Yes,
old Stacy Solomon will no doubt call me back for an appt. tomorrow.
She is the lung transplant social worker. I just talked to Jeff
yesterday and he reiterated his willingness to help in any way
possible. I gotta say thank God for friends who stick with you even
when maybe they have an excuse not to. I would never be making it back
to my profession without his help. Then I got Hal, whom you met. He's a
nut for sure, but a pretty quality moral person and
friend. Chris is the other one, and I have no doubt he will be a good
support guy when it comes down to it.
For
some strange reason, Chris feels the need to get all alpha male when it
comes to his brothers. I see it even more clearly in his dealings with
Jon, than with me. I'm not sure if you remember last year at the clam
place when Chris just went off on Jon for having an opinion about
something that was not the same as his, but it was pretty strange to
witness. I'm less confident that he is being nutso in his dealings with
me, cuz I could be aggravating him too. But you must have seen him
just
kind of roll over me when he wants something his way. They say you
never really grow up when it comes to your immediate family, and I guess
that's true. Chris has the need to "get over" on other people, as my
black friend used to say. It can be the silliest thing in the world,
but as long as he comes out one up, he's happy. Otherwise, nope. Not
to be interfering with your relationship, but it is something you might
want to keep in mind as well. I could give you the developmental
psychodynamic causes I suspect are at the root of all this, but you can
probably figure that out for yourself.
I
scanned a
copy of our card in the attachment. Didn't get them yet, maybe
tomorrow. I picked out the head full of gears logo, as it reflects what
we do, testing the machinery of the brain, so to speak. I dunno how
much business we will get from this effort, but Jeff likes the idea, so
I'll go along. We'll still get referrals from docs and the hospital.
That reminds me, I gotta see about getting back my privileges at the
local hospital I was an associate at. I'm getting all kinds of emails
from my various insurance companies now. It feels like I'm in a kind of
a countdown to a return to normal life, scheduled to commence
1/1/2013. I'm really not that sure I can be effective enough to get the
job done these days, but only one way to find out. Worst case scenario
is I continue to live in a hand to mouth way on my disability. It's
nice that they let you try to get back to work for a year before you
have to
make a decision about giving up the support. So any money I make, will
be in addition to my monthly stipend now, for a year anyway. Also, I
just got a notice that because of something or other, my food stamp
benefits are going up by 67 bucks a month starting the 13th of Nov.
Yay. I also have my Obamaphone, and my Obamaglasses for free. All I
need now is an Obamapartment. I may have to wait more than 2 years for
that though, assuming I'm still alive at that point.
Thanks
for asking about the treadmill. Yah I did my 30 minutes, but only once
today. I usually try to do it twice. When
I was out today, it was pretty bad, I gotta say. The rawness of the
weather affects me I think, and maybe I didn't get out all the phlegm I
should have before going out. I had a major coughing fit at the self
serve gas station, to the point I thought that maybe my fellow customers
were going to call 911. I think maybe the fumes contributed to my
distress. Maybe I should just go to places where they pump your gas for
you. Then I practically had a panic attack in the liquor store. I got
some Svensk vodka to go with my orange juice, and it was on sale, and
also had a 5 dollar rebate. But I was so fucked up, I forgot to make
the guy give me the receipt from the cash register so I could send in
for the rebate. Hey, five bucks is five bucks. So I had to go back and
wait while he went through all the recent purchases, but I did get it.
I know. Maybe I shouldn't be buying vodka in my
condition. You could have a point...
