Luna Park

  Got another one of those notices from the so-called Family Support division of my home state telling me that hey, you know that seventy six dollars you had to beg and fight for, and jumped through a million and one hoops to get during your last renewal? Since you got that cool COLA increase (a ginormous eight dollars or so according to my limited math skills,) we've decided to cut your food assistance to fifty-six dollars. A month. Since I I have something like thirty-five dollars in my checking at the moment and three different bills that I am going to have to pay late, which will eat up most of my SSDI because of late fees, and I don't get my SSDI until a week after they are all due- and there are plenty more coming down the pipeline-you can imagine that I was not happy to receive that informational tidbit. As a matter of fact, I snarled and bit the paper, cursed and threw it on the floor and jumped up and down on it. Then I very calmly picked it up, wiped off my froth, and went and put it in my important paperwork.

 I give up. I could fight it again, set up a meeting, waste gas money driving forty miles back and forth both ways to the library to make copies of the stuff they always ask for and fax them because of my unreliable rural mail service that may or may not get them to where they need to go in time, but you know what, screw that. I'm tired and pissed off, and tired of being tired and pissed off all the time.  I just want to buy some g.d. food and pay the bills, too. Why are they making this so hard? I didn't get cancer and become broke cause I was after free money, stop punishing me.

Oh, and apparently because of complicated new rules regarding SNAP in Iowa,  I can no longer buy candy, pop, or energy drinks there. (That's not entirely new and I don't want energy drinks anyway. Bleh. Caffeinated chemical juice.) I can still buy a freakin chocolate bar with SNAP where i live, at least until October. (Yay, right around Halloween, the candy holiday. Red states sure hate poor kids, ironic, since there are so many of them here.) This wouldn't irritate me so much if I really thought it was because people in charge really gave a tinker's damn about rural health and were sincerely concerned. No, they just think all poor folks are lazy inbreds who don't deserve any small scraps of comfort, like store-bought birthday cakes, a gas-station pizza after a long day when you're too tired or sick to cook, or a flippin jolly rancher and some bubblegum in a trick-or-treat bag at Halloween. 

 We had a lovely Christmas here, though it was a brown and foggy day and it smelled like Spring with the frost going out of the ground. I got up early this morning to make dinner rolls, turned on my Christmas tree and all my lights, put on my apron and some Celtic Christmas compilation on YouTube as I kneaded, drank some wassail (ish) and felt like Mary Berry.

I couldn't afford to give anyone anything this year except food (though I also gave my niece a granny-square afghan I crocheted from some odds and ends yarn balls, and a different one to Slightly Older Sister,) So I sure wasn't expecting anything for myself, but my oldest nephew gave me a nice plush throw and some chocolates, and Slightly Older Sister gave me a bracelet-an Avon bracelet! How in the world did she afford that!? And from where?? Aren't they out of business? You know what, I don't care, it's mine and I love it. I made sure she took away a big ol' plate of food, and bag of sugared popcorn too.

So now everyone is gone, and I made a plate for everyone else who wanted one to take away, and I am sooooo full I feel like a python that ate a goat.

Here's hoping that everyone had a wonderful Christmas, or very merry Festive Secular Event, or whatever you celebrated (or not) and that you all were warm and happy and full and safe in this troubled time we're in, and your holiday was the very best it could be. 

  and some bitter cold, but the temperature was warm enough today to send glaciers of snow/melting ice sliding down the roof, which hit the ground at regular intervals like gunshots. The cat did not enjoy the loud noises, and it tore my little string of Christmas lights off on the way down. (It's a metal roof so they're held on there with magnetic clips.) So I had to dig them out of the drifts and put them back up. But at least the road to the mailbox was slushy enough I didn't have to worry about busting my butt on my way there. Though the only mail was a water bill that was due on....November the fifteenth. Luckily I paid it with my debit over the phone on November nineteenth when I realized it wasn't coming. I was blaming the mailman for this, who has a tendency to look at the three mailboxes (Me, the neighbor, and the other neighbors,) and just cram all the mail into whichever box is closest reach from his truck. But the water department says it's because the mail has to go all the way to St. Louis for some stupid reason, and sometimes certain articles just don't make it back here to Northeast Dogpatch. US Mail service, you suck, but you've been sucking since The Angry Yam first laid his tiny orange fingers on you, so I don't know why I'm surprised. ANYWAY...moving on.

