Stress Continues to Build

My case manager called on Tuesday. She is back from time off and coming out here Friday. We made a plan to try to complete the telephone interview for my medical coverage and food assistance case review. I was very relieved that we might be able to get that out of the way. Wednesday morning I got a letter from the department handling the review. The letter says they never got my review form, and that if I’ve lost it I  need to call them to request a new one. I did not lose it! I mailed it long ago. It could be lost in the mail, but more than likely they received it and lost it on their end. So the plan for Friday will have to be changed. We will have to call and request a new form. The telephone interview can’t be done until they have a completed form in their hands.

Also Wednesday morning I discovered the amplifier at the repeater site had failed. Not again!? My DLS worker arrived and we went out to do errands. She helped me transport some power tools to the hill (repeater site) which I hope to use soon in helping a friend with his project up there. She knows I am very stressed about being so far behind on everything and want to get that done. While dropping off the tools I verified that in fact the amplifier was dead. We stopped at a small store I’ve been trying to get comfortable with. I bought a yummy home made piece of chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. I was in no mood to care about the fat, the calories, the sugar, or eating healthy. Aside from my poor food choice, the store didn’t bother me. Next we stopped at the larger store where I do most of my shopping for a couple of items. That was a big event. I used a different debit card for the first time ever. The process was a bit different than what I’ve become used to with the other card, but I handled it just fine!

Later that day I was complaining about the broken repeater amplifier. One of the locals offered to give me a ride to the site to retrieve the offending piece of crap so I could bring it home and attempt a repair. I accepted. Upon arriving back at my place we discovered the repeater was malfunctioning. Evidently the controller (think of it as a very special purpose computer that controls all of the equipment at the site) had freaked out when I removed one piece of equipment. It had essentially thrown its hands in the air and given up doing any work. Grr! So we went to the site a second time to reboot the little bastard. I wished I could boot it another way… right over the steep side of the hill! Oh, yes… I was very amused… NOT!

I’m VERY frustrated and it comes out as anger. It’s not that I don’t like working on radio equipment. The repeater is a very important project to me. It is my way of giving something back to a hobby and community that have been very kind to me. But there is never anywhere near enough money to do it right. I’m always having to buy 40 year old dead stuff, resuscitate it, and try to get it to keep functioning. Consequently there are frequent problems and overall the performance of the system is never up to what it should be or what I desperately want it to be. I have scraped up $800 to put into it this Spring but that is all I can do and it is a drop in the bucket.  It would take nearly another $4000 to sort out known issues. I just don’t have that kind of money and no way of getting it. There will continue to be problems with the system for years to come.

I’m also in a bad mood because I’m feeling desperately overwhelmed. That pending case review is stressing me. My tolerance for stress has been lowered by so many dental and medical appointments over the past few months. The lumber for completing my ill fated home improvement project is warping and twisting in the Spring warmth and extreme humidity but for the most part I am unable to get any work done. That project needs to be finished NOW, before the lumber becomes unusable. I have that project for a friend and my own repeater work to do on the hill but every day I have enough free time to get there it rains.  On the rare occasion I do get there, I’m too tired from making the trip to do any real work. This is one area where my new lifestyle is not working well. The seven mile trip almost all uphill takes too much out of me. The more overwhelmed I feel, the less I accomplish even when conditions are right.

Even though the repeater is the closest thing I have to a purpose or focus in life, and I’m very dedicated to it, there were times yesterday I would have surely strapped explosives to it and blown the whole damn thing to hell… if I’d only had explosives. I’m just at that point where I can’t take any more pressure.