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.

And if I had a bugle i would blow it

Many of you know that for a couple of months now my husband and I have had seven kids. Our two nieces and two nephews have been staying with us since just before St. Patrick’s Day.  It’s family business, but suffice it to say their mom, my sister-in-law, is homeless and unable to care for them at this point.  There is no one else who could care for them right now, so we took them in.  I grew up in a house where I was told repeatedly “If you get pregnant don’t expect any help from me,” so I sort of came out of that with an unwillingness to help others in these situations.  But that all changed when I had children and nieces and nephews started popping out all over the place. I fell in love with those kids, all eight of them, so when four of them needed a stable place to live, there wasn’t really a choice. Of course they were going to stay with us.

            We absolutely do not have the money to afford four more kids on top of our three, but at least we have room for them. For a whole month they were living in a seedy hotel with ten people, so just having room to play or sit quietly and do homework is pretty awesome for them. We have a full basement, and it’s partially finished. That’s where the kids stay, on a set of bunk beds and a queen-size bed. We could use a couple more dressers and some major organizational supplies (especially for their shoes! My god, the shoes!!!), but otherwise they fit here just fine.

            Where I’ve been so pleasantly surprised is by everyone in our community. When people find out we’ve taken in these kids, they have surprised us over and over with generosity. A woman from the church my kids attend gave us a queen-sized bed. My brother-in-law and his girlfriend brought us a car full of groceries. My mom made little Easter baskets for seven kids instead of three. I talked to their school counselor, and told her where we were really having trouble was feeding the kids, so she hooked us up with the “Lunch in a Backpack” thing. That helped, but we were still struggling to feed these kids, all ages 5 to 10, who seem to be hungry at every moment of their waking hours. So I applied for food stamps, and we were approved for $608 a month. That’s about $150 a week, and all of us are so grateful.

            One evening when the kids were playing outside, a woman who knows their grandpa stopped by and gave us a nearly full platter of Subway Sandwiches, which was perfect timing as they hadn’t had much for snacks all day and I didn’t have any idea what I would be able to put together for dinner.

            The school system also hooked my nieces and nephews up with clothes! They sent three bags of clothes, some old and some new, including shoes, underwear, and socks. My eldest niece got three really beautiful dresses, and they all felt so special with their new things.

            One day, a friend stopped by and gave us a couple of grocery bags of snack foods!

            We have just been amazed at how everyone we know has helped provide for these kids. It matters.  So, so much.

            I’ve taken to making a weekly menu now, and buying groceries once a week. I stock up on bananas, clementines, apples, and pears, and buy the ingredients for the dinners I’ve chosen. I keep ingredients to make our own cookies on hand. All of the kids, even mine, are starting to eat more vegetables and a wider variety of foods. We haven’t gone as healthy as I know we should, but we’re moving that way (the other day, they ALL ate salad!!  SALAD!!).  Our house is so full now! The hubby and I had just begun talking about having another baby when all this happened, but we absolutely cannot handle that now, and that’s OK. Being a presence in these kids’ lives is more important right now, for sure. 

            So even though none of the people who have helped us read this blog, we are grateful.  I will try my best to pay this forward.

 

P.S. Any study or blogger who says having three kids is as difficult as having 6, or 7, or 10, is HAHAHAHAHAHA WRONG. 

           

Working At Home

I've been working at home for about eight years now. I am a medical transcriptionist; I type up reports of your visits to the doctor. Well, probably not yours specifically unless you live in my smallish city and go to a certain hospital. I don't work for a national company; I transcribe local doctors and work as an independent subcontractor for a local businesswoman who owns a transcription business.

Working at home is amazing. One of my best friends since grade school works at home too. I can work whatever hours I need to as long as I get my work done before the 24-hour deadline, while my friend works set hours every day. We both have small children that we have to run to and/or pick up from school. Both of our jobs allow us to avoid daycare expenses.  Working at home is great.

In the real world, that cereal would spill
on the counter, the OJ would end up
all over the laptop, and mom would
find a better place to type her work.

Except when it isn't. My friend and I went to Chico Hot Springs with our other childhood bffs last weekend, and we confessed to each other that we have become no-showering, dirty-clothes-wearing, stank breath, messy haired slobs. Our other friends piped up that they'd love it if they could roll out of bed and go to work. And that IS nice. To a point. My friend said she sometimes went four days without showering. I admitted I almost always sleep in my bra and often wear the same clothes for two days in a row. I never wear makeup.  So my friend, who may have been totally sloshed, insisted we make a pact.  At least four days of our work week (I talked her down from all five days), we will get up and shower or wash our faces. We will fix our hair. We will put on makeup (she even gave me some makeup, since mine is pretty much decimated with four little girls in the house) or at least earrings. We will get dressed in real pants (difficult for me since I have exactly three pairs of jeans, but still doable).

I'd already decided I needed to start caring for myself. Hell, even just changing my underwear and washing my face makes me feel like a new woman, so I started getting dressed every day, even if it was yoga pants, and began wearing earrings again. I've amassed a few pairs as gifts over the years. I'm all about hair flowers, too, so instead of makeup I'll probably be doing hair flowers and earrings.

Another difficult thing about working at home is that there are so many DISTRACTIONS. Especially now that we have seven kids in the house, there is always someone who needs me to do something. Someone wants to read to me--how can I say no to that? Chores need to be supervised, fights need to be extinguished, dinner needs to be served, etc., etc., etc.  So at times, work that would take me four to five hours takes me ten hours. This means I'm distracted during all things.  When I'm working, I feel bad for ignoring the children. When I'm doing something for the children, I feel guilty about not working. It's something I need to work on changing, these feelings, because neither thing gets my full attention.

Even with the distractions and lack of personal care, I love working at home. It's the only way I can work realistically right now, with seven kids, one vehicle, and a partner who works outside the home. I know how lucky I am to be able to do this--but that doesn't mean it's all blissfully rolling out of bed and performing my work until finished, and then attending to the children's needs. It's a mishmashmosh of coffee breath, sock buns, and getting my ears used to sporting earrings again.

I'm trying.

Let's Be Bad, Together.

I've started subscribing to the thought that for feminism to really work and come full circle, women have to care for and support other women. This is hard because our culture has taught us to judge each other as whores, sluts, prudes, thin, fat, ugly, pretty. You know where I am coming from. Fighting the urge when we meet or see another woman and not to compare her to yourself physically and mentally (job, man, etc) is what women do a lot of the time. We have to program ourselves to fight this innate urge to judge our fellow women. This comes to the forefront of my mind tonight because I will be attended a hip hop/rap show where a female group is headlining. There will be big hair, lots of eye makeup and hella cleavage. I am sure to be one of them, as this is part of the fun. The headlining women swear like sailors and talk like men. In a word, as a woman, I jump between thinking the music is super ridiculous to a good turn in the status quo of things. Why shouldn't girls be able to rap about getting laid? About wanting to be tough? Men have been doing this in every form...forever. If the critics of feminism think feminist language is hate speech towards men, they need to think again. Women are just trying to undo the millennia of oppression placed upon them. And if we wanna do it with big hair while trying on your crude lingo? We are going to do just that.