Monthly Archives: July 2013

And it’s only Tuesday . . .

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

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I’m having a bad week. And it’s only Tuesday.

Yesterday I went to my studio and found that my portfolio was missing. Plain old gone, and I have no idea where several other pieces of art went either. (They’d been held separate, having been in shows.) Nobody as much as mentioned the $90 check I’m owed for a piece that sold (for a hundred bucks less than my asking price because I caved)–God knows where that is in their machinery over there. All the people who would know what’s going on are on vacation this week.

On my way home, I thought of stopping by the farmer’s market, which has historically been kind enough to not only take food stamps, but to double their value in the little cards or plastic coins they give to pay the vendors. Thought of grabbing a bunch of basil for this fried rice dish my friend had told me about. And whatever else looked good. Farmer’s markets are great for the “What IS that? Hmm, let’s find out” enlargement of the palate.  Although I found having to use food stamps humiliating even before the last election year told me what a waste of oxygen I was, it was worth it to even see what these heirloom tomato things looked like.

So I went up to the place where they take your food stamps and do the conversion thingy, and was flabbergasted. No doubling. (Oh well, whatever.) But no face value. Instead, they were halving. E.g., if I gave them $20 off my Card o’ Shame–they would give me $10 in tokens. There are so many things wrong with this that it would take a really long blog which would end in my fingers hitting random keys to indicate random rage-filled sputtering. What immediately struck me is that this is the sort of food stamp fraud people have been pompous about: I’d be selling food stamps: getting a value from my stamps–and somebody else would be turning a profit: What the sheep were they doing with the extra money?

I was a Nice Lady, and didn’t tear off the guy’s head, move aside his laminated tag saying that he was the SNAP/EBT person, and piss down his neck. I just asked him twice over to make sure that was what it did and went away before I cried from being too tired and having skipped lunch and the injustice of it all.

I went home and wrote not-tantrumy email to the city employee listed on the website, and she called me within five minutes and was horrified and disbelieving. She promised to look into this, and I am interested in what she will find. I also posted this on my Facebook page, which alerted the brimstone-breathing professional lobbyist friend, who really doth hunger and thirst after righteousness. Bwah ha, crooked market people!

And then I found out that for the second time I had been passed over to take a professional training class which I need to retain my employment. (They won’t actually sack me, thank God. It wasn’t my fault–there are only 30-some spaces and over 100 people apply. And it means I won’t have to leave my house every August Wednesday at 6 a.m. to go to Woostah. But still.)

So I curled up and cried so piteously that my daughter gave me her Klondike bar.

Today, I woke up feeling better, and went to work, where I had the usual Tuesday case of too-much-to-do-and-not-enough-time. No badness there. I stopped off at the Indian store on the way home, to grab rice and incense . . .

. . . and somehow . . .

. . . lost my wallet.

Fortuitously, my bank was on the next corner and shut down my card immediately, leaving me a week of replacing the other stuff at a price of some $50. Which isn’t the nightmare burden it once would have been, but will of course also take a great deal of time.

Needless to say, I’m depressed. I am superstitious enough to wonder if my run of bad luck will continue, which scares me. My life is filled with fragile pets and people and computers.

I lost my wallet this winter, and to my joy and amazement, the guy who found it immediately tracked me down and handed it over. No such luck so far. The finder (enriched by about $4) knows that I’m poor and disabled, and knows where I live and has my business card. But nada. The likelihood here seems that it’s your average creep. I am bummed beyond crying.

Instead, I posted the next-to-last chapter of Damascus, and decided to whinge to you here. Let’s just cross our fingers about tomorrow. My daughter is going out and getting me a wallet with a chain. Maybe it will be pink. Or leather or something. Ya never know.

Pain

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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Five weeks ago I gave myself a brutal sprained ankle, with the upshot that I’m not going to be going to the fireworks tonight–there’s still some residual inflammation, and the two miles would do me in. Hell, I’d be done in when I got there, and I don’t know if that beautiful rumble in my chest would pump out enough serotonin to compensate for the weedy little voice inside whining, “When do I get to sit do-o-own?” We live close enough to the action that we’ll be able to hear them–not loudly enough–but not see them at all. Which makes it worse.

(Hmm, what if I take one of my crutches . . .? What if I just open up a big #10 can of get-over-it?)

I also have arthritis in my knees, and I seem to recall this keeping me home last year. This is unfair, seeing as I got my magic cortisone shots this week, and all that hurts are these two or three acid-dipped rubber bands running up the inside of my lower calf. I’d love to go; to take my son, who is new to the Big City and Real Fireworks (set off by professionals who do not get their heads blown off). But there it is: I’m a wussy. There’s only so much soldiering through I can do.

The thing about this is that I’m a pain champion. Screw that tired labor/childbirth stuff (which I escaped via cesarean, therefore sullying my resume)–I get repeated kidney stones! (Women swear they’re worse, and I’ve lost count–probably 30ish, with two serious kidney infections to boot.) And I once had a bowel obstruction. I wanted to go to my emergency room, so at 5 am (thinking I just had a kidney stone, because that was how acute the pain was) I walked half a mile to the subway, changed trains, endured the longest 5 minute cab ride of my life, and showed up able to get the concepts “kidney stone” and “puking NOW” across. I get migraines! Champion, I tell you!

I suppose it’s the particular sort of pain–you can grit your teeth against a constant agony. Work on your breathing. Advice: don’t overdo this. I once had a stone obstruct (no good very bad life threatening) and the blob of clay I saw sent me home accusing me of “drug-seeking.” (N.B.: I wanted Toradol, which does nothing interesting to you at all.) I just wasn’t showing enough pain. In vain did I tell her that I had learned the hard way that crying doesn’t give the nice people in the E.R. the information they need. Letter in her file. Heh.

But when every step sends a needle of fire up my leg I whimper like the sissy little girl I really am. And it’s almost healed now, too. You should have seen me a couple of weeks ago, with the kids waiting on me and trying not to glare at the men who didn’t give me their seats on the train. (Five times out of six, seat-givers are women.)

I am, of course, no stranger to psychic pain, and I’ve had a boatload of that too. Sometimes I soldier, sometimes I whimper. Sometimes I try to figure out if watching all that CSI means I might not get caught, bwah ha.

But fireworks have always made it better. I was in the hospital in Indianapolis once (hyperemesis with daughter, sigh) and they had a huge window overlooking the river where they were setting them off. Best fireworks seat ever; mood a trifle dampened by it being in a cancer surgical ward; been puking for four days straight–all day–but . . . fireworks, man!

How much can it possibly hurt?