Christmas Letter: 2010, 11, 12, 13 and 14

Christmas Letter: 2010,11,12,13 and 14

      Yes, it's been that long since I've written a Christmas letter. And it wasn't for lack of things going on in my life, quite the contrary.

Let's start in 2010:

      In April 2010, I accepted a job as a census taker. I lost that job two weeks later when my fingerprints came back that I had been a very bad person. Unknown to me at the time, a crime I committed while I was 21 years old (my friends and I were drunk and they were going to teach me how to hot-wire a car), had not been updated in the FBI database and I was listed as two-time felon. I was only found guilty of a misdemeanor tampering with a vehicle. In any case, in this day and age when background checks are so cheap, I was unable to get a job. As my 99 weeks of unemployment loomed to a close in August, 2010, a textile recycling company, USAgain, hired me to find locations for their "mailboxes on steroids" so people could recycle anything doing with textile - even underwear! Unfortunately, out of the 8 of us that were hired, seven of us were let go the same day. They pitted us against each other to see who would work the hardest for them. On October 5, 2010, I received a 30 day notice from my roommate and by November 6, 2010, I was homeless.

      I spent the first 4 months with a friend who allowed me to keep my cats, Mowgli and Ming, with me in an extra bedroom in her home. Because I didn't have a job by mid-January and I told her when I moved in it should only be a few months before I landed back on my feet, as I have never had a problem finding a job, she asked me to leave by the end of February. 

       March 2, 2011, I was in a homeless shelter. My sister used her Hotel miles and put me up in a Homewood Suite on the 1st, but then I was on my own. I stayed in the homeless shelter for 2 weeks while I waited to get into "transitional housing" with the Fairfield-Suisun Community Action Council. Mowgli and Ming were staying with a couple I met while I was emceeing a Boy Scout Banquet.
       March 15, 2011, I moved in to transitional housing. I didn't know the woman who I would share the master bedroom with, but she seemed pretty straight forward. I'll call her Blondie. We became friends and totally understood each other.  She said it was due to the fact that I was a Taurus while she was a Scorpio. I do know I could leave ten-thousand dollars on the dresser and she wouldn't touch it. And she knew that if she asked for some of it, I would share, so there would be no reason for her to touch it. In April 2011, I noticed what I thought was another hernia - I had a hernia operation in December 2009 and my stomach was poking out again - so I went to the surgeon who did the previous one. I'll call him the "Hottie Doc" because we just seem to click. I wanted to make sure that the county insurance I had would cover the operation, so I had to go back the following week. That's when the abscess under my belly showed up. Instead of having hernia surgery in May, I had to have an abscess drained in the O.R. On June 1, 2011, I had hernia surgery. That was the same day my aunt found out she had pancreatic cancer.
      After I healed, I resumed my job search. I was also making some headway into clearing up the FBI mess. I think that was taken care of in May sometime, where they got it right. I kept looking for jobs, going to interviews, with nothing on the horizon. Meanwhile, outside of my roommate the rest of the women, the other four, were raised by wolves, I swear! The Program Director was also a mean person, telling us once a week, "If you don't like it here, leave. There are plenty more people where you came from. Believe me, you won't be missed." She says that to homeless women trying to better themselves. It was hell. Read my previous posts for an idea. I am writing a book on my journey through homelessness called "Homeless...But Not Hopeless". Then I had a nervous breakdown.
     My sister, who lives in Midtown Sacramento, had offered me her couch to sleep on, but at that time, Sacramento didn't have insurance for the indigent and Solano County, where I've called home for more than 20 years, does. My doctor referred me to a psychiatrist to deal with the breakdown. I didn't want to commit suicide, I just didn't want to live that life, with those people. That may sound snobbish, but I was taught differently than the people I was forced to live with and was comfortable with the way I had lived for the past 45 years.
      In October, I received a call to ask me if I wanted to be the next Office Manager of the H&R Block in the Target Center in Vallejo. Although it was a temporary job, it was a job. Of course I accepted! On the home front, the house we were living in was foreclosed and we moved to a larger house in Suisun City. That's when the real fun began. Read previous posts of this blog to understand what I mean.
       Because this job was temporary, I continued to look for permanent work and was offered a position as a clerk in the Welfare to Work office in Contra Costa County. I was originally assigned to Pleasant Hill, but there was a need in Antioch, so that's where I went to work. The day after accepting, Blondie and I were on our way to celebrate with a steak dinner when a 16-year-old boy, who had just received his driver's license, ran a red light and t-boned my car, totaling it and injuring my neck. Now I was homeless, without a car to get to my permanent job so I could lift myself by my bootstraps. I had no credit cards and not even a bank account. Thank God I had friends. One of them let me use her debit card and another paid for, a rental car, so I could get to and from my new job. Although I had given my 2 weeks notice to H&R Block, they fired me because I didn't have a car to get to and from work and to and from meetings. (I didn't get the rental until 10 days after the crash - H&R fired me a week prior)
     To add insult to injury, in California, if you are not insured and get into a car crash, even if it wasn't your fault, you cannot sue for pain and suffering. I ended up losing 2 jobs because of this crash, but I couldn't sue because my insurance ran out two weeks before the crash. I didn't pay my bill because I didn't receive a bill because my agent, who has since been fired due to negligence, didn't change my address. In fact, the afternoon, before I left the office to pick up Blondie for dinner, I called and left a message for my agent because it seemed like it was time to pay my bill. The kid's insurance company did reimburse me for the car that was totaled and paid for the rental, but that was it. I was on my own.
        I did lose my job with Contra Costa County in July 2012 because I was late too many times and took off too many days due to the neck injury. My left hand would go numb without warning, which my spine surgeon said was normal with that type of injury. Prior to becoming homeless, I applied for Social Security Disability because I couldn't stand for long periods of time due to the arthritis in my knees and the only jobs available required one to stand for long periods of time. They kept rejecting me, I kept appealing and the first week of August 2012, I had a hearing. I hobbled into the hearing room and told the judge all that had happened. The following month, I was awarded Social Security Disability and have been surviving off of it since.
      It's better than being homeless, but I really want to go back to work. I had neck surgery in June 2013 and my left hand no longer goes numb without warning. I have medical bills up one side and down the other because Medicare doesn't pay for everything and although the health insurance when you are an indigent is great in Solano County, if you bring home more than $600/month, you have a share of cost of the extra multiplied by 1.5. So in order to activate my Medi-Cal, I have a share of cost of over $900! I need a home health aid as I don't get around too well, but don't have $900 a month for one. My food stamp worker told me that if I worked I could get one cheaper. Hmmmm....
     Radio lost over 50% of its jobs in the recession and they haven't come back. In November 2011, I met a literary agent who told me that if I was serious about my writing, he could make me a best selling author. He was the one who suggested I start a blog. In 2015, I need to get to it, and assemble the book as it is already written in bits and pieces, through this blog, Facebook postings and my journal. Then I could finally get a new car, as the one I have can't seem to pass CA Smog standards and the tags ran out in September 2013.
      So that's been my life in a nutshell since 2010. My Aunt passed away from pancreatic cancer in December 2011. I found out via text from my sister while I was training for H&R Block. Mowgli passed away in October 2013 due to hyperthyroidism.  Ming likes the single life, so since she's now 17, she gets what she wants. I hit the half century mark this past year and need to get on with the second part of my life.
      Have a wonderful year!

