I love Canda!

Okay, I don't know everything about Canada or how their government works, or how their taxes work, or how their healthcare system works, but there are a few things I think I really like about them.

There are people on both sides of the fence when it comes to Canada's healthcare system.  I admit I'm not familiar enough with it to feel strongly one way or another ("Obviously Natasha Richardson died because her skiing accident was in Canada!" ... um, sure?)  But I think I personally would prefer a universal healthcare system (a single-payer system) to this behemoth Obamacare we've recently passed.  It's full of great ideas, but dang, it's messy and complicated and inefficient and looks like it just sells us all out to the insurance companies who have always been able to do whatever they want with us, and will continue to be able to do so. O_o BUT THAT IS A DISCUSSION FOR ANOTHER DAY.

BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND: WHAT I LIKE ABOUT CANADA.

Parental leave.
It's not maternity leave, which is a special cool luxury American working moms have that makes me jealous.  Granted, not all Americans get paid maternity leave, but dang.  Sometimes I wish I had waited a bit longer to have kids so I could have a job, take some paid maternity leave, then quit.  (Yes, my selfish inner desires are why employers hate pregnant women and are suspicious of them.)  But the idea is that in Canada, you get a year off with 55% pay.  Then you get to go back to your job.  A year, people.  Paid.  And either parent could take it off.  So if both spouses are working, each could take 6 months off, or Mom could take a full year off, or whatever.  But if one spouse is working, then the working spouse could take the whole year off.  That seems a lot less discriminatory than saying we want to give working moms all these benefits to make their lives easier.  Hey, look over here, I've made sacrifices, too!  Whatever happened to "all men are created equal" - why do they get special treatment and protection?

Canada's version of the "Child Tax Credit"
In the United States, we get something like a $1000 tax credit for each child.  That's great and all, but Canadians get a $100 check every month for each child they have (something like that.)  That adds up to $1200, by the way. ;)  Anyway, like I said, I don't know how their tax system works, but that seems more straightforward than our "$1000 tax credit plus a bunch of random deductions like the child care tax credit that ONLY WORKS FOR CHILD CARE AND NOT PRESCHOOL."  Again, one of those things that discriminates against stay-at-home parents.  Why is it that working parents need all this help?  If they need all this help, isn't that a sign that there's something wrong with what they're doing?  If *parents* need help, help *all* *parents* and not just a certain subset of them that exhibit certain behaviors the government wants.  It seems they want to pressure everybody into working and only having a few children.  Isn't Europe kind of having a problem with its aging population...?  How are MY kids supposed to support the Social Security needs of all the aging people if you're trying to stop middle-class people from having kids?
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301108/empty-playground-and-welfare-state-ramesh-ponnuru << a great blog entry

Universal healthcare.
I could never write enough about this in a single entry.  I don't think I could get it out in a bunch of entries.  But here's the quick version: we already practically have "free" universal health care.  Hospitals and doctors are required to treat their patients regardless of their ability to pay.  A friend of a friend said, "Health care is totally free, as long as you don't need a good credit score and don't mind dodging a few phone calls!"  Seriously, it's awful!  My aunt works (worked?) for a hospital's billing department!  It sounds like a nightmare job!

We have the ability to treat people and morally we should (something to do with the Hippocratic oath? or something?) and we DO and we bill people for it even if they can't afford it.  It makes no sense.  I got my hospital bill from having Mace and the bill made no sense.  They charged the insurance company some amount, the insurance company paid them some other amount (like, 1/5 of what the hospital billed them), I paid my teensy hospital copay (I love my health insurance ... they cover 100% and I have no deductible!), and somehow we all called it good?  Someone explain to me how this has ANYTHING to do with the free market.  And when I came in, they asked me if I was insured or if I was paying out of pocket.  Do they bill us differently?  I bet they do.  This makes NO SENSE.

The fact is, we don't understand anything about what healthcare costs.  And there are emergencies.  That's why we all have insurance, I think.  And we all have copays because the insurance companies don't want us going to the doctor for FREE because then we'd go to the doctor for every little thing and A) the doctors would be overwhelmed and B) it would be freaking expensive.  But it makes sense for preventative visits to be free (because insurance companies would probably rather catch something earlier than later because it would be cheaper to treat) and blah blah blah I don't think you find this interesting.

I think healthcare should be a common good because education is a common good.  We want our society to be educated because that makes them more productive.  We ALSO want our society to be HEALTHY because that will ALSO make us more productive.  I have a friend who was "disabled" because she has bipolar and epilepsy - and without medication she is unable to function.  But if she got a job, Medicaid would no longer be able to help her with her medical costs, but her job wouldn't be good enough to either A) provide medical benefits or B) pay her enough that she can care for her own health issues.  THAT IS JUST WRONG.

I could go more in-depth about this, but that would probably best be left to someone who is actually an expert in the field and knows about healthcare and knows about insurance.  Me?  I just read stuff.



