Normally, I wouldn’t spill guts on a personal level, and I would rather be discussing sustainable landscaping, ecological restoration, or restoring our nation to a sustainable transportation system, but just as the insane right wing is foreclosing on these things and has stopped Obama’s tentative steps towards these things, the awful economy and a considerable amount of crappy luck has also foreclosed many options for my family, which has pushed us into survival mode, despite my professional prowess and design and implementation of award-winning projects. One thing I have come to realize is that it is more expensive to be poor than it is to be middle or upper class for the same services.
As the last dying hours of 2011 wind down as a capstone to an awful year, one in which my mother in law died, my daughter contracted Lyme disease, one of our cats got kidney stones and required a very expensive operation, I totaled my car, the washing machine broke requiring a major repair, multiple electronic devices failed in the house, including my laptop, I fought and failed to get a loan modification through Bank of America and was served a foreclosure notice on Thanksgiving weekend, and weather and economic conditions, along with a bad economy and job losses, have caused my family income to fall through the floor. As a 99er forced into contract work for income, I have not had W-2 employment since working for the Census in 2010, and my wife lost her job with home health care after her patient died and Scott Walker canceled further enrollments in the program, among other ways in which he began to systematically destroy Wisconsin's economy and hopes. I’d discuss further, but that is the subject of another diary.
However, I digress…follow me below the filigree to see one way I tried to cope with these horrid circumstances in these times of hanging on by one’s fingernails. At least I still had, and still have my health…without which I would not have had the option of selling bodily fluids for compensation…
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