2015--A long backwards step.

2015 was a year for taking a step backwards.  It can be summed up best by saying in October I was 98.6% of the way to reaching a long-standing goal in my workplace's 401K plan, wherein I contribute $25,000 of my salary, after taxes, into a retirement fund and my employer puts in about $9,000 into it in "matching" money.  A mere 100 days later I am only 86% of the way there, having turned 2015 into a year where I paid Wall Street for the privilege of working for managers half my age who only care for themselves and their own furtherance.

Before the Decider wrecked the world economy and almost sent the country into a Depression, thereby pushing everybody's retirement five years further into the future, he said that he was going to spend the "political capital" he had earned in getting himself re-elected to a second term (by stealing his second election in a row--this time in Ohio) by privatizing Social Security.  I smelled a rat immediately.  Fortunately, like his "Mission Accomplishment" statement, his words were overmatched by reality and this scheme to allow Wall Street access to the Social Security trust fund, a huge pot of money, never actually happened.  America's safety net for retirees, the lifeline of Social Security, remains fully intact.

And what about Paul Ryan's notion that we should all just work till we're 70?  Workers get pushed out of their jobs beginning in their 60's, and that liar (what about his phony sub-three hour marathon boast?), born with a silver spoon in his mouth, should go out without his inherited advantages and millions and get a real job and work it till he's 70.

So another year of drudgery starts as I slide into my mid-60s and I return to a workplace rife with management by bullying and unbridled and unabashed arrogance exuding from these chosen, privileged and all-knowing millennials, having lost another 6% of my retirement money this first week alone.  Stick a fork in . . .  .

So Predictable

My phone rang tonight; it was a friend (who actually reads this blog) saying she was sorry that my middle son Johnny didn't show up at my annual ritual of having lunch on his birthday at a restaurant near where he grew up, for the tenth year in a row.  A full decade with no communication whatsoever with the lad; yeah, PAS sucks.  (Johnny, on the far right in 2001.)

It was nice of my friend to be concerned, she was thinking I'd be feeling low, but actually…I'm not.  He's 28, he makes his choices, and I'm past pining away because my kids are not a part of my life.  (A Rin Tin Tin pie for two.)

Johnny, I loved you, and I love you.  I hope you are well, although I would have no idea about that.  (My solitary lunch done, I took a swallow out of Johnny's beer, symbolically and actually, and took the other half of the pizza home for breakfast.)

Johnny, I'm glad that you were able to attend VCU for eight semesters totally on my dime (I provided for full tuition and fees at your request), and I thank you for the invitation to your graduation (I'm being sarcastic, son).  I do believe that what goes around comes around.  (Once so innocent, you proved to be susceptible as a minor to adult predators and joined in with your mother in trying to bury me through a phony "fiduciary" suit which got thrown out as "unconscionable" and a "harassment petition," with sanctions and my full costs imposed after years of litigation reaching all the way to the state supreme court.)