Kristi Myers's Open Salon Blog

Look How Far We Have Fallen

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:03:08 -0400

Ten years ago I was living in a different world. I had a great job that I loved passionately. I earned a nice salary, had health insurance, and even had $20k in a retirement account. I was driving a new car and could afford hobbies. When I was sick, I went to the doctor. When something broke, I fixed it or replaced it. I had a beautiful home full of antique furniture. I volunteered at local nonprofit agencies. I went to concerts. I had met the Governor of Pennsylvania and many legislators through my job, and I loved being involved in shaping policy and making life better for others. Life was really, really good.

I was married and in love. The only thing missing from my life was parenthood, which would come the following year. I felt like I had everything I could possibly want, and I could honestly say that I was happy almost every day of my life.

Then a few things happened. First, I became a parent. This lead me to "temporarily" leave my career, a decision I will never regret. Second, the economy began to tank, making future employment hard to find. Finally, my marriage died slowly and painfully, over many long, sad years.

Fast forward to 2010, the year I finally admitted that my marriage was over. My young daughter and I were living in my parents' guest room after the unemployment from my lost part time job ran out. My ex was living in the house I had painstakingly restored, driving the newer car, while I struggled to keep my nine year-old car on the road and relied on my parents for groceries. I had enrolled in graduate school that year, hoping that I could find a way to replace the career that had vanished. I had so little money that I became eligible for Medical Assistance. My ex and I made an appointment with a bankruptcy attorney because we could no longer cover our debts with so little income.

By 2011, my prospects were brighter, or so I thought. My part time job teaching preschoolers had returned, and I loved every minute I spent with them. With help from relatives, we avoided bankruptcy and I was on track to finish graduate school by the end of that year. My ex and I agreed to sell our house so he could move on and I could have my name removed from a mortgage I could never afford. On a Friday in June we made plans to list the house. Three days later, he moved his girlfriend and her family into the house and informed me that I could no longer have access to the property or my belongings still inside. About a month later, they packed my things and my daughter's toys in trash bags and put them in a storage unit.

I think that the worst day happened when I called my local credit union to get a supplemental loan to finish graduate school and was told that my credit score had plummeted from A+ to "don't even ask us to loan you money." I found out that my ex was not paying the mortgage on time and that I may have to leave graduate school two courses shy of my degree. Meanwhile, I had not received any child support and was relying heavily on my parents to cover my expenses.

It was at this point that I realized how far I'd fallen.

I still find it hard to believe that I took so much for granted. I find it harder still to believe what I've lost. If the younger, 2002 version of myself could see me now, I suspect she would be shocked and appalled. My generation was raised to expect more out of life. We thought we had nowhere to go but up. And we did climb higher and higher. For a while. Until things started to fall apart and we found ourselves in a slow descent to the hard, unforgiving ground below.

There were bright spots in an otherwise dark period. I met a wonderful man and fell in love. I did manage to finish school, although I had to change my program and forgo additional credits that would have made my degree more marketable. I found a new part time job and moved to a new town with this man who is my best friend and partner. We made a new home for my daughter, and she has made new friends. She tells me she is happy, and she and I are closer than ever before. She brings me joy every minute of every day, and I cherish her. I have made a new family in my new home, and we are very happy together.

But I continue to lose my foothold in this slow climb back from the bottom. This week, my new job will end after five months due to state cuts to social service programs. My fancy teaching degree is useless when education cuts are deep, and my old career - nonprofit fund raising - barely exists in a world where people have little to spare. I am frantically lining up freelance writing and editing projects to cover my bills and hoping I won't have to cancel my health insurance. I am not even thinking about hobbies and pets and volunteer work now. I am in full-on survival mode, praying my 11 year-old car doesn't die (since I am still on that mortgage and have no access to credit) and hoping my forthcoming unemployment checks are enough to cover the groceries.

I am thankful that my partner is well employed and able to take care of most of our living expenses. Without him, I don't know what we would do. He tells me not to worry because he has my back and we will manage together. He loves me as much as I love him, and he loves my daughter, too. He makes every day special in a way I'd not thought possible, and that makes these hard times worth it.

