"Where've You Been?"

"Where've you been? Haven't seen you around."
"Busy, working. Nobody's seen me or heard from me and I wouldn't invite you or anybody to the house because it hasn't been cleaned for two and a half months. I've got papers and jotted notes everywhere, and they're all important, and if I move any I won't know my own mind, because, see, I got this contract to write four articles a week, for good money, and have to keep coming up with ideas that need to be researched and everything. That's on top of editing, teaching, doing my own writing, answering emails, working some weekday nights, participating in club meetings, trying to lunch with a friend once or twice a month, and creating a three-hour PowerPoint presentation. I quit Facebook. I quit watching TV. I quit my other blog. I quit cooking. I eat tuna from the can. I don't walk every day or go to the gym four times a week or play pickleball or shoot baskets. I dread volunteering for anything. I don't phone anybody. I quit Tae Kwon Do for a while; too strenuous when I need the energy to work. I have 19 students this quarter and 42 students next quarter and they all want personal attention. I get up earlier. I drink coffee at 3 p.m. so I can work a second eight hours."
"Wow, I didn't know you did so much."
"I can do it, but not forever. I have Netflix DVDs I've had for four months. I need to give up something. What else should I give up? You run a business. You know about these things. Please tell me. Remember how they used to tell us to give up something for Lent? I have to give something up for sanity."
"And I remember how all businesses closed between 12 noon and 3 p.m. on Good Friday."
"Different world, that was. So what should I do?"
"Make a list of all the pros and cons--"
"I've done that. It turns out I have to do everything, pro or con, if I want to, like, pay the taxes on what I earn, or buy a new car sometime this century. I am not kidding. There's no one to pick up any slack. I can't slack. I can't count on anything. I hardly go outdoors because there's so much work to do."
[Long silence.]
"Go outside and lie down and look up at the clouds. The answers are in the clouds."
-So I did it and I found the answer, which is to talk with people, stop complaining, plant seeds for salad greens, wear colorful printed Zulily leggings, and buy new insoles for my shoes.

The Dismal Science

"Hi, Galaxy," I said to my phone. "Call The Medicine Shoppe." A Walgreens recording answered. Figuring that Galaxy messed up, I myself dialed the Old Towne pharmacy I'd used for 14 years. Chillingly, the Walgreens tape answered again.

It was surreal. I'd picked up a refill three days before from the familiar pharmacists and techs in the drab little Shoppe that kept only one of each item on its shelves, and had a rack of greeting cards that I alone (I think) bought from.

I drove there. Medicine Shoppe #1390 has closed. All prescriptions were transferred to the Walgreens a quarter-mile away, the sign said. No chance to ask questions or say goodbye before the staff--a motley, earnest, totally sterling team of women whom I trusted with my life--dispersed--to where?

Walgreens welcomes "Customers of Medicine Shoppe #1390"

I'd shunned the Walgreens because The Medicine Shoppe ladies saw my husband through his two and a half years of fatal illness; they'd rented me crutches; they'd witnessed my weepings and ailments, phoned and argued with doctors and insurers, knew all my secrets, and had never, not once in 14 years, given me the wrong medicine. I saw them save their meds from floodwaters. My insurer tried to force me to fill prescriptions by mail and I refused. My loyalty is non-negotiable.

Closed now. Maybe bankrupt. Or not profitable.Could have been franchisee's retirement, corporate downsizing, or higher rent. Maybe unable to compete with the Walgreens, grocery-store, and Walmart pharmacies within a two-mile radius. Possibly new rules for Medicare prescription payments. But no goodbyes. The weirdest sort of shock and heartache. And they're all out of work. They call economics "the dismal science" for a reason.

Walgreens had a sign outside to welcome me. Things could be much worse. But I wanted to cry.

What City People Eat

Today I went to an urban business lunch, a buffet serving grilled chicken breast halves (about 6 ounces each), pasta with vegetables (pretty good), salad, and rolls. My table seated 8, seven women and one man, and I surveyed their plates and saw:

1. Chicken, pasta, salad, roll.
2. Only chicken.
3. Only salad.
4. Only chicken.
5. Nothing but a nutrition bar she unwrapped and cut with a knife and fork and ate like it was a meal.
6. Chicken, salad.
7. Only salad.
8. Chicken, pasta, salad, and, going home in the car, still hungry (because no one takes seconds) a package of peanut butter crackers, and at home, blackberry pudding.

