Pumpkin chai

I heard today that a locally-owned bakery/cafe in the town where I work has pumpkin chai. I was intrigued. And after the flipping awful trial I had to deal with for the past three days (seriously, for the past four days, I've either been working at work, working at home, watching the kids, or sleeping...in that order, with sleeping being just a tiny little slice of the pie), I decided to treat myself after work. It was a good choice.

Pumpkin chai is AMAZING. The girl making it left a big jug labeled "pumpkin milk" sitting on the counter while she was making my drink, which makes me think they just mix up milk and plain pumpkin (or maybe pumpkin pie filling), and use that in place of regular milk. The chai they use is just Oregon Chai, which you can get anywhere. This makes me think I can make my own pumpkin chais at home. A little milk (we even have whole milk for W, which makes everything taste better. Really. Try using whole milk in your scrambled eggs. Awesome. Man, this post is tangent-y...), a little chai mix, a spoonful or so of pumpkin, shake it all up, heat it up, and enjoy, right?

This has now become my weekend project. Hopefully I'll have good results to report to you by Monday. Also by Monday, I'm shooting for a post with some content. I think my brain will have recovered from this week by then.

Little chef

W is all about helping Mommy these days, so I thought we could spend a little quality time in the kitchen (and give his new apron a test run). So we made pudding the other night.

Ready to get cooking.

Mixing it up all on his own. I was pleasantly surprised by how few fingers found their way into the pudding during this stage of the game. Also, check out his guns in this pic. The boy's getting ripped!

Enjoying the fruits of our labors. I'm pretty sure there's nothing cuter than a kid licking the spoon after a baking project.

P.S. Sorry for all the picture posts lately. I have some substance in my brain somewhere (I think), but am severely lacking in the time necessary to get it out on digital paper. I've also been feeling pretty rough around the edges lately, and there's a bunch of stuff I'm just not in the mood to talk about right now. I'll get back to real stuff soon, I hope.

Bathing brothers

The night started out innocently enough. R was just hanging out and enjoying his bath...

I turned around to grab something from the counter, and the next thing you know, big brother decides he needs to get in on the action, clothes and all (he was "helping" me wash R)...

W wasn't particularly interested in getting out of the tub, so I got R cleaned up and out of there before W's help injured him. Then W decided he needed to take his bath in the baby tub.

I eventually got him to take his clothes and diaper off.

"What? I'm just enjoying my bath here, Mom."

Nope, he's not too big for that tub at all (and I'm kind of amazed that he fit the bottle of baby shampoo, the rinse cup, my pouf, and the faucet cover in there with him).

Insurance rant, part II

I swear I keep writing posts in my head that are more fun and less depressing, but obnoxious stuff keeps coming up. Today's un-funness? Insurance. Again.

Two and half months ago, I started the agonizing process of getting my insurance to pay for me to get an IUD. As of today, it still hasn't happened, and doesn't look like it's going to any time soon. So this post is basically a gigantic EFF YOU to gynecologists, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals (manufacturer of Mirena), and my crappy-ass insurance company.

The facts:

• Mirena now costs $950. Really, not a bad price, if you break it down over the lifetime of the device. It comes out to $15.83 a month, which is likely what I would be spending on any other type of contraception. Unfortunately, it has to be paid for up front (if you aren't using insurance). I don't really have an extra $1,000 just laying around to pay for it.


• My insurance company increased its reimbursement rate! To $460. Which, leaves the doc's office out $490 if they accept the insurance payment. That's a pretty nasty loss.


• According to the nurse at my GYN's office, a lot of offices in the area aren't inserting Mirena until insurance companies get their heads out of their asses and/or Bayer lowers the price again.

As a bit of review, I remind you that my insurance company paid roughly EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for me to have R, plus they will be responsible for paying for part of his medical care for the next 18-23 years. It seems abundantly clear to me that increasing the amount they will pay once every five years for a device that more or less insures they won't have to drop tens of thousands of dollars on another of my spawn makes a whole hell of a lot more financial sense. But what do I know. It's just basic math.

In sum, this basically all means that I have no way of getting an IUD any time soon. Which probably means that B isn't going to be getting laid any time soon (and even if he does, I'm going to spend the whole time cursing his sperm and praying that they stay the hell away from my eggs. Assholes). That makes for a grumpy B, which no one likes.

It all boils down to the fact that I NEED SOME CONTRACEPTION, PEOPLE!!! And we've reviewed why the IUD is pretty much my only option. We've also now reviewed why I can't get one.

So, to gynos, Bayer, and miserly insurance companies, all I have to say is this: "Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. You're cool. Fuck you - I'm out."*

* 20 bonus points if you can name the movie (and you weren't one of my high school friends).