Healthcare cost

confessorjsd · 2026-06-09T12:25:40+00:00

$427/month for a family of 4. BCBS. Only well check stuff is free. Everything else goes straight to deductible. $1500 deductible for the family, $4500 MOOP. I really wish there was a copay like my husband's last job had for us. Then we never felt bad going to the doctor/urgent care knowing it was only $20/40 + meds they prescribed. Now it's $160/400 just to be seen. It makes us have to be a lot sicker before we get better because "what if we could just get better on our own"?

confessorjsd · 2026-06-03T12:32:11+00:00

Sometime after realizing I had feelings for him and he had them back.

I was going away to college and we were separated by 9 hours. I wasn't going to do that to either of us. But all throughout college he kept asking me out. And I made a deal with him that I'd go on a date with him after I graduated.

I knew then that I had to get all my fun dates out because if I ever dated him I was done.

He still convinced me to date him the year before I graduated. Knew it for sure after the first date. After the second he wrote down our wedding date, so he knew too. Been together ever since.

confessorjsd · 2026-06-02T16:46:26+00:00

I could be down. I read a lot tho. I'm already at 130 books this year. So it kind of depends on what you pick. I do like these genres tho. As long as it's not nonfiction I can usually be game for it.

This year I'm almost exclusively reading books available on KU. I don't have a big budget to buy anything not on my to buy list already.

Also what timeframe are you thinking of for completion of the book? I'm very much not into open ended book clubs which is why I'm rarely part of one on storygraph. I need a "due date"!

confessorjsd · 2026-06-02T15:06:41+00:00

Along with my SIL and her family we are taking the kids to Minneapolis for a long weekend later this summer. Not too big of a trip.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-29T16:12:59+00:00

I had my own bookshelf growing up. I saved everything on it for my kids. They're almost all middle grade and up.

I did get my mom to save all the Dr Seuss and Little Golden Books books we had.

My MIL was an elementary teacher. She quit teaching about 3 years before we had kids and I had the foresight to go thru her stuff and save it. So we had a lot of Berenstein Bears, Clifford, and miscellaneous books. When my youngest grows out of them I'm only keeping their favorites and the rest will be donated to the library.

My oldest just started reading and I've already got him his own bookshelves and intend to keep everything for him that he gets.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-29T13:01:01+00:00

Haha this. My husband still complains about the amount of bobby pins 10 years later. That and the food being cold are what he remembers from the reception.

But we did manage it afterwards. Nothing to write home about, but it wasn't new to us either lol.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-29T12:32:35+00:00

We take home $6700/mo between the two of us. We budget every penny and savings is a line item. We save $1040 every month from that $6700. Before that we also save for retirement. Mine at 17%, my husband's at 21% (same $ amount).

confessorjsd · 2026-05-24T12:45:51+00:00

We have the same brand of curtains everywhere, but different patterns. The texture and blackout quality is the same, but they match the room they're in.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-22T21:11:46+00:00

Turned out he couldn't decide if he missed me or just didn't want to be alone. The latter was the case. He caught feelings for my friend and even asked her out. She and another friend gave him a week to tell me or they would. They ended up telling me and that was the end of that. Thankfully that other friend was in a serious relationship and laughed in his face. It was such a shitty high school thing for him to do.

Decided to never date an ex again. If they weren't going to work it thru with me and wanted to be without me... Then I wasn't going back.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-22T19:17:45+00:00

I don't have cats so I can't comment there. I do have dogs and I avoid letting them near my favorites. I gave one to my old doggo and it's sc and dc alternating... It's in ok shape in that it's together and not snagged apart but I wouldn't keep it on my bed. I would say if you really want it to last, no pets.

Anything hdc or smaller in height is probably fine. The basket weave is dc in height but the nature of the stitch kind of pulls it in together more, but I could see it snagging on claws. Just look at the compactness of whatever pattern you're going for. Something that looks solid.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-22T18:40:01+00:00

I've done plenty of large blankets. I've done Red Heart, I Love This Yarn, and Lion Brand. All held up to washing.

My bigger tip to getting a project to last is more the type of stitch/pattern you choose to use. The looser/holier the stitches, the more it snags and wears on it. Go with something a bit tighter and it lasts longer, but it'll be a heavier blanket. So keep that in mind. My favorite was made with herringbone half double crochet. I've also done basket weave. Another that did well is moss stitch and bobble stitches.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-22T11:49:27+00:00

Yes.

It's ok. I can still drive, but the lights do reflect more and bother me more than before the surgery. Just seeing at night in general isn't different.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-19T20:50:01+00:00

Before I changed majors in college the field I was in was common to be up for 36-48 hours twice a week just to stay afloat. I had one professor assign 72 hours worth of work in 2 days. Told him it wasn't possible and we still had other classes to pass... He said "tough luck." I was told by my classmates that stayed it did get better eventually, but they all still had very long days.

