Your Gay Friend Doesn’t Speak For Me

January 31, 2012February 1, 2012 ~ riggledo ~ 10 Comments

A few months ago, a friend of mine, whom I know not to be racist or homophobic or otherwise filled with hate posted a comment on Facebook to which I took offense:

The cars with the reindeer decorations are gay. I have seen 2 today

I replied by saying that I didn’t realize cars could be gay, to which she said this one was. I said, “Dislike” since Facebook hasn’t been kind enough to provide an “I don’t approve of this” button – yet.

A friend of her’s, someone she knows face to face (I’ve only known her through on-line interactions) responded and said that there’s nothing wrong with saying “gay”. I agree, and I said so before adding, “it’s not OK to use ‘gay’ as a derogatory statement.” He provided a nasty, spiteful comment that doesn’t bear repeating and that really demonstrated to me that there’s still a long way to go, even in the realm of gay’s bashing each other. And I opted to see my way out of that conversation. The last thing I saw before “hiding” that “story” from my timeline was a statement from my friend who said that she meant no harm by it, that she would never want to hurt me and that there was no “cause for ‘ugliness'” as a result of her comment. She said that her gay friends have “given me permission” to make gay jokes.

The other day, after a much too long absence from her blog, she talked about “Me and my bestest queer* are going to…” The asterisk pointed to a footnote that read, “*He allows me to call him the queer so it’s fine.” One has to question: Why was it necessary to point out his permission, if “it’s fine.” Clearly my friend is aware of the potential for offense at the comment.

First, let me say that I am not calling this friend out, personally. This is a commentary on society, which uses these two relatively recent events as examples of the issue I’m discussiong. I’ve made a point of not naming her and I’m pretty sure she’ll be the only one who knows who I’m talking about, so let me also say that she is the only one who could out herself if she chooses to comment on this post in a way that will make it clear that she’s the one I mean…

Second, let me say that I know my friend is not a homophobe and that she does not personally harbor any ill will or negative feelings about me, or the gay community as a whole. On the contrary, she loves us.

Third, let me say that I don’t, personally, take particular offense at the use of the word “queer”. Webster’s dictionary defines the word queer as: Different from the normal or expected : strange. So, maybe I should take offense at the word, but I don’t. Just like I don’t take offense at the word gay. Personally, I am gay, and that’s not a bad thing. I am not queer, because there’s nothing different or strange about me. However, when those words are used to describe anything or anyone with a derogatory connotation involved, then those words are offensive to me. And they ought to be offensive to you, too!

So here’s the thing. In discussing this friend of mine and her “bestest queer” (whom she revealed to me, in a separate communication, that she refers to as “the queer”) she can call him whatever she wants in private conversation between the two of them. If he has no problem with her referring to him as “the queer”, than more power to them. If he doesn’t feel that saying something which she clearly doesn’t like “is gay” is a derogatory use of the word, and she wants to say it to him; more power to them. But just because the two of them don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, doesn’t mean the whole world agrees with them. It doesn’t even mean most of the world agrees with them. And I’ve got news for the two of them: It doesn’t even mean that the majority of that particular community agrees with them.

So, okay. The two of them are having a private conversation and she wants to tell her friend that cars with reindeer decorations on them are gay, and he thinks it’s funny, but they happen to be having this conversation in the middle of a restaurant and other people hear them. That is not a private conversation and instead of making a funny joke, they’ve just utilized hate speech. To the people in that restaurant, they’re not two people having a joke, they’re a couple of homophobes (or at the very least, very insensitive people), using a perfectly valid word that describes a perfectly valid portion of our society and comparing them to something that is unwanted and negative. You can make the argument that “it’s a private conversation between the two of them” if you want, but it’s not. It’s just not. (Certainly Facebook isn’t.) And just like that (*snaps fingers*) It’s not “okay, because my gay friend gave me his permission.” Your gay friend doesn’t speak for me.

