I’m trying to reinforce my daily writing habit.  Obviously I don’t always have something profound or even interesting to say.  The challenge is to take my empty void of a mind and try to cause something to materialize that is worth sharing.  Nobody wants to hear me drone on about irrelevant mundane trivia, least of all myself.  Mostly it’s to maintain a productive habit versus a time-killing one.  I’ve killed way too much time in my life; you could call me a time-murderer.  There should be a jail for that.  It’s like the reverse of a mind palace.  Instead of going into your mental space to visualize and rearrange all the puzzle pieces into order and clarity, you go into your solitary brain cell and wallow in empty chaos.  A mind prison.

Wasn’t that informative?  But hey, I wrote a thing.  😉

So far so good.  Our expedition to the tax people yielded an even better result than we had hoped.  Now if we can continue to fly under the radar and not send up false red flags, as is so often the case when one is ‘different’, we’ll be able to put more money in savings for our future in TN.

Appropriately, we adjourned to our HQ, the Tavern, for some good Ohio craft beers on tap, and their awesome fries.  You know, a balanced intake of munchies suitable for such an occasion.

The dark beer was a food group unto itself– Warped Wing (Dayton–who knew?) Whiskey Rebellion Russian Imperial Stout, at 11.2 % (!!), a deep, dark, intense experience that even E the newbie could get behind.

To wash it down, I got Yellow Springs (yes, our very own local brewery, around the block from the Tavern) Wyatt’s Eviction Extra Special Bitters, a smooth balance of English malt, hops, and yeast at 5%.  Really, who needs to eat when one can drink a balanced diet?

It’s nice being the designated drunk.  No lives were harmed in the making of this post.

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It’s a strange feeling.  This (2015) will be the first year I made so little that I don’t have to file income tax returns.  I am officially poor!  I receive a minuscule SS benefit that nobody could live on, and therefore qualify for Medicaid (all of which I’ve earned and paid for during my working life).  I can actually afford to go to a doctor and get preventive care.  Thankfully, I live with a fellow poor person and share expenses, so we don’t have to be homeless.

Ironically, I feel like the lucky one.  Other family members and friends are suffering because it appears on paper that they earned too much to qualify for any kind of benefits or relief.  They have huge medical expenses, not covered by their health insurance, which probably won’t get reimbursed in any form.  They can’t afford to go to a doctor, because they can’t afford their insurance, which won’t actually cover their healthcare.  There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

How is it that hard-working citizens of this “civilized” country can’t afford healthcare?  And those of us who have worked for the benefits we qualify for are considered freeloaders?  And those who are too disabled or old to work are flat out of luck.  Anyone who thinks privatized corporate monopolized healthcare is an effective working model, doesn’t actually live in the real world.  This system discourages the entrepreneurial spirit of small businesses, and crushes the illusion of earning the “dream”.  You actually have to be living on the streets to even begin to qualify for healthcare and other necessities, but by then it’s too late.  What kind of incentive is that?

So, I feel like the lucky one because I’m so poor at age sixty-something that I don’t have to file, having been compelled to retire prematurely, and I can finally afford a doctor.  I have a roof over my head, thanks to a fellow survivor who is still contending with the broken system.

Hopefully my friend will be able to deduct some of the outrageous medical bills that her so-called insurance stopped paying for, though she still has to pay ridiculously high fees to them.  She can’t afford to go to a doctor for even basic, necessary exams.  She worked extremely hard, long hours, for decades, supporting an ungrateful family, including a severely disabled child who died partly due to medical incompetence.  She’s still paying the consequences in every sense.  She served in the military for years as well, but unsurprisingly their promised benefits were also a farce.  She’s one of the millions who did their time, paid their dues, and got screwed.  So much for “bootstraps”.

Anyway, enough rant.  We’re off to the tax preparers today, to see if some of the huge medical debt can be written off, which would help us recover from the difficult past year, and save a little toward the future.  We never get our hopes up, so we don’t get let down.  Despite immense odds, we will get through this rough period and move forward to a modest new life with a clean slate.  It’s more than many older (and younger) Americans can hope for.

It was a gorgeous 60 degree evening in February, so we headed over to the fen.  No beavers or frogs were in evidence, but the yellow winter aconite was blooming en masse.  It normally waits a little longer for early spring.  I took photos like a crazy person with seasonal affective disorder.  Folks have reported peepers, other frogs, many species of salamanders, families of snakes, and wildflowers out much earlier than usual.

