Sanity

Sanity in the midst of madness is a bore. At least mine is. Don't get the wrong impression. I'm not bored, I'm relieved. But I cannot write interesting little essays out of whole cloth like I used to. For that you have to be out and about and out and about is part of my problem.

I've just had 3 good days, which means I have almost nothing to write about. I spent a morning's hard work on Sunday cutting down rampant grass in the small garden with the Buddha statue in it by the air conditioners and the utility meters on the outside of my fourplex [it's been a cool, wet summer here], as well as filling large flowerpots with bags of potting soil for my companion on oxygen to plant in while sitting in her walker. Big deal. Three years ago I might have been able to stretch that to three ruminating paragraphs. But no longer.

Yesterday, I went to the hardware store, the UPS mail box, the Office Supply Store, the grocery store, and Walgreen's. Too much. Getting up this morning was poisoned by the faintest new traces of a depressive cycle--the layer of voiceover dreaming was just very slightly off-color.

Unlike last week, however, when I was down to $6+ in my bank account before my SS check for August, I have OTC Ibuprofen back in my med mix.



Without 1600 mils. a day of it, my depression was decorated with chronic body aches from dawn to dusk--this is one of the reasons why it was so deep last time. Thunderstorms have rolled in this morning, so I'm a little more achy than usual, but I just popped 800 mils. along with my Lamictal and Welbutrin for the bipolar, and the aches should be gone in an hour.

When I write well these days, it is usually in reactive comments, mostly on the Anchoress' blog. Here's one from this morning on the Conservative willies about trying to fix health care:

I’m not a rich person. But ever since then I’ve continued to pay extra for the medical insurance most likely to preserve my freedom to choose.
Neo-neocon is not a poor person either. She is still above a threshold where she can afford to do this. She is far closer to falling below that threshold than she was a decade ago. So are you, Anchoress. So, in all probability, is Bender.
I fell below it in 2002 and I have never recovered. Once you fall below it you usually don’t. Catching up with the rising costs when underemployed is usually impossible.
More and more of us are becoming underemployed without even having to lose our job.
My companion and the lady across the hall are equally disabled, the one in chronic pain, the other in the process of dying by inches while hoping against hope for a liver transplant from one of the few institutions [the Cleveland Clinic] where there is even a slim chance she might get one. I don’t think she’ll make it.
“Choice” is something you pay for in this man’s country. None of the three of us will ever be able to pay for it again. Fall below that threshold, and you won’t either. Really.
You all can sit on your hands, hold your breath until you are blue, and refuse to participate in the process of trying to fix this steady progress of the U.S. toward the best health care that no one can afford. That choice is a precious part of our freedom. I hope none of us ever lose it.
But I also hope that all of you take a good look at how close you are to never being able to afford medical insurance again and start making your preparations for falling off that cliff.
Because, sooner or later, you will. Not you might, you will.

Wish I could do that on my own. Wish I could write about the perfect summer evening that I can no longer enjoy because the whole outdoors is on the other side of the glass box in which I sit.

Wish I could.