Lost Toys

About a year ago I cleaned off my desk and temporarily threw a bunch of stuff into a plastic bag, including some of my favorite desk toys. Somewhere along the way I misplaced the bag, thinking I'd accidentally thrown it and its contents away. My WACOM pen was also missing and I thought it was gone with the toys (but it later turned up somewhere else entirely).

This morning while collecting unused items to be donated I stumbled upon the bag with the long lost toys! Yay! Here's a pic.

Scatter

My desk is strewn with random notes on stickies and empty envelopes that were headed for the recycle bin. That isn't to say my desk isn't normally a disaster area...it's totally normal for there to be piles of stuff scattered about, just waiting for me to spill my drink on them (which lately has been the only thing to force me to clean up). It's just that I DID just clean off my desk last week, anticipating a visitor who was a no show. People are always flaking but that's a different story. There are a lot of details to handle when one's dad passes on. Especially if you're the person responsible for Everything (with a cap E).

My mom will receive a change in her Social Security from what I was told. Technically it is an increase. Practically she won't see ANY of it. Once again, Medi-Cal laws ruin everything. They only allow an old lady to keep $35 a month for personal expenses. The mistaken theory is that if a person is living in a care home, almost all of their personal needs are met. But the care home doesn't buy her clothes, cut or fix her hair, trim or manicure her nails, supply lotion, candy, sodas, or pay for her to have a root-beer float or some kind of entertainment once in a while. Not only that, the food there is not very good...some residents don't even eat it and their family bring their meals. A couple of weeks ago when my niece was visiting at dinnertime, the food was so salty it was inedible. By the way, my mom is supposed to be on a low-salt diet.

So of course, $35--which is a figure that might have worked back in the 1960s, and certainly the last time it was reviewed for acceptability--doesn't cover it all. And I didn't even list non-covered medical expenses like transportation to her doctor or over the counter items. Lawmakers in this country really aren't concerned enough with my mom's well-being.

Century

My dad passed away peacefully just past 7 a.m. Tuesday, June 3. Plans will be made soon for a memorial service. He would have been 100 years old--a full century--on August 31st. I'm willing to give him the next two months, so I'll just round it up. My mom has taken his passing okay considering they were married for 73 (!!) years. As for myself I'm doing the best I can to look for the silver lining...although some of my parade has been rained on because losing my dad means I'm also out of work a double hit. And this might seem redundant to say: After working to exhaustion with barely any time off in the past 5 years don't expect me to be looking for a job any time soon!*

In an unusual coincidence, my landlord's mother died the same morning as my dad. Weird.

It may be a while before I'm comfortable with an empty house.

*For unemployment insurance purposes I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of this statement.

The Day Everything Changed

Friday was a big day. I don't mean big in a good way, but also not in a totally bad way. I'm trying to mind the positive aspects of what just happened, on the fringe of a trajedy that isn't yet over. I read The Power Of NOW months ago and I think it's helpful that I've been practicing living in the moment and worrying less about the past and future. Yeah, that is a helpful way of thinking for this.

My dad went to ER Friday and is going to be in the hospital for a while. In fact, he will not return home.

Suddenly I must adapt to this change, one that I knew would come eventually and that I have been bracing for, preparing best I can (as if I even know what that means), knowing there wasn't "enough" time to really be "ready".

At home it is just me and the dog. That is strange, scary in fact. You'd feel the same way if you'd never lived alone in four decades. Both my parents' bedrooms are now empty. I'm okay right now except that earlier, for no reason, the dog barked at "something" in my dad's room. He almost never barks. I know people say their dogs don't bark when they actually do bark often, especially people who are trying to rent an apartment. But I'm serious, my dog hasn't barked in the past 3 months until today. I checked and there was no one out in front of the house, no one at the door. Weird. Scary. Creepifying.

I'm gonna just take things slow for a while.

