Baxter

I haven't sat yet, today.

I woke up at 5am. Had a nightmare that I was in a reality show and one of my tasks was to be a waitress. Seido was the host of the show. It was a nightmare. I used to be a waitress. I was an awful one.

Worked the weekend, but not Friday. We have only half a floor full of patients. It's like a ghost hospital. My theory is that when people are careful about one thing, they are careful about everything. And everybody's being very careful about money right now. Everybody's very, very worried. Me, too. I think everyone feels that they were betrayed. It's hard to fix the blame, reasonably, and it probably falls squarely on our shoulders for adopting a set of values that leads basically to financial ruin and the grave. Smoking, overeating, bad nutrition and overspending on things you don't need. I mean, what did we expect?

But they, whoever they are, argued their case so convincingly. They seduced us.

I watched the Oscars last night with Lilly, and in the middle of it, they ran a spot for Master Card about a dog named Baxter. It was really cute. But what was it trying to get us to do? Go into debt! Hi, the economy's in the pit right now. Look at this cute dog, finding his way home. Debt got him home! Save cute dogs. Go into debt. Owe us.

They don't want your money. They want your time and soul for the next 30 years.

I have about 16,000 now in credit card debt. It wasn't obviously frivolous (ok, maybe some of it was). I've been paying it down steadily. Every month, there's a little less. It should be gone in 5 years.

Lilly's anorexia has been hard on us, but one of the things it has done has woken us up. It woke us up to the lie of image. You know, the images in the media work on such a subtle level, I'm almost not aware of making a choice to buy in. Cutting it out of our lives has been a blessing. But it's like the blinders have been lifted on everything else. It seems that I look at everything now and think, "What is this? Why am I choosing it?"

What builds actual power and stability in a family, in a person? The ability to be self-sustaining, right? The ability to feed and shelter oneself without being dependent on someone else, right? What does our culture do? It promotes a climate in which everyone is encouraged to mortgage their futures. In essence, it keeps us all slaves. Then they raise your rates, shorten the pay period, ruin your credit, so you can't get more purchasing power. They own you.

Part of the reason for all the foreclosures, I think, is that everyone was encouraged to borrow money to pay off credit card debt using their house as collateral. Bad idea, tying up the house.

Here's what I think we should do. I think we should all rebel. Quietly.

I think we should form credit clubs, and pay off each other's debt. We could work out some arrangement. Pay it, never get more. Put these people whose customer service centers aren't even in the United States (so we can't think, well, at least it's keeping us employed) out of business. Let these pikers who've so carelessly squandered our money and seduced the poor into debt fend for themselves. Then I think we should concentrate on making sure everyone has a clean roof over their head and the food pyramid to eat.

Ok. That's my 1/2 hour. I'm going to go sit now.

I'm thinking of getting a wood stove.