Stressing Out

I woke at 7am and couldn’t get back to sleep. It was much colder today, very cool, so I got up and closed my balcony doors early, at that time, sometime just after 7. Then I couldn’t go back to sleep, I couldn’t drift off, I lay there. I rested, I closed my eyes, but in the end I had to stop trying to sleep.

So I turned on my laptop and fluffed the pillows. I did phase out again, just for a short time, as my eyelids got heavy and my body zzzzzz’d.

I’m stressing about everything, I’m worried just about everything in my life, everything except Sam are in a state of worrying flux. Not the least of which is the fact that I forgot to take my mum to the dentist. She had broken a tooth and the second of her front teeth was loose, last Sunday when Gill and I went to visit. I was supposed to call and take her last Monday, but it slipped my mind. It wasn’t until last night when Jill asked me how mum was?

“Oh fuck, fuck! I can’t believe it, I was supposed to take her to the dentist.”

How could I be so stupid? How can I be so useless? Why am I so useless? Of course, it is true, you know…

So at 9am, I got and called the dentist. I have to take her at midday tomorrow.

OMG! Oh please let it go okay. Please universe let her not shit herself in the process of going to the dentist.

OMG! Oh please let her second tooth be still attached. Please universe let her have as many teeth as possible still in her head.

Oh, is anyone going to employ me? Can I remember anything? Am I going to work again? Ohhhhhhh? Shake! Shiver! I’m shit!

Oh, for goodness sake… shake yourself, slap if need be… just be positive, just be a glass half full, stop being so negative.

I head to the periodontist. I’m there by 11am. It was my initial treatment to fix my gums and save my teeth, with the new guy.

It hurt. Nerve zzzzzz!!!!!!! Varrhh!!!!! Ahhh!!!!! Oh!!!!! That pointy spike thing. I think he was cleaning my jaw bone, at varying times.

“That will be $800 dollars today.”

“Um… oh… I thought it was going to be $250?”

“That’s for maintenance, this is the first treatment, deep clean, so that’s why it is $800,” said the nice dental receptionist. “Didn’t we go through the payment plan.”

“Um… no… I don’t think we did.”

She peered at the screen as though she was looking up my details. “Oh… um… maybe we didn’t,” she said. She took my card. “So is that credit.”

That’s it? No we didn’t go through the payment plan. “Should we look at the payment plan then?”

“Well?” She looked at me blankly. “We’ll see you in four weeks and then it will be $250.” She shrugged and smiled.

Okay? So that is it? Then? Oh my bank balance.

He worked on my teeth for 30 minutes and it cost $800. By my reckoning, that is $1600 an hour. $1600 an hour? Now, I don't know what you think, but when I thought about it, that is outrageous. Oh yes, university training, blah blah blah. Sure, of course that is true. Hygiene, oh yes, of course. But, my cleaner is similarly involved in my hygiene and she earns nothing near that amount.

But, even if I paid him, let's say, $100, that would be $200 an hour, which, in my book, is still very well paid. $150 for 30 minutes, $300 an hour. That is also very well paid.

Outrageous, when you consider that it is always a drama when the lowest paid members of our society ask for a pay rise through the fair work commission and it is always a drama. The commissioners hum and ha over whether is should be increased by $2 or $2.50. How can the lowest paid people always get their cost of living rise cut or modified, or debated and become a part of the national interest when there are people earning $1600 an hour.

Where is the outrage when periodontists raise their hourly rate? I ask you?

I headed to lunch with Beck and Mel. They were waiting out the front. They were chatty, chatting about meeting, about the day, about lunch. I was mute, a little nervous. “Can you talk?”

My hand raised to my mouth. I wasn’t sure. “I’m not sure.” It was kind of the first time I had spoken. I sounded like I had cotton wool in my mouth. “Woob woob woob woob.”

They laughed.

“I think I need zouph.”

“Soup for you,” said Mel. “Soup.”

Both Beck and Mel are good. We went to a café over Collins Street and ordered pasta bake and coffee.