But let’s take this just a little bit further. Let’s say my friend and her “bestest queer” agree that it’s not okay to use this language in public, but they are sitting around in the “bestest queer’s” living room using gay slurs (in a “humorous way”) and making jokes in which the term gay is used in a derogatory manner and they both think it’s funny and they’re completely at ease with it. How long is it going to be before one of them slips in public and makes one of those jokes where other people can hear (or read) them? When you allow yourself to think of something as being okay in private, before long you start thinking it’s okay in public, too. Before long you lose your perspective and you stop censoring yourself when it’s appropriate to do so.

Even worse! Suppose my friend and her “bestest queer” think I’m crazy and there’s just no way they would slip up in public and so it’s okay to make there jokes in private, just between the two of them. This friend of mine has a young son; a toddler. If she and her “bestest queer” sit around her house behaving this way, not only are they losing their own perspective of what’s appropriate, but they’re setting the example for her son that it’s the proper way to behave, or even worse teaching him that there really is something wrong with being gay, teaching him to judge, hate or otherwise criticize homosexuality, and if he happens to be gay, there’s a good chance that he could feel shame and fear of telling his parents because it’s been portrayed as something to be made fun of.

Outsiders do not get “inside jokes”. The people around you can not read your mind. The only thing people can go by, in understanding your beliefs and developing a sense of who you are, is your words. It is necessary, therefore, that you use a sense of good judgement in determining how you use certain terms in modern society.

A person can make the argument until he is blue in the face that he doesn’t mean any harm with the use of certain words, but the bottom line is, when you use a term, like say, “gay”, in a context in which that term does not fit by definition, like say, “cars with reindeer decorations are gay”, one can only go by what they hear (or read). Webster’s dictionary defines “gay” as: 1. Merry. 2. Bright and lively, especially in color. 3. Inclined toward social pleasures. 4. Homosexual. — n. A homosexual. I don’t think cars are capable of either emotion or sexual identity/behavior, therefore, I can only assume the statement is a derogatory statement which should not be made.

The bottom line is this: No matter what is in your heart, when you make a statement that has a negative context and you use a term that describes a particular section of society (particularly one that is already persecuted) to convey that negative context, you are, in fact making a statement of hate.

And it should. not. be. done.

Rides and Monkey Poop

January 27, 2012 ~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

“I’m in the process of getting over myself,” I told the small band of do-gooders sitting around me.

It was my weekly meeting of advisors for my Building Emergency Response Team (BERT) program and we were discussing deployment of our website. This website isn’t a new idea, nor is it a new product; it’s just something that hasn’t been in our control and hasn’t been properly maintained

Years ago, I asked for access to the site so I could make sure the data relevant to my buildings was kept current. I was told I would have it and then the matter died there with no fulfillment or follow through. The site remained out of date and the person whose job it was to maintain it, the person who, coincidentally enough holds the title of “systems administrator”, couldn’t be bothered to keep up with it and wouldn’t post the updated information in a timely manner. No one seemed to care about this, besides me… and my 230 “clients” who utilize the information that was chronically out of date.

My little band of helpers and I started looking for another way to make this information available. My company has its own “Facebook” type site on the intranet and we set up a group for the BERT program, but the information we were discussing, that needed to be readily available and easy to find, would get lost on that site as newer items were added and pushed that information further down the page. Not everyone on my council is as jaded as I am. Some of them still hold the mistaken belief that things can be done properly around here. They wanted me to ask for access again. I explained to them that I had done so more than once and that the end result is always run-around and disappointment and it’s reached a point where no one wants to listen to me about it any longer. The perception is that I’m the rabble-rouser, troublemaker and that the Systems Administrator is doing nothing wrong. So some of the more optimistic participants of the group took it upon themselves to contact my boss’s boss on my behalf and request the access for me.

Somewhat to my surprise, no one got upset that it was requested. No one came down on me for stirring things up, or for sicking my “underlings” on them. A week or so later, I got a simple e-mail with a user name and password and a link to the administrative portion of the site, ironically hosted on WordPress.

