Holiday Recovery

My parents headed back home this morning. It was great to see them and my mother cooked her standard fare for Thanksgiving (with some help from Rachel and I) We spent Saturday at the Treehouse Museum and Sunday at the Clark Planetarium. Both were fantastic. The Planetarium’s actual exhibits aren’t extensive (although what they do have is pretty cool), but their coolest feature is the dome and IMAX theatre. Free admission to shows in either theater for a year convinced us to buy a membership.

While they were here, my mom and I had a discussion about artwork. She’s been spending a lot of time creating water color paintings and was trying to encourage me to pick painting or drawing back up. I was saying how I think I hit my artistic peak just after college and really kind of dropped it after that. So she and I went out for art supplies. I didn’t want to get into the full expense of painting – I don’t have any of my old art supplies – so as a second choice, we picked up some water color pencils. I made two little “paintings” this weekend, and I really like the medium. It’s perfect for what my life is right now. It’s easy to clean up, it can be a fairly quick project. It’s flexible… I’ll have to update abovethefold.org with my paintings now.

Thanksgiving Shopping Insanity Test

Holidays are especially rough when you don’t live near family. You look out the window and see that everyone’s driveway in the neighborhood is full with visitors. Meanwhile, your house is nearly empty. Just a tad bit depressing. My parents know this, so whenever they can, they try to spend some of the holidays with us. So I’m really glad they’ll be coming for Thanksgiving this year. They won’t be able to stay too long, just the long weekend – but I’ll take what I can get!

My mom usually cooks dinner – even if it’s at my house. I don’t mind. I’m not the greatest cook, so my daughter and I act as her “sous chefs” 😉 But because they won’t be here until the night before Thanksgiving, I’ve been tasked with going out and getting all the ingredients. As fate would have it – I just haven’t had a ton of time to get out and do this task and have scheduled to do it tomorrow morning. Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving.

I know, I know… it’s going to be insanity at the grocery store. I’m just hoping that everyone else in this town is more organized than me (which is probably not too far from the truth). I DO at least already have the turkey! It’s been sitting thawing in the Fridge – so I’m not completely out of my mind. (I already made that mistake one year. If I recall correctly – we had to try to “quick” thaw the turkey with hot water. NOT an easy task with a huge turkey!!) But the rest of the ingredients are staples that I just can’t expect to suddenly disappear from the shelves. Green beans? Sweet Potatoes? I don’t really want all this food sitting around my house until we need it. We don’t have room!

Maybe this will be another year a “lesson” is learned. I’m hoping not. Either way, the available time just isn’t there.

In any case, I’ll be enjoying company the next few days. (Hopefully with all the food we have planned! LOL!) Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Healthcare Confusion

Sam’s company recently switched up their health insurance offerings. Previously, we’ve stuck with the same plan or something similar for the last 5+ years. It was pretty straightforward, easy to understand. I was never happy with the insurance company itself, though. They seemed to reject claims on a regular basis without cause, you’d call them up and then they’d “realize their mistake” and pay for the claim. For the number of times this happened, I really became suspicious that they were just hoping you’d give up and pay the claim yourself rather than following up with them every single time. Sometimes it became tempting to do so, but I just couldn’t on principle – figuring that’s probably exactly what they wanted.

In any case, that plan is not even being offered anymore. The two choices we were given were another plan similar to what we had – but with a higher premium (and a smaller selection of doctors to chose from!) or one of these “Health Savings Account” (HSA). My first instinct was to turn down the HSA. I just couldn’t imagine how that could ever be better than the standard plan we were used to going with. But his company gave two key incentives: they gave you a credit in the HSA and the premium was quite a bit cheaper than the other plan. As well, the selection of doctors from the HSA was much wider.

So I figured, the best thing to do would be to run the numbers. First we calculated out how much it would cost if we went to the doctor’s 10x a year and then 20x a year. And in both cases the HSA was less expensive. So then I downloaded our actual claims for the past year. Figuring that we would probably be about the same. Meticulously combed through each claim and sorted them for how we would have been charged if we had been under each of the new plans. Again, the HSA ended up being cheaper. In truth – the difference between the two almost always equaled the delta of lower premium and that HSA credit the company gives. If it wasn’t for that – the two plans would have been almost neck in neck.

