Whale of a Project

   It started with an invitation to a beach birthday party. My daughter was very excited about going, but didn't want to just buy a gift card. She wanted to add something special. Something she made.

    I suggested she do some research on the Internet, find a project and pull out her sewing machine
and get started. It had been awhile since she had sewn anything. She thought this was a great idea. So she started her search, looking for easy projects with downloadable patterns. In her search, she found the stuffed whale project.

   She called me in our study/project room and we reviewed together. The pattern was free and looked to be at her skill level. Which is a good thing, since I have no skill level when it comes to sewing. Heck, I can't even thread the machine.

   Her next step was to print the instructions and the pattern. She reviewed the steps carefully and asked me to look them over. The only issue I could see was the whale was going to be a bit big. Okay, so that is an odd statement, since whales come that way. But as a parent, I know that small stuffed animals can be loved just as much as large ones. She was a bit crestfallen at this news, but I assured her that the pattern was an easy one and that we could modify it with no problem.

    Together we modified the pattern. Then while I paid bills, she ironed material she had picked out for the project. She likes ironing, which is a good thing for her because I would rather eat glass. At the age 12, she can handle the iron. She ironed all her material (please note, all her stock material was washed ahead of time so it is ready to go when the sewing whim overtakes her). Then she ironed some other stuff. Said she found it relaxing.

Sick kid.

   After I reminded her to turn off the iron, she sat down and traced out the pattern on her material then cut it out while I paid bills. I am amazed at her skills and independence. At her age, I still struggled to use scissors, let alone cut out patterns with straight lines and curves.
 
   Next, she asked my help pinning the pieces together for sewing. I was cool with that, I could pin.

Okay, I didn't jab myself too many times.

  She felt then that she was ready to sew so she threaded her machine and set up to work. I suggested she do a few practice pieces first. After getting her tension right on her samples (she told me that prevented the material from bunching), she began to sew the first few steps.

   I took pictures to stay out of her way, then made supper. After supper we had to run out, so the project has to be picked up the next day. She was bummed. But she had gotten quite a bit done.

At some point she even embroidered an eye!

   I was quite flattered that she asked my help embroidering the other eye as she was having difficulty making them match. I had a hard time with it too, which made me appreciate the first eye even more. I asked if maybe it could be a one-eyed whale, but she wouldn't go along with that. 

    The next day it was back to the machine for more sewing. I was worried that sewing the two different types of material together was going to be a bit more tricky, but she did some more practice on scrap and assured me it was not a problem.  Only in two spots did she ask me to help sew with the machine to join tough corners. I managed not to stitch my fingers to the project or each other! Before I knew it, she had the shell of a whale!

   

   Now time for stuffing. 

   She enlisted the help of her grandmother to stuff the whale.

And stuff.

And stuff.

And stuff.

And Stuff.

And STUFF.

AND STUFF!

Always have more stuffing on hand than you think you need.

I was surprised that a whale needed so much stuffing. Okay, maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised, it is a whale after all.

   After all that stuffing, she stitched the whale closed. And with her grandmother, made sure that all was secure. I found the results amazing. She was quite pleased.

    Her friend was apparently pleased with the personal gift as well. It gave my daughter a sense of accomplishment (even if she did have to pick up the sewing supplies strewn about the room, put away the sewing machine and put the iron and ironing board away from where ever they came from).
 
    I was surprised and pleased to hear that another of the friends attending the party had taken the time to create a handmade gift as well. I think it says something important about their friendships. About wanting to share something of themselves with others and their talent and creativity to do so. I also think it reflects the personalities of the kids who take the time and the effort to put together somethings of their own creation.

   Even if they have to pick up afterward.

    These are the same kids who don't like picking up their socks out of the living room.

   If you happen to be looking for a creative sewing project that is not overly time consuming nor overly complicated, the project that my daughter worked on can be found at All Free Sewing Site - Wallace the Whale Tutorial (from Camelot Fabrics).  As I mentioned before, we did modify the project to make the whale smaller as well eliminate the hanging ribbon.

   Thank you All Free Sewing for providing projects like these! My daughter loves them...and me too!

 

Insurance search, a cautionary tale

   Change is inevitable in our world. You either embrace it, or get run over by it. Change means making decisions, ideally informed and educated decisions whenever possible. Which means being pro-active. Getting information ahead of time so that when it is time to make the actual decision, you are reasonably prepared.
 
    But getting that information can be tricky and downright dangerous. Even if you have been successful in the past at hunting and gathering, you might find that it is easy to do something stupid, like petting a bear instead of shooting it.

