insurance

Wouldn’t Call it Persisting

I am finding a lot of satisfaction from tidying. Of course I’m a temporary Kondo worshipper in the throes of decluttering and my endorphins are boosted each time I open a neat and tidy drawer, but I can honestly say that I feel more relaxed in my home recently. Knowing where things are and where to find them is such a comfort.

As you can see, it is calmer looking in the office. I bought a P Touch and now the drafts of stories I’m working on feel more substantial. In reorganizing files, I came across praise from editors for my writing that was so positive and affirming that I nearly feel like digging in and going for it again.

Another novel.

What am I thinking?

In this world turned batpoop loony, the might be my saving grace…

…or the death of me.

~~*~~

Of course, reality came in, bit my head, and sucked out any bright spots. A pushy medical person on the phone went out of their way to emphasis what a horrible, uncaring person I was for not bowing down to some made up guidelines to schedule another soul-sucking appointment in October. She made me feel bad about not being able to afford to run to their offices every three months for Husband’s “best health.” Sorry, not sorry.  We’re doing the best we can do with overpriced, high-deductible insurance and 6 months will have to do and no, there is no way we’re doing any more in person January – March appointments. I sincerely doubt anyone making these excessive, intrusive appointments experience what their patients do. I doubt they get charged for parking in a falling apart parking ramp, either. Had I the ability to do it over, we wouldn’t be going there at all, but for some reason, Husband likes the doctor – whose mind we were supposed to read today, but they called it “miscommunication.”

Even though we successfully talked them into a 6 month retest instead 3 months while in the office, and the actual medical degreed person came in and said to Husband, “Get a test in 6 months,” what we were were somehow supposed to divine was that he actually meant, “Make an appointment in three months that will go over your insurance limit for the year, get a blood test which is also over the insurance limit for the year but relatively cheap, and then drive here so I can tell you what those results are –even though it’s a blood test and you can look at the results online. And then do that all over again 3 months after that in the dead of winter, okay?” If he had said that, we would have told him, “No, we won’t be doing that at all. We have other doctors and they also want our money, so you are need to chill on wanting to take any more big chunks of it for a while, okay, you greedy little deaf piggy? We’ll get the test in January, and if we think it’s a bad number, we’ll give you a call, but until then, we can’t afford to see you again until next summer.”

Ffs

You know, it is getting very hard to live anymore, which is why I grabbed hold of the idea of tidying, hoping it would help some, and it has, but then I leave the house…I mean, what more do people want from me? I understand I cannot control anything, really, but does everything have to be awful? My son is having a real rough go right now. Our niece was hurting in the ER and we haven’t had an update in a while about that. The severity and the cruelty in the actions being taken by this government really doesn’t offer a reason to keep living in this country, especially when they act like they don’t want humans to be alive at all. Everything related to our healthcare and education policies are a horrid mess. Pollution, grocery and utility prices, all increasing. And then I get to deal with the apparently all-knowing, all-seeing, never met her before in my life Amanda telling me I’m an uncompassionate monster who doesn’t care about my husband having “best health.” Seriously, why bother anymore?

And yes, I know, why oblige them…but this is a hellscape.

And no, I’m not suicidal, but I don’t see anything getting any better, okay? We still have (had) the first amendment. I can still say things are bleak and I feel the bleakness, can’t I? Because it is bleak. And unbearable. And I am so, so freaking tired.

~~*~~

I wish I could type happier and tell you wonderful things about words and chapters, too, but I’m bungling around, up and down, irritated and enthralled. I walk to the labyrinth admiring the different shapes flowers have come up with to show off their blooms. Black-Eyed Susans, clover, fleabane, bee balm. The range of green – from nearly white-yellow to a deep dark hunter – delights my eyes. The roots I step over as I walk the rocklined maze are connected to the nearby sycamores, which are shedding their skins. I rescue a dying milkweed by untangling a three-leafed vine from the stalk. Fluffy purple flowers I don’t know the name of are the preferred sleeping spots of the bumblebees and the sweetest sight. I stand on rocks in the creek and I breathe.

Out there, I feel alive and I am fine. More than fine. Sometimes, I feel actual peace.

Otherwise, it’s been an all firewood splitting and stacking, finding places for things to live and putting them there while ignoring the horror called news and contemplating writing a story no one may ever read kind of quiet, hot month here.

I do thank you so much for reading this and seriously – I’m sorry for being down, but I could only mask over this anger, rage, and profound sadness for so long. I hope you’re doing better than I am and I wish you well. Thank you for stopping by! I really do appreciate you and your time. It means a lot to me.

