Touring the Valley

Losing the Benefits They Paid For

If you think cutting off Social Security and Medicare is not a problem, think some more. If you're under 65, do you want your elderly parents or grandparents to move in with you? It might not be as much fun as you think.

Look up the retail prices of the medications they take. Ask the doctor's office how much an uninsured patient pays for a visit.

Do your parents want to move in with you, or would they rather stay independent as long as possible? Do you have a spare room, or will someone have to sleep on the couch? How will the folks feel about giving up their furniture and accumulated possessions? Do you have closet space for them? How many bathrooms do you have? How much money can they contribute toward groceries, utilities and other household expenses? Are you all able to make major financial and lifestyle decisions together? Do they approve of the way you clean house, or the way you cook? Do they approve of the way you are raising your children? Do you enjoy their helpful suggestions and comments?

How much help with housework will your aging parents be able to provide? Do they have problems like incontinence, short-term memory loss, hearing impairment, failing eyesight, difficulty walking? Will you be able to leave them alone when you go on vacation? Or will you take them with you, and will they (or you) enjoy it? If the day comes when they need full-time care, will you or your spouse be able to provide it? Or can you afford health care workers (strangers in your home all day)?

If your parents are no longer living, will these issues apply to aunts and uncles, aging cousins, or even your older siblings? If you still have teenagers or 20-somethings living with you, can you afford to keep them plus the older relative who needs expensive pills?

Random Thoughts

"The Deadly Sins Dominated by Death" (1904), James Ensor

I don't want it to make me stronger.
I don't want it to make me a better person.
I just want it to leave me alone.

What if we could actually love each other as well as we promised we would?

Nothing ruins a lovely Saturday afternoon like realizing it's Thursday.

When your only tool is a sledgehammer, everything looks like a demolition project.

I still think love is better than hate, even though hate is more profitable.

Thousands of businesses perform internal audits on a regular basis. They do NOT shut down the business while the audit is happening.

Follow the Money

A company where I once worked decided to do an internal audit. They didn't have to fire anybody or shut down operations before they could do it. They just went through the records of all their accounts with their clients and tracked what money was received, what was paid out, etc.

In the course of the audit, they found a few cases where money should have been reimbursed to clients but was not. What did they do about this? Did they shut down the company? No. Did they fire half the employees? No. They realized these were just oversights that occurred when things were busy and complicated.

They wrote explanatory letters to the clients in question and sent them checks for the amounts owed. Nobody got upset.

It's Coming From Inside the House

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799), Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

I was about three years old when this happened. I woke up during the night, and I could hear some kind of wild animal snarling, growling, and snuffling in the darkness. Frightened, I called out for my mother. She sat on the edge of the bed and asked me what was wrong.

"There's a bear in the house!" I told her. "I can hear it."

"That's not a bear," she said. "It's just your father, snoring."

I learned to sleep with the bedroom door closed.

It has always mystified me that people are usually not awakened by their own snoring. All that noise is right there, inside their heads, and they sleep right through it. In Dad's case, it seemed particularly ironic, in that he was very bothered by noise of any kind. Loud conversations, popular music, distant train whistles -- any sound the world produced set his nerves on edge, especially at night. In his youth, the sound of crickets chirping became so maddening that one night he went outside with a hammer in his hand, determined to smash them, one by one. It was a hopeless quest.

To preserve his sanity and get some rest, Dad wore earplugs to bed. Decades later, Mom, airing yet another grievance, said that she thought he did it on purpose so that he wouldn't have to get up and take care of a crying baby (or, perhaps, a toddler who heard bears).

I once asked Mom how she could possibly sleep next to someone who made that much noise. "It's easy," she told me. "I just fall asleep before he does." Mom was a deep sleeper.