Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I'd blog more...

but my life is kind of depressing at the moment. I mean, will I really want to look back on this period of my life? I mean, it's the same ol', same ol'.

When Dan got laid off in January, it was a hit to his self-esteem, and a huge hit to our financial status. We had gotten pretty well situated, things were good until that. Luckily, we had put a good chunk in our savings, and figured taht the lay-off couldn't last much longer than May...right?

WRONG.

It is now the 23rd of June. The savings is gone. Dan was actually offered a job at the company that laid him off as a forklift operator, but he took a THIRTY THREE percent pay cut. We're losing over 1200 dollars a MONTH. So, now that the money is gone, what do we do?

I got put on WIC back in April. With me breastfeeding, this gives us milk, cheese, veggies, etc to help alleviate the monetary stress of feeding the family. But it wasn't enough, so I sucked up my pride and went to DSS for food stamps. I got there and looked around, thinking "I don't belong here!" but in all essence, I suppose I do. I feel like I'm justifying my decision when I say that the food stamp program was meant for people like us, people who are having a hard time, who don't plan on living off the system. We only need it for a little while, until Dan can start working as a process tech again and get us back that 1200 a month.

So I'm there, and the case worker tells me how much we'll be getting per month, and it will really help us a lot. I won't have to stress over feeding my family. HOWEVER, they told us that we'd be getting our EBT card at the beginning of the month. But it hasn't come, and my case worker isn't answering my phone calls. I've been trying to call since the 6th. Finally, yesterday, I got the number for a supervisor at DSS.

"Your complaint will be dealt with in the order in which it was received. You will be getting a phone call or a letter within the next two weeks, after we have researched your complaint."

Shit, man, what do I do until then? If I had the money to pay for groceries, don't you think I'd be using it? I need that money to feed my children! I'm feeling desperate. I don't know what to do, I don't know where to turn. I feel like I'm drowning and I don't know if we'll ever bounce back.

1 comment:

Penny said...

It'll get better. There was a time that I was a single mom with two kids and no job, newly divorced with no money and I had to be on food stamps, which only lasted a few months until I was able to find a job and then I stopped getting food stamps.

It's a slump but you'll get out of it. You guys always pull thru and there's no reason to think that this will be any different.