Noah: What I’m most worried about right now is that he’s not getting enough sleep.

For the last two days, he’s only napped for HALF AN HOUR at day care. And because I’m a little data-obsessed, I know via Trixie Tracker, that he sleeps an average of about an hour per day less than other babies his age.

Why Our Insurance & Flexible Spending Accounts Keep Behaving Badly: I have blogged before on the fact that we pay for cadillac health insurance coverage, and that this has an even worse economic impact on us than just the out of pocket cost, because the company’s contributions towards Jill’s coverage are imputed income to me.

This week, Blue Cross/Blue Shield PPO rejected our claim for Noah’s 6 month well-baby visit and standard 6-month immunizations.

I’ll pause for a moment so you can pick your jaws back up from the floor.

I swear it is true; I could not make that up if I tried.

When I called — and they are available to be called from 9 am pacific time until midnight pacific time — they said that the “routinely reject” charges like this because “they did not know whethe ror not he was covered by other insurance.”

Um. He’s not.

And even if he were, for what I pay to cover him on my insurance, they should cover it.

Anyway, when I said, “Um, he’s not,” to the customer service person, she said, “Fine, then I’ll resubmit that for processing.”

“Could you tell me what that means?”

Slowly, as if I were obviously not very bright, she answered, “It means that I will re-sub-mit that. For process-ing.”

“Um, right. Well, I’m still not clear. Does that mean you’ll be paying the claim?”

“Resubmitting it for processing is not a guarantee of payment.”

*fume*fume*fume*

“Ok, well, can you tell me what I need to do to follow up and make sure that this is being handled properly?”

“When we resubmit something for processing, it can take up to 30 days.”

Blink. Hokay, I gotta go.

Having not gotten any resolution from BCBS, I decided to tackle UniAccount, the company who handles our Flexible Spending Accounts — you know, the pre-tax money you can either use for health care expenses (including, TTC-ers, your frozen swimmers!) or child care expenses.

Since Noah was born, I’ve submitted a hair under $4k in child care expenses, out of a maximum $5k allowed by law. But with the child care savings accounts, you can’t spend it until you’ve actually had it withdrawn from your pre-tax salary. Right now, that amounts to a little less than $300/paycheck for me, and the total that’s passed through the FSA is only about $3k.

So they owe me roughly $900, and they’re supposed to be paying me in not-quite $300 incriments every pay-period.

This week, we got a check for $60.80. In the account summary information attached to the check, it still says that they owe me roughly $900, and that I have $233 available to be reimbursed.

Incidently, this is the second time this has happened.

So I called.

The woman remembered me from last time. She’s very sorry this is happening again, but it appears that my money is stuck.

Stuck?

Yes. Stuck. She can’t figure out how to get it unstuck. She’ll have to call me back when her manager comes into the office at 8 pacific time.

How does money get stuck in a computer?

It’s almost open enrollment season.

Should we keep Jill on this insurance because it’s covers 3 tries of IUI and we think we’ll be trying for her soon? Or is the out of pocket cost of the IUI cheaper than the insurance?

Should we move Noah onto Jill’s insurance because it’s cheaper? Will that just confuse things more?

Should I register the domains bcbssucks.com and uniaccountsucks.com? (I was really surprised they were available.)

What’s going to happen when I go to California for work, week after next?
Is Noah going to decide to self-wean out of being mad?

Are either he or Jill going to be able to sleep?

Will I feel unneeded if everything goes just fine?

Will the TSA be a nightmare?

Will I be able to ship my milk back cold fed-ex from the hotel?

Work: I’m still in the hard part of the learning curve on the various technologies that I need to use. I feel like I should know this stuff already — which is a big thing I use to beat myself up in general in life. I’m worried that I’m going to disappoint people.

And I feel really weird about blogging about it, because I know that some work people read the blog. (But I don’t think my manager does. I think it’s just the one or two people who have myspace pages and are more current about actually using technology.)

Oh, and I dozed off today in a meeting with the entire department, and was busted by the General Counsel. Fortunately, he seemed more amused than annoyed. I blame the 3-3:45 am feeding last night. But it’s still embarassing.

PLLP 9/28: Fruit: none. Veg: ~1/3 cup broccoli. Treats: Cake at the staff meeting.

PLLP 9/27: Fruit: banana. Veg: ~1 cup mixed veg at lunch, 3/4 cup broccoli at dinner. Treats: big ass piece of chocolate cake at lunch.

(Did you know that Ikea has a cafeteria? The food is actually very good, and not that expensive. And the chocolate cake was amazing.)

