#This is also with health insurance by the way but mine uh... sucks.

[iero]

Real talk: How do I let the fear of going into complete and total medical debt not stop me from getting the help I actually need?

#personal #Love everyone who is like 'Don't pay it when you get your bill!' and then I get sent to collections and fuck up my credit score etc. etc. #This is also with health insurance by the way but mine uh... sucks. #And this is me being serious by the way. I'm terrified I'm gonna go flat broke once I finally make the call to see a dentist.

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

If I Fell For You (Part 1) - The Nanny

Summary: The reader interviews for a new live-in nanny position with Jensen and quickly gets the job but she starts to slowly see that her new employer is going to be different than any other she’s had before...

Masterlist

Pairing: Jensen x nanny!reader

Square: Slow Burn

Word Count: 4,800ish

Warnings: language, mention of death of a spouse/death of a parent

A/N: Please enjoy the first part of this series! This was also written for @supernatural-jackles​ Tell Me A Story Bingo!

________

If someone had said you’d be celebrating your 30th birthday by accepting an interview to be a live in nanny when you were a kid, you would have told them they were nuts. Beyond nuts. Beyond help for that matter.

But there you were. Thirty. Single. Childless. Taking care of other people’s families and not doing much else with your life. You weren’t sure if your mom would have been on you about the no kids thing or the no boyfriend thing more to be honest.

But the pay was normally good and sometimes great and it gave you a taste of family, even if you were just the help to the adults most of the time.

You buzzed the button by the gate at the end of the driveway, a brief moment passing before it opened. It was probably on a timer like most of the people you’d worked for before, an alarm system kicking on at some point in the evening that required a buzz in, the code or a car sensor. You drove down the driveway and parked a little behind a black SUV. The house was a little modern, a little grand, a little overwhelming. A fence and lots of trees surrounded the property. The yard appeared large but you could see houses on either side. Private but suburban. 

The cadillac wasn’t a shocker. Most everyone in these neighborhoods had Escalades. You walked past an open garage on the way up, a muscle car and a more modest smaller SUV parked inside. You went up the very short path and stepped up, ringing the doorbell and fixing your shirt. You were in jeans and a plain gray shirt. It was your normal wear for chasing small children around all day and you weren’t a fan of uniforms.

“Hi,” said a very tired, very handsome man as he opened the door. “You must be from Nanny Core.”

“I’m Y/N Y/L/N from Home Pair,” you said with a smile. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the door. 

“The last girl was from Nanny Core,” he said. He blinked them open and shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Yes, Y/N. You’re the one that’s a consultant, not firmly associated with Home Pair, right?”

“Correct,” you said as he opened the door more and you stepped inside.

“Can I ask what the distinction is?”

“Mostly it has to do with benefits,” you said. “Consultants pay out of pocket for their own or negotiate with their client for those to be covered.”

“Gotcha,” he yawned. You looked ahead and he wiped his hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I must seem like an ass.”

“You seem tired is all Mr. Ackles. Not a crime,” you said with a smile. He nodded and he returned it, no fake cheesiness to it. 

“Mind if we do the interview in the kitchen over a cup of coffee?” he asked.

“Wherever you like, sir,” you said. You took off your shoes when you noticed he didn’t wear any inside and he chuckled as you walked back farther into the house.

“Uh, for the record, call me Jensen. None of that sir stuff. They must teach that at nanny school or something huh?” he said, motioning to a table. “I noticed all of you do it.”

“Something like that,” you said. You took a seat and watched him go to a coffee machine, fumbling with it before he spilled some ground coffee on the counter. He shut his eyes and gripped the counter’s edge, taking a deep breath to himself. “How about I make the coffee and you take a seat, hm?”

“I’m okay,” he said as he opened his eyes. 

“Well making you coffee is probably going to come up in my job quite a bit so consider this part of the interview. It’s alright, really,” you said. He glanced over to you and you smiled. 

“Thank you,” he said. You swapped places with him and got him a cup going, taking a mug off the counter and waiting a beat before liquid started pouring out. “I’m gonna ask you the same question I’ve asked all seven other women I’ve talked to today.”

“Yes?”

“Why should I trust you to watch my children?”

“Honestly?” you asked as he nodded. You smiled and carried the cup over to him, Jensen taking a long sip. “You shouldn’t.”

“I shouldn’t. That seems counterproductive.”

“I wouldn’t trust any stranger with my child. Trust is earned, not given. I think the real question is do you believe I’m capable of earning that trust with you and that’s something intrinsically only you know.”

“How so?”

“You meet a lot of different kinds of people with this job. My gut reaction to you is stressed, overwhelmed, sleep-deprived father who doesn’t really want any nanny at all but is forced into this situation. It’s going to be impossible for you to trust any of the seven woman from earlier or me off the bat, Jensen. You should be thinking of who will you come to trust. Who can you count on.”

“This is why my wife should have been the one doing this,” he said, smiling to himself as he drunk down most of the hot liquid.

“We could always re-schedule for when she’s available.”

“Oh, we’d have to wait a very long time for that,” he chuckled. He sat the mug down and glanced down briefly, smiling as he looked up. “She passed away unexpectedly six months ago. Car accident.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” you said. He nodded and made a face like he wanted to make a comment. “My mom died kinda unexpectedly. I know it’s...harder.”

“You’re young. How old?”

“Turned thirty today,” you said. He laughed and you heard the life behind it, Jensen shaking his head.

“Well Happy Birthday. I meant with your mother though. If that’s okay with you I mean.”

“It’s fine. I was sixteen,” you said. 

“That...fucking sucks doesn’t it?”

“So does losing your wife,” you said. 

“Yes it does. I’ve grieved. We all have. The kids are small. They’ll be okay.”

“Is dad okay?” you asked.

“Yes. Ready to start moving on with life again,” he said with a soft smile. “You’re kind. Not in a I’m trying to get this job kind of way. Just kind.”

“Well being cruel doesn’t sound like very much fun,” you said.

“You’re not trying to impress me.”

“The first rule of nannying, Jensen. You think you’re interviewing us when in reality we’re interviewing you too.”

“How am I doing so far?”

“Nice coffee choice,” you said with a smile that he nodded at. “You respect people. You’ll employ me but won’t treat me like I’m second class. You’re checking the boxes so far.”

“What if I don’t check all the boxes?”

“You don’t get to know the luxury of knowing the answer yet, Mr. Ackles,” you said. “Interview isn’t over.”

“You got fucked over by somebody, didn’t you.”

“Also perceptive,” you said. “Like I said, I don’t tolerate being treated unkindly anymore. It’s why I left my last position.”

“I have one more question,” he said. “Would you treat my children like they’re your own?”

“Again, asking the wrong question,” you said. He sat back and crossed his arms, smirking at you.

“What exactly should I be asking?”

“Will you treat my children kindly and with respect but take charge when required?”

“What’s the difference?”

“One is me doing my job and the other is me doing yours.”

“How old did you say you were again?”

“Thirty today.”

“Right. Well I think I know where I stand. Do you have anything for me?”

“Can you show me a picture of your kids?” you asked. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “You answered my question.”

“I didn’t show you anything yet.”

“You’d be surprised how many fathers I’ve met don’t carry pictures of their children in their wallets. That one is just a me thing.”

“Your dad do that?” he asked as he tucked it away.

“Maybe,” you said with a shrug. He was polite enough to not go down that route though and this was already getting more personal than you anticipated. “I think I know where I stand as well.”

“I’d like to hire you,” he said.

“Assuming our negotiations go well, I accept,” you said. He held out his hand over the table and you shook it.

“I did come up with what I thought was fair for salary and benefits. Let me go grab the paperwork and hopefully settle on something,” he said. He excused himself and you looked around the house, already trying to familiarize yourself with things. He was more relaxed when he returned with some papers and a notebook, handing you a few sheets. “If I’m missing anything let me know. I-”

“This is my weekly rate?” you asked when you saw the number at the top of the page.

“Oh no. That’s your daily,” he said as he took a seat. “So I think that’s-”

“Jensen,” you said, pushing the paper back. “I have to ask, things like insurance, are those coming out of your pocket or mine?”

“I’ll cover the expenses of your health, dental, all of that. You just choose and I’ll subsize it as part of your paycheck,” he said. 

“This is for a live in position. Um...can you just...explain what makes up that daily rate number?” you asked.

“It’s simply your base pay. Obviously I pay for housing, utilities, gas obviously. I will get you a credit card to make purchases with for the kids and all of that so it’s simple to keep track of. You’re free to any of the food in the kitchen. I’m guessing the salary is the sticking point here.”

“Jensen,” you said as you scratched your head. 

“I can go up fifty more dollars a day.”

“Jensen. This is way, way too much money. Way too much,” you said. “The average rate around here is about twenty five an hour or two hundred a day. Jensen this is double that. Are you factoring in like time and a half for additional nights and weekends?”

“No. That’d be on top of that. I thought that was a fair value based on the fact you are going to be taking care of the most valuable things in my life. It’s gonna get taxed too so it’s not like you see all of it.”

“You’re sweet, Jensen,” you said, writing down a number at the top of the page. “The average in Austin is twenty five an hour. I would be very happy with that.”

“You have to literally be the first person in existence to negotiate their salary down from the offer,” he said.

“Are you rejecting my offer?” you asked. He took the paper and crossed your number out, jotting down his own and spinning it back. “Jensen.”

“Y/N,” he said, crossing his arms. “I came down. Now it’s your turn. Do you accept?”

You knew thirty five was still way overpriced for the job, especially considering everything else he was paying for.

“I will accept on the condition that you get four hours of what we’d call evening or weekend at the normal rate ever week.”

“I can agree to that,” he said with a smile, writing that down. “So medical plan. Single, plus one, family?”

“Single for all that,” you said. 

“I should mention that there is an in-law suite off to the other side of the garage where you’ll be staying. It’s just down the hall but it has its own small living area and kitchenette. There is a separate entrance to it. If you have guests over I just ask you keep them to your area of the house,” he said.

“Absolutely. I don’t tend to bring people over much anyways while I’m on the job,” you said. He let you read over the rest of the benefits, a good amount of sick and vacation time too. Technically you were free evenings and weekends but he could ask you to work longer if he needed you and you were available. Overall everything seemed in order. “Alright. Everything looks good to me.”

“Awesome. Are you available to start Monday?” he asked.

“Sure,” you said. “It gives me plenty of time to move in things tomorrow so I can jump into the kids routine first thing Monday.”

“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll show you around. We can start with your side of the house.” You got up and followed him over to near the front door and down a long hallway, past a set of doors. There was a frosted glass one to your left just before he pushed open a wide white one.

Behind it was a living area and kitchen. Not huge, about the size of a small apartment. There was a TV and sectional, a table tucked against the wall and a kitchenette like he’d mentioned with full size appliances. 

“Like I said, I know it’s small. Please like, seriously watch TV out in the family room at night if you want or hang out wherever or the yard or pool. This is just your own space when you want to be away from us.” You hummed and he showed you a closet and then a bedroom and bathroom. It was simple but decorated nicely and looked relaxing. “If there’s something obvious I’m missing please let me know. A cleaning service does come by every two weeks on Tuesdays at around ten in the morning. They’ll do in here too. Otherwise you can keep after yourself. Cleaning stuff is in the laundry room. Oh yeah. Um, this is probably the last time I’ll like, ever come in here unless you need help moving things in since this will be your space.”

“Thanks. I don’t have too much. I do have one request before we sign all the paperwork.”

“What’s that?”

“I’d like to meet the kids if that’s alright. There’s not much point in hiring me if they hate me.”

“Fair point. We’ll get ‘em over here and then get you all squared away.”

Monday Morning

“Good morning,” you said, a cup of coffee in your hand already as Jensen yawned. 

“Morning,” he mumbled. His hair was a mess and he was in only a pair of boxer briefs before he paused and looked down. “I should probably put on some clothes.”

“This is your house. Wear whatever you normally would. Pretend I’m invisible,” you said as you poured a cup of coffee into a mug for him.

“Sounds like you worked for some real assholes,” he said, graciously taking the cup. “As long as it doesn’t bother you, me walking around in my undies.”

“No, not at all,” you said with a smile. “Would you like me to drop the kids off at school and daycare this morning?”

“Sure,” he said. “Car keys are on the table by the garage.”

“Okay great. I’m used to driving that kind of SUV,” you said. You snuck a look at your schedule you’d printed out again, knowing the twins would get need to get picked up around noon. You started to work on their lunches and snacks for the day while he took out the carton of eggs from the fridge. He cracked one into a pan and turned the heat on, yawning again as he got out some bread and threw it on a plate. “Would you like me to make lunch for you as well?”

“No thank you. I’m getting lunch with my manager today. You don’t have to make me coffee in the morning either, Y/N. Your job is to take care of the kids, not me,” he said.

“A cup of coffee is not difficult, Jensen. My job is to help you so if I can make dad’s life a smidge easier it’ll make theirs better too,” you said with a smile.

“You’re not like, a morning person are you,” he chuckled. “I don’t do peppy in the morning.”

“Oh no. I’m always a little nervous when I start a new job. I’ll get a rhythm down soon,” you said.

“So what do you normally do once the kids are dropped off?” he asked as he got out a spatula.

“On a weekday I’ll review their schedule, see if anything different is going on. An average day like today I will clean their rooms, their bathroom, do some laundry while they’re at school, maybe some shopping. I’ll pick up the twins, bring them home for lunch, a little playtime, a nap. We’ll have some quiet time and maybe a craft or coloring before we get JJ from school. Then I’ll give them all a snack, we can get outside and play to get some energy out. I’ll help JJ with any schoolwork she has while the twins play and then I will start on dinner about the time you’ll be getting home. Since you have no plans currently tonight I’ll leave you guys be at that point until tomorrow unless you ask me for help.”

“So when do you take a break?” he asked.

“Naptime. I’ll have lunch with the twins. Don’t worry about me Jensen. That’s my normal plan but if you would like me to run some errands in the morning I can,” you said.

“No, no. Just…” he trailed off. “I still want to make them breakfast and dinner and play with them too is all.”

“We’ll figure out the right mix of things,” you said. “You just gotta tell me is all, okay? It can vary day to day too,”

“Yeah,” he said, taking his fried egg out of the pan and placing it on one piece of bread. He made a sandwich and took a big bite, looking out the back window. “I never asked. How was your birthday?”

“Hm?” you hummed, dropping some carrots into a reusable bag.

“On Saturday you said it was your 30th. You do anything fun that night?” he asked with a soft smile.

“I got a new job. That was the highlight of my day,” you said, Jensen cocking his head. “I ordered pizza, binged netflix. My normal Saturday routine.”

“I know everybody jokes about 30 but it’s really just jokes. Wait until you’re 42,” he chuckled. “Then you really feel old.”

“Most 42 year olds would kill to look like you,” you said. You shut your eyes and shook your head. “I’m so sorry. That was so inappropriate.”

“It’s alright. I took it as a compliment,” he said, smiling again. “So you did nothing for your birthday, huh?”

“Uh, no,” you said, mixing in some grapes into each of the snack bags.

“I’m gonna get you a birthday cake,” he said.

“Mr. Ackles-”

“I thought I said it’s Jensen. I’m the boss so what I say goes. We’re gonna have a birthday cake for you tonight. So. What’s your favorite flavor?”

“Whatever you want is perfectly fine.”

“Y/N.”

“...I like red velvet,” you said. He smiled and chuckled. 

“That was my wife’s favorite,” he said. “Haven’t had that since her birthday. She would have liked you.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. You’re quite kind to me. She was always protective of me, even if she was the scaredy cat most of the time.”

“Can I ask how…” you said as he took another bite.

“Accident. Tractor trailer versus her car. He tried to miss her but it was too late. I wanted to hate the guy too but it was an accident and I couldn’t blame him for that.”

“My father died in a car crash when I was six. It does get better with time,” you said.

“That’s why you didn’t know if he had a picture of you in his wallet or not,” he said as you nodded. “You’re too young to have that much tragedy in life.”

“So are you.”

“I’m not young anymore.”

“You’re young and overly generous,” you said with a smile. 

“Misery loves company,” he said as you both heard a few feet above you running around. “Munchkins are up.”

“You want to make breakfast or should I?” you asked.

“Give me five minutes to get them in some clean clothes. Then I can show you how they like their eggs.”

“Sounds like a plan, Jensen.”

Later That Evening

“Y/N?” said Jensen, knocking on the door to your room. You got up from the couch and answered it, Jensen standing there with a smile. “The kids and I were wondering if you’d like your birthday cake for dessert.”

“You actually got me a cake?”

“I did indeed,” he said. You followed him down the hall and back into the living space, Arrow running up to you.

“Y/N! Are you sleeping over?” she asked as she gave you a hug.

“I live just down the hall now, cutie,” you said.

“Daddy, can we have ice cream too?” asked Zeppelin as he climbed up into his chair at the table.

“Sure thing bud. Girls, would you like some too?” he asked. Both the little ones said yes as he looked back at you.

“I really shouldn’t,” you said.

“We eat ice cream in this house,” he said.

“You don’t have to twist my arm over it,” you said. He got out the container and set it down on the table by the cake, lighting the match on the candle on top. “Oh please don’t-”

He started to sing though and the kids joined in, Jensen having a really good voice actually. You blew out the candle when they were through and he dished up some dessert for everyone.

“Y/N, can you read me a bedtime story later?” asked Zeppelin and you glanced at his father, Jensen making a face.

“Well Y/N’s not at work right now so she doesn’t have to unless she wants to,” said Jensen. “We’re already cutting into her-”

“I would love to, Zepp,” you said, his little face lighting up. “Maybe you guys want to join us?”

“JJ’s a little big to get read to at night I’ve been told,” said Jensen.

“Am not,” she said. “I can get a story too, right?”

“Of course,” you said. You took a bite of the cake and hummed. “This is really good.”

“I bought it myself,” said Jensen. 

“Well you have good taste,” you said. “In fact, I’m gonna have another slice.”

“Good,” he said as Zeppelin grabbed the ice cream container. “Alright, alright. You can have a bit more, bud.”

“Night, JJ,” you said, getting a hug from her as you put her back to bed an hour later. JJ smiled from her bed and you flicked off the light, pulling the door shut after you turned on her night light.

“Thanks for giving up your night with them. I didn’t mean to have that happen,” said Jensen as you headed downstairs with him.

“It’s no problem. It’s good bonding for us,” you said. You helped him pick up the plates at the table and wash them off, Jensen grabbing a bottle of whiskey from a tall cabinet as you covered up what was left of the cake. 

“Drink?” he asked.

“A small one,” you said. He poured a single into a whiskey glass and slid it over to you, smirking when you took a sip. “Oh that’s smooth.”

“Very,” he said, drinking from his own glass. “Thank you for tonight. JJ’s been…”

“She’s the oldest. She’s gonna have a harder time with it.”

“You were about her age when your dad died you said?”

“She’ll be okay. She’ll miss her but it won’t be a deep pain. She’ll have nice memories of her mom. She’s doing pretty good, trust me.”

“Can I ask another personal question?”

“I’m off the clock. Shoot,” you said.

“Your mom ever...try again with someone else?”

“Yes. Years later she found a good guy. He actually is who I stayed with after she passed. He’s married now, has some kids of his own but I know if I call him up he’d drop everything for me.”

“Good. I was getting afraid you were a complete Shakespeare tragedy,” he chuckled.

“Nah. I’m not at that level of crazy in my life,” you said. “As long as we’re off the clock, can I ask if you’re asking because you’re thinking of getting back out there?”

“I am. My wife kind of insisted on it. When we first got serious we had this deal that we’d go try again if something happened. I mean, I don’t cry everytime I think about her now. I can smile and be happy and that ache doesn’t try to swallow me up everyday anymore. I think it’s time I could get back out there.”

“I’d say it is. The kids are ready. They’ll understand.”

“You think your mom loved the second guy as much as your dad?”

“For sure. She was a bit of a free spirit but she didn’t think you had to have just one soulmate. She told me that after she’d met Ray. She said she got two so maybe I had two out there. I haven’t found either one of them yet so I’ll take increasing my odds as best I can.”

“Well you’re not gonna meet your soulmate sitting at home on Saturday nights, Y/N.”

“Just a lot of douchey guys,” you said.

“Ah. You need to meet a better kind of guy is all,” he said.

“Yeah see I’m thirty. All the good guys are married by now.”

“Oh all of them are taken. I didn’t realize that,” he said with a chuckle. “What am I then? Another douchebag?”

“You don’t count. You’re…”

“Too old for you?” he chuckled.

“My boss. Plus you’re like famous. You can go get like a victoria secret model or something.”

“Looks ain’t everything.”

“Maybe I ought to try older guys now that you say that,” you said.

“Y/N, you gotta be careful with that. I don’t want to see you get taken advantage of.”

“And this is why I watch netflix on Saturday nights,” you said.

“You serious about the older guy crack?” he asked. 

“I do find them more...attractive sometimes. I guess it depends on how old. Why?”

“I got a friend my age, might be interested?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” you said. “No offense to your friend but...I mean if he’s 42...I want kids and stuff you know? Although a dude it doesn’t really matter how old...I don’t know.”

“It was just a thought,” he said with a smile.

“I’ll think about it,” you said. “He’s not a weirdo, right.”

“No. He’s an actor. Something to think about,” he said.

“I will,” you said. “Thank you for the birthday cake, Jensen. You’re a good person.”

“I bought a cake.”

“Yeah but I haven’t really had one of those in years. You’re a good person.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said as you slid off your seat. “You’re free to hang out if you like.”

“I’m kinda tired. I won’t be getting up that early from now on I don’t think.”

“I completely understand,” he said. “Goodnight, Y/N.”

“Goodnight Jensen.”

________

A/N: Read Part 2 here!

#tell me a story bingo #SPN #supernatural #jensen x reader #jensen acklees #jensen ackles au #rpf #jensen series #rpf series #jensen ackles x reader #spn fanfic #jensen fanfic #jensen ackles fanfic #supernatural fanfic

[fizzingwizard]

Episode 34 arrives and it’s a MUCH NEEDED breath of first air. I mean, this episode could have actually BEEN a 99 Adventure episode. I guess at least one person on the production team has actually seen the old show at least once!

In my opinion, it doesn’t quite equal the cuteness, silliness, and personality of similar 99 episodes, but it comes very close, and it’s certainly the best we’ve had in a long long while.

And it’s all because of these two.

More below!

The episode bizarrely begins with Tailmon barking to communicate with Komondomon. Which raises the question, if no one could talk with Komondomon before because he can only bark, how were they communicating? Did Lopmon just tell Komondomon everything he needed to know and tell the kids “just follow his lead” or something??

