Would YOU give this bitch a book?

Me too! Me too.

I've just been so excited for you all day, kid. I know it seems silly, but this seems like such a victory for all of us. Like a huge confirmation that the waiting game pays off, that there are a few things out there that are right, and that people who work hard--combined with being awesome!--get what they deserve.

And for being awesome, you get an embarrassing blog. It's a small price to pay.

And imagine we're sitting in the Highland backyard, it's warm, and we're around a fire. Truman is in your lap. Then you run into the kitchen and ask "who needs a beer while I'm up" and while you're inside you catch us all around the orange flame through the kitchen window and hear our voices just as clearly as you did when you were outside. And you know--we're all so damn proud of you, and it feels so good to celebrate.

Now hurry up back outside and bring me my cold beer.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

I know nobody watches videos people put on their blogs, because they're all I'm at work or I'm not gonna push play it's too hard or the sounds isn't working on my 'puter, but seriously. This is hilarious. And inappropriate. Don't watch it where someone will see you watching it.

Goals for the future. Some of which I have control over, others I don't.

*Get enough loan money from the government to pay off my evil, very very evil private loan. And also to live okay without having to work part time during school next year, which would make me want to die as I would have no free time.

*Find a neat place to live in or around Rochester, much like the horse farm 2 bedroom apartment that is available. Yes. Live on a horse farm for a year, set up my record player next to the window, and walk around on acres of land in my free time and pet and feed horses every day. Sit outside at the horse farm during dark thunderstorms in late July, move inside of my horse farm apartment and read long, descriptive books in low yellow light. When it's fall at the horse farm walk in the garden because they probably have one and wear a light jacket and jog through the woods. When it snows at the horse farm, put on boots and make new tracks in the fresh white, go outside just to breathe the crisp air. Became familiar and ultimately nostalgic for the manure air and smell of sweet hay covered with dew.

*Help Truman recognize his dream of working facilities management:

*Write at least 5 poems this summer to make up for my lack of writing. At least keep a wonderful, descriptive journal that allows me to remember how much I miss being reflective instead of just sad and angry at the city and the economy and other things I have no control over.

*Get actual acceptance letter soon, before I start assuming for sure I'm making the move.

*Not eat an entire frozen pizza with the excuse "it's snowing outside."**

*Run, for Chrissakes. What is this weather doing to me.**

*Find health insurance for next year.

*Remember to tell my parents I appreciate them for what they do.

*Remember to tell all of my friends that I love them super-much.

*Read many books that will prepare me to be a successful high school teacher--many of the books I read in high school. Read these books quickly, and enjoy them enough that they convince me to stop watching TV all the damn time.

*Take the Praxis; do well.

*Sell some of my books; buy new, better books.

*Do laundry, clean room.**

*Enjoy the intellectual and emotional challenges that are soon to come.

*Find a post-school job in suburbia, at the job teach students the difference between opinion and fact, teach students how to think, feel confident that I am following a path that will lead me to success and happiness.

*Continue to talk in this weird, oddly self-help sounding tone.

*Get a haircut.

*Take care of the Intrepid.

*Watch gas fall to under $2.50 a gallon.**

*Make small, wonderful roadtrips to Wisconsin, and northern Minnesota, and maybe to one of the Dakotas.

*During these roadtrips, listen to loud summer music with friends.

*Be nostalgic for Lake Nokomis.

*Leave current job without hard feelings; convince current job to let me take many days off in May but still stay employed.

*Try to assign some sort of label to these past 10 months, whether it's good or bad. As long as it's not undecided.

*Do things I care about. Remain vague. Don't sit in a cube. Don't worry about money. Believe what people tell me. Be there for people who need me.

**THESE ARE ON MY GOAL LIST EVERY SINGLE DAY, YET STILL MANAGE TO NEVER HAPPEN.

Jeano is going back to school.

Just thought you all should know. Please come visit me as I drive once again, for the 8th year, through the rolling hills of Southern Minnesota. Although this time it's just for a year, and I'm getting a degree that will almost guarantee me work that I will enjoy.

Life is such a mess. I keep having to do the harder things. Let's hope that near-promise of an acceptance letter comes in the mail, instead of just more air up my ass.

And I will keep asking myself this, as I take more loans out: If the world ends in a couple of months, do I want to find myself in debt at this dead-end job, or do I want to be doing something I'm enjoying, and growing as a person. I'd like to growing instead of dying when the balls of fire rain down. And then, I won't have to pay the loans off!

Also, in Rochester I will hopefully find myself rooming with a resident doctor at Mayo. A male, attractive almost-doctor who still feels like he has something to prove.

I hate you, University of Minnesota. You have made this last month of my life a living hell. For the first time tonight, I will sleep for real. And I will wake up, finally, without just hope but guarantees in my life. Fucking A.

Sometimes, God gives you plan B because it's the better option and you don't know it yet. Give it up for plan B.

Jeano, you suck at blogging.

I know. It's just that these last few months have been a huge mess of waiting for responses. It's been first interviews, excitement about second interviews, then the most ridiculously long waiting game that quite literally gives me chest pains at work. It's other interviews in front of panels, explaining why I want to teach high school. It's imagining myself moving in June and suddenly being a full time student in Southern Minnesota again, or finally settling in the twin cities and making my life appear my permanent.

And I've just been informed today that the wait is going to be even longer. I can't deal with it. I binge eat and get sick. And, um, gosh. I'm feeling ill. I don't think I'm gonna make it in to work tomorrow. I just feel so sick.

I promise I will update you when I am updated. I'll be happy somehow, either way, whether I have a fulltime job or have taken out more loans.