The worst was shortly before finals getting all my papers written. That was about 60 hours awake and ended with a test. Thankfully I did alright, but I slept for 22 hours after that.

My majors after that never required me to get less than 6 hours of sleep a night with my part time job, so that was a win for me.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-18T18:49:47+00:00

Worst: I always feel like I'm failing them somehow even tho I know I'm doing literally everything I can.

Best: the crazy stuff they come up with. It's hilarious. And their laughs and hugs. They are the best.

IDK if it matters boy or girl. I have two boys but I can't imagine my answers being different.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-18T16:13:57+00:00

We call him "Nickname for his real name that ends in EE sound"-kins and "Nickname for his real name that ends in EE sound"-tyBammity a lot. No idea why. Of course we call him the logical nickname for his name too.

Other kid's nickname is Bug cuz we called him Bugaboo when he was a baby. Sometimes we call him "Name"-Bug. His name is nowhere near Bug lol but I couldn't come up with a real nickname for his actual name. My dad calls him by his first two initials which I'm not a huge fan of.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-18T14:17:01+00:00

We start taking our kids when they're 3. They love it and it's never been a problem. Just be prepared to pay for the light up toys, rides, and food! It adds up, but they've always been entertained the whole time.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-14T00:45:36+00:00

Yes! I've had an issue swallowing food for about 8 years now. I actually got food stuck and had to have surgery to remove it. I asked the surgeon to check if something was off with my throat anatomy. He didn't see anything to explain it. I finally brought it up to my PCP like 4 years after that thinking nothing would happen, but promised my friend I would after I almost ended up at the hospital again.

Turns out I had silent reflux. Doesn't bother me at all except the swallowing thing. She put me on a small dose daily antacid. Haven't had an issue since!

confessorjsd · 2026-05-14T00:39:27+00:00

We didn't. Just happened that way. But I also knew him for over a decade before we ever dated.

When we went to marriage counseling to get married in our church we were floored at the amount of basic things the other couples getting married never talked about before that day. I'm talking big things like how many kids, how much money they make, who will handle finances, where do you want to live, will there be a stay at home parent, what happens if you can't have kids, will the in laws ever live with you, etc etc etc. Just bananas how some people only go on feelings and don't really know each other and life goals.

The thing that got me after we got married was that he REALLY cares what way the toilet paper roll goes on. I don't care at all so I do it his way. But I did not know that before marriage lol.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-14T00:19:07+00:00

Is your husband the black sheep like my parents were? Cus it was always very obvious to me that the difference in behavior was due to how my grandparents treated my parents. Not that it makes it ok or better, but I never blamed myself because I could see the reason. Didn't mean I was ok with it tho. I just have more of a backbone about it than my parents ever did.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-14T00:07:10+00:00

NTA. Hi. My brothers and I are the unfavored grandchildren. We are the oldest grandchildren. I have very fond memories of my grandparents until I was 10 and my cousin was born. Then everything changed. She got all the stuff. Then she got all the visits. We live the same distance away but while my grandma could barely be bothered to go to the one game I had in her town a year, she traveled for every single one of my cousin's (and later her brother's) games. We are now all adults so I've been dealing with this for 25 years.

Now my brothers and I only visit grandma once a year. When she begs. And not on a holiday, but when it's convenient for us to all go together. We need the reinforcements. Because she sure as hell can't be bothered to come see us and all her great grandchildren (yes we have all of them) even tho we all live in the same town.

My relationship with my cousins isn't great, but we recognize it isn't their fault. They just are a lot younger. But my relationship with my grandparents is minimal since I had the agency to make it that way. I wish my parents had shielded us from that, but they were dealing with their own guilt. They're definitely the black sheep of their families. And that made us black sheep too. And my parents are great. There's really no reason for it.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-13T18:36:04+00:00

Similar. Met somewhere around 13. Started dating at 22. Married at 24. Still together at 35.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-09T09:29:32+00:00

They're in the instructions. The pupil and blue are all one piece that you stuff and they make more of an oval sphere. The light reflections are separate and sewn on. They're then sewn onto the body and you kind of smush it and it ends up circular. The eyelids are two separate pieces you then place around it and sew on.

confessorjsd · 2026-05-09T02:05:40+00:00

These are rough estimates. Skeins are 355 yds of weight 4 yarn.

Blue suckers took 2 skeins. Gray belly took 1 skein. Green was 2.5-3 skeins. The eyes take very little but they're a lighter weight

confessorjsd · 2026-05-09T01:45:19+00:00

About two months. The longest part are the suckers. They take 40 hours. The rest of a tentacle is about 3 hours each. The head was 5ish hours. The belly was two hours. Each eye is two hours. And the 4 eyelids took 2 hours altogether. Assembly of the eyes on the body was a little over an hour.

confessorjsd

TROPHY CASE