E made this fantastic pizza, including the flatbread dough, from scratch.  I call it the “breakfast lunch and dinner” pizza.  It was a white pizza with a topping of tomatoes and all kinds of veggies, herbs, and other ingredients.  It tasted as good as it looked.  Now I really have to work it off and earn my keep.

Accordingly, I started some indoor veggies, greens, herbs, and some perennials.  Our windowsills are filling up with future food and beneficial wildflowers to go into our garden.

It was a breezy 70 degrees in February.  We took a hike in John Bryan (the circuit, across both bridges).  Mobs of people and dogs were out.  The water was rushing and falling.  Lots of plants and mosses were turning bright green; there were fine fungi and lichen specimens.   A nice older man from a midwest wildflower group pointed out some tiny first flowers of the season, always exciting.  I think these were called “harbinger of spring”, for obvious reasons.  They’re delicate white with dark purple specks, like salt and pepper.

Back at home, taking advantage of the beautiful weather, we finally upended our bin of aging compost from last season in a corner of the yard.  It was nice and black, ready to add into the beds I’m going to dig.  I also mulched an area behind the house that I’m using for perennial herbs, and possibly tomatoes.  Soon I’ll start my indoor seedlings.  I’m planning a garden full of native, bird/bee/butterfly/etc.-friendly wildflowers, perennials, cutting flowers, as well as lots of veggies.  Gardening is my cheap but effective psychotherapy, to help me get through the duration of our Ohio sojourn.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was spring outside.  62 degrees, and higher tomorrow!  Which brings to mind Arab Spring, which segues cleverly to my Middle Eastern dinner.  We’re having: a fresh eggplant salad, using sautéd  ‘graffiti’ eggplant (the purple and white striped ones), grilled roma tomatoes and chilies, olives, garlic, spices, and fresh herbs; a tandoori-style roasted chicken with potatoes and carrots, in a middle eastern spiced yogurt marinade;  yellow basmati rice; and a coconut custard with rosewater, cardamom, apricots, sultanas, cashews, almonds, and sweet spices.  I think I may have outdone myself this time.

I come from the Cold War era, so I regularly had atomic disaster dreams growing up.  Many of us did. Just routine.   Later, I had demonic entities chasing me through ghostly forests, or wandered disoriented through complex labyrinthian landscapes.  For years I’ve had nightmares about ever more ghastly, horrible bathrooms!  (Don’t ask.) Just a normal night in the twilight zone that is my head.

But lately, my dreams are turning to more apocalyptic themes.  Everyone is being rounded up and detained like holocaust refugees, waiting for their doom, no possible way out, while I’m desperately running for my life, through cities and forests, just ahead of my pursuers.  Yes, I also grew up Jewish, comes with the territory.  But this is new and different.  It’s like scary current political/social trends are infiltrating my mind and taking fearful, apprehensive forms.  It’s happening more frequently, as I watch the news and anxiously observe the familiar signs.  It’s too much like the way it devolved in Nazi Germany.  People were complacent, fearful sheep, and let it happen under their noses.  They voted for it.  The world exploded into a nightmare reality.  There was no way out.  Finally the world belatedly caught on and fought back, but the damage was done.  Now here we are again.  We know the history, or else we are in serious denial.  Can humans possibly be this dense?  Do we ever evolve, or just keep wallowing in self-destructive ignorance?

It does worry me.  Hence the nightmares.  Is anyone else experiencing this?  Or is it just me being my usual anxiety-ridden self?

Imagine, me with nothing to drone on about.  I even asked E for a topic, but she drew a blank.  Now I’m staring at my screen but nothing is magically appearing there.  I guess this is what actual writers go through all the time.  Good thing I’m not a writer.

Speaking of writers, it being the fourth anniversary of the Lebanese-American reporter Anthony Shadid’s death (my brother was his literary agent and good friend), I showed E his book, Night Draws Near.  She started reading it and quickly got absorbed by his story.  I guess that was my good deed of the day.  It’s sad that more literate people don’t take the time to educate themselves about the ancient struggles of Middle Eastern civilizations, not just get taken in by the hate-filled rhetoric of idiots.

Well, a marathon of birthday movies beckons to me, thanks to my generous son and daughter-I-L, so that’s my cue to beg off writing anything meaningful whatsoever.  I’m going to initiate E into the wonders of classics like The Princess Bride.  She’s like a blank slate.  Bwahaha.

Hmm..Scalzi’s blog is “Whatever”; has anyone taken the name “Whatsoever”?  How about “Nevermind”?  As in, “braahk, never mind”.  (Sorry, in-joke.)  I must look into that.  My mind works in weird ways.  When it works at all.