Blue-Footed Musings

This big news this week is that our main healthcare provider is going out of business. The entire practice, which covers 25,000 patients between its adult and pediatric branches, is closing up shop due to a combination of staffing issues (i.e., doctors are retiring in droves) and low insurance payouts.

My husband and I were blissfully ignorant about this at first. We didn’t get the e-mail announcement, and we didn’t catch the story on local news. Thank goodness for my SIL, who was all in a tizzy over it. She passed the news on to us, giving us a chance to compete with the thousands of other parents who were racing to find a new doctor for their kids. Fortunately, we found a practice that had room for them (again, thanks to my SIL).

As for my hubby and me, it may be more difficult. We had already had some trouble finding doctors. For example, I haven’t had a “real doctor” in years. All of my care has been handled by a string of PAs. My current one isn’t my favorite, but she’s competent, and I haven’t had any complaints. However, I had wondered if either the practice was trying to save money by using PAs, who are presumably cheaper, or if they couldn’t find enough doctors. Now it seems that both things may have been true.

The real concern is that this happened at all. We’re talking about a large, successful, well-respected medical practice. If they couldn’t keep going, then other practices may soon meet the same fate. I’d heard warnings of a looming crisis in healthcare, so I was aware that it could happen. I just didn’t expect it to strike so soon and so close to home. But it confirms what I’ve known for a long time: the healthcare system is broken. And given all the upheaval in this country right now, things will almost certainly get worse before they get better.

I spotted the first violet of 2025 a few days ago. It was a white violet, and it was standing several inches tall, which was impressive given that most of the other violet plants are barely out of the ground. I almost missed it though, because it was right up against the foundation wall, and its light color blended in with the light gray concrete.

This is not the first time that I’ve found the first violet of the season growing against one of our foundation walls. My theory is that the sun heats up the concrete, which makes that area warmer for longer. This either convinces the flower that the spring is more advanced or it provides an advantage for growing, or both.

The Boston Globe always posts a recap of the previous night’s Saturday Night Live. I often watch it Sunday morning. In this one, Colin Jost made a joke about DST (“Tomorrow marks the start of Daylight Saving’s Time, when we set our clocks ahead, ideally four years.”). The joke was on me, though, because I hadn’t realized that it was time for the clock change. Darnit. It hurts to lose that hour.

We’ve had a lot of windstorms lately. Yesterday’s was particularly fierce. I was inside and perfectly cozy, so I wasn’t paying it much mind. Suddenly, I heard a terrible racket come from the corner of the house. I went downstairs and looked outside, expecting to find the usual sort of minor mess (garbage bins knocked over, a stray tree branch, etc.).

What I found was shocking. Our entire power cable had been torn from the house, and the lines were down. It took me a while to spot the culprit (a fallen tree), because it was so far from the house. The tree must have made a huge crash when it fell, but I’d had my headphones on, so I’d only heard the closer sound of the power lines being ripped from the house just outside my office.

Fortunately for us, the tree did not break the lines, so we still have power and Internet. Unfortunately, the lines are on the driveway, so we can’t go anywhere. And this happened on our property, so we’re the only ones affected and consequently not a priority to the electric company.

It’s been a whole day, and they still haven’t come to fix the problem. I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for it to be fixed, how long we’ll have to live without power while it’s being fixed, and how much it’s going to cost. But for right now, though the wind continues to roar and though I’m stuck at home, at least I’m still perfectly cozy.

I read an article recently about the drop in fertility rates around the world. The article mentioned that some governments have been trying to incentivize women to have children, but that the policies haven’t been very effective. The article suggested that there might be a monetary value high enough to get women to have children, but that it was likely in the range of $300,000. And I just want to say that, yes, for $300,000 I probably would have had another child, because that would have made it affordable. Of course, let’s be real–there’s no way the U.S. government would ever give such large sums of money to its citizens. Well, unless those citizens were billionaires. 😉 The government has zero qualms about handouts for the wealthy.

Just before Livia’s bus was due to arrive Tuesday morning, she came into my office and asked me for help. She was going to have an algebra test that day, and there was a type of problem that she still didn’t know how to solve. OMG, really? She had several whole days in which to figure this out, but she waited until five minutes before she had to leave? Kids. Anyway, I never learned algebra properly, so I wasn’t the best person to ask, but I came up with an equation that she said later had been helpful. Whew.

Meanwhile, being suddenly on the spot like that brought up bad memories from high school math, and I realized just how mad I still am about why I never learned algebra properly. But, I know math well enough for my everyday life, apparently even well enough for random early-morning algebra emergencies, so what difference does the past make? I think it’s time I finally told my Algebra Demon to fuck all the way off.

The vaccines took their toll on me Saturday. My arms hurt, and I felt tired and flu-ish. By late afternoon, I’d curled up in my daybed. I watched some TV and did some reading, then went to bed early. It was an unproductive day. But, I figure that having one unproductive day is a lot better than a bad case of flu or Covid, and I’m calling it a small price to pay.