You know you hate the government when you get a letter from your retired, severely ill mother saying that she is not only poor, but now so poor as a result of medical bills, that she is dieting so her appetite will be small enough she won’t use up as much food. This is the fucking meaning of evil.

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.

I suspected something more was happening to my money.

And I just found a RECURRING charge to my bank account from a place. And I googled that place and apparently identify thieves are charging stuff to it. FUCK FUCK FUCK. I’d thought it must either be this, or a staff person buying shit on my card. And now I have to wait till next week to do anything. I hope my bank is as good about this as my old bank was when a thief put me in the hole.

I’m not sure whether online banking is good or bad.

I can sit here and see that even with all of my food going on food stamps, and only $20 in random nonessential purchases, the amount of money in the bank is less than half what it was a week ago. And three weeks to go.

Apparently a huge amount of it is coming from medical expenses. Medicare keeps dropping coverage of essential prescriptions and then has the nerve to make me pay it $100 a month in addition to what I have to pay on my own now. And there’s still that $1400 medical debt I can’t pay. My rent had damn well better go down because of this (we get minute little adjustment to rent based on medical expenses) because this shit ain’t cool.

I also need to start checking if I’m getting recurringly billed for shit I don’t even use or remember.

I hate money.

This is good, but seriously WTF. (And, rambling about caregivers and food.)

I hate the system. I just hate it.

I got my notice saying I’ll get food stamps and fuel assistance, and it’s not the highest amount but it’s a good amount.

Then attached to it was this notice saying “Fill out this really long form and send it in the next two days or you may not get food stamps after all.”

It had to do with my monthly medical expenses, including the medical debt I’m in (because IUDs apparently don’t count as necessary, even if it’s to prevent cancer when you aren’t having periods and you have a family history). Most of the documentation is at my case manager’s office. So I gave her the forms and she promised to get it in by today.

But seriously. WTF. I mean I know they deliberately put obstacles in your way so you’ll get disqualified and save money. But come on. If someone hadn’t collected the mail yesterday I’d be screwed.

Meanwhile they’ve sent me my EBT card but no pin number. They said the pin number is coming with the notice of how much I receive and stuff. Except, oops, it didn’t. So now I can’t access my food stamp money until… I don’t know when.

I hate the system.

In better news on the same topic:

I found out that Jessica, who works here on Fridays, is an amazing cook. I mean I already knew I love everything she makes. It’s always both healthy and really tasty. But I found out this past week that she is one of those people who not only doesn’t even need a recipe to cook, but can cook amazing food out of random cheap ingredients that are left over at the end of the month.

I haven’t had anyone who could do that in eight or nine years. And that person, unlike Jessica, was terrible. But she used her ability to shop cheap and cook excellent poor food, to stay in her job even when she was abusive and horrible. I still remember the screaming match when I refused to believe her when she said “Retarded people can’t learn anything, so you need to lie to them to manipulate them into doing what you want, because they could never understand the reality.” And I had to sit there and listen to her say shit like that in front of her adult son with an intellectual disability, while he looked miserable and resigned, because he knew full well what she was saying. (He lived in the same group home as my friend.)

Meanwhile she lied to me about other staff, because she wanted me to slowly grow afraid of everyone but her. She also used to say awful things to me until I broke down crying, and then hug me and tell me what an emotional breakthrough I was making with her. She also lied about why she was always in trouble with the office — she claimed it was because she had such radical ideas, but it was really because she was an asshole who lied and hurt people. Dealing with her was a nightmare but because of the food, I put up with her until she put her hands on me and tried to restrain me.

Fortunately Jessica has shown none of the awful qualities that person did. I hope she’ll stay for a long time, because people who can improvise really cheap food out of random stuff and make it work, are rare as hen’s teeth in this field. It’s hard enough to find people who can make oatmeal (which is my breakfast and lunch every day) without screwing it up. And even better, she loves doing it even though she doesn’t get to eat any. I guess it’s a creative thing for her.

Anyway, I hope once I get my pin number, my food situation will improve. And I hope I don’t lose my benefits before I find out, WTF.

So I qualify for food stamps and fuel assistance.

Which is great.

But.

They won’t tell me how much money that is until I get my mail.

Which given that food stamps is anywhere from nothing to $200, is kind of an important detail to leave out and I’ll be freaking out until I know how much it is.

I had better damn well qualify for food stamps.

Because unless certain things are deducted from my bank account earlier than now in the month, I have basically no money until the 3rd. Yes I bought one thing this month but even that could be quickly eaten through other expenses I better damn well not run into this month.

I watched a movie the other night.

A documentary about rich kids.

And can I just say that I find the entire notion of a $900 purse really off-pissing? I mean not some sort of purse with good reason to be that expensive, like if it had high technology in it or something. Just a gratuitously expensive purse.

It pisses me off even more that there exist people who fill entire closets with the things without noticing they’re spending a shitload of money.

I can’t explain it. Maybe it had to do with going to school with this kind of person. Maybe it has to do with knowing the things that amount of money can buy — both in terms of essentials for daily life, and in terms of actual functional things. (Which I may define more broadly than some people, but certainly not to the point of $900 purses.)

I don’t know. It just bugs me.

Fuck the entire concept of money.

So with a cost of living increase in my RSDI(*) payments, I’m a few dollars over the line where they no longer pay my Medicare premiums. So now I have to pay an extra hundred dollars every month. Which means this feeble attempt by the government to adjust for an increased cost of living? In practice, makes me poorer.

In October, I had an IUD inserted. This is because I don’t have my period. And the lining in there just builds up and builds up without coming out. Which is a big risk for cancer, which runs in my family. Oral hormone pills barely create a period at all, and give me horrific migraines. The IUD gave me one huge massive period for a long time — showing the hormones weren’t doing crap before — and then it’s stopped and I feel great.

My gynecologist neglected to tell me that Medicare doesn’t pay for IUDs. Even for serious medical reasons like, oh, preventing cancer.

So now I’m $1400 in debt, in addition to the $100ish a month to Medicare. And I doubt they’ll let me do the payment plan that is actually right for my current income.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck the system, fuck money, fuck everything that practically seems to conspire to make sure disabled people can barely afford to eat. I’ve known since I was a kid that this is no way to run the world but it’s only getting worse.

.

(*) Most people know of SSI and SSDI. I’m in a weird little program with weird little requirements. You had to be on SSI. And have been disabled before the age of 22. And have a parent die, retire, or become disabled. And then you get something called Disabled Adult Child benefits (it has lots of other names). Where no matter how much income you have you still qualify for Medicaid (in certain states), but you have Medicare as well starting after a couple years.

And the income you get is called RSDI — Retirement Survivors and Disability Insurance. And there are weird little sets of rules that apply only to DAC, but most people in the system don’t know them and try to tell me I’m on SSDI. Which has totally different rules. And every once in awhile they try to cancel my Medicaid and I have to sic Legal Aid on them because nobody listens to a retard, even one who tells them exactly what page of the Medicaid manual to turn to. And Medicaid is important because that’s where my services come from. And for a program disproportionally involving people with developmental disabilities it’s ridiculously complicated to understand. And not understanding can get you in trouble.