Wanna crush a great mood quick?

Visit this site about the Pennsylvania Waiting List Campaign and learn the problem is worse than you thought, and realize you can't do a damned thing to help. (Oh, you will write your letters to the state senators, and to the Governor, but you know they will fall on deaf ears. No pun intended.) And you will believe that your job will help. Eventually. But what you really want is a nice, spiffy, magic wand to wave and make shit better. But you know that won't happen.

Then you read the family stories.

And you want to slap every tight-fisted asshole who wants to cut funding. You will want to make them live in a house where they must work with a budget, and care for a family member, and wonder if this is the year they'll get services, or if they'll get screwed again. You want to beat on the bastards who vote themselves pay hikes year after year. Then you read this report on caregiver wages, and find out that direct care providers make about the same as a parking lot attendant, and rarely get COLA increases, yet are expected to work miracles, and be perky all of the time. Then you want to do more than simply beat the pay-grubbing bastards. You'd love for them to change an adult diaper on a wriggling patient. You'd love to see them pour and administer meds, or penetrate the "shell" of an individual with autism. And you'd like to see them do it for years.

And you get into a funk that not even Loretta Lynn will pull you out of, because you know your state is no different than any other state, and the national waiting lists are even worse. And you get pissed off all over again, because damnit, we're supposed to be a great county, and we're fighting for the freedoms of a country that doesn't want us there, while we can't even be bothered to take care of our own country. We screw over the elderly, the disabled and anyone else we think we can take advantage of. What do we care, fuck 'em, they don't vote- right? And if they do vote, we'll just ignore 'em. They're not going to show up on our doorstep, there's no wheelchair access. We'll release the hounds on 'em- they don't move so fast. Right?

And you sit there, angry, and shaking, and not knowing what to do except maybe cry, but that doesn't do anyone any good. And then you go back to writing an article that nobody will read, calling attention to a problem that isn't going to go away any time soon. And you desperately want a beer, or something stronger, and you don't care how early in the morning it is, you just don't know what else to do.