Also Tailmon’s opening line being her barking is pretty surreal. And yet, fitting for a cat Digimon who is a dog at Child level.

The kids are shown taking a break - the first sign that this episode is gonna be A Bit Different.

Taichi: Something feels weird. Why aren’t we fighting?

Sora: Taichi, don’t you think you should rest once in a while?

Taichi: I mean, I do, I just got the impression the rest of the world didn’t agree...

Sora: By the way, why do we like this world that constantly tries to kill us and never gives us any pleasant memories so much? Why don’t we just take our partners to the human world and leave this place to its fate?

Taichi: How else am I gonna get an outlet for my pent up aggression and adrenaline junkie issues?

Sora: That’s your backstory?

Taichi: I’m a complicated man.

Komondomon then randomly jumps... into the sea. “Oh no, they’ll drown!” No, they won’t, because Komondomon has the ability to build a dome over his back trapping oxygen inside. Submarimon I get, but Komondomon?

As they dive, Tailmon explains what we learned last week about Millenniumon trying to resurrect himself with a new body. Apparently a very large fragment of him is located undersea in a place called Farga (transliteration TBA). She thinks resentfully about how she was almost absorbed into Millenniumon’s most recent resurrection effort.

Hikari tackles her with a comforting hug, which Tailmon seems a bit discomfited by. But does not object.

Tailmon considers defeating Millenniumon for good to be her personal mission as a Holy Digimon. Patamon sees her determination and does his best to put on his game face too. It’s like being glared at by a sock puppet.

Tailmon: I can’t allow Hikari to be put in danger. It’s my job as the Holy Digimon -

Tailmon: - gosh darnit and she’s just so cute too!

They wind up getting hit by a rip current or something?? and thrown into another weird submarine sort of thing. They discourteously break a hole in it and wind up inside a self-sustaining underwater kingdom, apparently, which instantly goes on Red Alert as Manbomon come to attack them.

This is Daipenmon, or Big Penguin Monster. I love him. He is glorious. Gaze upon his expression of perpetually stoned haze.

Daipenmon: You try steering this thing every day in and out nonstop without turning to hard drugs.

She attac!

While fighting, some Mantaraymon break in through the hole they made and the Manbomon go to drive them off as apparently they are not welcome. Then MarineAngemon appears in all her creepy glory and they sort everything out.

MarineAngemon: Oh, Tailmon, I see you’re a Holy Digimon! I can tell by your Holy Ring. I have one too.

Takeru: Patamon, why don’t you have a Holy Ring?

Patamon: .... -.-’

Look! See! So cute! They are floating on bubbles! All the kids get their own and each has an individual design that shows their personality. Here Tailmon tries desperately to keep Hikari from falling off. I missed this kind of thing! Flashbacks to Monzaemon’s Toytown...

Turns out MarineAngemon is extremely small and the scene before was all “don’t pay attention to that man behind the curtain” type scare tactics. Not very effective since no matter how big MarineAngemon gets, she’s still extremely adorable. She invites them to stay the night. I really expected it to be a trap, but it wasn’t.

OH MY GOD IS THAT FOOD ARE THEY EATING ACTUAL FOOD OMG OMG

quick someone alert the producers! Someone’s having FUN with this show! I was starting to think that was illegal or something!

It’s not AS fun as when they went to Devimon’s illusory castle in 99 Adventure and stuffed their faces after starving and living on potentially poisonous eggs for a week... but I’ll take it.

Meanwhile an undersea band plays music and Taichi ACTS LIKE THE FIFTH GRADE CHILD THAT HE IS. For about 0.5 seconds but HEY he did something child-like! holy cheez wiz batman!

Hikari is mysteriously absent so Tailmon goes to find her. Turns out she’s asked MarineAngemon to heal Komondomon who is tired and wounded from their journey. Tailmon’s like, “Aw, what a nice person she is.” I’m all for exceptionally kind-hearted Hikari, but taking care of Komondomon should have been priority 1 for EVERYONE. At least Sora should have thought of it. I can see Taichi being too forward-focused, and Takeru a dumb eight year old, but Sora would definitely have thought about Komondomon.

Clearly the show wanted to establish how nice Hikari is, but I hate when shows inadvertently make all the other characters look like asses just to trump up the current star...

Taichi’s digivice glows and...

... MINI KOUSHIROU RETURNS!!! Hurray!

Um, what’s that Sora’s drinking? A mimosa? o.O

Well anyway, Koushirou just shows up to remind everyone of the situation with the satellites and that things are getting worse.

Taichi: Do you have any idea what we can do about it?

Koushirou: No, but I’ll keep you posted.

Taichi: Thanks for nothing braindead

Koushirou: That’s it! You’re not the man I knew in episode 3 anymore! I want a divorce!

Taichi: Fine with me it’s not like you’re ever home anyway!

Koushirou: Well at least I’m not cheating with YAMATO!

Taichi: I HAVE NEEDS!

*cough*

Uh, I know Taichi is shorter than Sora, but he looks... pretty tiny here... lol. Or maybe Sora’s just had a growth spurt again.

They spend the night sleeping in bubbles. Aw.

By the way, question: the kids seem able to walk and breath normally in MarineAngemon’s kingdom... but the fish-type Digimon can also swim around normally. And it seems the kids wouldn’t be able to survive in the ocean itself, but they and the fish can both survive here? And yet bubbles? What... what kind of scientific anomaly is this place??

So... MarineAngemon’s kingdom appears to be a Whamon’s corpse! X’D Wow that’s dark.

They are attacked by Anomalocarimon! For reasons. Actually, they did explain earlier that the ocean Digimon have been more aggressive lately and it seems to be the influence of Millenniumon’s stone in Farga or whatever.

Daipenmon: This sucks I don’t have health insurance

Tailmon frantically tries to fight off the intruders while also keeping Hikari out of danger. This entire episode is about Tailmon wanting to protect Hikari and keep her at arm’s length so she doesn’t end up in danger, while Hikari just keeps trying to stay close to Tailmon and support her.

Tailmon: I can’t take you with me, Hikari. It’s too dangerous.

Hikari: Fine. Big brother, will you bring me into the heat of the action with you?

Taichi: Sure thing.

Tailmon: ...

In his defense, Taichi does seem a bit freaked when Hikari TAKES A FLYING LEAP off MetalGreymon toward Tailmon.

(no I really love that Taichi immediately understands why Hikari wants to fight and takes her right to her partner without even a token “nuu but you’re still a baby.” I mean, if Yamato’s cool with Takeru being in danger all the time, Taichi shouldn’t be much worried about it...

Hikari has a flashback! Turns out she’s heard Tailmon calling for her since she as a little kid!

She caught one of Angewomon’s feathers back then too.

Hikari promises Tailmon that she’ll be by her side. Awww.

Hands again.

Crest of Light! I kind of expect that we’ll find out about the Crests and what they mean really fast at the end of the season... although I’m still kind of hoping Mimi is mining Crest crystals atm.

Hikari is able to magically produce a Digivice... I’d completely forgot she didn’t have one till now.

Here I expected Tailmon would evolve, but instead, the power of Light appears to give everyone a power boost like it’s done in the past. They all glow with their Crest colors, kids and partners alike (except for some reason Tailmon glows yellow???) and launch a joint attack on Anomalocarimon and defeat him. Yay.

Then they say goodbye to MarineAngemon and go on their way, I guess to Farga.

So... yeah! it was a nice episode. It had a theme. There was fighting, but it didn’t overwhelm everything else. There was character development. I really can’t complain about it. And it was SHOCKING that Taichi had so few lines (compared to what’s become the norm - a GOOD shock but still I was like “omg what’s going on!!”)

I am just confused because why is this sort of episode happening when we haven’t seen it in ages? What happened in that interim between when they all met up after the first team split up and just now that prevented the show writers from having fun with the show and just writing nonstop fighting all the time? I’m so confused. It makes no sense. Still suspecting that they couldn’t get anyone to come in and voice characters for long enough so they just focused on Sanpei Yuuko/Taichi, but without the others they couldn’t figure out how to push the show forward and make it fun too... Idk. It’s so weird. But oh well. We got a good episode, and maybe it’s a sign of changes to come. I hope so.

Next week...

We get attacked by a scary looking Digimon and Hikari... Idk, thinks she can block the attack somehow? haha. Aw but look how awesome she is protecting her brother and Greymon!

Hikari gets touched by the dark powers! Oh noes!

And more cuteness.

The episode title name-drops Angewomon, which surprises me because I figured they’d hold off on her and give Tailmon Nefertimon for an evolution first. But *shrug* whatever! Looking forward to it.

#digimon adventure reboot #digimon adventure: #digimon adventure 2020 #fizz watches digimon 2020 #digimon #digi spoilers

[thebachelordiaries]

Clare seeks HIMBO: ‘The Bachelorette’ cast first impressions

The Covid-19 pandemic has been rough for the entire world, but Bachelor Nation faced some dark days too. Going eight months without a single new episode from The Bachelor franchise is something I would really like to not relive.

Fortunately, those dark days are over. Clare’s season has me sucked back in. 

The quality of this image is atrocious.

Most of these men—presuming they followed CDC’s social distancing guidelines— haven’t seen a woman in months, are touch deprived, possibly unemployed and contemplating moving back to their hometown while stalking the housing market on Zillow. Everyone’s desperate. That makes for some pretty good TV.

This season features men ranging from ages 26 to 41. We’ve got a boy band manager, a grooming specialist, several men who look like they masturbate in front of full length mirrors and even more who probably want me to join their MLM pyramid scheme. 

I’ve never been more ready to roast a bunch of men who have nightmares about going bald. It’s all I’ve wanted to do since March.

Let’s go:

AJ, 28, Software sales

AJ is the kind of guy who writes “Looking for the Pam to my Jim <3″ on his Bumble profile. His bio is generic and probably not reflective of who he is as a person. If I were Clare I’d swipe left.

Ben, 29, Army ranger veteran

“Ben's favorite indulgence is an ice bath.“ Well then.

Alexa, play “Run” by AWOLNATION.

Bennett, 36, Wealth management consultant

Bennett’s profile is the biggest red flag I’ve ever seen. This man says he is the total package but hasn’t always been "this successful and good looking.” But wait, there’s more: “According to Bennett, his high school girlfriend is the only girl he's ever had to work for.“

Can someone tell me what NYC neighborhood he lives in so I can blacklist it?

Blake M1, 31, Male grooming specialist

Blake’s just another stereotypical “29th round draft pick who sat on the bench of the practice team before getting cut, but claims he left the sport due to an injury on his own accord.” 

Blake M2, 29, Wildlife manager

This Blake is an outdoorsy Canadian who seems pretty genuine and cool. Unfortunately, he has the face of someone who’d get sent home on night one. I hope I’m wrong.

Brandon, 28, Real Estate Agent

Just another boring hot person. Nothing to see here.

Brendan, 30, Commercial roofer

Brandan, not to be confused for Brandon, “loves some good true crime, working out and hanging out with his friends.” I can’t even make fun of this man. We have the exact same interests. 

Chasen, 31, IT account executive

The Winklevoss twins are actually triplets and Chasen is their long lost brother. But more seriously, have you ever seen someone who looks more like their name than this man?

Chris, 27, Landscape design salesman

“Chris hopes to find a woman who is sharp and witty but also easygoing.” Chris, sweetheart, have you met Clare? Easygoing...? There’s still time back out of this before it’s too late.

Dale, 31, Former pro football wide receiver

Dale aggressively screams “Bachelor material.” I’d say he’s auditioning for that role but Matt James already scooped it up. Better luck next year, Daley.

Demar, 26, Spin cycling instructor

Demar is a “very popular spin instructor in Scottsdale and says he can get on that bike and spin to any beat thrown his way.” Imagine how many trophy wives Demar has f*cked? 

Eazy, 29, Sports marketing agent

Eazy is very similar to Dale on paper. Except his name is Eazy so he automatically loses that battle.

Ed, 33, Health care salesman

“Ed is looking to find a woman who has natural beauty without looking overly fake.” Ed deserves to die alone.

Garin, 34, Professor of Journalism

Garin’s bio is giving me hubby material vibes. And maybe a little bit of a “gets eliminated on night one” vibe too.

Ivan, 28, Aeronautical Engineer

Ivan, what are you doing here? We’re in a recession. Please go back to your normal job before it’s too late. 

Jason, 31, Former pro football linemen

“He is a former NFL offensive lineman who, after suffering too many concussions on the field, decided to prioritize his health and change the direction of his life.” A big, brawny HIMBO with CTE? I feel like he’s Clare’s type.

Jay, 29, Fitness director

There are too many things about Jay that I dislike and I’m trying to keep this brief. Jay says “it's time to take a break from worrying about others and focus on himself instead.” I am willing to bet money that this man has never made a woman c*m.

Jeremy, 40, Banker

Jeremy is the oldest contestant ever to come on "The Bachelorette,” which may seem like a monuments accomplishment but he’s literally only one year older than Clare. 

He also “hates Instagram models, both male and female,” so he should have a lot of fun here.

Joe, 36, Anesthesiologist

Before I even saw his profession and location, I thought Joe looked like a doctor I’d find on a NYC dating app...and...uh...I probably did see him on there now that I think about it.

Anyway, this man has apparently been through seven stages of hell while on the front lines fighting Covid-19 in NYC so I definitely think he deserves to find love. Someone marry him please.

Jordan C, 26, Software account executive

I can already tell Jordan is going to get the “I’m young but mature” edit which means he’s probably not going to be good TV.

Too bad someone a tad younger (like Tayshia) wasn’t the Bachelorette. I feel like they’d make a cute couple.

Jordan M., 30, Cyber security engineer

I was going to say something mean but Jordan’s into cyber security and I don’t want my blog to be deactivated, so never mind. Cast photos are historically bad so I’m sure he looks much better in real life.

Kenny, 39, Boy band manager

I could go for the obvious drags regarding this man’s profession (or his sh*tty chest tattoo, or his suspiciously boyish face relative to his age), but I like to think I’m more clever than that. 

I’d like to take this time to talk about men, who are obviously difficult people, who rant and rave about how they want an “easygoing” woman. Look into the mirror, bud. No, not the one you use to jerk off to your reflection; the mirror that looks into your soul. Out of respect for the rest of humankind, have some self-awareness. Or maybe just see a therapist.

Mike, 38, Digital media advisor

Mike is seemingly a decent catch, but I can’t help but wonder why he’s still single or how he never (accidentally or on purpose) impregnated a woman in his 38 years of life. 

And now that I’m thinking about it, do any of these men have children? I have yet to see any mention of it in their bios. But there are eight men left to review, so there’s still time.

Page, 37, Chef

I spoke too soon. Page is a father! He also hates football! I’m a fan of this man. I was initially going to drag him for his name and say that Page is not a real name. PAIGE is a real name. PAGE is a piece of paper. I’m allowed to say this because we have the same name except mine is spelled the correct way. Based on my (mostly positive) review of his cast bio, I have decided not to hold his name against him.

Riley, 30, Long Island City

Riley, once married with children, would like to go on a family vacation that consists of touring every single MLB stadium in the country. If i were his wife, I would simply never give this man children.

Robby, 30, Insurance broker

No more Robbys on The Bachelorette. Society has evolved past its need for more Robbys.

This Robby described his dream woman as: “Incredibly athletic and able to throw back a few beers with him after a day of hiking. She has a sweet personality and won't mind that he spends his Sundays on the golf course.”

Someone please give this man a sex doll. He just wants a hole.

Tyler C., 27, Lawyer

“Tyler C. is a badass lawyer who says he is a businessman by day and a cowboy by night.” How does that make him a lawyer? Does this mean he’s into cosplay? I’m confused.

Tyler S., 36, Music manager

Tyler makes an honorable living off riding his brother’s dick success as a country singer. “He just LOVES his job!” Uh yeah, I would too if I had a low-show, high-paying job off the merits of nepotism. It’s the American dream.

Yosef, 30, Medical device salesman

Another dad! He’s totally going to pull the “girl dad” narrative. That saying is kind of sexist to me but the masses generally eat it up, so I’m fairly confident Yosef will get the "sweet guy” edit he’s looking for.

Zac C., 36, Addiction specialist

“He loves Philadelphia sports and dreams of sharing a Philly Cheesesteak with his future wife while watching the Eagles win a Super Bowl.” This man is so South Jersey it hurts. 

On a more serious note, I don’t think anyone in recent history has spoken openly about their personal struggle with addiction on this show, so I hope Zac gets a chance to tell his story. 

Zach J., 37, Cleaning service owner

Zach is seemingly obsessed with Clare already and hopes to introduce her to his mom as his fiancée. Since Zach watched Clare on Juan Pablo’s season, you’d think he’d know that Clare would first meet his mom during the final four hometown dates. Assuming he makes it that far. My prediction is that he won’t.

Final thoughts

After eight long months Bachelor Mondays are back!!!

Uhh....wait.

Actually, we now have the less-exciting Bachelor Tuesdays. Yeah, it definitely doesn’t have the same ring to it. But I’ll take anything at this point.

Here are my final predictions:

First impression rose: Dale. It just looks like he can turn on the bullsh*t charm

Final rose: Jason. Clare wants a HIMBO I just know it.

Bachelor: nobody (Matt James is The Bachelor)

Most likely to get engaged on Bachelor in Paradise: Blake M2

Most likely to get canceled online: Bennett

Most likely to get sent home night one but deserve better: Chris

Who are your favorite men cast on this season?

#The Bachelorette #abc #clare crawley #chris harrison #photo credit: ABC

[crowdedimagines]

The Perfect Exchange - David Dobrik (1)

an// this is going to be the start to a series! i’m not sure how long it’s going to be, that depends on the feedback!!! short little intro here:) 

summary//david needs a green card and the reader needs health insurance!

~

“Natalie, what exactly are you talking about?” I ask, setting down my fork to give her my full attention.

“I know it’s crazy, but it really could work.” She smiles at me as if she hasn’t just brought up one of the wildest things I’ve ever heard. 

“So you’re saying that you want me to marry your boss, so I can get health insurance?” I restate, trying to compose all of what Natalie had suggested.

“And then David can get a green card.”

When I told Natalie that my parents took me off of their insurance plan, I have already practically drained them over medical bills over the years. Moving out to Los Angeles was the last straw, my last hope to at least be happy and live my dream. Natalie knew that the few months I have been here I have been struggling to get work and still pay for medication.

“I’ve talked about David before, you know that he’s a good guy. I wouldn’t bring this up if I thought it was a bad idea for either of you.”

I nod to show that I’m listening while still thinking. 

“Have you talked to him about it at all?” I question.

“I have, he’s not completely on board, but he’s desperate.”

“Thanks.” I roll my eyes with a laugh. I think it’s better this way anyway. I would be way more hesitant if he was already on board without even having met me.

“Well, so are you.” Natalie teases. “It’s a win-win. You’ll be on his health plan after that, he can help take care of expenses.”

I take a deep breath and look over to meet her eyes. She’s smirking, already liking having a plan.

“Let me think on it.”

“Okay!” She grins, “Take all the time you need. Well, not all the time, David needs to have a green card by like last week, but take your time.”

Natalie and I finish up the rest of our meal before going our separate ways. The drive back to my apartment I can’t stop thinking it over and over again in my head. When Natalie asked to meet for supper, I had no idea halfway through the meal she would propose a crazy plan like this. Marrying a man I have never met for health insurance.

I was born with a heart disease, which sucks, obviously, but it was never actually that bad. That is until I told my parents I wanted to move out to L.A. That’s when they decided to cut me off financially, in hopes of getting me to stay. They were struggling enough as it is, I needed to get out of there and stop feeling like a burden.

I can afford my rent, my car, and my student loans but adding on all of my medical bills on top of that is impossible. Not with the money I’m making right now at least.

“This is crazy.” I mutter to myself as I lean against my apartment door. It’s been a long day, working a shift this morning and then going out.

I was born with a heart disease, my valves and arteries are too small. Which leads to fatigue, shortness of breath, sleep problems, chest pain, and so many different doctors. My younger years I spent more time in a hospital than out on a playground.

The past three months I’ve been able to pay for about half of my usual medications. Having health insurance would change all of that. I would be able to have a life outside of work again. I could have full energy and get treatments when I need them without hesitation.

I throw myself on my bed and grab my phone out of my bag. I find Natalie’s contact and she picks it up almost instantly.

“When can I meet him?”

-

The next day I didn’t have a shift at the cafe, Natalie told me I could stop by to meet everyone. She said that it would be likely that there’s a group a people hanging out there.

I debate for way too long in my closet of what to wear, but I know that I need to make a good impression on these new people! I settle on natural makeup and one of my favorite outfits that is simultaneously cute and comfortable. 

I take an uber to the address that Nat gave me. When Natalie said he had money, she wasn’t joking. The house in the hills, the cars, it seems like he’s got it all up here. I tuck my hair behind my ear and lightly knock at the front door.

Natalie runs over to the door, smiling as it swings open.

“Y/n!” She pulls me in for a hug.

“Hi.” I grin.

She opens the door wider to let me in, I follow her further into the house where I notice there’s lots of people here.

“Hey everybody, this is Y/n!” She nods towards me.

“Hey, you guys.” I wave around to the crowd of people.

“Okay so this is Carly, Erin, Matt, Jeff, Corinna, Zane, Jason, Joe, and finally David.” Natalie goes around introducing me to everyone.

“Nice to meet you all, especially the future husband.” I tease.

“Yeah, you too.” David grins.

I can already tell he’s a good guy, not that I didn’t trust Natalie’s opinion of him, but it’s different getting a vibe from him myself. When Natalie and I were in college together she talked about David all of the time, telling me stories. I knew he must be worth something when she dropped out and moved to California.

“So, you’re going to marry our boy David?” Zane asks, grinning.

“I might be, we’ll see how today goes.”

A few of the group let out an ‘ooh’ with a laugh. I can already tell it’s easy to find a place in the group.

“So, Y/n, where are you from?” Erin asks.

“Chicago. Born and raised.” I grin, “That’s where I met Nat, at school.”

“Wait so you went to school with Natalie and David?” Matt questions.

“No, college with Nat.” I explain, “We were on the same floor of our dorm freshman year.”

“Yeah, we practically lived together because we both hated our roommates.” Natalie laughs, knocking her shoulder into mine lightly.

The rest of the room picks up with conversation, some moments it feels slightly like an interrogation with all of the questions they’re throwing at me. It feels good though to have a group of friends. It’s been nice to get to know everyone a little better. David is a really funny and charming guy. 

“Hey uh Y/n?” David asks, grabbing my attention.

The room falls quiet, I turn my head to face him.

“Yeah?”

“Can we go talk? Outside?” He nods his head back towards his yard.