PS. I'm in love with this woman and her blog.  Apparently she wrote about most of my issues years ago.
http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/category/women/

And gosh dang I wish I kept links to all of the blog entries that made me think about everything I wrote about in this entry.  Oh, well.  I will find more later, but the point is I need to get my thoughts out, y'know?

Coming up some day: if I ruled the world, what would it be like?

Personal family things

Now I'd like to take the opportunity to share a few things that have been going on in my life lately.

Mace is 4 months old.  I love him so much!

• He's a super-huge flirt who loves to talk.  He loves attention, and I love looking into his eyes.  He looks back at me, as if searching for some kind of reassurance, and when I smile, he beams at me.
• He loves it when people sing to him - one of the ladies at the gym day care even told me about it. :)
• He loves sucking on his Binky, and when it's not around, he sticks his entire hand into his mouth and sucks on it madly.  It's hilarious.  And for a kid who loves his Binky so much, he sure stinks at keeping it in his mouth!
• He loves to grab and pull at his toys.
• He understands when I'm promising him milk.  If he's fussing and I say, "Wait just a minute, I'll get you some milk, let me sit down..." he stops and looks at me for a while.  And if I get distracted and do something other than start nursing him, he furrows his brow and starts crying at me again. ;)
• He started rolling over about a week ago, and now he can roll from front to back and back to front!  But I think he only rolls over in one direction - when he's on his back, he'll roll over his left arm onto his stomach, then he'll roll over again and be farther away from where he started.
• He loves his big sister.  She is very good at comforting him, and when she got him to stop crying at the end of her swimming lessons a few weeks ago, one of the other parents was like, "Wow, she is the baby whisperer!!"
• Carmen loves him to death, too.  She helps stick his Binky in, she plays with him, she helps him roll over, she brings him toys, she talks to him in the high-pitched loving Mommy voice adults use with babies (apparently it's a natural thing for parents to do - babies are better at picking up the high-pitched sounds and we recognize that they respond to it.  We're not just being super-annoying with our baby talk.)  I love walking into a room and hearing her singing to him, or going, "Baby Mace, you're a cutie, you're a cutie!  Let's keep you forever!  I love you!  You are the cutest and sweetest baby!"  And when he's crying, she caresses his face and goes, "Shh, shh, shh, oh, sweetheart, you're okay, shh~"
• For some reason, I like to call Mace "Stinkerfish."  Sometimes Carmen gets upset when I call him that, and she goes, "He's not a stinkerfish!  He's a sweetheart!"

Carmen loves being a big sister.  I think she's hilarious, too.  I love having a creative 3-year-old!!

Carmen Dewey: Dinosaur Hunter

• For some reason, she is obsessed with death.  I've probably been watching too much Burn Notice with her. ;)  I hear her playing in her room, and she's like, "Hey, everypony, Pinkie Pie is dead."  And a few weeks ago in Nursery, she told her Nursery leaders that one of her friends died, and they were a bit worried about that ... I asked her about it in the hall, and she told me that it was one of her pretend friends that died.  "Yeah, she went out into the street without looking and got hit by a car and she DIED."  O.o;  I don't teach her that she'll die if she gets hit by a car.  I say she needs to be careful because the car might not see her, and if it hit her she'd get "big ouchies".  Apparently big ouchies = death.
• The best part of my day is when Carmen comes up to me and gives me a big hug and says, "Mommy, I just love you!"
• Sometimes, she says, "Ugh, Mommy, if you [do thing I don't like], I will not love you any more!"  (What?!  I don't threaten her with taking away love!  Where does she get this from?!) and other times, when we get frustrated with each other, she glares at me and goes, "But Mommy, I still love you!!"  Hehehe.
• I haven't quite figured out what this means, but sometimes she says, "I am the MADDEST Carmen!"  Usually this is when she's going to go out and kill dinosaurs or something.  I think she also says it when she's recently been scared by a bug (usually a spider/ant/fly).
• We're kind of working on our fear of bugs.  When bugs are inside, it's okay to freak out and get Mommy and Daddy to kill them.  When we're outside, I try to tell her, "This is their home; they're not scary and I won't kill them for you."
• Carmen is very thoughtful and obedient.  While we were on vacation in Utah, my dad and I were both taking naps downstairs on the couch.  I heard Carmen come down the stairs, calling out, "Mommy?  Grandpa Brad??" and when she saw both of us asleep, she sighed exasperatedly (it sounded a bit like Napoleon Dynamite) ... then turned around and went back upstairs, instead of waking us up and bothering us.  Seriously?  Seriously!!  I was so happy!!!!
• My favorite made-up word by Carmen?  "Yestertime."
• She is super-upbeat and optimistic and sweet.  "That sounds super-delicious!" "That is WONDERFUL, mommy!" "Mom, everything in this grocery store is SO PERFECT!" and our favorite descriptor for tasty fruit is, "It's super-juicy!"  Super-juicy strawberries, super-juicy apples, super-juicy pears ... Also, whenever we go to a place that will have kids there she can play with, she calls them, "All of my very best friends!" (I think she gets it from the My Little Pony theme song?)
• Everything exciting that she is looking forward to doing is happening TOMORROW.  I can't wait to go to my swim lessons TOMORROW.  I can't wait to start my dance lessons TOMORROW and wear my tap-tap-tap shoes.  I want to move into our new big house RIGHT NOW.  (or tomorrow. ;)  )
• Carmen reminds me of the little girl from Toy Story 3.  She runs around with her toys and everything that happens to them is SO DRAMATIC.  I love it!!