Guess which one I am. Made me wonder, where is this country going?

Giving Up My Land Line

Tripping and cursing, I'd hurry to the bleating phone, grab it and gasp "Hello" to some solicitor who'd reply, "Ms. Bunbun, how are you today?" Or I'd hear a tinny recording telling me to crab to my state senator about some issue. Family and friends no longer called that number, because I'd gradually, with concern for my privacy, disclosed to ever-widening circles my cellphone number. The chances that an old flame or potential employer might phone my old number diminished with time (although hope never dies). And the complicated bills with four kinds of taxes tacked onto them, looking like a long-division problem or a diagram of a high dive, annoyed me, so finally I gathered the nerve to phone AT&T and say, "Please cancel my land line."

I had to have someone in the room with me to actually do it. I was scared. I've had land lines all my life. If I dialed 911 responders would know my address. Also, I liked my phone number. They're assigned randomly, but some of my phone numbers have been more graceful or memorable than others, or were more fun to say, or suited me spiritually. This one had come with the dwelling and seemed like the foundation of the house. I was fond of it. But my cell number is fabulous. It trips off the tongue and walks on air, and if forced to choose, I'd choose the cell number. So goodbye.

Reports about brain cancer and salivary-gland cancers from cellphones -- I believe in them, and had wondered how to handle long conversations on the cell, but there's an app for that:  a speakerphone function. Now I needn't clamp it to my ear. Unlike the landline, the cellular phone sometimes drops the call, but we all understand that it happens and forgive each other in advance for the inconvenience.

For once, the phone-company employee did not try to sell me something. He simply said not to pay the current bill (because they bill in advance for the month to come; why aren't I ever paid in advance for the month to come?) and they'd send a prorated final bill. He said the connection would be terminated in a few hours. I then made one brief call to my parents, and after that the phone was stone dead. It was chilling.

The system had "hung up" on me. 

I moved furniture and unsnapped the wire from the jack. Eleven years had yellowed the wire and dust made it sticky. Bagging the phone was like bagging a dead body. Never again to dangle the receiver in the air to unravel kinks in the coils, watching physics in action in its wobbly spin. Never again to hear its dial tone, that warm wordless whine, a sound of the 20th century, pitched to resemble a human voice.

Bars, Fried Pies, and Stuff

New businesses are sprouting in the area. Good to see there's still small-town business and the owners think there's consumer demand and are giving the people what they want. I'm a mite concerned as to what we seem to want. New businesses:

• Bar
  
• Motorcycle shop (the town's third)
• Fried pies
• Gun shop
• Dialysis parlor
• Car-window-tinting service
• Calorie Comfort ("indulge and beat the bulge")
• 2 "urgent care" walk-in facilities

Says something about the way we live now...

Gun Shopping 101

Written for ladies, but anyone can visit this informative article by my sister, rulalenska, city girl and one tuff cookie. Above: Colt .38 Police Special revolver, standard-issue for police departments 1940s-1970s; this one pre-1945.

Hard Times & Noble People

This sign is in front of a small-business auto-exhaust shop in town, and it speaks of the times. Many more people shop now at the no-frills grocery: all three checkout lanes are busy. People carry their groceries home -- walking.

There are more new employees at Wal-Mart, working very strictly, as if they have master's degrees from Wal-Mart University. Rummage sales, church suppers, food drives, fundraisers, foreclosures. Fewer doctor visits, less travel and dining out. Higher bills for everything. With gasoline $3.68/gallon (today -- who knows about tomorrow?) every soul feels pinched. (Thanks to a certain P------t of the United States whose name we don't mention.)

All the same, there's an atmosphere: everyone making an effort to hold their heads up, hide their worries, keep their dignity and put on a smile, and think to themselves, "There's some that's got it a lot harder than I do."