One Thousand Dollars

It turns out that panhandling in the nearest city is illegal. Here I thought I'd finally come up with a way to scrape up some money—just the thousand dollars I need to get into low-income housing—and already my dream of standing terrified on a street corner hating myself for a day has been dashed, because I went online to find out if it was even possible.

Of course, apparently I'd be lucky to make seven dollars a day in this part of the country, but begging being illegal is more of a deterrent to me than it not being lucrative.

Why, you may ask, did I decide to look up panhandling?

The answer is: I'm highly discouraged by my continued unemployment, and today I overheard my sister telling my dad that she wants me and my daughter out of her house. Ouch.

My sister is a great person, really. She can't stand kids, though. She doesn't understand them, and thinks that being patient with them is a waste of time when you could just yell at them, tell them how horrible they are, and send them to their rooms. Because our mom doing that to us didn't have any long-term effects. *sarcasm*

Anyhow, it's a good thing she has dogs, and not human children. She's amazing with dogs. Hers are well-trained, and don't mind if she cusses at them when they bark at inopportune moments. But I digress.

All that's keeping me from moving into cheap housing is approximately $1,000. I owe a couple hundred on an old electricity bill, I need five hundred as a down-payment, and I need some to get all the utilities turned on. No clue how I'd keep the utilities on once I was there, but I can cross that bridge when I come to it. Right?

As much as I disliked my grandmother's house, I'm tempted to ask if I can move back in. They're getting ready to sell it, but I have to live somewhere, and that's the only place where there aren't other people to be annoyed at having an eleven year old girl around being moody and dramatic. Because, let's face it: eleven year old girls are moody and dramatic.

I get this. I don't know how all my family who raised kids, or who were kids, can honestly believe that a child of any age can behave perfectly at all times. Or maybe they're why I'm so hard on myself. I was expected to be perfect, and I did not succeed. I did not succeed pretty hard, in the long run.

The holiday season approaches, and so does the return of the choice I've faced too many times over the past years; where am I going to live? How can I keep a roof over my daughter's head with no money and apparently no marketable skills?

Unless you want to pay me for blogging.