Why snow is scary sh*t

January 16, 2012

…I interrupt the regularly (in theory) scheduled blog post to bring this update: it’s snowed!  Crap!

The thing with winter in Boston is, it’s predictably unpredictable.  We don’t know how much snow we’ll get or when, we don’t know how cold it will be or when, but we know that the majority of winter will involve cold and snow and ice.  That’s just how it works.  Which is why it’s been so odd this year to not get any snow, and to have little cold until this month.

Actually, there was a big storm in October that had everyone thinking it would be a tough winter, and some areas got hit hard, but others got almost nothing, and then it melted within hours.  My area was the latter.  Once I woke up to find a light dusting on parts of the sidewalk.  When I looked out the window an hour later, it was gone.  For me this has been fantastic!  Yes, we’ve had some cold days, but I just bundle up in my kick-ass coat, and all is fine.  Well, I admit to being a bit cold last night in 10 degree weather, but usually the coat is enough.

As for the snow, to be honest, if my body worked the way I’d like it to, I’d probably go skiing occasionally.  I can understand why the skiers are excited for snow.  And I do understand why snow doesn’t bother a lot of people.  Really, I only have two concerns with it.  The smaller one (since I’m not working) is that when it snows a lot (not today, thankfully) I have to find a way to dig out my car.  I can’t manage it myself, and it’s tough to find help some winters.

The bigger issue is walking.  My footing isn’t as steady as I’d like it to be, and a fall could be disastrous.  Simply spraining an ankle would be horrible – because of wrist pain, I can’t use any sort of cane or crutches; I can’t lean on anything.  And my apartment building is not wheelchair accessible.  Neither is my parents’ house.  Or most of my friends’ homes.  I love the old buildings in this area, but it means that most places aren’t accessible.  Ice is bad, but a light covering of snow, which we have now, is worse.  It can be treacherous.  For the first time this season, I’ll be pulling out the super awesome boots tomorrow.  Those things are warm and have great treads.  But I’ll still be a nervous wreck.

So the best part of this winter so far?  Being to walk without the extra fear.  I’ll miss that.  I just hope we don’t get too much more snow this winter.

[Note: This picture is from a storm in January 2005.  I’m short, but it’s still never a good sign when the snow drifts are taller than I am.]

Please share this on Facebook, Twitter, etc. This blog is new, and it would be great to have it passed along.

Leave a Comment » | Expectations, Frustration, Isolation, Limitations, Rants, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Facing the “real world”

January 12, 2012

2 +2 =4.  Every time.  It’s the most beautiful thing.  This is why I always liked math; it just makes sense!  Sure, there are negative numbers and irrational numbers and other weird shit, but when we’re just looking at straight-forward arithmetic, it’s the same every time.

I fell into accounting at a previous job.  I was just doing some basics, but I liked the basics so I learned more, and the more I learned, the more I wanted to do.  Before I knew it, I was doing it all and really enjoying it.

Last summer I started reading about personal finance.  I followed a link about something else entirely and ended up on a personal finance web site, where I got hooked for hours.  I read other web sites and a few books.  I’m really into it now.  And of course, saving is more important than ever, since I may not be working full time for much longer.

So if you throw together my love of math, my accounting experience, and my new interest in personal finance, it makes perfect sense that I was helping my cousin plan his first post-college budget this week.  I laid it all out very carefully.  I explained taxes, investing, compound interest.  I went over why planning is so important and what it’ll allow him to accomplish.

The most interesting part of all of this (and the point… yes, I am getting to a point) is that for the first time, he saw a glimpse of what the “real world” will entail.  He’s had some vague notions for a while, and I’ve tried to give him tips before, but this time he really got it.  He saw just how much it will cost to live a basic lifestyle.  He saw how much it costs to have a car – not just the car itself, but for car insurance, gas, servicing, etc.  He saw what health insurance costs, even before copayments and deductibles.  He saw that all those dinners with friends and quick coffees on the go really add up.  And it hit him hard.

I’m glad he’s seeing what’s involved in the “real world.”  Some of it sucks and some of it rocks, and it’s easy to leave college expecting all of one and none of the other.  I’m trying to show him some balance.  In some small ways I miss the carefreeness of those high school and college years, when someone else was ultimately responsible.  It’s scary as hell right now to face such an uncertain future, where I’m not sure how I’ll earn a living when I don’t feel well enough to work.  But there’s something great about it, too.  There’s the independence.  There’s the self reliance and self control.  There’s eating ice cream before dinner.  (Not that I do that, of course.  Nope.  Not me.  Uh uh.)  There’s living life how I choose to live it.

Life can be difficult and scary, and unfortunately I’m in one of those stages right now, but there’s some pretty incredible parts to it too.  Those are the parts to try and focus on.  And when they’re going well, they really do make up for all the rest.

Please share this on Facebook, Twitter, etc. This blog is new, and it would be great to have it passed along.

Leave a Comment » | Educating, Expectations, Job, Limitations, Raves, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

Survival instincts

January 11, 2012

My future is looking a bit bleak at the moment.  I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the tinted glasses I’m wearing – I’m so focused on the negatives, it’s hard to see the positives.  So what’s the answer?

I really don’t know the answer, I just know I have to keep moving forward.  That’s all I’ve got.  And for years that’s all I’ve had.  For better or for worse, I just have to keep moving forward, because there’s simply no other choice.  Just keep moving forward.

I’m reading an incredible book right now about life in North Korea.  It follows the lives of several people starting in the 1970s.  I’m up to about 1998 now and I can’t wait to see what happens next.  I know they survive only because they live to tell their stories, but as I read about the famine, about how these people beg and steal, how they eat grass and tree bark and unidentifiable food-type items, how they choose between antibiotics to save a son’s life or food for the family, it feels like a different world.  It is not as if I think there aren’t hungry people in the world, but I’ve never heard first-person accounts like this.  These people went from having three meals a day to not eating for days at a time in the course of just a year or two.  They watched their loved ones starve to death in front of them.  They describe malnourished children with distended stomachs, adults with flaking skin, and I start to cry.  And then I wonder how long I would have survived.