But my bruised ego insists on keeping score, and it reminds me of how wrong my life is. I am 40 years old, divorced, have ruined credit, am all but unemployed, and owe $33k in student loans with my first payment due in two months. I have a Masters degree and can't even find a minimum wage job. I have 20 years of work experience behind me. I am smart, knowledgable, and very capable. But in this new world of unemployment, budget cuts, and broken marriages, I am less employable and less financially secure now than when I was 20 years old.

How did this happen to me? How did this happen to all the women like me who worked hard and did everything we were expected to do? It is more than unfair. It is a crime that we've fallen so far.

Cheapo Synth Toy + Retro Crap Banjo = Joy

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 20:12:59 -0500

So I was browsing ThinkGeek and found this very interesting little synth-y device called the Bliptronic 5000 LED Synthesizer. It is basically a grid of plastic LED-lit buttons with some fun little knobs. You can do many cool things with it, including hack it to be a midi-type device. I have no idea how, but I know it is possible, so I will pretend I am all smart and stuff.

I was pondering the banjo, as well. I love the whole rustic, scraggly, old-man-without-teeth-on-front-porch-in-overalls mystique that surrounds the instrument. I decided I should find the cheapest, most beat-up banjo out there and learn to play it.

Then I thought “Hmm... wouldn’t it be cool to lay down a silly retro backing track with the Bliptronic and play something earthy and organic on the banjo or, failing to find one I can afford, a cigar box guitar (which I already own)?” So I ordered the Bliptronic thing-y and succumbed to thoughts of me playing techo-bluegrass-y crap music for no particular reason.

Is it possible? Well, like so many of my ideas, it is both doable and unlikely. But it made me happy to think about it today. That is good enough for me.

I Think We Should Talk About the Elephant in the Room

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 11:06:04 -0400

No matter what the talking heads on TV say, the economy isn’t getting better for many, many people. Regular people are still being slowly squeezed until they can’t manage anymore. People who used to have 750+ FICO scores who never missed payments and always expected to have a roof over their heads are seeing their coveted scores plummet, creditors hounding them day after day, and their once-secure homes taken away by lien holders. The people who were once considered “golden” are struggling to put food on the table, in spite of spotless work histories, college degrees, and years of smart decisions. This recession, as they like to call it, is really a depression of sorts. Literally and figuratively. It is subduing an entire generation of workers and rendering them impotent.

Just the other day, I read that some employers are bluntly refusing to consider unemployed job applicants. They say they need to thin out the applicant pool, and this is one way to do that. Some have attempted to rationalize their actions by theorizing that unemployed candidates must be unemployed because of some flaw. Never mind that we are at a ridiculous unemployment level, with many good workers unemployed through no fault of their own. Let’s take the job seekers who need jobs most and kick them when they are down. That’s the only civil thing to do, right?

As things slowly worsen for regular folks, they feel this squeeze. Month after month, they are forced to cut more and more, until they reach a point where there is nothing left to give up. Music lessons for the kids, pool memberships, vacations, new clothes, Cable TV, dinners out, fast food, sweets from the grocery store, taking the pets to the veterinarian, long distance, phone service... And then they have to stop paying on their credit cards, their mortgage, even their utilities. Unforgiving creditors call daily, and the electric company cuts service. For the first time in their lives, parents wonder if they will be able to keep a roof over their children’s heads. They feel like deadbeats, and the poorly-paid collections workers who harass them only reinforce that feeling. They struggle to hide their worries from their family and friends, even as they visit the doctor for antidepressants and fight with their partners about the mounting bills.

I think we should be talking about this. This scenario, with minor variations, is repeated daily in households in my community and every other community in the country. Women are hiding their worries from their friends, trying to maintain a facade of financial and emotional stability that has long since been lost. They cling to their nice clothes and fancy handbags, purchased three years ago, before the bottom fell out of their lives. They carry a worn out $200 purse, but are worried about whether their debit card will be declined at the grocery checkout.. They walk past the people clearly living in their car, wincing and hoping that things never get that bad. They hope they don’t have much farther to fall. They wait for the alleged economic recovery to reach them. They resent the people who are able to receive Public Assistance - Food Stamps, they used to call them - because those people qualify for help and can actually buy food for their kids.