“Of course.” I get up from the couch and follow up to the sliding glass doors. Neither of us are oblivious to the whispers being exchanged.

“I’m happy to say that you live up to Natalie’s hype.” I grin, we both take a seat on one of his lounge chairs. “Don’t tell her I said that though, she’d be pissed if you knew she actually enjoys your company.”

“Well that’s good to hear.” David smiles, “You definitely live up to the name too. The first year Natalie was out here she wouldn’t shut up about you. It was almost annoying.”

“Well that’s great.” I laugh, “So how do you feel about all of this?”

David follows my hand as I gesture between the two of us.

“It’s scary to say the least.” He pauses to run one of his hands through his hair, “But you seem really nice, I feel like I can trust you. You blend in with the rest of my friends really well.”

“Yeah, they’re definitely a fun crowd.” I glance back over my shoulder towards the house.

“How do you feel about it?”

“I need this if I’m being completely honest. I have been struggling since I came out here. I don’t know how much Nat told you, but I have a heart disease. I’ve had it since I was a child, my parents wanted to keep me close because all they do is worry. I have fought to travel and live independently, after I graduated I moved here. Which also got me cut off from their insurance.”

“Wow, that’s…” David exhales looking somewhat dumbfounded.

“A lot. I know, I’m sorry to dump that on you, I just want to give you the full story.”

“No, it’s good! I’m glad you did. We both need this. I am being threatened to be kicked out of the country I grew up in. I pay taxes here, yet I’m not allowed to stay here, Unless I get a green card. My DACA lawyer is guessing years before I could get approved, that’s assuming Trump doesn’t kick me out before that. If I even get a speeding ticket, it can be grounds for deportation.”

“Wow.” I lean back against the chair.

“Yeah, it’s a lot.” He leans over too, his leg pressing on mine.

“So, you wanna do this?” He whips his head to looks at me.

“I think I’m in.” I let out a huff of air, “This is crazy isn’t it?”

“Absolutely insane.” David conquers with a laugh.

“Let's do it.”

~

FEEDBACK PLZ

PART TWO

#david dobrik imagines #david dobrik imagine #david dobrik x reader #david dobrik x read #david dobrik x you #david dobrik #vlog squad imagines #vlog squad #natalie mariduena

[littlehouseofkarlacade]

k so since i’ve been hiding the fact that i’ve been depressed and frustrated af lately, i’m just gonna slam it all here under a read more. ignore if you want, actually please do, it’s just me bitching again--

so holy shit the way america is rn frustrates the absolute hell out of me. covid has only made it worse; it feels like we’re never gonna get out of this fuckin’ pandemic because of people screaming that their rights are being violated bc they’re being asked to wear masks (?????? you’d fuckin’ hate it in asia then, ya goddamn snowflakes) and having parties all over the place, plus there’s all the politics shit that i’m not even going to get into, and just... it’s so damn hard to actually live here because everything costs a motherfuckin’ fortune. for fuck’s sake, i am a woman making $15 an hour at a part time job that gives me only 12-15 hours a week, how the fuck am i gonna succeed in anything with that?!

holy fuck. i want so many things that are just out of reach, it feels like. i want to help sylvie start HRT so she can finally start kicking gender dysphoria’s ass and actually start being happy with herself and her body, but considering she has practically 0 health insurance, she makes even less than i do, and it’s fuckin god-tier expensive, i have no idea where to even start with that. a friend of mine told me about planned parenthood (which would probably be a really good idea for both of us, considering i’ve never had my, uh, inner workings checked out), but i have no idea if there’s even one in our area or anything, or how we’d go about starting anything regarding that. it’s so goddamn frustrating, because i hate seeing her hate herself and her body so much because she’s got the wrong goddamn one, and i feel like she’s just got this general feeling of hopelessness around the entire thing, and i want to show her that it is reachable for her, but... how am i supposed to do that if i don’t even know where to begin?!

ALSO, not even relating to that

i want a house. not an apartment, not to keep living with people i barely know, but my own actual goddamn house. my credit score is lookin’ pretty damn good right now -- it’s almost in the 700s, but... i have no idea where to start with that either. and like... i’m afraid, as well. because if we go buy a house, and then something happens where we can’t afford things with the house anymore, then we’re fuckin’ homeless. and like. i’ve been homeless before -- not out on the streets, but i was couchsurfing for a good year and a half, and that sucked -- and i never want that to happen again. rent is expensive as fuck, more than both of us put together can afford, especially with all of sylvia’s bills. our roommate kicked us out of our old place, so we had to quickly scramble to find a place, so we’re living with a couple of sylvia’s friends, and i personally cannot stand it. it’s nothing against them, really, i just. i hate being almost 29 and still having to rely on others for a place to fucking live. it’s fucking godawful. and considering i don’t have any family members or anything that will help me, it’s so... alskdjflkdsal;afd

plus we’re not even in our original city anymore, we’re stuck on a goddamn island that we have to pay a toll to drive back onto every time we go home from work, so that fuckin’ sucks. and i miss our old city so much and it hurts so bad that we don’t live there anymore; i was really at home there, it was the first place where i really felt i could be myself and just... leaving there fucking sucked. i want to go back, and i fully intend to. someday. when i can actually afford things like a goddamn house. why are houses so goddamn expensive anyway; it’s like fuckin’ robbery. idk.

PLUS, since i graduated from community college this past semester, i’m currently on a break, and i fully intend to go back to university, hopefully in fall semester. BUT, idk, it looks like i’m gonna have to push that back to spring 2022, considering we don’t have a place of our own, i can’t drive (was going to get my permit this past summer but covid fucked that in the ass), and while we don’t want to live here, i have no idea where we will be living, and location matters a lot for me since i can’t fuckin’ drive!! i can’t even start applying to universities until we figure that out, and it’s just... god. i feel like i’m spinning my goddamn wheels again, and i fucking hate that feeling.

this is all over the goddamn place and i’m so sorry for that, but i’m just so frustrated and thinking on all of it makes me so fucking depressed that most days lately i just feel like giving up. stop having goals, try to be content working at fuckin target for the rest of my life (even though it makes me wanna die). but goddammit, i’m too fuckin’ ambitious for that (before jkr turned into a fuckin’ bitch, i always got slytherin house because that’s me, kids), and i apparently can’t be satisfied with what i already have because i’m a spoiled-ass bitch, i guess. i always want better. like. i feel like i have to make something of myself before i’m allowed to feel happy and content with my life, and that’s frustrating too. it’s like... i dunno. things aren’t happening the way i want them to, and i just get pissed off at myself for allowing things to happen as they are.

just... god. fuck off. eat the rich. fuck capitalism. i don’t want to be a millionaire or anything. i just want to make enough to not have to live paycheck to paycheck and be able to actually afford things i want without feeling fuckin’ guilty about it. i mean jfc i spent almost $50 on tea shit on this past paycheck bc i got a bonus from target corporate so i had some extra money, but i still feel guilty about it!! and. jesus christ. i don’t know where i went wrong. probably being born to poor, abusive people is where i went wrong.

fuck off.

having mental illness and being poor is. fucking awful. i don’t wish it on anyone.

i just want things to be betterrrrrrr for fuck’s sake.

the end

#karla is frustrated #real talk with karla

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga Continues…

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link is here: http://paypal.me/mihaelkai .

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle committing to right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals/Friends: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

#transcrowdfund #trans crowd fund #please help #please consider donating #donation #donations

[dhominis]

Life updates! Rambling, happy. CW for disordered eating and Bad Family Dynamics. (Happy despite this.)

I’ve been in my new apartment for a while; it‘s amazing and I love having a place that is mine. A few days after I moved in, I stayed over at my girlfriend’s house because I didn’t really want to put the effort into going all the way back to my apartment and I had this thought: I want to go home.

This is not something I’ve experienced before. Home always has been my parents’ house, and home’s always been a place for caution, for guardedness. It has not historically been a place I wanted to stay. It’s been a place that’s better than the alternatives, but never somewhere that was itself comforting.

...And now going home means I get to go into my room (and it’s mine, I would be entirely justified in being angry if someone went into it and looked through my things and took things and questioned me about what they found). And then I can reorganize my room if I want (I can move furniture around! I can buy furniture! I can throw broken things away if I want to!), I can cook something, take a shower without having to justify why I’m taking a shower, I can clean up the side yard if I’m restless, I can clean the apartment. I can be in my room on my phone talking to my girlfriend, and probably nobody is listening in, and if somebody is listening in that’s still not dangerous. I can go on a walk, I can go over to a friend’s place, I can meet people somewhere, and I don’t have to explain this.

I don’t have to be on guard.

Been doing social things – poly community and, uh, adjacent less-SFW communities. Socializing is... easier now. (A lot of things are easier!) I am still extremely awkward but not in an intractable way; I expect this to dissipate with practice. People like me. They’ll like me more when I have better social skills and this is achievable.

...I asked a cute girl what her favorite pathogen/parasite was (this was relevant to the conversation!) and she said she really liked botflies and just. I can’t. I have always had to be the one who brings up botflies! Talking about botflies historically has worked out really well for me – it’s a great filter? – and I am so incredibly enthused about this. (We’re getting coffee tomorrow. I really need evo-bio disease-bio friends, and she is smart and nice and extroverted and gives great hugs. Things like “asking cool people to get coffee with me” also are easier. And “sending an email” and “answering the phone” and a lot of things along those lines. There has been a strangely global reduction in inhibition and anxiety.)

I got a job. Not the call center one I mentioned, instead entry-level healthcare. It’s pretty much ideal! Learning skills, interacting with people, IIRC they’ll do some tuition reimbursement if I go into healthcare (that’ll help until I hit the FAFSA independent student age cutoff). Fast-paced work, twelve-hour shifts and free time on my days off. Not having to self-motivate. I think I need that right now. The person who suggested I apply for this job can model my brain surprisingly well.

(In some contexts better than I can. I hadn’t generated this as a career option, hadn’t thought it would be even sort of good until he explained how it might fit. A post a while ago: "...he understands, I think, the need to be active and moving, doing a lot of different things, short feedback cycles. For me – probably for him as well – high-intensity stressful periods of limited duration are regulating or calming, not harmful. I keep fantasizing about getting the job, just going nonstop at maximum intensity for those twelve-hour shifts, and then coming home and… not doing that. Being able to use the time for other things, hopefully having burned off some of the excess energy so I’m not pacing around organizing things really fast for twelve hours at home.”)

And they’re giving me health insurance after a few months.

It’s... I really need enrichment. I need to be busy. Right now I am not in a high-stress environment and I am waiting for things to happen, there is not much I can get done right now (lots of cooking, going on walks, occasional bodyweight exercise, self-teaching reading ECG strips, but I am not yet good at self-motivation). I am the human equivalent of a pretty competent border collie that will, if left without adequate stimulation, herd every squirrel in the neighborhood into your kitchen.

But I start work Monday, and after that things will be easier.

Almost everything has, in fact, been easy. I can feel many of the anxieties falling away, many of the maladaptive behaviors. I am investing effort in this, but not enough to merit the improvement.

I have been realizing that living with my parents took up so much mental bandwidth. The personality and cognitive and life-skills improvements that I’ve seen in the few brief periods I’ve been away from them... I should’ve left earlier, of course. I would have been okay. I didn’t know that before recently, but it would’ve have been better.

So the cognitive changes are substantial. Behavioral too. I have for a while had great difficulty in eating adequate food – I mean, often going a few days without eating, going months with inadequate caloric intake, rapid enough unintentional weight loss that doctors have been loudly concerned. (There is a physical thing that I have been blaming completely for this, but honestly it’s not just that, there’s an irrational aversion to eating. Caloric deprivation always makes me want to eat less – want to hoard food, conserve it for when I really need it. I go into a famine mindset very easily; when hungry, I find it difficult to alieve that food is available. And the physical problems are worsened by not wanting to eat. I tolerate food worse when I don’t make myself eat regularly.)

It’s not effortless; minor inconveniences tend to make me want to stop eating and I don’t ever really want food. (Cooking and baking my own food helps. It is easier to want to eat when eating is part of a skill-building process.) But now, and not before: I need adequate nutrition and when I don’t want to eat I can just tell myself no, you need food, you want to feed yourself, you don’t want to lose muscle mass, you don’t want to lose fat, you don’t have to conserve food because there will always be enough. And I miss meals sometimes, still... but when that happens, I can make myself eat when I notice. Peanut butter interspersed with enough water doesn’t really feel like food and I can pretty much always do that.

And sleeping. And physical activity. And social interaction. It is getting easier to give myself the things I need. Sometimes when you do not have any realistic chance of global comfort, when your life will despite your best efforts be almost unbearably unpleasant, choosing your own mode of suffering makes it easier to tolerate. Adjusting to a situation in which I do not need to expect suffering is... strange.

So – I got a job and an apartment and I’m finding a friend group and I am doing okay with finances, and long-term things will be okay, and my brain has so many things wrong with it but I am fixing myself.

This all has been startlingly easy so far and I am waiting for something to go wrong. This is prudent – something will go wrong eventually, I’ll be able to handle it but it will happen – and also just really neurotic. Still I’m less neurotic than at any other point in my life.

And I have health insurance! I probably can get an ADHD evaluation and treatment, therapy if I decide that’s a good idea, whatever. (Potential issue with ADHD treatment: I’d have to go to the pharmacy like every month, it would suck so much, I have never done this successfully. Thankfully there is a pharmacy in my workplace. I am so lucky.) And I have social supports, I have a community. My roommates are great. I have my partner; she’s unbelievably amazing.

Leaving has gone better than the realistic best-case scenarios I’d generated. It’s been like a month and there is definitely time for things to go badly but I also think things going badly will be less bad than I had expected it to be, if that makes sense.

I’m happy. I expect to stay that way.

#news from meatspace #personal #original post #happyblogging #disordered eating cw #brain wrangling

[adambstingus]

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

Poverty is a well-worn subject here at Cracked. John Cheese has talked about it a lot, C. Coville discussed legal loopholes that can screw the poor, and we’ve also covered myths the media perpetrates. And now it’s my turn to moderately wealthsplain the subject.

Unlike John and others, I grew up one year’s worth of acoustic guitar lessons away from being the most stereotypical middle-class white kid ever. I didn’t take yearly vacations to private islands to hunt men for sport, but I also never wanted for clothes and video games. And while us suburban kids were taught that it’s good to help the poor, we were also accidentally taught to treat them with disdain. Here’s how.

5

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Pinterest

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

It’s all variations on the same theme: Money can’t buy happiness, true wealth comes from friendship and experiences, you don’t need the solid gold butt plug when the polymer one feels identical inside of you, etc. Movies teach it, music teaches it, our parents teach it — money is useless if you aren’t living. It’s not an inherently bad message, but try telling people at the homeless shelter to count the blessings that money can’t buy, and see how long it takes before you’ll feel blessed that you can afford health insurance.

Outside of images that the Care Bears would find insipid, “Money can’t buy happiness” is what middle-class people tell each other when someone is trying to decide between two different jobs. “I make 70k right now and the new gig only plays 60k, so I wouldn’t be able to travel as much. But I’d have more free time to play Ultimate, the benefits are better, and there’s no way my new manager could be any worse than my current one.” That’s an important decision to the person making it, but they’re debating between two different kinds of comfort. It’s safely assumed that the money they will need to exist will always be there. It would be nice to have more — to be able to go to more restaurants or to justify buying a second Roomba because deep down you know that the first one is lonely — but there’s always enough to keep the lights on and the kitchen stocked.

You may have seen the study that claimed $70,000 a year is the ideal salary — after that, more money generally doesn’t make you happier. Well, that’s great news for people hovering around that benchmark, but if you’re poor, more money will abso-fucking-lutely make you happier. More money means healthier food, or a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. It can mean knowing the rent is paid for next month, or being able to afford medication.

The middle class isn’t immune to money problems, especially if there are kids in the mix. Getting laid off at the wrong time sucks, no matter what your income is. But the middle-class people with money problems I’ve known were generally suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They had no savings because they wanted the new car or the luxury vacation. They wanted one of those experiences they were constantly told was more important than money, because the money for day-to-day necessities was always there, right up until it wasn’t.

That’s part of the reason, I think, so many middle-class people laugh at campaigns to raise the minimum wage. “You want 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers? How about you just hold off on the new TV until you get a real job?” The middle class generally fluctuates between being able to afford a nice vacation one year and having to settle for a few trips to the movies the next. The poor can fluctuate between paying bills and being out on the street. But the idea that such essentials could just go unpaid is unfathomable, right up until you experience it.

4

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

When I was growing up, there was never a question of whether or not I was going to college. That’s partially because the idea of my spindly idiot ass learning a technical trade or doing manual labor is the first step in creating an “Epic Fail!!!” YouTube video, but mostly because my parents had a fund set up for me. (It helped that I live in a country where a post-secondary education doesn’t cost roughly eight quadrillion dollars a semester.)

So jobs that didn’t require a degree were presented to us as warning signs. “You better study hard, or else you’re going to end up just like that bull masturbator for the rest of your life! And I didn’t intend that pun, so don’t giggle!” Becoming a janitor or a gas station attendant or an internet comedy writer would have been considered a disappointment, an inability to take advantage of the gifts that were offered to us. Poverty was considered a moral failing.

No one ever just came out and said that, but the implication was always there. We tend to assume that other people are basically like us until they prove otherwise, which is why I’m constantly shocked to discover that most people don’t like my favorite homoerotic golf academy anime, Wood Strokes. So we were never taught that working as a dishwasher or a grocery store clerk or a sperm bank fluffer could be an important stepping stone for someone with a different background than us. We were also never taught that, you know, it’s still a goddamn job where someone shows up and puts work in and gets paid for their time. They were always just associated with squandered potential.

And man, when you hear that message constantly, it’s hard to shake. It’s easy to glance at a middle-aged dude working the checkout counter and automatically think “Well, I bet he’s not the brightest guy around” or “Oh shit, is that what happened to Matthew Lawrence?” It’s not malicious — not initially. Being told to take advantage of your opportunities is not a bad message. But when that message is driven into you for decades, it creates a stigma around certain jobs. And from some people, it produces plenty of snide remarks about how the people working those jobs should get better ones, as if the person who’s been a server for seven years has never considered just popping down to the job store and picking up a career in architecture.

Janitors and baristas keep society running as much as anyone else. If all of America’s coffee shops shut down for a day, the country would experience a nationwide narcolepsy epidemic crossed with The Purge. But when you grow up in the middle class, the only thing you’re taught about such jobs is that you should get one as a teenager to build character, and then thank God that you’ll never have to work one again as long as you don’t fuck up in life. And as long as we consider that a sign of our superior work ethic instead of birth luck, we’re going to keep dismissing as pathetic the jobs we’d all get angry about if they vanished tomorrow.

3

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

An education isn’t the only thing that most middle-class kids can assume they’ll get. A car to borrow, a phone, 20 bucks for when you really want to take a girl to what you assumed was a bad movie so you could make out in the back row but then it turns out that she’s actually super into the plot of Gigli and wants to focus on it even though you were all set to reach second base and so you end up getting a confused erection to Al Pacino and it inadvertently shapes your formative years … you know, all the little things that are part of growing up in Middle America.

That’s the end result of assuming that a good job awaits you, and that money is for throwing at problems and buying pizza instead of something to stress out about. Water heater broke? No worries, we’ll just have to eat in the rest of the month to make up for it. Shoes all worn out? Well, you can’t go to school like that, so go get some new ones. Gone on a losing streak at the Pokemon Card League and the groupies have started drifting off to the other players? Better pick up a few booster packs to get back in the game. You know you can’t get greedy and start buying Armani, but as long as your needs are modest, the money will always be there.

So the idea of 20 bucks making or breaking someone is impossible to appreciate. It’s just not a concept that clicks in our heads. It makes sense on a logical level, sure — you need money, and you don’t have it, and that sucks. But when you’re raised in comfort, you can’t put yourself in that head space emotionally. You can’t understand the stress, or the fear that you might not be able to feed your kids. The closest we can get is watching Gwyneth Paltrow try and hilariously fail to live on a tiny food budget before going back to her $4,000 kale cleanses. That’s kind of like empathy, right?

And because it’s tough to relate to, it’s tough to talk about. If someone tells me that they never got Christmas presents growing up, all I can respond with is “Uh, yeah, that sounds like it sucked. Well … one time my grandma accidentally got me Super Murpio 67, so … I hear you.” Starting a conversation with a bunch of middle-class people about poverty is like bringing up Trayvon Martin at a country club. Everyone trips over everyone else’s words to talk about how tragic it is, but then they distance themselves from the problem and the “buts” start coming out. And to further compound the issue …

2

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

When I was growing up, my exposure to poverty was largely limited to sitcom families who would talk about how poor they were, but were still able to go on a wacky adventure every week. The Simpsons kept running into money troubles in their early years, but their house looked the same as mine. Even the family from Roseanne, the classic working-class sitcom, owned a house that’s a palace compared to what a lot of people live in. The problem with portraying poverty in sitcoms is that it’s hard to get laughs out of eviction and early deaths caused by crippling medical debt, so the lesson always ends up being “Poor people struggle with money sometimes, but in the end they always get by, and they have lots of laughs while doing it!” Sitcoms make being poor look fun.

Beyond that, once or twice a year, I’d go to some kid’s birthday party and notice that his house was a lot smaller and more run down than mine. One of the kids who always got talked about in a slightly different tone of voice by the adults. I never gave it much thought because we went to the same school and both liked Nintendo — how different could our lives possibly be? Maybe I’d see a story on the news that would put a positive spin on the issue. (“Look at how many volunteers with beautiful families showed up to the soup kitchen to help feed these filthy hobos!”) Beyond that, the middle class just doesn’t think about poverty.

We’re always looking up, always wanting to go to the Christmas party at the rich friend’s house so we can get a taste of what we’re aspiring to. There’s rarely a reason to go to the poor part of town. Tell jokes about it, sure, but go? We never have to leave the bubble, so we never learn what real poverty looks like. Poor people become invisible, this mysterious Other, a group that serves you food, and in return, you throw a couple of non-perishables and toys into donation bins for them over the holidays.

Oh yeah, the middle class loves to donate food and toys and clothes and gently used ball gags and all sorts of other crap that we weren’t using anyway. Food banks actually need money far more than they need your creamed corn that’s going to expire in two weeks, because money just goes further. But people who will gladly part with 12 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese and some Funyuns they found under the sofa get leery when it comes to handing over money, even though we’re supposedly under the impression that we don’t need it ourselves to be happy.

