I Bought $10 Worth of Crab Dip Friday Round-Up

My daughter and grandson were here for a quick visit, and I never got to show them that I’d cleaned the upstairs bathroom in their honor. I do like how their visits, much like my late mother-in law’s, spur me to quite serious cleaning. If they didn’t visit twice a year, Lord knows what we’ve have going on here.

It was extremely cold when they were here, below zero, so we confined our hiking to the local museum which ended up being exhausting and depleting in a different way. No matter what museum it is, I become overwhelmed with fatigue about thirty minutes in, from then on wanting to lie down on the floor, rest my head on my folded hands and go to sleep, letting people step over me on their way to the reconstruction of the pyramids and the mummy’s MRI.

Let me say this: Rachel Maddow is the best teacher I’ve had, and I’ve had plenty. She can riff without notes. She can take stacks of complex material, synthesize the crap out of it, and go from A to Z, all while looking straight at the camera and never missing a beat. Her analysis of the new Trump era is studied and smart and, most of all, helpful. I feel like I’m in graduate school again and I remember this: I loved it there.

On Monday morning, along with several colleagues from the Commission on Aging, I am meeting with Wisconsin’s U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D) to talk about the devastating cuts being proposed to Medicaid. If you don’t know, Medicaid supplements Medicare for low-income older adults’ regular health care and also pays for long term care. We are asked to bring personal stories because it is the stories that move elected officials to care. Me? I don’t need stories. I only have to imagine what will happen with these huge cuts. Old people left by the side of the road, only partly figuratively.

Yes. I paid $10 for a container of crab dip and another $10 for roasted pecans that looked especially beautiful but it was at the world’s smallest grocery owned by some round cheery guy who sells six fresh rolls and a pound and a half of hot ham for $6.99 on Sundays. I feel righteous in these expenditures since I’m not fueling the giant grocery chains where they make you not only bag your own groceries but ring them up as well. That crab dip, right there, right over there next to my empty wine glass, well, that was made by the round cheery guy in the back room, rung up by some college kid, and then put in a bag by another kid. Plus, they always have fresh carnations. So there.