I want to write more in here about family happenings.  I've been distracting myself too much for the past year or so to write, but I really need to do it!!  (Facebook status updates are enough, right?  Right???)

In other news ... we are moving into a house next Saturday (yaaaaayyyyyy!!!!) so this week should be crazy full of packing and whatnot.  Being OCD and all, I started packing boxes last week to take downstairs to the garage (I don't want to ask my friends to carry all of our stuff down two flights of stairs) ... then Carmen decided she wanted to help and she put all of her ponies and other favorite toys into her backpack.  Ahahaha.  I love her.

Spoilers!!

A few days ago, Mark came home from work super-giddy and told me what he weighed when he got on the scale when he got to the gym that morning.  I really wish I could remember how much he weighed when we got married ... I think he's close!  So far (in just a month) he has lost 20 pounds.  That's even more than our cats!!  (Our cats are fat.)  I want to take a picture of Mark holding Tiber, with the caption of, "This is how much Mark weighed a month ago!"

I, on the other hand, lost 7 pounds in a week (how is it possible? I don't know. Going off carbs is crazy!) and then realized I shouldn't be losing weight that fast because I'm nursing.  I was supposed to be eating fruit, too.  And if you've got sugar in your body, it has energy it can access before your body starts shedding fat so even eating fruit will slow your weight loss.  At least that's what I suspect.  So now I'm down just over 10 pounds.  So between the two of us, we've almost lost a Carmen.  In a month.

I've been pretty bad the past few days, though.  I've been craving chocolate so I had several pieces of chocolate cake at a friend's house last night, and today I've been sneaking a bunch of Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies.  I promise I'll get back on track tomorrow!

One thing that was really fun about that first week was stepping on the scale in the evening and weighing less than I weighed in the morning, even though I had been eating all day long and never felt hungry.  Gee, funny, you eat foods that keep you full and you don't get hungry as often.  Hm!!

It makes me think that maybe that, instead of simply writing up how many calories are in a food item, if they wrote it in something like calories per hour.  You digest carbs faster than whole grains/proteins/fats, so although fat has more calories per weight, I bet if you ate more fat during the day you'd eat fewer calories overall.  Carbs last, like, three hours, then you're hungry again.  They also spike your blood sugar and make you even hungrier.  I noticed I could be not-very-hungry, then I'll have something with sugar in it, and suddenly my body will start craving more sugar.

Yup, here's a little something describing cravings vs. hunger.  This is why you have to do Phase I of the South Beach Diet.  It's what kicks the carb cravings.  The first 3 days are the hardest.
http://www.southbeachdiet.com/diet/hunger-versus-cravings


I've decided I also need to come up with some sort of official "goal" for my weight loss, instead of, "The doctor told Mark he needs to lose weight, so what the heck I'll do it with him because I'm fat."

Here goes, once it's public and people know they've got something to hold you to ... right?

Starting weight: 179
Current weight: 169
Pre-Mace weight: 165
Pre-Carmen weight: 160

In my wildest, wildest dreams I'd like to be down to 140 lbs (how much I weighed when I was 16) and have a 30-inch waist or smaller.  Actually, I'd just like to have a 30-inch waist, period.  (I'm already one inch down!)  Realistically, I'd like to get down to 150 lbs, which is what I weighed when I graduated from high school.  I have clothes I've been holding onto since I got married, hoping I'll be able to fit into them comfortably again.  (Problem is, many of them aren't nursing-friendly so I've hardly worn them since 2008.  BUT I LOVE THOSE SHIRTS SO MUCH I CAN NOT GET RID OF THEM BECAUSE I SWEAR I WILL WEAR THEM AGAIN SOME DAY! **stubborn**)

It's kind of embarrassing thinking those are my weight goals, because I have friends who are like 140 or 145 and want to get down to 120 and I'm thinking, "How is that even POSSIBLE?!  I haven't weighed that I was 13!  And I was not fat then!"  (Back then, I'm pretty sure was pure muscle, and I could probably beat the crap out of you, and I rode my bike everywhere.)

And there's your way too much personal information about Kamis for the day.  Now I will be super-embarrassed if Christmas comes around and I'm still 160something. "You did so great in August, then you gave up?!"