That’s partially just because it’s more satisfying to give stuff instead of money — you can imagine some happy kid playing with your old Lego, and you get to clean out your closet. But remember, we’re taught that the poor are stupid and lazy. We sit around telling each other stories about how our friend’s cousin’s boyfriend knows a guy who spent his welfare check on beer and weed. These are campfire horror stories for the most tedious suburbanites, and they’re told in the hot tubs that they probably shouldn’t have bought until the next mortgage payment cleared. We can’t trust those people with money, because if they were smart enough to manage it properly, they’d be smart enough to have a better job. Also, they probably all have hooks for hands and murder teenagers while they’re making out in their cars. Hey, we learn so little about poor people that it’s just as believable.

1

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

I’ve known people with movie theaters in their homes and four cars in their garage who are convinced that society is against them, that life is a gloomy parade of suffering because their property taxes went up a bit. That’s stereotypical rich people behavior, but it’s there in the middle class too, in subtler ways. I live in a city where the economy revolves around a boom and bust industry, so people tend to make good money while complaining about taxes for a few years, then get laid off and go on government benefits for a while, and then get a new job and go back to complaining about the government. And if you watch the cycle, you see the same “us against the world” mentality, just with fewer BMWs in the mix.

When middle-class people get laid off and go on welfare, they blame the economy, or their former employer, or the government. They never blame themselves. And they shouldn’t! Much like a whale’s erection, economies are big, confusing things that can’t be controlled by the average person. It’s not like they left photocopies of their asshole on the boss’ desk. They paid into the welfare system with their taxes when times were good, and now they’re using the system for exactly what it’s intended: helping you out when you’re unlucky. It’s bridging the gap until you, a hard-working person who just caught a tough break, gets another job.

Except when poor people use the system, it’s none of those things. Suddenly they’re not getting help; they’re just dumb, lazy leeches. Plenty of middle-class people are more empathetic and generous than I’ll ever be, but the worst instinct of the middle class is to blame the system when the system fails us, then lecture poor people when the system fails them. I’ve heard the condescending explanations about how the world really works (which usually come out after a few beers when no actual poor people are around because the speaker would never be brave enough to say it to their faces) more times than I can count.

The middle class has a weird relationship with the rich — we alternate between complaining about them and wishing we were them. Money can’t buy happiness, but a yacht certainly wouldn’t hurt matters. Even if we don’t like the rich, there’s always the pipe dream that we could be them. But no one dreams about being poor, unless you’re into an incredibly specific kind of role-playing.

Being poor is a problem (practically, not morally), and a problem is either the fault of the person or the fault of circumstances beyond their control. The latter means we in the middle class might have to do something about it — or, God forbid, reflect upon our lifestyles, which is just the worst. It’s much, much easier to assume that we’re fine, that ultra-rich politicians and celebrities and investment bankers are the ones being condescending and awful to the poor, but also that poor people could probably stand to work a little harder. So, uh … sorry about all of that. I’ll donate some food at Christmas, though!

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty-2/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/183082791437

[allofbeercom]

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

Poverty is a well-worn subject here at Cracked. John Cheese has talked about it a lot, C. Coville discussed legal loopholes that can screw the poor, and we’ve also covered myths the media perpetrates. And now it’s my turn to moderately wealthsplain the subject.

Unlike John and others, I grew up one year’s worth of acoustic guitar lessons away from being the most stereotypical middle-class white kid ever. I didn’t take yearly vacations to private islands to hunt men for sport, but I also never wanted for clothes and video games. And while us suburban kids were taught that it’s good to help the poor, we were also accidentally taught to treat them with disdain. Here’s how.

5

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Pinterest

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

It’s all variations on the same theme: Money can’t buy happiness, true wealth comes from friendship and experiences, you don’t need the solid gold butt plug when the polymer one feels identical inside of you, etc. Movies teach it, music teaches it, our parents teach it — money is useless if you aren’t living. It’s not an inherently bad message, but try telling people at the homeless shelter to count the blessings that money can’t buy, and see how long it takes before you’ll feel blessed that you can afford health insurance.

Outside of images that the Care Bears would find insipid, “Money can’t buy happiness” is what middle-class people tell each other when someone is trying to decide between two different jobs. “I make 70k right now and the new gig only plays 60k, so I wouldn’t be able to travel as much. But I’d have more free time to play Ultimate, the benefits are better, and there’s no way my new manager could be any worse than my current one.” That’s an important decision to the person making it, but they’re debating between two different kinds of comfort. It’s safely assumed that the money they will need to exist will always be there. It would be nice to have more — to be able to go to more restaurants or to justify buying a second Roomba because deep down you know that the first one is lonely — but there’s always enough to keep the lights on and the kitchen stocked.

You may have seen the study that claimed $70,000 a year is the ideal salary — after that, more money generally doesn’t make you happier. Well, that’s great news for people hovering around that benchmark, but if you’re poor, more money will abso-fucking-lutely make you happier. More money means healthier food, or a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. It can mean knowing the rent is paid for next month, or being able to afford medication.

The middle class isn’t immune to money problems, especially if there are kids in the mix. Getting laid off at the wrong time sucks, no matter what your income is. But the middle-class people with money problems I’ve known were generally suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They had no savings because they wanted the new car or the luxury vacation. They wanted one of those experiences they were constantly told was more important than money, because the money for day-to-day necessities was always there, right up until it wasn’t.

That’s part of the reason, I think, so many middle-class people laugh at campaigns to raise the minimum wage. “You want 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers? How about you just hold off on the new TV until you get a real job?” The middle class generally fluctuates between being able to afford a nice vacation one year and having to settle for a few trips to the movies the next. The poor can fluctuate between paying bills and being out on the street. But the idea that such essentials could just go unpaid is unfathomable, right up until you experience it.

4

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

When I was growing up, there was never a question of whether or not I was going to college. That’s partially because the idea of my spindly idiot ass learning a technical trade or doing manual labor is the first step in creating an “Epic Fail!!!” YouTube video, but mostly because my parents had a fund set up for me. (It helped that I live in a country where a post-secondary education doesn’t cost roughly eight quadrillion dollars a semester.)

So jobs that didn’t require a degree were presented to us as warning signs. “You better study hard, or else you’re going to end up just like that bull masturbator for the rest of your life! And I didn’t intend that pun, so don’t giggle!” Becoming a janitor or a gas station attendant or an internet comedy writer would have been considered a disappointment, an inability to take advantage of the gifts that were offered to us. Poverty was considered a moral failing.

No one ever just came out and said that, but the implication was always there. We tend to assume that other people are basically like us until they prove otherwise, which is why I’m constantly shocked to discover that most people don’t like my favorite homoerotic golf academy anime, Wood Strokes. So we were never taught that working as a dishwasher or a grocery store clerk or a sperm bank fluffer could be an important stepping stone for someone with a different background than us. We were also never taught that, you know, it’s still a goddamn job where someone shows up and puts work in and gets paid for their time. They were always just associated with squandered potential.

And man, when you hear that message constantly, it’s hard to shake. It’s easy to glance at a middle-aged dude working the checkout counter and automatically think “Well, I bet he’s not the brightest guy around” or “Oh shit, is that what happened to Matthew Lawrence?” It’s not malicious — not initially. Being told to take advantage of your opportunities is not a bad message. But when that message is driven into you for decades, it creates a stigma around certain jobs. And from some people, it produces plenty of snide remarks about how the people working those jobs should get better ones, as if the person who’s been a server for seven years has never considered just popping down to the job store and picking up a career in architecture.

Janitors and baristas keep society running as much as anyone else. If all of America’s coffee shops shut down for a day, the country would experience a nationwide narcolepsy epidemic crossed with The Purge. But when you grow up in the middle class, the only thing you’re taught about such jobs is that you should get one as a teenager to build character, and then thank God that you’ll never have to work one again as long as you don’t fuck up in life. And as long as we consider that a sign of our superior work ethic instead of birth luck, we’re going to keep dismissing as pathetic the jobs we’d all get angry about if they vanished tomorrow.

3

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

An education isn’t the only thing that most middle-class kids can assume they’ll get. A car to borrow, a phone, 20 bucks for when you really want to take a girl to what you assumed was a bad movie so you could make out in the back row but then it turns out that she’s actually super into the plot of Gigli and wants to focus on it even though you were all set to reach second base and so you end up getting a confused erection to Al Pacino and it inadvertently shapes your formative years … you know, all the little things that are part of growing up in Middle America.

That’s the end result of assuming that a good job awaits you, and that money is for throwing at problems and buying pizza instead of something to stress out about. Water heater broke? No worries, we’ll just have to eat in the rest of the month to make up for it. Shoes all worn out? Well, you can’t go to school like that, so go get some new ones. Gone on a losing streak at the Pokemon Card League and the groupies have started drifting off to the other players? Better pick up a few booster packs to get back in the game. You know you can’t get greedy and start buying Armani, but as long as your needs are modest, the money will always be there.

So the idea of 20 bucks making or breaking someone is impossible to appreciate. It’s just not a concept that clicks in our heads. It makes sense on a logical level, sure — you need money, and you don’t have it, and that sucks. But when you’re raised in comfort, you can’t put yourself in that head space emotionally. You can’t understand the stress, or the fear that you might not be able to feed your kids. The closest we can get is watching Gwyneth Paltrow try and hilariously fail to live on a tiny food budget before going back to her $4,000 kale cleanses. That’s kind of like empathy, right?

And because it’s tough to relate to, it’s tough to talk about. If someone tells me that they never got Christmas presents growing up, all I can respond with is “Uh, yeah, that sounds like it sucked. Well … one time my grandma accidentally got me Super Murpio 67, so … I hear you.” Starting a conversation with a bunch of middle-class people about poverty is like bringing up Trayvon Martin at a country club. Everyone trips over everyone else’s words to talk about how tragic it is, but then they distance themselves from the problem and the “buts” start coming out. And to further compound the issue …

2

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

When I was growing up, my exposure to poverty was largely limited to sitcom families who would talk about how poor they were, but were still able to go on a wacky adventure every week. The Simpsons kept running into money troubles in their early years, but their house looked the same as mine. Even the family from Roseanne, the classic working-class sitcom, owned a house that’s a palace compared to what a lot of people live in. The problem with portraying poverty in sitcoms is that it’s hard to get laughs out of eviction and early deaths caused by crippling medical debt, so the lesson always ends up being “Poor people struggle with money sometimes, but in the end they always get by, and they have lots of laughs while doing it!” Sitcoms make being poor look fun.

Beyond that, once or twice a year, I’d go to some kid’s birthday party and notice that his house was a lot smaller and more run down than mine. One of the kids who always got talked about in a slightly different tone of voice by the adults. I never gave it much thought because we went to the same school and both liked Nintendo — how different could our lives possibly be? Maybe I’d see a story on the news that would put a positive spin on the issue. (“Look at how many volunteers with beautiful families showed up to the soup kitchen to help feed these filthy hobos!”) Beyond that, the middle class just doesn’t think about poverty.

We’re always looking up, always wanting to go to the Christmas party at the rich friend’s house so we can get a taste of what we’re aspiring to. There’s rarely a reason to go to the poor part of town. Tell jokes about it, sure, but go? We never have to leave the bubble, so we never learn what real poverty looks like. Poor people become invisible, this mysterious Other, a group that serves you food, and in return, you throw a couple of non-perishables and toys into donation bins for them over the holidays.

Oh yeah, the middle class loves to donate food and toys and clothes and gently used ball gags and all sorts of other crap that we weren’t using anyway. Food banks actually need money far more than they need your creamed corn that’s going to expire in two weeks, because money just goes further. But people who will gladly part with 12 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese and some Funyuns they found under the sofa get leery when it comes to handing over money, even though we’re supposedly under the impression that we don’t need it ourselves to be happy.

That’s partially just because it’s more satisfying to give stuff instead of money — you can imagine some happy kid playing with your old Lego, and you get to clean out your closet. But remember, we’re taught that the poor are stupid and lazy. We sit around telling each other stories about how our friend’s cousin’s boyfriend knows a guy who spent his welfare check on beer and weed. These are campfire horror stories for the most tedious suburbanites, and they’re told in the hot tubs that they probably shouldn’t have bought until the next mortgage payment cleared. We can’t trust those people with money, because if they were smart enough to manage it properly, they’d be smart enough to have a better job. Also, they probably all have hooks for hands and murder teenagers while they’re making out in their cars. Hey, we learn so little about poor people that it’s just as believable.

1

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

I’ve known people with movie theaters in their homes and four cars in their garage who are convinced that society is against them, that life is a gloomy parade of suffering because their property taxes went up a bit. That’s stereotypical rich people behavior, but it’s there in the middle class too, in subtler ways. I live in a city where the economy revolves around a boom and bust industry, so people tend to make good money while complaining about taxes for a few years, then get laid off and go on government benefits for a while, and then get a new job and go back to complaining about the government. And if you watch the cycle, you see the same “us against the world” mentality, just with fewer BMWs in the mix.

When middle-class people get laid off and go on welfare, they blame the economy, or their former employer, or the government. They never blame themselves. And they shouldn’t! Much like a whale’s erection, economies are big, confusing things that can’t be controlled by the average person. It’s not like they left photocopies of their asshole on the boss’ desk. They paid into the welfare system with their taxes when times were good, and now they’re using the system for exactly what it’s intended: helping you out when you’re unlucky. It’s bridging the gap until you, a hard-working person who just caught a tough break, gets another job.

Except when poor people use the system, it’s none of those things. Suddenly they’re not getting help; they’re just dumb, lazy leeches. Plenty of middle-class people are more empathetic and generous than I’ll ever be, but the worst instinct of the middle class is to blame the system when the system fails us, then lecture poor people when the system fails them. I’ve heard the condescending explanations about how the world really works (which usually come out after a few beers when no actual poor people are around because the speaker would never be brave enough to say it to their faces) more times than I can count.

The middle class has a weird relationship with the rich — we alternate between complaining about them and wishing we were them. Money can’t buy happiness, but a yacht certainly wouldn’t hurt matters. Even if we don’t like the rich, there’s always the pipe dream that we could be them. But no one dreams about being poor, unless you’re into an incredibly specific kind of role-playing.

Being poor is a problem (practically, not morally), and a problem is either the fault of the person or the fault of circumstances beyond their control. The latter means we in the middle class might have to do something about it — or, God forbid, reflect upon our lifestyles, which is just the worst. It’s much, much easier to assume that we’re fine, that ultra-rich politicians and celebrities and investment bankers are the ones being condescending and awful to the poor, but also that poor people could probably stand to work a little harder. So, uh … sorry about all of that. I’ll donate some food at Christmas, though!

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty-2/

[luci-in-trenchcoats]

Love Her (Part 10)

Summary: With the reader now technically on her own, things seem to be going okay until Dean makes a comment that rubs the reader the wrong way and when the reader starts school again, she runs into an old friend...

Masterlist

Pairing: Doctor!Dean x foster daughter!reader

Word Count: 5,200ish

Warnings: language, mentions of death, medical situation

______

“Dean?” you asked after you brought in the mail the next day. “What is all this stuff in my name?”

“Uh,” he said as he took the stack from you. “Health insurance offer. Dental insurance offer. More health, a vision, health. It’s fun grown-up stuff, sweetheart.”

“I don’t have health insurance?” you asked.

“You’re covered through the month on the old,” said Dean. “I can’t put you on mine cause you’re technically not a dependent anymore. We’ll get you on a single plan and I’ll pay. Don’t worry about this stuff. I’ll take care of it.”

“It’d be easier if you adopted me though, wouldn’t it?” you asked. He glanced down and set the mail on the counter, slowly raising his head.

“I’ll only say this once, sweetheart,” he said. “I think we both know where I stand on wanting to adopt you. But this isn’t something I want you to do because you feel you have to or for insurance. Someday, if you want it, you tell me. I’ll do it in a heartbeat. But only if you want it for the right reasons. If you don’t ever want to, that is completely okay. You’re still my kid. Always.”

“Maybe someday,” you said.

“Maybe someday,” he said with a smile. “But today, you get to learn about choosing health insurance.”

“No,” you groaned. “I have a concussion. No. Owie. No words good.”

“Y/N,” he said, tilting his head. “Part of being an adult means you have to learn these things.”

“Weren’t you just saying the other day you want me to have my childhood back?” you asked.

“Alright, alright. I’ll pick it out,” he said. “If you come to the twins soccer games tomorrow.”

“Sucker. I was going to go to those anyways,” you said, heading back for your room.

“Where are you going now?” he asked.

“Nap. I do have a little headache actually.”

“Alright. Try not to get too used to them. You have to go back to school next week,” he said.

“Do I have to?” you asked with a whine.

“Yes.”

“Can’t I just drop out and get me GED?” you asked.

“No. You are far too smart to not get a diploma and go to college. You need the interaction,” he said as he headed back for the kitchen. 

“Interaction?”

“You need friends,” he said as he started to dig through the mail. “I can’t be your only friend, Y/N.”

You swallowed and glared at him, Dean pausing after a moment and looking up at you.

“I didn’t mean-“

“Just forget it,” you said, going to your room. You heard a knock after a minute but you ignored it, grateful he left you alone for once.

“I brought you some pizza,” said Ana around dinner time that evening. The door opened and you sat up, spotting her walk in with a slice on a plate.

“Thanks,” you said, rolling your eyes when you saw Dean come in behind her.

“Dean would like to say something,” she said, bumping his arm.

“I’m sorry for being inconsiderate,” said Dean, Ana nudging him again. “And not thinking about how you view relationships differently than maybe I do.”

“He’s sorry for being a dumbass,” said Ana.

“It’s fine. I know I don’t have friends,” you said.

“I don’t have friends,” said Ana, your gaze flickering to her. “Most of my friends are Dean’s. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I don’t have any. There’s a difference,” you said.

“Y/N, you’ll make friends at school or college or work or wherever. I’m sorry I said that. You should focus on yourself right now,” said Dean.

“It’s fine,” you said again.

“Dean. Give us a minute,” said Ana. Dean left and she took a seat on the bed. “For all he’s been through, he doesn’t understand this part of it. Friends have been a constant in his life.”

“I was the quiet girl when I went to this school before. I didn’t fit in,” you said. “I had old clothes at first and-”

“Oh. You don’t realize...I guess you haven’t been paying attention to the twins outfits in the morning. They wear a uniform, to their private school,” said Ana.

“Private school?”

“It’s not the fanciest thing but the twins were a bit advanced for their grade at their old school. They also faced some of those same problems apparently. They were starting to get in trouble and get closed off. Some kids got a bit mean after you left. Dean decided to move them into a private school. It’s not full of stuck up kids. I’m sure there are some but there’s always some. Maybe this school will be better for you,” she said.

“Maybe. Dean just…” you said. Ana lay back on the bedspread, turning her head in your direction. 

“You two have come a long way in just a week. He rushed a little fast on that whole friend comment,” she said. “Take quality over quantity. It’s no competition. He doesn’t quite understand that you, unlike a stereotypical teenager, you want to be home with your family most of the time. I didn’t really make friends until college and even now, there’s only one I still talk to. Dean’s my best friend and that’s very okay with me.”

“You were never adopted, right?” you asked.

“No. I was a pretty bad kid. Not crime bad but I was nasty,” she said. You raised an eyebrow and she laughed. “You’re a saint compared to me. I wound up living out of my car for a little while and realized how much that sucked. I figured I’d go to nursing school. Everyone always needs a nurse. But I was pretty good at the medicine stuff and applied to med school and I sort of buried myself in that until I met my first husband. The time after Dan died and before I met Dean was probably the hardest.”

“I overreacted,” you said. “Earlier with Dean.”

“Probably. But he probably deserved it too,” she said. “I tell him he has to take this slow. You’re not going to suddenly be like every other teenager.”

You nodded and she sat up, leaning over and giving you a hug.

“You should have been adopted,” you said.

“I didn’t have someone like Dean around,” she said. “But I get him now. Plus he’s so much fun to make out with.”

“Ew! Nope. Moment gone,” you said, Ana laughing. Dean stuck his head in the room and she got to her feet, giving him a pat on the chest. 

“You’re mostly in the clear,” she said. 

“Thank you,” he said as she left. “I can get the ice cream and grovel more if I need to.”

“No. We’re good. It felt like you were saying there was something wrong with me for a second and I already have enough issues so-”

“Sweetheart, there’s nothing wrong with you. I’m sorry if I made you feel like that. I just...I want you to feel like you can have friends or go hang out with other people that aren’t me or…” he said as he sat on the bed. “I just want you to be happy, that’s all.”

“I understand,” you said. “Maybe I’ll make some at my next school.”

“The only thing I’ve ever asked you to do is try,” he said. “But I will try to think about what I’m saying next time too. Deal?”

You nodded and he took a bite of your pizza, your jaw dropping.

“Well if you aren’t gonna eat it I am,” he said.

“I was waiting until you were done talking,” you said. “They’re better be more left.”

“If you come out of your room there is,” he said. You got up from your bed and went out to the kitchen, finding more pizza in the box and practically getting tackled by Rae.

“Hey,” you said. “Care-“

“I thought you left again,” she said.

“Rae. I’m not leaving,” you said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Is there any good pizza left?” you asked her.

“Dad put one in the oven to keep it warm for you,” she said.

“Then why did you think I was gone, silly?” you asked, picking her up with a huff and setting her on top of the counter. “So how was school today?”

Monday Afternoon

“Hey guys,” said Dean when he picked you up from school. “First day go alright?”

“Yeah,” you said, getting a wave from a guy as he headed towards the student parking. You smiled and returned it, turning your head when you felt Dean’s gaze on you.

“Really?”

“What? You said to make friends,” you said.

“Better stay as just friends,” he mumbled.

“He’s my partner in AP Physics. AP Physics, Dean,” you said.

“I can deal with nightmares and vomiting at three in the morning and a whole bunch of stuff. Boys? Uh uh. Nope,” he said.

“I’m not looking for a boyfriend, Dean,” you said. “I got enough going on without trying to deal with that.”

“Good. I think we all do.”

“Hey, Y/N,” said Lewis the next day after Physics as you were heading for your locker. “You want to hang out after school?”

“I sort of have to watch my brother and sister after school until my…” you trailed off. “I just have to watch them until like five.”

“Oh. Yeah, I get it,” he said. “I’ll see you around then.”

“Lewis,” you said as he started to walk away. “I would. I…”

“I get it. It’s cool, Y/N,” he said.

“You could come over,” you said. “If you don’t mind hanging out with a pair of seven year olds.”

“Won’t your dad get pissed?” he asked.

“He’s…” you trailed off, closing your eyes. “It’s complicated.”

“So he didn’t give me a dirty look yesterday?” he asked.

“No. He did. He’s...he’s not my dad. It’s just…” you said.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” he asked as he leaned back against the lockers. You titled your head and he smiled. “I was a lot shorter back then. Kind of a shrimp.”

