Trapped

Ok, I haven’t posted in a while cause I just haven’t felt like it. Lately I’ve been feeling more and more trapped by our situation. It just seems never ending the amount of bad stuff that happens to us. In my last blog update I mentioned our garage door opener breaking and that is still an issue. The mother-in-law is at least somewhat happy with me right now as when she went down to LA help her son with some stuff, she stayed a few days, I went out and raised the sprinklers that had sunk down pretty deep. In one I had to put a 6 inch riser on it. So now our front yard does no look like it has big potholes in it. She was happy to see that. But that’s gonna last maybe a week. lol

A few things have left me in a funk.

1) Jobs. There are none. My wife read an article that said 40% of working age Californians are out of work. Meanwhile the state says the unemployment rate is ‘only’ about 16%, but that doesn’t even come close to the reality of the situation. So finding work in this environment is almost impossible. I’m seeing jobs that anyone can do that are requiring college degrees plus years of experience.

2) We can’t save money. Everything we have is going to food and bills, nothing is selling when I pout it up and its frustrating. I have a ton of cabinet supplies, stuff that is worth a good chunk of money, but I get zero calls on it. So that is frustrating too. In this market it seems nobody is buying anything, and if they are its for so cheap its almost not worth selling.

3) Health. My health is not good, I’m almost out of pills and its a ton of money to refill em. I take Gabapentin and Naproxin. Its the gabapentin that is expensive. I am supposed to take it 3 times a day, but if I do that I run out in a month, and its $130 USD for 90 pills. So I take one pill a day just before I go to bed to help me sleep. In Canada those same pills are $50 CDN for 100 pills. Another reason for me to be back in Canada. Plus I have a number of other medical problems other than my back that need looking up. I need a full scale checkup cause I am just falling apart.

4) Frankly politics in the US is going to the idiots. I really don’t care what side of the political divide you’re on, yelling and screaming over someone you disagree with is not democracy, but its what we have here. Recently 60,000 anti-healthcare reformers marched on Washington, which is great to see them come out and protest. (Although I bet that when it was anti-war protesters they were saying how un-American they were) However the amount of anger I saw was truly scary. One woman reporter was threatened by protesters. She had been interviewing a few of them and after the interview one protester asked her name, so that if they didn't like what she wrote that they could ‘find her’. Then when she refused because she felt threatened a woman with a megaphone started screaming she was from Acorn and had a bunch of people surround her. This is not democracy, that is thuggery. So I’m just really disappointed that US policy is being made to appease this segment of the US population. The lunatic fringe should not be setting policy.

Add to that the pundits and talking heads of the republican side are just fanning the flames of this idiocy. Outright lying about stuff. It doesn’t matter if its pointed out its not the truth because they’ve already hit their target market with it, and the media puts on 4 republicans for each democrat, so its hardly an unbiased media.

I guess I feel this ‘model of democracy’ is anything but. And that saddens me.

I also got some bad news. I wrote to the Canadian consulate here in LA to see if they have any programs to help Canadians get back home, and the answer is no. So I’m really disappointed it that. I guess the next step is to write to Prime Minister Harper and see if he’ll help. It never hurts to try does it?

I did talk with my mother last night and she did calm me down a bit, but I’m still in a funk. My mother is great and I am blessed to have a great mother like her. She is just so supportive and just listens to me bitch without complaint. While my mother and I have not always agreed on things, she has always been there to help me through difficult times.

So thanks mom!