My Dear Cousin - Utilities

21st June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

The day after my brother left I lost my job. I was having trouble staying awake because of my injury and to be honest my boss wanted me gone to limit liability. The injury had happened at work.

This was the height of the pandemic and the unemployment benefits were good money. I took the time I spent sheltering in place cleaning the house with nothing better to do trying to make the place better for  (Pickle) and me. I thought (Pickle) would come home. I was even using headphones when on the computer.

I went out and replaced his punching bag with a larger one. Years ago, my old man had gone out and gotten a punching bag stand fit for a professional boxer but a punching bag made for a child. It shook the roof when we used that bag.  I got the biggest bag I could find and it meant that Paul or I could take out our anger on the bag next time things came up.

I was even going to install padded flooring in the garage where we keep the bag. The house was all cleaned up and I was feeling rather good about the whole thing when I got a notification letting me know that the utilities  (Pickle) had been paying were now being shut off.

That’s right, without warning my internet stopped and I found out that the water was getting shut off. I had to scramble to get things right before I found myself without something major and I lost the phone number I had for thirty years.

This pushed me into a great depression. I finally had to admit that family was over for me. I mean, to be honest I don’t miss the man. I have nightmares about him coming home. I was always afraid of him coming after me in my sleep anyway.

One of the great facts of life is that no one is coming to save you. Well, no one ever came to save me. The Lawsuit is still pending and my life is much as it always has been.

Stay safe,

 

Richard Leland Neal

My Dear Cousin - A Car Hit Me

18^th June 2021

My Dear Cousin,

At some point I was hit by a car. This may feel off topic given my last letter, but it fits into the overall narrative to my life. You see, I was changing a tire when the car shifted and fell. It wasn’t my car and the owner had forgotten the parking brake.

So the car fell and clipped me. The car clipped me on the side and left a five percent bend in my spine. This placed me in the worst health of my life. I ballooned up to four hundred and fifteen pounds and I had trouble cleaning myself. It made me a diabetic.

The chair in my work room couldn’t take the weight, and it bent causing me to get another one. The only thing was that my work room was so much a mess that I had trouble getting the old chair out and the new chair in. I couldn’t stand for more than fifteen minutes at a time without major pain.

I came home one night and one of my cats was missing. I asked (Pickle) where he was as the cat was never supposed to leave the house. (Pickle) said he let him out and didn’t feel like chasing him to get him back in.

 Well, a few days after that, it could have been a week or two now that I think of it, I was still trying to get my chair back in my work room and I sat down on the couch and was watching something on my phone. I had my laptop set up in the living room at the time which was something I take to work every day.

(Pickle) freaked out and started screaming. He thought I was transferring things to the living room from the work room I think, but he never talked to me about it. He called (Pony Girl) and started complaining. You have to understand that (Pickle) has sensitive ears. He kind of needs to live in a quiet house.

I was furious; I ran up to him and said “Give me the damn phone.” I told (Pony Girl) I was upset over (Pickle) letting the cat out and him never returning. I felt he had gotten the old cat killed and that looks to be true. (Pickle) winced when he heard that, he knew he was in trouble.

(Pony Girl) said “are you saying you want to sell the house” and I said no. The details of the argument are a little fuzzy at the moment but I believe (Pony Girl) came and picked him up. I never saw him again.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal

This Grizzly Reality

14^th March 2015

Dear Cassi,

       

I have so much to say about my wounded little cat. Well, writing about my pain dulls it some and gives me the strength to face this grizzly reality. When I gave Ire her medication that first time Pickle started crying. He’s thirty nine and crying over a wounded cat that isn’t his. Well, the liquid painkillers helped.

       

In any case, when I took my little silver gray cat to the eye specialist they quoted me for two separate operations. To simply remove the eye was almost three thousand dollars and to repair it, which would likely not save Ire’s sight, was nearly four thousand. Treating the condition medically would only cost six hundred.  I read later that she had quoted someone else twelve and eighteen hundred for these operations.

       

Now, as I mentioned, the specialist’s tools looked very old, and I told her so during the examination. She ignored me. It left a silence in the air that made me question if those tools were still modern. Further, there were old dusty books in the examination room and other objects that would have been hard to keep clean. A bit of dust in a damaged eye can make all the difference.

