How I Learned to Love the Criminal Life

This is a snoozer. Let me say that up front. I try in almost all cases to keep these posts fresh and snappy as well as informative. This is pretty much just the latter. If it helps you in some way, that’s extra good. But mostly it’s just to establish a public record and illustrate just how insane bureaucracy gets.

Once upon a time the ACA was passed. Let’s make this clear. I adore the President. I totally get why he pursued the formation of what we fondly call Obamacare. Facing Congress and its known excesses of idiots, he figured that a health care plan that they had originally put forth as the alternative to Bill/Hillary care would garner a fair number of Republican adherents and grease the skids for an easy passage.

We know that that did not happen. What follows is somewhat critical of the Act, but I am very grateful at the same time. I believe health care is the right of all human beings.

That said, here’s what happened to me.

I applied, ran into the usual snafu’s at the beginning and was left with not being “verified”. I waited several weeks and tried again only to find that the validating company no longer had my “ticket” and I could not proceed with my application. By phone I was able to do so and I don’t fault the workers who manned those lines to assist people through the process. Mine came up “may be eligible for Medicaid”. Even though common sense told me I was not eligible, I was forced to go through that process.

I went to a “facilitator” here locally in Las Cruces. She insisted that the Medicaid New Mexico laundry list of financial questions were “inappropriate” and that all that was required was how much my income was, meaning our combined social security checks. Even though I protested, she insisted and filed an application on my behalf.

Weeks later I and my husband received Medicaid cards and a stilted letter than required a phone call to confirm that we both were given Medicaid coverage. My husband bailed on that, since he is covered by the VA. I went about life, an ensured person, seeing my doctor and filling prescriptions amazed at the wonders of health care.

Until about three months went by. We received another letter from Medicaid NM, just as cryptic, requiring yet another phone call, all to confirm that my coverage had been cancelled. No explanation was ever forthcoming other than “somebody had approved your application by mistake”. They saw no reason to explain further.

I placed a call immediately to the Federal exchanges where after numerous apologies for the bonehead play by New Mexico they assured me that the for me, the exchanges were still open (even though it was July) since my original application would be marked as “still open”. They graciously completed my application, told me of my subsidy, and went through the various plans until I decided on one.

I contacted my new insurer, paid the premium and happily my doctor accepted them and life again returned to normal.

Starting in about October I started receiving solicitations from a dozen or more insurance companies for supplemental insurance to Medicare. I was advised that I needed one for sure. Before I could even contact Medicare to see about the process of applying (I would turn 65 in April of 2015), I got official stuff from Medicare.

What a delight I thought. I was “automatically” enrolled in Part A and Part B. It was up to me to decide whether I wanted any supplemental coverage. There was reference to a Part D Medicare for prescriptions I could buy but no mention of cost, other than it would cost something more.

I soon received more official stuff from Social Security, as it related to Medicare. I was told I “might be eligible for extra help in paying for prescriptions”. It had to do with being “low-income” and receiving other “supplemental assistance” of various kinds.

I immediately smelled a rat.

Sure enough an application was forthcoming wherein there was a the laundry list of financial questions that I knew would kick me out. How much do you have in savings and checking? List your investments. What is your mortgage? At the bottom of the form was something to the effect of “I don’t want to apply for Federal “extra help” but send my application to the state for consideration”.

There were no other choices. I sent the form back without filling out ANY of the financial information to conform to the requirement. I assumed that New Mexico would look me up, see that my Medicaid had been cancelled for “ineligibility” and then I could get on to the business of choosing a Part D provider.

Not so.

I received some weeks later, a letter FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (DEPT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, from Maryland) advising me that I had been granted extra help and that I could choose from eight or so carriers. If I chose none, one would be assigned to me.

My frustration started to really grow at that point. I did nothing. A carrier was assigned to me, and I received a lovely packet of information from my new insurance provider and a shiny plastic card to show my pharmacist.

I put off the phone calls that I knew were necessary, and finally steeled myself to that event yesterday. I gathered all the various pieces of information, made sure I had all the identifying documents at hand, and called Medicare.

I explained that I had been given “extra help” for Part D coverage, and that I was, in my opinion not entitled to. I was even over the cut off based on my social security alone, without adding in our savings and investment portfolio. I was advised that New Mexico had granted the “extra help” and that Medicare couldn’t remove it. I was given the number to NM Medicare, which is not really Medicare at all, but Medicaid.

That call resulted in being told that “they had nothing to do with it at all, and I must deal with Medicare.

I called back Medicare.

Same result.

I called back Medicaid NM. Same answer.

I called back Medicare. Same answer

I called back Medicaid NM. This time they told me I needed to call NM Health and Human Services.

I did. Their menu had nothing about Medicare at all as far as I could see.

I called Social Security, “extra help” division. They gave me a history lesson in Medicare/Medicaid, and after assuring me they would help, told me that the document I had entitled Health and Human Services, from Maryland (denoting the US govt) was from New Mexico. I was advised to call NM HHS.

