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I've got to say, I'm finding the search for a marriage counselor to be a bit overwhelming. Where are they located? Do they have a focus on LGBTQ+ people? Do they accept insurance? Are they even accepting new patients?
I got a few recommendations indirectly through the Seattle Women's Chorus. I had hoped I could find someone through a recommendation, but none of these names were people who accepted insurance. At
this therapy practice's website, they explicitly state: "Insurance coverage for mental health services can be limited and requires a mental health diagnosis." And yet, I called Aetna directly today and the woman there told me that for in-network providers they'll cover 100% with just a $20 copay. She even sent me a list of Seattle providers, although I did not find it particularly helpful, and am honestly not fully convinced she filtered her search properly. I kind of fear billing coming back to me later with something along the lines of "Actually we do not cover this specific type of service."
Still, I have been able to find lists of in-network providers on the Aetna website, which even has a map you can use to zoom in and out of a preferred geographical area. In the end I still used this tool to send an email to a woman located in the Central District, on E Union between 27th Ave and MLK Way. I asked for clarification on insurance coverage.
Among the many websites I have now browsed, I found one with a FAQ about payment with an FSA card. So, I checked this as well. I got excited when "Therapy, mental health" was listed as qualified, but then the fine print says:
Therapy not required for a medical or mental purpose will typically not qualif, such as marriage or family counseling. Well, crap. And although I did ask the Aetna agent to clarify this, she said I would be covered with an in-network provider. But I suppose we'll see.
When I searched "therapy" among the list of FSA eligible expenses, though, it also said
massage therapy was covered—pretty much irrelevant to the conversation, but still something to note. I saw no similar qualifying fine print on that one.
I wrote the above as a draft earlier this morning, and have since exchanged a couple of emails with the woman I found in the Central District. Apparently a first appointment will have to be telehealth, and I have to be put on a waiting list; it may be several weeks, though she said the more flexible we are with time availability then the earlier she is likely to make it happen. I went ahead and asked to be put on the list. I will continue looking in the meantime, but have a feeling I will encounter these sorts of delays with many, as therapists and counselors are generally in high demand.
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— पांच हजार सात सौ बहत्तर —
Last night was Action Movie Night at the Braeburn Condos theater, and it was back to a high-attendance night: 12 people, only 2 empty seats. There were Tony, Jake, Ryan, Ben, Chris B, Derek, Tom, Andrew, Greg, Daniel, Shobhit, and myself. Chris B is usually a reliable regular, and had he made it we would have been 13. But, he didn't make it this week.
There was also an unusually large spread of food last night. We had only like two things to choose from last time, but last night we had the nachos Shobhit made (using sample seitan crumbles I brought home from work, which Shobhit smartly mixed with black beans); a mushroom pizza Ben brought; a bag of Cheetos; pistachio nuts brought by Tony; and the one thing Shobhit and I didn't touch, several bags of Dick's burgers brought by Jake, as he often does.
Shobhit and I both ate way too much. Mostly our own nachos. I'm glad we decided against making a double batch; the nachos were surprisingly popular and still the one tray we brought down was only mostly consumed by the end of the evening. I made myslf a hot buttered rum, which was very tasy but I nursed it slowly enough that I wasn't even done with it by the time the movie was over.
While we ate before the movie, Ben went out of his way to offer some more hot takes on movies, which he frequently does. His opinions are almost always wildly different from mine. "I saw
Anora," he said. "I didn't like it. I thought it was garbage." He later acknowledged the excellent acting in it, but had a problem with how stupid he thought the characters were and how he'd never want to hang out with any of them. These would never be disqualifiers for a quality film for me. Also, I'm not sure he has the breadth of cinema knowledge to appreciate
Anora specifically as a Sean Baker film, although admittedly that's not that fair a criticism given that it would also be the case for most of the movie's viewers. Nevertheless, among the actual Best Picture nominees, I'd have voted for
Anora.
Shobhit didn't hate
Anora but could not see it as all that great. Shobhit has his own takes, that's for sure: he was legitmately most impressed with
Emelia Pérez, and felt strongly that Karla Sofía Gascón should have won Best Actress—she's who he voted for in the SAG Awards—her
history of racist tweets notwithstanding. I think in Shobhit's mind, the voting should be based on the performance and in a vacuum, with no consideration for outside influences, even the actor's own behavior. Even I would say her performance in that movie was excellent. I was delighted by Mikey Madison's upset win over the expected Demi Moore, though, and here is where trying to vote with no consideration for outside details becomes a detriment: Madison's performance was so incredible, it's easy to assume she is like that character in real life, but she could not be more different.
Anyway. Shobhit, Ben and I did find one place of common ground in this conversation: Tom Cruise. We all acknowledge that he is nutso-cuckoo as a person, but he's an undeniable movie star and we simply can't help but eat up his blockbuster performances.
Soon enough we filed into the theater for the movie. It was supposed to be Derek's choice last time, and it was because he was unprepared that Shobhit got to choose then. So now Derek actually did bring a movie, and it was
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.
What a bonkers movie, in a way that just stripped it of any meaning. Shobhit fell asleep, and I had to nudge him when he snored pretty loudly at one point. And then I also fell alseep, and snoozed through at least the last half hour. As it happens, this was the first movie ever watched when, twenty years ago, Gabriel and Stephanie and I did
a series of "cult movie" watches.
Buckaroo Banzai was the first one we watched, and it had been Stephanie's choice, apparently a favorite of hers.
I had to look up when I first watched it: July 2004. I hadn't logged that on Letterboxed, and now I've logged it twice. I kind of hope now that I never see it again. It wasn't painful, exactly, just weird in ways that I found a bit annoying, it was so random and never really made any sense. It has a star studded cast of people before they were super famous, though: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin, Jeff Goldblum, Christopher Lloyd, Clancy Brown. I spent a lot of time tracking whether the move passed
The Bechdel Test. It didn't seem to, not while I was awake, anyway.
After the movie, Shobhit and I went back upstairs and watched another episode of
Silo before I went to bed.
— पांच हजार सात सौ बहत्तर —
[posted 12:41pm]
