I'm sorry I haven't updated much lately

I'm still without Internet at home, although I can get on with my hotspot, and I've only used about a fifth of my allotment in three weeks. But a lot has been happening lately, and I've come home just too tired to blog. But I have a three-day weekend and I'm hoping to get some writing in. Also, for now, I'm over at my friends' house waiting for 'Grimm' to come on while they're taking a nap. Since this is my computer (I've let my friend borrow it, as his needs a new power supply), all my settings are on my login, so I just went ahead and switched users and am using his Internet to get online.

So several things have come to mind over the last few days, things I've meant to blog about, but haven't. Here's the most serious:

There comes a time when, if we are lucky to live long enough, our own ageing and eventual mortality raises its ugly head. Perhaps it is dealing with the impending or actual death of a parent, or of a close friend, or perhaps even a diagnosis that is going to mean our own death within what suddenly seems a short time.

I will be turning fifty next year, the milestone so many dread, and to which I normally reply, ‘Well, it’s better than the alternative.’ When I turn fifty, I’ll have been at my current job for twenty years, and (unless I find something else soon) will be laid off the very month that I have my birthday. I’m feeling like an old fogey, and for the first time, I’m really afraid of age discrimination in the job market, and that as a solo medical librarian, I have harmed my job prospects because I don’t have the supervisory experience expected in most jobs looking for the length of career that I do possess. This despite the fact that I learn quickly, am great with technology, am very good with interacting with other people from all walks of life and am very flexible in terms of jobs I can do and my willingness to step in and help the team work out an issue. In the past few years, I have taken on another job in revenue cycle that has had me working with clinicians I never had much contact with before. I’ve helped out during temporary absences with things like foot pressure studies and patient scheduling, learning new systems and skills. It’s shown that I can do just about anything I set my mind to. But in the end, it may not matter, as the hospital is moving to an ambulatory care centre model, and there simply is no room for a library, librarian, or even the bulk of my charge entry job, as we will not be able to charge for outpatient facility fees. So I’m in a sort of limbo, looking for another job, at nearly fifty, after devoting most of my adult life to my organisation.

But adding to the uncertainty are issues of my own health and that of people close to me. Will my own health, which is not great, but which is managed, hold out until retirement? Will I lose people I love before I’m ready to let go? Am I up to the challenge of being a caregiver beyond what I have done for years? Will there be anyone left to take care of me, given that I have no children and a very small network of loved ones? These are all questions on my mind. For right now, I don’t have answers. Time will have to provide them. But it is all very unsettling. For now, though, while it is on my mind, the focus must be in living, in being with those I may lose, in doing what I can to help my own health. It is all any of us can do when faced with the march of time. In the end, it is how we live our allotment that matters.

Much less serious:

It's amazing how much attention you can garner while eating a pomelo.

I'd seen pomelos at Kroger and I have never had one and was intrigued. Sure they look like giant grapefruit, but I wanted to know how they tasted. But at $3.99 each, I wasn't going to try. Then I saw one in a little bag for 99 cents in the bargain bin, and bought it and took it home. Yesterday I took it to work with me, and was immediately bombarded at the lunch table by 'what is that?' and 'is that a grapefruit?' But it didn't stop there. Two people called out the same questions from a table, and another came over and asked me, too. I cut it in half, and that one half filled me up. It was actually quite sweet, not the tangy bitter grapefruit taste at all. I asked the staff in the cafeteria to wrap up the other half for me, and they were all curious about it, too.

It was quite an experience.

Back to serious:

It annoys me that icons like Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright seem to think that female supporters of Bernie Sanders can't be proper feminists or are somehow betraying their own kind because they do not believe that they should vote for Hillary Clinton simply on the basis of her gender. While I would like to see a woman as president, it's not my only criterion. Instead, I vote according to whom I think will do the best job leading the country and who stands for the things I believe in. For me, that is Bernie Sanders. I'm not saying I would not vote for Clinton should she be the Democratic nominee. But I seriously dislike her. Not as much as Donald Trump, mind you. But unlike Bernie Sanders, she says things based on politics rather than being consistent about her beliefs and assertions. I am tired of Washington insiders. Yes, Bernie has been a senator for a long time, but he's not in the pocket of big money, he's a maverick, and he's consistently been one for a long time, too. The only thing he might be weak on is foreign policy, and I'm sure he's smart enough to surround himself with the best people for that. Can he get things past Congress? I don't know. But I'd like to see him try. Also, I have trouble with the e-mail thing with Clinton. Seriously? I can't use my personal e-mail for my work, and I'm in a non-profit with no real secrets. But seriously, as Secretary of State? Granted, others apparently did not use encrypted government e-mail, either, but you know, that's dumb on all their parts, or at least dumb on their staffers' parts. I know people of Clinton's generation are not necessarily as tech-savvy as your average 20-year-old these days, but really? It's just dumb. How are you supposed to have any idea of national security if you can't grok that?

Despite the fact that many feminists have given feminism a bad name over the years, I consider myself a feminist. I do not support Hillary Clinton, true. I'd like to see a woman in office, but I do not want to see her in office, necessarily. The nice Jewish man from Vermont, old as he is, socialist as he is, even with his unfortunate choice of democratic socialist as description (if you don't understand while that's unfortunate, try reading some European history), is my choice. I have a Sanders bumper sticker on my car--the first time I've ever put a political statement on one of my cars. I'll definitely be voting for him in the primary. And Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright and the rest of those indignant feminists who think I'm betraying women can kiss my ass, because I have a mind of my own and I don't care what they think.

Mortality has been on my mind a lot of late

In seems like everywhere I look, things are hastening to their natural end. Tonight one of my beloved ‘nieces’, a collie shepherd who is about 16 years old, has been doing very poorly. Something has hurt her; I don’t think it was another dog, but she’s bloody under her right ear, and is very unsteady on her feet and more out of it than normal (and lately the senior moments have been more numerous than when she’s alert). So far, even when she’s slowed down, she’s come back and done pretty well. But she was obviously wanting to drink earlier, had her mouth right over the water, and couldn’t seem to. That’s not a good sign. My friends are going to call the vet first thing in the morning and see if they can get her an appointment. We did go ahead and give her the arthritis medicine in the hopes that it would help with some of the pain. The other dogs usually give her a wide berth because she is old and cranky, and there’s been no known dog fight or anything. It’s possible she tangled with something out in the bushes or got trapped and pulled loose. We don’t really know. But hopefully tomorrow at least the vet can see her and make her more comfortable. But we may be looking at the end. She’s been a wonderful and loyal dog. Considering her size, her age is remarkable. I do hope she’ll be alright, but I’m steeling myself for if she’s not.

Today I had my second performance appraisal in a week; I have two jobs at the hospital. I got pretty high marks, and I’ll be getting a raise (yay!) In the first appraisal, I was very candid with my primary boss about looking for another job, and she agreed that I had to pursue what’s best for me. In the second appraisal, my other boss asked me what my plans were at this point, when the hospital shuts down and moves to a new building as an ambulatory care centre. I explained that best case scenario, I find another job that has benefits and is full time. While I could stay to the bitter end and collect a severance, be eligible for unemployment, and have health care for a limited time, it’s very uncertain as to the particulars, a lot of the severance would go to taxes (although I’d get some back as a refund the next year), etc. I did tell him that I will have been here 20 years come next year, right before the move, and I’ll also be turning 50 (another reason mortality has been on my mind as of late), and it will be harder to be looking for a job. And I may need to look outside of the library field, maybe do something along the line of my second job in revenue cycle, if possible. We further discussed that if something did come up in the hospital, I would consider staying, although I’d probably have to take a pay cut, because my library rate is very good, and even though my charge capture position is much lower, it averages out to more than most of those jobs pay, and he was candid about that. He suggested that I could perhaps do something there in fiscal services, and even though I don’t have a formal background in accounting, I can obviously do similar things. Of course, at this point, they’re not sure how many positions in fiscal services will be going, either, so it’s not like he can say, yes, there’s a position you can have. But I think he’s happy with my willingness to take on other duties and help where needed, and I think if something came up, he would recommend me and prefer to retain me. The most likely place to have an opening would be scheduling, which I am trained in, at least to a point. I said I wasn’t sure I’d like to do that five days a week all day, but I would be willing to try, if the pay wasn’t terribly low. The main concern I have at the moment is continuing to have health insurance, and while I might find something on the exchanges, we have excellent insurance and it would be nice to keep it. But benefits are the main goal. That being said, I am having trouble making ends meet, mainly because I’ve overextended myself on debt in the last couple of years. So a pay cut, while it may be inevitable, is not going to be fun, either. Anyway, I asked him to let me know if anything came up, and to keep me in mind for future openings. It couldn’t hurt.