I called NM HHS. They actually looked up my old file, which is still current because at the age of 64, I still am able to receive family planning care at the state’s expense. If I’m ever declared as having a post-menopausal pregnancy, I’ll be the first to tell them and the world. She informed me that NOBODY there deals with anything like “extra help” nor Medicare. We didn’t do it she insisted.

I got in the car, drove to the Social Security Office. I explained my situation. “They are trying to give me extra help based on a mistaken belief that I am too poor to be required to pay,” I explained. They will come to correct that in a few months, and that might leave me without coverage, and my prescriptions are expensive. I am trying to clear up the problem now.”

He looked at me like I had landed from Mars. “So, he said, “you are getting Part D coverage but you don’t want it?”

“NO! It’s not that I don’t want it. I would love to have it. It’s just that I don’t think I qualify for it, and I don’t want to be stuck with no coverage when they inevitably figure that out. NOBODY will acknowledge that they gave it to me, so I can’t even discuss the qualifications with anybody. If by some miracle I am entitled, I’m happy to have it. But I can’t find that out until somebody admits they granted it. Somebody put an “approved” stamp on this. I’m trying to find that person/entity.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He made a phone call. He called the new insurance carrier and said, “she is covered by you, but doesn’t want it.”

I demanded the phone.

I gave her the information, “my insurance number”.

She looked up the file. She said, “there was a cross over from your Medicaid coverage directly here.”

“But my Medicaid coverage was cancelled.”

“I understand what you are saying, but they did it anyway.”

“Who is they?”

“It does not say. It appears that your status as having Medicaid caused a cross over.”

“But everybody denies they did it.”

“Ma’am I do understand. I can cancel it if you wish, but that may open a can of worms for you in trying to replace it. There is on its face no justification for refusing it, and so they might not give you other discounts. I really can’t say. I’d just advise you to leave it be.”

I looked at the Social Security guy across the table from me.

“I give up.”

“I’ve called everyone, talked to everyone. No one will admit they approved my being placed on this plan, so I can’t even ask the question of on what basis I’m entitled. I was here. Note that in my file. I’m done.” He smirked as if he had won the battle on that one.

Here I stand, beaten.  I thought I was being an honorable and honest person. The system does not reward honesty, it laughs at it. This stands as a testament should I ever be called to answer for my crime of trying to do the right thing.

Please tell me you have run into equally stupid bureaucratic bullshit?

 

What A Difference a Year Makes

Tags

New Year, retrospectives

We are fast approaching the end of things. That sounds ominous. It’s December 29, and Thursday we will awaken, albeit a few of us with aching heads, to discover that like a bright new shiny penny, the year has flipped to 2015.

This week is all about retrospectives, and I am finding them tiresome already. Turn on any cable news service and hear the refrains:

“Top ten natural disasters of the year, coming up next!”

“Who we lost this year in sports and entertainment!”

“Top five books of the year. Have you read them yet?”

Last year I realized that I was (as I always do) losing track of all these milestones during the year. I created a private blog just to jot down events as they took place so I would have them to turn to to “remember”. That lasted, ummmm, somewhere like a week, maybe less.

As I’ve pointed out at this time of year, nearly every year, I don’t do resolutions, finding them silly, self-defeating, and but another excuse for dragging out the old whip to flagellate my increasingly intolerant body.

So once again, I’m doomed to discover that people I really admired died, and I’d totally forgotten. And there were scientific discoveries that I had peripherally noticed and tucked away in some recess of my brain to which I’ve since lost the key.

About the only things I’ve remembered well are my own name and my address, though I often stop for a moment when asked my phone number or zip code.

Actually I remember a lot of political stuff, and that is probably not a good thing, since most everything that happened last year is eminently forgettable or should be. Given that I am a political satirist of sorts (god, that puts me up there with Jon Stewart, John Oliver, and Lenny Bruce, right?), it’s only natural that I should. Remember that crap, that is.

You may wonder why I think of myself as a political satirist, since this blog has taken a bit of a turn away from the day-to-day regurgitation of the crazy Reich-Right (use those Nazi references when you can). Because, even when I don’t technically refer to politics, I’m usually grousing about the people who make politics a living hell by their ignorant interference in things best left to adults with an education that goes beyond “how does a bill become a law.”

I say living hell in the sense that I do care that this country continues to swirl around on the event-horizon of a major black hole of doom. It hurts. And that engenders, as a defense, anger and yes even a modicum of hatred. Epictetus tells me that I ought not to become emotional about realities as such, but spend my energies doing effective things, but woe  is me, it’s so much easier to complain.

A few friends tell me that they avoid politics because it is just too unsettling, and I do respect that. There is no fun in continually poking yourself in the eye with a stick in the hopes that someday, it either won’t hurt or magically you’ll get 20/20 vision for your efforts.

I must admit to a sick sense of fun in all of it too, and that undoubtedly is what drives me to continue. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day in my head, but I do enjoy poking a stick (not in my eye) but through the bars at the caged idiots. For stupid people are caged whether they realize it or not. Caged by their lack of vision, lack of curiosity, and willingness to live a life of dreary ordinariness if only mas’r will give them the illusion of prosperity. Poke I will, with relish, because I enjoy the resultant explosion of racism, sexism, and all the other ism’s they exhibit when blood pressure overcomes what little common sense they possess. There is no knowledge to overcome since the very word suggests elitism to them and they regard education (except good-old fundamentalist claptrap as the work of the devil).