Cost of Living Adjustment BS

Every year the U.S. Treasury "gives" people like my dad a token adjustment to their Social Security checks. It's called a Cost Of Living Adjustment and, since our government was founded on the basis of acronyms, it's sometimes referred to as a COLA, as in Coca- (R). You might think the adjustment is given to stave off inflation but you'd be incorrect. Since the amount of the COLA falls well short of the rate of inflation and the actual cost of living for most people in this country, one can only conclude that the COLA's true purpose is "to make it appear as though the U.S. government cares about the people who receive these increases."

My dad's income is low enough he must rely on help through Medicare and Medi-Cal to meet his ever-increasing medical expenses. The Medi-Cal program has varying levels of eligibility for different income levels, but the laws that calculate these levels have not been fully updated in more than a decade. That puts my dad's modest Social Security income at a level where a very high share of cost (SOC) is required out of pocket before Medi-Cal pitches in to help. It's the state's way of saying, "We'll help you afford that (medical expense you can't afford) as long as you pay most of it yourself FIRST. Oh, sorry if you can't afford to do that." The dirty secret is that this arrangement ends up saving Medi-Cal lots of money, because if a person can't pay the SOC Medi-Cal doesn't pay any part of it either. But it also means people end up not getting medical attention or care they need. My dad is in this situation on a monthly basis. If his income was only slightly lower he would have no share of cost and Medi-Cal would cover every last cent. Under current Medi-Cal rules, every dollar over a certain limit raises his share of cost.

Which brings us back to the COLA. Every time the government gives my dad a small raise to cover the cost of living every last cent of it has to be applied to his share of cost, essentially making the adjustment worthless, as if the adjustment never happened. You might think this sounds completely insane, or that somehow I have it all wrong, there must be some mistake; how can it possibly be this way? Sadly it's true, and one of the many reasons existing laws are inadequate and need to be changed.

What do YOU think it is?

To paraphrase Brian Williams' intro on the Nightly News a couple of weeks ago, it's enough to make you wonder just what is going on in this world of ours. He was referring to all of the crazy disaster-type events occurring around the globe lately. With the disaster in Myanmar, viscous tornadoes in the US Midwest, fires, the earthquake in China plus aftershocks, volcanoes, economic problems in the US, including high cost of energy and transportation...and more, it seems there are more than the "normal" amount of these kinds of things happening. Is it just me or does it appear the world itself my be in the process of a massive disruption?

What do you think is going on? And what if anything are you doing about it?

Xray

After going accident free for quite a while my dad fell a couple of times recently, both a few days apart. In the two months before the first fall he'd been mentioning random back pain that he'd never had before. I was paying close attention to the pain to determine if anything needed to be done, and he would usually tell me he had no pain and that it comes and goes. After the falls the pain seemed to worsen so I took him to see a doctor. Xrays revealed mild compression (fracture) in his L4 (vertebra). Definitely painful. Interestingly, the doctor he saw, an associate of my dad's primary MD, did not prescribe any new meds.

Flash forward (Hoffs/Drawlar for LOST fans) 3 days. My dad was sliding off the bed and he was in serious pain when I tried to move him so I called an ambulance and took him to ER. Once the paramedics got him on the gurney, probably taking certain pressure off his back, my dad seemed to feel better. Since he'd just had an xray, the ER doc just sent us home with an Rx for Vicodin. He didn't even examine my dad. Interesting. Maybe because he seemed to be ok right then.

At 99 it is amazing my dad is as well as he has been. Up to this point he has had very little pain and no major disabilities. He'll be 100 in August. The new back trouble changes things somewhat, and gives me some things to think about. Though he's able to walk for the moment and his pain is under control, at any time his status could change. It would not take much now for him to lose his ability to walk, and if that happens he will be beyond my ability to care for him by myself, much like what happened with my mom. I realize now that I have to accelerate my efforts even more to prepare for this change. I need a good plan, maybe even plans B and C, for what to do for my dad and myself when the time comes. I've been working already toward this, because there's no way to predict when anything will happen, you can only prepare as well as possible, but with the new injury there seems to be more urgency. It's scary, it's scary doing this all alone...how do I know what will work? But I think things will go smoothly...at least I'll be more prepared than if I was just ignorant of the whole situation. I'm not sure exactly everything that I need to do, but I have ideas. I know it's a ducks and row kind of thing.