This is late getting posted because 2018 decided to suck right to the very end (and beyond). I have been physically going downhill fast since around the middle of October. I nearly died Christmas Eve trying to take a shower. I probably should have gone to the ER then, but there was no way I was going to force my parents to spend Christmas Day in the damn hospital. I had to do Medical Stuff (tm) the day after Christmas anyway, so while we were in the general area, we tried to get something resolved. The whole thing spiraled out of control until I ended up in the ER. Unlike previous times in the ER, there wasn't any messing around; I was admitted and in a room within an hour of walking in the door.
Long story short: Congestive Heart Failure and Kidney Failure. After nine days in the hospital with endless blood tests, CT's, X-rays, ultrasounds, etc., no definitive answer why everything crapped out. The leading suspect at this point is the chemo pill I've been on for the last 18 months or so for my Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, but we won't know for sure until the results of the needle biopsy they did on my kidney Wednesday come back in a week or so. I could hardly breath with all the fluid on my lungs, so when diuretics didn't really help, the lung doctor did a Thoracentesis on my right lung on Sunday, then my left lung on Monday. Between the two, they sucked 5.7 liters of fluid out of my chest. No wonder I got winded walking from the couch to the front door.
So bottom line is I'm home, I can breathe, I can lay down in bed to sleep instead of sitting up in a chair, I have no idea what caused any of this, no idea if it will just happen again, no idea if I will be able to restart my chemo drug, no idea if the kidney failure is permanent. We have no idea what any of this is going to cost us. (Well, that's not entirely true; I have no intention of paying anything to the fucking bastards ever, so in a sense I know exactly what it will cost me: nothing.) In other words, business as usual whenever we have to deal with the Medical Industrial Complex.
Anyway. New Years. I'd rather forget 2018 ever happened, so I'm not going to waste my time even trying to hit the high points 'cause there weren't any.
And 2019 is starting off with a bang: Neither of us have jobs thanks to the Florida Assholes as Cruises-n-More and the Zephyrhills Moose Lodge. Debbie has a few leads she's working on. I'm working on total disability. I'm done. The pricks can shove it deep and on a slant.
The one big change since the last New Year is that our blog is no longer on Blogger for the first time since I started it back in March of 2004. Google has become nothing but a bunch of annoying busybodies. Look; anyone doesn't like the things I say or how I say them, they are free to go be somewhere else. I have no problem with that. But when Google takes it upon themselves to make it difficult for me to post or for people to read what I write because I used the term "nigger" then it's time to pack it in and go elsewhere. I already get all my news from Uncle Vlad, so I figured why not use him as my blogging platform as well? And the timing was good in that my domain renewal is coming up here in a little bit, so I'll be switching where rdfrost.com points from Blogger to here. I'm not going to bother to try to move over all the old posts; I'll just stick a link down at the bottom of my link list if I ever want to go back and look something up. I'm still tweaking the layout and how things work, but I think it's pretty much in its final form. I wasn't sure about the theme at first, but the Edgar Alan Poe vibe fits my current mood, so I think I'll be keeping it for a while.
As far as what else I expect from 2019, I guess the answer is, "Not much." We still have all the same home improvement projects staring us in the face as we did a year ago. I don't see that changing this year. Not working may free up enough time to get something done, but then we don't have any money to pay for stuff. I'm figuring Debbie will find some sort of job either here locally or one she can do from home. I'm going to push hard on the disability thing if for no other reason than getting on Medicaid will help us more than any job I'm likely to find.
As a country, 2019 could be more stumbling around with no direction or purpose (and managing to kill thousands of innocent people in the process), or it could be the year the house of cards finally comes apart. The markets look like they've lost all connection with reality, our political systems are being systematically destroyed for fun and profit, and even Mama Gaia seems royally pissed off. I try to avoid getting all end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, but looking around at what is going on out there makes it hard not to slide into the same mindset as Jim Kunstler:
It’s not exactly the end of the world in Washington D.C., but as the old saying goes: you can see it from there! It’s out on the edge of town like one of those sinister, broken-down circuses from the Ray Bradbury story-bag, with its ragtag cast of motheaten lions, crippled acrobats, a crooked wagon full of heartbroken freaks, and a shadowy ringmaster on a mission from the heart of darkness.
The new Democratic majority congress has convened in the spirit of a religious movement devoted to a single apocalyptic objective: toppling the Golden Golem of Greatness who rules in the House of White Privilege. They’re all revved up for inquisition, looking to apply as many thumbscrews, cattle prods, electrodes, waterboards, and bamboo splinters as necessary in pursuit of rectifying the heresy of the 2016 election.
The simpleton California congressman Brad Sherman (D-30th dist.) couldn’t contain his glee, like a seven-year-old boy about to pull the wings off a fly. As soon as the Democratic majority was sworn in, he filed his articles of impeachment to impress his Wokester San Fernando Valley constituents out for deplorable blood. That was even a bit too much for Madam Speaker who reminded Sherman that some scintilla of a predicate crime was required — but surely would be available when Special Counsel Robert Mueller hurls down his tablets of accusation from on high.
Nothing good will come of this. Our country is being run by demented children playing with explosives.
Random bit picked up while hitting my daily web sites:
Saudi Arabia just instituted a new policy: women will now be notified by text message when their husband divorces them. This is considered an improvement over the old policy of not informing them in any way. Remind me again why these barbarians are considered allies, while the Syrians are our mortal enemies? Oh yeah. Oil. And money.
And I think that is enough for now.
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