Post No. 995 - Dog Day Blues

“There is no escape from the strange spasms of the world as we’ve remade it.” Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch

August of my second year of semi-retirement and the money blues are starting to sing. It’s been a summer of unexpected expenses, our daughter coming home from college in May, working sporadically at a local deli; in July she had breast reduction surgery for the second time in five years -- smaller breasts, a relief for her, but hefty medical bills for us -- with the standard barrage of paper notices regarding  in-network/out-of-network services, co-pays, deductibles, all the familiar ways costs are shifted to American patients because this country doesn’t provide medical care for all its citizens. It’s the same cost-shifting racket seen in other areas of the economy. Fees. Service Charges. Tiered plans. Subscriptions. American “consumers” get hosed right and left, preyed upon by banks and credit card companies and airlines and mobile phone and cable companies, all down the line. All these “rents” make some people richer than monarchs. 

I think our portion of the bill(s) will be around $10K. Shows you how high our annual out of pocket maximum is, but accepting that risk is the only way we can keep the premiums affordable. Damned, one way or another. 

Our daughter made a wee mess of her student loans, even though we’d been riding her to sort out her financial aid situation since May. We thought, erroneously as it turned out, that we had to cover a large tuition bill in order for her to enroll in her courses. On the one hand it serves us right because we left school finances to our 21-year-old daughter, expecting her to inform us when we needed to take action on her behalf. This, we thought, was a responsibility she could, and should, handle. She did, sort of, though if we had the money we fronted now, I’d be breathing a little easier. But we won’t see a refund for another month or so. That was our little cushion, our what if the washing machine dies or one of the cars needs new tires? cushion. But isn’t that the thing about being part of the working or retired poor? The unexpected expense that drops you in a hole can take months or years to climb out of. My wife and I are good about paying down debt, chipping away at it, but right now it’s about equilibrium between the money coming in and the money going out, the balance is off and I fret and stew and create dark scenarios of poverty and destitution.  

That’s one of my major life problems and bad habits, buying trouble in the future. It’s almost a certainty that we’ll be forced before too much longer to leave Santa Barbara. We’re local products, born and bred, but we missed the real estate lottery and haven’t a prayer of becoming property owners now. Precarious renters we shall be. When my mother-in-law passes, our last good reason for remaining here will be eliminated. But when I think of relocating my head hurts because there are more and more places in America where I refuse to live. Short list, for starters: Texas, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana and Wyoming. Other places are ruled out due to cost or climate. I think my wife would go mad in wet, cold Oregon. I wonder if Wisconsin or Minnesota might be viable. 

I collected my first Social Security check in July. Most of it went immediately to my daughter for school expenses and airline tickets. I reduced my hours at the Market from 24 per week to 16, in part to stay under the income limits imposed by Social Security for workers my age, but primarily because my body needs more recovery time between shifts. I’ve got all kinds of physical ailments, from arthritis in both thumbs to a torn rotator cuff muscle, to neuropathy in both feet; I snore at night and my restless legs drive my wife crazy. “Who the hell are you trying to kick?” I’m still fit, but I need more recovery time between training sessions, and I’m forced now to constantly modify my routines, fewer reps and shorter durations, lighter weights. My arthritic thumbs are a challenge I didn’t see coming. Anyway, working two days a week, Tuesday and Saturday, is perfect, but I bring home less money. Compounds the problem. 

My daughter did some growing this summer, even though it seemed at times that she was dead set on self-sabotage. By the time we flew to Philadelphia together, and spent a couple of priceless father-daughter days setting up her room in her apartment on Spruce Street, she had set her mind on making the best of her final year. It was hot and humid in Philadelphia, the kind of heat that clings to the skin, a soporific heat. We made trips to Target and CVS and Trader Joe’s, but also made time to see the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall, the Ben Franklin museum. We had drinks in a cash-only hole-in-the-wall bar whose walls were adorned with Philly sports memorabilia. The Little League World Series played on the TV. My Old Fashioned was tasteless. 

At night the sounds of the city kept me awake: screeching tires, car horns, alarms, voices, sirens and helicopters. People wandered in the alley below the window.

Back home Hurricane Hillary was moving ominously toward California, and the island of Maui was still in shock after wildfires destroyed a swath of Lahaina; hundreds of people there remain unaccounted for, many of them children. Canada. Greece. Portugal. Fires, floods, record breaking temperatures across the world. Catastrophic climate change isn’t coming, it’s already here, along with a debased and diseased political system that is incapable of taking action on this most pressing problem. More important matters, like banning objectionable books from school libraries and blaming America’s decline on transgender children, chasing Woke phantoms from university campuses, and making abortion illegal in all 50 states are the issues upon which our rulers and media fixate. They waste time and our tax dollars on insignificant and entirely contrived problems while the house burns and smoke pours from the roof.