Here’s Muriel, our noble, barrel-chested beast, breaking in the new chair. I’m not sure why it looks as though she was dragging the Gorilla Cart behind her like a mule, but clearly she and Crankenstein were up to something while I showered.* This room is big and nearly empty, so it’s a good place to unpack and assemble things, which we’ll be doing soon with our stereo setup. Much of the house is still empty, years after moving in, because we didn’t want to furnish it until the student loans were gone and we had a better idea of how we’d use the space.
While we’re on the subject of Muriel and furniture, she and Crankenstein endlessly fight over a prized spot on the couch, each ‘stealing’ it the second it’s vacant. They do this over and over again, night after night, Muriel enjoying herself considerably more than Crankenstein — the same Crankenstein who eagerly invited her onto the couch years ago despite my protestations that it would create a monster.** We’ve talked about replacing this couch (so old it was damaged in the fire-sprinkler disaster) one day with something larger, maybe a sectional, but I’m not sure additional cushions would stop this strange competition of theirs.
In other news, the disability lawyer called earlier to explain the boring bureaucratic procedures that come next. There’s a five-month waiting period before benefits begin, but my payments will start sooner since the judge found my disability onset date was earlier than that. The lawyer will get her fee, which is deducted from my back pay, directly from the government, and Crankenstein and I will pay taxes on whatever I receive. I’m not trying to be evasive about the figures, which we won’t see until the paperwork’s been processed, but it won’t be a bonanza since my longest-running W2 job never paid much.
Once we have more information, it might finally be the impetus I need to dust off my Money Changes Everything: Part III draft and complete it. I’ll probably elaborate on this then, but one of the dumbest reasons I didn’t want most of my family to know about my fight for SSDI was that too many of them would have rude or hurtful things to say about it. The greediest and laziest among them, like my sister Tom and our goonsday prepper aunt, would enviously imagine I spend leisurely afternoons diving into gold coins like Scrooge McDuck, which is silly — I’d (truly) earn more at an entry-level fast food job than I’ll receive through SSDI.^
What’s worse, I can already hear Tom wailing and gnashing her teeth about how unfair it is that she currently has no disabling diseases to speak of, or sputtering indignantly about how no spouse of a physician should be entitled to benefits. I don’t want to be any part of that, even if those tantrums (unlike the ones she regularly pitched when we worked together) are no longer thrown directly in front of me. Pursuing this wasn’t an easy decision to make for all kinds of deeply personal reasons, and it’s painful to know — and I know Tom’s that petty — that anyone, especially someone who claims to love me, could assign a higher value to the wealth they preposterously imagine I’ll gain because of illness than they’d place on everything I’ve lost because of it.
* One of Muriel’s quirks is her love of that purple harness. We call it her “work clothes” because she had to wear it each day she accompanied me to the office, since it allowed me to safely buckle her into the car. Once she became a work from home dog, I thought maybe she’d enjoy her sartorial freedom. But she insists on dressing for success, even when I’m in pajama pants and a tattered t-shirt I’ve had since eighth grade.
** During the day, when we’re alone together, Muriel’s just as covetous of my seat. But nighttime is the right time to serially harass Crankenstein.
^ My aunt, who spent most of the pandemic denying COVID-19’s existence and running around maskless, hacking on everyone and licking doorknobs at Hardee’s, eventually caught COVID and ended up in the hospital, fearful she was about to die. Shortly thereafter, she tried to file for disability with a spurious long-haul COVID claim (despite decades of bitterly complaining about lazy low-life welfare cheats).