My Quarantine Life: Week 110

April 17, 2022 / rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

It is week 110 and I am still in medical isolation. At this point, I do not think the pandemic will end. We will not achieve herd immunity. It is survival of the fittest. Being a person with a compromised immune system who is at high risk of death if I catch COVID, at this point my only wish is to outlive my cats.

The most difficult challenge in all of this is lack of healthcare. Routine healthcare is not available as the health system is too overwhelmed with COVID. When you do go to a medical office, you are exposed to COVID by COVID-positive staff. It is a game of how much pain can you handle and how long can you go without access to healthcare. Even emergency healthcare has a wait that is weeks long. Last fall, I had to wait 3 weeks for emergency surgery. Of course, once I had the surgery after the 3 week wait, things were more dire than they would have been if I had received same day surgery. They did tell me that if we were not in a pandemic, the surgery would have been same day and it would not have been as big of a deal as it was after the 3 week wait.

This time last year, I lost my job. I am so grateful that I have a job now that is 100% remote. Even though the job I have now is very stressful, I cannot tell you how grateful I am to be a completely remote worker. My medical isolation is only broken for medical care for me and for the cats. It is broken when I have work done on the car (twice a year) and when I need to have workers in the house.

Last year shortly after I lost my job, my hot water heater went. I was able to get workers in the house to install a new hot water heater.

About two weeks ago, the new hot water heater broke. I have no idea what is wrong with it. We have no hot water. Plumbers and other service people are only able to respond to emergency calls right now, as everyone is so overwhelmed with COVID. Hot water is not an emergency, so we have no hot water. We are hoping that we will be able to have a worker come this fall to fix the hot water heater before the winter. Hot water is not an emergency, but heating is an emergency. We will have to have the furnace maintained this fall. I am hoping to have someone come to the house who can service the furnace and fix the hot water heater both. For now, we are on a waiting list for plumbing service to fix the hot water heater.

I have been heating water on my stove to use for bathing and washing dishes. Thankfully, I do not need to shower every day. I have been using my shower chair and taking bucket baths. They are very soothing and I have actually been sleeping better at night. I don’t mind, really. Hopefully I am using less water by taking bucket baths instead of taking a shower. I just cannot bring myself to take a shower in cold water. I heat water on the stove, and that is the amount of water I have for bathing.

Thankfully, I am still shaving my head in year 3 of the pandemic. Of course, I don’t have access to anyone to be able to cut it for me. It’s just easier for me to shave it myself. It is easier for me to maintain. A shaved head is also easier for me to maintain personal hygiene. Now being without hot water, a shaved head is easier for bathing.

When I filed my taxes this year, I had to return the $1400 “stimulus” the government gave us last year under Biden. That hurt. No, I did not pay taxes on it. The IRS actually made me return the entire $1400 amount. Apparently, if you make less than $40,000 per year, that “stimulus” was a loan and not a gift. I got a letter from the IRS stating that my refund was reduced by $1400 because I was required to pay back the stimulus to the government. My tax refund this year was $187. That was enough to cover my birthday splurge of purchasing the robot vacuum cleaner.

This week I received a notice that I will be losing my health insurance soon. Biden has decided the pandemic is over, so they are canceling the health insurance for over 15 million Americans who have disabilities and/or are low-income. I am one of them.

I’m not sure what I am going to do without health insurance. There is a health plan offered through my new job, but it is very expensive and the deductible is equivalent to half my annual income. I cannot afford to pay 75% of my income in healthcare.

I am good about pinching pennies, but there is no way I can afford to live off of only 25% of my income and have no savings. Our student loans are due to enter repayment as well. I did receive a letter from the government stating that I am one of the people whose student loan forgiveness is messed up.

I will be entering year 26 of student loan repayment. I am in the low-income repayment plan and also the public service repayment plans. For some reason, I don’t qualify for forgiveness so I am required to continue to pay until I die. It’s indentured servitude. Even a mortgage payment ends after 30 years. Student loan payments have no end. Entering year 26 of student loan payments, I am expecting to continue to pay on these for 40 or even 50 years or more. I will just keep paying until I die because there is no forgiveness.

Many people point fingers and say it is my own fault for taking out the student loans. I took out student loans because I was promised that a good education would enable me to get a good paying job to pay back the student loans. Wages are low in America. I’m not sure how anyone pays back their student loans unless they are living rent-free in their parent’s basement or come from a background of wealth.