       

One thing that I did care for was that the vet wrapped my cat in a towel before conducting the examination. This kept her legs firmly secured so that she couldn’t scratch. It was a green towel, which I didn’t care for. White towels are kept for medical use so that they can be kept clean. It’s hard to miss dirt on a white towel.

       

The final point was that the vet didn’t bother to discuss the medications with me before I left. She said they were just strait forward. I didn’t know that there was a medication that needed refrigeration until I had slept and woke up again. I need to find a better eye doctor.

Know the world, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

The Eye Doctor

13^th March 2015

Dear Cassi,

Yesterday I went to the veterinarian, and today I went back to the veterinarian. I told you that my troubles were not yet over and they had only started. Ire, my little silver gray kitten, was bleeding from her eye, and I knew the morpheme would only last so long.

       

I was the eye doctor’s first client of the day, and still they had me wait before being seen. At this point it was past eleven. It could have been that they had simply started a new sign in sheet, but there were no other clients waiting.

       

They sent me into an exam room and had me sit waiting again. I set Ire in my lap and stroked her back as she purred. I looked around that room noting that all the equipment looked old and the Hooker Green paint on one of the test tools made me think 60s or 70s. It was a hundred and thirty dollars just for the doctor to look at my cat with her eyes. She didn’t take a temperature, but she did shine a light at my cat in the dark.

       

She billed me for a pressure test and she billed me for a dye test. When she took the pressure test she used the same cap for both eyes then threw the little white bit of latex away afterwards. I think she should have changed caps. If Ire had an infection in one eye it just got transferred to the other.

       

It was more than five hundred dollars to walk out of that office, and if I’m late for the next appointment I’ll pay ninety but there’s more. The pain medication they gave my cat was in pill form. There was no way I could wrestle with her to take a pill with her eye swollen and bloody. What if I had hit the eye and damaged it somehow? I had to call my regular vet to see if I could get a liquid pain killer and they obliged.

       

I read up on that eye specialist and she has gotten bad review after bad review. This is kind of to be expected with a veterinarian. I mean, no one likes to pay big bills. The only thing is that when I read one of the reviews she had quoted someone else much less for the same operation.

Do your homework, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

After I got Blooded

31^st December 2013

 Dear Cassi,

Two letters in one day, well, that’s something new. In any case I guess I could have just kept writing the last one, but I’m in a funny mood, and I have to go into work. I got my face blooded this morning and I’m still going into work.

I have to finish telling you the story of the person who bloodied it to keep my head clear.

In any case, that angry client left this morning after I tried to call the police, but she came back. I saw a figure at the door and went to press the button to open it, but I didn’t need to. The door came open on its own.

So there was that angry drunk, and she wanted her belongings at maybe an hour past midnight with her roommates sleeping. I can say this much she wasn’t drunk, not anymore, she was crazy angry, but not drunk.

This girl was the kind of angry that meant she couldn’t be permitted back to her room because she could hurt someone, and it was my job to keep people safe. So I told her to leave and she wouldn’t.

I called the police and she reached over the counter and ripped the phone off its cord. I pulled out my cell phone, and she tore the time clock off the wall and hurled it at my hands knocking my phone to the floor.

I had to put my phone back together and let it turn back on as she grabbed everything she could had hurled it at me as hard as she could. The papers and the mouse pad hit me. By the time she threw the computer monitor I was on the phone with the police. Next went the computer body and the police were on their way.

She tried to rip the security monitor off the wall, and I didn’t want that hitting me so I put my hands on top of hers to stop her, and she spit in my face. She tried to jump over the counter to get at me, but I knocked her back. Twice more she tried this before knocking over the Christmas tree and storming out.

I was safe, but I was bleeding. I was bleeding, and I didn’t even know it yet. I’ve got to go to work now so the rest I’ll have to tell you tomorrow. Funny, isn’t it, I got my face blooded at work this morning and they won’t even give me the night off.

Stay safe, little sister,

Richard Leland Neal

Anger and Restraint - Lucius Annaeus Seneca