“Lewis Nelson,” you said with a smile, Lewis laughing. You gave him a hug and he hummed. 

“I was waiting for you to figure it out,” he said. “Never thought I’d see you again.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of the other kids we were ever with. You were at our first foster house,” you said.

“I ran into one other kid once in a different house but yeah,” he said. “My parents-”

The bell rang and you frowned.

“Come over after school and we’ll hang out,” you said, taking your pen from your notebook and jotting down the address in his open one. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Hey, you still with the twins?”

“Yeah. We’re still together. Complicated but together,” you said. 

“Good. I’ll see you later then.”

“Who are you?” asked Ryan not two seconds after you’d let Lewis in.

“This is Lewis. He’s my friend from school and when you and Rae were little babies, Lewis was also a foster kid in the first home we stayed in,” you said.

“I don’t remember,” said Ryan, giving you a side eye.

“Well you were about two months old so yeah, not surprising,” you said. You showed him in and to the kitchen, pulling out Rae and Ryan’s after school snacks before you sent them off to the playroom. 

“Those two got big,” he said as you found a bag of chips and some dip for the two of you.

“Very,” you said as you took a seat on the counter.

“How long were you in for?” he asked. 

“Last thursday,” you said.

“You’ve only been adopted like a week?” he asked. You shook your head. “Complicated?”

“Yeah. What about you?” you asked.

“Maybe a few months after I left the house we were both at my parents fostered me and then adopted me a little while after that. They’re both engineers. It’s only us three but it’s nice. They’re good people,” he said. “So what exactly does complicated mean?”

“We bounced a lot and then two years ago, we wound up here with Dean. He wanted to adopt us all but he couldn’t adopt me because of reasons and I ended up getting sent to a different home. The twins got adopted and have been here and then about a week and a half ago when I turned 18, Dean came to get me,” you said.

“So you’re like, on your own?” he asked. You nodded and took a handful of chips from the bag. “But Dean isn’t your foster dad?”

“No. I just live here. He’s not really anything to me,” you said. You popped some chips in your mouth when you caught movement in the hall, your eyes catching sight of Dean’s. He looked away quickly and ducked into his office, leaving with a file. He didn’t say anything as he started to head back towards the foyer. You hopped off the counter and jogged to catch up with him, Dean sighing when you grabbed his arm.

“Forget some paperwork. I have to get back to work,” he said.

“Hey, that wasn’t...you mean something to me, Dean. You know that, right?” you asked. He sighed and you saw Lewis appear, giving Dean a smile. “Dean this is Lewis. Lewis was in my first foster home.”

“Oh,” said Dean, cocking his head. “What are the odds of that?”

“We were catching up. He was just asking if you’re my foster dad and…” you trailed off, Dean giving you a smile as you saw him relax. “Dean’s just my Dean right now.”

“I really got to run,” he said. “But you’re welcome over anytime, Lewis.”

Dean took off after that and you locked up behind him, Lewis scratching his head. 

“Wait so, he seems a lot nicer now…” he said.

“Dean gets a little protective of me,” you laughed. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a big softy deep down.”

“Hey,” you said, knocking on the door to Dean and Ana’s room around ten that night. Dean was reading in bed, Ana watching something on her computer beside him. “Earlier...are we okay?”

“I’d like a heads up of when you bring friends over in the future while you’re still in high school but Lewis was very nice at dinner. I think it’s good that you have a friend that understands how you grew up some,” said Dean.

“I meant that part of the conversation that sounded really bad,” you said.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Dean.”

“It hurt my feelings for two seconds but you’re right. I’m just Dean and if that’s how you want to explain it to friends, that is more than okay with me,” he said.

“Okay,” you said, biting your bottom lip. 

“Yes?”

“Um, so...I also may have also thrown up like five minutes ago in my bathroom,” you said with a wince. 

“Alright,” he said, climbing out of bed and leaving his book behind. He walked over to the door and shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “Sweetheart, did you throw up on yourself at all?”

“A little on my shirt,” you said as you glanced down. “Just a little.”

“Okay,” he said, pausing as he started to walk you back down the hall. “Wait here.”

He left and was back a second later with Ana, the two of them walking back to your room and into the bathroom.

“This is the cleanest mess we’ve ever…” trailed off Dean when he looked at you in the light. “Well the bathroom is pretty decent but she needs a shower and fresh clothes.”

“Why don’t you wash up in our bathroom and we’ll clean up in here for you,” said Ana.

“Go with her. She looks a little pale,” said Dean. You turned to go when he caught your arm. He spun you around and narrowed his eyes, staring at your side. “An. Does her side look…”

“Does your right side hurt at all?” asked Ana. “Can I look?”

“I’m fine,” you said as she lifted up your shirt a little.

“She’s bloated,” said Ana. “Severely.”

“I got my period today,” you said.

“Do you have any pain?” asked Dean.

“Cramps but that’s normal,” you said. He glanced at Ana and put a few fingers on your side before he pressed down.

It felt like someone had stabbed you and your hand caught the sink counter, Dean immediately pulling away..

“Appy,” they both said.

“Huh?” you said as he jogged out of the room, back a second later in his sneakers. He picked you up and you hissed. 

“Sorry,” he said, Ana already gone and opening the front door. “Keys.”

She grabbed the spare set from the front table and followed you both outside, opening the passenger seat door. Dean set you down and buckled you up before he shut the door, taking the keys from Ana and jogging around the car. He hopped in the drivers seat and took off, your hand gripping the center console.

“Fuck, Dean. Slow down,” you said.

“When did the pain start?” he asked.

“I don’t know. This morning. It felt like cramps was all,” you said, peeling up your shirt. “I think you guys are overreacting.”

“Did you go to med school?” he asked.

“I always get bloated on my first day,” you said.

“If we’re wrong, which we’re not, but if I am, you can tell me I told you so,” he said. “Tell me what else.”

“What?”

“Symptoms. What else besides the pain and the bloating and the throwing up?” he asked.

“I’m kinda cold,” you said.

“Feverish?” he asked. 

“I guess?” 

“I hate to break it to you, sweetheart but you have a bad appendix,” said Dean.

“I don’t need that one, right?” 

“No,” he said, a small laugh in his voice. “You don’t need it. Yours is going bad a little faster than is typical is all so we have to get it out of you quick.”

“Why?” you asked. He frowned when he got stuck at a red light, giving you a quick glance. “Why?”

“You’re getting more pale,” he said, putting the back of his hand to your forehead. “And sweaty.”

He looked both ways and went before the light turned green, the car behind him honking.

“Don’t ever do that,” he said.

“I gonna die or something?” you asked. He shook his head and moved his hand to the top of your head.

“No. You can get very sick if it bursts before they can get it out and we want to avoid that,” said Dean.

“Dean. I’m not a kid,” you said.

“....It gets very dangerous if that happens,” said Dean. “Appendix removal is a common procedure. It’s very safe. They’ll make three little cuts most likely and you’ll be up running around in a few days.”

“I’ll take your excessive speeding and breaking of traffic laws as a reason not to worry then,” you deadpanned.

“Hey, how about next week, we have no drama. Just a nice quiet week, hm? That’d be nice for a change,” he said.

“If you can get the universe to cooperate, I’m all ears,” you said. You shivered and he ran his hand up and down your arm. 

“We’re almost there,” he said. “Don’t worry, sweetheart.”

Three minutes later he was pulled into the ER, picking you up and carrying you inside. You barely had time to look around before you were sat down on a stretcher and being pushed into a room.

“Dean,” said Dr. Novak as you lifted your head, several hands pushing you back down. “Y/N. I wish I wasn’t-”

“Her appendix is going,” said Dean. Cas quickly pulled on a pair of gloves and moved to your side, pressing a gentle hand to it.

“Alright. Call up to the OR. Emergency appendectomy. I want her in surgery asap,” said Cas, giving you a smile. “Pretty routine for us around here, Y/N. No need to worry.”

“That’s what I’ve heard apparently,” you said.

“They want to bring her up now,” said a nurse on a phone.

“Alright, let’s send her up then,” said Cas. Your stretcher started to move down the hall and you saw Dean go with you before he was getting stopped at the elevators. 

“Cas.”

“You’re not-”

“I want to be in there,” he said.

“You’re technically not-”

“Cas. That’s my kid,” said Dean, glancing back at you. “Please.”

“Fine. If you can convince them to let you in, you can go,” said Cas. 

“Thank you,” he said, jogging past him and ducking in the elevator with you. 

Ten minutes later you were in a special gown, felt like you had fifteen things hooked up to you and you were watching people walk around you in scrubs in the operating room.

“Hey, sweetheart,” said Dean as he walked inside, giving you a smile. “Feeling okay?”

“Yeah,” you said, the door opening again, a man walking in with a smile. 

“Hello, Y/N. I’m Dr. Ketch. Sounds like you’re having a little problem tonight,” he said, taking a seat on a stool and sitting down next to you. “Normally I would tell you everything we’re going to do but we’re a little crunched for time and I know Dean understands the procedure front and back so if you’re ready, we’re gonna get started.”

“Okay,” you said with a nod.

“Thatta girl,” he said, standing back up. “Dean you can stay up top once she’s under.”

“Thanks Ketch,” said Dean, looking down at you. “Ketch is a little cocky but he’s a really good surgeon. You’ll be just fine.”

“Dean. Relax,” you said.

“Okay,” he chuckled, moving aside for a moment. “When you wake up you’ll feel a lot better. I promise.”

You wearily opened your eyes and found yourself in a recovery bay with several other sleeping people. Dean was resting his head in his arms on the bed, lightly snoring. He was still in scrubs and you yawned when you spotted Dr. Ketch head over towards you.

“Hi, Y/N. How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired,” you said, closing your eyes for a moment.

“That’s probably the anesthesia wearing off. Surgery went well. Your appendix was removed before it could rupture and the procedure was done with only a few small incisions so you shouldn’t be in too much pain. I’m pretty sure Dr. Winchester was more worried than you were,” he said.

“Dean’s always been a worrier,” you said.

“You should have seen him in med school. Cool as a cucumber until we had exams. Then he’d just-”

“Shut up, Ketch,” mumbled Dean as he lifted his head and blinked open his eyes. “You are not talking about my college days to her.”

“Party animal too,” said Ketch with a laugh. “For the first year at least. Then he toned it down.”

“Arthur,” said Dean lowly.

“Why don’t you take it easy and head back to sleep, Y/N. It’s about three in the morning. Sleep a few more hours. We’ll get you squared away in a room until you’re ready to go home,” said Ketch. “That goes for dad too.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You mind staying a second while I go change?”

“Yeah, I got it, Winchester,” he said. Dean ruffled your hair before he left, Ketch taking a seat in his chair with a sigh. “Remind me to never let him in my OR again. Talk about backseat surgeon.”

“Thanks. I know he was scared,” you said.

“Go on back to sleep,” he said as you shut your eyes again. “I’ll take care of Dean. You just rest now.”

Three Days Later

“Hi Rae,” you said when she came into your room late Friday night. “What’s…”

“Something’s wrong with dad,” she said. You eased yourself out of bed and followed her out of your room, following her down the hall and to his room. You poked your head in his room and she looked up at you. You grabbed her hand and sent her back to bed, saying he was fine. After she headed up you went back, knocking on the doorframe. 

“Dean,” you said, his back to you on the bed.

“Yeah, sweetheart?” he breathed out.

“You need anything?”

“No. You should rest. You’re still recovering,” he said. You nodded and left, going to your room and digging around in your closet for a moment before you were back in his room, walking around his bed. You sat down on the edge and he sighed, sitting up and giving you a long look but still you saw his red eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Ana has to work late tonight and you’ve been quiet,” you said. “I know what today is.”

“One of the worst days of my life,” he said. “It’s been nine years. This day…”

“I know,” you said. You grabbed his hand and pulled it into your lap. You slipped the bracelet you’d made earlier in the week on his wrist, Dean’s face blank when you set his hand back in his lap. “That was supposed to be a Christmas present but you look like you could use it today.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“I made you a bracelet from the twin’s arts and crafts stuff while everyone was at work and school,” you said. “I thought…”

“Thought what, sweetheart?” he asked quietly.

“I thought you might like it,” you said. 

“It’s like the one I gave you,” he said.

“It’s supposed to be,” you said with a shrug. “It was stupid.”

You got up quickly, Dean grabbing your hand and tugging you to sit back down.

“You can tell me anything, Y/N. You know that,” he said. “Why’d you make this for me?”

“You gave me yours and I know what it means to you to have done that. I just…” you trailed off. He tucked your hair behind your ear and you let out a deep breath. “It means a lot for me to give this to you too.”

You bit your bottom lip, Dean nodding as he ran his thumb over the band on his wrist. 

“I love it,” he said, pulling you into a hug. “Thank you, sweetheart. I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” you said.

You swore you felt him squeeze you tighter and a small laugh escape him. 

“Thank you,” he said. “Today’s not so bad after all.”

“Hey,” said Ana, both of you turning towards the door. “Everything okay?”

“Mhm,” hummed Dean, smushing his cheek against yours.

“Dean,” you groaned.

“Alright. You’re relieved of duty,” said Dean. You nodded and got up, getting a quick goodnight from Ana as you left the room. You paused outside the door when you heard him hum.

“Sorry I had to work late today of all days,” you heard Ana say. 

“S’okay, honey,” said Dean.

“Y/N take care of you for me while I was gone?” she asked.

“She made me this,” said Dean. It was quiet for a moment and you thought about leaving when you heard a laugh. “She told me she loved me for the first time too. She loves me, Ana.”

“Of course she loves you, Dean,” she said. “You loved her and you gave her that. You went and got her. You’re the first person in a very long time to stick up for her. Baby, she’s loved you since she came back to this house, probably before then. I just don’t think she wanted to admit it.”

“I just...I never thought she would. I’d be okay if she didn’t,” he said. “But she does. She gave me this. She did that today and she knows what today is.”

“Because she doesn’t like to see you hurt,” said Ana. “None of us do. But we both know how much you care about her. I remember when I met Rae and Ryan for the first time and you told me you had another daughter but she wouldn’t be home for awhile. She feels that love you give her, Dean. The fact that she wants you to feel it back is amazing, baby.”

“A part of me always thought she’d resent me, for not getting her back sooner. She could walk out that door and there’s nothing I can do to stop her. She’s not a baby, Ana. But she’s not just here for the twins,” he said.

“She’s here for her, Dean. I would have killed to have someone like you when I was a kid. She knows how lucky she got with you. It’s just going to be harder for her to say things like I love you out loud. But every time she comes and checks on you or asks if you’re okay, remember that she is saying that she loves you.”

“I’ll try,” said Dean. “She just...she made me so happy tonight. More than happy. I don’t…”

“Remember falling in love?” she asked. “That pit inside wasn’t so deep anymore?”

“My pit was pretty deep,” he said, taking a deep breath. “It’s not so bad anymore. I’m okay. Honestly.”

“I know,” she said. “Love you, De.”

You smiled and headed quietly back to your room, crawling into your bed staring up at the ceiling for a moment, rolling to your side and falling asleep with a smile on your face.

______

A/N: Read Part 11 here!

#spn #supernatural #dean x foster daughter!reader #series #au #dean winchester #spn fanfiction #dean x

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When a high school student gets a permit, do I have to call the insurance company and add them to the policy? I know it may increase the rate drastically, so what is best to do?""

How does AAA insurance work?

I want to start driving I'm a fifteen female. I want to drive my moms four wheel drive Subaru. We have AAA insurance and I live in the state of California. I'm just not sure what the insurance policy would be... Or whatever. So basically, what would our insurance be? I'm pretty sure this makes little to no sense and I apologies sincerely but to be quite frank I don't understand insurance whatsoever. So if you could explain to me that would be amazing. Thank You for your time""

What is a good place to get cheap SR-22 Insurance in the state of Utah?

What is a good place to get cheap SR-22 Insurance in the state of Utah?

""In Alabama, is it hard to get insurance for a Jeep if...?""

i'm turning 16 soon. Getting my intermediate license, then six months later i'll get my real license. I've been looking at Jeep Wranglers, but i've decided I need something that gets a little better gas milage. So now i've really come to like Jeep Grand Cherokee's. The price of the Jeep isn't a problem, I can pay for the gas too. But the insurance is another. Does anyone have any clue how much insurance might be? I think my mom is with progressive if it matters. Thanks in advance!""

Best Health insurance for young adults in NZ?

The reason why i'm wanting health insurance is mostly going to the dentist. does anyone know a good health insurance and what do i need to look for when i joining a company?

I need cheap but good car insurance what do you recommend?

I need cheap but good car insurance what do you recommend?

Insurance Question/Quote?

My name is Jake and my grandpa wants to sell me is 2004 V6 nissan 350z for like next to nothing but i am curious as to how much my insurance payment would be?

Is there a fine (other than the $25 correction fee) for a ticket for driving without insurance in California?

Is there a fine (other than the $25 correction fee) for a ticket for driving without insurance in California? I will have insurance on Monday when i go to take care of the ticket and hopefully just have it signed off. I was told by the ticketing officer that it was a fix-it ticket. So, will current insurance and the $25 fee be all i will owe, or are there any other fines or fees i should expect?""

CAR INSURANCE COST? 19yrs?

Im female, 19 years old, just got my license, will be driving a chrysler/sebring JXi. Im looking for the cheapest/minimum coverage in Bradenton, Florida.""

Insurance coverage after my car was totaled?

In 2005 I was in an accident, not my fault. My 1997car was totaled, due to a small area of body damage. I kept the car. Comparing notes with my friend, he said I should not have been paying for collision these past 4 years. When I called to tell my insurance company I bought a new car, I asked why my rates didn't go down after the accident. They said only I could have made a change. Question: what would have happened had I been in another accident that would have totaled my car a second time. Would they deny me. Are they obliged to counsel customers about keeping collision insurance on an already totaled car. Do I have any recourse. Could I get a refund. (My question mark key is gone on my keyboard.)""

I need to get rid of my car because the payments are way to high and insurance sucks?

I bought a 2003 Toyota Avalon a little more than a year ago from a dealer. I put 7000 dollars as a down payment and now am paying 240 a month for 60 months. Its getting kind of hard to pay off the car now with all of the costs going up. The total price of the car was 15000 and I got a bumper to bumper warranty for 5 years/100,000 miles when I bought it at 35,000 miles. The car now has 54.000 miles. How do I trade it in for a car that would cost me less than 200 a month Thanks""

Which is best health insurance company in india?

best health insurance company

The best insurance for juniors?

i just turned 18 and i need to get new insurance any ideas????

Are there different types of car insurance?

What are the different kinds?

How much on average would insurance be on a Grand Prix? (For a 17-year old)?

Are they considered sedans or sports cars? I think I would go through State Farm, with the good grade/safe driver book. Does anyone have experience insuring one? It would be anywhere from 1997-2003 model with about 100,000 miles on it. Thank you!""

Why do auto insurance company ask for social security number when asking for a quote?

must i give my social security number if i were to purchase a auto policy?

Where do I look for health insurance for my family?

Can i call insurance agents and get quotes from them for free? my husband is self employed do they have any health insurance specifically for that?

What is the cheapest Auto insurance I can get?

I'm 23, just got my license, i have a Honda civic 2002. Thanks!""

Who do you speak to when your auto insurance is not paying you for the total damage done to yor vehicle.?

CAR WAS TOTAL , INSURANCE COMPANY NOT PAYING FULL VALUE. IS THERE A AGENCY THAT OVERSEES THESE MATTERS.""

How much will my driving insurance be for 16 yrs old?

Drivers Age: 16 type of car: Toyota liability limits: uh... none, i think, once i crash the car goes.. comp & collision?: idk driving record: just got it today lol credit score: perfect =P zip code where car is kept: 43221 its a rav4 crappy car, i just need a ball park geuss... my parents r trying to make me think its a lot more than i no it is, just so i dont drive... and stuff, yea... thanks justin""

How is the government going to make insurance premiums more affordable?

I keep hearing how Americans need more affordable health insurance, but I have yet to hear how they are planning to do this or what results we can expect. Does anyone know how they are going to achieve this for us? How much can we expect our premiums to go down as a result of the reform? Do you think it will be more than what we will pay in increased taxes?""

Average cost for insurances for a service company?

im looking to start a business, though im wondering how much insurance will cost me monthly. I will be needing Commericial Property insurance, Insurance for equipment, Business for insurance, Auto commericial insurance, Workers comp, General liabilty, Commericial umbrella There will be 4-6 employees 2-3 trucks a commericial establishment for business equipment so if someone can give me a ball park range on how much this may run all in a consolidated number thanks""

Where is a cheap, affordable place to get my wisdom teeth removed in the Chicago area?

I have no insurance and my jaw is very painful!! Does anyone know of a place that is affordable? Thanks in advance! !

Where is the cheapest place to get renters insurance?

My land lord is requiring everyone to get renters insurance now so im just looking for the cheapest most basic insurance I can get.

Insurance company not paying for car repair that isn't my fault?

I was in an car accident. I was in the right hand side of the parking lot and I was backing out of my parking space. I was in the middle of the parking lot, and a guy pulling out of his parking space on the left hand side of the parking lot. While I was in the middle of the parking lot, the guy back his car into mine (In a hurry). After this accident happened, this guy admitted that he hit me and the accident was his fault. The police showed up and we told our stories and he admit to the police that the accident was his fault and it was on the police report. After the accident, we went our separate ways. I talked to my insurance company and they told me that since the guy that hit me admitted that he caused the accident, I had to take it up with the guy's insurance company. I called the insurance adjuster from the other insurance company and gave my statement and he told me that he viewed the accident as both our faults and would not pay me to have my car fixed. And I told him that his client admitted to the accident and he said it didn't matter. I would have to go to my insurance company to have my car fixed. I have arbitration. Also, the adjuster said that I can go through arbitration. I don't know what to do. What can I do about it?""

How to provide proof of auto insurance?

How to provide proof of car insurance? I have been offered a generous stipend for graduate school. One of the documents they ask for is proof of car insurance. Does anyone know how I can provide proof of car insurance? (I know for a fact that my parents have bought car insurance). It would be helpful to know what document I should be looking for, what it looks like, is it just my AAA card or is it a form. Thanks a lot for your help!!""

Car insurance?

i cancelled my car insurance which i pay by installments i paid 75 at the beginnning and monthly premiums of 67 i cancelled the other day and on the phone they said i might have to pay a cancellation fee 45 as this is standard if your policy is not finished now they have calculated that i have to pay85 this is more than a months payment doe anybody know anything about these things and will i have to pay thanks

Do I need to switch car insurance for being out of state temperaily? Am I still covered?

