it does is deliver 30 million new paying customers to a business that doesn’t actually want to provide the services we pay them to provide. Fuck that. Fuck all of it.

I finally got that bugger H1N1 vaccine today. Du Page County has been using the appointment system that Kane County finally moved to after the major disaster I previously encountered. I live in Batavia, which straddles the county line, so I figured out I could actually get a Du Page appointment.  It took about 20 minutes from arrival to departure. I laugh at the long lines others braved only to be turned away.

I did the flu mist. My mother wanted me to get the injection under some fantasy that they’re safer, but that’s pretty damn unethical. Not everyone can use the mist, so to take an injection I don’t need takes it away from someone else. Oh morals. Why does it seem like I’m the only one who has any anymore?

After our insurance company announced their premiums for next year, it officially became cheaper for me to spend two years in grad school earning a degree while staying on my parents’ health insurance than to pay for individual coverage.

That’s right. My master’s is cheaper than health care. I can’t even come up with anything to say about it.

It’s already proven itself to be a long week.  I picked up another grad class this week as F01 turned into F02. I love the class, but my work load is about as tough as I can handle, just about. It’s incredibly fortunate that I love the class I picked up: Classroom Dynamics.  Why can’t we have a full semester of that and only half of one on Assessment?

I already mentioned the H1N1 vaccine disaster. Now they’ve canceled their other clinics due to running out. As I said: we’re all doomed.

I’m exhausted and stressed out about things. It hasn’t helped that my medications make it hard for me to sleep if I don’t do that weird skip-every-fourth-day regimen. Guess who forgot to skip the fourth day during such a busy week? Oh yeah, I totally loved waking up every hour or so last night and then being up for 20-30 minutes. It also hasn’t helped that the last twenty minutes of down-time I had at work were scheduled up with K-Leap interventions.

As I say all the time: I love my job, and I love my buddy, but having a few minutes to just hang out in Kindergarten when he’s with a specialist was a welcome pause. Today was kind of a grumpy day anyway. He was tired, and we had a run-in with projectile, goopy snot. And we painted our faces green.  God bless water-soluble paint. I don’t know how I would have explained that one.  At least he didn’t rub hand sanitizer in his eyes today.

I just wish I didn’t have to wake up early tomorrow for a checkup with my brain doctor. Sleep would be so welcome tonight, and being able to sleep in past 8:30 would be incredible. C’est la vie.

Kane County held the first of several Monday clinics today at three local high schools.  For some silly reason, they decided 4pm to 9pm was reasonable. Which, in theory, it certainly is. But when you have people panicking about a possible pandemic…no, that is not reasonable. That is not reasonable at-fucking-all.

I’m supposedly at the front of the front of the line.  I’m in the at-risk group (under 24s) and I work with young children in a public school. Pretty much everyone wants people like me vaccinated.  And that’s all fine and well, if that whole “front of the line” idea actually meant something. Which it doesn’t.  It’s first come first serve, no matter what your risk is, who you are, etc.  In a “fair” and “equal” society that’s probably not a bad thing, but in the world of science and disease control, you really do want to get your vaccine to certain segments sooner.  First come first serve isn’t going to deliver that.  Neither is exceedingly stupid clinic hours.

Normal people, I hear, tend to work to 5pm. I get off at 3:45 (though I snuck out at 3:35 to try and get to St. Charles North High School in a timely manner). Considering I had no hope at all to get a vaccine, I think it’s safe to say that most people working full time didn’t either.  Not unless they wanted to take the day off.  A lot of us can’t afford to do that.  I can’t on a monetary or an ethical level.  Any day I take off work, my students–and particularly my special buddy–suffer.

I drove up Rt. 31 from Fabyan. I was lucky and managed to not hit the massive traffic jam also trying to get to St. Charles North until after Rt. 64.  But hooboy, when the traffic stopped, the traffic stopped.  It took me about an hour to get from Rt.64 to St. Charles North.  I tried to call my mother when I saw the line, only to be informed that the cellular network in the area was being reserved for 911 and emergency calls only.  Um, what?  Oh, and then there was the line of a couple thousand people that wrapped entirely around the high school which, as anyone from around here knows, is not a small one.  I turned around and left.  I don’t have endless time to wait outside in the rain.  I have homework to do.  Research reading + rain = not going to happen.

Entirely poor planning for something so in demand.  Turns out Kane County only has about 12000 doses.  And since they don’t seem to be planning this out in the smartest of ways, my only conclusion is that we are all doomed.