(testing a new post)

Speaking of broken systems: I went to the pharmacy to pick up a tube of Voltaren, a painkiller for arthritis and other conditions delivered in gel form in a tube the size of a standard tube of toothpaste. Initially I was told my health insurance would not pay for the prescription. I told the pharmacist I would be happy to pay for it out of pocket as I had used it in the past and I know it is effective for managing my arthritis. (This past week, the pain in my hand became so unbearable that I honestly thought I had a fracture and went to have x-rays. Even the doctor wasn’t sure.)

The pharmacist insisted I did not want to pay a retail price, and suggested I pay $36 for a “prescription buyers club” membership to earn a discount. After purchase, I received the following in an emailed receipt:

A prescription costs 6,000USD, yet magically becomes available for only 27USD with a mandatory club membership paid to the pharmacy?

Incidentally, Voltaren gel is sold without a prescription in both Canada and the UK, where it costs around the same amount as my 27USD “discounted club pricing.”

In other news, I want to thank David Merfield, the creator of Blot, for reaching out to me after my last post and teaching me how to embed a photo in a post like this. I was very tickled to get his email, and am grateful for the personal instruction. How often do you get personal assistance from a website on how to use it? Many thanks.

I need to learn how to give my photo posts some commentary in Blot. I would’ve labeled my June 9 entry about how absurd the entire student loan system in the USA is, and the absolute failure of UX design in that website. No one who put that site together realized there would be users whose information would spit out gigantic terrifying numbers, and either thought “maybe we should add something to keep them from a heart attack” or “maybe we should move up the part that explains you’re not expected to pay that if you can’t” when it comes to a number that would, as in my case, require your salary to be more than most CEOs make after years of employment in fields we didn’t spend that much to work in?

In any case, no, I will not make $626,700 this year, and thus the student loan highwaymen will not be reaping from me. Instead I will make what I make and they get 8% of it, which is all this website needs to say. For perspective: my debt total is AVERAGE for someone with a doctorate who had some financial assistance but was at least partially responsible for their own costs. There are people whose exit interview screens have considerably larger numbers than this one.

That’s the part that keeps me up at night. It should also keep the oligarchs who run the country I live in up at night, but I suspect since they never have to take out loans, this system is working exactly as intended.

So, the box garden is surviving for the most part. Something ate the leaves off the gerbera, and now it seems to be dying. I’m assuming some kind of insect, as it began as holes in the leaves and then entire parts of the plant gone or dried up. It’s spread to the dahlia, which has a few chewed leaves but is mostly intact. Sadly it hasn’t flowered again after the first time. The petunias are staging a box takeover, which I expected once I relented to include them. Every bloom on the anemone plants is a different color and it’s become fun to guess what will pop up next. They don’t seem to be being eaten, but then they also don’t have the same kinds of leaves as the gerbera or the dahlia.

The mystery plant at the center of the box has proven to be a slip of the laurel bush next to the box. I may have to move it before it gets much larger, but right now it is green and beautiful. Speaking of the bushes, I discovered that a pinwheel (yes, a plastic child’s toy) that I had placed in the garden box after moving in last November is now stuck inside one of the andromeda bushes somehow. I can barely see it, even if I’m looking for it, and it’s completely invisible from within the yard. Considering I installed it intentionally as a yard sentry…it’s doing an even better job from its new location. Nicely played, pinwheel.

Home again. Sitting with budgets and schedules. Determined to find a way to fund my writing so that the writing can fund me. No idea where to start looking, less idea of whether it will be productive, but failure is not an option and this dissertation needs to be published sooner rather than later. Patreon is doing well. Growing it is probably my best option right now, as discussions about other projects/contracts aren’t moving very quickly. So many things to think and do and solve.