The point really is that a year makes no difference at all. For some this has been a hellish year, one they can hardly wait to escape and start out fresh again. This is balanced by just as many who have had a delightful rich and fruitful year and hope that next year just continues in the same vein. Neither is being objective of course, and no one says they should be. Each operates from a singularly personal experience, much as some men love blondes and others brunettes or as the song goes, “I like my women a little on the trashy side”. Some women love them some nerdis sorts, while some love SOA’s Jacks on his bike.

What’s new under the sun? (Oh I can go on with these all day folks).

Even though I don’t “do” resolutions, I do do intentions. 

Intentions are much milder than resolutions as you can see. They are gentle and express a longing and desire, rather than some fiat imposed with an iron will that will be shown to be all too bereft of any undergirding at all.

So I have intentions.

• To write better. This is of course easy since I am the arbiter of success here. I determine what constitutes “better”. I can’t lose on this one.
• To read more. Again, I self-judge based on my recollection (no matter how faulty) of how much I have read in the past year. Philosophy is my focus this year.
• To continue toward the light, however I define it. There are many paths, and I intend to peek down as many as I’m able in the time yet allotted to me. All knowledge benefits so nothing is lost on the road more traveled as well as the less (eat your heart out Frost).
• To seek truth always. Truth untinged by desire and predisposition requires the constant overlay of critical thinking. We all fail much of the time. I desire to fail less often and about less  important things.
• I seek to be more of what I am destined to be. Don’t we all?

I intend and that is a victory in itself.

Gosh, so many of you have enriched this year for me. I thank you all, whether you ever knew or not. I consider myself among the most luckiest of humans. I live with a man who continues to delight me with a freshness of spirit and wit, who challenges me in a million ways that keep me alive and vibrant while loving me unconditionally. I have the sweet softness of dogs who suffer my failings and limitations while offering a love which they neither understand nor question. I live in surroundings that delight and prick my curiosity and remind me that beauty comes in many forms. I have pursuits that challenge my intellect and patience, and occasionally stamina. I am blessed beyond measure, and have nothing whatsoever to deserve it.

I am humbled for there are those more worthy who have so much less.

It has been a year, and like all such artificial divisions, it has no real meaning beyond what we assign. After all, before us, what was time but a thing yet to be named? Or no thing at all.

Some Thoughts on Books

Tags

Books, classical literature, education

I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. I went to a normal county school. Bond issues always passed. Our schools were modern and clean. The books were up-to-date and in good repair. We had a lab and a gym, a football field, a cafeteria. All the normal accouterments. Our parents were mostly factory workers, many probably hadn’t graduated high school, but most probably had. What did they know? What did I know?

How does one judge one’s school when one has never known another?

So I matriculated through, and thought I got the normal A- education, not quite the private school, but wasn’t I one of those American students who set the bar for the rest of the world? I thought so.

Looking back, I remember reading Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter, and some farcical redo of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (the remaining memory is “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears [a bag of ears lands at Antony’s feet]). That’s all I remember.

I remember as I prepared to go to college having a pamphlet entitled something to the effect: “The one hundred books every college freshman should have read.” I had read almost none. I set up rectifying that, but I don’t think I read more than about six.

I majored in political science and dabbled in philosophy and whatever else fancied me. I took a writing course, but never a formal literature class as I recall.

At some point I realized that I was not well versed in literature per se. It comes from reading books which explain an emotion or an event with reference to another well-known classic and, well, I seemed never to have read it or understood the comparison therefore. A lot of fairly heavy academic subjects often reference the hero or heroine of a fictional account to explain someone else. I usually missed those too.

It was then that I began to suspect that perhaps I had not been well taught in high school.

That’s an easy explanation and serves to put the blame squarely on another set of shoulders.

In part it might be true. I don’t know, but surely no English teacher I had in my youth ever managed to find the right button with me. I read a ton of fiction as a child, but most all of it was cheap trash that was not notable either by title or author. I got most of it from the school library. An only child has to fill some hours every week doing something and reading was my escape when  the time of day or situation presented no friend to wile away the hours with.

In part it was probably due to parents who were not readers. To my knowledge my mother never read a book, at least that I ever saw. My father confined his reading to the 25¢ paperback novel about the west or about the war. There were no “great novels” in our home. It’s little wonder I had no idea what one was.

Along came law school, and there was no time for fiction. I read day and night of course but not fiction. And then there were other interests over the years. I read deeply into paleontology, the origins of man, and astronomy, the origins of the universe. That later turned into a deep interest in Christianity which blossomed into a return to academia. Have you picked up the theme here? Origins. I read tons of science fiction for several years.

