all i want to do

This was a personal day of reckoning at the sawmill. For-profit healthcare is big business here in our country, and Obama pajama mama has nothing to do with that. His plan won't work either...you know the "give everything away to the ones who ass off" version. That is how my employer came to find itself unable to deliver to the stockholders. Translated, that means do more with less and hope for the best with the really sick ones. Cut those hours and slash that inventory until they bleed. Thank you Dr. Bill Frist, for that concept. I hope you get MRSA up your ass and then some. Surely Congress will comp your bill. After all...you earned it, right?

Miss Olive got caught smokin' in the bathroom last week and the house supervisor ripped her a new one for breaking the rules. HS threatened to call the cops on that old lady, I swear. She has a few Old Milwaukees every afternoon at cocktail hour with her hubby who is a whiskey man and when he gets out of hand? She hands it right back to him like the smartass that she is. They met in London during WWII when he was stationed there. How in the hell they ever got to our little 'burg is beyond me, but I try not to question big ernie and his plan. All I know is that she's an angel sent straight to me from heaven as a reminder that life is short and true love is not very hard to find but pretty hard to hang on to. I sincerely hope that before I die, I'll know that feeling.

Once upon a time there were people who cared about the oath of "do no harm." They still exist, even in a market that is driven by profit and abuse of the system. The bottom line? Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity, especially when they're sick. I remember when HIV swept through our town back in the eighties, thanks to a few chosen ones who were careless before they knew better. Me and Denise went to school together at Alice Thurmond Elementary which was just up the hill from my great grandmother Ethel's house and across Pate from Memama's. Mama and Nancy grew up next door to Ethel's where Miss Rosie, with a paper sack on her head, cooked greens and did chores for she and Ockie. As the story goes, he would go marching off to work at the KW Rogers store and she'd be hollering at him from the front porch like a shrew. Ethel answered the old timey dial phone with the greeting "alright!", a throwback to her younger days at the phone exchange a few miles down south in Lauderdale County. She clicked her false teeth when she said it too.

Mr. Bruce was the principal there, a young man from Mississippi who came north with his young bride Peggy, holding their respective degrees in education. At that time, there were three elementary schools in the city system, each of which employed numerous old ladies with blue hair and lots of rulers to spat hands and butts. A few of them even got riled up enough to pitch erasers on occasion. Nannie Jean was one of those who dumped fear upon any young punk who dared to act bored in her math class. How DARE you not love algebra!!

Sometimes I think about what I'd really like to do with the rest of my days here on earth if I didn't have to worry about paying the rent, utility bills and the insurance premiums. What has this world got to anyways??????