redacted is redacted

the latest budget stuff hasn't hit the news yet (if it ever does)  so maybe I need to be more cautious. (NB: I still have a job. I probably will still continue to have a job. But bugetary things are dire. My father the geologist says that perhaps the state has "hit bottom," revenue wise, and things will come up  soon - I'm hoping he's saying that out of some knowledge of either investing or oil and gas futures.)

I once commented that if my life were like a certain kind of movie, there would come a point where someone somewhere - an angel or a fairy godmother or a magic unicorn, depending on the movie, would go "Oh no! There is a woman in sector 7-G who is getting discouraged, we must DO something!" and then something magical would happen in my life to make it better.

But we don't get Clarence Oddbodies (or even Princess Cadances) in real life. So we slog on. I don't know how the new budget-cut future looks, and I don't know if it will ever get better. Frankly, sometimes I wonder if ANYTHING will ever get better on this side of the veil.

The "new normal" is never anything good. If it were, it would be called "an improvement," not "the new normal." "The New Normal" is a horrible phrase that marketing types use to convince people to swallow the fertilizer* sandwich that whatever-it-is has become.

I really wish there were a magic unicorn who could do something to make it better.

I think I'm just going to take a hot bath and go to bed early, that's about all I can manage after today's bad budgetary news. (No, I won't be eating cat food. But I may be eating more beans than I have been.)

I will say I cried more and harder this afternoon than I have in a long, long time. And now I have the after-cry headache, but am still trying to avoid NSAIDs because of not wanting to develop gastritis again (and given the stress we're all dealing with here at the moment, I need all the help to avoid it I can get)

(* A brief story I read somewhere about President Truman-  after his retirement, a group of Garden Club ladies were touring his farm/garden, and he was talking to them about things there. After the tour, one of the ladies took Bess aside and asked her, "Can't you ask your husband to call it 'fertilizer'? He says 'manure' and that's such a COARSE word." Bess looked at her and said, "How long do you think it took me to get him to tone down what he really calls it to "manure"?" So that's what I mean by "fertilizer sandwich.")

Edited to add: Apparently yes, this is a real story even if I misremembered some details.