So
I'm happy to have this communication with you. My therapist keeps
after me to maintain a blog of my thoughts and experiences, but I
haven't been able to do that, cuz who would ever be interested in such a
thing? I see now that that's not really the point. By the way, I have
a hard time with him sometimes, cuz he tends to interrupt my stories
and give me a long dissertation on whatever he is thinking about that
day. Then because of my memory dysfunction, I don't even know what the
fuck I was talking about. The other day, yesterday actually, I just
told him,
hey it's your job to listen to ME. It's funny, cuz he almost uses our
sessions to validate himself in my eyes, seeing that I'm a Ph.D.
psychologist and he's a social worker. To his credit, at the end he did
apologize for interrupting me and all, so I said that's OK, I know you
have your needs too. Not sure if he got it. Anyway, to write, you have
to kind of organize your thoughts a little bit. You might even do some
planning and accomplish things you otherwise might not. I see that my
google account has a provision for making a blog, and I think I will
look into that. Although I have to confess to being something of a
narcissist, I am realistic enough to know that nobody really cares about
my life, so I don't know what I would do with such a blog. Maybe you
just make it on google, then not tell anybody, so nobody has to read
it. That might work.
I
don't think of you as a nag at all. I am actually very grateful to
find that you have an interest in my life, and it can only help to have
you keep reminding me about things... You are kind of a very sharp
little sister to me, or maybe a favorite niece, considering our ages.
Whatever the outcome, I'm glad to have met you and to talk to you. I'm
not a guy with so many people who care about him that I can afford to
throw away those few who do.
So no, Stacy did not call me back today, yet. I will try not to
be paranoid and think that they are not interested in helping me with
the lung transplant. She may be too busy, or on vacation or something.
I'll wait a couple days and try her again next week. The folks at the
hospital (the one in Melrose where I used to have privileges) were nice
when I talked to them about
suspending my association, which was about 3 years ago now. I told
them about my illness, and they said to just call them back if I wanted
to continue being associated with them. I will have to fill out forms
sure, and get a new ID, but that's not really different from when you
have to get recredentialed periodically anyway. It's really kind of
honorary thing anyway, since I'm not a physician, and wouldn't be
admitting people into the hospital anyway. It just is kinda good if you
can say you have privileges at a hospital.
I did get a call from
my oldest friend I guess, Phil from Wayland. He just lost his GF of 25
years, (i.e., she died) so I asked him to call me and see about going
out together soon. He is a really unique\guy. So I'm looking forward
to that.
I got my headphone amplifier in the mail the other day.
It made my music louder, but it still wasn't as good as I would like.
So I
went online and searched for an equalizer/preamp app, and did finally
find one that works well. It is free for 14 days, then you gotta pay 5
bucks for it, and it is well worth it. So I saved a profile that makes
the music sound good, and was making dinner when a song with a lot of
bass came on. Well it blew out my left driver, so the Klipsch phones
are toast. Fortunately, I was prudent enough to get a 3 year warranty
on these things, could actually find the paperwork, and looked online
for my warranty. Well it wasn't there cuz I guess I never registered
it. So I call them up, they find it, but they say well this is an
extended warranty, and you only got these 5 months ago, so your
manufacturer's warranty should still be in force. So I find a number
for Klipsch, and call them. They won't be open until regular business
hours on Monday. It says on the website though that you should go
through the
retailer first anyway. So I call up amazon, and finally get to talk to
a human and tell him the whole sad story. This guy, incredibly, has me
go to the order, stick the phones in my cart again, pays for them, and
even pays for the shipping. I will get new phones as soon as the USPS
delivers them. Now that is smart business practice, cuz I'm going to
tell everybody I know that Amazon took care of me, when they didn't
really have to. Aren't you glad you read all this? This is my life!
Yay,
I couldn't find my prescription glasses, but I was just in the kitchen
getting some OJ, and there they were being worn by a loaf of bread. Do I
remember doing that? Nope. I got an invite to a get together for
Williams alumni to watch a telecast of the Williams/Amherst football
game tomorrow at a bar called "The Point" in downtown Boston tomorrow,
so I signed up. There's free appetizers, and cash
bar. But when I looked at who had confirmed to go, they were almost
all recent year grads. One name was McInerney, who is a famous novelist
who was in my class, (Bright Lights, Big City) but I see it is not Jay,
but some girl's name. It's his goddam daughter! It sucks getting
old. BTW, my therapist told me that there was a copy of Freedom at the
local thrift store, and I should get it, since it is about people who
are like my family, according to him. So I did, and got the hardcover
for 2 bucks.
