Health Insurance and Gardening

Health Insurance:

I called the Health Insurance provider affiliated with my former employer and turned my health insurance off.

We flipped over to my wife's insurance.

Between the premiums and the deductible, we were looking at health care absorbing over 30% of my gross pension.   I feel for people who do not have a spouse who works or people are looking at pensions that are far less than mine.  It is difficult to see how health care absorbing 18% of the GNP and growing faster than the general economy can be sustainable.

I had been procrastinating.  I have not been under anybody else's health care insurance for the last 33 years.  In the end, letting go of the pride and embracing my new interdependency feels like a step forward.

Gardening:

This is likely to be a short post because I am whipped.  I rarely worked this hard when I was working.

So far, my wife has been completely oblivious to my blogging.

She trusts me.

One of the differences between my wife and me is that she adores sweet peppers and I like hot peppers.  For me, it is a matter of economics.  I can grow a year's supply of hot peppers in far fewer square feet than a year's supply of sweet peppers.  I say, "Let California grow my wife's sweet peppers!"

Each year we go through a dance.  I plant my hot peppers.  She asks if I planted any sweet peppers.  I say, "No."  She goes out and buys some plants and we shoe-horn them in, somewhere.

This year, I was over come with remorse.  After having this discussion for the 26th time (guess how many years we have been married) I went out and bought a flat of sweet pepper plants.

My wife's sweet peppers are the beautiful, dark green plants on the right.  My hot peppers are the pale, anemic looking plants on the left.

I still have my pride.  I can blame the greenhouse for mislabeling the plants ;-)  These plants are actually a hybrid sweet pepper named "Fat 'N Sassy".

Incidentally, Roger Hastay is an awesome guy.  He helped me pick out the sweet peppers, gave me a great deal and knows how to keep a secret.  Give him a call at 517-663-6161 if you ever need anything unusual in the line of plants.

Tell him Joe sent you.

PT Update:

I met my goals for Roadwork, push-ups and sit-ups yesterday.  I think it was the first day I managed to make all three.  It feels like I am over the hump on the sit-ups.  Now it is a matter of increasing the number of reps in the set.

One thing I notice as I get more physical is that I feel as if my primary function in the cosmos is to be a sodium pump.  NaCl in, NaCl out.  Yesterday was a 6 mile run day and my 23 year old daughter wanted to join me.  I asked several times if she wanted me to bring something to drink for her (I carry a fanny pack, to be discussed in a later post).  She declined.  She discovered that running 6 miles is WAY different than running 3 miles when the thermometer reads +80F .  Nothing life threatening happened, but it was a real eye-opener for her.