It’s been a rather sober week so far. It’s not that I’m superstitious and worry that talking about mortality will somehow invite it. It’s just that…

Monday involved a long discussion about life insurance and how to start a savings program for our daughter’s college education someday. The insurance part involves discussion of how much one’s life is “worth” and future inflation so that enough insurance is purchased to provide for the survivors. It’s not a concept we are accustomed to pondering. And then there’s the fact that we need to figure out how to pay the premium, which is sizable. Shopping around has proven that the premiums are in the same range regardless of the company; the payments break down to a large monthly sum that doesn’t fit our current budget. Decisions, decisions. The educational vehicle most often recommended is a 529, but this restricts the money to educational purposes only, so we need to explore other options as well. By the end of the meeting my head hurt.

Tuesday we met with a lawyer to discuss estate planning, trusts, and wills. We’ve established guardianship for our daughter if Husband and I die simultaneously. But until the lawyer asked us, we’d never thought about how we want to divvy up our estate if we have more than one child and they have grandchildren, and one of our children dies, do the children of our dead child (our grandchildren) get a her/his share? Or what if one of us dies and the other is left alive but incapable of managing daily affairs (due to Alzheimer’s for example): who do we designate to manage our financial resources? These questions do not ordinarily star in my daily thought show.

Then there’s the health care power of attorney; I’m a believer in making one’s wishes known in case one is ever in a vegetative state. It’s a good idea to make clear if one wants all measures taken to stay alive, or if the idea of living indefinitely on machines isn’t acceptable. Beyond this is the question of whom one designates to enforce these wishes. The spouse is an obvious choice, of course. Yes, but if the spouse is unavailable for whatever reason, one needs to have a second and third choice person designated. It’s all very hypothetical and surreal to discuss these future beings and events, but at the same time, since death is an eventual fact (at least I hope it’s very eventual), it’s like having coffee with the grim reaper. It’s unsettling.

Today’s business is about trying to understand the terms of a recent legal agreement we have come to regarding some personal business. Legalese can be vague, and after reading the agreement I have numerous questions about how we’ll carry out the practicalities of the agreement. It makes my head spin.

Further, today involves trying to extract an answer from our health insurance why we were billed out-of-network for a doctor we never saw and when we went to an in-network facility for the service. (This was for the amniocentesis in March.) Each time I call I get a non-answer and come away understanding nothing. And of course I was a knucklehead and paid the bill (sent separately by the doctor) when it arrived months ago, so we’re out that money. The likelihood of getting it back is close to nil.

I also inquired about the coverage for an epidural, since we’ve been told insurance companies sometimes have exceptions. The rep I spoke with read the policy and nothing was explicitly stated about it. The strongest conclusion she could come to is that it’s “probably among the usual and customary services/charges” and thus covered. Gah. I hate PPO insurance. We switched from an HMO on January 1 (which we had to enroll in mid-November before we got pregnant) because we thought we’d be doing in vitro treatment and wanted to use a recommended doctor not on our old plan. Then we got pregnant (yay!) but have been getting bills every month for services. We haven’t changed doctors or the medical group at all! It’s just now we’ve got a different financial arrangement and we see bills for services when we never did before. It’s adding up. I’m sure even our 10% portion of the birth hospital bill will be daunting. We’ll be switching back to the HMO at the next open enrollment cycle.

All of this is a tad overwhelming, and tears overflow because I’m full up already with Big Things going on. This hasn’t led to a desire to write much. I’ll be perkier once we have these decisions made and the documents and processes established.