Please help me. I can’t escape the fear.

I don’t want fear to run my life.  But my life contains much to be feared. And it can be so random. This new thing has reminded me that since I can’t foresee the pain approaching: Fear everything.

I am grateful that I have had many good days lately. Not being terrified EVERYDAY is a vast improvement, but I fought the fear and sadness all day yesterday and now new fear has overpowered me.

Yesterday I was sad and fearful because I got an email from the pastor who lets me stay here. 2 days this week the neighbor’s bored 9 year old daughter has verbally assaulted me me as I took out my dogs.  I ignored her.  The second day I asked to speak with her mother, she said no.  I walked around to the back of the apartment because I thought the mother was on the back porch smoking. She wasn’t and the 9 year old was smiling at me through the sliders. The mother wasn’t home. Now the mother has called the pastor to tell him I have been stealing THEIR water (I use Jesse’s faucet and I guess the 9 year old saw me) and that I have been “looking into their apartment”.  The worst part is, the pastor that said if she continues to complain he will have to ask me to leave because “she” is paying rent, and I am not.  I understand that, but in my mind, it should matter if that she is lying.

What else might the child say? What if the child says I struck her?  I only go out now as it is, to take the dogs out and to go to church. I am afraid to go out now at all when they are home.  Not that they need to see me to fabricate lie.

TODAY  I receive a call from an attorneys office saying that I have a check that I owe from 2008 that I never paid and if I don’t pay it in 3 hours, they will put out a warrant for my arrest.  I know this check. It was for $60 to a towing company.  I spent two years trying to pay it, but the company was “unable to locate it”. Now with the attorneys fees it is $552.  They claim I repeatedly refused to respond to their demands for payment, and yet today this woman left me a generic collectors voicemail (first call) and I called her back. How can this be?  I need $552 in 3 hours or I go to jail?  I can only hope some can help and contribute in the side bar of this blog. Please, I am desperate.

After months of fear that I will never make it through all of this.  There has been a brief respite that things will be ok.  And now I feel as if I am being punished for the audacity of hope.

The fear and sadness of this is crippling.  The pastor says that the church is my family now, but it doesn’t feel that way.  In his email he worded it badly.  He worded it as if it were true and this was a warning. It makes me feel alone and unwanted. Un cared for. My nasty neighbor doesn’t know, like or care about me and that is fine, yet she has the power to make me, again, homeless?

I don’t WANT this sadness and fear.  I struggle SO, SO VERY HARD against depression every day.  I struggle against my physical limitations.  I struggle against lack of healthcare.  I struggle against low energy and falling as I step off the bus.

Yesterday, I also accidentally saw a photo of animal abuse and now I cant un-see it.  I am ultra-sensitive to that, because dogs are so trusting, and I cant get this picture out of my head. I feel the pain. I woke up in the night shouting NO.  I don’t want this empathy.  I want to be numb and uncaring. I don’t want any more reasons to be sad, in pain, and afraid.

I fear to dream the dream of someday again being joyous. But I know I am worth saving. Please help me.

@mehomeless
StressTakesAToll.com

The witnesses to my life

Today I am grateful for clean hair and my dogs :-) I took a shower in the yard yesterday from Jesse’s faucet (in shorts and a shirt). It made me so happy last night to go to bed with clean hair, I snuggled clean(er) into my comfy bed. And I am SO grateful that I have my two babies (dogs) Honey and Furby. When I returned from church last night (or when I return from anywhere) they are ELATED to see me. They are 11 and 12 and they dance around like puppies. Theirs are the only lives affected if I were not to return home, and it brings joy to my heart that someone is home to greet me with so much love and affection. They are the witnesses to my life. Thank You Lord, I am Blessed.
-
@mehomeless

There’s good news, and good news, and bad news, and bad news

The good news is, I have had a couple of pretty good days emotionally, and when I say emotionally I mean NOT emotional days. Just days.

The other good new is, a local attorney has offered to pay me to do some online research for him, so I should have a little extra work I can do from home, and I am pretty excited about that.

The bad new is, the county officials I have been bugging to help me with the remaining $246 to get the water turned on are still ignoring me, and either tomorrow or the next day the automatic charge will “bill” again and the $246 will increase by another $80, so I am pretty bummed about that.

The other bad news is, I had to go to the nice attorney’s office today to meet him so he could offer me some work, which means I had to leave the house.  And we ALL know what happens when I leave the house.