Life in THE COLLAR

   

 

   I stink. I'm not putting myself down, but I really stink. I haven't taken a shower since Wednesday, July 3rd. Then I went shopping and sweated. It was near the end of the record heat wave. I sweated the next day too, though I had to turn the oven on and keep it that way a few hours to cook some killer (ask Christine Craft, she'll tell you killer is the right word) ribs. I have run out of clothes to sleep in because it has been so hot, I haven't left my apartment to do laundry. The laundry room isn't that far from my apartment, but I know I can't take a shower every day. I am in a tracheotomy collar and it takes a full day for the pads to dry after washing them. I only have 2 sets of pads. So the best I could do is take a shower every other day, but why? I've no place to go. I'm not allowed to drive and that's driving me up the wall. The girls run out of their cat food in 2 days. While Mowgli will be just fine on the dry food, Ming doesn't have any teeth. I have put water in the dry food for her but she won't eat it. She will eat the dry food between the two feedings of canned food a day-they split a can of food in the morning and at night, though I think Ming eats most of it. When she eats the dry food, she drops most of it out of her mouth, but will not eat it unless it's in the bowl. Weird cat. In any case, when she runs out of canned food, I'm going to hear about it. I already hear about it when it's feeding time and she doesn't have her bowl full. There is one flavor she doesn't like-the Salmon flavor-and leaves some of it in her bowl. I tell her I won't open a new can until she eats what's in there. I point to the bowl that has food in it. I will go into the living room and within a few minutes will hear her metal I.D. tags banging against the ceramic bowl. About an hour later, I will put fresh (canned) food in her bowl and she's a happy cat. I know she's happy because she purrs when she eats.

