I found a picture of me taken on December 14, 2011, so I took another one today in the same shirt, just to show you how much weight I have lost since I got sick.
I know it is not the best way to lose almost 60 pounds, but lose it I did. According to my doctor, I still need to lose about 40 more pounds.
Are you trying to lose weight? How far are you from your goal?
I am going to be participating in an online Baby Shower Giveaway for the next several weeks to help out a fellow blogger. The prizes are fabulous, and even Grandma’s would be proud to win them for their grandchildren or grandchildren to be. I don’t have any on the way, but I do know a couple of people who are going to be grandma’s for the first time son. In honor of new babies to be, and new grandma’s everywhere, please feel free to enter any of the giveaways I will be posting here!
This giveaway is for $145 in Mobi products. The prize pack includes:
This giveaway is open to residents of Canada only, and starts today and ends on August 24, 2012. Entering is easy. Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below:
Thank you to Kidsumers for hosting this giveaway.
During my adult life, whenever I have thought about long term care (LTC), it was always with my mother or my in-laws in mind. I always thought that it would be them who would need an extended stay in a long term care facility, and that I was young and didn’t have to worry about things like that for myself. My recent stay of thirty four days in the hospital has changed my thinking about that.
Although I am only sixty years old, I have to face the fact that I (and my husband) am getting closer to that age group every day. I am also facing the facts that you don’t have to be a certain age to be a candidate for a nursing home. You never know what is going to happen to you tomorrow, that will change your life forever.A stroke could render you helpless, a fall could cause a broken hip, alzheimer’s can take a huge toll on you, and put a lot of stress on a spouse or adult children trying to work to make a living and provide care for someone they love.
I tell myself that I have four children, and that they would be more than willing to take me in and take care of me if I were to be to the point where I can’t take care of myself. I could be right, but I could just as well be kidding myself. While my son and daughters may be willing, they may not be able to provide the care I would need on a long term basis. I know they love me, but they have families and jobs and lives of their own. An incapacitated parent can be a financial and emotional drain on anyone.
So, what are the options for someone if they need long term care? How do you decide if you need an assisted living facility or a nursing home? And how am I going to pay for it? According to the the Department of Health and Human Services, 40% of people who reach age 65 will need to have some form of long term care. Long Term Care Insurance is a way to help pay for the care you need if you have a chronic illness or disability and need help with the activities of daily life.
Assisted living is often viewed as the best of both worlds. Residents have as much independence as they want with the knowledge that personal care and support services are available if they need them. Assisted living communities are designed to provide residents with assistance with basic ADLs (activities of daily living) such as bathing, grooming, dressing, and more. Some states also allow assisted living to offer medication assistance and/or reminders. Assisted living communities differ from nursing homes in that they don’t offer complex medical services.
A nursing home, or convalescent home, provides residential care for people who require constant nursing care and have significant problems with activities related to daily living. Skilled nurses are available 24 hours a day. The residents of nursing homes typically are elderly and younger adults with physical or mental disabilities. The residents of this type of facility may receive physical, occupational or other therapies following an accident or illness.
Lots of people believe that Medicaid will pay for their long term care needs. But Medicaid programs are in trouble funding-wise in every state. In the future Medicaid may become even harder to qualify for. Medicare covers only about 50 percent of most beneficiaries’ health-care costs and doesn’t reimburse for long-term care. If you don’t plan for LTC, you may have limited or no choices to pay for care when your health changes. And you never know when that might be.
So, what can you do? A Long Term Care insurance policy will help provide the care you need, when you need it. To find out an approximate cost of a long term care policy, check out Genworth Financial’s LTC Insurance Calculator. I did, and found that for my age, I could be insured for long term care for as little as $1650 a year. Compared to the cost of long term care in a skilled nursing facility, that is a bargain. And, the younger you are, the less your policy is going to cost. You are never too young to prepare for your future!
This is a sponsored post for Genworth Financial. Opinions and the ideas expressed are my own. For more information about long term care insurance and different types of life insurance visit the Genworth Financial website.
I am going to be participating in an online Baby Shower Giveaway for the next several weeks to help out a fellow blogger. The prizes are fabulous, and even Grandma’s would be proud to win them for their grandchildren or grandchildren to be. I don’t have any on the way, but I do know a couple of people who are going to be grandma’s for the first time soon. In honor of new babies to be, and new grandma’s everywhere, please feel free to enter any of the giveaways I will be posting here!
This first giveaway is for a $500 The Children’s Place gift card! How much fun could a grandma (or a new mom) have with that? I could buy stuff for three of my grandchildren with that, and get them soooo much stuff. They have expanded their line of infants wear, and have so many cute things to choose from:
Entering to win is easy! Just use the rafflecopter form below. Giveaway starts on July 24, and ends on August 24th. The giveaway is open to residents of the United States and Canada! Good Luck!
Thank you to Kidsumers for hosting this giveaway.
Genetically Modified Organisms are becoming more and more common, but do you really want to eat them? I’m not sure I do, but how do you know if you are getting something natural, unadulterated, or if that corn or your potatoes have been modified genetically? The fact is, unless our food items are labeled, we will never know.
The California GMO Referendum is slated to be on the ballot this November 6, giving Californians the right to vote for whether or not their foods are labeled.
So, what are GMO’s? They are genetically altered vegetables and meats. These food items have had their DNA altered in a laboratory by genes from other plants, animals, viruses, or bacteria, in order to produce foreign compounds in that food. An example of this is genetically altered corn, that makes the corn be able to produce pesticides in its own tissue. If a bug eats the corn plant, its stomach literally explodes. How do we know that when we humans eat that corn, we won’t have serious side effects in our stomach or intestines?