But it’s crazy how confusing this all is. I wonder how many people spend that many days agonizing over the decision, and then actually creating a spreadsheet of claims from the previous year – recalculating the charge on each one based on what would be charged under the new plans just to see what the difference would have been.

I really hate how difficult that needs to be, and even more than that, I hate that in this country employers are the ones that decide on the fate of your health care. I doubt his company has our family’s health interest in mind when they make these decisions. They’re going to do what makes the most business sense. It doesn’t belong in their hands.

Rennaisance Recap and Public Speaking

So, as I had said before, I was doing this thing in my daughter’s class…

I was dreading it and predicting that it was going to be bad, and my expectations were pretty much on the money. LOL! I had really freaked out a few days before doing the presentation about how awful I knew it was going to go, and was even offered a way out. They offered to have someone else do it for me – but I couldn’t take it. I don’t know, maybe I should have. But I felt that backing out, especially so late in the game wasn’t fair to anyone and set a bad example for my daughter. But at the same time, what did I teach her by getting up there and doing such a poor job. Even if it wasn’t my own fault. I did do my best, but in this regard, my best is probably the average person’s worst job. I’m not saying that to be hard on myself – it really has more to do with my issues on public speaking.

Before I went in there, a friend of mine asked me why I was so afraid – I mean, after all, they’re just kids. But it’s not fear that’s the real problem. I’m not afraid of the kids. I’m afraid of myself. I’m afraid of the fact that when I get up in front of people to speak, I simply lose the ability to put words together and make a coherent sentence. I’m not kidding. I’m not good at thinking “off the cuff” anyway – but it’s even worse when there’s a crowd. The more eyes on me, the less I can function. It’s really pretty annoying. But I think it’s something I’m going to have to come to terms with and accept and ultimately turn down anything that involves my getting up to speak in front of a group of people. I wish I could, I love the idea, but the reality is it’s just not something I can do. Under any circumstance.

A few years ago I was asked to be on a panel at SXSW. I turned it down. I sort of regretted that decision, but I’m thinking now maybe that I was right. Again, I love the idea of being able to get up and speak. And certainly there are some benefits tied along with it – becoming more well-known, being able to share some of my thoughts and knowledge with others. But in the end, I don’t think the good things I want will come from it. I forget where I read it, but someone was saying how they never wanted their “15 minutes of fame” – they never wanted to be on a reality TV show – because the fact of the matter is when it comes right down to it – you have way more to lose than to gain.

So while the kids didn’t pay attention, I had trouble making sense of what I wanted to say, and they probably absorbed not even the tiniest bit of what I had hoped to pass on to them – I at least learned something about myself. If I don’t have a memorized script – if every step isn’t planned out precisely – I do not belong up in front. End of story.

Of course, after recovering from this whole mess I was saying over and over “never again!! never again!!!” – I quickly realized I will have to get up in front again. Right at the beginning of the school year, the teacher had asked me to come in and talk about Hanukkah. This has become a near yearly ritual that I have come to dread and when possible avoid. Of course, since Rachel is probably the only Jew in her school, there may not be many opportunities to expose these kids to cultural differences so I feel obligated to do it. But I’m thinking I will need to either heavily involve the kids in the presentation and/or have them read things to the class and/or I will have a word-for-word script memorized beforehand. I guess knowing the real problem is half the battle.

Protecting your privacy at all costs

Speaking of healthcare issues, I thought this was pretty ironic…

The other night, I got a phone call. Now granted, on the caller ID, it did list the name of the insurance company that handles our prescriptions. But I know it is possible to fake this with the right equipment. So they called and asked to speak to me, and then said they needed me to tell them what my birthdate was. I asked why – they said it was to protect my privacy – because of HIPAA rules or something, they had to confirm it was me. So, I told them, “let me get this straight, you call ME in the middle of the night and then want me to fork over my personal information and this is to protect my privacy?? Sorry, I don’t think so.”

I told them anything they needed to tell me, they can put in the mail but I’m not going to freely give personal information to someone who randomly calls me in the middle of the night. Somehow I don’t think that’s what they had in mind when they wrote up the HIPAA Law.