In the meantime, what the FUCK IS THIS. But how appropriate that this exists. Jeano pants? And did you see the description? And that one of the colors is "gun metal"? That's totally me:

[Jeano has] universal utility and a traditional look that's at home almost anywhere. [Jeano is] Tough, [full of] precision, [she] holds up to stress, and [her exterior is like] durable fabric [that] lasts through extensive washing and wear. [She has] simple design [and a wonderful] profile [and is] timeless and always in style. Imported.

That's right. I'm imported.

For the rest of my life, I want a new puppy to wake me up every day.

That way, I have something to look forward to. Which puppy will it be today? At what time will I smell the puppy-puppy breath?

Liz and Christina often talk about starting a puppy farm. Unfortunately, it turns out puppy farms are bad things. No! It means that puppies are used and mistreated for a profit! No worries, though. They just have to come up with a different name for their giant farm, wherein puppies run around being cute. The farm is next to the fountain of youth, so the puppies stay puppies forever.

I spent this weekend at home-home. Liz is in Michigan, and I wanted to hang out with my brother's dog, whom I've taken to calling "Princess Bourbon, the prettiest Belle at the ball!" Craig hates this, so I say it as much as possible.

Her Majesty:

Even though Bourbon is a naughty, naughty doggy, it was still nice to cuddle up with him for a couple of nights and rub his soft ears between my fingers. He burrows under the blankets. He makes nests out of blankets with his paws and sits in the middle of them like a mother bird. Even when he woke me up at 4, pretending he had to go to the bathroom but really just wanting to run all over the house like an asshole, I still liked him.

I can't wait to get a dog. I will do nothing else except for play with the dog.

Here are some puppies for the puppy farm (that's not called a puppy farm--what shall it be called instead?)--

For Liz:

Did I really just write a blog and post pictures of puppies? With little content? Am I an 11 year old girl, or a 54 year old spinster? You decide friends, you decide.

Finally! One for us crazies! OR Two articles that explain how I'm doing today.

Taken from today's New York Times:

WASHINGTON-- After more than a decade of struggle, the House on Wednesday passed a bill requiring most group health plans to provide more generous coverage for treatment of mental illnesses, comparable to what they provide for physical illnesses.

The vote was 268 to 148, with 47 Republicans joining 221 Democrats in support of the measure.
The Senate has passed a similar bill requiring equivalence, or parity, in coverage of mental and physical ailments. Federal law now allows insurers to discriminate, and most do so, by setting higher co-payments or stricter limits on mental health benefits.

“Illness of the brain must be treated just like illness anywhere else in the body,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. Supporters of the House bill, including consumer groups and the American Psychiatric Association, said it would be a boon to many of the 35 million Americans who experience disabling symptoms of mental disorders each year.
Insurers and employers supported the Senate bill. Many opposed the House version, saying it would drive up costs.

President Bush endorsed the principle of mental health parity in 2002. But on Wednesday, the White House opposed the House bill, saying it “would effectively mandate coverage of a broad range of diseases.”

Both bills would outlaw health insurance practices that set lower limits on treatment or higher co-payments for mental health services than for other medical care.

Typical annual limits include 30 visits to a doctor or 30 days of hospital care for treatment of a mental disorder. Such limits would no longer be allowed if the insurer had no limits on treatment of conditions like cancer, heart disease and diabetes.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the House bill would increase premiums for group health insurance by an average of four-tenths of 1 percent. Some of the cost could be passed on to workers.

The House bill does not apply to health plans sponsored by an employer with 50 or fewer employees. Nor does it apply to coverage in the individual insurance market.

Three factors contributed to support for the legislation. First, researchers have found biological causes and effective treatments for numerous mental illnesses. Second, a number of companies now specialize in managing mental health benefits, making the costs to insurers and employers more affordable.

Finally, some doctors say that the stigma of mental illness has faded as people see members of the armed forces returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with mental disorders.
Supporters of mental health parity see it as a civil rights issue, and the debate Wednesday was filled with poignant moments.

“I have a mental illness, and I am fortunately getting the best care this country has to offer because I am a member of Congress,” said Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island and chief sponsor of the House bill. Mr. Kennedy has been treated for depression and drug dependence.

The main Republican sponsor, Representative Jim Ramstad of Minnesota, a recovering alcoholic, said, “I am living proof that treatment works and recovery is real.”

The House bill is named for Senator Paul Wellstone the Minnesota Democrat killed in a plane crash in 2002. He had a brother with severe mental illness. The main sponsor of the Senate bill, PeteV. Dominici Republican of New Mexico, has a daughter with schizophrenia.

Under a 1996 law, health plans are forbidden to set annual or lifetime dollar limits on mental health care that are lower than the limits for other services. But insurers have gotten around the law by setting different limits on the number of outpatient visits or hospital days, and by charging different co-payments.

The protections of the House bill apply to people who need treatment for alcohol and drug abuse, as well as mental illness.

Under the bill, if an insurer chooses to provide mental health coverage, it must “include benefits” for any mental health condition listed in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association.

E. Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation, a trade group, said: “Businesses will be faced with the choice of covering every single mental or substance abuse disorder listed in the diagnostic manual, or nothing at all. Neither choice is appealing.”

Among the conditions listed in the manual, critics noted, are caffeine intoxication and sleep disorders resulting from jet lag.

Nicholas M. Meyers, director of government relations at the American Psychiatric Association, said: “This is nonsense. Simply because a diagnosis is made does not obligate insurers to pay for treatment.”

Insurers could still deny coverage if they found that a service was not medically necessary.

*

Also: this.