Kat, I forgot to say that I hate the all-or-nothingness of the system. It just doesn't make sense.

Lawd, FNL is trying to kill me. Just watched this week's episode. I might have to buy that cover of "Teardrop" that they used at the end. Oh, Matty. Oh, Riggins. Oh, Vince and Tami and Jess and everyone.

Yes, that song was excellent.

I know! It was an excellent episode. Also, I can't believe that the real reason that Matt stayed in Dillon was to be near Julie. Bad, bad decision making.

I'm so sorry, Kat--and, yeah, as support staff in a medical facility, I've seen similar stories over and over and over for years. It would be merely infuriating if it didn't fuck so deeply with people's lives.

Ugh. Long, long day with Matilda already, ending with her in disgrace and on lockdown, with no TV and no princess movies or Harry Potter for the rest of the weekend. I'm now even more in awe of msbelle, and so glad you're about to move someplace where you've got a good built-in support system. Even when it's comparatively minor and you understand absolutely where it's coming from and you don't lose control of the situation, the willfulness and defiance is draining to deal with.

Oh, dear, Matilda. Be nontantrum-y on three day weekends!

OMG, had BBQ. I had the pulled pork sandwich, and Dan had the brisket. Both were sooooo good. KC BBQ = summer.

I am going to have to have a protein nap before any more laundry or grading gets done.

Mmm... brisket. I think we're going to go get tritip from the Handy Market which does barbecue every saturday. We were supposed to have mom and noah yoga time but I hope he naps through it (both kids are out for a nap).

It is all or nothing. So maddening.

Tomorrow we're going to have salad at the place near ita after we pick up my mom. I need to figure out how to get to see Burrell since we missed Isaac's party while waiting for formula. And, did I mention, the tension headache?

I saw that kind of thing often when working for govt housing - getting a job would make them worse off, because of all the government benefits and concessions they'd no longer be eligible for.

I'm also hate the all or nothingness of aid. But don't blame that on liberalism. It is conservatives who use stringent income tests to make aid as stingy as possible and moderate liberals who see them as a way of keeping costs down and programs strong. (Which misunderstands basic politics. If you want a program to be politically well defended include as many people in it as possible. See Social Security and Medicare.)

So this is where that Frank Zappa song title comes from...

Vintage Men's Adventure Mags

Gar, I'm not blaming it on liberalism. I'm not blaming it on anything. I'm essentially saying that as a middle class, middle income human being, I can see how this experience would make a person distrust the government, feel like their tax dollars are not being well spent because the services I am paying for I don't receive and how it would push a person to become more fiscally and perhaps more socially conservative.

In fact, it GALLS me that if my daughter remained institutionalized the government would foot the bill. It pisses me off that if I quit my job, the social safety net would protect Grace. But to do the things that I KNOW are best for my daughter, which is to have her at home and care for her here, means that I have to pay exhorbitant out of pocket costs for things like doctor-prescribed formula (which I don't even want her on!) or meds to make up the difference that the formula can't provide.

That said, my response is that a lot of this experience would be less stressful for me if we had a single payer health insurance system. As it is, with private insurance I am fucked because the system is too busy at war with everyone else. Anthem doesn't want to pay because they want the government to cover what they will to increase their profits. The government doesn't want to pay because Anthem should.

And Grace is caught in the middle of this.

It's a political argument to some but it's not to me. It's a very personal one.

Kat, I'm so sorry bureaucracy is making your life harder than it needs be.

My heart goes out to -t.

And we just finished another storm of tears. Matilda was still hungry, I asked if she'd like an apple, she said with woebegone face, "With no skin?" I affirmed that I could do that if she wanted, she asked if she could help me, we carefully negotiated toddler helping mama with a paring knife in such a way that the toddler both felt helpful and had no actual contact with the knife, she sat down to munch on her apple bits, and three minutes later burst into awful sobs of, "But I didn't WANT the skin cut off! I wanted it WITH THE SKIN! I didn't want no skin!"

What this kid needs, desperately, is a wayback machine. She does this much too often--changes her mind after the fact and weeps to undo the done thing (she'll cry after mac'n'cheese because she realizes now that she wanted spaghetti, she'll cry at the end of the day because she wants to have worn this shirt all day instead of that one, etc.). I love her dearly, but the age of reason cannot come one minute too soon to suit me.