Ciao

The Easter Bunny did not leave enough chocolate again this year

Things will happen a certain way and I’ll wonder if other artists have the same thing happen to them. I don’t ask because I’ve read their posts and flashes, stories and poems that have already told me the answer. Yes, it all happens all the time. It comes in waves. Tons of work getting published, then long stretches of comma rearrangement; long stretches to work but no inspiration or drive, then a week jammed packed with movement and tableaus to explore and little time to jot a note or sketch an outline.

The week I had included going to the Hamburg Library to attend a Lissa Marie Redmond event on a Monday night. I ran into Mary Jean Zajac there. Hannah from Writing Club attended, too. On Tuesday, it was Writing Club and I was reminded how far I have to go with the rewrite in making the text clearer. (And doing that while trying to remember the altered plotlines is what someone older than myself would call a “hoot.”) Wednesday I spent time at a mall with a woman I used to spend days at the mall with frequently and had at least 4 story ideas come up that day. Thursday, I helped a poet without realizing it was a poet I was helping at the parking kiosk. It was at Buffalo State and I was there to read for Drop Hammer from the upcoming (now out) Endurance Issue of Elm Leaves Journal. Theresa Wyatt, Nancy McCabe, Carol Townsend, and Jean Thompson read too at the invitation of ELJ’s editor, Kim Chinquee. Thank you, Kim! It was lovely and she took us out after for a meal at Cornelia, the restaurant in the renovated AKG. Kim has two (TWO!) books coming out soon – Contact with the Wild and Octopus Arms – congratulations Kim!

Friday, I ran errands and took the dog to the park. Saturday, we went to Buffalo with Betty in the rain and added our fed-up-with-this-dog-e-shit-slash-and-burn-policy voices to the Hands-Off Protest. It was cold, wet, and miserable, but it will be just as awful in an El Salvadorian concentration camp, you know?

Later, Husband and I went to see JT and the Law at Still on the Hill and my muted phone kept buzzing. The message came in out of order – the enormity of it all still stuns me. A friend I almost lost in a motorcycle accident two decades ago was in a near miss from a stolen Tesla that nearly killed him and his two children as they were on their way to an El Paso Easter Egg Hunt. Weirder still is that his wife, who came a bit later, medically attended to the person who had nearly wiped out her whole family.   

And that wasn’t even a full week of my April.

There is insurance paperwork piled up for me to read, reread, and attempt to understand. I was charged as a new patient when I was not and need to get that corrected before pulling out my hair. That right there is something to protest for – can you imagine? In other countries, healthcare is free – not for an insurance company to extract every penny in your pocket so they can have a profit and please their shareholders. Ffs, it’s people’s lives and those would be made healthier in an instant if universal healthcare – as found in most all other countries – came along and reduced everyone’s stress levels. But why would anyone in this administration care what would help anyone that isn’t them?

You see my dilemma – so much to write about, so behind on the minutia of daily life, so angry that the upcoming chaos could have been avoided. Plus, it’s criminal not to go out and acknowledge spring flowers like these while they are here, no?

Many thanks to you for stopping by and for the read. I cherish you in a weird way, but I think you already knew that because if you’re reading me, you’re probably a writer, too, so you know that kinship you feel when someone reads your words.

Cheers!

Hocus Pocus now, The Addams Family later

Upstairs in the white room, the view shifts by the hour now. Leaves swell with color, wither, fall off in a symphony. Tomorrow is November. What a short year…which has dragged on forever. I started out the month strong in Kim Chinquee’s Zoetrope room. I managed three flash pieces that had a “there” there to them enough to post. I’m humbled and grateful to report Kim Chinquee accepted one of them, “No Object” for publication in Elm Leaves Journal’s upcoming Eclipse Issue. Thank you, Kim!

After that, the focus turned mainly to the approaching winter and accepting the reality that the modest list of projects we had every intention of getting done this summer would henceforth – most likely for the rest of winter – be abandoned. Obviously, that goes out the window with the next weather forecast, but the weather is unpredictable and my worry over not having the roof work done is growing. Why is insurance maddening? The claim is valid, it needs to be replaced, just pay for it like the sums of money flowed to you, let them flow back “good neighbor.” I may have the wrong jingle in my head, but still…

These were the decorations the cats and dog allowed to stay in place this year. Today, I pulled on a black sweater, dusted off the black witch hat, and wore my skeleton earrings to the library to pick up books. I haven’t finished Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel yet because I don’t want it to end. Yellowface by R. F. Kuang needs to be read in 7 days and Hilarie Burton Morgan’s Grimoire Girl looks promising. Reading blocks out the clatter of words in my head.

