The University does not seem to like answering questions

So hyesterday I had to gtake Emma to the doctor, never mind why. While we were there we discovered that -- contrary to the most recent back-channel version I had gotten -- my insurance had been cancelled.

So instead of buying my medicine yesterday I spent the rest of the morning on the phone trying to find out what the current story really is.

No dice.

So I'm off to buy my medicine at non-insured prices. We'll see how that goes. I do have the money to do that for the time being. But.

If they've cut me off, then will I lose the window for COBRA (continuance where I pay for it myself)? And if I don't, can I even afford it for long -- and is the COBRA plus the copay still less than the non-insured cost?

That's even financial angst for today.

I've been reading the stories in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. The first several are horror stories. There's a formula to horror stories, at least these -- I don't know if it's universal. A character is set up who is deeply, deeply inadequate in at least one moral direction. Then there's a somewhat disgusting temptation -- usually, but not always, supernatural in nature -- that breaks down the feeble supports the character has. And then there's a horrible, usually disgusting, consequence, which does not necessarily work out logically as retribution.

Thing is, they're awfully tempting to write, because they're easy.

I know it looks like envy or something else unworthy to say that a genre I don't like and don't really approve of, but which is somewhat popular, is easy, when I'm making so little traction of my own, but I really think it is. You don't have to work out what the truth is, or what would happen, because there's only one truth and only one what would happen allowed in the formula. There's no doubt.

I suppose a person who finds "happy endings" irritating could say the same thing, but I believe Tolstoy was wrong about the happy families being all alike. Anyway I'm not so interested in happy endings as I am in stories where the people manage to remember to try to do okay by each other at least part of the time and manage to come through once in a while. Especially ones where there's some collection of reasons why this is difficult to do, including, as in The Marigold Field, an important character being, at core, without true empathy or the ability to love, and doing the best she can with limited emotional resources. Not that that's my favorite situation, just that Diane Pearson does a really good job of it. (this is also a remarkable book in that it is about working-class people and doesn't descend into the territory of pity-these-subhumans -- instead it gives the characters the full dramatic treatment. I guess this is less remarkable these days, but I can tell you it was a relief to me when I first read it back in the Ice Age)

So anyway.

I'm working my way up to looking for a job with benefits and without the various diasadvantages if the one I've got.

I'm getting a lot of slack there, but I'm having to give slack, too, in matters that are more important in the scheme of things than whether I can walk to work or whether it's okay for me to be late.