How exciting to get a special request that I blog about something! Especially since the person who asked, Kate, asked for my opinion. I love giving my opinion.

Here are my thoughts on the question of moving from DC to Atlanta, and more generally, comparing the two metro areas:

COST OF LIVING: Atlanta wins this, hands down. We sold our 4th floor, walk-up, way-out-in-Reston, condo and purchased a nice single family house in the Metro-Atlanta equivalent of Takoma Park, the City of Decatur. If our house were in Takoma Park, it would be roughly twice as expensive.

Update for readers not in metro DC or metro Atlanta: Both municipalities are known for being progressive, diverse, having excellent public schools and very high taxes, and for being the epicenter of lesbian family life in their region. Atlantans joke about the pronouciation of “Decatur” in that regard — I’ll leave it to your imagination. I think most metro areas have somewhere similar — Park Slope, Shorewood, Somerville/Jamaica Plain, Hawthorne….

CAR TRAFFIC & COSTS: This is a draw. My car insurance went up here, which totally surprised me. But the drivers are actually worse. The traffic is a negligible percentage better. Car traffic and long commutes are hideous in both places.

PUBLIC TRANSIT: This one goes to DC, unless you already live outside the Metro or commuter rail range. The MARTA here isn’t very convenient for most people. I’ve ridden it twice, Jill maybe half a dozen times.

CULTURE: Atlanta has a worse reputation than it deserves, and the High Museum is really nice, but DC has such a great theater and artistic community that it wins hands down. Plus you just can’t compete with the monuments and the Smithsonian. I hear that the music scene is better in Atlanta, but I’m unqualified to have an opinion on that.

OVERALL POLITICAL “TONE”: This has to be broken down by community somewhat. In Atlanta, the split is “ITP” vs “OTP,” or “inside the perimeter” vs “outside the perimeter.” Technically that’s like inside vs outside the beltway, but the cultural meaning is more like DC & Maryland vs Virginia. I’d personally rank the general comfort level as follows:

1. Montgomery County
2. The City of Decatur
3. The District
4. Fulton County ITP
5. PG County/Dekalb County ITP
6. Northern Virginia (Note that I am not distinguishing Arlington separately. I never lived there & don’t have an opinion about it separately, although I understand that many people do.)
7. Other Counties in Metro Atlanta

Living in ITP Atlanta doesn’t feel like I imagined living in “the South” would feel like. When we first visited, the two real estate agents we contacted both said they thought we would be fine anywhere ITP, and they recommended half a dozen neighborhoods. Atlanta is urban and cosmopolitan, I’m out everywhere, and it is 98% a non-issue. Maybe more.

I felt more hesitant about coming out to my neighbors when I lived in Shaw, and when I lived in Reston, although not when I lived on the Hill (in spite of the fact that my landlord was Senator Specter’s consipiracy theory staffer) or in Takoma Park. And I’m more comfortable coming out in work contexts here than when I was a lobbyist.

THE REAL LEGAL SITUATION FOR SAME-SEX FAMILIES: This goes to DC and Maryland, hands-down. But Georgia is (surprisingly) MUCH better than Virginia!Geogria law is actually silent on the question of whether or not same sex couples can adopt and both be the legal parents of a child. Some judges, in some counties, will grant the adoptions, others will not. This is being litigated and could possibly get worse. There is also always a worry that the legislature will make it worse, but the good news is that they only meet from January-March, so the paranoia and fear is finite.
Although our efforts to have Jill legally adopt Noah as a second parent were an awful roller-coaster, a gigantic pain in the ass, and much more expensive than we originally anticipated (what with having to MOVE), we were ultimately successful, as were those of all the other couples we’ve met in Atlanta.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s all about? Noah has two legal mommies, and if we’d stayed where we lived in metro DC, we would have had all the awful moving issues there too. (But at least we could have planned for them.)

WORK: It depends on your taste, but I give this one to Atlanta.

In DC, tons of people you meet have really interesting sounding jobs. On the down side of that, tons of people you meet spend the first 10 seconds of the conversation trying to figure out if you are important enough to keep talking with, or should they move on to someone more important?

In Atlanta, I’ve never had a conversation that felt like that. People here seem more interested in talking about something they’re interested in than what their job is.

People have a wider variety of jobs. A lot more people work for big companies. Far fewer people work for the government, although there are enough to notice, especially the CDC and the VA, in our area.

THE NEWS: You really can’t compete with the Washington Post and WAMU. WABE is pretty good, but the AJC? It has THREE sports sections on Saturday. The news part? Not so strong.