These people, the ones who used to volunteer at nonprofit fundraisers, donate to their favorite charities, take their children to ballet lessons, and hit the sales at the mall - they cross their fingers and hope that the phone doesn’t ring. Because they know that the caller will just be asking for money they don’t have. Time was when they always met their obligations and didn’t have to worry so much about money. Those days are over, and may never return.

When times are tough, and these times are tough for almost everyone - we should be owning up to our suffering. We should be saying “Yes, I am struggling financially. I worry about money more than ever before. I miss my old life and am desperate for a better job.” If we would just come clean about the hard times, we could support each other and ease the burdens of the people we love. We are all in this together. Even those of us who are still holding it together, albeit with both hands, should open the door to communication so that all the people who are struggling can draw comfort from knowing that they are not alone. Let’s be honest people. If you are among the ranks of the newly-minted poor, own it. Giving voice to your troubles is empowering, and it helps to put a face on the economic crisis that is dragging our country down.

We became "poor" to help our daughter

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 13:01:35 -0500

We have the most beautiful little girl in the world. She is smart, funny, confident, talented and wonderful. She is a blogger, a clothing designer, and a prolific artist. And she is all of these things in spite of impossible beginnings that should have ruined all chances of reaching her potential.

Our Genevieve was born at 25 weeks gestation in November, 2oo2. For those who are counting, that is about 15 weeks - or more than 3 months - to soon. She spent 3 months and 1 week in the NICU, relying on oxygen and a feeding tube for most of that time. She had a severe brain bleed, multiple deadly infections, and other problems that are described in thousands of pages of medical records.

We met Genevieve on February 12, 2003, just 2 days before she was released from the hospital. Before we could even hold her, we had to sit with an adoption lawyer, review the damning medical files, and sign a paper saying that we would be her parents forever. The first moment I laid eyes on her, I was terrified because she couldn't even take a bottle without forgetting to breathe. Her arms were slack at her sides, and no amount of stimulation could keep her awake for more than a few minutes. She was 3 months and 1 week old.

And she was so beautiful. She had these big blue eyes that filled her little face. Her skin was smooth and perfect. She looked like a porcelain doll. We fell in love with her from the first moment we held her.

We brought our Genevieve home. We signed her up for home-based therapy, found a pediatrician, and checked in with a pediatric opthalmologist. Time passed, and we enjoyed every second of parenthood.

Then, when Genevieve was about 15 months old, an Early Intervention evaluation showed that we she was about 50 percent delayed. That meant that she was functioning like a 7 or 8 month old. She wasn't walking. She wasn't babbling. She couldn't sit up or crawl very well, and she couldn't feed herself. It broke our hearts.

At the time, I was working full time as the Director of Development for our local Arc chapter. (The Arc used to be called the Association for Retarded Citizens, but had long since dropped that name in favor of the less descriptive and less insulting "The Arc.") My Mom was babysitting Genevieve, because her immune system was too fragile for group child care. Mom was running her to monthly pediatrician appointments, inviting therapists into her home for regular early intervention services, and learning what she could about preemies. Meanwhile, I was working 60 hours a week and, with my husband, making just enough money to pay the bills.

But Genevieve's evaluation scared the hell out of me. Clearly, she needed more than we were giving her. A 50 percent delay is huge. It could mean Cerebral Palsy, mental retardation and a host of other problems, each with their own acronyms and scary prognoses. We knew that she was at a high risk for all kinds of problems, so this wasn't a surprise. We couldn't change what had happened before. But we had to do something to change Genevieve's future.

So I quit my job. Our income went from $75,000 per year to $35,000 per year in a day. Suddenly, we were a lower income family, making less than we needed to survive. I knew that we needed more money, and more services, to get by. I called the Social Security Administration.

