The phone will be shut off on Friday. The internet's due to be shut off whenever the ISP gets around to it.
The "day labor" around here is a joke, only one that is becoming less and less funny as time progresses. I had to sit around all day waiting for a phone call that never came instead of trying to hustle a job or collect cans. This means I wasted another day at a time when I don't have a day to waste.
Still no unemployment check. I think it's safe to assume at this point that there will BE no unemployment check. Still no notification of a change in decision on TANF. I think that's safe to assume as well. I'm driving into Vegas tomorrow to work day labor there (if I'm there by 5:30 am, they'll have work for me), and then I will stay overnight at the truck stop and work Thursday as well. We have to get some revenue into the house, and a thorough search of the house has yielded only two things that can be pawned, for a combined total of about $50. The computer's not one of them, as it has very little value (6 years old, 466 mhz celeron processor, 64 mb RAM). Once we're officially homeless and don't need them anymore, we will sell the refrigerator and washer and dryer as well. But we're holding out on those because we need them at this moment and they won't sell for enough money to pay the rent anyway.
The girls are being troopers; they are aware at this point that they're likely going to have to make some difficult choices as to which of their toys and clothes are worth keeping (unless we can afford to get a storage shed; a car takes higher priority than that, though). They're having to make the kind of tough choices I never wanted to inflict on my kids; to work so hard over the years only to have it all come down to this is devastating. I don't consider myself "brave" at this point; I'm barely hanging on here and doing what I have to to survive. This has been an enriching experience nonetheless, as I further begin to understand mentalities you can't understand unless you're in this situation. I'm really not in much of a mood to write, but this record is far too important for me to neglect.
signing off,
Gideon MacLeish