     

     But back to me. I stink. In the past year since I have been disabled, I haven't been too physical. You know the old saying, "if you don't use it, you lose it"? Since I haven't been up every morning to go to work, I have become lazy. Add in severe arthritis in my knees (really, the last orthopedist I saw took one look at my right knee MRI and said, 'how do you even walk? You have no cartilage there') and you have a middle aged fat chick who is not able to do much. Since my neck operation, where they shaved three discs, opened up the area around my spinal cord and fused two things, I am not allowed to lift more than ten pounds. But I have a life that needs living and I got tired of the big bag of garbage sitting in the middle of my small kitchen, so I took that and the garbage in the can, out about an hour ago. That just about did me in. I was going to shave my legs and take a shower, but I am beat after taking out the trash. I need to shave my legs because when I do laundry later today - I need to because all of the t-shirts I have been wearing are all dirty and stinky - I will be wearing shorts. And while most people could care less, I can hear my dearly departed mother's voice in my head, 'you want to go outside like that? You want people to think you're gay? Or French? Geez, why bother to shower at all!' Besides, I like the feel of newly shaved legs against my 600 thread count sheets. Which I also need to launder. I have about eight sets of sheets and they are all dirty. When I say dirty, that's what I mean. Like my body of late, I wait until my sheets stink before I change them. It's not that I don't like clean sheets, it's just that it takes so much out of me to change them.

    

     So I stink. Here's a funny thing: when they were releasing me from the hospital, they were showing my sister and I how to change the pads in the neck brace, actually COLLAR from Hell, and suggested that I wear tops that are open wide at the top. I, of course, came in a tie-dye t-shirt that was kind of tight around the collar, We got the shirt on over the brace and then the collar over that. I stayed that way a few days until I took a shower and put a regular nightgown with a big opening at the top. The pads rubbed against my skin and irritated them so bad, I have been wearing big old t-shirts to soften the blow. What I wasn't supposed to wear, has actually helped me. I found that ironic.

 

     I know I stink and I am tired of stinking. I have nowhere to go, so I will now change out collars, shave my legs and take a shower. Because I am tired of stinking.

Homeless, Again?

Now where were we...oh yes, that's right, self discipline. At least a blog a week. And now that I have the Internet at home, there are no excuses. Though I am certain I could think of a few.

     July 26, 2012 was the day I didn't pass probation as an Experienced Level Clerk (ELC) for the Welfare to Work Department of Contra Costa County. They don't need to tell you why you didn't pass, but I asked anyway. The main reason was that I was gone and tardy too often. If you know me, you know that I have been struggling with that last issues all of my 48 years. My mom used to say the only time I was on time was when I was born. My 7th grade English teacher wrote in my yearbook that I would "set the world on fire if I could only get there on time". What can I say? Her class was right after lunch and I like my food to settle a little bit. But more of that in another post. This was even worse. Since being T-boned by a careless driver in February, my left hand goes numb without notice. My back does the same. Imagine waking up at the normal time, but not being able to move too well because your back is numb. And dropping everything in your left hand because it decides to go numb whenever it wants. Things take a little longer. But you don't have a little longer. So the next day you wake up 15 minutes earlier and nothing happens and you could have slept that 15 minutes. Needless to say, I was late. That was if I could move. I called in sick way too many times because I could not move well enough to get ready for work, let alone drive 40 miles and work. The second reason I did not pass probation was my personality-too much of it in such a small space. I worked a full ten months after being out of work for three years. I didn't know what I was going to do.

     A few weeks earlier, I had received a letter from Social Security telling me I had a hearing on my disability case coming up August 8th. I went and stated my case that I essentially lost my job due to my disabilities. I hobbled into the room and hobbled out. I received a call from Social Security about three weeks later telling me that I had been deemed disabled from the date I originally filed-October of 2010. I needed to send in some paperwork, but would be receiving a lump sum from the back payments. Meaning, that if they had not denied me the first time, I would not have spent a year and a half being homeless. I was happy and asked when I would get the back payments. The lady told me as long as I turned in the needed documents within the next ten days, I would receive it in September. What a relief! I now had a way to pay rent and not worry about being homeless - AGAIN. All I had to do was wait.

