Excited and Proud

So, not sure if you have been reading my blogs over the past 2 years or not, but I had an incident at school 2 years ago.....

I was going to school full time to become a physician's assistant. The class load was very tough! I had an issue with one of my classes. I tried to study on my own and that didn't work out so well...There was way too much material that had to be covered in a very short amount of time! Anyways, I didn't meet the minimum requirement of 80% on my exams and lo and behold, I was dismissed from the program! I know, I know....It seems harsh. However, I take full responsibility for what happened and I am a firm believer in "everything happens for a reason".

I cried my eyes out and felt like a big loser for a good couple weeks....But I sought out my therapist and talked things over with her and got back on board! I knew that I was going to start re-applying to schools all over the country! I want to be a PA!!

I have taken some classes over to gain better base knowledge, I have attended study skills workshops such as time management, note taking and one on learning styles...I researched a lot of information on learning styles online and discovered that I am more of a visual/kinesthetic learner and that I prefer pictures/graphs/charts to the written or spoken word...I have also discovered that I will no longer take my computer to class and that I will hand write all of my notes (remember like we used to back in the day!!), I will be shadowing a wonderful PA at the Henry Ford Hospital downtown....

I re-applied to 4 programs this past year and received interviews at all 4 schools! I was turned down by 1 program, but was put on the alternate list for the other 3 schools....I finally received a call last week from my 1 choice!!! I am in!!!!!!! I am back in!!!!!!!! And it just so happens to be the school that let me go 2 years ago!!

Micki and I stopped in to share the good news with one of my ex professors and my ex advisor and they remembered me!!! It was so good to visit with them and to have them meet our son! They reassured me that I will do great this time around and are so happy that I am in the part time program!

What a great feeling! Micki and I have been on cloud 9 since we received the call last week! I am so proud of myself for pushing forward and not letting this experience stop me from pursuing my dream of becoming a physician's assistant!!!









Q. What is a Physician Assistant (PA)?

A. Physician assistants are health care professionals licensed, or in the case of those employed by the federal government they are credentialed, to practice medicine with physician supervision. As part of their comprehensive responsibilities, PAs conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, counsel on preventive health care, assist in surgery, and write prescriptions. Within the physician-PA relationship, physician assistants exercise autonomy in medical decision making and provide a broad range of diagnostic and therapeutic services. A PA's practice may also include education, research, and administrative services.

PAs are trained in intensive education programs accredited by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) .

Because of the close working relationship the PAs have with physicians, PAs are educated in the medical model designed to complement physician training. Upon graduation, physician assistants take a national certification examination developed by the National Commission on Certification of PAs in conjunction with the National Board of Medical Examiners. To maintain their national certification, PAs must log 100 hours of continuing medical education every two years and sit for a recertification every six years. Graduation from an accredited physician assistant program and passage of the national certifying exam are required for state licensure.

Babes

the universe on a mission
two souls lost
and found

time stopped

a deep love-
soulmates
created for one another

love and cherish
from the beginning

until we meet again
on the other side

06/16/08

My boy

Yesterday Javi and I went to mail some packages and then we strolled on up to the Ferndale Library to check out some Baby Einstein videos. He was hungry so we sat at one of the tables by the children's section and he gulped his bottle in no time flat! Then we resumed our search for videos...We found one Baby Einstein and one Baby Genius DVD. We left the library and I was hungry and Javier was sleeping so I strolled him over to Java Hut. I planned on eating outside since the weather was fabulous, but there was a man smoking at one table and a dog chained to the other table....So, I ate inside. Javi briefly woke up so I held him and rocked him back to sleep. I read the Between the Lines while I ate my turkey sandwich.

I was thinking how lucky I was to be able to do this with my son everyday. I really do enjoy spending time with him and showing him new things and new places.....I wonder how different our lives would be with a second child. Would I be able to do the things like I did yesterday??? I really don't think I will. Unless Javier is in day care a few times a week in order for me to spend that one on one time with the new baby.

I just wonder what life would be like with two babies...I don't think we can even understand what it would be like until we are there though. I can survey and ask other mothers, but I won't know until I get there I suppose.

We want more than one child. I love Javi so much and it seems difficult to even imagine sharing my love between him and another child. But I know that parents do it all the time. Perhaps I feel this way now because Javi is still so young.

The Marriage Debate

People wonder why we "gays" are fighting so hard for marriage to be legal for us....Here is a few reasons why....Read below...

The myth of the marriage penalty

Despite what you may have heard, when it comes to taxes and benefits, it generally pays to be married. But that's not true for all couples. Is it for you?

By Liz Pulliam Weston

If you believe the myth about the marriage penalty -- the one that says you pay more taxes when you're married than if you'd stayed single -- you might be baffled by the whole gay marriage thing.

Why are gays and lesbians trying so hard to get hitched, you might ask, if marriage is so hard on the wallet?

The reality is that marriage has plenty of legal and financial benefits, including tax benefits. Even before Congress changed tax rules in 2001 to deal with the so-called marriage penalty, more married couples got a tax bonus from being married than paid a tax penalty:

• 51% of married couples paid less tax jointly than if they had not been married, according to a 1996 Congressional Budget Office analysis. The average amount these couples saved: $1,300.

• 42% of married taxpayers paid more by filing jointly than they would have if they'd remained single, the office said. The average penalty: $1,380.

