The Bad Christmas

The year before we took in our nieces and nephews, they had an awful Christmas.

Their mom, though she was supposedly working full time and then some, and making tips, neglected to buy them any presents.

She should have gone to her parents. They would have made sure to buy a few things for them, if they knew my sister-in-law had nothing for her kids. But since she was leaving the house every day for 12 hours, they thought she was working (and maybe she still was at that point, I really can't say), and had no reason to believe that she couldn't provide this for her children.

My mother and father in law are raising two grandkids from another sister-in-law, so that Christmas morning the kids began opening their presents. My MIL noticed that my SIL's kids were sitting, still hopeful but sad-eyed, watching their cousins tear into gifts. When asked, my SIL teared up and said she had bought presents, but they had been stolen out of her car in the Wal Mart parking lot. All that was left was a movie for her youngest son - Toy Story 3.

The only gifts they got were what their grandparents got them; well, we had gotten them gifts but we were broke that Christmas and so only got them a few small items from the local thrift shop. The kids came over to my house that evening to play.  Some of the older kids took my daughter's brand new bean bag and tried to hang it from the rafters in the basement and swing on it.  It immediately tore and spilled out millions of staticky, white balls. I got so angry at them for that. I yelled at them. The bean bag was pink corduroy, it was really big, and my youngest daughter loved it. I made them clean up those white balls for over an hour, and I was still huffy.

Later the kids were upstairs and I asked them what they got for Christmas, and they told me they'd gotten pajama pants from Grams and Papa. They recounted the story of their presents being stolen, and I immediately got pissed because I knew it was a lie. I also immediately felt like dogshit for chastising them for breaking the bean bag.

The next Christmas came up, and we knew we had to make that up to them. We got help from the school - two different organizations got gifts for the kids. My beautiful, generous friends bought all the kids gifts. We splurged too much too, and that morning when they came up the stairs, we recorded their faces, so bright and surprised and nearly in disbelief. Three more Christmases and we spoiled them rotten. I tried not to, but I'd go overboard and it would take us several months to get caught up on the bills again.

Finally, this year we scaled it back. The kids are older now and some of them mainly wanted clothes. We decided no new electronics; they are on computers, tablets, phones, etc., enough already. So they each got about five gifts and a stocking. For seven kids, that's still 35 presents. The baby only got a couple, of course (oh, I forgot to mention, my youngest nephew is now living with his dad and doing fairly well. We also had a new baby about 18 months ago) and the kids had their stockings as well, filled with candy and small gifts. We are still behind a bit but will be caught up next paycheck. It was important to us to dim the memory of that last bad Christmas with their mom.  I doubt we succeeded, except inasmuch as kids memories do blur when they are that young.

But even if they never forget that bad day, I hope it will at least be overshadowed by the happier holidays.

Still Lucky

Wow!  It's been four years. I am a bad, bad blogger!

We did get pretty busy with having four extra kids. My last post detailed all the wonderful ways in which we were blessed after we took in my nieces and nephews. We were given a good queen size bed. People brought us groceries. We got help with Christmas presents through two different charity organizations. We'd just gotten stable enough to get off food stamps, but soon figured out we needed that back, so I reapplied and we were able to get about $500 a month in food stamps, which was amazingly helpful.

When we took the kids in, I was not working much; my medical transcription job had been cut severely as doctors began to use voice recognition technology and did not need transcribers. I was down to an hour of work a day or so on that. I got some work doing freelance writing, but it took tons of time and brought me very little money.

A few months later, I went on an interview for a company my best friend worked for.  It is based out of our teeny tiny hometown, and I get to work from home still.  I do have a set schedule, though. The job is in customer support, so I answer phones, emails, and chats, and as we are a pretty small company, I wear a lot of other hats too; proofreader, trainer, organizer, spreadsheet maker and editor, special project manager, etc. Most days I really like my job.  Most customers are fine people, and my coworkers remain cooperative, funny, and amazing in many ways.

To train for the job, which requires me to do support for seven different websites we own, I had to be out of town for weeks.  I'd train for a week with one customer support rep, go home for the weekend, and then train the next week with a different person. I'd rotate back to the start when I had been to everyone's houses. It was difficult to get through, as we only had one van, which I had to take, and my husband was left with seven kids to take care of. Luckily, it was summer by this time and he didn't have to worry about getting them to school, but he did have to get to work five days a week and get them to appointments (when we took in the kids, their teeth were terrible and each one needed at least three visits to pull teeth, fill cavities, etc). My in-laws were instrumental and we could not have done it without them. They babysat, took my husband to work, and helped deal with an outbreak of lice that lasted for months because I simply did not have time to comb through seven heads every night.

It wasn't long after the kids moved in that their mom went to Georgia. I am still not sure why she went, but she rode along with some friends and eventually they left her there, and she's been there ever since, no ID, no car, no possessions.

