Company, beefing up, working from home, insurance

As I taught my class yesterday, I had the entire Education team at the house with me. It was not too disruptive. They are a quiet bunch for the most part and I was able to shut the door to the room that I teach from so the noise they did occasionally produce was largely muffled by that simple closure. The class itself was a very good one. I had several participants that were more than willing to participate and several asked very good questions which sparked some helpful discussions. As I taught, Anayeli (my compatriot in Instructor Led Training) monitored the class as a backup so those in the house got to sneak peeks at the class through her view. From that little bit of exposure, I got some good feedback. That is always welcome because I cannot see what others see, so hearing those suggestion and solutions helps me improve through every class. By the time I present this class a few hundred more times, I should be pretty good at it.

We will soon be onboarding another instructor for the class I teach most often. When my company did a review of everyone in our system that should have renewed their qualifications within the last year (it is required to be renewed every three years) they discovered over 500 persons in our program that are out of compliance. That means when those clients are contacted, we will need to add to all the classes we have currently scheduled as well as add an additional thirty or so classes through the end of the year. Since it can be assumed that I cannot teach them all, we are arranging to have additional instructors added to the teaching roster. That will help greatly in facilitating all these classes. Plus, it will generate a lot of income for us as a company. The downside is that we will have a few disgruntled clients who feel they are being put upon to renew their qualifications – that always happens – but those will be the exception and not the rule. The additional attendees will add significantly to the administrative work we are required to do in the background, but we are expanding our department for other projects so we will have the resources to pull that work off as well. Job security.

I have to admit that it is good to be working from home today. Not only do I get to sleep about forty minutes longer when I work from home, but I get to enjoy Mama’s interruptions throughout the day; and we get to eat breakfast together. I do not eat breakfast when I am working at the office or teaching a class, so those breakfast times together are a little bit of extra I get to enjoy on this split schedule. I do not want to skip over those small blessings. We are too often on the lookout for big things to happen in our lives and too easily pass over the multitude of little things the Lord continues to do that eventually heap up to equal some very large blessings. Not only do I get to enjoy breakfast with Mama when I work from home, but I get to listen in on her phone conversations – mostly with our children – which helps me keep up with what is going on in their lives. Mama sometimes forgets to pass on to me that information; like Maggie’s struggles with and anecdotes about Walter, Brittany and Andrew’s roller coaster emotional adventure of trying to find a house in New Jersey, or the latest update from Honduras. At least this way I get in on part of the conversation. That helps me to pray more effectively.

This week we were required to sign up for insurance at work. I was initially excited about the new insurance we were offered from a cost and services perspective, but when I went online to get me and Mama signed up, I found that the price advertised, which is somewhat on the high end of premiums, was not a monthly but rather a per payday cost. I was disappointed when I saw the $900 per month price tag. I told Mama I loved her, but we could not afford that on a monthly basis. I opted for the plan that was offered at about half that cost. $6,700 annually versus $12,000 was not a difficult choice but it was a sad one. I do not want that large a chunk of my gross income to go to medical insurance. So, I chose a lesser large chunk of my income to go toward insurance. Not necessarily a winning option, but a doable one.

At least we will have some usable health insurance for Mama.