I have car insurance in Florida, but I'm going to be going to school in New Jersey for probably for 2 years. Do I need to switch my car insurance or will I still be covered under FL rates? My DL has my Florida address and my car is registered in Florida. I plan on going back, so what should I do? Thanks (I'm with State Farm BTW)""

Short term car insurance?

want a scooby on the side for a bit of fun, can i get some sort of insurance for say..... weekends or the odd day here and there.""

Insurance on a range rover?

how much do you suspect insurance on a 2004 Land Rover Range Rover Range Rover would be the car is $5000 i know the lady she dais she'd sell to me I just want to make sure the insurance isn't going to be too much I'm 18 B average took driver's course and defensive driving class.......just a guess

Car insurance renewal & no claims certificates?

My car insurance is up for renewal soon, I had 1 year no claims before the current policy (but no certificate to prove it) and havent claimed during it. When I renew I like to look for the best price which may mean not sticking with my current insurer. If I change insurer and they ask to see proof of my no claims how can I prove I have 2 years? Will my current insurer issue me with a certificate saying 2 years (1 year with them added to the 1 year beforehand) or just 1 year? The other issue is that surely this certificate will arrive AFTER I want to begin my new policy?? Any advice would be much appreciated""

How can i find the name of insurance company with the policy number?

I need to find out the name of the insursnce company with the policy number

Car insurance or is it?

My truck was broke into a couple of hours ago and my pistol was stolen. i called the insurance (farmers) and they said the gun isn't covered by car insurance, it's only covered by homeowners insurance, and no my truck was not at my house. does this sound right to anybody? i don't understand what full coverage means if they don't fully cover everything.""

Car insurance changes depending where you live?

My sister has had a car for awhile now that was given to her by a family member, and she had her insurance and all set up and she was fine. We moved pretty much across the street but when you cross this street you live in a different town, the borders are in the middle of the road. So she called to change her address and they charged her 30 some odd dollars cause apparently the costs of living in this down is higher on your car insurance, so can anyone please explain to me why this is? Why would moving from one town to another, [across a road] take any effect on car insurance?""

How much should a Hyundai Sonata lease and insurance be?

I want to lase a 2011 Hyundai Sonata Limited 2.0T fully loaded within the next couple of days. I've totaled it on HyundaiUSA.com and it cam out to $30,195. the dealer said he would he down to $26,795. Their current promotion says you can lease a 2011 Sonata for 199/mo. for 36 months with $2,399 due at signing. I only want it for 24 months with $2,000 down. Any body have any idea what the lease rate or the insurance would be? Anybody whose leased a 2011 Sonata, please provide input. Thank you to everyone who answers!""

Car Insurance question?

Hi im 23 and currently live in BC, im planning on moving to Alberta and im wondering how much my insurance would be when I move I have my class 5 BC license my insurance monthly right now is 350 bucks due to me having an accident with my N a couple years ago I want to know if I move to alberta will it be more or less a month as ive heard alberta insurance companies dont like drivers under 25. Also is it worth risking it and not getting it changed and sneak it and hope not to get in to an accident with my bc license if ive moved there?""

What are the steps to obtain medical insurance?

I used to have peachcare,but my parents said something happened to it and I don't have insurance anymore.""

Car insurance rates after having license for 3 years?

I'm 26, had license for only 3 years. About to get my own insurance, just the basic state minimum, nothing fancy. Nationwide gave me an online quote of 204$ for 6 months... That doesn't sound right, sounds low, that's about $35 a month. In January I got insurance for only s month and it was $70 a month... Of course I hadnt had my license 3 years yet.""

Can't afford college Health Insurance...?

I need some type of advice regarding my options. I feel like i've hit a dead end. I have a 4.0 and financial aid, however my state requires student have health insurance... and the only insurance my school offers is over $80 a week on top of the $85 a week lab fees, dr visits, and meds because I have a severe blood disorder and need to go get my blood check every week. I also have specialist visits once a month. I have medicaid right now and if I go to school at all I will lose it and I can't afford the student insurance. It would total up to be more than my rent each month not to mention they don't cover pre-existing conditions. I feel totally hopeless. I'm willing to move to another state if necessary where insurance is more affordable. I just really wanted to go to medical school and now I feel like my future is shot all because I'm not healthy.... Also, i can't take out a loan because i don't have credit being so young and although I was born in this country and my parents were from here, they relocated to a foreign country so they can't help me either.""

Insurance on a used car verses a new car?

My dad says that if I buy a new car my insurance will double or even more than my insurance on my used car. Is that true?

If i got a car as a gift and dont have insurance and a car hits me is that ok?

my friend gave me a car and i dont have insurance, but a guy hit me this morning, will his insurance pay for it?""

How do you put someone on your insurance policy?

I have been insured for 3 years. My bf wants to get a car but with no no claims bonus he is getting quotes in excess of 3000 on the most basic insurance. I've tried to get quotes online to have him on my insurance but driving seperate cars and it seems I can't do this online. Do you have to actually phone them up? I'd prefer to do it online as it's less hassle.

What auto insurance does aarp offer?

the name of the insurance (auto) offered to aarp subscribers

""Health insurance, pre existing condition?""

what is the difference between a pre existing condition in health insurance and pre existing condition exclusion period. im reading from howstuffworks, health insurance but still confuse. i understand employer waiting period. here is the link for pre existing condition http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-insurance12.htm here is the link for pre existing condition exclusion period http://health.howstuffworks.com/health-insurance13.htm""

How much did your car insurance rate increase when your 16 year old began driving?

How much did your car insurance rate increase when your 16 year old began driving?

How much you pay for car insurance if your in early 20's?

I'm a 21 year old college student. Im going on to my junior year and have just gotten a car. I have always gotten a ride with my friends. I got a quote from Farmers Insurance for $2600 for 6 months full coverage is that normal?

Where can I find good deals on auto insurance?

instant, online quotes for auto insurance""

""On average, how much do YOU spend on utilities each month?""

I'm a college student getting ready to do into dental school. & I was wondering about how much do you spend on gas, electric, rent, insurance....etc. Please name what it is and about how much you pay. Do you have any money left over?? I'm like freaking out here because right now, I live in a dorm & I don't pay anything.""

Where is a cheap, affordable place to get my wisdom teeth removed in the Chicago area?

I have no insurance and my jaw is very painful!! Does anyone know of a place that is affordable? Thanks in advance! !

What is a good health insurance plan for two snowbirds that travel between NY and FL?

Hello. I am 67 and my wife is 61. We are going to begin living between New York and Florida now, half of the year in Florida and half in New York. What kind of health insurance is popular for our situation? What is the most affordable plan? We want to be insured throughout the entire year in both FL and NY. I am 67 and my wife is 61. Thank you.""

Will car insurance pay for the following:?

I caused a damage to my car the other day by trying to pass between a truck parked in one lane of the road and the rest of the road. In another words there was some road works going on and only very tiny space for cars to pass. When trying to get through very slowly, I got stucked and when trying to reverse I broke my front bumper and done some other small cosmetic damages to the side of the vehicle. I am fully insured, my insurance is going to expire in about 2 months and I never made a claim before. I have bad experience with insurance companies in general and now am not sure how to follow and make insurance company to pay for the damages. There are some other damages done to the vehicle, for instance, a small stone from vehicle driving in front of me hit my windscreen and caused a small crack. I have no idea how to follow up and make the ins.company to pay. I am fed up with all travel, health and other insurance companies that just make excuses and never pay.""

Does adding a driver/family member bring drive up car insurance premium?

I want let my parents drive my car once in a while, do i need to add them as additional drivers or are they covered under my existing bare minimum insurance coverage.""

Can you have more than one car insurance policy?

Okay, imagine the situation. Mum's got a car (A), but it's too expensive to run. Son has just bought a car (B) but doesn't want to drive it much until next year. Mum's already got an insurance policy on Car A, she wishes to take out an insurance policy for Car B with another company, but still keep her insurance policy on Car A with her old insurer. So Car A - Insurance Policy A - Mum driver. Car B - Insurance Policy B - Mum driver, Son named. Many thanks.""

""Which is better, Term Insurance or Whole Life Insurance?""

Say you're newly married and the wife is pregnant. You have just bought a home and have a large mortgage. Which kind of insurance is best for a family, Term Insurance or Whole Life Insurance?""

Can you have Medicaid and insurance?

I live in Nebraska and I am pregnant. My husband does have insurance with his employer, but it has a super high deductible. I think we would be eligible for Medicaid based on income. Can I have both insurance and Medicaid?""

How much would it cost for a 2.5 nissan skyline to run? (Like insurance wise for a 17 year old?

How much would it cost for a 2.5 nissan skyline to run? (Like insurance wise for a 17 year old?

Affordable Health Insurance?

I was in a pedestrian accident earlier this year. The case has since been settled and I was awarded $25,000. That was the maximum insurance the driver had, after lawyer fees, etc., etc., I didn't end up with much. I am unable to work and have no health insurance. My back is still scarred. Everyday, all the time it aches. I stopped treating with the chiropractor because he was making me feel worst the entire 2 months I treated. I need prescriptions and medical attention period! I have about $4,000 left, but I am unemployed and do not want to continuously dip into my savings. Since my lawyer has been paid, I seem to be of least concern.""

2008 Harley Low Rider insurance?

Hey I am 17. I just got a Harley Low Rider (1584cc) and gave been riding it with out insurance for the past month and I was wondering how much would the insurance cost for it.

Car Insurance increased? what to do next?

My car insurance company had increase my insurance by 2 folds (103%) increase. I contacted the company, enquired about this increase. But they said they cant do anything about it, If I want I can raise this with the customer service chief and chief executive. I wrote them a letter stating it was ridiculous amount of money, they asking me to pay. Also clearly brought to their notice, that I have a clean history, no claim, paid insurance on time, no accidents, and I have no claim discount of 7 years in total. The companies chief executive has replied me in a letter stating, unfortunately, the post code where is stay is subjected to recent increase and personal injury claims from post code area has gone up. So nothing he could do. But I replied him saying, I lived in the same place for more than 5 years. But still no good. Regards to this, I email Watch Dog, explaining the same a month ago. Still no reply or correspondence from them. Now I am stuck, I do not what to do. Honestly, I only brought this care for 500 in very good condition and it is still the same. But my insurance is more twice the value of my car. Please somebody tell , what can I do next. This is really ridiculous amount and unacceptable whatsoever. Thanks in advance.""

Insurance for a car?

how much would car insurance for a 99 s10 blazer when im 18 and not have full coverage and also have a car crash ? and one ticket for rolling stop its going to be most likely to be over 500 dollar a month right ? and a male

How much does Ensure cost?

I'm striving to gain weight and I was wondering how much Ensure costs? I'm thinking Ensure Plus in packs or as a single purchase. Please name stores that sell it too. Thank you!

Piaggio ape 50cc Insurace Please HELP?

Okay I'm 17 and looking at getting a Piaggio ape 50cc to drive around i live in a town in the uk, I have looked for a number plate to get a example of cost on insurance as if its loads I wont be able to get it! I'm pretty sure I don't need full licence to drive just CBT as I don't have full licence!""

Does your car insurance on old car cover your new car for 30 days?

i just got a new car. i traded it for a new one. i live in illinois and i am insured with geico. On my way home that night i got the car i got pulled over and got a ticket for not having insurance on that vehicle.i tried telling the cop my situation but that still didn't matter to him. So he gave me a $500 ticket. i was told when you get a new car your old insurance will cover you for 30 days. i called Geico numerous of times and they wont help me. Is there anyway to get out of this ticket? is there an illinois law that states something about this?

Can i get a ticket for no insurance?

Can i borrow my moms car. I have a valid drivers license and her car is insured under her name i'm not on the policy. Can i get a ticket for no insurance if im not on her policy?

How many cars can you put and take off of your insurance policy in one month? One year?

How many cars can you put and take off of your insurance policy in one month? One year?

How much will my insurance cost?

Im 18 and wanting to move out this august for college. The apartments im looking to rent is on average about 500 a month for me and im trying to figure out how much a month its going to cost me to live on my own. I have a 2002 Chevy trailblazer which is completely paid off. I dont know what insurrance company my parents have right now but i know for sure its not geico or progressive. I think its like blue shields or something or other. Any help is areciated! Thanks in advance!

""Insurance paid out too much, Am I obliged to give it back?""

After a solicitors firm managed to draw out a car insurance claim for 18 months I finally settled 50/50 on the incident, instead of refunding me 50% (400) of my excess the solicitors paid me 100% (800). I verbally informed them of the error before they issued the cheque and they still proceeded, now they have noticed the error they are asking for me to return the money. Am I legally obliged to do so and how far are they likely to pursue this if I do not?""

How much insurance is on a 2002 mustang gt on a 55 year old male?

How much insurance is on a 2002 mustang gt on a 55 year old male?

How much does insurance cost for a new 16 year old female driver?

I would like to know how much insurance costs for a new 16 year old female driver. My parents have the insurance company USAA, so if I could get some information on the likely costs of this, that would be great. Thank you!""

Where did the myth that the color of your car is an insurance factor come from?

Where did that come from I hear lots of people saying that. That would be a sad day if the inusuance companies had that much say into how my car should look.

Is it illegal to drive car if you personally don't have car insurance?

Let's say a teenager doesn't have car insurance and he has his license. His car is registered in his parents name and the teenager isn't under the family car insurance. The teen drives his car and gets wrecked in a accident. Now will he be protected because the car is under his parent's insurance and they let him use the vehicle?

18 year-old female in Florida (Manatee/Sarasota area) looking for car insurance.?

I am looking for inexpensive car insurance for a 2007 Scion tC. I have had no tickets nor accidents in the two years that I have had my license. Oh and I will be 19 in two months. Any help will be appreciated.

A question about Group Medical Insurance and Life Insurance?

ok my friend will be working @ braums as a full-time .. and she told me that she will get life and medical insurance without even paying for them.. is that true? so lets say she cut her hand and now she need to have a surgery does that really mean that she will get surgery for free? and whats the difference between Group Medical Insurance and Life Insurance? and if she is not right that can u tell me how does it work? here is the link read the benefits @ the top of the page

How much will motorcycle insurance cost for me?

I'm 18, i live in austin, texas, and i plan on getting a kawasaki ninja 250 for my first bike""

Where is a cheap, affordable place to get my wisdom teeth removed in the Chicago area?

I have no insurance and my jaw is very painful!! Does anyone know of a place that is affordable? Thanks in advance! !

I want to file a complaint about two health insurances.?

I went on the Internet to try to get health insurance, this company called alliance for affordable service called me and told me that my percriptions would only cost in the neigbor hood of $10- to &50 dollars. I spoke to my Dr. and he told me that there was none of my medicines that he could change to the lower prices. I contacked the company and told them what the Dr. told me. I asked for my money back, they told me to send a letter, which I did. They sent me one back aqnd told me that they would not give me my money back. I dropped the insurance. I contacked another insurance on the internet. They called me. I sepicifity asked if they covered preexisting conditions and he asked did I mean, I told he that the Dr. wanted to do surgery on me left foot. He told me that it would cover any preexisting preplanned surgeries. The Dr. office called them and they told her that they would not cover any suegery inpatient or out. This company was Sure Care.""

The average price of car insurance for VA drivers?

I'm planning on getting my license very soon. I've been planning ahead by saving up car money and figuring out what type of car I want. However, my dad often mentions how insurance is gonna bite you in the ***. so I would like to know what the average price of car insurance is for young or new Virginia drivers. please and thank you. (I've heard rumors that sometimes it helps if you have a beige or gray car. true?)""

Is there some kind of insurance I can buy for my pit bull while renting a home/apt?

I'm not looking for housing, but I know how difficult it is to get while owning a dog over 25 lbs and a pit bull mix to boot! Is there a type of insurance that I can get that will over-ride or cover whatever it is in the commerical insurance that makes people reject me for my dog breed? I have read somewhere there might be, but I don't know what it is and what was the experience with using it? I'm wondering if it's something I should get now and have a history of having or just get when I need it.""

Job offer buyout insurance?

I just got a job offer for 40,000 with 75% benefits paid. Ill be living at home with my parents and im covered under their health insurance until im 26. Can I ask them to not pay for insurance and give me a higher salary instead? Has anyone heard of this happening? Thanks""

Is there such a thing as mental heath insurance or at least a carrier that is better than others...?

i'm self employed and considering blue cross/shield and kaiser but can't really find a cost difference between them. i'm in california, physically very healthy but feeling the need for therapy, but can hardly afford it. i have no health insurance at all so a plan that covered everything, but was especially generous on mental health would be great.""

Does my car has to have insurance or do I have to have a new insurance for myself in order to drive in NJ?

I'm a bit confused about this issue. I have a permit and I want to do a road test in order to obtain the provisional driver license. The thing is that I heard a lot from people about insurance and now I'm that confused that I don't know what to do. Do I need to have insurance? or does my car need insurance? Can I be under my parents insurance? Would that be cheaper? Could you guys help me figure this out? All I want is to drive legally without any problems, and don't waste money. Could you give me some sources also? Thx ahead""

How can we make health care insurance work like car insurance?

Everyone is familiar with how car insurance works. Its available to all. Its pretty cheap. They can't drop you from coverage even if you are a drunk driver. Once you have a accident they dont raise you rates too much. Why can't health care be more like Geico (insurance) and your local car repair man (doctor) and the DMV (government help)?

What happens after you settle with your insurance company?

My car was stolen Monday morning on July 15 around 3am to 5 am in Richmond CA the car was park right by my parking lot my question is what happend after I settle a payment with my car Insurance and The police find my car after I settle with my insurance?

Health insurance in NY? Minor children & jobs that don't offer healthcare?

My friend has twins that are 17 & they are having a hard time finding affordable health insurance like many people, she works 2 jobs that total around 2,300 a month & her husband makes around 3,000.. None of the jobs offer healthcare to the kids, they tried a insurance called Hudson health but ended up being told it would be about $600 a month which they can't pay, does anyone know any insurance that works with you, or that is more affordable? Any help is much appreciated :) thank you""

Insurance on Rx-8 for a 29yr old male?

I'm almost 29 and I'm thinking of buying a Mazda Rx-8, the 230bhp version. I've got 2 yrs no claims and was wondering if anyone of similar age has one and if they could give me an idea of what the insurance would cost in Ireland??""

Cheap subaru impreza insurance?

has anyone got a scooby? any recommended insurance companies? just brought my first one. a 1993 WRX import. im 29 with 11 years no claims. best i can find is with the AA for 664 with 450 excess. are there any places that specialize in imports that could beat that? cheers!!

Will the insurance give me another car?

someone backed into my car bumper resulting in a fairly unnoticeable damage,I started a claim, if the insurance company send me to a bodyshop to for the repair will they give me another car till my car is fixed???""

Who sells the cheapest auto insurance online? Thank you in advance.?

Who sells the cheapest auto insurance online? Thank you in advance.?

I'd like a bigger bike but what will the insurance cost me?

I'm looking to trade in my 125cc for a bigger bike, most likely a 600cc, but I'm wondering what the insurance will be considering I have 3 points on my license for speeding. I'm looking to get it for my 18th, and it will be restricted to 33bhp. Can anyone give me a ballpark figure of what the insurance will be? And what bike should I get?""

Help finding a car insurance quote?

I'm doing a project for my economics class where I have to pretend to be a 22 year old living on my own and make a monthly budget for myself. I have to find a car insurance and health insurance quote, but everywhere I search asks for personal information and has to search through my records and credit to give me the right quote. I'm only 17 so they wouldn't find anything on me. I need it for a 22 year old making 27,000 a year. Please help me! 10 points to the best answer :)""

How long on workers comp can you keep you health insurance from your work?

i mean like for things not related to my work injury? how long do they have to keep my job for me?

""Getting my first car,without license or insurance?""

Hi i live in California and im getting alot of money to get my first car withing a 90 mile radius,the problem is that i have no DL or insurance.My question is what happens if i get stopped?Im only going to be driving it to my house and thats it until i get my license.Im also buy it off a person not a dealer.""

""I need cheap car insurance, I'm in college?""

I'm 19, a college kid and need car insurance. I now it's going to be crazy high, but if anyone has any insight or tips to make it cheaper, it would me much appreciated.""

Must you have insurance if you are a driver in the state of Nevada?

I'm a driver in California, under the age of 21. I don't have a car that I own nor am I put on the other cars that my parents own and don't wish to be on them. If I am not planning on driving any time, do I still need to have insurance because I have a driver's license? If you have an answer, I would appreciate a link as well to look on.""

How much is home insurance per year in South Florida ?

Were purchasing a home around 300,000 how much is insurance yearly ? Anyone pay around this much ?""

Average motorcycle insurance for a young married couple?

my fiance and i are thinking about getting a motorcycle in about a year. how much would insurance cost for an average bike? we will be 20.

Help looking for health insurance for college student in California?

I'm a 20 year old living in California and I'm trying to get health insurance. My previous one in PCIP is dissolved and I'm trying to get enrolled into Covered California, but I got locked out and can't reach anyone there due to high call volumes. I'm looking for an alternative but I have no idea where else to search. I'm looking into Kaiser, Blue Cross etc. but I'm not sure what to do.. Can someone please help me?""

Will my car insurance go up?

I just got a speeding ticket for going 14mph over. I pay my car insurance on a 6 month cycles and I just paid for the next 6 months at the beginning of the month. Is there any way the insurance companycan charge me more for the current 6 months or will my insurance not go up until my next 6 months bill? Thanks!

Insurance esitmate for 2 door vauxhall corsa?

Im 17, and im planning to get a vauxhall corsa, estimated insurance prices please?""

Should i keep car insurance?

Car lot required full coverage car insurance to drive car off the lot. I just want the bare minimum can i switch to just liability? Or do i have to keep it?

Where is a cheap, affordable place to get my wisdom teeth removed in the Chicago area?

I have no insurance and my jaw is very painful!! Does anyone know of a place that is affordable? Thanks in advance! !

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/affordable-auto-insurance-omaha-lynn-wade/"

[kaikhaos]

The Hurricane Sandy Saga: Feb 2019 Edition

So here’s the story of my life since October 28, 2012 and all the chaos that has come with it. This is not a happy story, so far, but I’m hoping you guys can help make it one, or at least help prevent a bad end. This is a story of corrupt banks, government bullsh*t, and a 25 year old disabled trans queer who just wants to go home. Over the next five thousand words, I hope you realize the extent of how life has repeatedly NOPED at any sense of logic. At the end of my story, I’m going to ask you to help me out if you can and to spread the word either way.

