Seat Cushion

This morning at about 5 to 9 there is a knock on the door.
I am wheeling around, putting my pile together, stuffing pockets
As I did not get my reservation in time, I made sure I awoke early enough to be dressed and then call at 8 asking for 9:15
for which I had to pay $10 each way.
So not the happiest start to another labor intensive morning.

Anyway it is Audrey the cleaning lady and I freak—
it is too early
o no she says it is something else, knowing it think she is there to tell me the bus has arrived
I open the door and it’s a cushion for the electric wheelchair...

I have no time to consider it and try to get my mind off how they were supposed to deliver it at 2 p.m. and how this throws me off, and how this is before even the office is open and how they just handed something precious to me to some unauthorized stranger.

I start scribbling checks and write the wrong amounts.
As I scribble again, the buzzer sounds...it's still not 9:15 but I know I better go.
I whirl around and pull on my lovely cotton double-sided jacket from Marketplace India. I am grateful for this loveliness and handwork.

It is a comfort on the nearly cold morning, but I forget my flocked black velvet scarf and hope it is not windy...

A new to me guy, Bill, with a cigar stub in the corner of his mouth, is my driver. We talk about tobacco, did he chew? I had two colleagues who did and I remember Craig’s face ruddy with his high and his lower cheek pouched out and that palying softabll got him started. Bill doesn't smoke the cigars, just sucks on them. Interesting how some people manage their oral fix and look tough about such a tender need.

He tells me about fishing off the Florida Keys and how they've changed. He would chew tobackky while a fishing and spit into the forgiving sea. There weren’t fish to mind he laughs. The gay folks made it better and then developers are ruining it with time-shares. I thought about the other wonderful quiet place, Nantucket, Soho, places I could afford before I could afford them and when I made money finally, they were astronomical.

We miss the back, I tell him to turn left but he doesn’t respond soon enough because the front of our building is at the back.

Leaving, it's EJ who is scowling until I come near. He arrived ten minutes early and the scowl may be because today it took me the whole ten minutes to
get downstairs….but maybe not, I was in my apartment well before 2 and for once ate at a time that still might be called lunch…

I almost let myself roll unstopped down the hill of an incline at work, another of these allegedly accessible things that feel frightening and precarious in the access….

but the chair picks up speed and I hurt my hand grabbing the one unadorned wheel.

EJ picks up where we left off, after I tell him how Vern made a scene at work the day before.
That's Vern he laughs
And he recalls, to tease me, how I ascribed his line to Vern.
You've seen the rest, now you have the best and he riffed on it, mentioning again his motorcycles and I affirmed that I remembered, Mr. reservist, world traveler, 19 years here...
And then he began to tease me Vern’s Friend he said and when I reacted he was unrelenting, happy he at last had a burr to irritate me.

And good news!

I can have 4 more sessions with my physical therapist! Approved at last by Insurance, though I tried to tell her this last week.

Anyway when we last spoke and I told her about the cushion she said the one I have in my manual, the Jay Easy was about 2 grand. I looked it up $607. Still more than something I could run out and buy but little enough that it should have been a part of their huge bill to the insurance company.

About 11% of the price of the manual and only 5% of the price of the electric, undoing her point and supporting mine about why didn’t I get a cushion with the chair.

Anyway glorious Kory who is the order taker and not the dour mean deliverer called and said they found something I could use to spare going through the insurance thing and waiting any longer. Kory was away last week getting his new daughter.

I am so so happy for him, he is a man who was radiant with clarity and kindness, I remember his energy from when I was at the Highlands of Brighton and I know that getting the electric chair is much about his effort.

It has a lower profile than the one I sit on so maybe now they will be even and I won’t have to adjust all my equipment and I can transfer from manual to electric on my own..

And I will have Kristen to help me suss it out.

Unfortunately I found out I could have access to her after I made an appointment for my home health care aide tomorrow….

I am trying to be as parsimonious as I can--- keeping their visits—the home aids visits down to once every 5 days to a week so I can stop hemorrhaging money I don’t even have..