This week’s interruption was brought to me by youth sports and the insurance company. Not together, thank God. I'll leave those phone calls to my sisters and their boys.
Youth Sports: I love them. Let me say that now. I adore that they teach teamwork and perseverance, they humble kids while also having the ability to motivate them and raise their spirits. I, myself, was a player of sports back in the day (way back. Like, so far back certain rules have changed and I find myself stumped by them). However, being a kid, I don’t think I realized how much fucking time youth sports take. Like, do we need three basketball games in a week? Do we?
My parents, who are great enough to come to some of those weekly games (nailed that photo opp, Jude), are reading this and laughing hysterically because, three? Remember, Kristen Anne, that’s only for one child. If you have three, as they did, it’s closer to nine, maybe a dozen if it’s a tournament weekend.
And now that I'm reflecting on it, we were always in a tournament weekend.
Needless to say, my early-to-bed, talk to no one after 5 p.m. routine was interrupted this week when I was taken out of my house three times after 7pm to watch Livvy-Love play basketball. And it was fun. I had a great time, despite the late hour and the massive losses our girls endured because whichever genius thought 5th grade and 6th grade should be blended in a league obviously forgot what puberty does for a body. (Grows it. I’m not a biologist, but I can tell you after five hours of basketball in which some of the girls make up three of my daughter, puberty effing grows the body.)
I also realized that part of what youth sports teaches parents is patience and communication. On Wednesday, after a major loss on Monday and again on Tuesday, Liv and I were headed to our weekly library date after school, and we discussed the importance of staying positive and looking forward. I was worried she wouldn't hear other girls being sad and envelop those feelings, to which she responded, "it's not the NBA finals, mom, I'll be fine. And can we get coffee before the library?"
Okey-doke, great perspective, Kiddo. And of course we can get coffee. Duh.
Which brings our story around to insurance, and how it complicated my life when I had to call my provider this week. This has to count as interrupting myself because the easy thing would have been to just pay the damn $540 bill that was “rejected due to lack of PCP.” I had to look up what that meant. It means, my primary doctor left--2nd in 5 years--and before I got a new one, I deigned to make an appointment with my OBGYN, you know, the most necessary doctor in a female’s life from age 14 to FOREVER.
The doctor I’ve been with and seen for over 8 years, once a year.
And yet, despite the many years I’ve been using this doctor, and the labwork I’m sure has appeared to my insurance company once a year for those eight years, like clockwork, apparently, without a PCP logged on my profile, my insurance assumes I am “sending in samples for lab work” myself.
What?
No, seriously, what??
More curious, why?
I’m an English teacher and a writer. What I know about the human body comes from romance novels and rom-coms. My knowledge is all very civilized and…thematically based, ahem. I don’t dig for information or names to parts because… gross. And terrifying. And irrelevant when all you're saying to your reader is, "she orgasmed. Well done, hero."
It's even well known by students that I won’t answer any of the “trusted adult” questionnaires that the Health teachers give. Boundaries, my friends. I like lots of them, which means I am most definitely not sitting down during Study Skills and describing my experiences with conversations about STDs, birth control, and relationships when I was younger.
I’m getting hives just thinking about it.
Anywho, the take away from this was that I interrupted my bad habit of accepting something because it's easier. Different than normal, my third week of this new year, I persevered and asked for a reprocessing of my claim that was most definitely not submitted because I did “vaginal work and testing” on my own.
Gag. I can’t.
After this trauma, my girls, Old Man River, and I still managed to take a walk in the rain on Saturday, balancing the scheduled with the unscheduled, and enjoying the outside even with the dropping temps and fog rolling in. Luna was ecstatic; Liv is ten, so her enthusiasm for mud, and rain, and "walking uphill so fast" was less:) What does attitude bring, if not a little chaos?
I’m not sure there’s much else to say.
Oh, I cooked dinner--and it wasn’t potatoes and eggs. I used an instapot on pressure-cook, only asked a million questions, googled three or four things, and reread the instructions seventeen times. And yes, Maddy and I both jumped when we realized just how much steam was released if you didn’t wait the entire 40 minutes for it to release on its own.
But that damn black bean soup was on point. Even Livvy said, “this should be your celebration post for the week, Mama. Good job.”
Hell yeah, Liv. Hell yeah.
xoxo
Addendum: after I wrote this post, Liv asked me to sit with her while she put away her laundry. I almost said no because I was prepping dinner for tonight and tomorrow, but then she said: "we haven't really seen each other today." And she was right.
Reality: sitting on Livvy's bed, drinking a glass of Malbec, listening to her talk about her crush (circled in the class pic in pink highlighter, obvi), her latest OBOB book that she finished, and discussing the line, "hope is like a dull knife," From Measuring Up, I had the revelation that 20 minutes talking to my kid about books and crushes made any chaos, schedules or not, insignificant. Cheers, loves. ❤️
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