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Please Don't Miss and
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Tuesday, 12 September 2006
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Desperate Dog; A Bleg (Updated 2007.07.14)
Contributed by Bill Faith Too broke to pay attention. Literally. There are other things I should be doing. It hurts to be writing something like this again. It hurts because I don't want to drain off help from The Phoenix Project and the other worthy charities on our sidebar. It hurts because I'm still supposed to be a healthy young dog, a giver, not a beggar. It hurts because ... It just hurts. We lost Grandpa Faith when I was three. I have vague memories of sitting at his breakfast table arguing with him about "Rolled oats!" vs. "Instant Ralston!"; I don't remember which side I was on. I remember boxing with him on his front porch, him in his rocker and me barely able to reach past his knees; I always won. I remember him and Grandma pulling up at our place in their Model A and me leading them by the hand to see the volunteer watermelon growing along our back fence. Today I looked up from my blogging to see my sister and nephew taking Grandpa's clock down from the shelf it's occupied in "my" room for as long as I can remember. There was a time I counted the ticks and tocks of that clock instead of sheep, trying to go to sleep on summer nights before we had air conditioning. I asked if they had notions of winding it and finding out if it still ran, and was told that, no, Mom had decided to sell it. She also wants to sell her mother's sideboard and, if we'd let her, I guess she'd sell her rings. I'm the only one of Dad's kids old enough to remember Grandpa, and I always sort of assumed that things he'd handed down would end up being my grandson's sometime. Grandma lived here for a while when my sister was younger and I guess her stuff is my sister's now, but that clock is mine. I used to have a little brother but he doesn't exist any more. Simple fact: I will not live to see that clock or that sideboard leave this house to cover day to day expenses. How many times can the same old dog go back to the same well before it dries up? I guess I'm going to have to find out. I didn't start blogging thinking there'd be money in it; The Lord knows that's a good way for an old dog to starve. For me, blogging is a love/hate thing. Love of country, love for our younger war dogs, hatred of the jihadis, hatred of turncoat vets like Kerry and Murtha. On the other hand, I'm old and sick and blogging is "what I do." It's all I have, and the web is the only place I know to turn for help. Those of you who've known me longest might remember , which I wrote when my little sister had Breast Cancer. to that post, we didn't lose the house or Dad's truck, and my sister didn't go back to work after her surgery too much sooner than she should have. Not too awfully long after that the VA decided I have a valid excuse for not working and things got better, for good I thought. They were better for a while. Over a third of my pension check goes to cover payments on the only car we have that's reliable enough to start toward the nearest conveniently located VA clinic in, but that leaves enough that for a while it moved the household budget needle into the black. Then my sister had surgery last winter for a pre-cancerous ovarian tumor and things got a little less rosy; we were able to hang on only because she didn't wait as long as she should have to go back to work. Then we had that fire and I had to post , and again I found out there are still good people in this world. We hung on, for a while, but between the surgery and the fire my sister was too exhausted to do a good job in a position she'd held for almost ten years and ended up losing her job. Mom's health got worse about the same time and my sister decided to try staying home to take care of her instead of looking for something else right away. (No better than I get around, and no better than I hear, I'm not much help in that department.) We've been going farther and farther into the hole ever since, a fact that it was apparently decided I'd be better off not worrying about. I got my first major clue when I saw Grandpa's clock coming down off that shelf. Maybe I should have realized something was wrong when my sister got her eyes examined last week and decided she "didn't want to spend that much" for glasses. Old dogs can be sorta dense sometimes. My sister's job hunting, but at best her first check is a couple of weeks out. At best. That isn't soon enough. I am literally in danger, sometime soon, of sitting here in the dark wondering what my Dogs are up to, whether New York's still there, whether we've declared war on Iran yet, whether anyone remembered to send TypePad money, ... I won't sit here like that very long. When I moved up here from Texas my only other options were to find a bridge to sleep under or a bridge to jump off of. There are bridges right here in this little bitty town I moved back to, and I still have insurance. My only hope for ever being financially solvent in my own right again is my lawyer's