Areas of Unrest

26 March 2000 - Agonizing Waves of Self-Pity

QOTD: "It takes a lot of time being a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing." - Gertrude Stein

Reading: Dervla Murphy, South From the Limpopo

Listening to: Snakefarm, Songs From My Funeral

I've had a weekend of vague discontent. Some of it was explainable enough on the grounds of physical complaints. I've had a recurring but sporadic problem with one knee, the sort of thing that is briefly painful but vanishes long before I can actually make a doctor's appointment. This bout was bad enough to disturb my sleep. I finally had a moment of inspiration and took an aspirin. If the problem comes back in the next few days, I will just have to face my medical phobias and get it looked at. I'm sure that cramped airplane conditions won't do it any good either. I've also been having flareups of tendinitis in my right wrist, though that's been alright the past couple of days.

But much of my discontent is far more nebulous. It comes largely from wanting things to be done, but not wanting to do them. Taxes, filing, housecleaning - all of it is sheer tedium and I know I'd be better off if I just did it. I hate the chaos and squalor around me and progress on decluttering is just so slow. I know that handling just a few things a day does work in the long run, but I've been feeling impatient.

Not that it was a useless weekend by any means. I did balance my checkbook and pay bills and do some filing and go to the new supermarket in my neighborhood to see if they had Schweppes Bitter Lemon by some miracle (no such luck, though they do carry Stewart's Ginger Beer which is almost as good as Stoney. And they had Girard's Fat Free Balsamic Vinaigrette, which is the only good fat free salad dressing I've found since Pritikin stopped making their Herb Italian). It's just easy to focus on what's undone, instead of what's done.

Checking up on my mother wasn't exactly a mood-elevator either. One of her friends is dealing with a number of medical problems and may end up going into a nursing home. She saw another friend who was telling her misleading things about protecting her assets if she were to be hospitalized. So I ended up trying to explain to Mom that she wouldn't be doing Elliot and me any favors by putting her house in our names or selling stock to give us money. Financially, we'd be better off inheriting any appreciated assets because our basis for capital gains purposes would then be the value of the assets when we inherited them. (If you get things as gifts, your basis is the basis when they were purchased.) Mom can't seem to grasp the notion that the lower tax rate for long-term capital gains isn't really a player in this. If you've held something 366 days or 40 years, the tax rate is the same. Now, I agree with her that it shouldn't be that way and that the laws amount to taxing inflation, but that isn't how it works. Finally, I just said, "you know there's really no reason for you to worry. You're going to end up like the rest of your family."

Mom said, "you mean I'll have a sudden heart attack when I'm 75 and that will be it?"

To which I replied, "No. But you won't be lucid enough to care what happens." Fortunately, she laughed.