Wrapping It Up: Vacation Retrospective

Things done, things undone. Positives and negatives. I'm still working on figuring out if this has been a plus or a minus, on the whole. There have been times I've thought both. Some of those were the same times.

Weather has been one of things beyond control... as always. Usually by early August this area has started drying up, mosquito populations are dropping, firewood is actually usable, and the sandbar at Steve's favorite boat launch on the St. Croix River has grown with dropping river levels to the point where Steve has plenty of room to set up a chair and his gear for fishing without a conflict with boaters for space.

One of those above has happened. Fortunately, it's been the fishing. Steve used a couple of other public access sites that have docks, but his intermittent bouts of dizziness leave him leery of sitting up on a narrow platform above the water when a fall is possible.  Using the river site gives room  for me to drop him off with all his gear, then either shop locally or sit in the car reading/napping until he calls me ready to head home.

We usually have several backyard bonfires during the summer, flames to enjoy along with our food, and that wonderful campfire smell without having to leave home. Brats and fixings, roasted ears of corn, s'mores or simple marshmallows for dessert to share with good company. We're still waiting for our first bonfire. The thunderstorms have actually been picking up, and with 2 weekends left for that bonfire, I'm pessimistic. Since I'm hoping to use the occasion to celebrate my 70th with a yardful of people, I've been trying to get the inside of the house into shape to hold everybody as the backup plan.

Please note that I've said "I". Not "we". Add two extra people to - shall we say a "casually" maintained house, with all having a tendency to do more cluttering than straightening, and you may understand why the prospect seems daunting. There have been many weeks where both the garbage and recycling bins, each 60+ gallons capacity, have been rolled curbside, not merely full but overflowing. I still see no progress.

If anybody sees Dobby the house elf, please send him this way. I've been feeling like a very incompetent version. While the knees are fine, strength and stamina are still dropping, the lungs are not keeping up, and a light depression has settled in. I'm told the latter is an expected side effect of the medication that is finally successful at keeping my blood pressure where it needs to be. I suspect the lungs are reacting to the excess mold from a very wet summer, although I wonder if the perpetual cough this summer shouldn't be a wet cough rather than a dry one if that were the entire case. I have managed to push ahead that pulmonologist appointment to just after we get back. I'd love to walk more than a block without puffing and panting. That's kind of another impediment to getting the house ready for company. I've given up on doing the basement stairs either for cleaning up or free laundry. Steve and I willingly pay the  local laundromat.

One the plus side, I've decided to quit fighting the insomnia so hard,  just catching up during the day instead. Either way, it's enough sleep that the A-fib hasn't popped up again. Driving home across two time zones will set my internal clock more where I want it anyway. Steve and I have managed to see everybody we've wanted to at least once this summer, though with family and friends spreading out that's getting to be more of a challenge. Steve has gotten to see grandchildren who've been unavailable for years, so that's been a real treat. We took Rich to see his granddaughter (that's weird: my kid's a grandpa!) who's also my great-granddaughter for a nice visit not long ago. All three of us were armed with cameras and caught bunches of still and videos, since the trip is a challenge. Of course, within two weeks her Mom posted Facebook video of the baby taking her first bunches of steps.

I packed three boxes of jewelry-making supplies to bring up here. Mostly they sit on the table. Just lately, however, I've gotten in three classes on how to do stuff up here that the club in AZ doesn't teach. Not only is it fun, helping abolish the depression for a bit, but I'm now laying in bed not sleeping while I plan on how to work on these new things back down there. In other words, another version of why I can't sleep when the head hits the pillow.

Topping it off, I've offered to teach the woman who's been giving me classes how to do her own chaining. We both benefit. Not only that, but I'll be using - for instructional purposes only - the 20 gauge wire jump rings I make when I first started out, before I decided they were too flimsy to do anything with. I couldn't bring myself to throw them out, and now they'll have a use. She knows she'll be making pattern samples only, and not to expect wearable jewelry at the end of the class. She, like I do, can stay awake nights imagining all kinds of ways to make adaptations. Different metals or colored wires, different size links, interrupted patterns with a bigger ring to connect them or hang things from like pendants or charms, mixing colors....

