Had a chance to blow off a little steam today...

It's been a busy, hard week for me. Absolutely normal one for most people... but I'm still fighting my walking pneumonia, and the fibro symptoms that have been exacerbated by it. So... today, I'm working in the kitchen. Planning to make a beef stew and having to clean dishes, cabinets, as well as restack shelves of plastic containers in precarious positions, etc. as I go. IOW, everything being very disjointed, just like my back!

Anyway, I got a phone call from a number I didn't know. Normally, I blow those completely off. Hubby cleaned out our bank account once after getting scammed, and I came too close once on my own. I answered "Hello" while having both hands concentrated on my dutch oven of soup. When no one answered after a few minutes, I just said "goodbye" and went to disconnect. The guy immediately hollered after me that he was there, and identified himself as someone to do with "energy savings" work being done in my neighborhood. To say I absolutely didn't want to get onto an extended "no way" conversation, I stopped him in mid-sentence and let loose.

First, I told him I'm sorry that he has to do this work, but my family (like most of those around us in this elder neighborhood) are subsisting the best we can. Normal living expenses like utilities, etc., have skyrocketed on top of the ever-increasing greed of those in charge of food prices, not to mention healthcare prices.

I told him until this country came to its senses and got rid of trump, one way or another, and turned away from fascism, we were ALL screwed... young, middle-age, and elderly. There's just some of us getting hit worse than others. I told him I didn't know if he earned more than minimum wage, but that my bet was he was as hungry for democratic normalcy as the rest of us are. But until we shook ourselves out of this dystopia, I would not be spending money on anything that "sounds like it would be a good idea" or even that I see we needed, unless it was a dire emergency. I closed off with "get rid of trump, or your company will probably find itself on the way out, too." And THEN I hung up.

I don't normally do this, but come on... people are hungry and trying to survive the best they can and don't need to be strong armed into something they don't need right away. I know for a lot of people here, this may not be an issue. But after as close as I came to being scammed because of a job application *through a headhunter* and my husband completely clearing out our bank accounts to the "FBI agents" who called him, I have a deep-seated ill feeling towards these kinds of marketing calls. It's not exactly apples vs apples, but close enough. We elders are holding on for dear life. Between meds and food, many of us are barely keeping our heads above water.

I have to admit that upon hanging up, I felt a sort of catharsis. Don't know if that makes me a bad person or not... just a fed up one!