They gave me an appointment one month in the future. I needed that time to compile dozens of reports and hundreds of pages of medical records to prove that Genevieve needed help. We were lucky, because somehow Genevieve was approved for SSI (Supplemental Security Income) on the first try. Most people are rejected over and over, needing attorneys and appeals to get the help they need.

But there was one little problem. Before we could access the benefits, we had to spend our entire savings account and cash in life insurance policies to make ourselves poor. You see, a family can only have about $3,000 in total resources and still qualify for SSI for their dependent child. We had $8,000 in the bank - money from our last income tax refund. They told us to spend it. So we did. We spent our safety net.

Finally, after about 5 months, Genevieve qualified for about $400 a month in SSI, plus the magical Medical Assistance card.

Now, the cash was helpful, because it replaced some of my income and helped us make ends meet. But the MA card was like gold. At the time, Genevieve was receiving 2 hours per week of Speech Therapy, 2 hours per week of Occupational Therapy, 1 hour per week of Physical Therapy and other services that everyone agreed would be her best shot at catching up. Without MA, these services, not covered by our private insurance, would have cost us about $4,200 per month.

"What?" I can hear you asking the question. "Surely you must be joking." I am not. This wasn't funny at all. Had I continued working, we would not have been able to afford even half of the services our daughter needed to catch up. I had to quit, and we had to become poor.

SSI has monthly income limits, and if you exceed them, your check and Medical Assistance benefits dry up. But if we stayed below the threshold, Genevieve could have uninterrupted assistance for 3 years. We figured that was just enough time to get her on track.

Oh, and did I mention that, from the age of 15 months to 4 1/2 years, she awakened screaming dozens of times each night? That was fun.

So we got our income down to about $33,ooo per year. I started using WIC checks to pay for Genevieve's expensive, high-calorie formula. (We could no longer afford the $80 per week to pay for it ourselves.) I had to flash a bright yellow Access card to cover medical services. And I suffered through excruciating calls to the local Social Security office. (Luckily, these calls were infrequent because our lazy, incompetent clerk rarely returned my calls.) Twice I was accused of fraud and ordered to repay every penny of SSI that Genevieve had received, and I spent dozens of hours filing appeals and explaining how we could not repay the money because we had been ordered to spend all of our savings. At one point, I had to justify our cars, which were needed to take Genevieve to appointments and get my husband to work. (One SSA clerk told us to sell our car to repay an "overpayment." The car was 12 years old, and I had to justify our right to keep it.)

I really began to understand how people receiving Public Assistance are wrongly stigmatized. People looked at me with such contempt when I presented my WIC checks, rolling their eyes because they knew I would hold up the line. Parents at the doctor's office would shoot me weird looks when I explained Genevieve's insurance coverage to the clerk at the window. I had to beg, borrow and steal to get the expensive leg braces replaced every three months instead of the allowable two times a year, because Genevieve was finally growing. (At the age of 1, she weighed 12 pounds and the doctor was going to classify her as "failure to thrive.") And I had to jump through hoops to prove that I was my daughter's Rep Payee when I tried to deposit her SSI checks into our account to pay the bills.

There were hundreds of times when I was humiliated, questioned and judged by providers, government workers and people on the street. A "friend" even commented that the government spends too much money to save babies who are a drain on the system. (I extracted an apology and made him feel like a real shit, I can assure you.)

Finally, when Genevieve was 4 1/2 years old, she started to catch up. The services were discontinued because she didn't need them anymore. We gradually gave up OT, PT, and Speech in favor of home-based counseling and Therapeutic Staff Support to help her cope at home and in preschool. She began to show us her extraordinary gifts, and we saw that she finally seemed to enjoy living in her own skin. Things had turned around, and we were so grateful.

Then I was offered a great part-time job at a local non profit agency. We weren't out of the woods, but we could see the path that would lead us home. I took the job and increased Genevieve's home-based counseling to address her anxiety about being left with a babysitter. I did as I was told and called the Social Security office to let them know that I would be returning to work in June. Everything was looking great.

