Cha-CHING! "The New Normal"

I sat down and figured out what my monthly expenses are - groceries, gas, laundry, rent, heat, phone, etc. Nearly every penny I make now goes just for regular, every day living expenses without indulging in extras. In some cases, my cost of living has doubled, tripled, quadrupled, but my pay hasn't kept pace with the rapidly rising costs of living. I'm cutting my expenses wherever I can, including skipping meals to save money. I can't walk as many places as I'd hoped to this summer due to my right leg injury, forcing me to use my car a lot more than I'd like to. I'd seriously considered a second, part-time job for the summer just to make ends meet, but now I can't, since I'm injured and will be cast-bound for the duration of summer, maybe even beyond, depending on how well and quickly I heal up. So a "new normal" is developing of being one of those people forced to live paycheck to paycheck, without much ability to save anything. I feel like I am being squeezed to death and what pisses me off is that there is nothing I can do about it. Oil prices are being driven by rampant specualtion on oil futures by greedy Wall Street investors who are reaping huge fortunes off of our misfortune. I don't like this one bit and I can't say how much worse things are going to get. They certainly won't get better. Gas prices will never again come down below the $3 a gallon mark and are predicted to rise as high as $6 a gallon before year's end, which will effectively mean that I will no longer be able to afford to drive to work. And people silently take it because they know they have to. Oil has us over a barrel and we can't do a thing to change it. We are victims of forces much larger than ourselves that are as far out of our control as anything. So what are we to do if, by 2009, we are paying $6 a gallon for gas? It may just result in the shutting down of our economy. Trucks won't be able to afford to keep running to deliver things places, businesses will be forced to shut down, mass transit will not be able to afford to get people places and frankly, anything involving transportation will stop. Period. No cars, no buses, no trains, no nothing. The Chinese and Saudis will have, in effect, succeeded in doing what they always have wanted to do and that is to bring down the mighty American Empire. And they may well succeed in so doing, too. I made another car payment on Friday on my 2007 Hyundai Accent hatchback, but if things continue unabated, I may just sell my car and try to figure out some way of getting around that is cheaper than owning a car that has, so far, only averaged a disappointing 28 mpg highway and fewer in city driving. I almost wish I could have afforded a 40 mpg Toyota Yaris. But this is what I got, and as much as I dearly love everything about my car, its gas mileage so far has been less than impressive. I just hope that I can afford to keep it. Otherwise, if gas continues going up and up and up the way it has lately, it's going to go up for sale and I'll find another way to get myself around until things change for the better. If they ever change for the better, that is.

MY FINGER IS STILL STIFF, BUT NOT FOR LONG!

My left index finger is still pretty stiff, but it's healing nicely and will need some occupational therapy, which I hope to begin this week. I can't start soon enough because I am more than eager to have it back to full function as soon as humanly possible. It still hurts a bit as well where I had the incision and I suppose that is to be expected. I soaked my finger today in Epsom salts and I will probably continue to do so several times a day from now on until I get full movement and healing back into it. That's one of those old time honored remedies for stiffness and it also promotes healing, so I am going to use that as a kind of "adjunct" therapy in addition to whatever they prescribe in occupational therapy. I was going to try to go where I have always had physical therapy, but my hand surgeon isn't too crazy about the idea of physical vs. occupational therapy. She'd rather I have specalized hand therapy, so I may just end up going to the Summit Hand Center, where my doctor's office is located. I hope that their co-pay isn't to high and that I can get in and out of there in a few short weeks so I don't end up spending a small fortune. I can try to convince my doctor to let me go where I am used to going, but she may not relent. I'll just have to call them tomorrrow because I did set up an appointment at my PT place for this week just in case. The only objection I have to going to Summit Hand Center is that it's way out on the far west side of Akron and it'd be a long drive home and a lot of gas burned as a result, and in these days of high gas prices, I am considering every mile I travel carefully. It'd be better for me to drive home to Kent and then walk downtown to the PT clinic I've always gone to and I may work on convincing my doctor to let me do that instead in the interest of saving gas money. These days, we're all feeling the squeeze from high gas prices, and if I can save a few pennies on gas, so much the better. But if my doctor insists that I must have hand-specialized occupational therapy, well, then I will go ahead and go where she wants me to go. After all, she did the surgery and she doesn't want her handiwork to be messed up, and I can hardly say I blame her a bit.