I fell getting off the bus, like a ton OW-Bloody Kneeof bricks, and gashed and bloodied-up my left knee and shin.

After the bus driver filled out a form, I limped the four blocks home crying the whole way. :-(

@mehomeless

Homeless gets you ignored a lot, and I am SICK OF IT!

February was very emotional for me. Hormonal – and THAT ship sailed 4 years ago, so the convulsive sobbing at the drop of a hat has been a new curiosity, like I need something new.  So I that was why you have been missing me. :-)

Jesse the neighbor hasn’t left yet, so I still have access to water.  Though he doesn’t have power anymore, so I can take a shower, but it’s a COLD shower. AND, it’s in the dark. Still I am grateful for access to water and a cold shower. (Jesse says, “It’s ‘pitch’ in there.” And I said, “The stuff that needs washing, I can find in the dark.”)  However, now something is “amiss” with the plumbing in the shower. (not the toilette or the sink, not the kitchen sink, JUST the shower.) No water comes out. I didn’t even know that was possible? So currently, nobody needs a shower more than me.

Anyway, when this happened two weeks ago, and I seemed to be getting a bit of my brain back, I wrote a letter to the water company asking for their help.  Now remember, one is not allowed to live in a house without water, so that will be our little secret.  The letter was to the head of the water company, and to the city commissioner above him.

The two men I wrote passed the buck on to a man below them, who was SO very kind to me on the phone, particularly since there was still a bit of sobbing going on.  They agreed to waive the deposit of $215 but that still leaves a $246 balance on the account. So I immediately wrote another letter to the two men explaining the continuing situation of the pastor’s wife in the hospital, etc. and asking the following. 

“Since my mother’s stroke, I have lived a lot of years, without a lot of things, for lack of $246. And of course none of this is your problem or responsibility. But to not have free temporary housing for lack of $246, in the grand scheme of things, just seems to me to be something that kind people, like yourselves, might take upon themselves to help with personally. You know, one human being to another. In return I can offer you my undying gratitude and a guarantee that I will pay it forward when I can.

So even though I haven’t spoken to either of you, I am sure you are kind and compassionate men who really want to help as much as you can.”

Of course I have had no response, email or phone. And I have emailed again and called twice and spoken with their respective administrative assistants.

It’s so degrading to be ignored. Even “no” is a response.  It seriously “burns my biscuits” to be disregarded. Not important enough to even justify a response. To them I don’t matter.  I don’t count.

Amusingly, on the county website there is an organizational chart and at the very top, above the sheriff and the district attorney and all the other county big wigs, they have inserted a box that says “Citizens”.

I considered emailing them a copy of it with my name photo-shopped in that spot, just to remind them of who I am.

In a perfect world

In a perfect world I would run a nonprofit organization.

It would be called “The Group Give”.

I bought the domain name years ago.

It would be a group of like-minded, philanthropic people who want to help others. These people aren’t rich but they know that together we can do more. They understand concepts like barn-raising and combined prayer. One regular person can’t donate $20,000 but 1000 regular people together can accomplish the same goal by contributing $10 or $20 each.

I got the idea in 2009, the year I volunteered by doing the emailed newsletter of an Orlando pet rescue.

People wanted to donate and could only give a few dollars but the pet rescue had thousands of people on their email list.  That’s when the idea first started percolating in my head.  Sometime that year I bought the domain name.

In a perfect world I would run a nonprofit called The Group Give.  It would have 1000 members who think they could commit to donating $10 or $20 a month for a year, or $120/$240 all at once.  Every member would be on the Board of Directors.

20% of all donations would go to building wells all around the world, providing access to clean drinking water to thousands of people.  For months I have been whining because I don’t have the money to get the water turned on here, so although I still don’t have running water, the water I have had ACCESS to is clean and clear and treated, unlike much of the world.  Can you even imagine not having CLEAN water? I have this vision, clearly in my mind, of many new, life giving, wells in the deserts of Africa and villages in Asia and they each have a little plaque on them that says “The Group Give” and the year. :-)

20% of all donations would go to helping animals.  In a perfect world I would like to build and fund an animal rescue EXACTLY like Best Friends Animal Society, but on this side of the US.  (They are in Utah). I would like to build it in Central Florida, but I am not sure how members across the country and around the world would feel about their money being used so close to MY home, so we could always vote on it.  Members can always specify any place they DON’T want their money to go.