And then, at 5pm on a Friday, my second day of work, I got a call informing me that all of Genevieve's benefits had just been cancelled, effective immediately. Her services would end that day, because I would eventually get a paycheck. They took away her benefits before I saw a penny from my new job, and did so in a manner that almost lost me my job. You see, Genevieve also has a serious anxiety disorder that made it nearly impossible for her to separate from us, her parents. For her, seeing me leave for work was terrifying. We relied on the counselors and therapists to help us get her through the transition. Without their help, I had to consider quitting my job after only two days. It was all terribly ironic, because I did not see a paycheck until almost a month later. Technically, we were still qualified for benefits until we exceeded the income guidelines. But that didn't matter to the computer.

Well, I yelled and screamed and wrote letters and got the benefits restored under a different funding stream. The services continued, and I kept my job. We made it through, and we managed to save money again, without the Social Security Administration breathing down our necks.

But I learned a lesson, and it helped me understand how people can be beaten down by a broken, unforgiving system. When you need help, you are treated like a criminal, with so many traps to catch you when you aren't doing anything wrong. One misstep, and you lose everything. And when you finally try to better yourself (by getting a job, for example), they yank the safety net right out from under you before you can find your footing.

So, we made ourselves poor in order to give our daughter the future she deserves. Given the chance, we wouldn't change a thing. Now we have this exceptionally talented, loving, articulate little girl who can do anything. She is so smart that we can't keep up with her, and she is a blessing to everyone who meets her. And you know what? She not only caught up - she left her peers in the dust.

So sure, we used public assistance to help our daughter. We took taxpayer money to access services and supports that we could not otherwise afford. And we are glad we did it. The government money spent was really an investment in our child's future. Now she really will reach her full potential. And when she does, you watch out. She is going to be fantastic!

Today I became an "old person"

Sun, 4 Jan 2009 15:01:04 -0500

Well, it was yesterday, to be exact. I was having dinner at Damon's, playing that nifty trivia game, when it happened. We were there to celebrate my cousin Zach's 21st birthday before he headed back to college. Between rounds 2 and 3, the guy with the microphone announced "Today we wish a Happy Birthday to Kristi Myers, who is 37 years old." Totally ruined my game. I came in fifth.

There it was. My younger cousins at the next table snickered, clearly enjoying my embarassment. It was then that I realized I had officially crossed over to the dark side.

What had happened? Just last year, my cousins, aged 15 to 25, laughed with me, sharing jokes and stories and talking music and fashion and boys. They came to to me for advice, and sometimes dropped by for dinner or the occasional "sleepover" with me and my little girl. With one sentence over the PA system, that had ended.

Now, I wasn't totally in denial or anything. Short of lying about my age on MySpace, I was well aware of my increasing age. My colorist was skilled at both lying to me about my gray hair and hiding it for me. And I was happy to pay her well for the service. I knew I was getting older, but for some reason "37" really got to me. Perhaps it was the way my hormones suddenly went all wonky, or how my once lightning-fast metabolism suddenly slowed to a crawl. Whatever it was, it really did me in. Thirty-seven has turned out to be worse than 30.

It was only a few months ago that I first noticed actual lines around my eyes and mouth. And all those fancy creams? They do NOT erase wrinkles. That is a lie concocted to seduce women out of their money. I know, because I have tried all the creams, gels and masks one can get at Sephora, and the lines remain.

There is an irony here, of course. I would much rather be 37, with all my knowledge and experience, than to be a clueless kid of 25 again. For me, 2009 presents an opportunity to grow my consulting business, work on my writing, and be a better Mom to my wonderful 6 year-old.

In conclusion: getting old sucks for sure. It is even worse when you are as vain as I am. But becoming wiser really rocks. But It's a damn shame I can't be wiser without the crow's feet and gray hair.

At least, that's what I told myself when I went to bed last night. But this morning, I found a WHITE HAIR sticking out of my head, bold as you please. Now that can't be good.