So reading was never the issue, but fiction fell by the way side, and I found in my fifties that gosh, I was pretty illiterate when it came to American authors and most of Europe’s best. I had read most of Twain, most of Dickens. I’d read Moby Dick,  and a few others. I’d read a fair number of more popular authors like Leon Uris. I read all of Shakespeare. I read Homer. I read Thucydides and parts of Tacitus. I’d read parts of Aristotle, and all of Plato, and most of the Greek playwrights.

I had not read Chaucer or Flaubert, Proust, Cervantes, Hemingway or Fitzgerald, Salinger, or Hesse, or Conrad, Vonnegut, Plath or Dreiser, Sinclair, Cather. Oh the list was and is quite long. I’ve read most of these now, at least one of their novels, and a host of others. I’ve seen so brilliantly what real writing is all about.

The list remains long  in this late attempt to catch up to where I think I should be. And in the end, it falls upon me, only me. I can push off some blame for not being directed as a child, but surely I decided as an adult to spend my time on this rather than that. And perhaps that was not wrong, so much as it led me to these beliefs and not some others.

Who is to say which would be better? I’m convinced in some real sense that reading some of these authors at 20 is not profitable. It takes a lot of living to extract the value of say a Salinger or a Plath don’t you think?

If we can think beyond the tip of our nose, then it is on each of us how much we will decide to benefit from the wisdom of those that have walked before us. Hermann Hesse says that wisdom cannot be taught. One can convey knowledge but wisdom? No. And he is right. We do not learn wisdom from these greats, but we gain insight and perspective, and these are, to me, some of the building blocks of wisdom.

At my age there is little else to strive for, except to be known as wise. Today a nice enough fellow suggested that I wrote long replies to appear brilliant and cover up the bullshit of what I was saying. I think that not true actually, I speak in carefully constructed sentences to be properly understood. But of course, flowery prose does have a way of making shit smell better. So there was a point to his statement if alas he only meant to dismiss my remarks with mean-pointed barb.

Still, words are the tools of my craft, and I admit to being a bit in love with the playing with them. Yet, in reading so many marvelous for-the-ages authors, I’m reminded at how much wisdom is offered if not always received. And I’m the worse for it for taking as long as I have to discover what I have missed.

Nothing to do now, save to read on. Read on, my captain.

PS: there are enumerable lists of “The 100 books everyone should read”. They are probably all equally good and bad. But they do offer a guideline. I’d stick with newer models if I were you, since the older one’s are decidedly western-centric.

Favorite Things

I was reading about a book called My Favorite Things by Maira Kalman. Others of note have done the same. The whimsy of the project compelled me to stop and think. It is just not things. It is smells, and views. It is a feeling too rare that it is never forgotten. It is a moment in time captured and stored and taken out and caressed with the tendrils of the mind again and again.

It is our humanness hanging out not for all the world to see surely, but nonetheless it is an expression of that which is unique to our bipedal form. Of course I cannot say that chimps and other sentient beings don’t do the same, but somehow I suspect they don’t. It is our human trait, yet one we don’t share because, how really can you express such exquisiteness? We may have a thing to touch and stroke but what wells up within cannot be explained in any way that is ever satisfactory.

But, being a writer, I shall try, if only to encourage you to spend some time doing the same.

A late morning laying on a couch in my dorm room at MSU, the window open, a breeze softly playing across my face as I laid there, hearing the soft whinny of  a horse corralled below at the MSU vet clinic pasture. As my consciousness slipped back and forth in that delicious reverie of near sleep, I felt a joy beyond compare. I was here, in this place, perfectly warm yet not too warm, hungry but not too hungry, sleepy but not too, young but not too, a mystery called life before me. I remember that perfection every time I lay down with a breeze across my face, and return to a time of it being all before me yet.

An evening, with a coal-black sky and stars blazing across my vision, I lay in my childhood back yard. It was summer. It was cool, but not uncomfortably so.  I stared upward until my field of vision closed off the trees and telephone lines to all but the stars, and still I stared. Suddenly, without warning, that was ALL there was, just the stars and me, and the feeling of the entire planet Earth behind me. Suddenly, with no thought, but only by instinct, I reached with each hand and grabbed a fistful of grass and hung on as I felt myself on the edge of this planet hurling through space. There was no fear, but only awe. I think of it often when I gaze skyward at night and will back that feeling of transcendence.

A heavy satin wedding dress, for me. I was only about three. It fit me perfectly with lace shoulders that crossed to attach in the back. It was an exact replica, hand-made of the one my father’s first cousin wore when she married in 1953. I, you see, was the flower girl. I carried that dress from my childhood home to every subsequent one for many years, though somehow, I decided it should be left behind somewhere. I used to stare at it. I don’t remember wearing it. I am told my uncle, the father of the bride had to come take me down the aisle because I was afraid, yet I waved at recognized faces as I he carried me. It is hard to believe that we don’t remember things as small children, for our brains have not yet formed the connections for long-term memory. The dress holds the memories in the stories that were told of the time when I was too young to remember.