The tl;dr version is that my family is facing homelessness for the fourth time in eighteen months and I really need you guys’ help to get us back into a stable situation so this never happens again. The mortgage company has screwed us yet again and is holding on to $250,000 that is supposed to be ours. So while we own one house and one newly demolished lot, we have nowhere to live. If you can at all help out, please do. My paypal link is at the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

My name is Aleks. This is my story.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m disabled. I have been legally recognized as disabled since I was 18. I have a combination of mental health issues and physical health issues that make it so my capacity on any given day varies greatly from “I made it through a day at a con thanks to lots of painkillers!” to “I brushed my teeth today and didn’t cry doing it!” But I try. Anxiety, depression, C-PTSD, & ADD are just a few of the things I’ve been diagnosed with by my therapist and psychiatrist, paired with diagnoses from my doctors of migraines, fibromyalgia, and a degenerative connective tissue disorder known as Ehlers-Danlos that all combine to leave me in fairly constant pain basically everywhere. My brain and my body attack me constantly but I still try to do what I can. Unfortunately, it means I can’t just go out and get a 9-5 or retail job to help fix my situation. I can only do what I can do and I have to know my limits.

I live with my mother and my QPP Luca who are both also disabled.

You may know in 2012 we were hit by Hurricane Sandy. If you don’t know that, you’re about to find out. We had six feet of water in our house and my grandfather’s house next door (AKA: my inheritance) floated off of its foundation and was straight up condemned. Ever since then, life has been, in a word, chaos. It’s gotten to be a theme in our house that if it can go wrong, it will go wrong. Even my therapist has given up on making any kind of treatment plan and is basically just focusing on damage control. And honestly, at this point, I just wanna go home.

But Aleks, it’s been seven years, why aren’t you home yet? Oh boy, I am SO glad you asked. Let’s get into this history.

First, a prequel. I’m not rich, my family isn’t rich, but we get by. Our house wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. In 2006, my mother bought two tiny houses next door to each other from an old man who wanted to sell them to a family the way he’d grown up in the smaller house while his parents lived in the other house. The one house was a six hundred square foot bungalow that would become my grandfather’s and its neighbor was a seven hundred square foot house that would become mine and my mother’s.

Our house was gorgeous and cute. Built in the early 1900s by a tinsmith with scraps from all of his jobs, all of the walls were tin instead of sheetrock or plaster, the floors were gorgeous hardwood, and the three bedrooms were each under a hundred square feet. It was tiny but it was ours.

On August 28th, 2011, that house was hit by Tropical Storm Irene. Our house was flooded by two feet of water on the first floor. The Atlantic Ocean took out our floors, cabinets, appliances, electrical outlets, the bathroom tile, and the furniture, not to mention rusting the heck out of the bottom of the tin walls. It took six months to get the final eighty thousand dollar settlement out of the insurance company.

The check was deposited by the mortgage company who said they would hold onto it and dole it out as we hired contractors or finished repairs. But here’s the thing: The settlement barely covered enough for the supplies, so we maxed out credit cards and depleted personal savings and finished our repairs a few months later with the help of very few contractors and a lot of DIY.

We installed our kitchen appliances as the last step and called the mortgage company that day to ask them to come and inspect and verify the repairs were done so they could release the other seventy thousand dollars that they were holding onto. They said they were backed up and that they would come and inspect in a month.

Our new stove was 22 days old when Hurricane Sandy hit us.

Where Irene was manageable, Sandy was devastating. My grandfather’s house floated on the storm surge and landed three feet away from its foundation. The legs of our lawn table were bent and sticking out from under the house like the damn wicked witch or something. Our house on the other hand shifted by an inch. Not much, you’d think, but enough to break every pipe in the house and damage the entire structural stability of the house.

The town building department condemned my grandfather’s house and wrote ours up as “more than 50% damaged”.

Needless to say, both houses were left completely and totally uninhabitable.

The mortgage company inspector came and said because everything was wet and ruined that they “couldn’t certify the repairs were completed” even when we were standing there with a stack of receipts and before and after pictures, clearly proving everything had been replaced since most of the materials had been changed. So they decided they wouldn’t release the $70,000 they were holding onto from Irene until the new SANDY repairs were done. Even though we’d already spent that money on repairs and run up debt because of it, they decided they were just going to hold onto it for longer.

And honestly? Fuck those guys. They are the root of some of the most evil parts of this, as you’ll see.

So back to the Sandy damages. First, the insurance company offered us a FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLAR damage assessment. Fifteen thousand bucks when we had six feet of water in our house. For perspective, fourteen months before Hurricane Sandy, Tropical Storm Irene sent 24 inches of water into our house and the insurance company gave us eighty thousand dollars to make those repairs. So yeah, fifteen thousand wasn’t gonna do it. The construction estimates for the repairs were coming in around two hundred and fifty thousand.

So, of course, we appealed. Our engineer said parts of the house were outright dangerous from the damage and had to be torn down and replaced. We told the insurance company this and they told us they would send their own engineer. And… well… they sent SOMEBODY. Was that guy a licensed engineer? Nope. Did they tell us he was? Yup.

So then we appealed to FEMA. The judge from FEMA told them outright to send a LICENSED engineer in his decision and left it at that. So then they did. This guy now said he thought fifty thousand was gonna do it. The insurance company looked at his report and went “mmm… so how about thirty thousand?”

So… no. So then we had to hire a lawyer and took them to court. We weren’t the only ones, thousands of people had to file these lawsuits. The lawyer told us not to let the mortgage company cash the $30,000 of checks we’d been given for the storm so far because it could be argued to be us agreeing to that number. He said we just had to WAIT. So the checks got too old to cash.

The Visiting Nurse Service started sending a therapist to our house once a week for each of the three of us to help with “Hurricane-Related PTSD”. Yup. Cool. On top of my regular C-PTSD. Awesome. But the guy was nice and having therapists to talk to twice a week (my regular one and this guy) was helpful. And he gave me some worksheets that helped me kind of have more of a tool kit. Everything still sucked but hey, we all trudged on.

Pretty sure this was around when the first roofing shingles started falling off of our rental house. We told the landlord that this was a problem and that the property was going to start getting leaks in the roof. We pointed out that it said in our lease that he was supposed to fix this little ‘issue’.

Repeatedly.

Including in writing and by sending him photos of the slowly growing stack of shingles that were not on the roof anymore and the leaky window.

And he still did diddly squat about it.

For five years.

Meanwhile during this whole… process, New York State started the New York Rising program to help rebuild the houses who were tied up in lawsuits like ours or who didn’t have insurance like my grandfather’s. We applied right away. It seemed like an answer!

…So then uh… New York Rising LOST our file.

…Uh… Twice.

And when they finally DID decide to properly process our application, they gave us a grand total of $88,000 and put us in the ‘Build a whole new house’ category. Our house is, as I said, under 900 square feet in size. You literally cannot build a house in our area for that price at that size. Especially when it’s a property that needs 14 foot deep helical pilings and a nine foot high foundation to comply with current code. The foundation alone is $50,000. The lowest estimate we found from any construction company after no less than TEN bids was $180,000 NOT counting the architect who’s another $15,000. NY Rising expected us to be able to rebuild for a fraction of that. So we started looking into finding other financing possibilities while waiting on the lawsuit to continue going through.

We decided to hire our neighbour’s architect because he was something resembling almost affordable. We gave him a deposit. …A few weeks later, he had a heart attack while leaving the building department’s office. …A few weeks after that, he started being investigated for embezzling money from his clients.

At this point, we’d been out of our house for years. And more and more shingles kept falling off of the roof of the rental. Then a siding tile fell off too because the landlord’s son’s landscaping company crashed a lawnmower into it.

We started looking at houses to buy so that at least we would own something.

Then my grandfather (who had been a major contributor to our household finances) had a severe stroke. Six months later, he died. Suddenly we were $3,000 tighter per month. The possibility of buying a house went out the window. But we made do as best as we could.

FEMA was paying for the rental house we were living in while going through all of the appeal and lawsuit procedures and, when we hit their funding cap, New York Rising’s IMA program stepped in to pay “whichever is less, your rent or mortgage”. It still meant higher costs as the rent around here is more than our mortgage, but it made it so we could get by.

The one silver lining was that once my grandfather was out of the picture (since he’d been living with us in a shared rental since Sandy), I was able to start on testosterone injections. January 28, 2015, I was able to start my injections and officially begin the medical side of my transition.

Then New York Rising hit a cap on IMA funding. Which… sucked pretty fucking hard because then there was a few thousand a month more money we had to find to shell out. But then the program was extended and that was awesome.

Then our cat, Pickles, developed severe kidney problems. She was my best friend since the day she showed up on our doorstep a week after we bought our house in 2006 and wandered into the kitchen demanding petting. She moved into our lives and never left. I couldn’t give her up without a fight. So I spent all of my savings on her medical bills and started giving her saline injections twice a day every day to help her kidneys flush the toxins they couldn’t handle themselves.

Then the IMA ran out again. So back to the land of suck. They told us we would be eligible for a little more funding. But only if we demolished the existing house.

In order to legally demolish the house, we had to pay for a construction company to do it under their license. New York Rising expected us to be able to demo the house for $5,000. The lowest bid we received was for $9,000. When we told them this, their reaction was essentially “yeah, yeah, we know, just make it work”. Make it work is a cool and funny phrase when spoken by an aging fashion consultant on television. It’s not so cool or funny when it’s being told to you by the people who are supposed to help you fix your house. It is stressful as hell.

Then Pickles got sicker. And sicker. And her at-home dialysis wasn’t enough to keep her going anymore. Pickles passed in May 2016.

In 2017, we finally won our lawsuit. The judge ruled the insurance company had to release a full payment to the policy maximum of $250,000! Those jerks tried giving us $15,000 and the judge was like “Uh… no, this is $250,000 of damage”. Victory! But we were still out our legal fees because, unlike homeowner’s insurance where the insurance company pays the fees, flood insurance is federally underwritten so you’re not allowed to get the legal fees paid for. Some flood insurance companies realized they’d fucked up and as a result agreed to pay for the legal fees. Our flood insurance company… wasn’t so generous. But a check was still generated by the flood insurance company thanks to the judge. Huzzah, light at the end of the tunnel!

…Then the lawyer refused to sign the check.

Apparently our lawyer has had dealings with our mortgage company before and run into the same problem as we had with their “we’ll release your funding at the end” theory. Except for him that meant “we won’t pay out your legal fees until the house is finished” and he didn’t like that. So they wanted him to sign the check over to them and he wanted them to sign the check over to him. They spent years arguing over a piece of paper with some dollar signs on it while we got needlessly further into debt.

Then one of my ferrets, Wasabi, my emotional support animal, got really sick really suddenly.

By the time the vet scrambled to find out what was wrong, it was too late and he was gone. It turned out that he had a rare autoimmune condition caused by heavy metal exposure from the water. His sister survived, but now Lemon was alone and she and I were both devastated. Watching the way she would get excited and then sad any time we brought out a toy with Wasabi’s scent on it broke my heart so I replaced her toys.

A month later, people came knocking on our door offering free water filters if they would let us track the toxic plume of decades old industrial chemicals and waste spreading unhindered through the groundwater supply that had apparently reached us and was contaminating our pipes.

Eventually, during all this, New York Rising started to realize that their $160 per square foot amount just wasn’t enough when it came to houses like ours. So they started a program called the Recon 100 program. The goal of this program was supposed to be that New York Rising would take over the build process, they would hire contractors and architects in bulk, essentially hiring them for ‘bundles’ of 10 or 20 properties at a time to get them to accept a lower profit per house because they would be guaranteed months of solid work. We were signed up into the program.

Now, as a condition of this program, we had to stop doing any work on our own, we’d have to return whatever hadn’t been spent on repairs already, and we’d have to give them any insurance checks. But New York Rising was bragging about how they had programs that would allow you to repay the funding over several years because they knew everyone was using a little bit here or there to make ends meet. And that was all well and dandy because once the repairs were done, the mortgage company would release what they were holding one way or another. They would have to. …Right?

Meanwhile, our rental assistance hit the next cap. New York Rising told us not to worry because once this paperwork was approved, we’d be eligible for a higher cap of extended rental assistance. It was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to get approved, they said.

Then our caseworker at New York Rising decided she was going to deny our receipts for the funds already spent. And that she wasn’t going to file the appeals to that denial that we explicitly asked her in writing to file.

Then on top of that, we discovered that at some point our NYR caseworker had decided to NOT sign us up for the extended timeline repayment thing because… fuck knows why, honestly? And that now she wasn’t going to apply us for it because “oh it’s full now”. So NY Rising decided that, before they’d do anything, they wanted us to give THEM the money that was still sitting in those pre-lawsuit paper checks that went old immediately. The government decided that we either had to magic the money of an un-cashed check out of thin air or else it was up to us to: 1, get them reissued, 2, get them deposited by the mortgage company, and 3, somehow get the mortgage company to issue that money to New York Rising.

And they wanted all this done in less than a week because they decided this in the last phase of our approval process and there were other deadlines really close. …Needless to say, the mortgage company was like “lol um nah” even to the theoretical idea of giving the money to NY Rising for the repairs, nevermind the hassle of getting the checks reissued by the flood insurance company with an active lawsuit ongoing.

New York Rising only said “too bad, figure it out yourself and PS because you’re not in this program anymore, we won’t give you the continued rental assistance, why aren’t you done rebuilding your house yet?” Meanwhile, we were waiting on them for months because they told us it was just waiting for the paperwork to go through.

Meanwhile, we had a new jerk of a builder/flipper neighbour. He’d bought the house next door to us when the family with the new baby decided it wasn’t worth waiting so many years to have their own house fixed. Let’s call him Fish Head. He decided to have his building supplies delivered to our neighbour’s yard WITHOUT her permission because there wasn’t enough room on his property. Straight up, he had a whole pallet of building supplies just dumped on her yard. She complained, obviously, and her husband threatened to call the cops. So he moved his shit to to OUR yard because we happened to not be there that day. It took WEEKS to get him to move the shit, even WITH calling the cops.

Turns out, cops don’t give a shit if someone puts hundreds of pounds of building materials on your yard. They’ll tell you you’re well within your rights to move it yourself but if you don’t have a forklift or a whole team of burly humans to assist you in the move then too bad so sad.

Thanks, Fish Head.

But back to the housing. We were months overdue on the rent because we were “just waiting for the paperwork to finish processing”. They told us we’d get all the back stuff in one lump payment. They lied and now we were up shit’s creek.

Our scummy landlord finally sent a notice saying “I’ve waited long enough, get out”. So that was… cool. We were able to keep him from coming after the back rent by pointing out that he was a slum lord and that we’d notified him in writing about being a slumlord, but it still meant we had to move out immediately and in a rush. Thankfully, it was May.

So on June 1st 2018, we moved into our RV parked at a local campsite. Three adults, a cat, and a ferret, crammed into an RV that was anything but recreational.

We installed cameras on our house around this point because Fish Head kept having his workers trample all over our property and they kept breaking things and leaving garbage everywhere.

Then the engineer said he thought he could figure out a way to save the main body of our house and raise it, that we’d only have to demolish off the back room and possibly the bathroom in order to raise it. It was another light at the end of a repeatedly lengthening tunnel. So we changed tracks completely and had him start drafting stuff up for us to raise the existing house, rebuilding only the porch.

Now, here’s the thing about the local campsites, we don’t have many of them and they sell out pretty quickly. Especially for the height of the summer. So they didn’t have any of their ‘full hook-up’ sites, AKA the ones that get you electricity and everything, but we had water and a bathroom and a shower facility and the barbecue to cook food, and it was… survivable. Not exactly comfortable but survivable.

We started doing the work to repair the house instead of following the line of thinking of rebuilding it. We cashed in everything we could and scraped together every scrap of money we possibly could, we sold things, we asked for help where we could, we got a very understanding contractor to give us the lowest prices we could. We managed to get the mortgage company to pay out some of the Tropical Storm Irene money directly to the contractors. Remember that guy, wayyyy back in 2011? And the mortgage inspector who missed a pre-Sandy inspection by a week? Yeah. They still had that money. So even though it was technically Sandy damages as we’d already done the work from Irene, we managed to get them to pay that out. But WHATEVER. It got it paid.

We had a looming deadline from New York Rising that they wanted the house raised by December 31st. Or at least that they wanted it lifted and pending the new foundation. They call this ‘cribbing’ and it basically means your house goes up on Jenga Towers and that you can’t live in it for a while until the foundation is done and it goes back down. So we had to somehow make that happen. But first things first, the campground was closing for the season and we had to have a place to live.

On November 1st 2018, we were able to move back into our house.

Temporarily, at least, while permits and construction drawings and everything went through for getting the house raised.

So we applied to the mortgage company to get the remaining $40,000 that they had from Tropical Storm Irene, the full final payout. And, amazingly, we got it. In it came and went right back out it went to the contractors who were supposed to be working on raising the house because that December 31st deadline was still looming.

Then Fish Head who we keep running into issues with, FINALLY got a stop work order on his house for not having the right permits. Serves you right, Fish Head. But, in retaliation, he decided to lie to the building department that we were living there without utilities? Somehow? When we literally had all our utilities? And had gotten the “90% complete” inspection from our mortgage company? So THAT was a whole mess to try to straighten out. When we met with the head of the building department, he literally turned to the guy next to him and said “See, remember I told you about this guy? This is the retaliation I was telling you about” because he was the guy who had personally signed the stop work order on Fish Head.

So the next big concern was that December 31st deadline. Everyone kept debating whether or not New York Rising would extend it at the last minute again (as they’d done that once before), and we started scrambling to try to find somewhere to live while the house was raised. Ideally, we were looking for somewhere that WASN’T the cold tiny RV in the middle of a New York winter. We applied to a few apartments but because we were paying the mortgage and everything our debt to income ratio didn’t qualify.

On December 24th, 2018, we got the $250,000 check from the flood insurance company with our name and the mortgage company’s name. It seemed like a Christmas Miracle. So we immediately sent it over to the mortgage company so they could cash it and we could apply to have those funds released, remember, our house was FINISHED and HABITABLE, except for needing to be raised per the new flood zoning stuff. At the very least, we had the 90% inspection, and on our next inspection we got a 99%.

So we immediately started applying for the final permits for getting the house raised and my grandfather’s house demolished. The lady at the building department is… nice but not very organized. So we had to deal with the town jerking us around with the permits taking forever to get done, well past the time estimates they tell you on the phone when you call and ask about time estimates.

We rushed to have our disconnects done. Water, electric, sewer. The house was all wrapped up in a pretty bow ready to be raised. We moved into a hotel. All we needed was the final elevation permit and the money from the mortgage company.

So back to the mortgage company and that $250,000. The mortgage company denied the payout 3 times saying, “Oh we don’t have… this paper or that paper” for papers we had confirmation they had. The guy on the phone one time when we were like “….We submitted that one on x date while speaking to Z employee”, he tried saying, “Oh this fax isn’t legible…” and we were just like “…FAX… you mean the scanned in PDF we submitted via your web upload?” And he was like “…Oh. hold please…” and suddenly he could read the form. Magic. So basically they were just LYING to us. Why? Fuck knows.

Then it was, “Everything is fine and it’ll be issued in 3 days” on the 23rd. And we got the elevation permit! And the demo permit on my grandfather’s house! Everything was rolling along and it was all going to be fine! Right?

Not so fast.

On the 31st we still had no check. We called and it was, “Oh it has to go to this other department because it’s over $70,000, but everything is approved and they’ll issue the check in 5 to 7 days, HONEST”.

We called back on the 5th and THAT lie had turned into “Oh well… we sold your loan effective the 4th, you’ll have to ask the new guys”. The mortgage company SOLD OUR LOAN to another company WHILE our payout was “APPROVED AND SENT TO THE CHECK ISSUING DEPARTMENT”.

We called the new guys who told us, “Oh we don’t even have a ID NUMBER assigned for your loan yet, call back in a week to get your loan number and then it’s another week until we can even see your funds and start your payout claim oh and we probably need to schedule our own inspection.”

So it’ll be easily a month OR MORE before we get the money.

We are trying to expedite this whole process as best as we can. We managed to get the ID number in only 4 days. They seem to be arguing with themselves about whether or not they need a whole new inspection or not.

Meanwhile, we only really had the money for the hotel for the lift time but all the disconnects have been done (there is no heat, water, or electricity) so it’s not like we can just go BACK HOME during the delay either.

We have $250,000 on the way and we’re about to be homeless. Again. For the third time in 18 months.

If we can just get $5,000, we can pay to have the house RECONNECTED AGAIN to everything so we can wait these fuckers out and get the payout.

Every little bit helps.

Please.

The other option is living in the RV again just to have a roof over our heads. But unlike last time when it was warm, it is February and we are in NY. It snowed yesterday. RVs aren’t designed to keep warm when there’s snow out.

Please help me and my family stay in a house.

My paypal link can be found through the big PLEASE HELP button at the top of my page on desktop as well as will be pinned to both of my twitters (MihaelKai & HedonistInk) and I’ll also be regularly reblogging a version of this post here WITH the link.

I am also taking a limited number of 1000 word or less commissions! That’s about the limit of what I can handle right now! DM me for details!

(Mutuals: If you can’t donate but you can loan us some for two months or so, we can pay you back as soon as we get that check? Please let me know if it is a donation or if you would like to be paid back so I can keep a record.)

#trans crowd fund #please consider donating #donations #transcrowdfund #homelessness #please help #hurricane #hurricane sandy

[adambstingus]

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

Poverty is a well-worn subject here at Cracked. John Cheese has talked about it a lot, C. Coville discussed legal loopholes that can screw the poor, and we’ve also covered myths the media perpetrates. And now it’s my turn to moderately wealthsplain the subject.

Unlike John and others, I grew up one year’s worth of acoustic guitar lessons away from being the most stereotypical middle-class white kid ever. I didn’t take yearly vacations to private islands to hunt men for sport, but I also never wanted for clothes and video games. And while us suburban kids were taught that it’s good to help the poor, we were also accidentally taught to treat them with disdain. Here’s how.

5

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Pinterest

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

It’s all variations on the same theme: Money can’t buy happiness, true wealth comes from friendship and experiences, you don’t need the solid gold butt plug when the polymer one feels identical inside of you, etc. Movies teach it, music teaches it, our parents teach it — money is useless if you aren’t living. It’s not an inherently bad message, but try telling people at the homeless shelter to count the blessings that money can’t buy, and see how long it takes before you’ll feel blessed that you can afford health insurance.

Outside of images that the Care Bears would find insipid, “Money can’t buy happiness” is what middle-class people tell each other when someone is trying to decide between two different jobs. “I make 70k right now and the new gig only plays 60k, so I wouldn’t be able to travel as much. But I’d have more free time to play Ultimate, the benefits are better, and there’s no way my new manager could be any worse than my current one.” That’s an important decision to the person making it, but they’re debating between two different kinds of comfort. It’s safely assumed that the money they will need to exist will always be there. It would be nice to have more — to be able to go to more restaurants or to justify buying a second Roomba because deep down you know that the first one is lonely — but there’s always enough to keep the lights on and the kitchen stocked.

