Busy Days

I didn't mean to drop off the map right after I decided to rejoin it - just Christmas and all that. You know how it is.

Anyway, we're settling back into the routine of a new year, completely with newly birthday-fied oldest (last week's joy was a houseful of 6-8 year old boys running around for the majority of Saturday. Lordy. It was fun, don't get me wrong. But...wow. Of course, my sister dropped by as it was winding down and left very shortly thereafter because of the noise. I can't say I noticed it was appreciably louder than a typical  with just my two. Heh.)

We've been the doctor (see newly birthday-fied child) and he's healthy and right where he ought to be. So, while I already knew that, it's good to have it verified by a "professional." I'm sure I'll feel less delighted about the professional verification when we get the bill. I miss the days when you paid for your health insurance and then went to the doctor and things were paid for. Or you had a copay and that was the end of it. Now it's all about the deductible. So you go. They say, "Oh, you don't have a copay." SO you don't pay anything. Then you get...THE BILL. Because until you've paid the insane deductible (and ours is insane, though I'm told it's less insane than other peoples) you're actually on the hook for the whole thing. But you can't just pay it when you go in, because it has to run through the "insurance" first, otherwise it wasn't counted against said deductible. And good grief, this has made healthcare easier and more affordable? FOR WHOM? Oh, and we're still paying just as much each paycheck. So it's not like all we're paying is the deductible. And, at the risk of beating a dead horse (why is it dead? Probably because it tried to read the fine print on its insurance coverage.), I liked our plan before all this started, so would've been perfectly content to, you know, keep it. Like we were promised. (And we're not even going to mention speech therapy for the younger child that is, when all is said and done, costing us the equivalent of a car payment a month.)

Of course, that just feeds into the whole, "how do you know Obama's lying? His lips are moving." thing. I'd say joke, but really, no one's laughing. And is anyone worth voting for actually planning to run at this point for '16? So far, I'm not impressed with the hints and speculation running rampant. I begin to understand, at least a teeny tiny bit, the people who've just given up all together. But that doesn't help fix the problems, so really, taking my bat and ball and going home isn't an option.

And, I didn't intend for this to turn into that kind of post. My initial point was that things were great, just busy. Apparently I also need to add: expensive.