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Benefits are the new business cards

I have a phobia about business cards.
Every time, I get business cards, something terrible happens.
I get sacked. Or my business folds.
So I started refusing to use them.
I also don't go on vacation. Again, whenever I do, something terrible happens.
I once worked for a political party and decided to take a much needed vacay to Jamaica (jus cool!). When I came back, I noticed I'd been turned down for a VISA card. The next day, I found out why. There was a new sheriff in town who handed me my walking stick.
Another time, I went on vacation with my husband and over dinner, he told me he was cheating on me with an old girlfriend. A few months later, he took me to England and left me in the airport to fly to Bermuda into the waiting arms of the woman I now refer to as the White Witch of Bermuda.
My step-son called it Rose's Goodbye Tour.
Hah.
So I don't travel anymore. Don't get me wrong, I trust this husband. But I'm afraid he might be eaten by sharks or kidnapped by pygmies.
The mind is a dangerous thing.
Anyway, my new phobia is related to medical benefits
For my friends in the United States, let us clarify the medicare situation in Canada. We do not have free health care as Obama would like you to believe. We pay through the nose for it as part of our tax system. It is true that you won't exactly lose the house if somebody gets sick. You only lose your teeth and walk like a blind hunchback because our health care system won't pay for vision, teeth and physiotherapy.
And you might get surgery but you die from agonizing pain because the government doesn't pay for drugs, either.
That's why Canadians drink so much.
You have to kill the pain with something.
If you want those services, you have to have a job that has benefits.
I'm a freelancer, which is like the bug on top of the pond scum in our society.
I haven't had medical benefits in more than two decades. That's because when my husband left me and three kids, he knocked me off his benefits to put his older uglier new wife on his. You think I'm bitter? Does Gordie poop on my bed?
I hope she gets skin cancer from spending two decades in the Bermuda sun and lung cancer from smoking two packs a day and getting my elder son hooked on cigarettes.
Maybe she'll give my ex the human papilloma virus, like Michael friggin' Douglas.
Hey, a girl can dream.
I digress.
As I get older, I long for them -- the benefits I mean.
I want to go to the dentist on a whim, or get my neck cracked just for fun.
Maybe I could get orthotics for my sagging arches.
But I can't.
Like an old car, I need some work.
I have a chipped front tooth and a cracked back one. I have bursitis and a cataract.
Trouble is, my current husband works in a very sketchy business -- car sales.
His first dealership forgot to sign him up for benefits, so he worked for three years without them. Then he went to a second dealership and he got benefits but the pay was so lousy, he couldn't even afford the co-pay. So then he quit his job and we were really fucked.
In the spring, he took another job and we've had benefits since July and we've finally gathered enough moola to pay for the dental work for which we get reimbursed.
But yesterday he quit that job to take a better one.
So I have two weeks to organize major dental.
Because I won't get benefits again til Christmas.
I'd love to have business cards, because that would mean I had a job. I'd love to go on vacation and take a chance that Scott won't be eaten by pygmies. And I'd die for benefits.
Realistically, I might die before I get benefits.
Another example of the ferris wheel of shit that is my life.










 

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