The stock market

When my parents died in 2011, they left me money in the form of stock. I considered it the retirement account I never had and didn't touch it, except for the dividends, which I kept rather than reinvested.
My parents lost a lot in 2008, as did many others. "It always comes back," my mother would say. (She had the investing gene in the family.) She was right, but it can take years for it to do so. If you're in the market when you're eighty years old, it might not come back in a way that will help you because you may die before it does. 

That was the case with my parents and may be the case with me, with my recent diagnosis of a probably terminal illness, so earlier this week, I got out of the market and put the money someplace safer. I have little knowledge of financial things, but I know that I don't want the stock market's ups and downs to influence my moods while I'm already concerned with a form of cancer that can only be treated by amputation, in my case of my right leg, at the hip. 
As people say, I've got enough on my plate. 
Today, I washed my sister-in-law's dog, which I'm tending for a few days. She looks terrified in the photo and indeed bath time is not her favorite thing in the world, but once she's clean and I'm drying her off she gyrates happily in the towels as I rub her dry and it's one of those times you can see an animal having genuine fun. I'm going to hate not being able to do this because it's too hard to do on one leg.

A dog getting bathed.

The Big Board

The stock market, which is not to be confused with the economy, soared yesterday and closed at its highest point ever. This makes rich people happy because it makes them richer. Interestingly, the Complete and Total Loser also gains from this because the money his late parents left him was in the form of stocks and he reaps the dividends, which this month were more than he'll earn at his low-paying job as a store clerk. 
This has put the Loser in an odd position; he hates a system that benefits him. Despite the extra money, he lives as he did before, eating out once every two months or so with the one friend who will dine with him. His only extravagance in the past year has been the occasional accessory for his early model digital SLR camera. A lens, a larger memory card. Even then, the Loser shops around, checking craigslist for weeks and, if he gives up, looking online for good deals. He's talentless as a photographer, as he is in everything else, but has the childish, warped notion that if he bought something better photographers used he, too, would be better. 
He knows, however, that it's not about the camera. It's the person using it.

A woman stands in front of a big building.