No, I'm not deliberately trying to give somebody else insomnia. I really like her. But it might be a side effect.

The annual Crex Meadows photography contest is being held later than usual this year. I have 3 photos entered, and just enough of a window to haul Steve up there before we leave so my pictures get at least two votes each for best in their category. Hey, it's not cheating! I'm sure some entrants come backed by large families of voters. There's no other way I can explain how one or two each year manage to win, especially when there are three nearly identical shots in some categories and how the heck to you choose except by reading the name of the entrant below each one?

While I was up there, I managed to wander familiar roads with my camera, shooting everything that was half-worth the effort. Which is exactly what they were: half-worth the effort. But I have a pair picked out to decide between for next year's contest. Or maybe the X-mas card.

On the still-to-do list: plan and do packing, schedule visits with Steve's Colorado family members, reserve motels. Plus that party, of course. Paul wanted me to go around the yard with him and mark how trees should be pruned, but that's not happened. At least the packing list is saved on the laptop so I can compare it with what was brought up.There will be lots of adjustments, of course. We brought stuff to leave here, and acquired stuff to take down.

All in all, we're both ready to head home. And maybe rethink the plan for next summer.

What: Medicare Is Free?

The usual brainless talking heads are at it again, claiming Medicare is free. This of course is part of their argument for destroying it.

Hey, brainless ones: I've been paying for my Medicare my whole working life. Just like Social Security.  So have you, presuming of course that you've been able to hold down a job at your level of stupid. Calling the programs "entitlements" like we're out there sitting around with our hands out waiting for freebies is completely missing the point. We ARE entitled to it. We've been paying for it for years.

Oh yeah, and we still are paying for it. Every month. For those uninformed among you, there is a monthly Medicare premium. It's just not the $800 per month or so it would have been the day before you aged into the program...because we've been paying in all those years while we were young and healthy enough to be out there working! We've been paying, we're still paying.

Just like every OTHER kind of insurance we get!

Get it? Medicare is an insurance program. Social Security is an insurance program. Homeowners and Renters are kinds of insurance insurance programs. Flood, Auto, Liability, FDIC, Life: all insurance programs. No pay, no benefits. Pay in, still maybe no benefits, depending on how life happens in your piece of the world. But we pay in so just in case, when life hits you hard, you're not destroyed financially. We pay in, so just in case our actions hit somebody else hard, they are not destroyed financially either. Nor are we for having been judged responsible.

You have no problem, I'm sure, in calling your insurance agent for your owed financial payout after an auto accident, right? Or to get your house rebuilt after a fire or tornado, right? And you still pay in even if nothing ever destroys your home, your car, or nobody robs your bank account. It's built in to the structure. A large pool of paid members enables the insurance company to cover the load for the individuals who need it under the terms of their contract. That's. How. Insurance. Works.

So if you happen to die before you qualify for Social Security, you've still been paying in because you're part of the national pool and if you'd qualified by staying alive long enough you'd be getting your own benefits. Same with Medicare.

Let me ask you this, those of you who think it's a good idea to destroy what you like to call "entitlements". I bet you think of yourselves a good people, right? Most of you would refer to yourselves as good Christians, or Jews, Muslims, or whatever affiliation you have. But if you destroy Medicare and Social Security, do you want millions of elderly people to become homeless? Go hungry? Become and stay ill, suffering until they die? Really?

Or are you willing to bring Granny or Grandpa back into your own homes, feed, clothe and shelter them, pay for their medical needs out of your own pockets, drive them around wherever now that they can no longer afford keeping and running a vehicle? And don't forget loving them and nurturing them - because you're such good people - and never making them feel obligated to you for having to take over the family duties now that you've taken away their "entitlements"? You know, paying from your own pockets and out of your own time and energy for what you've been calling "free"?

Are you ready to do all that?

Really?

And you think somebody's going to do it for you when it's your time?