danceboy

I miss you mom

Yesterday, on the way in to pick up mzhotspur, I asked schr0dinger if he knew that I loved him.

"Daddy," he said with an air of patient resignation to my slowness of wit "I _always_ knew that."

The only down side is that he didn't let me snuggle him.

"Can you show me a picture of the moon?"

He was not at all sleepy.

Yesterday, mzhotspur was singing softly to herself:
"Spiderman, Spiderman
You make me happy,
when skies are grey"

So ricevermicelli has breast cancer, and at her last appointment they helpfully suggested that she call her insurance company to ask if they cover the treatment center. I was a little surprised to hear this, I figured that they would know whether they took Cigna or not, but no, there's variation from plan to plan. So we call. And get hung up on by the automatic system. Repeatedly.

After 5 PM Monday I thought to just say "Operator" until they put me in a queue for a human. It took over 20 minutes (to be fair, the system did tell me it would be over 20 minutes). Anyway, I talked to a human who was as helpful as her system would let her be. She couldn't tell for sure. She'd like us to ask the treatment center. The official Cigna line is that you have to be an advocate for yourself. I think that their business model is based on hoping we don't get the treatment, or don't discover until too late that we're somewhere that hasn't contracted with Cigna.

So yesterday, while we were actually at MGH, with the help of a friendly Dr (RV's mom (very helpful that)), an MGH billing specialist, and a conference call with the Cigna people that took over half an hour, we now know that MOST of the things that HAVE to happen are definitely covered. There are some things that HAVE to happen that we're still unsure about, but very good odds. Among other things the surgery might change billing codes during the surgery, and Cigna can't just tell us "All of the possible billing codes are covered.". They have to go in and check one by one, and there are evidently hundreds of possibilities.

If the insurance companies did their jobs adequately, I wouldn't be quite so gung-ho for a government takeover of the system. But they seem to consider customer service to mean buttering up the HR rep who decides which insurance company they're going to provide to employees. Consideration as to people who then have to use their system does not seem to be their primary focus.

I'm not really a good enough jew to be sitting shiva per se, but we'll be at home weeknights this week from around 5:30 to around 9. People are welcome to come over.

At Arisia I bought the kids a "Giant Cthulhu Dice". Yes, I know "dice" is plural. I assume that Steve Jackson knows it too, but didn't want to hear all the bad puns that selling a "Giant Cthulhu Die" would entail.

Anyway. The kids were playing with it, and I asked mzhotspur if she could say "Tekeli li". She said "No!". Then, from a space behind her mother's legs, I heard a very soft, sweet voice piping up with "Tekeli li li li".

The other day schr0dinger wanted to grab my hands and walk himself up my body to do a flip. I asked him if he could do it without putting his feet on me. Turns out he could. Then I asked if he could flip back. Turns out he could. He had a pretty good pike position once I explained what that was.

I checked, and it turns out that it's the third most giggly skin the cat of all time.

So, we're all hopefully familiar with red, yellow, and green. Even blinking red and blinking yellow should be more or less comprehensible. But this is Boston. I've seen others. I've seen blinking green, and I think it's useless the way we use it. I've seen (red & yellow). I've seen blinking (red & yellow). They also seem to be slightly less useful than nothing.

Today I saw (solid red & blinking yellow). I'm pretty sure that this means "Here in Boston, we don't want just anybody surviving."

"A 'pamp' is a lunchbag that you bring to the trapeze store."

--schr0dinger