I am still alive. I am still surviving. My only objective is to outlive the cats. I am struggling to come up with a plan to care for them in the event that I die first. That is my greatest worry.

We are all together. We are happy and healthy. That is what is most important in life. We are truly blessed.

My Quarantine Life: Week 50

February 22, 2021February 20, 2021 / rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

Simon is sleeping all nice and warm.

Wow. It’s been almost a year since I’ve been in quarantine. I’m not allowed to be indoors with any other people. I am not allowed to go to the grocery store or pharmacy. I have had one in person doctor appointment where someone touched me for a blood draw. All my other appointments have been virtual.

The pandemic has been challenging on so many levels. We are still experiencing food and supply shortages. Right now, I am having difficulty getting cat litter. It has been a year since I have been able to get retail toilet bowl cleaner, so I have just been using baking soda to clean my bathroom.

Prices on everything have increased significantly. This year, effective January 1, 2021, my municipality decided to raise my property taxes by 20%. Yup, you read that right, 20%. My mortgage increased to cover the escrow and I am now paying thousands of dollars a year more in taxes.

I am now paying 3-4x more per month for food and supplies. I am doing everything I can to try to keep my expenses down. I am using a lot of cloth items and drastically reduced my use of disposable paper products such as paper towels, toilet paper, and tissues.

I have also been concerned about my utility bills. My idea was to reduce my utility bills by turning my heat down. This was a great idea in theory, but did not work well in practice. Here’s why:

There is at least a 5 degree difference between the upstairs and the downstairs in this house. When I turned the heat down, the downstairs was tolerable, but the upstairs temperature dropped into the 50s. This made me concerned due to plumbing. I did not want pipes to freeze with indoor temps in the 50s. I get squeamish about pipes if the temp dips below 60. So I had to turn the heat up enough so that the upstairs would be at least 60 degrees.

Second, I am home all the time now. Last year, there was a huge difference in working all day in a 68 degree office and then coming home at night to a slightly cool house. It did not bother me one bit. But now that I am in the slightly cool house 24/7, it’s chilly.

Being chilly also makes me feel guilty about the cats. I had the office to go to last year and only came home to a cool house at night. For the cats, this is their entire world. I feel so bad I left them a bit chilly. Now that I am home all the time, I understand more what life is like for an indoor cat.

I turned the heat back up to 68 degrees. That’s where it’s going to stay.

I have no idea how I’m going to afford the utility bills when my heat is on 68 degrees, but we have to be here all the time, so we need to be comfortable. I also have to keep the heat in the house at a reasonable temperature for maintenance reasons.

It helps a little that student loan payments have been suspended right now. Since my mortgage, food and utilities have all gone up, not having a student loan payment takes a little bit of pressure off. Not much, but a little. When student loan payments resume, then we will definitely have to take more drastic measures to reduce our utilities somehow.

So the lesson for this week is that our thermostat is staying on 68 degrees. We just couldn’t stand having it on 63, especially with the upstairs piping being much colder.

With all of the power outages and everything else going on in the country right now, we are very thankful to have power and heat.

Goals of Life and Good Death

December 31, 2019December 31, 2019 / rachelgoes262 / Leave a comment

With everything that has happened the past few years, I am a little behind on goals. I finally completed a New Year’s resolution that I had back in 2016. I have read the Bible in it’s entirety this year. It had been awhile since I have read the Bible completely.

Following the Our Daily Bread plan, I read a passage from the Old Testament and from the New Testament each day. Breaking it up into chunks with passages from both Old and New made it much more manageable, especially when going through books such as Numbers. Numbers basically consists of long lists of incomprehensible names.

I have yet to meet a person whose favorite book of the Bible is Numbers. However, if your favorite book is Numbers, let me know. I would like to know why and to hear your viewpoint so that I can learn something.

Reading through the Bible in its entirety again was calming yet challenging. We all have our favorite books to which we gravitate and return to again and again. Some books like Numbers were more challenging.

For the record, I would say that Nehemiah is my favorite book of the Bible. Although, my favorite verses, that are my life verses and will be read at my funeral, are 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 (NLT).