A book, I recall so well, but it too is lost, returned to dust in some landfill long since gone too. It described the possible ways that our moon was created. I especially remember the one, the idea that like a pimple it grew out of the side of the earth and stretched farther until there was a band of gooey looking lava-like material holding the two together. It finally grew so thin, it snapped and the moon was separated from earth. I puzzled over that book as my mind learned to wonder at all the inexplicable things that I might learn about some day. My mind stretched to imagine what might be imaginable and how that very thought made my head fuzzy. How do you imagine what is not imaginable? The book was a child’s book. Where did it come from? Who would write such a picture book for a child? And yet, it was bought for me, and I turned its brightly colored pages more times that I can remember. And I imagined. Such visions were so much more real than Alice and talking rabbits.

Has there ever been a woman born who did not hold to some piece of clothing in the hopes that one day she could get back into it again? Mine was a pair of lounging pajamas, Chinese inspired with a short square neckline, and those wonderful frog-closures and a light satin creme-colored. I have no clue why I bought it, since it was always too small, but I often fingered it’s fine tailoring and hoped. Perhaps that is what it serves–the tangible item upon which we rest our hopes of being better, wiser, more in charge of our lives, happier, stronger, with more patience. Is that what it represents?

A set of soft leather books, classics all. Tales of Sherlock Holmes, and some Emerson and others. Some in tooled leather, others in brushed suede covers, all the paper, fine and silky, with gilded edges. They belonged originally to my grandmother’s aunt, left to her at her death. My grandmother gave them to me, because even at my young age of barely a teen, I was noted as “the one who read”. I have read them, most of them, but that is not why they matter. It is their fine construction that calls to me. This is what people do. They sit in fine chairs in fine drawing rooms, with glasses of port and they read from such fine books. They read and they think, and ponder great ideas. At least that is what they have always represented to me. Thinking is always the better part as Mary knew, and Jesus remarked.

Walking the meadow, listening to cows in the distance, as the dogs raced back and forth, casting for a scent to follow, I wonder. Who walked these hills before me? My husband’s father surely, and my husband as he moved the dogs down to the fence lines where pheasants liked to lay. But who else? What wagon laden with hopes and dreams traversed this land heading for a home further west? What native hunted deer or moved with a family to pitch tents near the creek? Who slept under this sky? Who died on this land, or was born during the night? What stories can these trees tell? Whether taken as a vast landscape before me from atop the hill, or exquisitely arrayed at ground level as ants march in determination to their appointed duties, it is the same. Who touched this before I? Whose moccasin or boot disturbed this grain of sand in distant time? The wondering that such thoughts bring.

There are many such stories of such memories. Together they weave a life, a life no better, no worse than most I suspect. Well, perhaps better than most, but certainly not worse. I guess you have to be a certain age to have much of a list. If I sit a while, I will think of others, but mostly it is the here and now experienced in its exquisite multiplicity that ignites each recalled moment in time, and I remember, and  flesh out this mortal life.

A word of advice. Start early.

Links, Blades, and Scooters

Tags

Humor, life in New Mexico, life in the foothills, short stories, the Contrariran

I’ve tried to explain that living with the Contrarian is an experience hard to describe.

It’s not for the feint of heart.

It’s not for the seriously humorless.

It’s not for your average joe-ess.

Plainly, you must be slightly off your rocker.

Since I am, it all works fine.

When I say I am off my rocker, I mean in that way that to the outside world doesn’t show, but  is only known to myself and my inner workings which are one hellofva weird chaotic mishmash of circuitry with a whole lotta cables hooked up to nothing and just there “in case”. If you get my drift that is. If not, I suggest you skip reading further and return to old issues of Cosmopolitan which are probably more your speed. (Make that Sports Illustrated if male) I was going to say Popular Mechanics, but I have no idea whether that is still published or what made some mechanics popular while others were apparently not. Could be the chest hair.

In any event, which means nothing but takes up ten letters and about an inch of space, I am married to The Contrarian, which is the prototype for all contrarians, though I don’t think anyone has ever asked for the plans.

I just thought I’d catch you up on some of his escapades, or adventures in our fair state of New Mexico, which is as they say, neither “New” nor “Mexico”, which makes it a great place to hide out as both Billy the Kid and Walter White would tell you if they were (a) still alive or (b) real.

As pointed out on previous occasions, my dearly beloved has some sort of “balance” issue, which causes him to walk while weaving like a drunken sailor, which is half right since once upon a time he was most assuredly drunk but not a sailor, wearing the insignia of the army instead of a rubber ducky. Now, he has been probed, examined, MRI’d, ear-peered at, and all the rest numerous times, only to discover that by golly-g, he has a brain and there is some sort of lesion there, which is as they say “organic” which basically means that “we have no clue and try the auto lube joint down the road”.

So to avoid having to go around the block, always leaning to the left, to get across the street, he sometimes uses a walker, which doesn’t walk at all, but rather rolls (comes with hand-brakes!). He doesn’t use it all the time, but only when the “wobblies” (as we call them) are bad. On his steady days, he runs marathons. (just kidding).

