Tuesday, August 14, 2007

How am I going to pay my rent?

So this is a game any poor mother has probably played: wrangling rent (and other bills). I will be bringing in about $450 for my last paycheck, and my rent is over $600. This does not include power, internet, student loans, credit line, food, or y dry cleaning bill for my comforter that my cat peed on.

This is by no means new territory, but damn I hate it here. But why the credit line? Granted it's less than $300, but I hate, hate, hate "credit cards" (indentured servitude). I needed it to float a couple items.

First item, two new bras. Did you know, world wide web, that I have a bra size that necessitates I buy bras in specialty stores? Did you know that this is expensive. Sad, but true. After creating the Tiny Tyrant with my body, my breasts grew disproportionally to the rest of my body (except my enormous abdomen , which has mostly, though not entirely, gone down). This is not something I desired, as men tend to sexualize breasts, and I don't like that kind of slimy attention. Also! I am an action/adventure person, and wish that I had small action/adventure breasts to compliment my lifestyle, but I take what I got. And what I got demands expensive/expansive bras.

Second item, food. It is a fact that when you make less money than you pay in bills any savings from tax refunds and old financial aid is eaten through very quickly. I hate this fact. If I were a middle-class person, instead of an impoverished one, I would have savings bonds, a money market account, and conservative investments. This is because I am cautious with money. I would love to have a healthy savings for lean times, but the times have always been lean.

Do not say, why dear poor woman do you choose to bicycle across the state, and go on camping excursions with your loved ones? Do not continue, if you scrimped and ate beans and rice you would not be in such a bad shape. Furthermore never say, it's because your irresponsible that you're poor; if you would be responsible like me, you would have money like me. You don't want to say these things to me, because I will throw things at you. I will be forced to do this because I have been poor my entire life. And, when I was a preschooler and went without dinner it was not due to my own (or even my mother's) fault. It was due to an uncaring society that thinks that poor people should pull themselves up from their bootstraps (even if they don't own any boots).

Furthermore, poor people do deserve some nice experiences in life. We deserve to go on vacations, to eat well, and even to have choices in child care. Some of us choose to have internet, some of us choose to have pets, and some of us choose to eat organic foods. This is beacause without some of these things, life is dreary and dull. Probably some of you do too; our society thinks that you deserve it, though, for all of your hard work. This, of course, ignores the fact that many poor people work hard (any poor mother), and that scrambling for rent is more than a full-time job.

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