Cooking While Yelling.

Newlywed Husband has had an unnatural fear of shrimp scampi. Maybe he had a bad childhood experience with a crustacean or something, but I think it's a bit irrational. I've been dying to try Kath's shrimp scampi recipe, and insisted on cooking it last Thursday night for dinner.

I had Thursday and Friday off work, and spent all day Thursday waiting on the microwave repairmen (you've already heard about this, I'll restrain myself from biaytching about it more), and cleaning the entire house from top to bottom! Those of you who know me well are aware that I am married to the world's biggest clean freak, which typically discourages me from cleaning. Why clean when he's just going to clean behind me - that just encourages feelings of inadiquacy. I might as well drink a glass of wine and let him vaccum around me. But, for some reason, I decided to deep clean/organize the entire house.

I was so proud of myself, and looking forward to cooking a delish shrimpy dinner and relaxing with Newlywed Husband in our super-duper clean house!

Then, the bill came for Newlywed Husband's stomach-flu-induced emergency room visit. $2,041 for 5 hours of the worst service I've ever experienced. Oh, and they didn't give him any medicine, just an iv of fluids and a battery of unnecessary tests. Needless to say, when I saw the bill, I hit the roof.

The next hour and forty minutes were spent on the phone with Blue Cross Blue Shield telling two different people how ridiculous this bill was. Apparently, our deductible is $3,000 (didn't know that), the limit for how much the hospital can charge us for the services rendered was exactly $6 more than they actually charged us (convenient, hmmm?), and oh, the icing on the cake...they are NOT open on Sundays! The next two paragraphs are pretty much what I recounted over and over (the BCBS girl was a little...how shall I put this...slowwwww), in an increasingly loud voice.

My biggest problem with the whole deal was that if I get into a car accident at 2:34 am on a Sunday morning, I can call my insurance company and someone will answer the phone and explain my rights and benefits to me. Apparently, your health is worth less than your car, because BCBS doesn't even have an automated line to help you on Sundays. I know this because I tried to call them on the way to the emergency room to see if Baylor Hospital was a preferred provider, and to ask a couple of other questions. No luck, the automated message kindly directed me to call back between 8am and 8pm central standard time, Monday - Friday.

Add to this the fact that the only symptoms that Newlywed Husband was complaining of were vomiting, diarrhea (sorry, this is gross, I know), and a fever. That's IT! But they tried to give him an EKG (which I flatly refused - he is not having a heart attack people!), and insisted on giving him a chest x-ray, flu test, and a couple of other tests...all the while saying that he had a stomach virus. So we waited, trapped in a freezing ER examining room for 5 hours while they ran a bunch of tests we didn't want or need, and never even got to see a real doctor - only a physician's assistant.

Poor Newlywed Husband came home starving and exhausted to find me fuming about the bill and screaming four letter words (sorry Grandma) while stomping around the house and terrifying the poor dog. I insisted on calling BCBS while cooking dinner, and the poor guy had to wait for almost two hours while I argued, drank chardonnay, argued some more, viciously diced shrimp, argued even MORE, and broke dry spaghetti noodles with a little more vengeance than they probably deserved.

I finally got off the phone and slamed a huge mound of pasta on a plate, shoving it at Newlywed Husband. (Obviously, the phone call did not go well.) He looked at it in terror, struggling to say, "Wow honey, that looks {gulp} awesome. Do I have to eat it all?" *Cue look of death from me*

He gamely took a bite, and then another and another. Not only did he genuinely like it, but he asked for seconds, declared it the best meal I had ever cooked, and said he wanted it again Monday night. Too bad I was too mad to eat.