Housekeeping

I was supposed to work today, but was put on call instead. Frankly, I was relieved; I worked 10 unscheduled hours on Monday and was wondering how I was going to get through two more 12-hour shifts today and tomorrow, and another 10-hour shift on Friday. For some reason, Matt and I have also both been requiring an insane amount of sleep lately. We go to bed plenty early and have great intentions, but when the alarm goes off at 5:30 to run, it's more like 6:30 or 7:30 or even 8 (depending on whether I have to work or not) before one of us even tries to convince the other to get up. Then the next night, we collapse into bed, exhausted, by 9. It's kind of unusual for us, particularly for Matt, but we try not to question our bodies' earnest requirements, and we've been chalking it up to the fact that we're wearing ourselves out going through so much change lately! I like to think, too, that what we experience as periods of increased need for sleep are a cue that we've averted some kind of sickness we might otherwise have gotten. I have been feeling a little achy lately, and kind of sinusy with allergies, so I was more than happy to hunker down and work on some paperwork today.

First up: my Frontier application. Much more sane and manageable than most (or does it only seem that way because I've gotten so accustomed to doing them?), it's ready to send off once Matt comes home and checks off the final proofreading of my resume and admissions essays. I've scheduled my phone interview and have a call in to my clinical site of choice. My schedule is cleared for the September orientation period, should I be accepted. All systems go!

On my days off, I typically also try to keep close tabs on our budget. Since January of this year I've been tracking every penny (okay, every dollar--I do round) of what comes in or goes out of our possession, and it's been both enlightening and encouraging. I set up our budgets from the 10th of one month to the 9th of the last, because Matt always gets paid on the 10th and I get paid on alternating Fridays. I keep track of our income and expenditures, our progress on paying down loans, what's in our savings account, and any potential upcoming expenses. One that's approaching is health insurance for me. Since I'm hourly at work (which gives me much greater flexibility as well as an additional $10 an hour), I don't get benefits; until August 21st, I'm covered under the policy I bought through law school last year. Adding me to Matt's policy would cost approximately $300 a month, an amount that's hard to swallow when I don't think I've ever generated $3,600 a year in medical bills. I was planning to buy coverage through Shenandoah, but, well. I think that would require my actually going through with attending school there. Frontier doesn't seem to offer it. So I was happy to find this site, which seems to indicate that for about $80 a month, I can purchase a plan with around a $3,000 deductible, decent coverage for a well-woman exam, and good benefits should something catastrophic happen to me. I'm more than happy to self-insure (ie place in a savings account) for a $3,000 deductible, since I would have spent more than that out of pocket in premiums otherwise. The companies to choose among include Anthem, Humana, and United HealthCare. Anthem has the highest ratings and I think that's who Matt has. Humana interests me because they seem to have a large philanthropic arm, though they're rated A- to Anthem's straight A. United HealthCare is who I have now, and I can't say I've been terribly impressed--though I haven't been terribly unimpressed either, and it could just be the bare-minimum student coverage I have. On principal, I know that UHC refuses to cover homebirth, while Humana makes the distinction between covering medically indicated C-sections while refusing to cover elective ones, showing that they've given some thought to the issues close to my heart. If all other things are equal, I like to vote with my dollars where I can. So we'll see.

Otherwise, we went grocery shopping the other night. Here's what our trip looked like:

This was a pretty representative list of what it takes to feed us for a week, because we'd cleaned the cupboards pretty much down to bare, except staples, before we went out of town. It even includes cat litter, which we buy every other week. You can figure another $10-15 for items like milk and eggs and produce from the farmer's market, and that puts us at about $50 a week, which I feel is pretty reasonable. Otherwise, we were pleased to note that it's a pretty darn healthy selection of items; we pared most of the crap out of our diets awhile back. We've also cut way down on cheese, which had the effect of greatly reducing the bills; you'll notice that the most expensive item on the list after the asparagus is a bag of mozzarella. (The items labeled "Grocery 1" were apples, bananas, and a just-over-a-pound bunch of asparagus, respectively.) The menu for the week is as follows:

Stir-fry (broccoli, carrots, onions, and tofu) with rice
Spinach and tomato pizza
Whole-wheat spaghetti (we have sauce in the freezer)
Black bean and corn tamales with salsa and tofu sour cream
Whole-wheat penne pasta with oven-roasted asparagus, onions, and grape tomatoes
Baked potatoes with tofu sour cream, and steamed veggies on the side

The tofu sour cream has taken up a pretty sturdy residence on our menu because it's easier to keep tofu on hand for long periods of time than real sour cream is. It also has a little more protein and fiber in it. As I've mentioned before, it's not any kind of a stunner by itself, but it lends plenty of tang and creaminess to dishes like tamales and baked potatoes, and that's really all we're looking for.

Breakfasts at our place, which is not so well-represented on that list, are anything from oatmeal to smoothies to, recently, Kashi Heart-to-Heart because we got it for $0.50 a box using coupons. (Word is that it's on sale at Wal-Mart for $2 a box, meaning that we could get it free after the printable $2/off coupon, but unfortunately our nearest Wal-Mart is 8-10 miles away. That somewhat eats into the savings. Which is a bummer, because I do love that cereal. Lunches are pretty much always leftovers from dinner, along with a piece of fruit or a handful of nuts. Possibly not the most exciting way of eating, but we're pretty happy with it.