Work has established a new ‘Get Fit’ program through our health insurance (http://voices.yahoo.com/working-violation-12318644.html?cat=5) so aside from the required physical, we can also call and establish our own ‘health nurse’ that is supposed to encourage us to eat right and exercise through the insurance company all free of charge.
Julie, my personal nurse, and I are not the best of friends. She lacks patience and I lack time. When I called for the initial enrollment into the program I was at work. Julie knew that my position at the facility where I work calls for me to play receptionist when the regular receptionist it out. I don’t know why it came as a big surprise when I kept having to put her on hold to answer incoming calls. She curtly informed me that the next time she talked to me it would have to be during the times when I am home. Okay… I have a five year old tornado, a needy, almost boyfriend, and a seventeen year old who hibernates in her room with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door…until I get on the phone. Julie doesn’t know it, but she’d have much better luck going up against the switchboard.
Julie called a couple of weeks ago to see how I was doing. Did I receive the materials she mailed? Had I quit smoking? Have I started to incorporate exercise into my day? I wanted to say: Sure Julie, I quit smoking as soon as my break is over and I get plenty of exercise; I walk to the vending machine. I walk outside to the smoking area. And I do this at least twice a day! But I didn’t. Then she reminded me that Halloween is this month and taking my youngest Trick or Treating would be a good chance to get in some exercise. Hello? Is the health insurance company based in Mars, or is it just Julie? You don’t walk around your neighborhood to trick or treat. You drive to a different one to get better candy! I am assuming that Julie doesn’t have kids because every good mom knows this.
A big hurdle that I face, that Julie doesn’t know, I loathe Halloween. I didn’t even like it as a child! Growing up we lived three miles outside of town and there were no other kids in the subdivision so trick or treating was unheard of. I got drug off to my grandmothers and had to endure this horrid tradition while being ‘protected’ by my two male cousins who found humor in running off and leaving me or poking holes in my candy bag. I just never learned to find the fun in Halloween and was glad when I finally got too old to trick or treat.
As a parent I have had to endure this celebration all over again and have learned to dislike it for a whole new set of reasons. First I spend months preparing Carmen to start thinking of the perfect costume only to have her change her mind at least six times after I have bought what she first decided on. Once we get the costume on, Halloween night no less, she informs me that it makes her itch or she really wanted to be something else. Then we must drive through subdivisions fighting other parents and children because eventually trick or treating comes to an end and these days it keeps getting earlier.
This is hard work! I must be aware of what houses we have visited, where we still need to go, map out which street has less traffic, but still the shortest route all while not running over those kids who dart in and out of traffic because their mothers, like Julie, decided to incorporate exercise. With all of this stress does Julie really think I am concerned about adding in a walk? This only further proves that Julie has no children. No mother would discuss trick or treating and exercise in the same sentence!
Bre is too old to trick or treat and Carmen is still young that I could buy her a bag of candy of her own and never leave the house, but my needy, almost boyfriend wants to take her just so she can wear a costume. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out he has never Trick or Treated before or had a much better experience at it than I did. So, it will once again be my job, as the mommy, to be the official candy taster and throw away any suspicious candy (i.e. Kit Kat, Milk Duds, Hershey’s) and I take my job seriously! Carmen won’t have to know that the ‘candy taster’ actually takes the candy to work to gorge on for the next two weeks and more importantly, Julie won’t have to know it either!
So when Julie calls me in November to see how I am doing I will have to be careful not to let her hear me unwrapping all of Carmen’s candy otherwise Julie may turn me in as the renegade employee and cause me to lose my health coverage altogether.