I decorated the living room and put up the tree and tinsel and ornaments ,and all the lights I could manage to plug in, (I used to have a bigger tree, so I've got a lot of lights, mostly multi-colored, because I want ALL  the twinkly holiday COLORS, and plain white lights are not my favorite trend.) I also dug around in the basement and found my projector doo-dad thingy (I'm so articulate,) that makes big floating Christmas images across the walls and ceiling. It's probably lucky that this old house doesn't have more accessible/working wall sockets, because the entire downstairs would look like a rave at Santa's workshop.

   Younger Brother went ahead and bought a small turkey for Thanksgiving, because he lives in hope I can still pull the rest of the ingredients out of thin air somehow. That and the even smaller turkey breast I have in the freezer will have to do. Usually he gets a voucher for a free turkey from his workplace, (they can and package various foods there, mostly meat related, which the poors like myself can't afford to buy now, sooo...) but they're in middle of a layoff without actually calling it a layoff, and he's not getting a lot of hours. Or a free turkey, apparently. I'm already really sick of this whole "Shutup and eat your gruel, and don't expect a lot of turnips in it, peasant," vibe going around this holiday season. 

Speaking of turnips and the lack thereof, I made my trip to the food pantry on the thirteenth. I got two big bags of green grapes, a can of tomato sauce, a can of pears, a bag of pears, a gallon of whole milk (frozen), a half loaf of bread, a small roll of ground pork,and a chunk (I don't dare call it a 'roast',) of rather questionable beef. I know I'm only one person, but I feel like I'm living in a dystopian episode of that cooking show Chopped.
In what universe do these things come together to make meals that are not only edible, but that will last a whole month? (I did cook the roast with the last of my potatoes and carrots. After two hours in the oven, you could barely cut it with a carving knife. I fear it was an extremely elderly cow, or a very hard-working horse.)

Man, now I want some nice young, tender, turnips. I'd quarter them and roast them with some salt and pepper and rosemary. Dammit.

 I have many fond memories of Halloween. Classroom parties. Chasing after my two sisters on Trick-or-Treat night, leaping drainage ditches and occasionally falling on our faces on the broken sidewalks. (Or maybe that was just me.) .Homemade popcorn balls and caramel apples. Meeting friends in the dark and sharing intel about who was giving out the best loot. Hitting up my granny's house on our way through town. Oldest sister was ten years older than me with the attitude of a drill sergeant, but very petite, so nobody gave her a second look. She usually took a pillow slip so she could collect the maximum load, slightly-older sister and myself usually had a paper grocery bag, (yes, I am old,) but we filled those suckers up. Mom would park at the end of the block and set us loose. ("Only the houses with porch lights on!") By the time she collected us we were usually a sticky mess, wet up to our knees, and had lost parts of our costumes, but it was awesome. I pity the poor kids now with 'Trunk or Treat'. So lame. 


( So how about some odd anecdotes for Halloween?  )

These are the only things I couldn't blame on being tired, or my eyes playing tricks on me in that house, though, and the weirdness was so few and far  between that it was easy to dismiss. I've already mentioned in previous posts about that voice in my ear at my old, old job, and the time in my present house I saw a shadow figure in the bedroom, so I'll just link to those. Make of them what you will. 

  Happy National Fossil Day! I've always loved fossils, one of my many nerdy interests. I found a lot of simple marine fossils in the fields behind my house when I was a little sprout everytime the farmer turned over the dirt, and even on the railroad tracks where the railroad had used limestone (and sometimes geodes) for fill. I gave most of those away to my eighth grade science teacher, (Hi, Mrs. George!) One year Dad bought a load of river rock for the driveway and I found a gigantic piece of agatized coral tinted red and yellow. like a chunk of quartz, the size of a baby's head. I kept that one for myself, but there was a flood in '93, so...)  I'd show the few I have now, but I have low brain today and my internet does too, apparently. Everything is loading soooo slooooow, if at all, and anything with an image, forget it. Life in the country, friends and neighbors. But I have a trilobite, a big chunk of Rugose coral, and a nice piece of the bottom plate of a fossilized soft shell turtle. Even today I'm always on the lookout. 

I must have looked really sad on the way to my mailbox this morning, staring down at my feet, but no, just scanning the gravel for anything interesting, ha ha.

In other news, still waiting for the garage to come fetch the car, so I guess I'll call out there and see what's the hold up.

I actually had a little mental squabble with myself for my good mood , because I had my SNAP hearing on September thirtieth and managed to wrangle it up from twenty three dollars to...(drumroll)...to a whole seventy-three dollars. Huzzah, she said sarcastically. But I had been dreading the hearing so much, and finally it was over, for better or worse, and the next day was October. My brain was all like, "We're still kinda screwed, you know that right?" And the rest of me was "But OCTOBER! HALLOWEEN! YAY! Let's decorate and make a cheesecloth ghost!!" So, that. Admittedly, it is ninety-three degrees outside at his moment, and drier than a popcorn fart, with heat indexes possibly up to a hundred on Saturday. Not exactly sweater weather out there.