In 2020, I am hoping to accomplish a goal that I had set for myself last year and did not yet achieve. Since buying the house and turning 40, I decided I need to be a responsible adult and plan my funeral. Well, I should at least have a Will. I now have a significant asset, so decisions should be made. Yes, I know it sounds morbid, but hear me out.

First, I have no family. This means that when I die, my body and possessions would become a ward of the state. Since I spent about half of my childhood as a ward of the state, I have no desire for my dead body to become one as well. I know someone else who died with no family and saw what that looks like. It is the most undignified and disrespectful way to die. I am appalled at what happens to dead bodies that are wards of the state in New York State.

Given that I have no family, there is no one to carry the burden to make arrangements and decisions when I am gone. There are no friends close enough that I would ask to bear the burden that should be carried by a spouse or child. If I pre-plan everything, then the only thing that would need to be asked of a friend would be final signing of paperwork to carry out my pre-planned wishes.

Second, I have discovered that a pre-planned and pre-paid funeral is exempt from both asset calculations and from all legal proceedings that may take something from you. As an example, if I end up in need of Medicaid in the future, a pre-planned and pre-paid funeral would not be considered an asset for Medicaid determination purposes. Also, when I die, all my assets would currently be seized by the federal government to be put towards my student loan debt. Nothing would be able to be sold or saved to put towards my funeral; it would all go to student loans. A pre-planned and pre-paid funeral would be exempt from seizure to satisfy my student loan debt.

This is in marked contrast to a life insurance policy. One of my friends suggested just getting a life insurance policy that would pay for everything. Well, a life insurance policy is considered an asset and would disqualify me from receiving Medicaid if I should need that in the future. A life insurance policy would also be seized to fulfill my student loan requirement in the event of my death, with none of the money going to my funeral or anything else. My house would be seized for student loans also.

You know, I keep saying student loans in America are a form of indentured servitude. Student loans are a rant for another day. Or, you can check out my slam poetry piece from #Occupy to jog your memory on student loans. I digress.

It is my goal in 2020 to pre-plan and pre-pay my funeral, so that when I die, I just need a person to sign off on all my arrangements. For example, I want to be cremated. You cannot sign the paperwork to be cremated until you have a dead body. If you are dead, you cannot sign for yourself, so someone will have to sign for me.

As gloom and doom as this may sound, the planning I have started has actually been quite fun and exciting. For some reason, I attended a few funerals in 2019, and while each was beautiful in its own way and befitting the deceased, none of them are what I want.

In the words of Monty Python, I want “one mother of a blowout.”

I am planning a 2 hour celebration of life party. Instead of everyone singing church hymns and sitting through a service that may have meaning to me, but not to them, I am designing a play list. I have chosen 26.2 songs that have multiple meanings in my life. 26.2 is the length of a marathon. There are 26 songs, one by a different artist. The point 2 portion are my two favorite Christmas songs.

It has been so much fun working on my funeral play list. I am going through songs and very carefully choosing ones that have had significant meaning for my life for decades.

There is the play list of songs in the key of life, then there is the annotated play list. The annotated play list is basically the Celebration of Life program. In the annotation, I have 2-3 sentences that explain why the chosen song was so significant in my life.

This way, people can listen to the play list and maybe learn things about me in death that they did not know in life. They can also listen to songs from the play list whenever they miss me and want to remember me after I’m gone (if there is anyone who misses me like that).

Some people have asked what is the purpose in pre-planning one’s funeral ? You will be dead, who cares? For me, the purpose in pre-planning my own funeral is so that hopefully I can have in death what I never got in life.

And that there is another story entirely.

But I think even without giving you the back story, simply stating that I want to pre-plan my funeral so that I can have in death what I do not have in life to be impactful and meaningful enough.

Given that I am now a home owner, creating a Will, doing legal paperwork and all of this pre-planning is the “responsible adult” thing to do. With my disability, I want to be sure that I put these provisions in place now while I am of sound mind and body. No one knows the course this disability takes. I have good days and bad days. I may be with it today, and completely gone tomorrow. I want to make my own choices while I have the ability to make them.

With 2020 coming, the year is going to be about life and the good death. On a less morbid note, I am in the process of planning my 2020 running season and am looking forward to my next race and to achieving medal #18 in 2020. Every step I run is a celebration of the beauty of life and makes me so grateful to be on the planet. Running = Life.