The people who got tax breaks by marrying were those with disparate incomes, where one spouse earned more than the other. The wider the gap between the paychecks of the husband and wife, the bigger the bonus.

The people who tended to face a marriage penalty were those with similar incomes. Typically, the more they made, the bigger the penalty they paid.

Who's really penalized: The poor

The people who faced the most egregious penalties, as a portion of their income, were the working poor, according to tax expert Edward McCaffery, a law professor at the University of Southern California and the author of "Taxing Women." A husband and wife who each earned $10,000 could end up with a marriage penalty of more than $4,000.

Those low-income couples still face the potential for a tax penalty, said Mark Luscombe, a principal analyst for tax research firm CCH. That's because the earned-income credit, a tax break designed to keep the working poor out of poverty, can be less for a two-earner household than for singles.

But Congress effectively eliminated the penalty for the majority of couples with its 2001 legislation, which has since been extended (but not made permanent; more on that in a minute). The standard deduction for married couples is now twice that for singles, and, for 2008, the 15% tax bracket has been widened for marrieds to $65,100, twice the limit for singles.

Dishonesty about finances is one of the biggest causes of divorce. Here's why it's such a marriage breaker.

There's still a potential for an income-tax marriage penalty once joint incomes reach the 25% bracket, but the widening of the 15% tax bracket means that even those who pay a penalty will pay a less significant one than in the past.

The legislation eliminating the penalty for most couples is set to expire in 2010. Congress will be under plenty of pressure to make the change permanent, but that doesn't mean it will happen.

Still, even without income-tax breaks, there are plenty of financial benefits to marriage, regardless of their income-tax situation. Among them:

• Workplace health and pension benefits coverage. Though some companies offer health coverage to domestic partners, this benefit is typically taxable as income. When spouses are covered, the benefit is tax-free.

• Social Security retirement and survivor benefits. A husband or wife is entitled to one-half of the spouse's Social Security benefits and to additional benefits in the event of death.

• Lower insurance rates. Married people usually get a discount on auto insurance and may pay less for other types of insurance.

• Automatic inheritance rights. Die without a will, and your spouse gets your stuff. In many states, the surviving spouse has a legal right to at least one-third to one-half of your estate.

• Preferential estate-tax treatment. The richer you are, the better the deal this is. Essentially, estates worth more than a certain amount -- it's $2 million this year, and that will rise to $3.5 million in 2009 -- are subject to estate taxes. But this exemption amount doesn't apply to married people: You can leave an unlimited amount to a spouse without generating a penny of estate tax. In certain states, this benefit is multiplied by special capital-gains-tax treatment for homes and other assets held by married couples as community property.

A penalty still on the books

One marriage penalty that remains has to do with Social Security taxes and working spouses, particularly women.

The Social Security Administration says 62% of the women over age 62 who receive benefits do so based on their husband's work records, rather than their own. A little more than half of these women didn't earn enough to qualify for payments based on their own work records. The rest opted to take half of their husbands' benefits because they were larger than the checks they could qualify for based on their own earnings.

Now, in one very real sense, these women are better off married because they benefit from their husbands' larger Social Security checks.

In another sense, they're severely penalized because all the Social Security taxes they contributed over the years essentially yield no additional benefit. They'd get the same payments if they'd never worked and paid into Social Security.

This is no small potatoes. Social Security taxes now eat up 6.2% of every worker's paycheck, up to an annual maximum of $6,324 on earnings of $102,000 in 2008, while employers contribute an equal amount.

As more women work and earn better salaries, the proportion claiming benefits based on a spouse's record may decline somewhat. But because men still earn more on average than women, this phenomenon certainly won't disappear. Given the precarious state of Social Security and political realities, this is one marriage penalty that's likely to persist.

Gay Pride 2008

At first, I was a bit disappointed and sad. Although our beloved rock star chosen family member Steph attended Pride with us, we did not see many of our friends compared to last year. There seemed to be however, many more people at this year's pride than in any other year I have attended. It was nice though to take our son to this event. Many of my wife's following had a chance see our son and ogled him for a moment which was nice (and weird too!). I must say the people watching is fabulous! Wow do these events bring out the strange and unusual!

As my wife and I were about to leave her post, a former professor of mine was just walking by. She was one of my professors from PA school. I had a feeling she was a lesbian, but she never came out to me. She was a big supporter of mine during my dismissal. I met with her afterwards to see how I could improve my application for the next round and she explained to me how she told the committee how fantastic I was. That I was "well above where I should have been" and that I knew that material almost word for word (the physical exam) which was incredible. Anyways, this professor of mine had an accident some time last year where she had suffered some trauma to her head, leaving her with short term memory loss. I was afraid to contact her, fearing that she wouldn't remember who I was (given that I attended her class 2 years ago!). Anyways, back to Pride....She walked by and I stopped her and spoke with her. She did remember me!!! She also said that she and my former advisor went to bat for me! She said that they really pushed for me! I was truly honored! I told her that I will keep applying to the university until they are sick of seeing me!!! I also told her that I have applied to a few other schools and I am an alternate with those schools and that I may need to update my recommendations for the next round of applications. She said that she would be more than happy to write a recommendation for me!!! She told me to contact her this week and she'd check up on things...

I was so excited! I was floating all afternoon and the next day too! I emailed her yesterday and plan on calling later this week! I sure hope that I get back into this university and prove that I can do it! :)

Below are some pictures from Pride....