I managed a drawing for Inktober.   The prompt was 'mustache'. Eh.  I had Halloween on the brain.



I also went for a CT scan Wednesday, but the worst part of that was drinking a quart of red contrast dye .Pardon me while I shudder in rememberence: Gaaaaaaah.

  All I seem to do is complain about my life situation, but then again, I have had a lot more to complain about. Like...

Did my over the phone renewal with SNAP last month, got that taken care of, everything lookin' good. Sweet. Yesterday I got a letter from DSS telling me that they are cutting my food stamps from 292 dollars a month to...23 dollars a month.

I went to the local DSS office. Apparently, I make too much money. Even though it's a tiny pittance of SSDI that barely pays my bills. Every bit of money I will have to spend for food now is that much more I will have to take from my checking that I pay those bills with, which makes that much more difficult, maybe even impossible, depending on my heating bills this winter. She kept saying how sorry she was, but it was a thin veneer, and I got the feeling she just really was humoring the crazy lady and needed me out of her office. She set up a hearing for me and DSS is supposed to call me, but I'm not hoping for much. It's just really a sucker punch. I was doing alright with the 292 dollars these past months, not great, but with ruthless budgeting I was feeling hopeful, even happy. My bills were paid on time, more or less, and I had food. In spite of everything, I was looking forward to the coming holidays.

When I left the office, I sat in my car and cried so hard I gave myself a headache. Then I sat in line and cried some more at the food pantry, (which I have learned has had it's funding cut,) and got three small boxes, no bread, eggs, or milk, not even dry. Mostly pasta, and some ground meat, and a lot of stuff I can't eat -beans, corn, cauliflower, raisins, granola-because of my colostomy. (And weirdly, seeds. Sunflower seeds, petunias, snap peas, catnip. Seeds to plant. In September. They did their best. I'll bring my dietary issues up next time  I go.) 

23 dollars a month. FML. 

  It's that time of year in the country when all the little critters that are out suddenly want in, and my basement is liike a vacation spa for them, since it is still a disaster area from The Great Grey-Water Clogged-Pipe Backup of 2024, when I was in the Hospital waiting for surgery and my sister, with good intentions (I choose to believe, but we know what that road to Hell is paved with, don't we?) decided to surprise me by washing every dingdang thing in the house. (Including many things that never should have gone anywhere near my nice Speed Queen washer and my delicate old septic system, like stiff-backed throw rugs. ANYWAY...

So there is a cricket in my basement. A very loud cricket. And every time I hear it, it seems closer. I swear that sucker is slowly making his way up the stairs,  like some really small, chirpy horror-movie villain with a hunger for socks and underwear.

 Usually, I would get some hedge-apples and place them around but I can't really get out and get some this year. I don't have some hideous cricket-phobia or anything, but I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and his constant chirp is driving me bonkers. He better hope I don't see him the next time I do laundry, cos I've got a fly-swatter and I know how to use it.

  I dreamed I was in some big box store, the kind that people go to when they want to buy huge amounts of cheez-snacks or toilet paper or bottled water all at once. It was mostly empty of of shoppers and not a lot of visible employees either. It was very much a warehouse and had tall red shelves made of metal. For some reason I was standing in a pet food aisle, looking up at these big piles of sacks of dogfood, some stacked way too high and too close to the edge. I remember thinking Man, that is an accident waiting to happen.

Then Donald Trump appeared. Yeah, I know,what are the odds. My sleeping brain is a strange place sometimes.

He muttered something like "I need all of that," as he reached up and grabbed a corner of the bottom bag, and he got it as he was suddenly buried completely in hundred pound sacks of dog-food, nothing but his face sticking out. He seemed strangely unexcited about his predicament, just kind of loose-lipped and dull, with the vague, distant expression of a toddler loading his diaper. Like he always looks, really.

"Aww, too bad," I said, with complete insincerity. "Hang on, I'll go get help." Then I wandered away, in no particular rush, happy to do the whole world a favor by letting him be slowly smooshed, not feeling at all guilty.

I ended up looking at some light-bulbs. After a long time I looked up with a package of 100-watts in my hand and thought, with a great deal of mental struggle: Damn it, am I actually going to have to come to the rescue of that demented old [insert anglo-saxon expletive here]?

I woke up before I could find out what I did. Ah well