@raclut Oh, soooooo unhappy with our health insurance options. H & I do not get our health insurance through our employers. It is so expensive, but worse, the network is exceedingly narrow.
When one of our kids had a health crisis last year we were immediately on the hunt for someone competent to help us. The referrals we were getting from our PCP for providers in-network for our HMO were extremely disppointing.
We ended up finding excellent help, thank God, but we are out of network with skilled professionals who have stopped taking insurance. We have to pay 100% of the bills, out of pocket.
Out of pocket medical expenses with no end in sight was a major factor in our college tuition budget! I wish it didn’t have to be this way! I’d grind my teeth less, probably.
@Midwest67 " I’d grind my teeth less, probably "
I had to have a mouth guard made a few months back because of teeth grinding/ jaw clenching when I sleep…and not covered by insurance
Just saying, my dentist recommended we start with the less expensive sort some hs sports kids use- warm it, bite in to set it to your teeth pattern. Basically, he said if it’s just simple grinding, whatever works.
OP needs to try to anticipate what her kids would most likely need. She’d need to have out of network bills of about 2200 for any one kid to make the separate college insurance start to be cost effective for that one (then the math for whatever deductibles the college plan may have.) She has some college town doc choices who are in network, she said.
Most insurance today conforms to ACA. OP hasn’t said if she has an older grandfathered plan that may have some odd features.
When you are at a gas station and a car enters and stops in front of the first pump in a bay instead of pulling up to the second or third. Then when you you come in behind them you have to go around them and in some instances depending on space reverse into the pump in front of them.
Isn’t it just common sense to pull all the way up to the farthest pump so someone can pull in behind you and use the first one?
^Do you remember the PSA commercials about litterbugs when we were young kids? Might be time to run a few of those again, but I guess trying to get people to stop smoking, etc. probably does rank higher in the PSA hierarchy.
^^Same. I had to buy a carpet steamer last week. Damn cat. No more cats ever. When this one kicks the bucket I’m FREE!!! (she’s 13, can’t happen soon enough).
And no, there’s nothing wrong with her, I brought her to the vet and spend $300 for him to say she’s a little senile and may be forgetting where the box is. Oh GREAT.
I should amend that she’s a delightful cat-sweet and kind and very adoring. But the peeing not in the box is awful to clean up. And I’m a neatfreak germaphobe. We’ve had to confine her to one room so she has a shot of making the box.
And by “wrong” I should say “fixable”. There’s nothing wrong with her that’s fixable.
@MotherOfDragons
I am going through the same thing with my 14 year old cat ! He has taken a liking to peeing on my bathroom floor…GRRRRR I am so tired of it.
I know that if i took him to the vet , I too would walk out $ poorer and no medical reason beyond senility
That coupled with him interfering with our sleep nightly is solidifying my stance on no more cats. EVER
You haven’t learned to really hate cats until you’ve ripped up an entire downstairs of wall-to-wall carpeting due to their peeing wherever they choose.
And then there’s the furballs and the vomiting . . . .
We have a one year old Maine Coon kitten. It’s the size of a small dog and apparently will keep growing for two more years. It loves to throw the sand out of its sandbox. I mean everywhere (it can really throw). I’d get a covered box but would need one the size of a barn.
^^^I would get something specially built for him that’s like three feet extra on all sides of the box, and then put walls up that are around three feet high so he can’t push the sand any old place. That’s likely to be ginormous, however, and chances are you don’t have space for that.
@exlibris97 , my old man is also a Maine Coon. We thought he was the last one of our brood until I got a call about an abandoned MC after our area got hit by Hurricane Sandy a few years ago. She is enormous ! More the size of a show male than any female I have ever seen, and at least as big as two of my former MC males
I used to use big rubber maid storage storage bins to cut back on the flying litter
I’m a dog and cat person. Our beloved yellow lab was such a great dog. Would hold it even at peril of bursting. At the end, though, she began losing control of…everything. It was heartbreaking, and a sign that things were coming to a close.
Our current dog will be our last. Love them, but they require so much more than I’m really willing to give after we go through another inevitable crushing blow.
Though I would argue about his stance that “there’s nothing wrong with her.” My cat is 13 and shows no signs of senility!