Instead, the portion to help animals could be distributed to support established animal rescues worldwide.  I would love to fund mobile spay and neuter hospitals and also possibly mobile free or discounted veterinary services.  Times are tough. People don’t have health insurance for themselves OR for their animals.

20% of all donations would go to helping the homeless, at first providing assistance to already established shelters.   There are a lot of people out there doing a lot of good.  But in the long run I would like to build housing and shelters, and specifically shelters that accept pets.

I envision homeless people and homeless animals sheltered together.  Well not literally together, but near each other, so they can help each other out.  Homeless people could help out in the pet shelter and if they get attached to an animal or animals they can see them, and interact with them daily, have them in their shelter home if they want, and not lose their place to live because they want to have a beloved pet, and not lose their beloved pet because they need a place to live.  I feel really strongly about this one.

15% of all donations would go to micro loans in the US and around the world.  This one would be hardest to manage if we did it in-house. But the beauty of funding micro loans is this: not only are you teaching a man to fish, as it were, but the money gets recycled over and over again. When it works like it is supposed to, you loan someone $500 to start a small cleaning business and then when the loan is repaid you loan the same money to someone else.  You can even charge a small interest rate which helps cover the admin costs and/or generates more funds to lend.  It’s really “win-win”.

(I have pondered and planned all this for a very long time.)

15% of all donations would go to a “wild card” fund or even a “to be announced” fund.  I think of the wild card fund as the “devastation du jour”: the earthquake in Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia.

10% would go to my job creation project, which means it would help me get it started, and keep me off the street.  Once it gets rolling it will support itself and that 10% can be reallocated to something else or something new. :-)

In a perfect world I would run a nonprofit called The Group Give.
1000 people contributing $20 a month to help others in a BIG way.

Every member of The Group Give will get a member number and I am claiming the first.  My number is 1. The tag-line could be “Take a number” like people are lining up to contribute as a group to help others.

Each member should get something like a bumper sticker or a lapel pin with their number on it and the year, since membership will change from year to year.  My sticker could say, “I’m #1 – What’s YOUR number?”  Maybe I would write my favorite actor or athlete or other celebrity and invite them to join The Group Give and “Get their number”.

In a PERFECT world I would run a nonprofit called The Group Give that helped people.  In a perfect world, figuring out ways to help would be my purpose in life, and my job, and I wouldn’t be afraid anymore that someday soon, my dogs and I won’t have a place to live again.

What do you think of my idea?  Do you think it would be possible?  Do you think it will work?  Will people join? Will they join a group and contribute just to make a bigger impact?  Would you join? After me there are only 8 more single digit numbers, and only 90 prestigious double digit numbers.

Do you want one?

I have thought about this for a very long time and I think about it a lot.
I think this idea’s time has come.  I hope you will share your thoughts.

Comment below or you can email me at:  Info@TheGroupGive.org

Definitely email me if you want a number. :-)

Blessings – Kathleen

Thanks GL – I know water will be flowing soon

Much Gratitude and an update for G-Logians. I posted yesterday that I am soon to be “access to water free” and many blessings and funds have been sent to my cause.  I wanted to express my thanks and send blessings in return. It never ceases to amaze me the kindness that comes from this world.  In addition, tomorrow I start my second attempt at creating a job by training someone to do what I know how to do.  I hope the results are more positive this time around.  I invite GL’s global resonance for a positive learning experience for me and for her.  Duplicate Thanks and Blessings. Kathleen

Other things I can’t afford because I am homeless

I can’t afford to worry about the environment
I am using paper plates and plastic spoons and I feel like I am personally stabbing mother earth in the chest.  On the plus-environment side, I don’t throw away things I should.  Just because it is garbage today, doesn’t mean that tomorrow I won’t be forced to re-use it in some sort of necessity-is-the-mother-of-all-invention emergency.  And since I don’t really own anything, there is plenty of room to leave the garbage lying around – just in case I need to use it.

I can’t afford to eat just because I am stressed or bored
There is just not enough food.