prediction that when Social Security finally quits stalling and we get our day in court I'll get back-benefits from the time when I got too sick to work. By my calculations they currently owe me tens of thousands of dollars, but that isn't going to keep the lights on next week or the cable modem working this week. I need help. There's no other way around this. I need help keeping the lights on and the cable connected. I need help putting food on Mom's table. (I tried, Daddy, I really did.) My baby sister needs bifocals so she can quit having so many headaches. I need someone to loan me enough money to start one month off from scratch, to be paid back when I get my Social Security money, if I don't die first and never get it. I need a way to make money sitting here in my blogging chair on no predictable schedule. .... I need to be healthy again. The note under that PayPal button on the sidebar says "Donations will be passed on to the charities on our sidebar unless you instruct otherwise." Can you help a tired sick old dog? Please? ... It just hurts. Bill Faith *** Update -- 2006.09.12.20:25 I walked into the front room a few minutes ago to tell my sister I'd gotten my first donation from someone other than another Dog and get there just in time to hear "Mama, I don't know what we're gonna do. I've been poor, before, but this is the first time I've ever been hungry!" She's going to use my PayPal MasterCard to buy some groceries tomorrow. Thanks to the generosity of three of my Dogs and one younger veteran (a damned fine pup; If he was older I'd give him an OWD key) I'll have a cable modem for at least another month, the lights aren't going to go out next week, and my baby sister won't have to be hungry for at least a little while longer. The wolf is longer banging on the door but he's still lurking in the woods. My sister's job hunting but in a little town like this that can take a while. I guess what I'm saying is we still need help. When my sister finds work and we start operating in the black again I'll update this post and if we have anything tucked away beyond a reasonable emergency fund I'll pass it on to Soldiers Angels and/or The Phoenix Project. To my Dogs, and to Sra David L, USAF 1995-1999: I owe you, big time, and I won't forget. I don't know anything I can do to repay you except by working even harder than I have been on making this a good pro-America, pro-troops, pro-veteran site; you have my solemn promise to do that. *** 2006.09.12.21:25 It just occurred to me the maybe I should explain my use of the phrase "baby sister." I was 12 when Vicki was born. I helped her learn to walk and talk and called her from Saigon on her 10th birthday. The things big brothers are supposed to do. When I got too sick to work she took me in. I'm supposed to be taking care of her, not the other way around. Giving her what I can out of my pension check and any money I can bring in this way is the only way I know to do that. *** 2006.09.29.21:25 I think there's light at the end of the tunnel if we can just hold on a little longer. The bad news is that Mom's health is still poor enough that my sister feels like she can't work outside the house. The good news is that my niece, who has two pre-schoolers, just moved back to Lawrenceville and found a pretty decent job. Another one of those situations where I'm a Conservative in general but a Lib in particular. The State of Illinois is going to pay my sister a lot more than my niece will be paying in taxes to baby-sit so my niece can work. During the day that puts Mom, my sister, me, and two little ones here. Maddy's got a bit of a cantankerous streak but I'll have Noah blogging in six months. *** 2007.07.14.01:05 Since I just linked to this post from a newer one I'll be publishing after bit I guess I should bring it up to date. It took that light at the end of the tunnel almost three weeks to go out. My niece requested time off to take her oldest son to a counseling appointment that could have waited a few days, the request was denied, and she skipped work anyway and lost her job for doing it. At roughly the same time she and her estranged husband decided they could get along after all and she didn't even look for another job. Mom's physical and mental health (Alzheimer's) is still such that she needs my sister home during the day, which leaves us trying to live on my brother in law's wages and Mom's and my pension checks. The docs have my sister's hormones so messed up trying to minimize the chances of her cancer coming back that I'm not real sure she'd be able to hold down a job anyway. |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on September 12, 2006 at 12:54 AM in | Comments Posted by: I love you and I wish you would let me know about stuff like this before I have to read about it here. Posted by: | Sep 15, 2006 12:52:16 PM Posted by: Another one of those situations where I'm a Conservative in general but a Lib in particular. I'm conservative and I have no problem with the government helping those who truly need it. In this case there is a real need. I'm glad there is light at the end of the tunnel. Posted by: | Sep 30, 2006 10:17:26 AM |