Monday, Monday

So I called my insurance company today and found out that the claim was never paid because the hospital was sending it to the wrong billing address. ?? How that can be I don't know (since they are especially the same). So I called up the hospital and told them the correct address. Why do I have to be the middle man here - they could see the claim, knew it was going to the wrong address and never corrected it themselves?! Stupid. Anyway, once insurance pays their portion of the $6,000 I found out I will be responsible for $1,130 of it. So now we are over $4,200 in medical bill debt.. how depressing. Maybe we won't be going on a cruise after all. You want to have a nice reward to help with motivation, but I don't know how we can justify an expense like that until we are out of debt. So we will probably end up with a night in a nice hotel and a bottle of Martinelli's. At least that is something, I guess.

Today I met up with my friend Mettina and her girls. We had a wonderful time together. Jacob, Nellie and Samantha had a blast playing together. I really miss having her live next door. I really enjoy days like today that help break up the every day schedule we adhere to.

Also, I had to tell you all that I had fish for dinner tonight. Those who know me know that do not like seafood. But I keep trying different things to see if I can find something I like. That and Brent and Jacob both love fish so I don't want them to miss out just because of me. Well, I finally found a recipe that I like. I found it on allrecipes.com and it is called Lemon Garlic Tilapia I've adjusted it a little but that is the base. I saute the garlic in the butter and lemon juice and then sprinkle the fish with parsley, a little salt and pepper and a some cajun seasoning (I put LOTS of cajun seasoning on Brent's fish since he like a lot of spice) right before baking and serve it with homemade tarter sauce. It is delicious! We've had it twice this month already. I've come to the conclusion that I like only white fish ie: Tilapia, Halibut and Trout and they have to be really, really fresh. I am so happy to finally find a way to eat fish and not gag on it. I've wanted to like fish for so long because of all the health benefits and now I have a recipe that works for me. We will probably have it twice a month regularly.

My week

This week went ok I suppose. My treadmill still doesn't work and the tech guy didn't show up yesterday, so that is being put off yet again. My friend Angela and I have come up with a plan to help motivate each other. At the end of each day we email each other and say what we did for exercise and how we did with our eating. I'm finding it very helpful to have the accountability and support. I worked out 5 days this week. I'm hoping to keep that up so that when my treadmill is finally "running" (hee hee) I can start right out on some nice workouts without delay.

We decided to switch services from Comcast to Verizon. It is exactly the same cost and it will be a faster fiber optic internet, we will get BYU-TV as part of standard cable and we will have a DVR for 6 months free of charge. I've always wanted to try one of those. Hopefully it will be a nice change void of complication.

I got the bill for Daniel's birth yesterday. You know how you sign those papers saying if your insurance doesn't pay up you are responsible? Well, the bill is 6 grand and due in the next 20 days. I'm going to call on Monday and try to be nice while getting our insurance to pay up. Stupid idiots. We have Providence Preferred insurance and delivered at a Providence hospital! How can they not pay that bill??!! I'm a little ticked. I don't need the added stress of all the insurance crap I've had to deal with. I'm glad to have it and have some coverage as some is better than none. But boy am I workin' for what we do get. We got another bill this week for Daniel's shoes. They cost over $800 and our portion is $120. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed with medical bills right now. We owe around $3,000 (separate from that 6k bill I just got) and have set up a payment plan to help us manage it. The sad thing is there is more to come I'm sure.

Today we went as a family to the Children's Discovery Museum. Jacob has so much fun there and it was really nice to trade off interacting with him with Brent. Bob the Builder was there and Jacob got to meet him and give him 5. I would say he had the most fun in the water area, since that was all new for him. We were there for only 2 hours but we played hard and then came home for lunch. Both boys crashed and took a nice long naps. This enabled me to have some time to read, take a nap and workout to a DVD.

Tomorrow is expected to be a low-key day, which will be nice.