FFM Once Again
New Rule: I fend, you fend, we all fend for ourselves
I get it. Government help is only for those who meet certain criteria. It has always been thus.
The criteria is typically official poverty and non-employability. It has also been thus, as far as I can tell, for the last all-of-my-life.
And it makes sense. Those of us too obstinate to stop working shouldn’t get the special treatment of those who cannot work. Like I said, I get it.
But it leaves me in the same juice I’ve been pickling in since 1982, when I was too non-capacitated to function in someone else’s work environment, yet not sufficiently functional to support my family in the manner that would let them compete with the Joneses in their lives.
Keeping me alive and working has always been expensive—and until the last few decades, non-tax deductible. Mine is so not the typical story, leaving me open for, oh, the last forty-three years or so, to those slings and arrows, not of outrageous fortune, but of well-intentioned wishers who wonder if I’ve ever tried… fill in the blank. I’ve already ranted about that. This is a different rant. This one’s about not being able to walk anymore.
Okay, that’s a lie. I can, too. It’s just that trying to stay on my feet now depletes my daily spoon supply to the point I either lose consciousness or become immobile. Not paralyzed, mind you, just non-capable of moving. The parts all work, they just don’t wanna so they’re not gonna, and what the fuck do I think I’m gonna do about that, huh? Huh?
Waste my (and Kata’s) time, apparently, to relearn the same lesson I keep dumbasfuck butting my head up against every few decades. This episode started when I saw that Physical Medicine DO (Doctor of Osteopathy) a few months ago, who agreed it would be best for me to start using a wheelchair, but Medicare wouldn’t cover said equipment until I couldn’t get around my house without one. That’s med-speak for “no government aid until you slip below the poverty line.” Been there, didn’t do that, not interested in spinning on that particular merry-go-round any more.
But, alas, I’ve now physically declined to the point that I can’t get around the house on my feet without inducing neurological exhaustion, which not only saps my physiological energy, but my mental acuity as well. And I ain’t agonna give that up, not for no viral squatter what’s done outlived its welcome nearly six decades ago! FDT? FMS!
FDT, i.e., Fuck Donald Trump, if you’re one of the few innocents left in the world, is the tagline for Dave’s Sweet Tooth Toffee, crafted in a variety of non-typical flavors and sold in little packages for more than Almond Rocca costs, but with the side bonus that the company will send a jar of rocks to your favorite SOB politician.
Customers claim it’s the best toffee they’ve ever tasted.
I can neither confirm nor deny their raves, for while I do love toffee, the tab plus shipping isn’t worth the momentary pleasure that would probably just leave me craving more. If’n I ever have so much disposable cash that I don’t know what else to blow it on, I’ll give Dave’s a try and shall leave you know my opinion.
That said, if’n you is non-able to extrapolate what FMS means from the above explanation, I fear there’s little hope for our future relationship.
After a lifetime of intoning “The more I do, the more I can do” ♪all day, every day therapist, mother, maid ♫—geez, does everything have to remind of a song or a quote?—I now mantra, “The less I do, the more I get done.”
Which is against-all-odds actually true. So long as I remain primarily inert, I can put in eight, even ten hours of work. But (I hear you say), there’s more to life than just work! What about balance, what about muscle atrophy, what about …?
I faded that last line because, good golly miss molly, don’t cha get it? My work is my life; it’s ♪ my first, my last, my everything ♫. Years ago when I told a friend I was as boring as whale shit and she responded, “But whale shit is iridescent in the moonlight,” I named my budding publishing company Iridescent Orange Press. ‘Cause I’ve always been ♪ all about the book, just the book, no treble….”♫
Not to pull a Dave Barry, but I think I’ve nonsensed myself to the end of this post. So Medicare won’t pay for a wheelchair ramp, a determination that will likely lead to denial of the chair itself, and I’ll have to Fend For Myself one way or another. Hasn’t that always been thus and so? Come full circle have I not? Whatever I can no longer do at any given time is just another something for which I’ll have to figure out a workaround one way or another (♪“I’m gonna find ya, I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya”♫).
This kvetch will self-destruct in 10 seconds… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5…