It was a Black Law Firm hate fest, of course. As Beck said, we had a good thing going, we had a good working relationship, we had it all set up and running smoothly and then they wrecked it, they destroyed it and we got thrown out for no good reason. Beck was pushed. I was sacked.

I told the two of them how I still kind of worried that I was shit and that no one would hired me, that I was really no good.

They gave me that sideways look, that look you get when you are telling truths, real truths, real emotional truths, that get people’s attention.

“You’ll get a job,” said Beck. “Don’t worry, you’ll get a job.”

It does concern me that I am crap and that I am a second rate employee who gets the sack.

Beck said that money on my mortgage doesn’t count towards money in the bank for the dole. I think about going on the dole and renting out my two spare rooms. I’ve never been on the dole, I wonder if that would work?

I went to Medibank afterwards and put in claims for $1000 worth of dental work and got refunded $40. Periodontal is not dental, but major dental, it is different, of course, so it is not covered. The new Medibank benefits/regime/payment details do include periodontal, but my payments would increase by $50 per month, or so, if I did that.

“Okay, how about if I delete my extras and just have hospital?”

Well, with the changes in the payment structure, if I reduce my cover to just hospital, my monthly payment would, actually, go up by $5… because I signed up 12 years ago and I have the cheaper payment plan.

“Okay then, we are done here, I guess.”

If I get rid of my cover all together, when and if I take it up again, I will be penalised 2% every year for ten years and then that penalty would stay with me for ten years, something like that, before it is dropped off again.

Do I want to drop my health insurance? And risk that.

And then, of course, there is the tax penalty, which makes it almost impossible to not pay medical benefits, as you get taxed more if you don’t have it. Of course, I don’t work now, however, that, sadly, is not going to last.

Who still believes that Australia has a free medical scheme?

I walked across Elizabeth Street. By now, I was feeling so stressed by “my lot” that I couldn’t think. So, I sat in the mall in the sun and listened to a man play guitar and harmonica wonderfully. Great. Really great.

And I took photos of people, all the people, lots of people, none of which really turned out that well. Ah well. I didn’t have my camera with me, sadly, just my phone, with the crappy HTC camera. Oh well, boo hoo.

I came home and took to my bed. Of course. Lovely. Locking myself away in my room, shutting the world out, depressed? Oh, I don’t know if I am depressed, just less enthusiastic… with life… with it all.

A cool breeze blew, which made a nice change.

Jimmy came to get his brown polyester suit. We sat in the lounge room and chatted for quite some time. He invited me to his 40th birthday on a hill in Castlemaine. Camping, with Sam.

Jimmy tells me there is gaggle of welfare abusers in Castlemaine. I tell him about my ideas of renting rooms and the dole and wonder why this has come up with him? Is the universe trying to tell me something now?

“I used to want to get to the end of my life and want to be able to say that I had never been on the dole,” I said. “But now, fuck it, I’d abuse the system if someone would show me how.”

We both laughed.

I spoke to Anthony and told him about my worry about mum shitting herself in the dentist chair tomorrow.

“Don’t worry, dentists are highly qualified medical professionals. If it happens it happens, don’t worry.” He laughed. “Shit happens.”

Some how it didn’t make me feel better.

He’s been told to take his sling off. His two shoulder blades are better now.
I spoke to Adriana, on Skype. That was after thinking about her for the last few days, week. David would say “nszpitipsssszzzzpppttee. See the universe answers you. There are no coincidences in the world,”

Adi and I are going to Nova on Monday night to watch The Descendants.

Sam called me while I was talking to Adi, that hasn’t happened to me on Skype before. It’s a modern world.

I called him back, we chatted for ages.

He tells me I should rent out my two spare rooms and not think about working. I tell him how Beck said that money on my mortgage doesn’t count towards money in the bank for the dole. That I can rent the two spare rooms, three in total and go on the dole too.

“Do it,” he said.

I don’t know, I can’t see it.

Then again… fuck it!