Forget my health problems.  Obviously that would affect things.  But aside from that, would I have made it?  Or would I have been one of the first to go?  I have a steely resolve.  I have a strong survival instinct.  I know this.  I also know that I would want to help others, that I would hesitate to steal or cheat.  But maybe in this circumstance that wouldn’t be true?  I can’t imagine it, and I would guess that no one can.  You don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re forced to find out.  Still, right now, I don’t know that I’d make it.  At the time of that famine I was a teenager, happily going to school, hanging out with friends, dating, researching colleges.  That girl might have actually done ok.  I was even more stubborn then than I am now, and somehow I think I might have been ok for the early years.  Still, I can not imagine how they survived it.

So even though I am depressed and overwhelmed by the potential problems of the near (and long-term) future, I know that I have to summon my strength.  I come from a long line of stubborn folks.  My grandparents have survived an awful lot, and much of it seems to be by shear force of will.  My mother amazes me with the obstacles she overcomes.  I have that same stubbornness in me.  It’s time to use it.  I am not facing war or famine.  Hard as my problems may be, it is really only my own inner demons that I have to fear.  So I just have to remember: keep moving forward.  There’s no other choice.  Just keep moving forward.

 

Please share this on Facebook, Twitter, etc. This blog is new, and it would be great to have it passed along.

4 Comments | Decisions, Expectations, Frustration, Limitations, Symptoms, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

5 reasons the next election scares me

January 9, 2012

I’m irritable and grumpy and really not in the mood to write a happy post.  But then, I’m tired of hearing myself complain.  So where does that leave me?

Avoidance.  That seems like a perfectly immature solution.  I’m going for it.

To avoid complaining about the health issues that are on my mind, instead I’ll list my top 5 (in no particular order) concerns going into the next presidential election.  After all, politics is always a good topic to vent about.

  1. Obama’s healthcare plan could be repealed.  I sure don’t agree with all of it, but it’s the best we have right now.  It worries me that some of our candidates believe that anyone who can’t afford healthcare should be left to suffer and even to die.  It worries me that they don’t see the need to outlaw preexisting condition exclusions.  It worries me that they think our current system works.  Just because it works for them, doesn’t it mean it works for the rest of us.
  2. Abortions could become illegal, or legal but almost impossible to get.  The laws in some states scare me.  To think that a woman must be counseled against an abortion before she can receive one, or that she must be forced to listen to the fetus’s heartbeat, is just downright scary.  A woman should not be forced to carry a baby against her will.  What kind of society would enforce that?  It’s especially heinous considering how difficult some people want to make it for women to receive contraception and Plan B-type medications.  Believe it or not, not every fertile woman wants to have a child.  Expanding these laws to work around Roe v. Wade would be unacceptable.
  3. Homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia could become legal.  Well, more than it already is.  What really angers me (besides the politicians railing against “the gays” who themselves turn out to be gay or bi) are the many politicians who say they “have many close friends who are gay” and they “have nothing against gays” but then denounce same sex couples as having “unnatural lifestyles” or something equally absurd.  Psst…. you really do have a problem with “the gays,” even though you still want their votes.
  4. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, could become scapegoats for every single problem in this country.  Well, even more than they already are.  Shocking as it may seem, immigrants did not cause the current/recent recession, immigrants are not preventing a rebound in employment numbers by stealing American jobs, and immigrants did not come to this country in order to scam our welfare system.  Yes, there is the occasional immoral immigrant, just like there is the occasional immoral U.S.-born citizen.  But overall, these are people who came to this country for a better life.  Why did your ancestors come here?  Unless your ancestors were Native Americans, your ancestors immigrated to this country at one point.  They may have come by choice or they may have come against their will, but they weren’t born here.  The vast majority of us are descended from immigrants.  Get over it.
  5. We’ll continue to see nothing but infighting, status quo, and bandaids.  I’m so sick and tired of see a group of rich white guys, with a few women and minorities thrown in for good measure, fighting for their side to win, even at the expense of the American people.  I’m fed up with seeing real solutions to real problems being watered down to the point of being made almost useless.  I’m aching to see something more than just incremental changes.  Where’s the real thing?  Let’s tear apart our broken systems and rebuild them to be better.  You know that whole “all [people] are created equal” clause?  I want to see our politicians act as if it’s really true.  I want to see our political system fixed so that there’s no longer an incentive for politicians to pander to rich people and large corporations.  I want to see a system that appears to at least have the potential to actually work.  I’m not seeing that right now.

 

For once, I want to vote for the best candidate, not for the least bad one. 

A few people have suggested that I run for office myself.  They weren’t suggesting a presidential run, of course, but something more like a state representative position.  I gave three good reasons for not doing it: (1) my health (2) lack of money (3) I’d want to speak my mind, and I honestly don’t think anyone can get elected by speaking their mind.  I really wish that wasn’t true.

This next election scares me.  I just don’t like the direction we’re moving in.  I hope that by some miracle, things improve.  Oh, that reminds me, I didn’t have room to get into my views on the separation of church and state and where that’s headed.  A future rant to look forward to….

If any of this sounds familiar, if you can relate, please share it on Facebook, Twitter, etc. This blog is new, and it would be great to share it.

And if you’d like to get these posts emailed to you for free, simply click the “Sign me up!” button in the top right corner.

2 Comments | Educating, Expectations, Frustration, Healthcare, Politics, Rants, Unpredictable | Permalink
Posted by chronicrants

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »