Is it insane that I hang on to this one little thread that keeps me from being totally jealous of Dooce? I mean, she and her husband live off her blog, she has herself, her husband and her babysitter AND her mother all vying for time with her ONLY ONE child, Leta, and she gets all expense paid trips to Amsterdam? What is the one little thread that I hang on to that I have over her, you ask? She lives in Utah and I DON'T!!!!
Pretty weak, huh?
So, in other news...lets talk about how broke I am and my brokedy brokeness and all my broketivity. As I've said before, I live off of a lousy SSDI check and a lousy salary from the state, as a home care worker for D. When he is in the hospital, I don't get paid. In addition, the State lost my time sheets for both December and January. They've since just been found, but I haven't gotten paid on that job since last November. Then SSA decided just to pretend they gave me some $8000 they had extra lying around, and then didn't pretend they wanted it back. So I'm in an appeals process with them right now, but they haven't paid me since January. I've just this week convinced them to start paying me again until the appeal goes through (which could be months or even years) and they've agreed to start next month. So, I've got a Dec. and Jan. check coming, and SSDI in April which is good. And I just cashed a $400 check that I had forgotten about that was for D's share of our shared cell phone bill for the year. (Before you get on our asses for being poor people with cellphones, remember, that you don't use semi reliable public transportation and you can see where pay phones are and you can get out of your car and change your tire if it goes flat.) So, its not like the babies won't eat, but the babies are not going to get their new bedroom furniture this year as I had been saving for. It's okay, it doesn't mean cribs till they're 18, I have the furniture in their room that has a twin bed and a trundle bed thing (with no mattress). This is very girly furniture that was mine as a child. (It's yellow. You can see it in some of the pictures.) The plan was to replace that this year, but they will have to wait. All I really need to get this year are two new twin mattresses. One for the trundle and one to replace the one from 1976.
It's good to be broke every once in a while in a way. It makes you really look at your expenses. I'm already looking at what I need to trim down. I could get a better land line deal and go to Vonage or something. I could get rid of the cable because for the most part, I never watch it much... though my dad does...hmm. I could look at better Internet access. (And before you get on my ass about being poor with internet access...you try calling the pediatrician or the guy to fix your water heater when you can't read a phone book.) Things like that. Luckily I have already bought summer clothes for the kids in a buying spree at the Carter's outlet store and at a consignment shop. They will need shoes, though, this summer. Baby needs a new pair of shoes! Or two. I've been in a giving program called Woman for Woman International where I give direct cash to a woman in a third world or war torn nation. I sponsor one woman a year with $30 a month. (Which is more like $300+ a month in their countries.) I could take a rest on that if needed, but I'd rather not.
I have two job plans going on right now, but they both have a little bit of ramp up time before I see a return. The plan used to be that D would get someone to replace me and I would gradually phase out. But now, it looks like I won't be getting paid in April, either, as he is going to go to the rehab hospital instead of coming home like I had originally thought. He gave me the go ahead over the weekend to start hiring attendants, and I put ads in Craigslist and some other places and already got several applicants. Then Monday night he tells me that he's not going to be home by the end of the month, he's going to rehab. I guess that is good, health-wise. It is probably the right move. but I had to get back to all those applicants and tell them the deal and see if they want to hang on or not. And if he gets out in April and I start working part-time in May, I'll be out approximately $6000 worth of earnings for the year. That's like almost a third of my income. Of course, he is loosing money as well, as he has not been able to work either.
When you have a previous disability before employment, and you are on/have been on social security, you do not qualify for unemployment, or short-term or long-term disability from your job. It sucks.
So, anyway, my two job options I've been pursuing are to either do medical transcription or take in another child or two and do daycare. Both allow me to work at home. With medical transcription I have to go through an on-line training course that takes a few months. It looks pretty easy and I already know A LOT of the medical terminology so I could breeze through it, but you kind of have to have it to get placed. Then, they say it takes a few months to get your skills fast enough to make a good wage. You get paid by the word/page. With childcare, I could do that simultaneously with my own kids. So at the end of the day, I'm DONE. I don't have to do a whole nother job. Medical transcription pays more, but I wouldn't have much time to rest. It wouldn't be required of me to get my house certified for child care if I only took in a kid or two, but since I am disabled, I need all the credentials I can get to get the confidence of the parents. So I was trying to learn what I would have to do to get certified, and it ends up being a top to bottom child-proofing deal. Like, anally so. So I have been working on that as well.
Now, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just get something real quick. Even if it is just temporary. I'm almost a bit past the point, disability wise, where I can go into a job cold and apply for it like everyone else. I really need now a unique situation that is set up for me. I need a job developer. But I've thought about doing these work at home thingies that are advertised all over the place where you stuff envelopes or something. Does anyone know anything about those? Is it a scam? I need a quick and dirty emergency job for when stuff like this happens to me. Something where I can get a few hundred dollars when I need it here and there. But I have to be able to do it without too many accommodations and work at home and have it not be a long term, deadline driven thing. Hmmm.
I was supposed to start going to the gym this week. Sigh. But Monday I had to deposit that check, which is a big errand for me since there are no ATMs or banks close by. It ends up, my bank has a branch right across the street from D's nursing home. So I took the kids up there for a bit. I still have not put my kids on the bus. I totally could have and then gotten off the bus right there. But instead I decided to take the train and then walk about a mile there and back. so that counts for a workout, right?
Then today I had to take the kids down to my church so I could prepare the classroom for a new unit and get supplies ready and stuff. I got toys for the kids from the nursery and still they drove me bananas. I was trying to make a time line on a long piece of poster board and they kept trying to grab scissors, markers, paper, everything. What should have been a 20 minute visit ended up taking me an hour. After that, I went to the store, so that whole round trip was probably about a mile and a half. All this is pushing/pulling (the blind people way) a double stroller. So, hey, I'm working out, right?
On the way home, I thought I saw D's van but wasn't sure. Then it honked at me so I assumed it was D's father and waved. Then it had turned around and came up behind me and rolled down the window. It was D's father, but it was also D! He was on a pass out of the old folks home. He did this for the first time last Saturday. It was his first time up in the chair and he came home and we went to visit him for a little bit. This time, he was going to...Office Depot. The guy hasn't been out in public for three months and he gets a chance to get out and he goes printer cartridge shopping. What a nerd! But it is good because he got it so he could get some paperwork done at his house to get his life managed. And that is the NUMBER ONE PRIORITY around here...babies need a new pair of shoes!
hi lisa.
i am on DAY THREE of exercising. yup, sure, you go ahead and start and i will be happy to shame you if you fail! :)
Posted by: instamom | March 23, 2006 at 11:13 AM
Okay, first, for god's sake, stop talking to detractors who think you shouldn't have a cell phone or internet! If they're too dumb to get why you need that, they're too dumb to talk to.
Second, try Smarthinking.com. I worked for them briefly last year. You tutor college kids via the internet, mostly on freshman comp-type papers. You can also tutor in Math and I think science and foreign languages, but I think you'd qualify for the English papers thing. There's no training--just a sort of try-out where you sample correct a paper and they give you tips on what you did well or could do better. Then they look over your shoulder for a while on the job and keep giving tips (they want the feedback really standardized).
It pays $11/hour, which is absolutely crappy, but it's quick and you can make your own schedule doing it during naps or after bedtime or whatever.
Can you access ebay? If not, want me to browse for shoes for you?
Posted by: shannon | March 27, 2006 at 12:27 PM