davejenbarnes

Yesterday I found out that yet another friend is having a baby. First the Magee’s and Aiden was born on March 18, then the Hay’s and Hayden was born in April. Next up is David’s middle brother and they’re due in August with their 3rd. Then the Moultons due in early September. Lincolns are due in December (I think?) and the Trusketts are due in later December. I just found out yesterday that Chris and Darlene will be having a baby in late November. Man… I would love to be able to announce that we’re due for a kid, so I have made a very important decision. I will not be continuing the two extra months’ worth of pills that Dr. S gave me!

Before we considered the cost of birthing a child, my plan was to start trying in January of 2004 and David’s ideal plan would be to wait until January 2005. So… starting trying in middle of 2004 is a good compromise.

I am currently taking a prenatal vitamin every night with dinner and walking on the treadmill 30-60 minutes three days a week. Oh, and David has always cleaned up the kitty litter! And just today I will start charting my basal body temperature.

Click here to view my first published iMix. Feel free to vote for it as well…I mean…I did.

I was going to wait a few days before updating this thing again (I’ve been on a posting streak lately) but I feel like typing about our morning. Apparantly, we were without electricity all night and the cats never once told us! David’s alarm went off at 5:15 and it was the single solitary working electrical device besides the flashlights. At 5:15 in the morning, it was a curious mystery that only those three things worked. Eventually we figured out that all those things were run on batteries. Needless to say, the power came back after we had both gone through the trouble of getting showered and dressed by candlelight and after David manually opened the garage door to get his car out. The entire complex was out, courtesy some wild driver who hit a power line around 10:30 last night. Thursdays are very very light workday for me and I am able to drive back home around 9 a.m., and this morning, there were very many late people leaving the complex around 9 a.m. At least they got a good nights’ sleep!

No, I’m not pregnant, but I want to be. I am still in the months before we officially start keeping track of everything. I have been assured that if it happens before September 1, 2004 that David’s new insurance will cover me after September 1st for all pregnancy needs. However, my current insurance does not cover anything if it even smells like it had to do with maternity. If I were to conceive before September, I would have to pay 100% for any appointments and sonograms. I think that having to pay 100% for an appointment would prevent me from making any appointments.

I am scared because my birth control prescription ended this month (middle of May) and I am confused because Dr. S gave me two sample prescription packs but they’re a totally different pill than I have ever had before and I think that it would be good to be off the pill for the next three to four months before we really start timing everything and try for kids. That way my body has at least a little time to be regular on its own.

I started my cycle yesterday evening and today is just plain crappy. I hate cramps, but at least they’re not as bad as they’ve been in the past. David and I need to be careful May 23-29th unless we want a February baby. I think we should be careful until it gets a month or two closer to September. I don’t want to be in my sixteenth week and not have had an appointment.

Looking back over the first two posts, I realize that I have been away from this for awhile. In my pre- appointment, we discussed my pre-pill cycles and determined that, amazingly for my height, I am still a little underweight. Dr. S was hopeful that I be able to hold a steady weight instead of fluctuating so much between 125-115 in order to give myself the best chance at resuming a regular ovulation cycle. It’s hard for me to gain weight and keep it on!

The other major thing which happened was that I was able to talk to Audrey, the insurance guru at Dr. S’s office and discuss different insurance plans. I can’t wait to be on David’s insurance policy! It will be so painfully expensive but also so very worth it.

This is for you, Mark, and you, David, and anybody else out there reading via the RSS feed built into WordPress on this site.

1. I wanted to specifically apologize as I go back and edit random entries to change things like categories and broken links. They may show up as “new” or “edited” on your subscription.
2. You can still stop by the page if you ever have the inkling to see the beautiful, lovely background I mentioned earlier.
3. At least I know of two people using the RSS so it is not a wasted .php file on davejenbarnes.com. Thank you for using the RSS making it worth having.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the rest of your cloudy Austin Wednesday. :)

David and I are currently re-doing our health insurance for next school year. We want to get me on his plan (Humana) because the benefits cover more than just a yearly exam, but they have made it so confusing! Our biggest concern is what is covered pregnancy-wise. I am sure ready to have kids, but this insurance thing is a nightmare!

Right now, I’m covered with my own policy through UNICARE. Although it is a very limited plan and covers zip-zero-zilch as far as anything above and beyond a yearly check-up, I at least understand that it covers zip-zero-zilch. Reading the paperwork on the Humana plans is so confusing, you can’t tell what it doesn’t cover.

My biggest question (and I will be calling Humana to ask it) is, “If I am pregnant before September 1st (when the plan starts), will I still be covered with all the dr’s appointments and birth that follow?”