So you ask my opinion about you and Chris. I'll
just be as honest and open as I can about that with you, and with him.
It's not as if what I think matters a whole lot anyway, but both of you
have asked me about it, so I'll say what I think. I told him, and I'll
tell you, that there are pluses and minuses to your relationship (duh),
and each of you has to add them up and see if it is worth
pursuing. Anne's impending death complicates things, of course, but
they are independent issues, or should be as much as you can make them.
As much as I have problems with him, Chris is a pretty remarkable guy,
and I can see that a woman might want to be with him. Of course, he's
old enough to be your father (easily), but if you don't have a problem
with that, I sure don't. The question is really can you tolerate him
catering to his ex, Anne, while she goes through the dying process. She
is nuts, obviously, trying to hang on to a status, of Chris' GF, that
was over TEN YEARS AGO, but then again if that's what gets her through
the night, I can't really come down too hard on her for that.
Ironically, it is one of Chris' more admirable traits, of being loyal,
that puts you all in this situation. You know, SHE calls me to get my
take on all this too. Anyway, I guess my take is that if you want to
hang in
there, and continue with Chris after Anne dies, you have a decent
chance. I understand why you might not want to do that, and that's OK
too. I think you are going to be asked to reduce your expectations vis a
vis the boyfriend experience with Chris as her death approaches. The
whole thing makes my head ache frankly, and I don't know what I would
do. Fortunately, I have no such entanglements and only have to deal
with my own physical decline and looming death. If you think Chris is
"the one" in the way some people think about romance, go for it, I
suppose. On the other hand, you are pretty young (not to mention young
and pretty) and will have the opportunity to have something with a lot
of other men if you decide to go that way. That's probably as much, or
more, than I should say about it...
No, I'm not splurging
necessarily in anticipation of my increase in food stamp benefits. I
don't get my card
replenished until the 13th anyway. Now it will be about 6 bucks a day
for food rather than 4 bucks. I'm not complaining, but it does not
exactly signal an significant change in lifestyle. I'm very conflicted
about money in the first place. While it is probably the case that I
will die before I get down to my last dime, that's not exactly the life
endgame I had envisioned for myself. Unless I can get healthier, and
more prosperous, I can kiss goodbye the prospects of having any kind of
relationship with a woman again. The ones I would be interested in are
not going to be particularly fascinated by my ability to cadge free
health care, food stamps and a disability check. On the plus side, I am
experiencing a recovering libido, up from being pretty much dead in
that area a couple years ago. Now it's what am I going to do about it?
Nothing, apparently. Several years ago now, when my high school
sweetheart dumped her husband and came on to me after 30 years, I
thought that that might be my final chance. Now it looks like I was
right, but for additional reasons I didn't even consider at the time.
AAAHHHH, it's all my fault, I know. Can't keep from complaining a
little about it though.
So what I did is to open a google blog,
write a little introduction, and am putting in it these notes, and some
other things I have written trashing some of my cyber enemies, if I
think they have some merit, which some of them do. I have to figure out
more about how the blog thing works before I'm going to allow access to
it to anyone, and edit what I have put in there of course. Oh, no I
don't have the cards yet. Were you able to see what I sent you? I
think the head full of machinery thing is kind of cute.
Well
almost time to give up on sleeping this night and start on the coffee.
Lying flat makes it
harder to breathe for us lungers, and sometimes I never make it to bed
at all, but just sleep a few hours sitting up on the couch. If I am
flat in my bed, it can be pretty anxiety provoking if I get air hungry,
and then I just get up and start fucking around. I've been advised to
rig an incline in my bed, but haven't gotten around to that yet. BTW, I
don't think you ramble at all, and you are a very good writer,
especially considering that English isn't your first language. I
ramble. Have a good weekend yourself. I think the Patsies are back
from the bye week so I got that to look forward to. It's just a thrill a
minute. Bye for now.