Label GMO’s website says this:
The issue of GM food safety was first discussed at a meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and biotech representatives in 1990. The “substantial equivalence” concept was proposed in early 1996. The adoption of the concept of substantial equivalence allowed permission to market and sell new foods without any safety or toxicology tests as long as they were not too different in chemical composition to foods already on the market. [FDA GRAS proposal] To decide if a modified product is substantially equivalent, the product is tested by the manufacturer for unexpected changes in a limited set of variables such as toxins, nutrients or allergens that are known to be present in the unmodified food. If these tests show no significant difference between the modified and unmodified products, then no further food safety testing is required.
The California Right To Know organization has more information on their website. Although I am not a citizen of California, I feel that this is an important referendum, Proposition 37, and could eventually affect every citizen of the United States. Please, encourage everyone you know who lives in California, to go to the polls on November 6, and vote YES for Proposition 37.
I have been wanting to try making some home made gluten free tortillas for a very long time. I have tried a couple of different gluten free tortillas that I have bought at the store already made, and they both were lacking, either in flavor or texture. I found this recipe today, so I thought I’d give it a try.
I used Tom Sawyer All Purpose Flour, which already has the xanthan gum in it. Using a blend makes it so much easier, because all I have to do is measure, just as if I was using wheat flour. No mixing this and that to get to a starting point for the recipe.
I have to learn how to pat these out. I floured the counter top and the rolling pin, but they still stuck a little bit to the counter. Getting them ready didn’t take very long. Getting them to the pan to cook them up before they fell apart was a challenge, but once I got them in the pan, they cooked up nicely.
I put some cheddar cheese in the middle, and made these tortillas into quesadillas. While I was eating my yummy snack, Fabgrandpa came in and took a bite. He was very impressed and asked me to make some for him. Now THAT is an endorsement! This recipe tastes really good, almost like regular wheat flour tortillas. Now to practice getting them rolled out thin without sticking to the work surface.
Gluten Free Flour Tortillas Recipe:
2 c. Tom Sawyer All Purpose Flour
1 tsp. Gluten-free baking powder
2 tsp. Brown sugar
1 tsp. Salt
1 c. Warm water
Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl, and mix together well. Add the water, and mix well with your hands. Separate the dough into 8 or 9 balls. Flour your hands and work surface, and roll out 1 at a time. Keep the dough balls covered with plastic wrap until used.
After the tortilla is rolled out as thin as you can get it, place it in a hot skillet with a bit of oil. I used spray olive oil. Cook on one side until the surface “bubbles”, then turn over. If you want to make a quesadilla, add cheese once it is turned. Cook on the second side for a minute, then fold in half and serve immediately. For plain tortillas, place on a plate, and cover with a clean towel until all the tortillas are cooked, then serve.
My “to do” list for today included “shop online for health insurance”. I must have lost my mind along the way, because that is something no one wants to do. However, in light of my recent 34 day hospital stay, for which I have already received bills totaling more than half a million dollars, I figured I needed to find out how much I it will cost me to insure my old self.
So, I googled “pre-existing condition health insurance” and got 3,760,000 results. I started on the first page. All of the websites I visited require that you put in your name, address, phone number, and email address before they tell you that someone will call you. I do not like this type of shopping, because I want to be able to look at the plans and pricing before I talk to someone. I want to have time to get my questions written down, so that I will have a chance to sound like a sane and intelligent person. Anyway, I went ahead and filled out three forms, for three different companies. I have received two phone calls so far.
The second phone call was a very nice lady who told me that because I have diabetes, I am NOT eligible for major medical insurance. I can only get an “indemnity” plan. Because I didn’t know the difference in major medical and indemnity plans, I had to look it up. This shopping for insurance is harder than it has to be.
I googled “what is an indemnity plan” and this very helpful page came up. So, the idea is that with an indemnity plan, you are allowed you to direct your own health care and visit almost any doctor or hospital you like. The insurance company then pays a set portion of your total charges. Indemnity plans are also referred to as “fee-for-service” plans.
According to Finweb, there are essentially two classes of comprehensive major medical plans: those that provide first dollar coverage, and those that do not. With first dollar coverage, as soon as covered medical expenses are incurred, the policy immediately begins to pay benefits. Consequently, policies with first dollar coverage effectively have a deductible amount of zero. Without first dollar coverage, the insured must first pay out-of-pocket a specified deductible amount, and when that amount of incurred covered expenses has been paid, the policy will then begin to pay benefits.
So, because I don’t qualify for major medical, there is no further need to discuss or look at them. The very nice lady sent me a link to two plans that I AM eligible for. One of them costs $159 a month, but for any PRE-EXISTING CONDITION, I would have wait 12 months to be covered. That includes anything related to my colostomy and intestinal tract, diabetes, kidney stones, and plantar fasciitis. Those would be the most probable reasons I would need to go to the doctor.That is like paying premiums for a whole year for absolutely nothing.
Of course, the very nice lady told me that starting January 1, 2014 if you have pre-existing conditions, they will be covered immediately. But, that is a year and a half away. I need coverage now. And then I thought, that is ONLY six more months than
Sooo, do I chose the cheaper plan and hope that the only reason I would have to go to the doctor would be something new to me, OR do I choose the more expensive plan, at $228 a month, and only have to wait 30 days for doctor visits for any reason to be covered??? Decisions, decisions, decisions!
Going to Flagstaff afforded me the opportunity to go to a thrift shop. This particular shop, Old Highway Trading Post on Hwy 66 is an antique shop. It has a wonderful variety of “stuff”, most of which is not junk.
You might have noticed in previous posts, that I am sort of addicted to rhinestones. I found the neatest rhinestone hair comb! It is a little tiara, on sterling silver. I got it for $15.99, and I just love it!
Don’t I look “royal” with my tiara? I think I am going to wear it to the grocery store!
