I am not alone! Kerstin is resisting the blogworld peer pressure to spin too! Love her blog, too, it's so much fun. I'm starting to think it's time for a fresh start with this blog - it needs redecorating. But then, so does half my house, and my backyard desperately needs landscaping, the garage desperately needs cleaning out, and there's all that yarn sitting around waiting to be knitted, and of course work and friends and a phone that rings every evening when I sit down to knit (headset for phone is on the shopping list). Spin? Puh-leeze! I have too many things I want to knit and no time to knit already - I'll be lucky if I get half the knitting projects on my plate done between now and Christmas. I got four rows on my Sitcom Chic done yesterday morning, only because I woke up super-early (as I did today) and got to it in the wee hours with my morning coffee. I had an inkling that my life was going to be like this.

Let me put it this way: I promise I will learn to spin right after I win the lottery. Consider this my commitment, before God and everybody, to that effect. Yep, just one multi-million lotto jackpot, and I will be able to buy the free time to sit right down and learn to spin - that's all it would take. So you all can stop plotting to make me a spinner, and rest assured that it's at the top of my post-lottery-winning to-do list. Until then, just think of me as a spinner in spirit.

Still waiting to see dime one from the life insurance. That's getting a bit stressful. One can only rob Peter to pay Paul for so long, before Peter and Paul figure it out and beat the hell out of you. Had another fiscal heart attack the other day, when a statement came from my insurance company, rejecting a bill for my late husband's nursing home stay - five days of care was over three grand, and he was there for what, over six weeks? It was all one long hellish day to me, I honestly lost count. You can do the math on the cost of his care, it makes me feel faint to contemplate it. Anyway, I opened the mail while at the house at lunch; nearly screamed when I saw the claim wasn't paid, calmed myself down, went back to the office and called the carrier and asked (somehow managing to keep a note of hysteria out of my voice) why they bounced the claim. The very nice claims lady looked it up, said, "You're right, this was rejected by mistake, somehow they missed that the nursing home was under contract, inpatient hospice should be paid at 100%," and resubmitted it for payment. Whew. I reviewed the open claims online and the many weeks of nursing home care weren't on there yet - but the rough online total for the last months of his life looked like about $60,000. So far. I didn't actually do the math because, again, it makes me feel faint. Each week in the hospital since the end of March was around $15,000, and that's not counting the bills from the parade of specialists called in to confer on his care. And most of that care was custodial, because he was off treatment by that time - no surgery, no expensive anti-cancer meds, nothing "fancy" inflated those bills. That was just what was needed to make him comfortable. I feel very, very lucky to have good medical insurance, and it's very, very scary to think about how millions of Americans are facing disaster if a serious illness hits the family, because they just don't happen to be very, very lucky that way. But that's a rant for another audience.

Boychild is moved into his new place, a few miles from here, and is very happy about it. Girlchild is living like a gypsy, crashing at friends' houses, until she can move into her new house next weekend. With a little bit of luck by Labor Day this insanity will be completely over, and everybody will be parked, unpacked, and settled in where they will reside for the next year or so. I'm going to take a couple of long weekends - not next weekend but the one after, and the following one is Labor Day - and on one weekend go visit Girlchild's new abode, and on the other I may just lock myself in the house with DVDs and knitting. And turn off the phone.

And on that note, I'm going to take my coffee and go make some progress on my Sitcom Chic. Happy Weekend!