On closer examination, however, I discovered that the site I had been given access to was an entirely new site. The old site had not been on WordPress and the decision had been made to move everything over for easy of use. As I perused the information that was available, I discovered that none of the properties that I work with were included in the site. No pages even existed for my properties. Nearly a week later, I got an e-mail from the Systems Administrator asking me to let him know when I had time to talk (on the phone) so he could show me how I could create the pages.

I discussed this with my manager and the conclusion that we agreed on (shocking, I know) was that it is the Systems Administrator’s job to build the site; the only thing I had ever wanted was the ability to keep the downloadable documents up to date. My manager sent an e-mail to the Systems Administrator and CC’d me asking him to create the pages for our buildings so that I could update the documentation. His response? “The pages are created, Kevin just needs to copy and paste them from the other buildings.” My manager didn’t respond and no additional action was taken until a couple of days ago when I sent him my own e-mail and copied my boss saying, “Can you tell me when the pages for my buildings will be created so that I can add the documents to them?” His response, once again, was to tell me to let him know when I was available so he could tell me how I could create them.

Now, rationally speaking, I realize that it’s not going to be all that difficult for me create the pages and customize them to my buildings. I realize that it will get the job done more quickly and my cohorts and I can get on with our project. Ultimately, I understand that it’s the thing to do. It makes more sense, I suppose, at least to most people, and it would be a lot easier on me, just to go ahead and do the work and get on with my life. I get that… Really.

But the problem is, I can’t bring myself to do it, at least not yet. I have such an egalitarian perspective on life that it stops me being able to shrug my shoulders and go on with the work. I believe so strongly in right and wrong, fair play, that it hurts me to do something that I feel violates that sense. I see it as a much bigger picture than just me getting my website built. Here is a person who doesn’t do his job and pushes it off on other people. A person whose customer service (and we are his customers) sucks. He makes no effort to understand his customers’ problems, he doesn’t communicate his answers clearly and he doesn’t do what’s asked of him, by the customers he serves, in anything like a timely manner.

And no one does anything about it!!!

Something needs to be done, and of course I realize, I’m not the one to do it. No one will listen to me; I’m only one man. Only then the thought comes to mind, “Martin Luther King, Jr. was only one man.” Except, I guess he wasn’t only one man once he actually accomplished something. He was a leader of many men and women who believed in his cause and followed his example. Something I’m not going to be able to do here and in this situation.

I have yet to convince myself that my creating these web pages isn’t an endorsement of this persons behavior, and while this is a simple and small thing for me to do and only a small part of his job, it literally makes me ill and angry to consider doing it for him. I mean, literally, I can feel tears burning behind my eyes just thinking about it.

How do I make this rational knowledge of simplifying my own existence translate into a psychological peace with performing the act? I do not know! Because it’s not fair!

K’s father has a saying, “A fair is a place you go to ride the rides and step in monkey poop.” (Actually most of his dad-isms involved poop in one way or another.)

I wish I could figure out how to reconcile the knowledge of what has to be with my reality of its wrongness…

I’m still in the process of getting over myself.

Sopapillas and Pita Bread

January 18, 2012 ~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

I was going to write a riveting, brilliant, startling revelation of a post, today, about my improved emotional well-being and something that I’ve been giving a lot of though to recently. It was going to be a amazing and you were going to love it.

But now I’m just pissed off and it’s all your fault. Yours and yours and… well, not yours. You didn’t do it.

It’s all this bullshit I’m seeing everywhere I turn about the bills before the house and congress about censorship of the internet. I’m just sick of it.

No! You know what I’m sick of? I’m sick of vigilante activism. That’s what I’m sick of. Occupy this. Black out that. Come on! You want to educate people, then educate people, but this is ridiculous.

Last night I watched a really weird LGBT movie called “The Lost Coast”. The movie was strange, but it had some really good moments in it. Early on one of the characters picks up a photograph in another characters apartment and says, “Is this the lost coast?” I didn’t even know the lost coast was a real place. (Turns out it’s somewhere north of where I live, here in California.) I did what I always do when I don’t know something. I Googled it. This was last night; about 9:00. The first result, as is so often the case, was Wikipedia. So I clicked on the link and the page loaded, and then just as I was starting to read about the lost coast, the screen went black and an annoying message popped up, whining at me about internet censorship and “Imagine a World
Without Free Knowledge”. There was no way to acknowledge the message and move on. Just, “nah-neh-nah-neh-nah-nah. You can’t read my pages.” Last night. It annoyed me, but I found what I wanted to know elsewhere.

