The Fork in the Road

I have had chronic financial problems for years; until I was 40 I had two years where I earned more than $12,000 a year. I had several years at $25-30,000, down to about $10,000 for several years and have been at $32-35,000 a year for the past 5.

And I am not consistently good at managing money. I can do very tight austerity budgets,but give me a little discretionary income and I can really get my money out of whack easily. Nothing huge, I don’t go into massive amount of debt, but always a bit short of what I need to get by.

It’s been stressful and overwhelming and anxiety producing. It’s been coming to a peak for the past year or so. My electricity was turned off a year ago and didn’t have it again until a week or two ago when my MD signed paperwork so they had to turn it back on for medical reasons.

Sometimes, frequently, the bigger the struggle, the bigger the hit to your self esteem, the more you need to turn it over; give up control. I finally did just that.

Yesterday, I gave verbal control to my brother to manage my money and provided him the information to start doing my banking on line. Today I signed a POA giving him power to manage my financial affairs. His wife is second agent.

This gives him power to help me get my car out of foreclosure and set up payment plans with the entities to which I owe money,. He and his wife are considering buying my car and letting me pay them back or buying a different one for me that I would pay off.

They are going to help me establish a budget that will meet my needs, including savings for last minute things like new tires, things of that nature.

They are going to help me get set up with online banking so that that runs itself as much as possible.

I cannot express how relieved I am to have this weight off my shoulders or how grateful I am to them. They are making such a concrete contribution to the quality of my life, giving of themselves and their resources so generously.

It is expected that this ‘total control’ should only be for a few months. Then it will be up to me to make the best of it.

Wish me luck as I choose the other fork.

Re-Humaning, Re-Jewishing

I’ve been out of sorts for a while, physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Results:  increased stress with increased physical pain along with the emotional pain of not being a truer version of yourself.  It shows itself in a lot of ways.  For example, I keep in having the thought that I should ‘unfriend’ a friend from blogland because I’m tired of listening to her irrational rants which are mightily influenced by her untreated depression.  The ‘reason’ is that I can’t let myself be personally exposed to too much distorted cognitions as it places me at risk of geater depression.   While this is true, I could feel better about this thought if I was being more careful about taking my antidepressants. 

I also find myself withdrawing from Judaism and my congregation at these times; certainly one of my primary supports.  I know that this is really dangerous for me emotionally and in other ways.  But it’s not only in the attendance and contact, it’s performing the mitzvahs.  There’s a lot of mitzvahs I can’t or don’t do. 

But there was one I started about a year after I became Jewish; if someone asked me for money, I gave them some.  Per Jewish tradition, you give because someone says they need it, even if you think they are going to use it ‘wrongly’, like buy more alcohol or drugs.  I used to do it even if it was just a few coins. 

For some reason I got away from it.  I’ve been thinking I need to start doing it again; I feel good performing a mitzvah and maybe helping someone.  It seemed if a bit of my small prosperity flows out, there was room for some to flow in.  It felt good…..

Friday night, with the long weekend coming up, I treated myself to umpteenth in one of my favorite mystery series and a slightly expensive magazine.  After leaving the bookstore I had to stop for gas.  While I was filling up a woman asked me for money.  I murmered about not being sure how much I had and looked away.  The woman was ‘not my kind’, definitely small town and a little rough looking.  Then she said she was from a town about 2 hours away.  She had no way home other than driving.  She had a story about coming to Milwaukee to sell something and the buyer not showing up.  But all of a sudden that didn’t matter.  She was a woman, a human, about 100 miles away from home with no money, no gas and no place to stay.

Was I picking up on her fear or projecting my own onto her?  I don’t know.  A Christian looking back would maybe say that she was Jesus for them….’for if you do it to the least of these, it is as if you do it to me’…..maybe she was Elijah or Miriam or one of countless unnamed Jews or humans who have been caught without. 

And at that moment, if I was to be human, to be Jewish, I couldn’t ignore her.  I couldn’t give enough for her to be sure she could get home on, but she only would need another dollar or two.  I think she was getting that as I got back in my car. 

Thank you, woman, for giving me the chance to honor my best self in some small way.  I hope you made it home safely.

Reminder

I park two blocks from my office and occasionally the lot (holds roughly 36 cars) is very full.

There’s a really good reason; I am across from our federal courthouse. 

Sometimes the lot is full because a big trial is going on.

Usually it’s for another, sweeter reason.  Naturalization ceremonies are conducted there.  It can be lovely and meaningful to see happy people of different ages and nationalities (some in ethnic dress) leaving the building and waving little flags.