You may have seen the study that claimed $70,000 a year is the ideal salary — after that, more money generally doesn’t make you happier. Well, that’s great news for people hovering around that benchmark, but if you’re poor, more money will abso-fucking-lutely make you happier. More money means healthier food, or a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. It can mean knowing the rent is paid for next month, or being able to afford medication.

The middle class isn’t immune to money problems, especially if there are kids in the mix. Getting laid off at the wrong time sucks, no matter what your income is. But the middle-class people with money problems I’ve known were generally suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They had no savings because they wanted the new car or the luxury vacation. They wanted one of those experiences they were constantly told was more important than money, because the money for day-to-day necessities was always there, right up until it wasn’t.

That’s part of the reason, I think, so many middle-class people laugh at campaigns to raise the minimum wage. “You want 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers? How about you just hold off on the new TV until you get a real job?” The middle class generally fluctuates between being able to afford a nice vacation one year and having to settle for a few trips to the movies the next. The poor can fluctuate between paying bills and being out on the street. But the idea that such essentials could just go unpaid is unfathomable, right up until you experience it.

4

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

When I was growing up, there was never a question of whether or not I was going to college. That’s partially because the idea of my spindly idiot ass learning a technical trade or doing manual labor is the first step in creating an “Epic Fail!!!” YouTube video, but mostly because my parents had a fund set up for me. (It helped that I live in a country where a post-secondary education doesn’t cost roughly eight quadrillion dollars a semester.)

So jobs that didn’t require a degree were presented to us as warning signs. “You better study hard, or else you’re going to end up just like that bull masturbator for the rest of your life! And I didn’t intend that pun, so don’t giggle!” Becoming a janitor or a gas station attendant or an internet comedy writer would have been considered a disappointment, an inability to take advantage of the gifts that were offered to us. Poverty was considered a moral failing.

No one ever just came out and said that, but the implication was always there. We tend to assume that other people are basically like us until they prove otherwise, which is why I’m constantly shocked to discover that most people don’t like my favorite homoerotic golf academy anime, Wood Strokes. So we were never taught that working as a dishwasher or a grocery store clerk or a sperm bank fluffer could be an important stepping stone for someone with a different background than us. We were also never taught that, you know, it’s still a goddamn job where someone shows up and puts work in and gets paid for their time. They were always just associated with squandered potential.

And man, when you hear that message constantly, it’s hard to shake. It’s easy to glance at a middle-aged dude working the checkout counter and automatically think “Well, I bet he’s not the brightest guy around” or “Oh shit, is that what happened to Matthew Lawrence?” It’s not malicious — not initially. Being told to take advantage of your opportunities is not a bad message. But when that message is driven into you for decades, it creates a stigma around certain jobs. And from some people, it produces plenty of snide remarks about how the people working those jobs should get better ones, as if the person who’s been a server for seven years has never considered just popping down to the job store and picking up a career in architecture.

Janitors and baristas keep society running as much as anyone else. If all of America’s coffee shops shut down for a day, the country would experience a nationwide narcolepsy epidemic crossed with The Purge. But when you grow up in the middle class, the only thing you’re taught about such jobs is that you should get one as a teenager to build character, and then thank God that you’ll never have to work one again as long as you don’t fuck up in life. And as long as we consider that a sign of our superior work ethic instead of birth luck, we’re going to keep dismissing as pathetic the jobs we’d all get angry about if they vanished tomorrow.

3

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

An education isn’t the only thing that most middle-class kids can assume they’ll get. A car to borrow, a phone, 20 bucks for when you really want to take a girl to what you assumed was a bad movie so you could make out in the back row but then it turns out that she’s actually super into the plot of Gigli and wants to focus on it even though you were all set to reach second base and so you end up getting a confused erection to Al Pacino and it inadvertently shapes your formative years … you know, all the little things that are part of growing up in Middle America.

That’s the end result of assuming that a good job awaits you, and that money is for throwing at problems and buying pizza instead of something to stress out about. Water heater broke? No worries, we’ll just have to eat in the rest of the month to make up for it. Shoes all worn out? Well, you can’t go to school like that, so go get some new ones. Gone on a losing streak at the Pokemon Card League and the groupies have started drifting off to the other players? Better pick up a few booster packs to get back in the game. You know you can’t get greedy and start buying Armani, but as long as your needs are modest, the money will always be there.

So the idea of 20 bucks making or breaking someone is impossible to appreciate. It’s just not a concept that clicks in our heads. It makes sense on a logical level, sure — you need money, and you don’t have it, and that sucks. But when you’re raised in comfort, you can’t put yourself in that head space emotionally. You can’t understand the stress, or the fear that you might not be able to feed your kids. The closest we can get is watching Gwyneth Paltrow try and hilariously fail to live on a tiny food budget before going back to her $4,000 kale cleanses. That’s kind of like empathy, right?

And because it’s tough to relate to, it’s tough to talk about. If someone tells me that they never got Christmas presents growing up, all I can respond with is “Uh, yeah, that sounds like it sucked. Well … one time my grandma accidentally got me Super Murpio 67, so … I hear you.” Starting a conversation with a bunch of middle-class people about poverty is like bringing up Trayvon Martin at a country club. Everyone trips over everyone else’s words to talk about how tragic it is, but then they distance themselves from the problem and the “buts” start coming out. And to further compound the issue …

2

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

When I was growing up, my exposure to poverty was largely limited to sitcom families who would talk about how poor they were, but were still able to go on a wacky adventure every week. The Simpsons kept running into money troubles in their early years, but their house looked the same as mine. Even the family from Roseanne, the classic working-class sitcom, owned a house that’s a palace compared to what a lot of people live in. The problem with portraying poverty in sitcoms is that it’s hard to get laughs out of eviction and early deaths caused by crippling medical debt, so the lesson always ends up being “Poor people struggle with money sometimes, but in the end they always get by, and they have lots of laughs while doing it!” Sitcoms make being poor look fun.

Beyond that, once or twice a year, I’d go to some kid’s birthday party and notice that his house was a lot smaller and more run down than mine. One of the kids who always got talked about in a slightly different tone of voice by the adults. I never gave it much thought because we went to the same school and both liked Nintendo — how different could our lives possibly be? Maybe I’d see a story on the news that would put a positive spin on the issue. (“Look at how many volunteers with beautiful families showed up to the soup kitchen to help feed these filthy hobos!”) Beyond that, the middle class just doesn’t think about poverty.

We’re always looking up, always wanting to go to the Christmas party at the rich friend’s house so we can get a taste of what we’re aspiring to. There’s rarely a reason to go to the poor part of town. Tell jokes about it, sure, but go? We never have to leave the bubble, so we never learn what real poverty looks like. Poor people become invisible, this mysterious Other, a group that serves you food, and in return, you throw a couple of non-perishables and toys into donation bins for them over the holidays.

Oh yeah, the middle class loves to donate food and toys and clothes and gently used ball gags and all sorts of other crap that we weren’t using anyway. Food banks actually need money far more than they need your creamed corn that’s going to expire in two weeks, because money just goes further. But people who will gladly part with 12 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese and some Funyuns they found under the sofa get leery when it comes to handing over money, even though we’re supposedly under the impression that we don’t need it ourselves to be happy.

That’s partially just because it’s more satisfying to give stuff instead of money — you can imagine some happy kid playing with your old Lego, and you get to clean out your closet. But remember, we’re taught that the poor are stupid and lazy. We sit around telling each other stories about how our friend’s cousin’s boyfriend knows a guy who spent his welfare check on beer and weed. These are campfire horror stories for the most tedious suburbanites, and they’re told in the hot tubs that they probably shouldn’t have bought until the next mortgage payment cleared. We can’t trust those people with money, because if they were smart enough to manage it properly, they’d be smart enough to have a better job. Also, they probably all have hooks for hands and murder teenagers while they’re making out in their cars. Hey, we learn so little about poor people that it’s just as believable.

1

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

I’ve known people with movie theaters in their homes and four cars in their garage who are convinced that society is against them, that life is a gloomy parade of suffering because their property taxes went up a bit. That’s stereotypical rich people behavior, but it’s there in the middle class too, in subtler ways. I live in a city where the economy revolves around a boom and bust industry, so people tend to make good money while complaining about taxes for a few years, then get laid off and go on government benefits for a while, and then get a new job and go back to complaining about the government. And if you watch the cycle, you see the same “us against the world” mentality, just with fewer BMWs in the mix.

When middle-class people get laid off and go on welfare, they blame the economy, or their former employer, or the government. They never blame themselves. And they shouldn’t! Much like a whale’s erection, economies are big, confusing things that can’t be controlled by the average person. It’s not like they left photocopies of their asshole on the boss’ desk. They paid into the welfare system with their taxes when times were good, and now they’re using the system for exactly what it’s intended: helping you out when you’re unlucky. It’s bridging the gap until you, a hard-working person who just caught a tough break, gets another job.

Except when poor people use the system, it’s none of those things. Suddenly they’re not getting help; they’re just dumb, lazy leeches. Plenty of middle-class people are more empathetic and generous than I’ll ever be, but the worst instinct of the middle class is to blame the system when the system fails us, then lecture poor people when the system fails them. I’ve heard the condescending explanations about how the world really works (which usually come out after a few beers when no actual poor people are around because the speaker would never be brave enough to say it to their faces) more times than I can count.

The middle class has a weird relationship with the rich — we alternate between complaining about them and wishing we were them. Money can’t buy happiness, but a yacht certainly wouldn’t hurt matters. Even if we don’t like the rich, there’s always the pipe dream that we could be them. But no one dreams about being poor, unless you’re into an incredibly specific kind of role-playing.

Being poor is a problem (practically, not morally), and a problem is either the fault of the person or the fault of circumstances beyond their control. The latter means we in the middle class might have to do something about it — or, God forbid, reflect upon our lifestyles, which is just the worst. It’s much, much easier to assume that we’re fine, that ultra-rich politicians and celebrities and investment bankers are the ones being condescending and awful to the poor, but also that poor people could probably stand to work a little harder. So, uh … sorry about all of that. I’ll donate some food at Christmas, though!

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/172256736157

[allofbeercom]

5 Reasons Why The Middle Class Doesn’t Understand Poverty

Poverty is a well-worn subject here at Cracked. John Cheese has talked about it a lot, C. Coville discussed legal loopholes that can screw the poor, and we’ve also covered myths the media perpetrates. And now it’s my turn to moderately wealthsplain the subject.

Unlike John and others, I grew up one year’s worth of acoustic guitar lessons away from being the most stereotypical middle-class white kid ever. I didn’t take yearly vacations to private islands to hunt men for sport, but I also never wanted for clothes and video games. And while us suburban kids were taught that it’s good to help the poor, we were also accidentally taught to treat them with disdain. Here’s how.

5

We’re Constantly Told That “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”

If you’re friends with the right kind of insufferable people on social media, you’ve probably seen pictures like this:

Pinterest

Or these:

Simple Reminders

Quotesgram How profound, guy with countless fans and a net worth of 150 million.

Or, God help us, this:

It’s all variations on the same theme: Money can’t buy happiness, true wealth comes from friendship and experiences, you don’t need the solid gold butt plug when the polymer one feels identical inside of you, etc. Movies teach it, music teaches it, our parents teach it — money is useless if you aren’t living. It’s not an inherently bad message, but try telling people at the homeless shelter to count the blessings that money can’t buy, and see how long it takes before you’ll feel blessed that you can afford health insurance.

Outside of images that the Care Bears would find insipid, “Money can’t buy happiness” is what middle-class people tell each other when someone is trying to decide between two different jobs. “I make 70k right now and the new gig only plays 60k, so I wouldn’t be able to travel as much. But I’d have more free time to play Ultimate, the benefits are better, and there’s no way my new manager could be any worse than my current one.” That’s an important decision to the person making it, but they’re debating between two different kinds of comfort. It’s safely assumed that the money they will need to exist will always be there. It would be nice to have more — to be able to go to more restaurants or to justify buying a second Roomba because deep down you know that the first one is lonely — but there’s always enough to keep the lights on and the kitchen stocked.

You may have seen the study that claimed $70,000 a year is the ideal salary — after that, more money generally doesn’t make you happier. Well, that’s great news for people hovering around that benchmark, but if you’re poor, more money will abso-fucking-lutely make you happier. More money means healthier food, or a chance to get out of the house and have some fun. It can mean knowing the rent is paid for next month, or being able to afford medication.

The middle class isn’t immune to money problems, especially if there are kids in the mix. Getting laid off at the wrong time sucks, no matter what your income is. But the middle-class people with money problems I’ve known were generally suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They had no savings because they wanted the new car or the luxury vacation. They wanted one of those experiences they were constantly told was more important than money, because the money for day-to-day necessities was always there, right up until it wasn’t.

That’s part of the reason, I think, so many middle-class people laugh at campaigns to raise the minimum wage. “You want 15 bucks an hour to flip burgers? How about you just hold off on the new TV until you get a real job?” The middle class generally fluctuates between being able to afford a nice vacation one year and having to settle for a few trips to the movies the next. The poor can fluctuate between paying bills and being out on the street. But the idea that such essentials could just go unpaid is unfathomable, right up until you experience it.

4

We’re Taught To Associate Low-Paying Jobs With Failure

When I was growing up, there was never a question of whether or not I was going to college. That’s partially because the idea of my spindly idiot ass learning a technical trade or doing manual labor is the first step in creating an “Epic Fail!!!” YouTube video, but mostly because my parents had a fund set up for me. (It helped that I live in a country where a post-secondary education doesn’t cost roughly eight quadrillion dollars a semester.)

So jobs that didn’t require a degree were presented to us as warning signs. “You better study hard, or else you’re going to end up just like that bull masturbator for the rest of your life! And I didn’t intend that pun, so don’t giggle!” Becoming a janitor or a gas station attendant or an internet comedy writer would have been considered a disappointment, an inability to take advantage of the gifts that were offered to us. Poverty was considered a moral failing.

No one ever just came out and said that, but the implication was always there. We tend to assume that other people are basically like us until they prove otherwise, which is why I’m constantly shocked to discover that most people don’t like my favorite homoerotic golf academy anime, Wood Strokes. So we were never taught that working as a dishwasher or a grocery store clerk or a sperm bank fluffer could be an important stepping stone for someone with a different background than us. We were also never taught that, you know, it’s still a goddamn job where someone shows up and puts work in and gets paid for their time. They were always just associated with squandered potential.

And man, when you hear that message constantly, it’s hard to shake. It’s easy to glance at a middle-aged dude working the checkout counter and automatically think “Well, I bet he’s not the brightest guy around” or “Oh shit, is that what happened to Matthew Lawrence?” It’s not malicious — not initially. Being told to take advantage of your opportunities is not a bad message. But when that message is driven into you for decades, it creates a stigma around certain jobs. And from some people, it produces plenty of snide remarks about how the people working those jobs should get better ones, as if the person who’s been a server for seven years has never considered just popping down to the job store and picking up a career in architecture.

Janitors and baristas keep society running as much as anyone else. If all of America’s coffee shops shut down for a day, the country would experience a nationwide narcolepsy epidemic crossed with The Purge. But when you grow up in the middle class, the only thing you’re taught about such jobs is that you should get one as a teenager to build character, and then thank God that you’ll never have to work one again as long as you don’t fuck up in life. And as long as we consider that a sign of our superior work ethic instead of birth luck, we’re going to keep dismissing as pathetic the jobs we’d all get angry about if they vanished tomorrow.

3

There Are Always Certain Things We Take For Granted

An education isn’t the only thing that most middle-class kids can assume they’ll get. A car to borrow, a phone, 20 bucks for when you really want to take a girl to what you assumed was a bad movie so you could make out in the back row but then it turns out that she’s actually super into the plot of Gigli and wants to focus on it even though you were all set to reach second base and so you end up getting a confused erection to Al Pacino and it inadvertently shapes your formative years … you know, all the little things that are part of growing up in Middle America.

That’s the end result of assuming that a good job awaits you, and that money is for throwing at problems and buying pizza instead of something to stress out about. Water heater broke? No worries, we’ll just have to eat in the rest of the month to make up for it. Shoes all worn out? Well, you can’t go to school like that, so go get some new ones. Gone on a losing streak at the Pokemon Card League and the groupies have started drifting off to the other players? Better pick up a few booster packs to get back in the game. You know you can’t get greedy and start buying Armani, but as long as your needs are modest, the money will always be there.

So the idea of 20 bucks making or breaking someone is impossible to appreciate. It’s just not a concept that clicks in our heads. It makes sense on a logical level, sure — you need money, and you don’t have it, and that sucks. But when you’re raised in comfort, you can’t put yourself in that head space emotionally. You can’t understand the stress, or the fear that you might not be able to feed your kids. The closest we can get is watching Gwyneth Paltrow try and hilariously fail to live on a tiny food budget before going back to her $4,000 kale cleanses. That’s kind of like empathy, right?

And because it’s tough to relate to, it’s tough to talk about. If someone tells me that they never got Christmas presents growing up, all I can respond with is “Uh, yeah, that sounds like it sucked. Well … one time my grandma accidentally got me Super Murpio 67, so … I hear you.” Starting a conversation with a bunch of middle-class people about poverty is like bringing up Trayvon Martin at a country club. Everyone trips over everyone else’s words to talk about how tragic it is, but then they distance themselves from the problem and the “buts” start coming out. And to further compound the issue …

2

We Don’t Witness Poverty, So We Don’t Understand It

When I was growing up, my exposure to poverty was largely limited to sitcom families who would talk about how poor they were, but were still able to go on a wacky adventure every week. The Simpsons kept running into money troubles in their early years, but their house looked the same as mine. Even the family from Roseanne, the classic working-class sitcom, owned a house that’s a palace compared to what a lot of people live in. The problem with portraying poverty in sitcoms is that it’s hard to get laughs out of eviction and early deaths caused by crippling medical debt, so the lesson always ends up being “Poor people struggle with money sometimes, but in the end they always get by, and they have lots of laughs while doing it!” Sitcoms make being poor look fun.

Beyond that, once or twice a year, I’d go to some kid’s birthday party and notice that his house was a lot smaller and more run down than mine. One of the kids who always got talked about in a slightly different tone of voice by the adults. I never gave it much thought because we went to the same school and both liked Nintendo — how different could our lives possibly be? Maybe I’d see a story on the news that would put a positive spin on the issue. (“Look at how many volunteers with beautiful families showed up to the soup kitchen to help feed these filthy hobos!”) Beyond that, the middle class just doesn’t think about poverty.

We’re always looking up, always wanting to go to the Christmas party at the rich friend’s house so we can get a taste of what we’re aspiring to. There’s rarely a reason to go to the poor part of town. Tell jokes about it, sure, but go? We never have to leave the bubble, so we never learn what real poverty looks like. Poor people become invisible, this mysterious Other, a group that serves you food, and in return, you throw a couple of non-perishables and toys into donation bins for them over the holidays.

Oh yeah, the middle class loves to donate food and toys and clothes and gently used ball gags and all sorts of other crap that we weren’t using anyway. Food banks actually need money far more than they need your creamed corn that’s going to expire in two weeks, because money just goes further. But people who will gladly part with 12 boxes of Kraft Mac and Cheese and some Funyuns they found under the sofa get leery when it comes to handing over money, even though we’re supposedly under the impression that we don’t need it ourselves to be happy.

That’s partially just because it’s more satisfying to give stuff instead of money — you can imagine some happy kid playing with your old Lego, and you get to clean out your closet. But remember, we’re taught that the poor are stupid and lazy. We sit around telling each other stories about how our friend’s cousin’s boyfriend knows a guy who spent his welfare check on beer and weed. These are campfire horror stories for the most tedious suburbanites, and they’re told in the hot tubs that they probably shouldn’t have bought until the next mortgage payment cleared. We can’t trust those people with money, because if they were smart enough to manage it properly, they’d be smart enough to have a better job. Also, they probably all have hooks for hands and murder teenagers while they’re making out in their cars. Hey, we learn so little about poor people that it’s just as believable.

1

We’re Taught To See Ourselves As The Victims

I’ve known people with movie theaters in their homes and four cars in their garage who are convinced that society is against them, that life is a gloomy parade of suffering because their property taxes went up a bit. That’s stereotypical rich people behavior, but it’s there in the middle class too, in subtler ways. I live in a city where the economy revolves around a boom and bust industry, so people tend to make good money while complaining about taxes for a few years, then get laid off and go on government benefits for a while, and then get a new job and go back to complaining about the government. And if you watch the cycle, you see the same “us against the world” mentality, just with fewer BMWs in the mix.

When middle-class people get laid off and go on welfare, they blame the economy, or their former employer, or the government. They never blame themselves. And they shouldn’t! Much like a whale’s erection, economies are big, confusing things that can’t be controlled by the average person. It’s not like they left photocopies of their asshole on the boss’ desk. They paid into the welfare system with their taxes when times were good, and now they’re using the system for exactly what it’s intended: helping you out when you’re unlucky. It’s bridging the gap until you, a hard-working person who just caught a tough break, gets another job.

Except when poor people use the system, it’s none of those things. Suddenly they’re not getting help; they’re just dumb, lazy leeches. Plenty of middle-class people are more empathetic and generous than I’ll ever be, but the worst instinct of the middle class is to blame the system when the system fails us, then lecture poor people when the system fails them. I’ve heard the condescending explanations about how the world really works (which usually come out after a few beers when no actual poor people are around because the speaker would never be brave enough to say it to their faces) more times than I can count.

The middle class has a weird relationship with the rich — we alternate between complaining about them and wishing we were them. Money can’t buy happiness, but a yacht certainly wouldn’t hurt matters. Even if we don’t like the rich, there’s always the pipe dream that we could be them. But no one dreams about being poor, unless you’re into an incredibly specific kind of role-playing.

Being poor is a problem (practically, not morally), and a problem is either the fault of the person or the fault of circumstances beyond their control. The latter means we in the middle class might have to do something about it — or, God forbid, reflect upon our lifestyles, which is just the worst. It’s much, much easier to assume that we’re fine, that ultra-rich politicians and celebrities and investment bankers are the ones being condescending and awful to the poor, but also that poor people could probably stand to work a little harder. So, uh … sorry about all of that. I’ll donate some food at Christmas, though!

Mark is on Twitter and has a book that’s made him rich in experience.

For more, check out 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor and 4 Common Morals Designed to Keep You Poor.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Disney Thinks You Hate Poor People, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. Likes don’t cost a thing.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/5-reasons-why-the-middle-class-doesnt-understand-poverty/