Kristen says:
I have 3 new holes in my arms today (quickly healing, of course) from the shots. When I went in I was really thinking I was going to have to have something like 10 shots (grossly overestimated, as it turned out.) We actually each had just the three: H1N1 and Tetanus booster in the right, Hepatitis A and B combo in the left (I actually had Hep. B back in Junior High, after my mom had cancer treatment, but I thought better be safe than sorry.) I will also start taking an oral Typhoid round sometime this week or next, depending on whether my sister's doctor says she can be around me or not. (Now that the secret is out in Iowa I can announce it to the blogging world: I AM GOING TO BE AN AUNT!!! :) Baby Bock (the nickname it will have from me forever) is due in early December, so now we have all the decisions to make about whether or not we go home for Christmas...)
And, that's it. (For shots, anyway).
We opted out of Rabies (the nurse said it only eliminated like, 2 shots that we would have to get if we were exposed anyway, and it costs something like $700, so we figured it wasn't worth it.)
We did get a prescription for Malaria medicine --don't ask me which one, we didn't go pick it up from the pharmacy today-- so we have some decisions about whether or not to take it once we get down there. All-in-all, I feel very confident after visiting the Polk County Health Department today, and happy that it didn't cost the THOUSANDS of dollars I thought it would. Grand total for all our shots was less than $400, and my insurance even kicked in $80 for the Hepatitis shot and the county paid for H1N1. Woot.
So, today we have made a small dent on the huge Honduras to-do list:
Inoculations, check!
Underwater video camera purchase, check!
Date scheduled for moving out of the apartment, check!
Plane ticket for dog ... well, not so much...
So, it turns out that Continental doesn't pick up live animals in Des Moines...so we may have to change our flight (goodbye $300!) and leave from Omaha instead. Hmmm. That drama will be interesting to follow.
My big project for, well, the next long time is to take care of this:
The project of which I speak is the sorting, cataloging, packing, and/or --sniff!-- getting rid of all those books behind him. If you can't tell, they are stacked 10-12 deep on all the shelves, spilling out onto the floor, creeping around behind where I was sitting to the side of my bed...and that doesn't even count the books I have at my current classroom. As I said in my last post, I love STUFF, and books are my #1 stuff. They make me happy, and I really do read a lot. Chris is being VERY nice about the whole way-too-many-books thing, but I know I have to step up to the plate and sacrifice some of my beloveds so that my mom doesn't end up with a basement full of my books.
A great visual analogy for Chris and myself:
So, as you can see, this moving to Honduras thing is going to be more than just an adventure in where we are living, it is going to be an adventure in how to live.
Questions of the day:
Will Kristen get rid of more than 5% of her books? Will Chris grow totally exasperated with Kristen's pack-rat-i-ness? Will Pip get to come to Honduras on July 6?
Stay tuned, dear readers...
KF