EOB.

a song to set the scene // songs in my head by honne

My $400 medical bill sat splayed in front of me, staring at me in the face.

Now $400 isn’t a lot for a medical bill, but this was for a covid and a strep test.

I mean, come on.

Did I mention I had insurance?

Well, apparently it didn’t cover.

As I logged into my member dashboard to find out why my insurance wasn’t covering, confusing words like tiers, and claims, and deductibles blaringly read back at me.

I swear, insurance is a scam.

Do they purposefully make it confusing? Do they intentionlly explain your member benefits in fine print so you won’t find out your insurance doesn’t actually cover “urgent” visits, like covid and strep tests?

Apparently so. It was all there, detailed in my “Explanation of Benefits.”

An “Explanation of Benefits”, or EOB for short, helps you understand how much your health plan covers when you receive a medical bill.

And I guess in my particular case, urgent visits weren’t covered.

A week later, I found myself face down in a bath tub, bubbly bathwater returning my gaze in a candlelit bathroom.

I was sick, on day 4 of suffering from bronchitis.

My gem, I was finding, was showing his full colors as a wonderfully well-equipped nurse.

He had been making me tea every night, tucking me in, preparing me soup, and drawing me spa-like baths, complete with back massage.

They were all benefits of this beautifully built boyfriend of mine, and I wasn’t discovering them until now.

I learned something, sitting in that bath tub.

An EOB, which can be downright confusing especially in regards to insurance, is also sometimes best unearthed after the fact.

It’s been years since I started dating my gem, and while I’ve always known him to be… well, a jewel, this particular level of love and care struck me.

While it would be nice to know what my insurance covers (and what it doesn’t cover), my gem’s EOB was helping me understand that sometimes, it’s a greater joy to find out the benefits of your relationship along the way.

It’s a gift that I find myself continuously unwrapping.

And I just keep soaking it up.

Face down in a bath tub, bubbly bathwater returning my gaze in a candlelit bathroom.

just the three of us.

a song to set the scene // boo’s going home by randy newman

We started planning immediately after we left.

See, that’s what you do when you leave the happiest place on earth. To ward off the post-Disney depression, you simply have to start organizing the next visit.

It’s just what you do.

The next trip though… required some meticulous planning.

We had decided to celebrate our brother’s 30th birthday by taking him to Disneyland.

He hadn’t been in two decades, and honestly that’s just criminal.

He deserved to be spoiled, treated, and exposed to the wonder and magic of Disney.

So for two years, we organized and mapped out a trip.

(and made the hotel, plane, and dining reservations which were luckily way easier to do since the last time I went post-rona)

Then, on his 30th birthday, we surprised him with a LEGO castle with the three of us LEGO siblings all wearing shirts that read: We’re going to Disney!

And just like that, time slipped through the Aladdin hourglass, and we were on a plane headed to Anaheim.

No parents, no significant others, just the three of us.

It was likely the one and only time the three of us had ever taken a trip like that before. So it was special, from the start.

There we were, three adult kids from Alaska, passing through the gates of the park, experiencing something so nostalgic from our childhood that we all shared together.

It was more than magnificent. It was magical.

And we had one whole week to enjoy it.

I can still hear my brother’s joyous laughter whenever he got splashed on Grizzly River, see his teary-eyed face when he seeing the Millennium Falcon for the first time.

I can still picture my sister being our fearless leader at the front of the pack, feel her death grip on my arm whenever we dropped from the sky in Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout.

I can still feel the tears on my face as we roared down Big Thunder Mountain, smile at the memory of seeing Star for the first time when watching the movie Wish.

They all say Disney is “the happiest place on earth.” And for me, that remains true.

But it’s not the park itself that makes me happy. It’s the memories the park elicits. It’s the experiences there with the people I love that make it the happiest place on earth.

And what makes it magical is the fact that when I leave, when I wave goodbye at Walt’s statue holding Mickey’s hand, those memories get to come with me, wherever I go.

And they inspire me to book the next trip.

Which of course I’m already doing.