1. Jerimiah and I finished regular season pickleball play last night with a win leaving us with an 8-1 record for the fall season. The only loss we had came when my back was acting up and Jackson had to sub for me. Little Baby Jesus and the whole wide universe and his mother all love Jackson immensely, but his backhand is atrocious.
Playoffs are next and the plan is to sweep it, but you know, even the best laid plans… either way it is time for us to move on to the bigger leagues. We haven’t because we are cowards.
Therefore, regardless of how well we do in the playoffs, we are moving up. I suspect you are watching the rise of Pickleball greatness. Glad you got in on the ground floor.
2. I couldn’t sleep last night because I forgot Hank’s goddamn birthday or maybe it was because 40 million Americans are about to lose their SNAP benefits.
3. I was raised by a single mother who had four children. I was a free-lunch kid. My mother’s full-time job was to clean the barracks on Fort Leavenworth. As such, she was a government employee, though her funds came from NAF (non-appropriated funds) so I’m not sure if her pay would have been withheld during a shutdown, I just don’t remember.
I do know that she made minimum wage, which at that time was $4.25/hour. She worked her full-time job and on the weekends she cleaned homes for a series of wealthy people around Leavenworth, mostly doctors. Because my mother’s income still came in below the poverty line I was a Kansas Healthcare and SNAP beneficiary as well as a free-lunch kid.
My mother generally received about $250/month in what was then called, “Food Stamps.” I–like 40% of the Americans losing their SNAP benefits in a few days–was a child, therefore I could not work. But I did get my first job at 14 to help.
Even so, we were still eligible for Food Stamps. We were eligible until my mother retired from Fort Leavenworth my sophomore year of high school and got a job with the VA making an actual living wage at $15/hour (back in 1998).
4. My mother was again eligible for SNAP when she retired from her VA job about 16 years ago at the age of 65. My mother, like about 13% of SNAP beneficiaries, was an “elderly” person receiving assistance because both her retirement check from her NAF job (the VA job did not have a retirement plan) and her social security was still under the poverty line. She received about $50/month in SNAP benefits and lived in HUD subsidized housing for senior citizens (her rent was $150/month) until she moved in with my sister about five years ago.
My mother is 81 now and she has macular degeneration, rendering her 70% blind, mostly because she never had health insurance and when she did she could not afford “premium doctors” like an optometrist.
Thankfully being 70% blind is qualified as a disability in the state of Kansas. That qualification is what aides in her living in a private nursing facility versus a state-run facility and alleviates my sister Belinda and her husband Keith (an essential government employee currently working without pay) and Jerimiah and me, from splitting the $5000/month cost for her being in the best place she can be for her full-time care.
5. We are now losing our mother, in little bits everyday, to dementia.
6. Houses with children, elderly Americans, and those with disabilities account for the majority of SNAP beneficiaries. That’s always been the case. You are NOT eligible for SNAP if you are not a US Citizen. That has also ALWAYS been the case.
If you believe anything other than that, you are believing lies. And you are perpetrating the lies, the system, and the people who are using them to keep the poor, well, poor. These lies have VERY real implications on millions of Americans, mostly children, and so does your silence if you know the truth and continue to say nothing.
7. If this government shutdown had happened in say 1992, my mother would have no means to feed me, the extended family she routinely fed, or the stray kids that would make their way to our house around dinner time. The doctors who loved and trusted my mother would have most likely stepped in to get us food or my mom extra work, as would several of her friends and my friends’ parents.
8. IF I HEAR ONE MORE FUCKING PERSON SAY THAT PEOPLE RECEIVING SNAP BENEFITS “JUST NEED TO GET A JOB” OR THAT ALL THE BENEFICIARIES ARE “ILLEGAL” YOU WILL HEAR FROM ME AND IT WILL NOT BE FUNNY AS HELL.
9. IT WILL BE BAD.
10. VERY BAD.
11. I WILL CALL YOU AND EXPLAIN TO YOUR WHY YOU ARE A SELF-ABSORBED PILE OF SHIT WITH YOUR HEAD SO FAR UP YOUR OWN ASS YOU COULDN’T SMELL THE FREE THANKSGIVING TURKEY MY MOM COOKED EACH YEAR, THAT SHE OCCASIONALLY HAD TO STAND IN A LONG LINE TO RECEIVE.
12. FUCK YOU
13. AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON.
14. Based on Jerimiah’s salary we are in the 24% tax bracket. That does not necessarily mean that 24% of his paycheck goes to federal taxes, it’s more convoluted than that. But the gist is that we pay no more than $500/year to help fund SNAP.
15. I encourage you to research how much you pay to help fund SNAP, but beware, when you see the actual number that is pulled from your check to specifically fund SNAP and not say, subsidize corporations, the number is shockingly low.
So low in fact, you’d be ashamed for the way you are reacting to help feeding American children, the elderly, or those with disabilities living in poverty.
And if you do not feel shame, ask yourself why that is.
Then book an appointment with a therapist. But beware, those are “premium” co-pays.
16. I’m enjoying some Starbie’s this morning and it’s scrumptious. Mmmmm.
Stay warm, y’all.
❤
M.
Melissa Goodnight 