UPDATE: May 12, 2004 I had the opportunity to talk with the Humana representative that was at CPMS today to clarify some of the paperwork that the teachers are receiving about the different health plans. She told me that pregnancy is not considered a “pre-existing condition” with Humana and will not be denied coverage as long as I keep my current healthcare coverage with UNICARE until the last day of August 2004. The Humana coverage will begin September 1, 2004 and will cover me completely from that date on. This is a huge relief for me and I’m sure that David feels good about this knowledge as well. God is taking care of us. He always has. Always will.

I have officially given up on Blogger.com as my weblogging publisher of choice. I will continue hold my blogger account open as a back-up to this site, but I have just moved a copy of all of my files into my WordPress directory, which you may now view in this beautiful freshly-redesigned site of ours! And wouldn’t you know it, Blogger has redesigned as well just today. Check it out:

Old :

New:

I’m glad they worked on their site. I’m glad it publishes now. I’m glad I found WordPress!

To our moms! We’ll be calling you today, you can count on it.

Love,
Dave & Jen

Ok, so we’re really going to Cape Charles, Virginia, but I figured I’d find the biggest “close” thing on the east coast and since I’m a through-and-through Texan, you can’t get much bigger than Washington DC! (It’s kinda like when the Mt. Carmel thing happened and everybody labeled it “Waco” or the Jerrell tornado a few years back and that got labeled “Austin.” Yep, it’s the same sort of thing)… I would like to spend a day in Washington DC, though, since I’m an adult and will actually remember it.

There is a friend of mine who lives there with his wife now, but we’re not in touch anymore… that’s kinda sad since we were in the third grade together and then went to the same high school (which is kinda rare in a military community) and even kept in touch all through college, but somehow we lost touch when I moved to Chicago with David and he got engaged to his wife. Life happens and we all get caught up in the whirlwind and before you know it, years have gone by before you say hello again.

UPDATE: May 14, 2004 I have just received an email from said friend. Life does happen and he and his lovely wife are expecting their first child in late November! It is so good to hear from old friends.

Anyhow, I digress… If anybody has any ideas of what we could do in one day in the nation’s capital, by all means, leave a comment.

Mark & Becky recently brought over their Roomba to give it a whirl on our cut-berber carpetting to see how it handled under… er, over… our conditions. A picture says a thousand words, so here are three:

We were amazed that it picked up that much cat hair in only 5 minutes (the battery had not received a full charge before working for us) and that it even picked up the feathers from our down-filled nine-foot-long couch. Samba pulls the feathers out of the pillows, but she doesn’t know how to throw them away in a trash can yet.

Before you start thinking that David and I live like slobs, I would have you know that the carpet that the Roomba traversed was vacuumed by our Kirby G5 just seven days prior to the Roomba visit. Cats shed. a lot.

The cats, our two cats, were curious. They’re pretty accepting of things, though, and they’re also just big kittens, being about 2 years old and not set-in-their-ways quite yet. Mambo is more laid back… he’s the kind of cat you’d see sitting on a lawn chair out on his balcony with a beer (or Dr. Pepper for you Baylor alumni) and his feet propped up on a cooler… and he was like, “Hey can I smell it? Why is it coming close to me, I guess I should move. It’s getting closer. I need to move.” then zoom, and start over from the smell it part. Samba is more freakish and she was just a quivering cowering pile of fur with two huge Oh-My-God-What-Is-That-Thing-and-why-is-it-moving eyes popping out of her head. Samba, being the hisser, didn’t hiss at it, but she doesn’t hiss at our regular vacuum either. She only hisses when you pull something like a tail or a paw or a ear. Hiss on command, but we never hurt her. She’s the drama queen. Mark’s cats just find another room to chill in until it dies.

Happy Birthday Jerry! I hope it’s been a great day for you!

Cool. I’m here at the local Schlotsky’s Deli off 620 with Dave. He had a late nite at school tonight and I was at the church for a meeting and we met up and headed out here for dinner. I’m eating a triple chocolate cookie and Dave’s having some kind of sandwich that smells barbequey. Yum!

So far, so good. Last night I installed this here WordPress Blog and I had the opportunity to show it briefly to Dave. Overall, we’re both impressed at the smoothness of its operation and with the sheer number of options we have with WordPress. BLOGGER is really quite simple and comes with relatively few decisions while this… this could be huge and as complicated as we let it become. I now completely understand the complexity of the template on WordPress and understand that some minor adjustments site-wide may be unavoidable. Of all the features I am most impressed with, I’d have to say that I love the categories. Being able to organize posts by subject is something I have wanted to do for awhile now, though I will heed Mark’s advice about the complexity of categories and try to keep them simple!