In short : money.
Let’s start with the numbers. Right now, I have $428 to my name.
My weekly budget is $150/week for four weeks. $600 totaly. Ergo, if I were on budget and on schedule, I would go into tomorrow (beginning of week 2) with $450.
Ergo, I am already $22 into next week’s budget and I am probabkly going to spend around $20 more tonight.
Ergo, I am around $42 over budget and I hate that.
Especially because I don’t know how it happened. I thought I had everything under control. But then I count my money last Friday and I am $50 short of where I should be.
And that makes me feel very insecure, both financially and emotionally.
Those tend to be the same thing with me.
Now this is not a financial crisis. I have $434 on The Card right now. I can make a cash withdrawal and get my financial ship back on course and that’s fine.
The enotional situation is far more complicated, though. I don’t handle the unexpected well even when it is not about money.
When it is about money and involves a feeling of loss, it really destabilizes me.
The problem began when I was so happy that, after the deposit I made when I cashed my check on Thursday, my total was over $500.
That felt good. That felt like an achievement. That felt like I was doing something right.
But that’s hoarder thinking. Miser thinking. The moment I felt good about essentially setting a new high score, I became attached to that number and that sets me up to not want to spend any of that money so I can cling to the feeling of financial security and safety it gives me.
But money is for spending, dammit. I don’t want to be the sort of joyless person who accumulates wealth and then does nothing but squat on it like a dragon.
I want to spend money to make myself happy. That’s what it is for. That doesn’t mean I will ever be the sort of person who spends it as fast as they get it, but I refuse to let myself become the kind of person who is incapable of spending it.
I want to have fun, dammit/. Buy myself nice things. Make investments in my own happiness and wellbeing.
Maybe even get myself some positive experiences some day.
None if that is possible if I lapse into a state of financial constipation, where no matter how much comes in, nothing goes out.
I’ve read about captains of industry who accumulated vast fortunes while continuing to live like paupers. My buddy Ebenezer Scrooge is the most famous example from the world of fiction.
He lived like a beggar despite being rich. And the real irony of that is that the only real difference between a miser and a beggar is that the beggar’s misery is justified.
And even then, the beggar is probably happier.
So no. I don’t want to go down the path of the miser and the money hoarder.
I will learn to spend it and enjoy it if it goddamned kills me.
Here comes the cut!
In other news, I am free. Ish.
Saw Doctor Vortel, infectious disease specialist and comedy alien, today, and he took a look at my leg monster and agreed that it is looking way, way, way better than it did when I came in two Fridays ago. My bloodwork was similarly vastly improved, and so without further adoodoo, he discharged me from the antibiotics program.
So no more going to Richmond Hospital every day for me. W00t. I especially like not having the IV… nozzle? interface? dongle? Dongle it is…. stuck in my arm any more.
Not that it hurt orrestricted my motion or anything. It was just annoting having it and all its gauze and tape on my arm all the time.
Speaking of gauze. a mystery : When I went to sleep last night, my IV dongle was all wrapped up in gauze like it is supposed to be.
When I woke up this morning, the gauze was GONE. As in missing. All the tape and stuff was there. but the gauze was gone, which should be impossible.
It’s like a locked room mystery. How the hell did the gauze escape while leaving all the tape holding it there? And for Dog’s sake, where did it GO?
I figure my body absorbed it.
It’s the only explanation that fits the facts//.
Anyhow, the upshot is that I have been transferred to the community home wound care program. And when I heard that, I was like… “really? they’re going to come to my home? That’s awesome! ”
But no. Of course not. Presumably, the “home” in the name means “we give you some stuff so you can go away and treat your own wound in your own home. ”
Typical, that. Having had the childhood I did, I am well aware of how “encouraging independence” can look an awful lot like “fuck off and leave me alone”.
“Hey, guess what, you have to do this for yourself now.”
“Um, okay…. is anyone going to teach me to do it?”
“Oh no…. god now. I already feel like I have spent more time on you that you’re worth. I’m just telling you that nobody is going to do that for you any more. What happens to you after that could not mean less to me. “
At least I don’t have a complicated wound, as far as I know. I am a little worried that I will go into that clinic and suddenly things will get complicated and weird.
The damned thing has healed wonderfully with just regular changes of dressing. And even then, the wound is draining so little now that I only need a change every other day. So I am not sure what I need the wound care people for.
I just need a stack of those enormous bandaids they use to dress my wound.
Those, I can change myself. It’s just a huge bandaid. Even I can handle that.
One thing of note : I was feeling trembly and weak and so I asked the nurse doing my IV for something to eat.
She said fine, but then got a worried look on her face, and asked me if I wanted to get my blood tested first.
I said sure. Hard to argue with that without looking like a stereotypical fat guy.
“NO TEST! FOOD NOW! ”
And it’s a good thing that the nurse had that foresight, because my blood glucose level was over 21 and normal is seven.
So it was triple normal. No snax for me. I sat there wondering how this was possible, and I figured it out, and it is Bad.
I had the symptoms of lood blood sugar because those are the symptoms of your cells not getting enough sugar, and mine were not.
But it wasn’t because I needed to eat, it was because my insulin response was so bad that the sugar was staying in my bloodstream and not making it into the cells.
That is Bad. Very bad.
So I am softening on the whole testing by stabbing my fingertips thing. It hurt klike a motherfucker whenthe nurse did it, but the information was extremely important.
I have no idea where my old testing kit went, so I am going to order a new one. Then it will be back the world of lancets and test strips and paaaain.
My thought is that I will test once a day. after lunch, and then again as needed if I discover my level is too high and I have to do some insulin and then check to see if that did it or not.
And that’s a good incentive to keep on the straight and narrow path right there : not having to puncture myself more than once a day.
Hopefully that will be enough.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.