Sunday Squares

I hope everyone had a happy Easter day. We got up and watched Hayden open his Easter basket. He actually had more fun throwing the grass around than anything else. But he was introduced to Hershey's Kisses which he calls cacalot (chocolate). He ate a half of a kiss and then another and we put the rest of the bag up for later. I bought him a cute little blue monkey that was wearing rabbit ears, and some Easter stickers. He loves stickers now, he likes to stick them on everything and can play for an hour or longer with 1 sticker, he calls them ditters. I forgot to get the peeps, but it's probably better, he doesn't need all that sugar.

The kids went to Brennan's grandpa's house in Jennings for the afternoon. It rained most of the morning and into the afternoon.

I started to make a ham and all the fixin's for an Easter dinner, but since it was just me, David and Davy I decided we really didn't need all that food. So instead I made chicken breast with rice and then some brocolli and cauliflower on the side. I really didn't have a recipe, but it was pretty darn tasty. I put some rice in the bottom of a casserole dish, covered it with cream of mushroom soup, place the cut up chicken breast on top, poured some chicken broth over the whole thing and then dobbed some green chilis over the top of the chicken. Added some poultry seasoning, and pepper and baked it covered for 1 1/2 hours at 300°.

After we ate, I started working on my squares again for my barn raising quilt. I finished #35 last night. I wish I had kept better track of the square that came from yarn donated by my Ravelry friends. I'll have to go through them and see if I can remember which square came from what yarn. But I was smart enough to start keeping track with the ones I just finished. This is the square that came from the beautiful Koigu yarn that Mspalmtree (Nancy) sent to me.

Isn't it pretty? I love the colors and it is going to blend so well with the squares I've already worked up. This was also the first time I'd knitted with Koigu. It's quickly become one of my favorites to work with. She also sent me another skein that I'm going to start of very soon.

I've got another picture of a square that was from donated yarn. Well actually this yarn was won in a bet. I'm involved with the Ravelry pool (The Amazing Race). It's a pool where each person who signs up is assigned one of the teams racing on the show. The object of the game is to be assigned to the team who wins the race. All the other members of the group will then send the winner a prize valued between $15 and $20. It's a lot of fun. So I was assigned the cheerleaders, Cara and Jaime. One of my buddies Knit4ever (Kara) was assigned the blond flight attendants or STEWS for short. We had a little side bet going that the first team out between the two of us would send the other an extra gift. My cheerleaders outlasted the Stews and this is the yarn that Kara sent to me. It's Panda Wool, another that I've never used before. It's so soft, I'd like a sweater out of it. But I don't think I could ever
afford to buy that much of it to actually make myself a sweater, I'll have to stick with socks.

I had also gotten some sock blanks and started dying them. I've got pictures of the blanks on my stash page in Ravelry. But I decided it would be a while before I got around to actually making myself socks and really wanted to use some of the yarn for BRQ squares. I seperated the 2 strands and wound them up. I used the "Northern Lights" for this square and I think it's one of my favorites in the whole bunch. The funny thing is that this dye job was a total mistake and a flop, but the finished square is gorgeous. I'm going to have to block some of these pretty soon and start trying to figure out the best color scheme and sew them together in strips.

I hope everyone has a really good week and I'll try and post again really soon!

Teresa

Medication and Insurance Companies

Okay, I just posted a nice fun post, but now I'm irritated. As you all know, my daughter got married a couple of weeks ago and you also know that she has been diagnosed with a seizure disorder (epilepsy, is what they are calling it but they don't really know). Anyways, when she was on my insurance her medication was a $50 co-pay. On her husbands insurance, they are telling her it's going to be $86.44. When she told me that it made no sense at all because, I had contacted the pharmacy before she got married to find out the cost of the medicine without insurance and was told $150 something dollars. Her new insurance card states that prescriptions are as follows: Tier 1 - $10, Tier 2 - $20, Tier 3 - $30, all other 20% copay. Okay $86.44 is more than 1/2 the cash price. So I called the pharmacy, I know, she's married now and an adult with a child of her own, but I'm still her momma. Anyways, I called the pharmacy and they are now telling me the cash price is $331.72 for a 1 month prescription. What the hell happened in the last 3 weeks???? Okay, so if her medicine is that much and she has to pay 20% that's only $66.34, where is the other $20.10 coming from. The pharmacist technician, Mandi, told me that I would have to contact the insurance company because everything is done online and that was the price she was given. Chelsea called the insurance company and found out that her medication is actually a Tier 3 drug and should be a $30 co-pay. Wait, Chelsea just called me back and was told that because she has to take 100mg per day and the pills are 25mg each it is basically a double prescription each month and the price will be $86.44. I don't understand that at all, if it's a Tier 3 and should be a $30 co-pay, even doubled would only be $60. What a rip off.

