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Tomatoes and health care
Sep. 29th, 2010 11:00 amIt is a sad, sad week at our house. It is the week of the first grocery store tomatoes.
It's not that our tomato plants have stopped producing, and it looks like we'll have enough sun this week that some of the tomatoes may even ripen outdoors on the vine and actually taste better than the grocery tomatoes. They are not like the green beans and cucumbers, which are as dead as Marley. They're just not producing tomatoes reliably. And so the grocery tomatoes had to happen as a fallback. Because lack of tomatoes was not an option.
(Really not. Earlier this year, sources close to the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrissa had a shorthand for talking to me about my daily life that was "what you're reading and what was in your salad." And I had to laugh, because it was all too accurate. There are days when I don't have a salad. I mean, I think there are. I just can't think of one. But we're out of the part of the year when the basis of the salad is "what's ripe and needs using up from the garden" and into the part of the year when the basis of the salad is brassicas from the grocery.)
But! The tomatillos are in fall craziness mode, to the point where I am willing to spare some of them for experiments and not save all of them in frozen goop form for chili verde base all winter. So there will be some cedar-planked fish with roasted garlic tomatillo sauce. I think it sounds wondrous. I think it sounds amazing. I think it sounds like something I will totally make someone else work the grill for.
In other news, I have been working on paperwork for our health care savings account. There are people who are touting these things as though they will cure cancer and halitosis, and now that I have folders and spreadsheets set up, they'll be a lot easier. But truthfully it seems to me that this thing is a lot of work for people who are seriously ill or disabled, and they're really best suited for people who are healthy and already have plenty of money. See if you can spot the flaw in this system! Seriously, there are a lot of things that work that way: they're set up supposedly to help people who are ill or disabled, but they are really only helpful if you have the time and energy of an able-bodied person. This summer and early fall has been particularly frustrating, since we have a household with three adults in it, and the able-bodied one has only been at home half-time. And then this month he's been sick the whole month. A lot of stuff kind of goes kaput when that happens. In our circumstance, we have resources to throw at the situation. We can throw money at it, and we can throw family and friends at it, and we have been, sometimes. But things will fall through the cracks, which is why I have lost a big chunk of my very limited work time to sorting out this stuff and setting up the system for it to work longer-term.
And my work is flexible, and we have these resources. I can do that. A lot of people would just be lost and permanently behind and would just have to drop that particular ball. Would just have to drop a lot of balls. And it frustrates me to know that something is being proposed as a solution by people who don't have any concept of what the problem is even like. Over and over again I run into people who seem to be saying that something works as long as nothing goes wrong. And I know that that's exactly the same as saying that it doesn't work.
It's not that our tomato plants have stopped producing, and it looks like we'll have enough sun this week that some of the tomatoes may even ripen outdoors on the vine and actually taste better than the grocery tomatoes. They are not like the green beans and cucumbers, which are as dead as Marley. They're just not producing tomatoes reliably. And so the grocery tomatoes had to happen as a fallback. Because lack of tomatoes was not an option.
(Really not. Earlier this year, sources close to the
mrissa had a shorthand for talking to me about my daily life that was "what you're reading and what was in your salad." And I had to laugh, because it was all too accurate. There are days when I don't have a salad. I mean, I think there are. I just can't think of one. But we're out of the part of the year when the basis of the salad is "what's ripe and needs using up from the garden" and into the part of the year when the basis of the salad is brassicas from the grocery.)But! The tomatillos are in fall craziness mode, to the point where I am willing to spare some of them for experiments and not save all of them in frozen goop form for chili verde base all winter. So there will be some cedar-planked fish with roasted garlic tomatillo sauce. I think it sounds wondrous. I think it sounds amazing. I think it sounds like something I will totally make someone else work the grill for.
In other news, I have been working on paperwork for our health care savings account. There are people who are touting these things as though they will cure cancer and halitosis, and now that I have folders and spreadsheets set up, they'll be a lot easier. But truthfully it seems to me that this thing is a lot of work for people who are seriously ill or disabled, and they're really best suited for people who are healthy and already have plenty of money. See if you can spot the flaw in this system! Seriously, there are a lot of things that work that way: they're set up supposedly to help people who are ill or disabled, but they are really only helpful if you have the time and energy of an able-bodied person. This summer and early fall has been particularly frustrating, since we have a household with three adults in it, and the able-bodied one has only been at home half-time. And then this month he's been sick the whole month. A lot of stuff kind of goes kaput when that happens. In our circumstance, we have resources to throw at the situation. We can throw money at it, and we can throw family and friends at it, and we have been, sometimes. But things will fall through the cracks, which is why I have lost a big chunk of my very limited work time to sorting out this stuff and setting up the system for it to work longer-term.
And my work is flexible, and we have these resources. I can do that. A lot of people would just be lost and permanently behind and would just have to drop that particular ball. Would just have to drop a lot of balls. And it frustrates me to know that something is being proposed as a solution by people who don't have any concept of what the problem is even like. Over and over again I run into people who seem to be saying that something works as long as nothing goes wrong. And I know that that's exactly the same as saying that it doesn't work.
