Thanks to Leslie for the heads up on the 12 hour sale at Top Foods, featuring whole chicken for $.59/lb. Many of you recall my love affair with using whole chickens rather than buying them in pieces. Today's sale had a limit of four chickens. So after our initial purchase, I ran out to the truck, loaded everything in the back, and went back in to buy four more chickens. NICE! I just finished butchering them all and they're now nicely packed away in the freezer, ready to use. I do want to rethink my current storage method. I use too much plastic. I like everything cut up and ready to go, since I'm sort of a lazy cook and often don't have dinner planned at 4 pm. That way, I can just take out a baggie of chicken thighs and defrost in the microwave (or a pound of ground beef, which I package similarly) and voila, there's my protein! Next time I do this, I think I will butcher fewer chickens at a time so I can lay out the pieces on a cookie sheet to individually freeze pieces. Less plastic use is always a good thing. Hopefully in a couple year's time I'll be using chickens from my own little farm rather than the grocery store! Heck, maybe we'll have a commune going by then and someone else can help me butcher chickens!
To think, just 8 years ago I was still a vegetarian. Sometimes I wish I still was, but I think I actually eat a lot more healthfully now than I did pre-meat. That is, if you don't count the ice cream and Sweets and Beets.
Today we had gymnastics, but starting next month we will be going on Wednesday at 11 am. That's going to be good, since Leslie lives sort of close by, and her kids will be going to violin on Thursdays 10-12. This way, we can meet up or hang out at Leslie's, though I'm hoping we can arrange park or library trips occasionally.
I actually wasn't so sure we could go to gymnastics this morning. Lacy has been coughing since Tuesday, and Rose has been a little as well (I think she's finally getting those top 2-year molars, though, so it may be unrelated to Lacy's cough). She woke up with a nasty cough this morning. I decided to wait it out to see if she would get better. I gave her a Ricola cough drop, which helped a little bit. Probably because she crunched it right up, rather than sucked it down. Just like her mama-- impatient. I decided to see if a hot shower would help clear her lungs. So I gathered two naked girls into the shower and we had a little party. I plugged the drain up, let the hot water vapor pool around us, and added a few drops of peppermint essential oil for good measure. That did the trick! No more coughing pretty much the rest of the day.
During this time, Dave has been sleeping on the couch to avoid getting sick. Unfortunately, he still ended up getting some sort of flu today. I have him taking some homeopatics that have helped him with the flu before, and I'm hoping that spending pretty much all evening on the couch today has helped him relax and rejuvinate his body. I hate to sound greedy and/or insensitive, but, Friday is an overtime day, and it is really helpful when he works Fridays, especially since he likely only has one more week after this with this company.
Some good news came today. In the midst of these medical bills from hades, we have a little glimmer of happiness. The insurance is covering more of Rose's dental expenses than I previously thought! I saw how much they were billing the insurance for most of the procedures, compared it to my "maximum benefit" chart, and realized that the crowns were going to cost a bit more than the insurance covered, by about $75 a pop. Plus there were additional things that weren't covered fully, so I was expecting to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 for that lovely smile Rose now possesses. Plus facility fees ($300) and anesthesiologist fees (we have yet to be billed for that, but I'm expecting around $75). In addition, Lacy had surgery the same day, as you may recall, which will cost us around $475 for facility fees, unless we get a network discount that I don't know about (we still owe about half of that), anesthesiologist fees (about $75) and physician's fees, which will probably be in the neighborhood of $150-200. That is one expensive day! Not that I'm complaining-- Dave's been working extra hours, which has prevented the medical bills from becoming a hardship, and Lacy gets better sleep now. In fact, a friend of ours the other day commented on how beautiful Lacy is now that she doesn't have rings around her eyes all the time! She doesn't snore, and she never has trouble breathing at night anymore. That's been huge for us. It's just so nice when you get little gifts like that.
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