my tragic right hip

Today the Rock and Roll Boyfriend and my brother are tearing apart our basement. They have so far found knob and tube wiring, mountains of dead cockroaches (ew!), plaster lathe, really old tiles on top of other really old tiles, and much of the old kitchen the previous owners used on a daily basis.

Before we can start renovating the next level, he needs to re-wire almost the entire house. There’s nothing like an old home; it can catch fire at any time because of the live wires from the ’30s just sitting, hanging out, maybe thinking, “let’s spark up!”

I, of course, can do nothing to help because just going up and down a set of stairs sends me into a coughing spasm. Bah!

Not hard enough that I coughed and peed, but just coughed — but still, very funny: The Man From Funckle’s Fame Audit of William Shatner. Damn that man (From Funckle) is one hell of a good writer.

I know everyone’s probably heard of the Schiavo case by now, and you probably don’t need another blog about it, but I’m truly disgusted by the absolute disrespect for the humanity of life that people on the right have in the United States. They mistake the sacred nature of life with the physical body; they figure that while poor Terri Schiavo can move her eyes or make some other involuntary movement that there’s hope. Please, there is no hope. That woman has suffered in that condition being stuck to tubes and having absolutely no quality of life. Her husband has to see the woman he loved, loved enough to marry, loved enough to fight for her right to die with dignity and move on to whatever comes next, lay in a hospital bed rotting away because her parents aren’t brave enough to admit that God probably won’t punish them for giving her relief.

My mother lives in a similar state, and I can tell you first-hand that it’s not a life. She barely recognizes us when we visit, can’t feed herself, can’t walk and can’t do much except lie in bed watching a television that she probably doesn’t understand for hours on end. This is no way to live. And yet, there she is, alive in body, gone in spirit and with brain damage so severe that the few words, sentences, memories she has all come out jumbled in one big mess.

I watched what happened to my father after my mother’s accident. How he dealt with it by drinking, by visiting her every day, by trying to be a father (I use that term lightly, and while my dad is a wonderful man; he’s a not-so-hot father). It ruined his life, and it pains him every day to see her like that knowing that if we had euthanasia in this country at least she would get what she would have wanted.

The value in life does not come from the very basic fact that one can draw a breath. Life is rich beyond words; and you need a mind, body, and spirit at least working together as a person, however philosophically you determine that to be, in order for a life to be worth living. I’m frightened of a world that has tied up Terri Schiavo so deeply in the twisted fight of the extreme Right in the US, a cause for extremists to act, well, extremely. Please, let her go, give her family peace, it’s something I’ve been craving for almost twenty years now.

So, after almost a week of running a fever and coughing so much I would, ahem, pee myself, I decided it was best to take my bronchitis-full self back to the doctor. With my immune system so suppressed they’re still worried about me catching pneumonia, which would be very bad indeed.

So now, I am a veritable pharmacy. I’ve two different types of antibiotics, two puffers, and my regular meds for the disease. Total cost of all this medicine? In the thousands of dollars. It’s one thing to live in Canada for the health care system, but it’s quite another to have an old work that fires your ass but still lets you use your benefits. Without them, I would quite possibly be dead.

The scariest thing about being this sick makes me think a lot more about the disease and its affects on my body. I mean, if I can get this sick in such a short period of time and need to much medication I look like a Snowbird on her way to Florida for the winter, I can only imagine what’s going to happen as I get older.

Well, I finished David Bach’s Start Late Finish Rich. And I’m more convinced than ever that people like Bach make millions telling people things they should know. And I’m even more convinced that any many that recommends buying McDonald’s or even considered buying a McDonald’s franchise has no place telling me what I should be doing with my money.

See, I’m tired of all the money books telling me I shouldn’t be buying shoes. Telling me that the “Latte Factor,” Bach’s all encompassing term for the money you waste buying frivolous things, is what’s separating me from being a millionaire. Because you know what, it’s not.

Money books don’t speak to women, and even if they try to, they don’t speak to my generation of women. Women who have grown up knowing they’ll work, raise a family if they choose, live in mainly urban settings or have urban mindsets even if they live outside a city.

A few things he talks about every single book I’ve read about money make sense: buy don’t rent; if you make more money, you’ll save more money; invest in a variety of stable investments like mutual funds. But what the book doesn’t do is tell me how to be a girl and still save money. The book simply tells me to forget the fact that I love shoes and therefore the value in them is threefold to spending the money. The fact that I think it’s worth it to buy brand names because they last longer and while it might cost more to buy something from the Gap vs. Wal-Mart, I know it’s better made–or at least it used to be. I still have t-shirts from the Gap when I worked there in high school–they’re still wearable. I’m not going to tell you how long ago that was…

In a sense, what’s missing from all these books is finding a balance in an urban lifestyle. That not everything to do with money is making more or cutting out the things in life that you love. Retirement is important, but so is enjoying yourself. Money is serious, and people should take it seriously, but it’s also a made up thing that has take over how we approach everything in life.

I’m tired of books that tell me to work more. That’s not the answer at all; the answer is to use your talents to their full potential. To capitalize on the things that you love to do and find the pathway to get there without sacrificing your heart. I know it’s cheesy, but I just finished a big fancy paying job and hated myself. What I need a book to tell me is how to spend money in an increasingly throw-away world, in a world where people would rather not worry about the affects of their decisions because they can’t see the impact on a global scale.

Be girls, buy things, have your coffee, don’t abuse your credit cards, live a balanced life and don’t read silly books like Start Late Finish Rich. I need to write a Girl’s Guide to Money. I think that’s the solution to my problem.

I can’t believe Sarah Jessica Parker is “upset” that after two seasons she’s no longer the spokesperson/model for The Gap. No offense, but the imdb (and yes, I love their gossip read it everyday) states that she made $38 million dollars from those two campaigns. You can’t tell me she’s that upset; she could retire on that kind of money and never work again. Please, should people even be making that much for enjoying being a girl? I enjoy being a girl, maybe The Gap would like to pay me if SJP’s getting too pissy.

Is now yellow, red and quite bruised. Still begs the question: How did I go to bed with bronchitis and wake up with a black eye. Ow. It hurts.

I’ve been doing a lot of nothing except shuffling around my house wearing two sweatshirts and groaning every now and again, hoping that at some point my fever will come down to something approaching normal (which is not, ahem, 38.7 degrees Celcius).

Yesterday I watched movies. All day. And I didn’t even get that too-much-television headache. I simply couldn’t move. Except to get up and drink a half-cup of apple juice.

So I watched Touching the Void, a truly exceptional documentary about two men who climb the west face of the Andean mountain, Siula Grande. Then, I watched Reese Whitherspoon in Vanity Fair, which I had high hopes for having absolutely loved Mira Nair’s Moonsoon Wedding, and I thought Hysterical Blindess, the HBO film she did was also quite good. But it’s kind of eh, the story never reaches the amount of tension it really needs to portray the tragedy and/or strength in Becky Sharp’s character.

And then, in a fit of absolute fever-inspired weakness, I watched Shall We Dance. No, not the original Japanese version, but the Hollywood one with Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and Jennifer Lopez. Yeah, at the end, I bawled, and bawled, like a baby. What’s wrong with me? I decided enough’s enough and went to bed at that point. Maybe today the fever won’t be boiling my brain so much that I actually thought Shall We Dance wasn’t half bad. Ouch! Eck! Ow! Stop throwing things at me, I said I was sick, okay?

I woke up this morning with a black eye. Things have gone from bad to worse…