We organized our large basement so that the younger kids were on one side and the older on the other side.  As they got older, we divided them with boys on one side and girls on the other side.  the basement is sort of separated by the stairway, so they have their own spaces, sort of.

We made do. Eventually, with my job, we stopped getting food stamps. The kids are still all on Medicaid, thankfully. It is still difficult to feed the kids on our budget, but I menu plan and we do go to Family Services when we need to, such as now, right after the holidays. You never know what you're going to get from them; one time we got an entire cheesecake. Usually we get a lot of cube steak, but one time we got sirloin and New York steaks. One year my father in law was able to get a buffalo permit from the tribe and both he and my husband got a buffalo. That fed us for a whole winter and boy did I get spoiled on buffalo burger; it's quite a bit tastier than beef. We just had to pay for the processing of the meat.

The help we get has slowed down, but the school still asks us sometimes if we need snow boots, if we need help paying for instrument rentals, etc.We are still grateful. We are still a family. We are still very, very, lucky.

Over-the-Counter Birth Control: Win Win for Everyone?

This is an interesting idea – The beloved Pill switched to simply being over-the-counter, available alongside other type common-ailment pills like cholesterol pills and migraine pills. The FDA is reportedly considering such things. And it sounds like a god-send in most cases. An article on Care2 described making birth control OTC as “win win.” Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan makes sweet sarcasm: “But without a doctor to look at them disapprovingly, how will sex-having ladies know to feel bad about themselves?” Birth control is easily twisted into an infuriating example of control over the rights of the female gender, as this process of control lies at the political core of most interpretations of Christianity. I think we also have to remember that, as far as control goes, here lies another all-American class issue.

As a mother of three daughters (two are now older teenagers), I can see the good side of easy access to birth control, believe me. As a woman who loves her birth control madly and who, being a teenager once, feared the scrutiny of physicians and her parents but had unprotected sex any way, I like the idea of lifting a stigma or two. Making birth control pills OTC - offering up a little Kiosk for diagnosis even more reliable than a doctor - is a way to potentially side-step the recent political war going on between “religious employers” bitching about being forced to pay for insurance covering “women’s health.” I use the quotes here because the terms have been twisted into all sorts of alternative terms, depending upon your approach and side, “women’s health” especially – a.k.a. “slutiness” “whoredom” “prostitution.”  If we make the Pill OTC, then we can tell everybody it’s up to the woman and only the woman, so the rest of the controlling world can shut the fuck up.

I’m all about short-cuts and easier paths. I’m one of those people who will cut across the pretty grass (barefoot, if possible) if it saves me a minute. But I think in our efforts to make things easier, we need to be careful not to overlook those who need the Pill the most. If the Pill becomes OTC, then the funding and livelihood of places like Planned Parenthood become absolutely VITAL.


Places like Planned Parenthood will be needed more than ever to provide birth control for those who need it most at reduced costs or FREE, otherwise making such pills OTC doesn’t offer much help for those who truly need it. I’m talking about those who qualify for and rely upon state health insurances or those who can’t even qualify for state health insurances, as the qualifying maze is too often impossible. We're not all able to slip into a drug store, buy our pills, and walk back out with a little brown bag and a shrug. The first thing I thought of when I read about this was the teenager who lives in poverty (most likely to become pregnant) who barely has a pot to piss in, let alone the money to afford the potential OTC cost of the Pill. And I’m not a pro when it comes to economy, but I could foresee the pill if it goes over-the-counter as not being cheap, simply because it will be high demand. Please tell me if I’m wrong (I am all for easing my worries). We should remember that carrying birth control on store shelves at all becomes up to the scrutiny of private store-owners, owners of massive chains like WalGreens and Wal-mart, which means more control in the hands of the great money makers who have proven themselves to be terrifyingly influential in our ways of living.

Here's what I know: my family and I have received state insurance before, and we have gone to many state-funded clinics. When you have a condition and the clinic’s physician looks at you and says, “Go buy this as treatment. It’s over-the-counter” (an action far more common today than it once was), your heart can drop. That treatment can cost more OTC than you can afford to spend. Of course, you can’t spend money you don’t have, especially if you’re receiving a tiny TANF check. You will skip the OTC suggestion. Or you will lie, tell him or her you’ve tried the OTC treatment before, and it doesn’t work, whatever it takes to get them to give you a prescription that will be covered by your insurance so there is no out-of-pocket expense, so you might instead pay your mother-fucking rent. And you will continue to lose faith in your doctor and in a system who refuses to understand what it’s like living in poverty.


Women who are below poverty level (and there are lots) need to have free and easy access to birth control. The Pill OTC doesn't necessarily solve that - in fact, in many cases, it makes access harder. The OTC solution won’t work so well if profit and the values of private business are left as priority over the good of all people.

To me, offering the Pill OTC feels like a sneaky way to appease the middle class woman (who actually has a voice).