Today, as I’m reading through the blogs in my reader, I find post after post about these bills and how wretched and horrible and awful the bills are. Now, I usually open the blogs and read them on people’s sites. I’m not at all sure that reading in Google Reader counts toward people’s page views on their blog stats and while we like to pretend we’re cool and don’t care about such things, we’re lying. We all care. So I like to make sure it counts. (This, by the way, is the reason you have to come to my blog to read the entire post… just in case you were wondering.) Anyway, half of these posts have come through just fine in my reader and I could read the entire thing if I wanted, but when I clicked on the blogs themselves the blogs are blacked out “in protest”. So, I can read teh whole damn post on Google Reader, but I can’t read it on your blogs and show you I’ve been there. Vigilante Activism Fail!!!

It’s not that you wrote blog posts about it. They’re your blogs. You can write what you want. Personally, I’m annoyed by the glut of posts on the subject, but at least by writing about the bills you’re making an effort to educate me. It’s the “blacking out” of the pages “in protest” that’s got me pissed. By the way, I haven’t read any of your anti-sopapilla bill blog posts. I’ve even dropped a couple anti-pita bread bloggers from my line up. Enough is enough!

I sent a link to a particularly funny lolcat to K this afternoon. The lolcats did it right. There’s a screen that pops up in front of the page and tells you to beware the bogey monster and then at the bottom it asks you if you’d like to learn more. You can click a “learn more” button and, imagine that, learn more. Or you can click on the “no thanks” button and get on with your life. K wouldn’t look at the lolcat because she wasn’t willing to click the “no thanks” button. Her loss.

Look. I get it. Censorship is bad. We don’t want these bills to pass and if someone presents me with an unoffensive petition to sign, I’ll sign it. I sent the e-mails to my representatives. I’ve done my part. And the truth is, I don’t really understand what these bills are about. What is internet piracy? How are these bills supposed to make things better? I. Don’t. Know. What I do know is, blacking out or otherwise inconveniencing half of the internet, isn’t serving any purpose. I guarantee you the talking heads in Washington, do not care that I couldn’t look up the lost coast last night. The vast majority of them have not looked for a single website that happened to be part of this ridiculous protest.

IT. DOES. NOT. WORK.

Counting Thoughts

December 21, 2011December 21, 2011 ~ riggledo ~ 8 Comments

Some people say that Holiday’s like Christmas are all about giving. “‘Tis better to give than to receive,” and all that hooey. I have very mixed feelings about the gift giving holidays. I want to get presents. Let’s be honest, don’t we all? I think anyone who says, “I don’t care about receiving presents. I just like giving things to people and watching their faces light up when they open the package,” is lying through their artificially whitened teeth. (I don’t know why the teeth are artificially whitened, that’s just the first thing that came to mind and we’re going to go with it.)

I like to GET presents, but I HATE to give them. I do. It’s not because I’m stingy or selfish. I’m not. I do like to give people presents that they genuinely enjoy and appreciate. There is a commercial that keeps playing on the radio right now: I think it’s for Roku (Obviously not a very good commercial because I had to try six different spellings, “Orocu, Orokoo, Arocu, arocoo, etc.” before I actually found ROKU with no O or A in front of it.) The commercial says something about knowing the different between genuine appreciation and fake appreciation when you give a gift. I? I get the fake appreciation most of the time.

I don’t usually try to give people gifts that will blow them away. I don’t make any sort of effort to surprise people, because I suck at it. I ask people “What do you want?” and then if I can afford it, I give it to them. If I can’t afford it, I ask, “What else?” I hate it when they tell me, “I don’t know.”