Most of the past few months, I’ve watched or heard battles. Characters speaking. Sometimes they insist I write it down, others scream and swear and vow to never talk to me ever ever again if I print the…Ow!

You see what I mean? The characters from the latest unfinished novel have been around, one quite surprising me by being alive as she was dead six months in the earlier draft. The sister I hadn’t gotten to yet has been quite vocal, too. I’ve signed up to start both NaNoWriMo and Nancy Stohlman’s Flash-A-Day. I hope to exhaust them and their stories, get them out of my head. So off I go to draw up a calendar to plot out the timeline and refresh myself on names in preparation for the part of being a writer I truly dread – the wring part.

Thank you for stopping by and for the read!

Bonus Content: My poem was in Artemis!

Meant To Be.

Sunday was exciting for the conversation I had with XO man. The pillows on the couch in the library are still in the position they were when I stretched out and laughed at the shared plight of having an inept dentist. We also talked of music, dance, and cleaning women.

I’d been cleaning the house in anticipation of the novel critique group meeting here tonight. It has corresponded with the ‘so called spring cleaning’ time of year, though I’m not moving the furniture yet due to the still chilly nights. Regardless, “art” has been on my mind a lot recently.

My “style” is eclectic to say the least and as I go along, pieces have to hit me to disrupt the equilibrium I’ve established with the pieces in the house. Monday, I met the newest love of my life.

I had a doctor’s appointment at nine–because even though my insurance card says I don’t need a referral, I can’t see a dermatologist unless I have one, which is a bunch of BS, but that’s for a different post. Anyway, because we have the one vehicle, Husband dropped me off then was going to pick me up on his lunch hour.

Randomly, the Monday I went for a referral, I was also sentenced to an X-ray on my leg, blood work, and an ultrasound. After my appointment, I was able to get the x-ray and the blood work done and walked out of there at ten fifteen. Go figure. I had hours to kill. I went to Café 56 and had a snack while I edited. I was quite content until I felt something and looked over to see I was being stared at by some guy in the corner. I didn’t like that at all.

Flustered, I stayed and worked. I looked out the window and swear I saw Agent Chase crossing the street and enter the antique shop. I leisurely finished my coffee, wondering how far I was going to take this. I calculated that if a fictional character walks out of your head and into the sunlight, you want to pursue, but not so quickly as to scare them away.

Bill paid, street crossed, store entered, I found Agent Chase was gone. I wandered the store after a few words with the shopkeeper. Husband had told me his supervisor, Jody Buttons, owned it. I verified that, then took my time looking at all the interesting things in the shop.

Near the end of my walk around, I came to a framed print. In an oval frame with the glass protruding like a pregnant belly, there was the smuggest, sexiest, slyest picture I’d ever seen. It didn’t remind me of Van Eyck as much as Vermeer but I don’t think it’s either of those. The colors are wrong for both. I looked it over, and there was no price. I asked the merchant, he said he’d have to ask Jody. I told him my husband worked with him, hoping for a better price, When husband picked me up, I told him about it. At work the next day, husband said something about it and Jody said, “That was you?”

I called the shop on Tuesday and Jody hadn’t given a price even he was asked about it three times. Wednesday, at break, Jody walked over and just gave Husband the picture. Jody said he didn’t know whom it was by, but the frame was at least one hundred years old. He wouldn’t take any money for it. Norm was aghast as Jody doesn’t giveaway anything.

So it’s mine now and Husband and I agree, in the event of divorce, it is mine. Right now, it’s hanging on the wall, and I’m even fonder of it though I have to change out and move other pieces around to accommodate this gorgeous thing. Once the novel critique meeting is over, the furniture will move and the other artwork will move to accommodate this newest acquisition.

After I had talked to XO man on Sunday, I got a call on my cell from someone looking for Gail and wanting to make sure she got home safely. Gail is the name of the MC in my current WIP so that freaked me out a little, but without that nudge of the fictional and real blurring at times, I might not have followed a phantom that led to this, new love.

 

pj

Sorry, taking a picture through curved glass isn’t easy, but look at the interplay between the women. Exquisite.

 

 

pi

 

(*These are just my creek side reflections. Your experiences may vary.)