I must say that I absolutely detest the American medical billing system. You go to a doctor and about a month later when you forgot all about the doctor appointment you start getting mail about the appointment from companies you’ve never heard of.

Yesterday I got a bill from a company that analyzes the tests claiming I owe them over $100 for a bill that was generated nearly a year ago. But my insurance company (thankfully) now has access online. So I was able to see that this particular company was paid for this particular service last November.

I provided the insurance claim number, the check number, the check amount, the discounted amounts. Everything. They promise to investigate. Let’s hope they get it right.

I’m receiving another medical bill in my name that actually belongs to my husband. There is a problem with this bill, but I can’t do anything about it because it is my husband’s medical records, so therefore it is private. It’s very frustrating. It is nearly impossible to solve a problem when you can’t talk to anyone.

The other day hubby got a letter from his credit card company saying they needed to have a street address on his account because of new laws put forth after 9-11. We changed our mailing address to a PO box just over a year ago, but our street address hasn’t changed since the early 90s. So getting the letter in the mail, I called his credit card company to let them know.

They wouldn’t talk to me. I’m not on the account. DH doesn’t have the type of job that allows him to make phone calls during business hours. So I do this stuff. Or try to. Finally I told the woman that I didn’t have to give her any information at all. That she already had it all right there, if she could just note that the street address is the same as it was. I think she did it. But who knows?

Speaking of changing our address to a PO box…

One of our major reasons for making this change was because every winter for the last several years our mailbox has been destroyed by a county plow truck. Mail has been thrown into deep snowbanks, some of which wasn’t discovered until the spring thaw. I’ve ranted about it here before.

So when we switched to the PO box, we decided to leave the mailbox up to see how long before the county plow truck took it down for us.

Last year, there was a month in which I went through two replacement mailboxes, and both of those mailboxes were damaged in between. Repeatedly. Like day after day.

This year? Our mailbox hasn’t been touched. No door ripped off. No dents. No tilted box. No box ripped off the post and thrown four feet into the snow bank. Nothing. Nada. Damage-free it remains.

Steve says it’s because we haven’t had a lot of snow this season. Probably. But it looks like I might have to take the mailbox down after all. But not until it warms up quite a bit.

For the past few weeks I would arrive home to be followed shortly by my children minus 1. One after another it seems they all went home from school early because they were sick. So instead of having all four children greet me as they got off the bus, I’d have three children saying "so and so is at Grandma’s."  Hubby even got sick briefly. But I remained fine.

Notice the past tense.

I’m sick. How can your nose be congested and runny at the same time? My throat hurts. My body aches. I’m coughing so much my ribs are now aching.

And then we got lots and lots of snow yesterday. Today is "in service" day at school. And I have to get to work regardless of how ill I am.

In the good news department, going out into the cold world will give me an opportunity to buy some powerful over-the-counter drugs. Yesterday I had to resort to taking children’s something or other. Why am I the only person with 6 bottles of various OTD in my medicine arsenol, but none of them match MY symptoms unless I want to sleep. Which I don’t.

So the children are going to Grandma’s. I’m going to work. (I have to go or else I’d just stay miserable without drugs until hubby came home tonight.)

Speaking of work, I have a new computer. An eMac with OS10.

This means (drumroll) I can do TWO! TWO! things at once. Or even more than TWO!

On my old computer (which was an iMac) if I was working on aQuark document and went to save it to the server, I could be waiting for minutes (sometimes as many as 20) for the document to save. And while it saved, my computer was frozen. Frozen solid. I couldn’t even write.

Which made everything take sooooo long to do.

I’m a multi-task type of person and I so hated not being able to do anything while my computer was saving. And you know the old saw about computers. Save often, right? Yeah.

So now I have a purty computer that will let me do (my editor assures me) up to 10 things at once (within reason). Yippee.