In which I’m on vacation next week.
This week, we upgraded the POP server at work and I’ve been busy as fuck. Next week I’m flying to California to see Mother and get my head on straight.
I love getting on planes.
In which I wonder what my old age will be like.
Yesterday, I read an opinion piece in the New York Times. It was a good man’s story: older, loyal, secure; then his company “restructured.” Now he’s been unemployed for years. He’s too old to get a job; he has a preexisting condition so he’s unable to get insurance; he “always did the right thing,” and is now facing abject destitution.
He’s not much older than I am.
I have not done the right things.
I went to college, yes, but I didn’t have any discipline. I took classes that interested me, dropped out of those that didn’t, and in six years of higher education came away with substantial and still growing debt and no marketable degrees.
I got married, yes, but I chose badly. I didn’t choose someone who would make a good helpmeet and life partner. I chose someone who, at first, rocked my socks off in bed and who, unlike anyone else, actually asked me to marry him. But that was it, there really weren’t any other important qualities there between us, not the kinds of qualities that get you through your working years and safely into your dotage with your needs modestly taken care of. So naturally we divorced, and that left me with no equity and even more debt.
Now I’m of an age where I should be investing and building my retirement. Instead, I have no savings and no insurance. For the next few months, I’m giving 30% of my monthly income to my dentist so I can keep a tooth. As soon as the root canal and crown are paid off, I’ll do the same thing for my eyes, because I really need my prescriptions updated. After that’s paid off, no doubt, something else will happen, and I’ll pay that off too.
But eventually something might happen that I can’t make payments on. What if I get hurt, or need medicine? I’m employed, so I’m not eligible for many types of relief, but I earn too little to, say, be able to spend a bunch of money on meds every month.
I’ve been insured fewer than four years since I started working.
I’m not borrowing trouble. I’m stating that it is statistically likely that I will need something I won’t be able to to afford.
Which means I have failed my end of the social covenant. I should have educated myself more carefully and made myself more employable, no? I should have chosen a decent partner1, and together we should have earned and saved enough to pay for ourselves. I should have taken steps all my life not to be a burden on anyone, right?
I mean, isn’t that the social covenant?
In which there were gigs.
On Friday, I played the MF Supper Club.
There is basically nothing I’ll eat on their menu, but “supper club” is still a cool phrase. The bartender said they did $1300 rather than the $200 she’s been pulling on Friday nights, so that’s good. It was really red and kind of dingy in a groovy but run-down sort of way. I love that place.
On Saturday, there was a private party in Dayton. It was fun, and there was plenty I could eat (including this crazy corn salad with Fritos in it).
After the gig, I went to karaoke and got very drunk. Then I listened to vinyl at my bass player’s house until morning, and then I slept all day. Nothing chore-like was accomplished. No laundry, no lawn mowing, no grocery shopping, no nothing. I didn’t even make it to the nail salon, that’s how lazy my Sunday was.
It was pretty awesome.
What did you do last weekend?
In which I had a dental appointment today.
Okay, so, all I wanted to do was pee the entire second hour I was in the chair. Really badly. But I couldn’t, because I was getting a fucking root canal.
1. Two and a half hours at the dentist.
2. DENTAL. Motherfucking. DAM.
3. Temporary filling: same texture as wet toilet paper.
4. My face hurts.
Moral of the story is that you should pee twice before any kind of long procedure you might embark upon after drinking coffee.
In which I need a fucking root canal?!
My appointment was at two o’clock. I naively expected to be out of there in about an hour, but I didn’t get back to my desk until a quarter past four.
First of all, nobody told me about the smell. The drill wasn’t that loud nor did it hurt, but that burnt smell is weird, you guys. Srsly.
Wait, wait, back up! So, this was my very first filling ever, right, and I told the nurse1 so. She was amazed because every single tooth in her head is filled, and some more than once. I was kind of excited because, hey, it’s a new experience and how many 43-year-olds get to experience their very first filling? Having survived not one but two planing & scaling experiences and four extractions, I’m no stranger to needles, so it’s not like there was anything to be nervous about.
We discussed my tooth as the topical soaked in and we waited for the doctor. The nurse showed me three tiny little discolorations on my x-ray, and read my chart to me. Lingual! Distal! Tiny cavities, all on the same tooth — tooth number 15, for those of you counting along at home.