I’m just not very good at gift giving. I suck at gift giving and I come by it naturally. Observe:

One year, when I was about fifteen, my mother decided, seemingly on the spur of the moment, that she was going to give us something for Christmas. She ran out on Christmas Eve, in search of some kind of gifts for her children. The next morning, after we had our traditional Pillsbury cinnamon roll breakfast, we each opened a small package with our name on it. Each package contained one embroidered dish towel and one pot holder… with Santa Claus on them. Again… I WAS FIFTEEN.

Last year my mother sent me a green t-shirt with a giant Grinch face screen printed on it. She couldn’t have known by looking at the shirt that the dastardly smiling mouth on the shirt only serves to highlight my much maligned and despised gut. I also don’t appreciate being referred to as “The Grinch”, which is what she calls me when she’s not calling me Scrooge. I never have and never will wear the shirt out of the house.

Last week I received a text from my mother:

“I’ve ordered you some Christmas goodies from Harry & David. Don’t know when they’ll arrive but be on the lookout.”

By chance I came home that night to a box on my front steps. I opened it up and found a metal tin inside with three different flavors of Moose Munch. If you don’t already know, this is Muse Munch:

And these are my teeth:

Give or take a few months and a different color rubber band.

I texted her, “This is some awfully mean stuff to send a guy with braces. 😉 Good thing they’re coming off soon. :-)”

“I completely forgot about the braces!” she told me.

I answered, “It’s OK. They’ll be off in a few weeks. That stuff will certainly keep. Thanks for sending it. Should be tasty.”

She asked, “Did you get both boxes?” I told her I only got one. “The other one will be a little more braces-friendly, I think.”

The next day a second box appeared on my steps. “This box has air holes…” I texted to her. “Did you send me a puppy?” This box had six pears, a small bag of mixed nuts and a block of cheese. (See the picture of my mouth above.) I’m not particularly fond of fresh pears, though I don’t know if it’s realistic to expect that she ought to have known that.

It’s clear my mother doesn’t know how to give good gifts, though certainly she means well. I wrote yesterday about all the pressure, expectations, and demands on holidays and this is just part of it.

I’ve been thinking, these last several days, about gifts and how I feel about them. There was a time when I bought into the addage, “It’s the thought that counts” only, I don’t think I believe it anymore.

I’m fully prepared for the one person who actually comments on my blog with any regularity (and the one person who just has to talk to me in person about it because she’ll explode if she puts her thoughts down on the blog instead of – or maybe in addition to – talking to me about it in person) to give me all kinds of grief over this, and that’s okay, but just hear me out.

I have so much stuff. Way too much stuff really. I don’t need more stuff. And I’m beginning to feel like gifts for the sake of gifts? are just stuff. It’s stuff I can’t throw away, or give away or return, because if the giver catches wind that I got rid of his gift so that it won’t be just stuff, the giver will get his feelings hurt. The thing is, if the giver gave me a good gift, then it wouldn’t be just stuff it would be something of value, something I might treasure and therefore, would not get rid of it. I’m coming to a point where I feel like, if I don’t need, or didn’t already really want, the item the giver is giving me, it’s actually a burdon. And because I feel this way, I feel very ambivilant about giving gifts because I don’t want my gifts to be seen that way, and so I’m just adding to the pressure on myself to give good gifts so that they won’t be just stuff and I’m no good at it.

If you’re like me, though, you buy yourself all the affordable things that you need or really want and it’s the things that you can’t afford that you really want someone to give you, only they can’t really afford it either and so there’s nothing for them to give you because you’ve already bought all the things that people can afford that you want. It’s a vicious cycle.

I’m not sure, now, where this post was going to go, though I’m certain it was a very different direction. What I do know, now, though, is…

Give money!

I think that’s what I’m going to do from now on.

If everyone who was going to give me a gift, just gave me money instead, maybe I could pool all that money together and spend it on something I really wanted, like an iPad or a new television instead of a box of pears and a — Well, I don’t know what else, because I really only expect to get one other gift and I have no idea what it will be… probably Glee DVDs.

