What to do?

I have been wondering what to do.

Legal papers, insurance, financial accounts...

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Also considering what to move, donate, trash...

So much to consider after all these years.

CORPORATE SUBVERSION: Health Care, round 1...Insulin, the stuff of life or death

It's a very simple equation. This corporation that makes Lantus has me in a very tight embrace which is: I either use its product or I die.
Not much room to wiggle around is there? Roughly speaking to buy this insulin without insurance would cost me $435/mo. Not a chance in hell I could afford it and have enough money left over to live appropriately. In Australia, under their socialist health care system, it would cost me no more than $30/mo. Well within my means and budget.
But living here in the US, where corporations reign supreme what to do.
Turns out the answer is engage the system, subversively, for your own purposes.
If you engage the system here, even in the smallest of ways, like a part-time job with a corporation, they are forced to give you a 'W2 form', in other words, a widely recognized piece of paper describing your earnings for tax purposes. Turns out this is not only useful for filing a tax return it is also useful for convincing other corporations you are indigent. That is, you earn so little money that you fall below the recognized poverty line.
Congratulations.
You just qualified for free goods and services.
I'm sure corporations get a tax break for their largess but you don't really care about that do you? NO, you do not.
You only care that you will now be receiving free health care products. Like insulin. Like continued life on the planet.
Your only remaining concern is how do you access corporation largesse? Where do you get the application forms, what other things are necessary and how will this product be delivered to you?
Lets just use Lantus as an example:
Steps to obtaining free Lantus
1. Identify the corporation that makes it: Sanofi
2. Search the web with Google or some other search engine for things like "Sanofi patient assistance program"
3. Find the corporations patient assistance program then, try to figure out 'how to apply'. In this example, they hid it well. Unlike some others there were no online forms to download. Nope. If you were going to be successful, you had to read between the lines and call them. Nothing less than a phone call would do. Then after speaking to you they would email you an application form.
4. Fill out your part of the application form, then take it to your doctor's office, have them fill out the rest of the form and with the above mentioned W2 form, fax everything to their patient assistance program.

I wasn't willing to write this post until I knew that it works. Had the insulin in my sweating pudgy hands and had stored it in the fridge.

So now that you know it works and how it works, email me or message me or leave a comment or some way for me to get a hold of you. I've still got the forms and it would please me no end to help someone else do the same thing.

Just some background:

Have been living here for ~35 years, house and car paid for; been scouting for someone to live with/near as an alternative to assisted living.

Didn't want to give up garden/compost/cooking/clothesline.

Gary showed up (after several years as 'net friends) and offered a place to live with "soft survivalism".

Have a year and a half to arrange/move/dispose years of stuff.

Future posts will concern: here and now, or preparing/transition, or plans for there. 

The crash and burn of things mechanical

Damn. The day started out okay in most respects but then as I was about to learn, things mechanical began to go wrong...It was almost as if there was a conspiracy afoot to break things.

The worst was the shade top to the boat, I ran it into an errant mangrove branch and broke the front bow. Oh yes, there was more indignations to come...how do you steer the boat when the canvass top collapses on your head? Well with great difficulty...until you realize you have to lash it back to it's foundations and subject yourself to the sun's full blast, if you are going to finally pull the crab traps from their watery graves. We got it done but at some cost.


Next? Bait bucket falls apart...too much sun has made it brittle and on this day the handle pulls loose, great holes appear and the bucket now has enough holes to literally resemble Swiss Cheese. Not the most useful device for holding small pin fish.

Finally, even the hose nozzle got in on the act...

Do you see that crack in the upper right of the handle???? That crack means that the pin pulls through the handle and the hose no longer squirts.

This shit is going to be expensive to replace, let me tell you.

One day, one errant mangrove branch and suddenly all other mechanicals see their chance and there you are. Dead in the water until repairs.

Shit.

If  I didn't love my life so much I'd just give it all up and cry over the loss.

Never mind.

SOFT SUVIVALISM: OLIVE OIL AND SHARP RAZORS

It's what Claudia calls 'soft survivalism', nothing too hard core here. Not even an end goal of completely separating ourselves from civilization...no not that. It's not what we want to do.

What we do want to do is to minimize the influence of corporations and their 'consume or die' mentality. We haven't really started in earnest yet but here is one little way of reducing dependence and consumption of corporation inspired dispensability. This sort of attitude may go by other names like, 'frugality' 'sustainability' or 'corporate anarchy'. Okay, I just made up the last one myself. But in the end, they all have one idea in common and that is to reduce our outlay of money to corporations. We may still choose to outlay money but it won't have to be to a corporation.

Here's a handy dandy little device I didn't even know existed until Claudia sent me one...and yes, after this mornings trial, I can tell you it works a treat.

I had deliberately used a fairly expensive 3 blade disposable razor until it was dull. Followed the directions on the box and it was back to 'good as new' in no time. Also read the instructions for a change of pace and realized that they probably had a point with 'dry your razor to prevent microscopic rust'. So then had an old brain brainstorm and remembered I had read a hint somewhere along the line that told me how to do this effectively.

That's about an inch of olive oil in an old plastic drinking glass. No water, no air ='s no rust. Neat huh?

SOFT SURVIVALISM.

A night trout before off island ultrasound.

Here we have a fine example of a 'night trout'. What's a 'night trout' you might wonder? Well it's a trout that you catch at night(obviously) off your deck, before you go off to an early morning appointment to get your testicle ultrasound.

One of the rules that apply here in Florida where I live is that whatever you catch off your dock is 'yours' no questions asked. So after turning on the 'dock light'(and underwater light) yesterday evening I got up early...way too early for most...around 4a.m. and saw this lovely specimen totally hypnotized by the dock light and had to have it.


A lucky throw with a cast net and this and several catfish, destined for the crab trap, are sitting on the boat awaiting collection and preparation in daylight hours.

This trout will be lunch, as soon as I get back from the off island(never a good thing) ultrasound and get around to fully cleaning him. All my volunteers, as I call my catches, get a swift and clean death as I do believe that's part of the deal for volunteering. So he'll be waiting for me in the fridge having been dispatched shortly after this picture with his partial remains being returned to the sea to serve as food for his brethren. 

To the greatest extent possible EVERYTHING here is recycled, one way or another.

Some background: been living in Ohio for ~35 years; moving to Florida late next year.

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