Read Free Fortnight (RFF) continues at The Diary.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, June 4
There was some moderate action at the veterans service office (VSO) today…There were two messages waiting for me, one from Mr C and one from Mrs P…Regular readers of this crap may – or they may not – recall that Mr C is the gent living in a trailer without running water whose brother originally contacted me, while Mrs P is the widow whose late husband had originally been turned down for a claim the VA now routinely approves.
It was good to hear from Mr C…He had declined to either take or return my calls earlier this week and he wasn’t there when I visited him and I had half a mind to call the sheriff for a welfare check, just in case he’d had a massive coronary and was dead…I am helping him to get housing in town that has permanent electricity and running water and his caseworker in Denver said Mr C had the required bank statements that would complete his application.
His message was funny, transferring blame to yours truly for taking so long to coordinate matters…He said he’s had the statements for a while and had been waiting for me to call, which was preposterous because I’ve called him 17 times in the past week…Then, to show some contrition, he blamed the Memorial Day holiday, saying he’d forgotten about it, tho what that had to with anything will never be entirely clear.
So I headed out and visited him and he had the statements, which showed the only regular deposit was his VA pension, about $1,300 a month, which is about what it costs to rent a bedroom in town, so no wonder I’m helping him get subsidized housing…There was nothing else, not even social security.
Mrs P is the one who received a VA letter saying denied claims of that era were being reviewed…Her late husband had diabetes, a presumed condition of Agent Orange exposure, but his disability claim was denied…Now, it turns out her husband died from pneumonia, so she is not entitled to any widow benefits, but I told her I would like to file re-file the original claim on the theory that the VA might approve it and fork over back pay because this is a claim they now approve…Mrs P lives an hour-and-a-half away in another county and when I asked if it would be convenient for her to come in she said, well, she had an eye doctor appointment on the 16th which just happens to be a Wednesday, so we made an appointment for then…I asked her to bring her husband’s discharge papers, plus his death certificate and their marriage certificate…I don’t know if there’s any precedent for the VA approving claims for widows under these circumstances – nor do I particularly care – but we are going to find out.
Boy, the lawn has sure taken a beating this week…After a wet start to spring, Mother Nature has turned the faucet off and it was 90ish when I returned to The Shire this afternoon and the lawn was no longer a lush green…In past years, I’d soak an area for a 45 minutes or so, but I had to get the Friday Afternoon Nap (FN) in so I gave three sectors about 20 minutes each.
The fly in the ointment, tho, is with the new weed store going up next door you just can’t put the big sprinkler on and turn it up full blast because you’ll water a good portion of the construction area…So for the strip between the cabin and the new fence you put that old round sprinkler on and while that doesn’t cover as large an area, it does fit nicely into the area between the cabin and the fence…I’m going to try and get as much of it done when I can, 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there, every day…The lawn will die if I wait until Thursday when I can do the whole thing in one day.
Speaking of the weed store, it’s coming along nicely…I guess…I don’t really know because regular readers of this crap know ol’ Sparrow is hardly Mr Construction…Still tho, windows are in now and so are the doors and the exterior walls are being put in, too.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log:
2030 Thursday until 0300 Friday
1630 Friday until 2100 Friday
11.0 hours for the day and 38.0 hours for the week, a good total but hardly a great one heading into Saturday’s final sleep session of the week.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th-century British novel of the same name.
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