Surviving

Yes we are, surviving that is. But it's hard. I think everyone I know is starting to numb out, forming a protective shell around the misery that is President-Elect Trump and his minions. I really admire the media for continuing to get up every day and go cover him and the rest of the horrible news. I couldn't do it. It all makes me so ill.

I've actually lost weight since the election. No lie. Three pounds. I simply do not feel like eating. Part of it is that I came down with a cold right around then, so I've had it for about 10 days and it won't go away. It's all sitting down in my throat, where all my colds live -- they don't go up in my sinuses anymore, just down in my pharynx or, I don't know, some structure down there. My voice sounds funny and I wake up every morning coughing up crud. I should probably gargle with salt water. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, nausea from the election and a sort of fullness related to my throat being full of infected gunk combines to suppress hunger. I'm good with that. And no, I don't want to go to the doctor and beg for antibiotics. Two rounds of those this fall was enough for me. I'll fight this off eventually.

It doesn't help that we're having financial problems again. Or, not again, it's the same old thing that's been going on for a while now. It just seems notable to us because we are at the richest point in the year: in the fall my take-home pay is more, because my $13,500 fall semester salary is divided among four months, not five as in the spring semester, plus we now have rental income. And yet we fall further and further behind each month.

My latest credit card bill is for $3552, and of course I can't pay that. I can only afford to pay about $1000 a month on my credit card, and last month's charges came to $1802. Just stop using the card, you might say, and sure, that's a good plan. Except how then would I have paid for my apicoectomy ($770) and Kid A's monthly orthodontia treatment ($100) and the cat's diabetic food ($102) and the cat's ridiculously expensive medical tests ($270) and my antibiotics ($26) and our cell phones ($31) and a tank of gas ($26)? Everything else I charged was food. We did eat out four times and I know that has to stop. $32 at Denny's, $13.91 at Noodle's, $36 at IHOP, and $27.75 at Abo's Pizza. Not exactly gourmet cuisine. Three pricey trips to the grocery store, plus the bill for milk delivery. Maybe we should stop getting our milk delivered. Why did I charge groceries to my credit card, you might ask, and the answer is that we had no money left in the checking account. When I study the checking account statement it's the same thing: most of the charges are food or utilities. Not entirely, though -- I had to buy Kid A new shoes (yes, they're pink -- his choice) and us new sheets and mattress cover when we ripped ours. But nothing frivolous. We're NOT being extravagant. We just can't afford to live.

I get paid on the last day of the month and we live on that check for two weeks, running out of money at the end. A few days ago I noticed that we had $31 in the checking account, so I told Rocket Boy no more buying ANYTHING until the rent check comes. It was OK -- we had some kind of weird dinners, but we didn't starve. The rent check finally arrived today, so now we'll have money until the end of the month, at which point we'll live off stuff in the cupboards until my paycheck is deposited. And then we do it again. But starting at the end of January, my paychecks will be smaller. And the property taxes will come due. And my credit card bill will get larger. At some point I'll ask Rocket Boy to sell some more stock and pay it off, but I'm afraid the bill will build up again immediately.


Thinking about our finances is a distraction from thinking about Trump. It's really true. I'd rather stew about my credit card bill than think about how fake news on Facebook got him elected, or how his evil son-in-law is trying to circumvent the nepotism laws, or how he thinks the conservative judges he plans to appoint will repeal Roe v. Wade but keep same-sex marriage. "That's settled law" he told someone, apparently not realizing that it was a Supreme Court decision only a year ago and presumably would be even easier to get rid of than Roe v. Wade. People are really confused about these things. A student of mine told me the other day that abortion was legal because of a constitutional amendment. "Um, no," I said. "It was a Supreme Court decision in the 1970s." Constitutional amendment, give me a break. We couldn't even pass the ERA. I had a good talk with the student about the election, though. He's a devout Catholic Republican from Kansas, but claims he didn't vote for Trump and doesn't want to repeal Roe v. Wade. It was an interesting discussion. I like Midwesterners, understandable given my roots.

When I got home that day I started writing down all the Midwestern states that I have some connection with, through my forebears. (I like that word, forebears. As if one were descended from bears.) Nebraska, Oklahoma, Minnesota. South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kansas. It's a fairly comprehensive list. Why, if my family came out of all that, did the people there not vote like we did? Minnesota went blue. But the rest?

And Gwen Ifill died. It's the end of the world. I was counting on her being around for a LONG time yet.

We just had our latest first snow ever, on November 17th, following our hottest November day ever (80 degrees on November 16th). But global warming is a hoax, don't forget that.

But yeah, we're surviving. Hope you are too.