Will someone please think of the balloon poodles?

Last night I was sitting on the couch playing Candy Crush and trying to come up with something to write about. This is basically the Cliffs Notes version of every night of my life. But then I started looking at Facebook and noticed several of my friends mentioning they’ve received the renewal notices from their health insurers and the common thread is that their monthly premiums have almost doubled for the same level of coverage.

And this sent me into a little bit of a tailspin of worry because P and I are both self-employed. We already pay quite a bit for health insurance and I’m really not looking forward to that number doubling. At some point you have to think we’re better off just taking the hit and using the money we’re saving on insurance premiums to stock up on Band-Aids and a few tubes of Neosporin.

On a related note, I just read an article that said the NINETY-THREE MILLION DOLLAR website developed for people to sign up for Obamacare is expected to have months of glitches. I verified this earlier when I went on to act like I was going to create an account and all I got was a bunch of gibberish computer code.

So. Let me get this straight. You want to be in charge of my healthcare but you can’t build a reliable website for the bargain price of NINETY-THREE MILLION DOLLARS?

That sounds totally reasonable.

And not at all frightening.

Anyway, the point is I went to bed and tossed and turned because I was worried about our insurance premiums. Which led to being worried about paying for Caroline’s college. Which led to worrying about the science crossword puzzle she had for homework because we barely knew any of the answers. Which led to thinking the sleeves on my pajama top were too scratchy. And, thus, I was up most of the night. Welcome to the state of my brain.

In the morning, the first words out of Caroline’s mouth were to remind me that I said we could run to HEB to buy flowers for her to take to her teacher from last year for her birthday. So we rushed through our morning routine to ensure we had time to go get flowers and make it to school within reasonable range of the ringing of the tardy bell.

However, we arrived at HEB and Caroline found the flower section overwhelming. Lilies? Gerbera daisies? Roses? An orchid? I implored her to make up her mind quickly and walked over to the edge of the flower section to take deep, calming breaths. It was then that I noticed a sign on the helium machine next to all the balloons.

It read: WE CAN NO LONGER FILL UP BALLOONS DUE TO THE WORLDWIDE HELIUM SHORTAGE.

Well. I had no idea.

As if I didn’t have enough on my mind. Now I have to worry about the clowns.

Because I yearn for knowledge on any crisis that may lead to lame balloon-less parties, I immediately consulted the internet as soon as I got home. I discovered many things. Most importantly, the worldwide helium shortage is a real thing and balloon artists are having to resort to using wooden sticks to hold up their creations.

Now I’ll never sleep again for thinking about some poor clown having to make a balloon poodle look lifelike and interesting using only his mind and some wooden sticks.

But, more importantly, the U.S. Government is in charge of one-third of the world’s helium supply.

Of course it is.

With all the things Congress cannot agree on, they managed to reach an agreement about the helium a couple of weeks ago. I assume because a shutdown of the Federal Helium Program would result in lost revenue to the U.S. Treasury averaging $430,000 a day. And then how would they pay for that healthcare website?

Also, we have a Federal Helium Program.

We have a Federal Helium Program.

Now the President just needs to sign the bill so it becomes a law. Otherwise, none of us will ever be able to talk in funny voices at a party ever again.

Helium is also used in a wide variety of things like the aerospace industry, MRI machines, and fiber optics.

And I guess those things are important, too.