It’s been a very long week, it seems. Tonight I missed the return of ‘Grimm’ because A really needed to go to the store and do a large grocery run. YKWIA recorded it though, and we’ll watch it tomorrow. I also need to see the last two ‘Heroes: Reborn’ episodes. Oh, and he’s been recording the ‘Sword of Shannara Chronicles’ but we haven’t seen them yet.

So, tomorrow I need to:

1. Possibly take the dog to the vet (it’s very close to where they live, but the poor thing is too unsteady to walk up there, right now).
2. Take A to get his medicine, or at least go by and get it for him.
3. Possibly take him to get his hair cut.
4. Take in the Time Warner Cable equipment.
5. Do a very small grocery run for a couple of items they didn’t have tonight.

Okay. I’m pretty tired, and it’s after midnight. Good night.

One more reason to go vegetarian

or at least lay off red meat...

A 10 year study of more than a half million U.S. men and women associates the frequency adults eat red and processed meats with significant increases in overall death, death from cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The study, which features a cohort of about 322,000 men and 223,000 women (who answered questionnaires about food intake and health for a decade), suggests the consumption of red meat is independently associated with mortality...

For more, listen to the comments by the Director of the National Library of Medicine here.

Looking in the mirror and seeing mortality

Nancy's funeral was Friday afternoon. For those of us who couldn't go, there was a memorial service at the hospital, which was nice. I was able to view the slideshow today, and the service itself was really pretty helpful, I must admit. A chaplain from Hospice performed talked to us, but mostly it was people talking about how she touched their lives.

A friend of mine and I were talking about why I took her death so hard, given the fact that I really didn't know her that well, and certainly not outside of work. He believes, and I agree, that part of it is that the last person in my life to die was my grandfather, eight years ago, and he was older and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/emphysema and had been on oxygen for years. It was not unexpected. Most of the people in my life who I've mourned died due to an illness that prepared everyone for the eventuality. The one exception I can think of was a young man in a wheelchair I'd been tutoring who was killed by a car as he was crossing the street. But I was nineteen or twenty at the time, and although I was sad about him, I didn't really make a link between his mortality and mine.

But now I'm in my forties, I'm diabetic, overweight, and very much feeling the weight of my mortality. It's not that I'm particularly afraid of death per se, but it is the unknown quality that unsettles me. And Nancy's death--someone closer to my own age, sudden as it was, and with her dying alone--underscores the idea that we all will die, sometimes without farewells or wrapping up loose ends, and especially it reminds me that I could die at any time--and yes, die alone. I find myself thinking sometimes questions like: Will my family respect my wish to be cremated, to give my organs? Should I write a will? How will I die? How will my loved ones take it? How will the readers of my blog know? Will I be remembered fondly? Have I touched any lives? What will people think of the mess that is my house when they have to go through it? That sort of thing...

And part of it, too, is that I feel like such a failure in my life, in terms of what I've accomplished. But that's mostly because I'm pretty critical; I don't always see the good in life very easily. I do know that one of my best qualities is that I'm a fiercely loyal person. And I'm sure there are other good qualities. But I can't say I have joie de vivre, or that spark that Nancy had.

One thing my friend said that struck me, though, (and I'm paraphrasing since I don't remember the exact words, but it was expressed much better than this) is that there's no way to know how people will really be remembered until their work is finished and they've died.

I guess most of us have thoughts on mortality as we get older. It's only natural. But Nancy's death has given me more to digest about death, and life, and I can only hope it will have an impact in how I approach the rest of my life, and how I myself will be remembered.

I know that's several posts now on the subject. Thanks for bearing with me.