So one of his true delights has been discovering the motorized shopping cart. He loves those buggers. Not all said ve-hick-als are made the same. The K-Mart one’s are too speedy and have you racing down narrow aisles at Indy speeds, without a small enough turning circumference to make the intersection turn (think riding lawn mowers). The one’s at Lowe’s tend to run out of juice too soon, which is a real pain since that store holds about 14 football fields within it’s confines. The Walmart (we make our customers comfy so they spend more) is of course, “just right”, having  speed, dexterity, and staying power to make your shopping experience a deep pleasure.

What the Contrarian has discovered is that with the cart, and the proper expression of sadness, mixed with frustration, and a sip of melancholia, presents the perfect picture for lots of ladies to offer their assistance in getting things off the shelves. No matter than he can stand and walk almost normal, why do that when a bevy of women are there to fetch for ya. (It helps to extend the arm to it’s natural length and wiggle the fingers just a bit, and sigh of course while doing so).

Shopping has become a joy and one that he relishes each week now.

To that can be added of course the “accident” which makes him all the more helpless and pathetic.

The accident was the culmination of a lifetime spent using power tools with blades all without incident. Years of chains saws and tree toppling, slicing and dicing, and splitting all without injury. Until the “sled”. Now, I don’t know exactly what a sled is, except that it “slides”, somehow managing your piece of wood to it’s destination with the “blade”. He somehow designed it in such a way that a blind spot occurred wherein his finger resided (thumb actually), and before you know it blood was flying and he realized it was best to shut that sucker down.

Now, no animals were hurt in the making of this tale, other than the cat gut used to sew up said digit (and I think all that stuff is synthetic these days). Cats are grateful. He cut no bone, and no tendon either, just the big fat part of his thumb wherein his identity lies. Doc says that part of his thumb shall be forever no more, once the healing has finished and the dead skin is flushed. So I figure a life of crime is a good second career, since he can’t leave a print with his left thumb any more. Which makes working in a super accelerator requiring thumbprint identification impractical, or in the heart of the mountain where the big button is located that will end the world. I figure it too requires a thumbprint to make sure you have the au-thor-ity to doom the world.

Which all leads to the exceedingly boring story of what a baby men are when they have a little boo-boo. I mean seriously, the moaning never stops.

He had it checked at the hospital on Monday, and there was no infection, but he was thoroughly upset because the doctor made him “look at it”, which is akin, in his mind to making him look at two-headed snakes and other such unnatural and “icky” things.

So, I took out the trash for him, and made his breakfast (once), and open his candy bars at night. I told him he need not cook on Friday, but he said as long as I made the batter, he could probably flip a pancake. He can’t break an egg, because he can’t without both thumbs, so he says.

He pouts a lot.

He’s says it itches.

He complains that the lady nurse rewrapped it much more stupidly that the guy who did it the first time.

Diego sniffs it every day and will alert us if he finds anything worth eating in there. So far, no, and given Diego eats EVERYTHING, that’s sayin’ something.

So, I asked him, do you want bacon or sausage with his pancakes on Friday? and he said patties, which I took to mean sausage, which he meant to mean sausage but not links but patties, which makes no freakin’ sense since they both TASTE THE SAME.

And he thinks he should have a body cam so that he can play back our conversations because he is sure I asked him links or patties instead of sausage or bacon. And I’m really sure I didn’t, because I never think of patties versus links and only decided to do the links because I like Johnsonville and they don’t make patties at least as far as I saw, so that’s why I got the links in the first place.

And he just purses his lips in that way that men do when they are thinking, “I’m right, but what’s the use?”.

And I’m thinking, “You’re right, there is no use, since I’m right.”

And he’s off to get my oil changed which came out all wrong, since I don’t get oil changes but my PT Cruiser does, and he has my girl in his custody.

He wants a new bandage put on his thumb, but decided to wait until he got back, because he’s going to the “filthiest place on the planet” after all, so there is no use getting his thumb all spiffed up before THAT. And, no he was not referring to the Jiffy Lube, but rather to WalMart.

My eyes, were examined by an expert the other day, and they came off with an A+.

No wonder, all the eye-rolling I get to do living with this man. Exercise is very good for your eyes they tell me.

If you can beat any of these stories (which are true I swear with just the slightest hyperbole to make it interesting), I’ll roll my eyes for you too!

 

 

 

 

You Really Can’t Go Home Again

Tags

aging, Autobiography, life in the foothills

I’m in one of those head scratching modes. I’m thinking that perhaps I’m the “duh” one, not the others.

The others?

Oh, all those folks I expected more of and got so much less from.

Truth be told, they probably think the same of me.

But I conclude that it was really all my fault from the beginning. And they were generous in their open-armed acceptance. And I was a fraud.

Once upon a time I lived in a place called Flint. It was a factory town, where most everyone got their paycheck one way or another because of cars. We lived in a subdivision called “Mayfair” and my childhood was, as others no doubt saw it, “idyllic”.

People love that term.They mean, you grew up thinking you were fairly normal and you had enough to eat, and TV to watch, and a yard to play in, and got new clothes for the new school year, and a decent load of presents at Christmas. You got to swim in lakes in the summer, and skate on ice ponds in the winter. You ate blueberry pie from wild blueberries picked by your aunts and uncles and cousins. That sort of idyllic.