GAY BARS: I only went out once while I was here, before Noah was born. But women’s night at Hoedowns drew +150, which beats any crowd I ever saw on a Thursday night at Remingtons. (Even the night KJ became Ms. Rems!) Otherwise, I’m unqualified to opine.

I miss reading Lisa de Morales** with my morning coffee, and don’t even get Jill started on the theater critic at the AJC. Jill just pointed out that you can still read her — and the rest of the Washington Post online, but I like the newspaper. (And so does she.)

RESTAURANTS: DC edges out Atlanta in this category, but not by a whole lot. DC wins on convenience more than anything else. Atlanta is more scattershot. On the plus side, Atlanta is less expensive, or maybe less expensive on the “inexpensive-to-moderate” end of the spectrum.

Commenter Kate, be careful what you wish for! If you still want more on Atlanta vs DC, drop me a note at lesbianfamily (at) gmail dot com with your number.

**When you google Lisa de Morales, you don’t get a link to her column on the first results page. But you do get a link to regular commenter here, Jen (in MD)! I never was able to find a bio to link to….

PLLP 9/25(2): Pizza for dinner. It is really hard when Noah crashes at 6:15 pm.

PLLP 9/26: Fruit - I think I had a banana, but I don’t actually remember. Veg - mix of corn & greens with lunch, and corn with dinner. Treats - snack of last pkg pop-tarts & also some chocolate at work.

The banner is coming back. I broke it, and I’m having trouble fixing it, and I really need to stop trying to fix it and go study for the CIPP exam which I’m taking tomorrow.

PLLP 9/19 (2): I also ate about a dozen baby carrots. And no ice cream.

PLLP 9/20: Fruit - nothing. I’ll have an apple during project runway. Veg - ~half cup sweet corn & btw 1/4 & 1/3 cup turnip greens. Treats - doritos w/lunch, 3 bite-size cookies at unvaluable work lunch & learn, luna bar - chocolate carmel brownie flavor.

Wish me luck with the test. I don’t know diddly about HIPPA or Gramm-Leach-Bliley except that we all have to sign stuff at the doctors and get lots of junk mail from the bank. One of the other book authors wrote those sections. I really don’t know anything about the EU data privacy directive or the special laws that apply if you live in California, which the book doesn’t really cover. And I haven’t taken the pre-test class.

Lately — and by lately, I mean during the last ~7 months, if not longer — I’ve been eating like crap. And when I eat like crap, everyone in the house eats like crap, because I’m in charge of groceries and cooking. And making us fat.

For the first few months after Noah was born, I cut myself a lot of slack. But things have been mostly stable for awhile now. The routine isn’t easy, but it is a routine.

Now I need to work on the routine involving less frozen pizza. (By the way, I can’t say enough delicious things about Freschetta’s thin crust pizzas.)

Step One in Project Live Long & Prosper is me resuming my daily fruit & veg report to you nice people in the blogosphere.

If I am really brave, I will also admit to the awful day last week where — no kidding — I hate half a dozen krispy kreme donuts. (Um, yeah, honey, I didn’t tell you about that…I stopped at the grocery store for apple juice for work and also bought donuts.)

[Ed. Note: did you catch the freudian slip there, where I tried to pretend I hated the donuts? No no, I love the donut. What I did to those 6 donuts, yes 6, over the course of a regular workday, was I ate them. I didn’t hate them. Not for a minute.]

Ok, that’s it. The daily fruit & veg report will also include a section on treats. It won’t include the ~1.5 quarts of apple juice I drink per day, mixed with ~4 quarts water. That’s just a given, although I think I’m going to try again to mix it up with some lower-sugar-therefore-lower-cal options like lemon juice.

PLLP, Sept 18: No fruit. ~2/3 cup mixed veggies + beans & rice for dinner. 2 pkgs chocolate chip pop tarts. (I really shouldn’t go to the grocery store in the morning if I didn’t eat breakfast.)

PLLP, Sept 19: 2 very small organic gala apples. Leftover veggies/beans/rice. 2 donuts at work. Anticipating pizza for dinner, and maybe also ice cream. (It’s goodbye dinner for the Baby Juggler Family, who move to the opposite corner of the country on Thursday. Whaaaaah! MORE comfort food neededwanted!)

Step Two is meal planning. Does anyone have any great resources for shopping & cooking such that dinner on weeknights is fast and easy and healthy and generates leftovers that can be lunch? The One-Armed Cook recipes have been “eh” so far. Oh, and no recipes are allowed to involve fish.