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toy debt
Tuesday, April 18 2023
I took a recreational 150 mg dose of pseudoephedrine this morning. It doesn't always help me power through my workday, but at least it usually makes for a good time. Unfortunately, today it failed even at that. I started drinking kratom tea before the Tuesday group QA, and within an hour I started feeling sick in my stomach. Antacids helped, but they were kind of weak relative to the problem, so I had to resort to baking soda. At times it got so bad I feared I might throw up.
Meanwhile in the outdoors, it was a fairly miserable spring day, with much cooler conditions than we'd been having and occasional drizzle and rain. Still, given my intestinal issues, I though maybe a walk would help. So after work I went on a short stroll down the Farm Road and back. Some kind of hawk was flying from treetop to treetop the whole time I was out, though I wasn't able to get a good photograph.
Meanwhile Gretchen was down in the kitchen cooking all kinds of things, including birthday baked goods for her mother and brother and condolences baked goods for our friend Anna (see yesterday's entry). Gretchen had also been to Adam's Fairacre Farms and had a bunch of fresh vegetables including basil and broccoli rab, some of which she made into various cooked items. There was still plenty of leftover chili, but I had no appetite for that. Instead I drank a single farmhouse ale.
When my guts weren't bothering me, I found my body feeling very content, especially when I was lying on the laboratory bean bag.
My brother Don called this evening to tell me about all the toys he's been buying, including a $150 Lego crane and a $56 drone. I asked where was he getting the money for this stuff, and he told me that Joy Tarder had loaned it to him. So then I felt the need to strongly caution Don about going into debt. I told him that some day he might even have access to a credit card and he'll have to exercise restraint, only buying what he has the money to buy at the time. He mumbled in agreement, since he knows that credit cards charge high interest rates. But he has almost no executive function whatsoever and wouldn't even pass a marshmallow test as an adult, so he'll always be dependent on someone constraining his access to money. Joy Tarder loaning him money might seem like a kindness, but it's training him to think about money in the wrong way.
Don also mentioned that some woman on Mill Creek Road had hired him to do a little fence repair work for $12/hour. He'd only ended up working 50 minutes and expected about $10, but the woman was nice and gave him $24. Naturally, he immediately went and blew the money on books and toys.
Don still has to buy groceries in order to keep himself fed, though they're mostly paid for with food stamps. He said he's become dependent on some friend (someone I don't know) to drive him home after he goes shopping, but the other day that person wasn't available, and nobody else was either. So he'd been forced to carry numerous bags of groceries for six fucking miles. He said one of the bags tore open and dumped its contents on the road about a mile from Creekside, and he'd cached that stuff and come back later to recover it.
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