Now my question, what if she didn't have insurance? How in the world is someone supposed to live with a siezure disorder and carry on a 1/2 way normal life if they can't afford $331.72 a month for medication. I guarantee you that the insurance company isn't paying near that for the prescription. They are probably only paying 1/4 if that. It's so sad, but shouldn't it be the other way around. I know Wal-Mart has the new $4 prescriptions, unfortunatly her medication isn't on that list.

Okay, my rant is over.

Did you get fooled?

I went all day long yesterday and nobody tried to get a joke on me until I had already left work. I stopped at the tag office to pick up the car tag and left my phone in the car. I came back out about 30 minutes later and had 5 missed calls. Just seeing that the calls were all from Chelsea and David made me panic just a little bit and when I noticed that they were all within minutes of each other I really started getting nervous. My mind started spinning out of control and all I could think was something has happened to the baby.

I immediately called David and he asked if I'd talked to Chelsea. I told him not yet and asked what the heck is going on. He said, "You know the wooden spoon that 'little dude' (Hayden) likes to carry around?" and I said "Yes". He said, "Well it's found a new home." I was confused and asked him what he was talking about. He replied with "Well let me just say, I can't move the big screen TV by myself." I gasped and said, "Is he okay?" "Yes, he cried, and it scared him when it popped and sparked, but we got him calmed down." All I could picture was him sticking the wooden spoon through the screen and hurting himself. It's not a glass screen, but I thought maybe he could have been shocked. David told me that the screen was ruined and the spoon had fallen inside and messed something up and the TV was dead. I guess once I realized that the baby wasn't hurt, I really didn't care about the TV. I just said I'd have Davy and Brennan move it out and put the TV from the bedroom in it's place. (The big screen is old, probably from 1995) I've been wanting a new TV anyways. After I hung up with him, I called Chelsea to check on Hayden. She informed me that it was April Fool's Day and it was Dad trying to get me. Okay, ha ha ha, you got me.

On to the important stuff, like knitting.

I've been working on my barn raising quilt and I've got 30 squares finished. The pattern calls for 42 squares but I think I want to make it a little bigger so I'm aiming for 56 squares. If I knit when I get home, I can usually get a square finished in about 3 hours and depending on what's going on during the weekend maybe 2 or 3 finished. This is Chelsea and Brennan's wedding present from me, I knew I wouldn't get it finished by the wedding, but it was a good start. When Chelsea saw the picture she asked if I could make it big enough to fit their bed. They have a king size bed and I have no idea how many squares it would take. I'm enjoying knitting the little squares because they are a fast knit and I don't get bored. I like being about to bind it off and put it in my stack of squares and start with another colorway. My plan was to have the 56 squares finished by the end of the month, but you never know, I may keep adding on squares until it will fit their bed. Maybe this will actually end up being their Christmas present. Here are some of my squares. In no particular order. What do you think?


I'm also working on a new Red Scarf for 2009. The Traveling Scarves Groups, better known as TSG has a group that is working on the charity for the Orphanage Foundation, they give scarves to all the children who were in foster care that have aged out and are now in college. Last year, the TSG - Red Scarf Project made scarves that started out as a 4x5 inch square with live stitches that traveled from person to person, each adding their own unique pattern to the scarf. All the scarves were made with the same yarn (which traveled also). This year we are going to have a free for all. Some of us are making lengthwise scarves, casting on 300-400 stitches and then each person that it travels to, will add up to 3/4" of their own red shade of yarn to the scarf. It should be very interesting, some are going with the traditional scarf like we did last year and sending their own yarn and others are going with a uniform pattern throughout but with different shades of red. The scarves officially start their travels on Saturday, April 11 and all the scarves should return back to their original starting place within 4 to 5 months as long as we don't have any snags along the way. I'll make sure and post a picture of my red scarf as it travels along.