     I was able to pay August's rent with my last paycheck, but September came and the third week into the month, I had still not received the lump sum, which I figured to be about ten-thousand dollars. I could pay a few months in advance! If only I had the money. The first week of September, after I had not paid my rent, I got a three day notice to quit or pay rent. I told the manager the issue and he said there was nothing that could be done about it. Then a knock came on my door one Sunday morning and I answered it, thinking it was the lady upstairs whose grandson loved to throw things downstairs onto my patio. Instead it was a process server. See what happens when you don't go to church?  I thought I had 14 days to answer the complaint, but it was only a week. See what happens when you don't read? The last week of September, a note was nailed to the side of my door letting me know that the sheriff's office would be by on October 4th at 6am to kick me off the premises because I did not pay September's rent. During the final week of September, I left a message a day  with the contact person at Social Security and did not hear back, so I went down to the office to ask in person what was going on and how could speed things up. She told me there was nothing she could do except move my payment from the end of the month to the 3rd. I told her about the eviction and that I finally had a place to live after being homeless for a year and a half and now I was going to be homeless again. (By the way, I could not go back to the crazy house because they have me labeled a "violent drug offender who can't follow rules". I have no idea how to get that bullshit off of there.) The other thing she could -and did- do was write a letter stating that I was waiting for the money from Social Security and there was nothing more I could do until I got it. 

     I came straight from the Social Security office to the apartment office and gave the letter to the manager. He asked if I had called the lawyer's office that was handling the eviction. I told him I had just received the letter and that I would. Two days later I called the lawyer's office. They didn't care. Come October 4, 2012, I was going to be off the premises one way or another.

     As October 2nd turned into October 3rd, I checked my bank account on my phone. My first check had arrived! There was $1500 more in my account! I was so excited I couldn't sleep. When I finally got up around noon, I went to the bank and bought a money order for the amount of September's rent, with the late fee included. I raced back to the manager and handed it to him. He refused to accept it. He said I was too far along in the eviction process and that nothing could be done. I offered to clear out my bank account with just enough to keep it open if I could stay. (Just to let you know, it wasn't that I was in love with the place or anything like that. I was just tired of moving. I lived in the same apartment in downtown Suisun City for 15 years before moving into a house with my upstairs neighbor. I was there only a year and a half when she gave me notice to leave. In the next year and a half, I moved four more times. I needed stability.) But the people who own the apartment complex didn't care. In their eyes I was a lowlife deadbeat who didn't pay her bills. I asked the manager to call his boss and tell him the unique situation and ask for more time. He said he would and that he would contact me later that day with the decision. A few hours later he called back. The answer was no. If I did not leave mt apartment the next day, I would be forcibly removed. I rented a U-Haul truck and bought 10 medium size boxes. I would get what I could in my disabled state and put it into my storage unit and rent a room at a cheap motel until the money came in. And I had just put $30 on my laundry card. I had gone shopping the night before. I wonder who I could give my food to? I called the cats' last caretaker and left a voice mail for her asking if she could take them in until I could find a place. These are the things that ran through my head the night of October 3rd. I did some laundry because it needed to be done and I wanted to use the money on the card. But the security guard locked the laundry room ten minutes early so my clothes sat all night in the dryer. Just another thing I had to deal with in the morning when they locked me out of my home and I once again became homeless.

     But I couldn't bring myself to put the boxes together to start packing what I had barely just unpacked. I was frozen. I prayed, but I still felt hopeless and lost. Many people who are homeless got that way through their bad decision making. Was that me? Was I always going to be chronically homeless because the industry (radio) that chose me to employ had lost more than 50% of its jobs? Was I a bad person? If I wasn't, then what went wrong? I escaped the crazy house, on their terms, but I escaped anyway. For what? To have dreams of being self-sufficient only to find out I wasn't? And what about my girls, Mowgli and Ming? They wouldn't leave my side since I brought them home. Now they were going to be homeless again too because their mommy couldn't make the right decisions. They were going to be homeless again because their mommy was a failure. I couldn't put the boxes together because I was falling apart.

     Because my clothes were being held hostage in the laundry room, I fell asleep naked on top of my bed. Six o'clock in the morning of October 4, 2012 came and went and no knocking at the door. I finally allowed myself to sleep.

     BANG! BANG! BANG! "This is the Sheriff's Office! We are here to let Lynda McMahan know that she must vacate the premises!" It was 9:30am and my front door was wide open as a locksmith changed the locks and the manager just stood there. I yelled that I needed to put something on, could they wait a second? I tossed on an old nightgown and went to the door. The sheriff's deputy explained to me that I had until 5pm that day to get my stuff out of the apartment. If I was unable to get it all, the apartment manager would store it for me at a reasonable rate. If I failed to vacate the premises after 5pm, I would be arrested for trespassing by Suisun City Police. The locksmith has changed the lock and my door was to be left unlocked for the remainder of the day. Did I understand this? Yes, I answered. They left and I closed the door. It was really happening. I was going to be homeless again.