I'm home early as a partial make-up for working Columbus Day. Tomorrow will be extra busy at work, but it's worth it to have some time now. I cut my right index finger pretty bad while washing dishes yesterday, and it's pretty hard to type or navigate the computer while it's healing. Already much better though, so tomorrow should be easier. I've just been leisurely cooking lunches for the next few days, as well as doing prep work for tonight's and tomorrow's dinners.

Other than that, our simpler life is coming along pretty well. We've all been a lot easier on each other and ourselves. On the financial front, not much has changed on the surface; we still have our budget and spending limits and try to stick to them. The difference is if we go over, I quietly note it and move on, taking the money from our budget surplus. I've overspent personally by about $150 and am trying to make that up gradually from my spending money, but I know if I start to stress out about it I can just cover it with the surplus. I'm not planning to spend much this weekend so should be able to take that deficit down to about $90. Unless I have to buy a new Halloween costume for AA, which would be about $30. She wants to be the same thing as last year, so first I'll see if her old costume fits. Either way I'm hoping to make up my overspending out of my own spending by mid-November.

Work is the one stressor none of us can really control right now. I'm just trying to compartmentalize mine a bit and leave the stress there when I come home. Sometimes I succeed. AS's keeps getting busier, but at least she's making strides in creating an international reputation that may serve to get us to England someday, so that's been pretty exhilarating for her. NT told his job about his ER visit and that at least a partial cause was stress and exhaustion, so they've made yet another promise to get him some help. Hopefully this time with his health on the line they'll follow through. They've made several empty promises in the past.

I logged into NT's health insurance account to see if there were any claims yet from his ER visit. So far there's only one; I think it's the doctors' portion. Looks like he'll owe $338 for that. I can't imagine that will be the only bill; there's the ambulance ride, the EKG, the ER bed, the overnight stay in observation ... But, I did note some things about his coverage. His deductible is $1000, which I think means after that they start covering more of the cost. And his out-of-pocket maximum is $3250 for in-network services. (This first claim shows up as in-network, so I imagine it will all be.) Considering I estimated between $1000 and $10,000 as possible expenses, a cap of $3250 sounds pretty good to me! I already have about $2000 allocated in November that was gojng to go toward student loan debt. Not going to have any wiggle room in December/January budget because of NT's tuition coming up, but will have nearly $2000 in February that could be used toward medical.

Oh, and I moved my dental scan up to November, just before my flex spending must be declared. If it turns out I need the extra $2200 procedure for my implant, I'll up my flex by that amount. Either way, my take-home is going to be smaller because of the upcoming dental, but our taxable income will be less, so that takes away some of the sting.

Guess that's it for now! Apologies if my nine-fingered typing caused more typos than usual; I did try to fix them all but may have missed a few.