The Sex Lives of Aliens

 

My wife is currently unemployed and has been looking for something to pick up the time. Long story short, ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed, the medical industry has been going through rapid changes and part of those changes have been massive corporations gobbling up and absorbing all the private practices. After several mergers and trades, the clinic my wife practices at was finally just closed since it is without a hospital facility where all the money making procedures occur. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements generally are only enough to pay the bills and vary state to state. Iowa ranks 50th out of 52 regions in the United States for the amount reimbursed by our federal government under the ACA and so rural places where the population tends to be older and on Medicare and Medicaid are struggling to remain solvent, unless they are partnered with a hospital where more lucrative things like MRI's, ultrasounds and other specialty tests are done. 

Despite all this, we are rolling with the punches. I urged my wife to just retire but she refused. She loves helping others and wants to continue. Fortunately there are other clinics around (also owned by large corporations) that are also attached to hospitals so still able to eke out a living under our current medical system. She has no shortage of job offers and will accept one eventually but wants to take a few months off to see how retired life might be someday. As a result, the above picture came about.

I have an acoustic guitar that I bought decades ago and started to learn how to play it. But life intervened, i.e. my instructor got laid off and moved away, and I just never picked it up again. My wife decided she wanted to learn how to play it but was having difficulties pressing the strings down with enough force to play chords. Her instructor suggested getting an electric guitar which is much easier in that aspect. And so we found ourselves in a town not too far away buying a gently used electric guitar from someone. I was a bit surprised by what he had displayed on his coffee table while we were starting the inspection/negotiation process of making a deal and snapped the above picture surreptitiously while he happened to be in another room for a few seconds.