It is now 2:42 in the morning and I am just getting home

after being up since a little before 7 am and going into work early due to my schedule being adjusted so I could go get an allergy shot after work, which I did. I then picked up some toilet paper from my apartment and ran it over to my friends' as they were out, ate some Morningstar Farms tomato basil pizza burgers and macaroni and cheese, watched a few things with YKWIA, and took A on a very long and grueling run to the grocery store (it was a two-cart run). I fixed YKWIA some dinner, and we watched some 'Grace and Frankie' and the beginning of the second season of 'House of Anubis'. Then YKWIA and I made four (count them, four) traditional derby-style pies for A's picnic tomorrow. We just finished a short while ago. They're in the pantry cooling on racks.

So now I'm home, and very, very tired. I am also very poor at the moment, and just raided a coin-collecting book that had about $5 worth of state quarters in it so that I could pay for parking tomorrow, as I need to go visit my mom, who's in a hospital here in Lexington. My stepfather called me earlier to let me know. I'm worried about her; this is the second hospitalisation in two months. Hopefully everything will be alright.

Okay, I have a little spinach-artichoke hummus and pita in me now. I'm heading to bed, after one more short post. Good night.

Flying without a safety net

For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall

Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. She nicknamed herself after a metal band and vowed to become the first in her family to earn a college degree.

“I don’t want to work at Walmart” like her mother, she wrote to a school counselor.

Weekends and summers were devoted to a college-readiness program, where her best friends, Melissa O’Neal and Bianca Gonzalez, shared her drive to “get off the island” — escape the prospect of dead-end lives in luckless Galveston. Melissa, an eighth-grade valedictorian, seethed over her mother’s boyfriends and drinking, and Bianca’s bubbly innocence hid the trauma of her father’s death. They stuck together so much that a tutor called them the “triplets.”

Low-income strivers face uphill climbs, especially at Ball High School, where a third of the girls’ class failed to graduate on schedule. But by the time the triplets donned mortarboards in the class of 2008, their story seemed to validate the promise of education as the great equalizer.

The value of health insurance demonstrated in a new study

First Study of Its Kind Shows Benefits of Providing Medical Insurance to Poor

When poor people are given medical insurance, they not only find regular doctors and see doctors more often but they also feel better, are less depressed and are better able to maintain financial stability, according to a new, large-scale study that provides the first rigorously controlled assessment of the impact of Medicaid.

Among other things:

The study found that those with insurance were 25 percent less likely to have an unpaid bill sent to a collection agency and were 40 percent less likely to borrow money or fail to pay other bills because they had to pay medical bills

I know having health insurance has been perhaps the single-most important thing for me in terms of staying alive and keeping afloat. Even when I was only working part-time at the hospital, I was fortunate to have benefits, although I had to pay a little more for them than full-timers. But I had health insurance. That, combined with a medical flexible spending account, helps make sure I have money for bills rather than spending everything on my health.

At the beginning of the year, I ran the numbers and found that my medicine alone without insurance would cost over $1100 a month. When I was working two part-time jobs, that amounted to 85% of my take-home income. Now it would be 69%. Now I could just pay for medicines and eat--but not doctor's bills, rent, or utilities. Back when I was working two jobs, it would have been worse.

That's one reason I think it's incredibly important for everyone to have access to affordable health care. Also, I think we as a society pay less in the long run if people have access to preventative care and are not forced to use emergency services for things that aren't emergencies.