For no good reason that I ever figured out, kids like to join cliques. Being a “only” child, I was always looking for friends. My best friend as a small child was one of the kids across the street. She was a year older, but when you are young enough, that was okay. Still she was different than me. She came from a big family, me the “only”. She slept in until 9 or 10 in the morning, while I knocked on her door at 8, having waited an excruciating hour at that, to be told by her mom, that she hadn’t gotten up yet.

I sat some more.

Then when I got to older pre-teens I was with another group. I was, for a while, second to the leader, a dark haired girl name Patty something or other, who told us about the $400 dollar couch her parents had, which seemed to make her rich.

You were either on Patty’s good side or bad, and when on the bad, nobody else would play with you, meaning you couldn’t play jump rope with the gang. I tried hard to be on the good side of Patty. It was painful to fail. I was, as you can tell, not principled. I shunned who she shunned and did my best to lick her shoes.

Then there was the middle school years. I tried hard to be in the “in” group. The one that played sports, and were cheerleaders, and that sort of stuff. I was successful for a bit, but the funny thing was, that I was always hanging on by my fingertips, and I knew that.  If we were going to meet at someone’s house to go out for pizza say, I had to be there early, because they would not wait for me. I was one they “put up with” until they didn’t.

Either they didn’t or I grew tired of trying to be “in” and being left “out” too much.

So I drifted to another group whose main attribute seemed to be a general dislike for almost everything that had to do with “that” school and “those” people. We hung out with some guys from another school. We were starting to drive now, and that broadened our horizons.

I felt accepted by them. But still, I probably never felt completely at ease. I was always having to “try”. We had fun for a few years, mostly going to dances, and walking to strip malls and drinking cokes and eating fries. We hung out every evening after school until it was time to go home.

Then we graduated, and I went off to college, and they went off to marriages and babies, and finally I left Flint, only visiting now and then to see family.

And I didn’t contact them, and they didn’t contact me, because I suppose we all knew it was never a proper fit. I was the one who got good grades in spite of trying to look very much that I didn’t care. I was the one who apparently had dreams they did not.

Not that they didn’t have dreams of course, they had them I’m sure, but they were very different from mine, and there was nothing to keep up “friends” after graduation.

I saw Flint as a place to escape from, they saw it as home. I saw education as the means to a life where I did important things, met important people, talked about important things. I met mayors and congressmen, and brilliant jurists  and traveled on “business”, and they did what they did.

I no doubt felt superior, based on my assumption that everybody should want what I wanted, which is surely stupid on my part. But as the years went by, we had less and less in common surely.

Now we are all on the cusp of being real senior citizens, and we’ve reconnected and had those chats about the “old days”. And it was fine for a while. I tried to interact with those from the old groups whom I abandoned in my middle school years, and that was kinda sad.

Some were polite, some were friendly, until we realized that we believed radically different things. Several cut me out of their Facebook life. Others just ignored me. Even though I would dutifully “like” their constant “if you love your daughter share this”, and fishing trips and other stuff, they never returned the favor. My links to my writing was left with stony silence. My birthday was left unremarked about.

What the hell did I do to you?

Some were  “friends” and we maintained the facade a bit longer. A few (those who share my general uber liberal beliefs) still share and “like” a lot, and chat on the side sometimes. But mostly even those who were my “best friends” for a good four years of the high school years, have silently slipped away, no longer interested.

Perhaps my beliefs offend them too. Who knows? As I said, they were open to me, while I always was trying to fit into that square hole with them. So I account it as no one’s fault, just water seeking it’s own level.

I cannot fathom the thought of living in that town still, and having always lived there. I’ve lived in four parts of the country, five really, and I don’t find that a lot frankly, from the friends I have now. We are all people who have traveled from location to location following jobs or dreams. It makes us different from people who haven’t I guess. Or at least it seems so.

I don’t bemoan any of it really. My life is too special to me here and now to lament that I don’t have friendships that are real with people I haven’t seen in 40 years. I just find it curious. And then I don’t. For if we had nothing much in common then, then it can only be worse now.

Mostly, I find that people who stayed in Flint became people I don’t like much. Not all, some seem to have escaped the provincialism and the tribal indrawn mentality. But most are hatin’ kind of people. I don’t know enough about their lives to judge. They say that each generation has it better than the last. My gut tells me that this was not true for most of them.

I guess its good mirror. My desire to learn served me well, bringing me out of a stultifying world and into a cosmopolitan environment where I met people from all over the world, enjoyed other cultures, and lost any sense of “them or us” in my thinking.

I’m a boomer, through and through, an Idealist. I scratch my head and wonder, “how can you think like that????” But dirty factory towns apparently do that to people. Flint became a mean place, in some ways worse that Detroit, because it was always “at least we aren’t Detroit”, and the fall was all the harder I suspect.

Or maybe this is all just me trying to defend me. Funny thing is, I don’t care. Aging does that. No more time for people who aren’t  on the same page. As the meme says, “not my monkeys, not my circus”.

May your life bring you peace–mine has to a degree I would never have thought imaginable. I imagine that pisses some of you off. And that tickles me frankly.

