Hello awesome job. Nice to meet you.

About a month ago I pulled some cards regarding what the heck I was gonna do over the summer since my welfare time-clock expired. My work study job (I'm a humanities tutor at a community college) ends when the school semester ends. I really was afraid I would have to work at Starbucks or something again. Mindlessly yanking a milk frother while people look right through me. But the cards said that I needed to be open to new ways of receiving income this summer. So I was. And then I won the George Tiller Memorial Essay scholarship for that little piece I posted about the right to choose life. $500. Nice. Last week, I received an email forwarded to me from one of my GWS professors. It was for a paid internship at MomsRising.org. The stipend is $500 per month. They wanted someone who has used the web as a platform for political activism. I wrote up a resume and a cover letter and sent it out. The great thing about this job is that it is 100% tele-commute. There is no office to go into. Everything gets done online or by conference call. I never have to "go to work."

Moms rising is a great organization that was started as a reaction to The Motherhood Manifesto; A compilation of stories by mothers who were experiencing discrimination in the workplace. In the past four years this grass roots organization of tech savvy moms grew the membership of momsrising to almost 1 million members nation wide. Kick Ass.



By the way, I got the job and I love it!

Pictures of the Matrix Under the Pier

Featuring my daughter and my sister;both of whom I love dearly.

Child Support Update

So, interstate child support collection is anything but adequate. I called Illinois, the state that is garnishing my x's wages. Let me just note that neither I or my x currently live in Illinois. Apparently, their department of family health and services has intercepted the payment. I thought it was California's DPSS but when I called my workers (both calworks and gain) they had absolutely no answers for me. They didn't really know what I was talking about! My calworks worker gave me the number for LA county child support services but it was actually a disconnected number. It was fairly simple for me to go on line and find the number myself. I called and listened to nauseating music on hold for over thirty minutes. Finally, a human being answered, and she had a brain! She looked up my case and informed me that Illinois has not informed California that they were garnishing wages or receiving payments. I told her that I just got off the phone with them and they informed me they were. She told me that she would assign a worker to my case and if I don't hear from that worker, to call back in about a month.

Ummm...Okay? I guess...

I asked if she knew what the deal with CALWORKS is. She says that if I keep my daughter on cash aid (even though my time clock has expired, she still receives $345 in aid, plus food stamps and medical), that I would collect an additional $50 from the child support payments and the rest would "pay back" my welfare. So I would collect $395 per month and it would be called, "aid". And I would have to keep jumping the hoops. Or, I could take my daughter off of aid and collect the child support directly. My question is, if I take us off aid, then will they still claim the back child support? If not, then I would receive $414 per month. If they do, I will only get $345. However, my x could lose his job or go back to getting paid under the table and then this will be a non-issue.

So it's all basically the same amount of money, the problem is what to call it. Right now the money is just sitting in bureaucratic limbo, and I supposed it will stay there for the time being.