What I’m really sick of is people going around saying the American people don’t want this. Bullshit. We’ve wanted this, and deserved this, for a century. Everyone who voted against this bill and is mad that it passed should really reconsider their morals. Be opposed to health care reform is literally advocating for the death and illness of a huge swath of our population. That’s gross. Really gross.

That is far too much, and I’m really kicking myself for letting me do this to myself. Really, Miss Wren, you should have been doing work for the past two weeks. I shouldn’t have let it get pushed back so far. Now I have three projects due this week and I’ve only just started on them. Ah crud.

And I got all my travel vaccines today (and I didn’t have to get my tetanus after all!). But three vaccines in both arms plus lots of heavy books put my arms completely out of commission after I got home from the library. It was really quite pathetic. I had to ask my father to pull my bag and books out of the car because it felt like my muscles were going to tear themselves to shreds if I even moved my arms. It’ll be totally worth it when I’m in Xela though. I’ve got another 12 hours or so of work lined up for tomorrow, too. At least I got my girl Aurora on my back. We’re library hopping tomorrow.

I just have to make it through Wednesday. Wednesdays are my new night off, so I just need to finish my Thursday project on Wednesday and I’m golden. Never mind the huge Tuesday Project and huge Monday project and presentation. I might actually cry.

But I’m still on spring break, and I have refused to let a stupid thing like being horribly diseased ruin that. If I’m going to be sick, I’m at least going to have fun, dammit! So I bought myself a present: new crochet hooks and a bunch of yarn. I sort of have this thing where I feel a thousand times happier when I’m physically making something, so I crocheted up a storm this week.  Case in point:

Those are going to turn into a blanket at some point. I only need to make, oh, you know, 42 more of them. I also made a delightful hat. I’m wearing it right now. How snazzy is that?

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.

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.

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 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?

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

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.

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.