Incoherent

I didn't have a super eventful week, so I don't know what to blog about. I have various ideas, but I don't know that I want to make an entire post about any of them. So I'm going to make brief observations about many things.

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Since I don't have employment-provided insurance, I have to use Healthcare.gov, and I have used agents to help me sign up. This week, I needed to update my income. I was going to have my agent do it, but I logged into my account just to see what information I needed.

Well, the website and system is so messed up that just by me logging in and not even really doing anything, it messed up my application. My agent got quite mad at me because he thought I had opened up a can of worms, but then it wasn't as bad as he initially thought. I find it frustrating that the system is so fragile that I can break things just by looking at it. It's been years, but there are still a lot of kinks to iron out.

Some people want to throw it all out and start over, but that will just bring in a fresh batch of problems. Why don't we just fix what we already have?

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I tend to be very sentimental, and I remember a lot of things. This makes it hard sometimes to get rid of things. "I remember when I got this on that Thursday five years ago. I don't want to get rid of it!" But I'm trying to get better at not holding on to everything. There's three things that help with that.

(1) Once in a while, I will catch parts of the Hoarders TV show. I don't want to be that. I wouldn't classify myself as a hoarder, but I don't even want to approach that.
(2) Marie Kondo. I haven't even watched her show, but her rhetoric has infiltrated society. I ask myself is something brings me joy, and that helps.
(3) Daughters of Utah Pioneers museums. I've visited several such museums in the last few years, and they tend to be brimming with random nineteenth- (and twentieth-) century items. It's like someone was tidying up and donated the antiques, and the DUP didn't want to say no, but now they have too much stuff. Sometimes I like to hold on to things for their "historical" value: "This item is a relic of 1980s pop culture!" But when I see those museums, I realize that there are already enough artifacts. Too many, even. We don't need to keep them all.

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As you all know, I take holiday candy very seriously. For each holiday, I have a mental list of what I officially classify as category 1 treats, meaning they are iconic to the holiday. For Easter season, which kicked off this week, category 1 consists of chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks (Peeps), jelly beans, carrots, carrot cake, eggs, and chocolate eggs. (This week, I have had carrot cake cookies, carrot cake muffins, carrot cake Dove Promises, Peeps cereal, and Peeps creamer.) Last year was the first time I classified chocolate eggs as category 1, as I kept finding references to chocolate eggs in pop culture and other things. But now I'm trying to define exactly what a chocolate egg is. Does size matter? Does it have to be 3-D egg-shaped, or can it have a flat side? A Cadbury Creme Egg is definitely a chocolate egg. But what about Cadbury Mini Eggs? I say so, mostly because they're so popular at this time of year and they show up in other things. (I don't like the red and green Cadbury balls for Christmas, because they just taste like Easter.) But if Cadbury Mini Eggs are chocolate eggs, then so are M&Ms eggs. Lots of people praise Reese's Eggs (and I agree that they're better than Reese's Cups), but I wouldn't consider those a chocolate egg—they're more like an egg-shaped candy bar, because they are flat. I'm still working out the definition of a "chocolate egg." Yes, this is what I spend my time thinking about.

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Since I eat too much seasonal candy, I've been looking forward to the snow melting so I can get back on the trails and git rid of my pudginess. (Streets don't beckon me the way trails do.) Well, the snow is mostly gone, but then it's been rainy. And I'll be out of town this week. I just hope I don't miss the glacier lilies before I can finally hit the trails again.

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This Is the Place resumes officially on Saturday, but I have been there many days in the last few weeks, helping with field trips, trainings, etc. When people ask me if I like it, I tell them, "It would be a great job if I didn't already have a degree." I'm trying to do a better job about enjoying the moment. I ignore most "inspirational" stuff shared on Facebook, but one of them a few months ago pointed out that we shouldn't spend our time at work wishing we were not at work. The pay isn't good, but it is a fun way to spend my days. You know me, I'm a conceited know-it-all, so I like telling people about what I know.

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It makes me so happy when I wake up in the middle of the night and see my cat sleeping on my bed next to me. When he comes to sit on my lap, I think it's so he can get warm or have physical needs met. But when he sleeps at the head of my bed, he's not getting warm or getting petted. I can only assume it's because he likes to be with me.♥