1,000 Greatest Drivers: Ricardo Maurício
It's well past time for me to get a real job...
Well, the die is cast. Next month, my mom’s Medicaid kicks in to pay for the nursing home and she will indeed have $50 left in her bank account and Medicaid takes out their lien on her Social Security before her mortgage does, so I am going to have to figure out how to cover it. Making this worse, I was unable to get her senior STAR property tax discount signed by March 1 because she was in the nursing home and they didn’t even let me try to appeal that, so the mortgage is now $100 more than it was (just under $600). Through some combination of my Substack, my RotoBaller work, sales from my previous book, and some data entry work I have from one of my ex-Sports Reference colleagues where I’m entering historical college football rosters I’m making more than zero but not enough to cover that and everything else. I definitely need to give up my mom’s credit cards, which I probably should’ve done a while ago (gave up mine even longer ago). The mortgage servicer is possibly willing to renegotiate but I would potentially have my name on the deed and to rip off Stefan Fatsis, my credit rating is a Superfund site so I might not be allowed to have the mortgage in my name anyway. Obviously, I now need to add some other kind of part-time gig (at least) on top of all this other stuff, which is fine except that I’ve been wanting to visit Mom every weekday because I feel she needs me there, so I have been but pretty soon I need to stop and hustle I guess.
There is potentially some good news though. I contacted PACE CNY, an in-home nursing company, and it’s possible that something can be arranged with them so Mom can come home on June 1. Earlier today, I scheduled a meeting with Mom and a woman there at the nursing home for next Monday when they will do some sort of intake assessment and I hope she passes. If she is back home and she has nurses there for part of the day, that will probably free me up to work outside the home more than I had been willing to because I was in part taking care of her, which is part of why I didn’t have a day job lately. They told me that I might even be possibly eligible for FreedomCare, New York State’s program where they pay relatives who live in the household for home care. I’ve looked at this before and decided not to pursue it because it would have been used for Medicaid asset recovery, which I didn’t even know about until I looked this up (too late to be sure to protect my house, unless I am approved for the caregiver exemption, and I’m definitely going to try). But now that I know Medicaid is going to drain her bank account anyway, if she is allowed back home in June, I may take on formal home care to supplement my income if I don’t land a real job, or even if I do. Two silver linings I guess: I am expected to get a few hundred dollars from a competitive typist who is making a robot for his typing game based on my own individual typing style, but I don’t yet know when I will get that and the foreclosure process doesn’t begin until 60 days after the mortgage payment is due, so I’ve still got some time to figure this out. Even though this isn’t the most efficient way to make money by any means, it’s one of the only means I’ve got so I’m still going to continue this blog.
It’s difficult to research Brazilian touring car drivers because so little is written about them in English, but Maurício is recent enough and I’ve done enough with my touring car model that I think I can easily handle this even though I definitely couldn’t discuss anything about his personality or anecdotes about his greatest races like I usually like to do. I have more respect for Stock Car Brasil than I used to so I have upgraded several of Maurício’s seasons. I originally had his 2021 at C- and his 2022 at C but I have since upgraded both of those to C+ since even though Daniel Serra crushed him in the championships both seasons, Maurício did win 12 races to Serra’s 2. I also have a couple other retractions to make. I had Phil Hill’s 1958 at #2 and I forgot about that. I ranked a couple Tazio Nuvolari seasons higher when I went through all the top fives from 1929-1949 than where I originally had them, so I will make those edits after I finish this.
