If I Get Sick, Call Washington

Applying for Medicare has got to be a landmark in anyone's frail and tenuous existence. I have attained that social pinnacle, having sent my online application to the Social Security Administration just a week ago. It seems that I may be getting in just under the wire, although it hasn't been entirely smooth sailing for the new Congressional budget geniuses. 

Head Genius

I will only say, vis-a-vis the application process, that it wasn't all that difficult to figure out, although I can see that it might be if you've been sick or intend ever to be sick. Fortunately there's nothing wrong with me that a course of antidepressants and a good talking to couldn't cure, but I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones.  

 

My medical regimen

My last major landmark, as nearly as I can remember it, was turning 60, which seemed (in anticipation, at least) pretty much the end of things for me. But the party came off in style and the morning following witnessed the return of my vital spirits, general elan, and the knowledge that I had my Medicare to anticipate. I recall that celebration with great pleasure now - so much so that I give you the invitation I sent out asking friends to share in the revels:

Miguel de Montaigne desires that you convene with select friends to celebrate the near approach of his Senescence, Obsolescence, Decrepitude, Desuetude, Detumescence mental and physical, general Diminishment, and existential Dread on the occasion of the Sexagesimal Anniversary of his Natal Day. See the Dimming of his Faculties; watch Reason forsake her Throne. Revels to include:

• Sacrifices, Burnt Offerings in the Old Style, with a cake
• Recalling Names and Telephone Numbers of People I knew in the Forties, by Sir Alisdair Pevin-Jimson
• Chalk drawings (with comic attempts to rise from his working position), by centenarian sidewalk artiste Gulley Jimson
• Reminiscences of Lost Youth, by Murgatroyd Poindexter de Montaigne, recently parolled uncle of the celebrant
• The Exotic Dances of the Jimson Sisters (formerly the Sisters Khapadia) of the Tolleygunge Club, Calcutta
• The Lamentations of Job, sung by the Northern Macedonian Male Chorus of Agios Hilarios and Dimitrios
• Impersonations of the 18^th Century’s Great Men of Science, by Wladislaw, natural half-brother to Prince Ludwig the Mad of Bavaria 
• The Highland ballads and musical stylings of Wee Stanley MacGregor 

Indeed turning 60 was not the end of the road, pass it did, and my current state almost feels like a graduation of sorts . . . 

It doesn't get any better 
(than being eligible for entitlement programs)

So I enter the ranks of the Medicare-eligible, being in sound health, having lived a clean and wholesome life, having exercised pretty regularly, having mostly eschewed fatty viands. . . 

Chicken fried everything

 . . . having learned in some measure to control my states of agitation, annoyance, pique, petulance, ill-temper, savoir-meilleur, and those emotions (save but one) that raise the heart rate and render the humors overly dry, sere and heated. At the same time I remind myself that Heraclitus accounted the soul as fire and thought that a dry soul was best. Dry, as I said, but not too dry.

 Medicare Plan D 

(prescription drug plan)