Apparently, Michelle was going to buy me a new printer since the one I had doens’t work with my new-ish computer… But I bought myself one on Saturday so now she has to come up with something else. Way to go, me! But in “me’s” defense, Michelle stood right there and watched it happen and didn’t say anything until we got back to her house with it. She could have stopped me.

OH! I know where I was going with all that!

I’ve been struggling for the last several days with the idea of gratitude and appreciation vs. expectations and dissappointment.

When I opened the box of Moose Munch, I was dissapointed that my mother sent me what amounts to caramel corn and chocolate chips. (You Moose Munch enthusiast can just back-off. I’ve never had it and I can’t eat it for at least another two weeks and probably six.) It’s food. She sent me food for Christmas. I can afford to buy my own food so this didn’t fill a need. A quick glance at the Harry & David website tells me she probably spent close to $30.00 on this caramel corn and chocolate chips. Plus she sent the pears and cheese. Another $40.00? At least it is food and will go away. It’s not just stuff.

On the other hand, there were lots of years when she didn’t give me anything.

So I can’t help but wonder… Am I making too much out of this? Is it really “the thought that counts”? Am I just ungrateful? Is it my own fault for having too high expectations when I find out someone sent me anything at all?

Then again, it occurs to me that since I can’t remember any of the gifts I did get when I was a kid, and more often than not, I can’t remember a few months later what I gave anyone or what anyone gave to me… Maybe it is the thought that counts…

The truth is, I’m feeling simultaneously grateful and dissapointed, I just would like to open a package and just be delighted by what I find. But the fact that I feel grateful and dissapointed at the same time is soemthing in itself. I’m certainly not accustomed to the ability to acknowledge two contradictory feelings at the same time.

By the way, the pears are awesome, much to my surprise.

What is the Deal

December 14, 2011 ~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Watch this video from my favorite Christmas movie. Don’t worry, it’ll open in a separate window. I tried to embed it but the person who posted this set it up so it couldn’t be embedded and it was the only clip I could find with the crucial line in it. If you don’t have much time, skip ahead and watch from 3:03 to about 3:30. (Thanks a lot, Christmas Dave for ruining the flow of my blog post.)

Go over to YouTube and watch the clip. Go ahead. I’ll wait. I’ll be here when you get back.

Finished? Great. Now allow me to branch off into a seemingly completely unrelated topic, only to loop it all back around in then end…

I’ve got a bit of seemingly minimal crap going on in my life. But of course, “a bit” of seemingly minimal crap can pile on and amount to one big pile of smelly, unpleasant… stress.

The apartment I have lived in for the last four years has only one built-in source of heat. It’s a small, gas-burning fireplace with asbestos (probably not asbestos) logs that glow when hot to make it look like they’re on fire. The flame itself only resembles a smoulder and offers no ambiance to my apartment. The fireplace gets pretty hot right where it is and according to “them” is supposed to be sufficient to heat my whole apartment. In reality, it s about 85 degrees at the fireplace and about 65 degrees 8 feet away. Plus, the fir place puts off an obnoxious odor that gives me a headache. I choose not to use the fireplace and in the meantime, it is freezing in my apartment.

Yesterday I went to the Orthodontist for what was supposed to be my take-my-braces-off appointment. Last month, the younger Dr. Tinloy (it’s a father and son practice) told me to pay close attention to my teeth over the next month and see if there was anything else I felt needed to be corrected and this month we’d talk about taking the braces off. Realizing that literal perfection is not a possibility at my age, without extraction and implants, I’m pretty happy with the way my teeth look these days, but I did notice that the back teeth on the bottom are not in-line with the rest of my teeth. I didn’t know if it really mattered, or if it was worthwhile (or even possible) to try to correct, but I didn’t want to look back on this experience in a couple of years and wish I had stuck it out and gotten those last two teeth straightened out. When I pointed this out to the older Dr. Tinloy yesterday, he agreed that it could be done and even said he did think it was worthwhile. So here I sit with braces still on my teeth and in some respects tighter than they’ve ever been. I’m aware that after only one year and nearly finished I’m better off than most and my threshold for pain is pretty high so I haven’t had a lot of discomfort, but they’re a hassle and I’m ready to have them off. In the end though, I chose to continue with the process and finish what I started.

