Not Lost in the Weeds

It's a warm night here in San Francisco, and I'm back home after a day when the teens and I helped my oldest daughter and her family move into their new home in the East Bay hills. The day started with math homework, the bane of my youngest daughter's existence. We think we finally figured it out, but who knows. My 17-year-old vomited all morning, having come down with a stomach bug last night, perhaps having eaten something crummy. My 16-year-old has little energy and should probably be checked soon for mono. I myself felt horrible all day. Lately, my body has just seemed to hurt, head to toe, around the clock. I suppose it is stress. Trying to shoulder two IRS audits is slowly but surely wearing me down. I wonder if anyone in the US government has any idea how debilitating an audit is to an honest, hardworking taxpayer. You're presumed guilty and have to prove your innocence. But doing so involves reconstructing life three years ago, long after many of the paper records of what happened have faded, been destroyed, lost, or recycled. We do not all have the luxury of unlimited storage space. The experience of being audited by the IRS has led me to truly hate my own government. I know these very young people, hired straight out of college, and compensated on whatever they can squeeze out of people like me, are grateful to have jobs and sincere in their conviction that they are simply catching tax cheaters. But in fact they are persecuting honest people, normal people, people who do not have the means to defend themselves. In fact, they are destroying the American Dream. And since they are doing this on Obama's watch, I hereby declare I will not vote for Obama this fall. He is the ultimate hypocrite, pretending to care about people like me and my family, but obviously does not. Any President who encourages audits of those unable to defend themselves, while bailing out the banks that have put many of us in the unfortunate financial situations we find ourselves, is truly an enemy of the middle class. *** I love my family. I love little else about the world or life any longer but I love my family. Today, I snapped this photo of my granddaughter, her Mom, and her youngest Auntie.

One way or another we will make it through. If my body holds up, I will survive these assaults on our family. Maybe I'll even start to feel better, and enjoy the sun and the songs of birds again. I would like to buy some seeds for my daughter's family and help them plant a garden in their large back yard. Tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, radishes, spices and fruit trees should flourish there, I think. I imagine an old man with white hair helping them work the earth and raising these crops. What that will require is energy and stamina. It is confusing and sad that I seem to have so little energy and stamina now I am on my own. Almost all of my adult life I have had a partner. I was not always the perfect partner back but I always loved the woman I was with, best that I could. It has been a crisis the past two years as I have tried to learn how to cope with being alone and the presumption now that I will always henceforth be alone. The crisis begins when the sun rises (at the latest -- many nights it begins earlier). It starts out with the silence of being alone in this place. I turn on the radio, and NPR helps me feel not quite so much alone. I can never eat breakfast, when alone, but I do drink coffee. Sometimes, if the weather is right, I open my back door. The right kinds of weather include rain or sunshine, but never fog. In the sun I hear the birds. In the rain I hear the raindrops. Either way, I feel less alone. As I sip my coffee, I think about the people I love. Of course, these start with my children, my grandchildren, my ex-partners, my friends, and lots of random people who have come and gone in my life. *** My fantasy baseball team, the Mud Lake Mafia, is off to its best start ever. Even after a terrible week, we are in fourth place in our 14-team league tonight, but for most of the past two weeks we were in first. I have no illusion that we will regain first but I feel we can finish in the top half of the league, which would be a major accomplishment. *** The Giants finished April with a record of 12-10. *** My son's team won Friday night, 3-1. My daughter's team tied 2-2 yesterday in an inspirational comeback. *** In many ways this was a good weekend. But as I shaved yesterday, looking in the mirror, the only thought I had was that one of these days will prove to be the last time you shave your face, David. -30-