Then my hip dentist arrived and I told him it was my first filling ever, and he smiled and said, “Ever?” and I said, “Ever!” and he sat down and picked something up and said, “Ever ever?” and I said “Ever!” and then he stuck a needle in my gum — he’s left-handed — and we sat there in the companionable silence you can only achieve with a relative stranger who has several digits in your mouth and is massaging anesthetic into your jaw.
Aaaaaand I have my name back. Legally!
April 25th, 2012 | Posted by in Decisions | Spiritual - (2 Comments)In which I’m finally rid of my married name!
I decided recently to get a passport. No real reason. I don’t have any travel plans, but one never knows — and I have the money just now so what the hell. Maybe I’ll get to India before I’m 50.
Today I went to my second appointment with the passport lady at the post office, and I gave her a bunch of paperwork and money and she made me re-do my work about three times, which is impressive considering it’s only a two-page freakin’ application and I’d already done it twice and I have a reasonably high IQ.
Halfway through the procedure, the passport lady decided they’d probably reject my application because the name on my driver license did not match the name on my divorce papers well enough. She suggested I go update my driver licence. And could I maybe possibly do it, like, right now, since she’d already put my passport application on her transmittal and she had no idea how to remove it and the paperwork has to go today?
A driver license. Before three o’clock today? Sure. What the hell. I’ll try.
So off I went to the DMV on my bike during my lunch hour. (It’s all downhill, so the ride out there was pretty okay.) I walked in the door and I kid you not: there was no line! None! Talk about support of nature: I got help immediately, which has literally NEVER HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF THE DMV. The mild glitches (they had to delete an old expired license from the last time I lived in Washington, plus I very nearly flunked the vision test) were neatly handled. (Note to self: get new contacts.) Less than an hour later, with my name all changed and a new temporary driver licence in my purse, I rode back to the post office. (It was all uphill.) I stopped at Taco Bell, about halfway, for a tostada because I was hungry. (Did I mention it’s all uphill?)
In which there’s a tech support puzzle for you to solve.
A customer calls in because she can’t send email. She can receive email and she can surf, so the connection is up. I walk her through the settings in the email client and have her correct the following:
- SMTP server name field (it had had the POP server name in it)
- the username (added the domain)
- enabled authentication (it had been disabled).
No wonder she couldn’t send, all those config errors. I have her click Send/Receive, thinking the call is over, but she still can’t send email. The SMTP error is 451.
I ask her what ISP she’s using, and it’s Century Link. Since they block port 25, I have her change the SMTP port to 2525. She still can’t send email. Change the port to 554, and she still can’t send email.
In which I don’t know where to see Mother this year.
The US Tour schedule just came out, and wouldn’t you know that a friend is getting married during the Seattle dates and I’ve already committed to singing at her ceremony?
Meaning, of course, that if I see Mother in Seattle, I’ll have to leave the program early to be back in time. Lame. Might as well see Her somewhere else!
Chicago? Emailed NLW to see if she’s going; if she says yes, I’ll blow my tax return on airfare. If no, I’ll probably go to the San Ramon ashram programs since I’ve never seen Her there. The DC or New York programs are also possible, but while I do know people both places I don’t think I know any devotees.
(I haven’t even begun to plan my travel but I’m already dreading the results of being out of the office for more than six hours. Being the only person in your department is kind of stressful.)
Last year I had ‘get divorced’ and ‘obtain passport’ on my post-seeing-Amma to do list. I’ll have both handled by the time I see Mother again. We’ll just have to wait and see if I feel compelled to ask Her whether I should go to India/do ashram life for awhile or stay here and wait until G’ma actually needs me. I’m really not doing anything useful with my life, ultimately, and hello: I’m alive during the embodiment of an Incarnation. Why am I settling for seeing such a being once a year? What the hell am I doing, not fighting tooth and nail to be near Her all the time? The odds of there being an Avatar in my next life are low, low, low. Every second you give away you never get back.
In which there’s a party.
My friend Embo had a birthday yesterday. We took balloons and cupcakes to the bar and got drunk.
It was fun. Pictures are here.
In which decorating has unexpected results.
In an effort to celebrate the season, which is Spring, I guess, and some Xian holiday I only vaguely care about, I filled these bottles with colored water yesterday and put them on the kitchen windowsill:
Nice, huh? I pretty much nailed the whole pastel thing, don’t you think?
Anyway, as a result — I believe — of observing this ritual, I found candy on my bedroom stairs this morning:
Take that, you God-hating atheists!
Er, wait.
Take that, you Nature-hating, um, non-Paganists!
(No matter how old you get, there’s nothing like finding a treat on Easter morning. Makes you feel like you belong.)
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