Reminds me of how lucky I was and am to have been born here.

Spring is trying to arrive.

And trying mighty hard.  But winter is just having a hard time giving up its grip.  Sunday we had an amazing thunderstorm; amazing enough, preceded by a very intense, roughly three minute, hailstorm that covered the ground with little 1/2 to 1 inch balls of hail.  They made quite the noise and I was afraid that the squirrels who live in the tree outside my window would get little squirrel concussions!  I do think they survived with maybe a little squirrel headache.  This was the result of a sudden change in temp (and fronts and all that other meteorology stuff I don’t really get) of 40 degrees or more. 

We are expecting the same kind of temp change this weekend and I wonder if we will have an equally interesting weather event.

I have to admit being ready for spring; to splash through some mud looking for trillium, to hearing more birdsongs, maybe some rainbows from mild rain.

Maybe my soul is stuck in winter; I had a major flare up of my fibro after the bat mitzvah and then kept ignoring my sinuses until even a 5 pack of zithromyacin almost didn’t do the trick.  I have a hard time summoning the focus to work on things I really want to do.  Like the eternal saga of getting the apartment settled.  Or doing more artwork; I’ve discovered a blog called “Illustration Friday” where they post a one word theme every week and you can post your illustration on your blog to it.  Or finishing the spring jacket I’ve been working on for several months.  Or selling the vintage dishes which I bought at a ridiculously low price at a thrift shop–either on Craigslist or to a china replacement service.  I would like to start marketing some things, but know I’m in a place where getting stuff listed on e-bay and then shipped just isn’t reasonable right now.

Some of the members at my synagogue belong to other congregations as well.   One of them, an 80 year old man who has been fighting many intense health issues the past several years, will be celebrating his birthday at an oneg (light refreshments) after services tomorrow night at one of these other congregations.  I’ve known his wife since 1988 when she was one of my interpreter trainers.

Bob had hardly been at services last year and when I asked Eve to chant Torah at my bat mitzvah, her acceptance was conditioned on his health status and my having lined up a replacement reader if she could not attend.  Imagine my surprise when he came in.  And my pleasure when I told him I was glad to see him and he said, ‘You have to be there for the good ones’.  This man definitely knows the secret of living the spring of life.

Spring is also the time of Pesach, or Passover.  We remember our escape from Mitzraim (Egypt) and slavery to independence and freedom.  Mitzraim translates as ‘narrow place’ and it is interesting to consider what narrow places one may need to escape from at this time.  Definitely I need to escape my winter soul; it’s time to stop hibernating and try my wings out–I think I’m confusing metaphors here, but I also think that expresses my meaning.

The Retired Scout

Friday AM, I was visiting a residential facility where I have some clients and saw something very cute.

Many of our clients use the ‘rollator walkers’ like you can find at Walgreen’s and other places.  They are bigger, with a wider base than a standard walker.  They have 4 wheels and use handbrakes.  Most importantly, for the people who use them,  they can go longer with them as they can turn around and use th walker as  a chair as it has a seat and a bar wrapping around as a back support.

One small lady was pushing her rollator, not much taller than it.  On the seat, a black cat was perched in it’s hind feet with the front paws on the back support, watching the world glide by as it went for its ride.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

The Perilous Problem of the Prime Minister

(From Ringo)

 

I shoulda known better.  That Prime Minister really needs to be watched.  After all, that’s why the Princess really wanted me to go with her everywhere.  The Scout is only a part time position.  I’m also, unbeknownst to her, the PMs body guard.

 

And sometimes, she does take guarding. 

 

Tuesday we went to a yarn shop and the coffee shop, they are next door to each other.  The coffee shop closes at ten and the PM sat there with their permission until 10:30 looking for her keys. She could not find them and finally decided she must have left them in the car starter.  So, she left.  But it wasn’t true, the keys were not there.  And it was not just the car key missing, it was the housekeys as well.  She looked all over.  She couldn’t find them.  She checked the trunk  to see if she dropped them there.  She didn’t.  She looked under the car.  Not there.  She tried to see if her car still had roadside assistance.  It didnt.

 

So I worked lots of over time taking care of her.  She kept falling asleep and waking up.  She thought a policeman would stop to see why the car was still parked there, but they didn’t.  If they did, she was going to ask them to give us a ride to an all night restaurant.  But they didn’t. 

 

So we wuz stuck until 6:30 the next morning when the coffee shop opened again.  The keys didn’t get turned in the shop or the  yarn store.  She missed most of work getting keys, etc.  Boy were we tired.

 

The Princess was not happy.