My very first blog post was on the Lyft drivers who hauled me around Austin. How I loved conversing with them. Diverse people from all over. And they got me where I needed to be.
Now it’s the Instacart drivers.
I broke a spine bone, an elbow, and worst of all, a kneecap in 2024. Do not break a kneecap it really, really, really hurts. Like screaming out loud hurts.
I had a baby with none zero anesthesia and that was not totally, but relatively, painless in comparison. I was talking on the phone an hour before birth. That’s how easy I had that. Home next day, parents on the way to meet their newest grandchild.
Knee, was in hospital for what felt like a long time, and it really was a long time, multiple weeks, surgery to wire and screw my patella back together and get me walking. My surgeon did it. I can’t even imagine. My Ph.D, as much as I personally enjoyed my studies, would never give me the courage to do his work.
(I’m accident prone, best one was falling 13 feet into an unmarked construction tunnel on my undergrad campus. Got fished out by some helpers who climbed down and brought me up in what seemed like a canoe. In a cast for a while. And then I flung the crutches down the stairs, three stories, in the liberal arts building. My sorority roommate, a sage, told me throwing crutches down three flights was not helpful.)
Got the surgery scar. Show that off when it’s warmer and I’m back in shorts. Great surgeon though. It’s actually a little hard to see….how good was that doctor.
Thankfully now home with the contraptions in the corner, walking very cautiously. But walking.
The hospital here has some badass nurses who made me get up and sit and then walk. I mean badass in the best way. Gosh being a nurse is damn hard work. And none of mine ever messed it up. (I was being given too many medications at the time, gosh practically meals of meds which I can not swallow easily. Chocking three times a day was pretty hard. Now back home it’s minimal meds.)
The hospital had bird feeders at every window. Some genius did that. The caretakers would come early in the morning, fill with seeds, and for someone looking out from a hospital room wanting to be her own bed and kitchen, at her own desk, just the joy. I was well cared for.
And the Paris Olympics were on cable, which I don’t have at home, gymnastics, men’s and women’s, swimming, men’s and women’s, track, men’s and women’s. I had been a triathlete so I get training. But those folk were breath taking. Helped the time go a little, not much, faster because no one wants to be in the hospital. Just no one wants to be in the hospital period. But if you are waiting to go home the Paris Olympics were not a bad way to recover.
Anyway tip economy.
As I’ve been recovering, I’m not cooking really, working on standing and walking, working with my health insurance to get baby steps on physical therapy until I can be back at the marvelous YMCA here.
My Mother would like this, I am eating at least a little. She always tells me eat even if I’m not hungry. I don’t eat when I’m not hungry. I avoid processed. Two easy rules, works for me. But the grocery drivers do bring me some salads and berries, cheese, and some wet food cans for crazy Quinn the cat. Quinn eats. He stops when he’s ready to stop though, good instinct.
I’ve gobbled those blueberries and strawberries at 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. whatever time crazy cat Quinn decides I should be awake. He is pretty persistent. He knows his name and he knows no. If I need to sleep until winter daylight I just cover my head. Gosh I hate winter. I’m an August too many planets in Leo person.
The drivers are so generally nice but don’t have a lot of time and we don’t talk much. They’ve got other deliveries. But I know from the Instacart website that the generated tips are pathetically low. It’s bad. Really bad. On a $60 order, the auto tip is under $3. I up that a lot, obviously, but it’s the customer, not the whatever supermarket or such, who needs to make that happen. And the drivers, no salary, have to use their own cars, pay their own gas, car insurance, surely no benefits.
This is so damn wrong. These people are working, sometimes more than one job, and just saying, browsing and picking the aisles at the supermarket for some stranger like me, basically for whatever random tip, depending, cannot be anyone’s idea of fulfilling. Oh, and reliance on random tips is not a secure living. There’s that reality.
Now today, January 5, 2025, it’s snowing, no blizzard but probably some ice. Pretty from my windows. Privileged me to be inside (although I have driven some bad winter roads with bad drivers making me feel yup pretty unsafe). Now. cat Quinn snoozing. Journaling. Figuring out Substack. Streaming MSNBC. Power on. Pretty peaceful. Privileged me.
But it is cold out there now. And ice, scary walking, scary driving. And there will be people making deliveries still. In a good world, at the very least, tip generously (I do) because their employers do not pay fair wages and benefits. What we can do until we (not all) can…and will…make a system where the people who help get a decent salary and benefits.
Those drivers are out on these icy roads tonight.
Working on Opportunity Economy. That’s going to take some more reading and figuring out what to write, find book proposal outline (I’ve been moving between Texas and Illinois, boring personal story.)
And the homeless report.. So not excusable. Don’t really see many people in tents and sleeping bags here in Illinois as in (alarming) Texas. Under the freeways there is seriously shocking.
Had my berries and oranges from the Instacart driver at about 4:00 this morning. (He left them last night.) Gosh I love oranges. Privileged me.
Dayna Finet 