 

“It seems to me that in the orbit of our world you are the North Pole, I the South–so much in balance, in agreement–and yet… the whole world lies between.”
― Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

The Dirty Little Secret

Tags

Autobiography, family

I’ve spoken once or twice about my failed relationship with my parents. Both of them. The trifecta of dysfunctional. It is probably not possible for two dysfunctional people to raise a third who is not also dysfunctional.

That would be me. But I take great comfort in the fact that I became aware that I was dysfunctional quite early on, and took a lot of steps to fix me. I did a good job. In fact, I have to say that that I’ve been “evaluated” and found to be quite sane, and quite functional. (Nowadays when you are considered for entry into the convent you get a psych evaluation, and you also get a copy–so I know of what I speak).

I’ve talked a bit about my mother and father, and how odd it seems to me it is that two people who BOTH functioned on the basis of conditional love would marry. But they did. I’ve explained something about what that is about, and I don’t intend to delve into that all again. It was what it was. They were who they were. Both were emotionally wounded themselves and given that, they presented as fairly normal as most people go.

I certainly am not suggesting that my life was any living hell. It was not. I was not physically abused. I received corporal punishment as was common among all the kids I knew, but no more so than most. My parents were emotionally abusive though I’m quite sure they would never have suspected that what they did was damaging or wrong. People who are emotionally abusive raise kids with all sorts of issues about self-esteem. It impacts what they seek, how they seek it, and how they evaluate their own success in life. It all leads to a bad end  of, I think, revolving abuse, if you aren’t lucky enough as I was to identify it, and fix it.

This all comes up because yesterday was Mother’s Day, and as you might expect, Facebook was just chock full of pictures of everyone’s mom and lots of laudatory things to say. I don’t quarrel with any of that, and in fact, I bless everyone who was lucky enough to have a good relationship with their mother and/or father as the case may be. Father’s day of course is coming up next.

I recognize that a whole lot of people say they “love” their mother, and they “honor” her in many ways, but if you probe a bit, you find that the relationship they had with Mother was anything but loving and supportive. In fact, books galore are written about the difficulties in parent-child relationships.

Which means really that people think that it’s wrong to admit that their relationship with parents simply sucked. It’s the same way mostly with “do you believe in God?” A whole lot of folks will say “yes” because they don’t want to face what they think will be the reaction if they say “no”. People react automatically to “don’t you love you mother?”  They say “yes” because the opposite is unthinkable.

And a ton of folks, bite the bullet as required every year, every month, or whatever, making the journey to mom’s or picking up the phone. But as they do it, their stomach tightens and they try to get prepared for what is to come. When the encounter is over, they feel mostly relief. They go home and lick their new wounds, or bandage up the old one’s that have been torn back open. Tell me if you don’t know people like that?

Yet, it’s somehow better to “put up with” mom’s snide remarks, badgering about the grandchildren she doesn’t yet have, you’re failure to live up to her expectations, and so on and so on. It’s better to put up with it than to remove yourself from a toxic situation that is causing you pain and trouble. Somehow you “owe” it because after all they “had you”.

Well, the dirty secret is that there are a lot of adult children out there who have cut the cord, saying enough is enough. I’m going to get healthy and stay that way. Mothers aren’t always “there for you”, they aren’t always “on your side”. They don’t always have “your best interests at heart”. Sometimes they have their own, and no doubt they are not even aware.

I recall many years ago a discussion with a group of nuns I was spending a weekend with. They were talking about the necessity to vision God in not just male terms. God needs to be what God is, non-gendered. The reason is that there are people out their who have been abused by men, and calling God “father” is jarring to them and makes it difficult for them to feel safe in God’s love.  I realized the importance of that idea, and it carries over to such holidays as Mother’s and Father’s day.

For those of us what have found it necessary to move on from these relationships, such days are reminders of what others have that we don’t. Or more correctly what many of those others profess to have because they are afraid to utter the words, “I don’t want a relationship with you any more.”

Someone posted this on Facebook and I went and read it, and was surprised at how viscerally some of these things hit me. It’s entitled, 13 Things No Estranged Child Needs to Hear on Mother’s Day.

No one should feel ashamed or more importantly feel called upon to explain or defend their decision. We are all born of someone. We do not “owe” them anything for that. We exist. We have a right to try to make our lives as happy and complete as we desire. Nobody should be forced to endure misery because “they’re your parents”.  I am sad that I did not have the relationship I envisioned.  I hold no anger that I did not. I have let all that go long long ago.

I have found the mentors I needed and they were happy to be there when I needed them. I don’t consider my story unusual or myself particularly brave or special.  I suspect there are a lot more out there who don’t desire to be open about their own journey of estrangement. They have every right to talk or not about it as they see fit. I’m just willing to let others know that if they are like me, they are not alone. Not by a long shot.

It’s about truth.

Maybe we need, a day of honoring all those people who have helped us become those things we admire in ourselves. A “You’re a Good Person Day”.

Perhaps it would mean more than  words spoken in hollow obedience to society’s “norms” that I fear is all too often the case.