This week I did something stupid.

No, it wasn't sharing coffee with a frog.

It was worse. It was sharing information. I might as well have pet a bear.

      We are currently faced with a change that will affect our health insurance. The need to make a decision looms in the not too distant future. Being proactive, I decided to do some tentative hunting and gather some information. Our final decision will be made with the assistance of well educated and well informed advisers, but I wanted to have some preliminary data by which I could make some comparisons. Besides, I had a little free time and a computer on my hands.

Turns out, that is a deadly combination.

   Now while I am not an internet expert, I have have had my fair share of successes in the past while looking for information to make important decisions that will impact my family. I have researched and evaluated car insurance packages and pricing. I have compared mortgages for refinancing my home.  I have even researched cars and campers. None of these decisions could be taken lightly. The internet proved invaluable in providing me with the data I needed to help make decisions. Although the internet was not the only tool I used, it was the basis from which I started to make useful comparisons.

So why should it be any different with health insurance?

   When making comparisons for car loans, mortgage refinancing, and even car insurance, I was careful to start my search using sites that were either trusted sites recommended to me or sites that have a .org designation. These latter sites are generally used by non-commercial entities, like universities and non-for profit groups, as well as open source groups. However, beware, there are no restrictions on who may use this designation.

   I had selected one such .org designation that purported to provide the user with comparison policies for review. According to what I understood when reading the information on the site, they would take a look at what kind of policy I was hoping to obtain and send me information on three different insurance carriers that provided such policies and what price ranges they offered. Feeling like this is exactly the kind of preliminary information I wanted to receive, I went ahead and put in my name and email address (I used a non-primary address), as well as a few details on what type of policy I was looking for. The site also insisted that I put in a phone number. I did think this was a bit odd, as the site was just supposed to send me some information, but the wording indicated that they needed this information to complete my request and ensure that I was a legit person. There was even a CAPTCHA to prove that I was not a robot.

   I should know better. Correct that, I do know better! I am reluctant to give out my phone number at the doctor's office. I don't know what made me do it. I blame it on stress. And hormones, yes, I think hormones played a definite role. Thankfully I put in my home number.

   No sooner had I hit the send button, my phone rang. I answered it, without checking the caller ID. Caller ID on our home number is a fairly new novelty, so I almost never look at it. We have a number of projects going on around the house, so the phone rings frequently.

   It was some insurance company wanting to talk to me about my application. As they started their spiel, the hairs on the back of my neck began to prickle. Something in their presentation was not right and I said no thank you and hung up. Then the phone rang again. Same company. I politely asked them to remove my number from their list and hung up. Then the phone rang again, this time different insurance(?) company that was going to help me out, they just needed me to let them know what kind of policy I was looking for, was it for myself or my family. I asked them to remove my number from their list. After all, that information was on the form I had filled out on the web site, if they couldn't bother to read it, I couldn't bother to do business with them.

   Then the phone rang again. Guess who was calling? Yep, another insurance group. After ten minutes and eight phone calls, I stopped answering the phone. In the next thirty or forty minutes the phone rang no less than eighteen times. According to my call logs, several of the companies called repeatedly, spacing the calls no less than one minute apart. Nearly all the calls were anonymous.

   This continued the next morning with bombardment of phone calls until I had basically blocked all the incoming numbers that appeared on my call log and subscribed to Nomorobo (a call blocking service that eliminates robot calls) which works with my phone service (our home number is a VoIP service). If anyone wonders, I use AT&T.

Thankfully these action have ceased the ringing and brought a peace to our home.

   Oddly enough, I only received one email. This from site where I had placed my information, letting me know that they were there to help me and I might receive a few calls. 

YA THINK?

   I really didn't bother to read the rest of the email.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. There are a lot of healthcare scams out there. I found this out in my subsequent research.
2. Don't trust any site that mentions Obamacare, even if it .org. Legit sites will not use this terminology.
3. Hard-core pressure tactics still only make me angry. Not very effective in selling me anything. Just the opposite. If anyone tries to pressure you into a sale, hang up.
4. I like call blocking features. 
5. I think I am going to like Nomorobo service. It is free to consumers (not businesses) and is meant to block automated calls to your home. This includes political calls! But according to the information provided by both my phone service and the Nomorobo company, will not block automated calls from my doctors, schools or pharmacies. There were others types of legitimate calls listed that it will not block, but hey, I found call blocker feature for any of those I don't like!

   Anyone can be fooled. Hopefully in my case, not more than once in the same arena.