Some time in the last month or so, some ne’er-do-wells managed to sneak some contraptions into the self-service check stands at several of the local Lucky’s grocery stores. These contraptions record and somehow transmitted or conveyed the information from customer’s credit cards to the ne’er-do-wells who have been using the information fraudulently and causing a lot of trouble and heartache for the owners of those cards and the banks they’re attached to. Sadly, I frequent two of those Lucky’s grocery stores and while, fortunately, I have not been a victim of any identity theft, or bank fraud, my bank, proactively, decided to cancel my debit card because I shopped at those stores. They sent a replacement, which I received yesterday, but for several days I was without access to my money…

This was not as much of a hardship as it could have been, because, well… I really don’t have any money. I have $38.00 in the bank until payday which is this Friday. I need to do Christmas shopping (soon, since most of my gifts are going out of state) and I have bills that are coming due soon, but for the moment, I’m OK, financially speaking. Still $38.00 isn’t much and I would certainly prefer to have more money just hanging around… I suppose we could all say that, though, no matter how much we actually have “hanging around.”

For a few weeks, ever since the very sniffly, coughy, non-hand-washy DMV worker, I’ve been struggling with cold-like symptoms. First it was a couple of weeks of running nose and sniffles. Then just as that was dwindling away, I started coughing… TWO. WEEKS. LATER. The cough has persisted. It’s not constant, though it is a nuisance. It’s not productive and despite my best efforts it’s not offering any kind of relief to the irritation that causes it in the first place. While I have not been short of breath, I have had a hard time getting a full, deep breath and when I try, it just makes me cough some more. Also, after nearly three weeks of coughing, I have muscular pain in my chest and back when I cough. Monday, I finally broke down and called my health care provider. I wasn’t sure there was any point in me going in – I don’t go to the doctor for the common cold… though maybe I should. After a conversation with an “Advice Nurse” it was determined that I could probably make do with a “phone appointment” and a little while later, I spoke with a doctor who, after discussing my symptoms said, “it sounds like you’ve got bronchitis” and proceeded to put in three prescriptions for me; two inhalers and one bottle of pills. Now, what I’m about to say is going to sound really ungrateful, so let me just specify that I KNOW I’m luckier than many people when it comes to health care coverage and yet, even for me, an employee of my healthcare provider, costs have gone up. Everything is relative and compared to the coverage I used to have – $5.00 for prescriptions and $0.00 for everything else – the increased expenses suck.

Remember that my ATM/Debit card was cancelled and I did not have access to the $38.00 in the bank. I happened to have very full jars of change on my dresser which I took to a coinstar machine and cashed in. It gave me enough cash that I should have been able to get through this week without any fears of running out of lunch money. My three prescriptions on Monday night cost me $45.00 and I had to pay another $1.00 for parking. I had $49.00 cash in my pocket. Suddenly, I didn’t have any more money for the week.

Monday, I reminded K of a task she needed to complete for me this week. It’s a task that will take her all of 20 minutes to complete and normally she wouldn’t have to do it right now, but she’s on vacation next week and I’m taking another two weeks stay-cation starting at Christmas. What she needs to do for me needs to be done and announced before I go on vacation, therefore, she needs to do it this week. Her response? “See this is why I asked you last week if there was anything else I owed you.” After thinking of a number of less friendly things to say, I simply said, “You’re welcome,” and left it at that. I chose not to make her attitude, my problem.

Yesterday, I had about an hour and a half between my Orthodontist appointment and my bi-weekly appointment with Deb and while I was at home I had a thought that caught me a little by surprise and when I expressed the thought to Deb, “With all this stuff going on, I’m not stressed out about it. I’m doing just fine,” I got a mental picture of The Grinch in the scene above…

To paraphrase a little bit, “I’ve got all this crap going on, and I’m fine. What is the DEAL?!?!?”