The first day of Spring

Ah spring! And it is very spring-like here. I had a lovely walk
this morning. It is sunny and in the 70s.

Our plumbing problems persist. The basic problem is a cracked
sewer pipe underneath the kitchen floor. Robert has removed
buckets and buckets of yukky, very yukky stuff and more
buckets of dirt. The latter to try and make the area such that
he or hopefully, soon, a plumber can stand down there and fix
the cracked pipe. It is still not clear whether or not the kitchen
floor will have to come up. He has determined that the pipe
that goes to the septic, outside the house, is also plugged up.
He plans to call the plumber soon and make a date for next
week. The plumber is currently working on a large house in
Boulder, but his truck needs work so he is hoping to work on
our project while Vernon works on his truck. In the meantime,
on my walk this morning I stopped to talk with a neighbor and
she said that she had a guy staying with her for a while (I gather
he is out of work and is currently homeless except for her taking
him in). He does plumbing and carpentry, a general handy man.
He may be of help if we have to dig up the line from the house
to the septic and/or have to cut into the kitchen floor.

Robert and I have been sleeping and taking many of our meals in
the motor home. It is very pleasant out there and it has the
only working plumbing at this time.

Stuart, my supervisor at Jared's office, and I went for a meeting
with the staff at Craig Hospital. Members of other legislative
districts were also in attendance. The purpose of the meeting
was to ask the congresspeople to remember to think about
rehabilitation when working on health care reform. Almost no
current health insurance covers rehabilitation and with proper
rehab many people who would otherwise be dependent on the State
may become viable, productive citizens if given the proper
physical and mental rehabilitation. With the coming onslaught of
Vets this problem is going to be exacerbated. They were very
convincing.

When I got home I checked our insurance and they are correct no
rehab is mentioned. Likewise true with our long term health
care. There is "care" with skilled nurses, but rehab as such is
not mentioned. I expect they would provide a certain amount of
physically therapy after a stroke, but the whole body care that
the Craig folks were talking about isn't covered anywhere except
by private philanthropic agencies.

It was a very interesting day.