Lunch vacation

Today is cold feet and hot cups of tea. Now sit down and be productive, damnit. Sunlight is tapping on my window, impatient for me to finish this healthcare website business, a bicycle ride in the planning, but the unsatisfactory numbers blur together and my hypothermic fingers nudge the mouse button more than click it, knuckles gone stiff in the chill, so wouldn't you know it, it's time for another cup of tea. Extra long pause to pet the smiling dog this time.

This feels like choosing which demon to feed my blood to, is there such a thing as a good insurance company? Do I give them too short of shrift? Perhaps it's just scar tissue from a high school job in a pharmacy, helpless before the confusion on the faces of the elderly, who got sick after years of paying premiums, then their insurance companies dumped them. “Can they do that? I guess so.”

Maybe the Affordable Care Act, embarrassing baby step that it is, will clear some of that.

Ug. This shit is enough to send me back for more tea. I'm going to die of hyperhydration. Is that covered? Time for a vacation. Right now.

A few sluggish pushes on the mouse, and here I am in Panama, the San Blas Archipelago. I've forgotten what socks are. “Sweater” is a noun to describe me, not an article of clothing. Why would you ever need more than a T-shirt? Warm water is right there, whenever you're ready, and again next time.

The Argentinians are drinking their mate, and the Venezuelan barters for more lobster from the men in the canoe, who laugh at his antics. Our game of rummy will last for hours, one hand every ten minutes, broken by dolphin breaks when dorsal fins appear within the lagoon. I'm the only one who swims there fast enough to see them, and my remorse at this is subsumed by a warm Caribbean soak that suffuses the salt with gratitude.

In a few days I'll disembark in Colombia, and my pack is lightened by a load of blissful ignorance, foolish belief that I have it all together, my secret manageable. It feels like helium, but is more akin to carbon monoxide. But for now, the world is laughing with me in sunlight refractions and pineapple fingertips.

I feel better. Now...what size deductible can I handle?