Yay! Nice going, Laura.

Fixer Upper always makes me feel at peace.

Ugh. Tim's now-previous employer is so small that they don't offer COBRA, and his new employer has a 3-month probationary period before benefits kick in, so we have to find insurance coverage through the ACA. While I'm so glad the ACA exists, just the process of enrolling is so exhausting that I can't believe anyone in this fucking hellhole of a country is opposed to universal health care. And that's before I even get to the premiums, which are insane. Holy shit.

I'm just glad we only need ACA coverage for 3 months. My therapist isn't on any of the ACA plans we qualify for, so I'll have to figure that out. Meh.

Argh that sucks Steph. How small does an employer have to be to not offer Cobra? Is it like FMLA?

Though apparently my giant multinational employer has such shitty health insurance that none of the best physical therapists and none of the massage therapists at all take it.

Argh that sucks Steph. How small does an employer have to be to not offer Cobra? Is it like FMLA?

I think companies with fewer than 20 employees don't have to offer COBRA.

Woo, we're also putting 4 new tires on the Corolla and getting the 60,000-mile service done on Wednesday. We definitely budgeted for this (we bought the car in 2015, so we knew we'd be due for tires before this winter really kicks in, and the 60,000-mile service is important), but between this and the ACA premiums, it feels like we are hemorrhaging money.

We're fine; we have the funds for all of this, but it's just daunting for all of it to hit at one time, so it makes me spin my mental wheels a bit. So my coping method is to get takeout pizza for dinner tonight. (The kitty is getting his bi-annual checkup, shots, and a teeth cleaning, so I had to drop him off at 7:30 this morning, and I'll pick him up later in the day. The vet is right by one of my favorite pizza places that does a gluten-free crust. It would be foolish to NOT take advantage of the proximity, so we are by god having LaRosa's for dinner tonight.)

In SUPER happy news, my brother and SiL will be here for the holidays in exactly 3 weeks! And they're staying for 2 weeks. We have shenanigans planned (where "shenanigans" means "see Aquaman on opening night and also Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse because we are giant nerds").

That sounds like all kinds of fun, Tep! Sarcasm with the expenses, not sarcasm with the pizza, friends, and movies.

Kara has been tentatively diagnosed as being gluten intolerant, which is like a step below celiac, I guess. I don't really get it, but we're having to do the same oh-crap-that-has-wheat-in-it dance we were doing with Nick until he moved out. We were solidly gluten free until we moved to Arkansas, and my mom's idea of gluten free was to buy the really good bread with all the seeds in it. We only stayed with them a few weeks while our house went through the title search and such, but it was frustrating, and we gave up because the kids got the taste of "real" pasta in their mouths again.

So, not a big deal since we've done this before, but a little adjustment anyway. It'll be fun, right? And we'll probably all lose some weight, which would be good.

All of the before meant to be an intro to, "I wish we had gluten free pizza!" man, I didn't just bury the lede, I forgot it!

Nice news! And yes it would be so very foolish to not get the pizza when it is right the hell there next to the vet!

I was asked to make a couple lasagnas for Christmas dinner. DIL has to avoid gluten so I am making the veggie one with sliced zucchini instead of noodles.