I can’t afford to be clumsy
One day last week I had two pieces of chicken left to eat and the plastic container it came in kind of collapsed in my hand and one piece of chicken went to the floor.  When you have enough money to buy groceries, and a convenient way to get to the store, you don’t have to play the 5 second rule game.  That being said, when you have no running water and two, big, long-haired dogs, it equates to a ZERO second rule. However, I don’t have much food or money.  I picked up the chicken, pulled off the skin, checked it carefully (as if I were checking a diamond for clarity; up to the light, one eye closed) and nuked it for dinner.

I can’t afford to worry about calories
Lean meats and fresh fruits and vegetables are not cheap.  Ramen noodles are 7 for $1.00.  Most people don’t know what makes Ramen noodles different from regular noodles other than you can cook them by just pouring hot water on them.  Most people don’t know that Ramen noodles are DEEP FRIED before you even get them and heat them.  And in looking that up, TheStraightDope.com says, “Ramen noodles unfortunately are not very good for you. Each package contains about 1560 mg of sodium. To remove the water and form them into blocks, they are deep fried in palm oil which is about the most saturated fat there is.”

Apparently I can’t afford to worry about calories OR my arteries.

I know where this is headed and I don’t think we even need the handbasket

You remember my job creation project?  I have spent the last two weeks attempting to train two very nice people how to do my job, and apparently they are jerking me around. I am not sure what would motivate them to want to jerk me around. It’s not money, they only get paid when they make money (and I only get paid when they make money) and they haven’t. But I have discovered that they have been dishonest, and I just feel stupid and gullible.

There has to be some expression already coined for the way I feel. You know, something like, “Extend your hand to help a stranger, and surely it will get lopped off.” Ok, I know that’s not fair, but that’s what it feels like. I am giving my time and knowledge to try to help, because I have nothing else to give, but time is our most precious gift, and there is a reason they say time is money. In my belief that this was the right thing to do, I have not spent time trying to generate my own income while launching this endeavor, and with my first effort I feel like a failure, and worse, a CHUMP. And now what few expenses I do have are due, with no funds: electric bill, phone, internet service, and a mattress and box spring on the floor, that I RENT. . . .  ARGH!

I can’t do anything to make money, for me, or to even try to help others, without electricity, internet access and a phone. And my depression is growing.

On the up side I went to the free clinic and got a prescription for my anti-anxiety medicine. On the down side, I don’t have money to fill it.

Does anyone know how a non-athlete can get a corporate sponsorship? Send them here.

And yes, thank you, I really would like some cheese with this whine.

I created 2 jobs this week that didn’t exist before.

I haven’t posted since before New Year’s because I have been too busy implementing my job creation project.  I have been training two total strangers to do what I know how to do, so hopefully they can earn a living based on their own efforts. (Yay!)

I have sold local advertising, in print and online, for over a decade. Admittedly, with my depression while caring for my mother after her stroke, and then the economy going down the tubes, I haven’t been doing very well lately, but PEOPLE NEED JOBS DESPERATELY, and I plan to do, what I CAN about it.

The deal is, if I can teach what I do, to people who want and need jobs, and they are successful in building their own business, they can pay me a little bit in the future, like a franchise, but without the GIANT franchise buy-in fee.  It’s a franchise opportunity for regular, broke, unemployed people, who are able to do the job.  AND THEY CAN DO IT FROM THEIR HOUSE, which I am excited enough about to type in all caps because, it doesn’t commit me to any set location or to any expensive traveling, AND it will help people who, for any number of reasons, aren’t equipped to travel to regular jobs, whether because of transportation issues, clothing, handicaps, caring for an infirmed loved one – whatever.

If by helping them, I can in the long run, help myself, then I can go on to help the next person and, maybe someday I can also have a permanent place to live.  That’s MY definition of WIN-WIN.  If you would like to help me, you can always donate in the side bar; since spending my time training others means that I am not earning myself.

Also I am formulating an idea where individuals can help an out-of-work person while they train for a new job (16 hours at $8 an hour = $128. If the trainee sells to even one business, it will pay them for the following week part-time). Offering a paid training period could provide a larger pool of potentially qualified people who want to try to see if this is something they could do. Conversely, there could be many people who DO want the job bad enough to learn it for free, but may not be qualified. That is something I try to determine during the interview.

Offering them paid training would at least give me a better response rate to my ad.  I am not saying that I shouldn’t focus on people who WANT the job bad enough to learn how to do it for free, I am just saying, I would like to be able to offer the job to people who may be qualified to do it, but might not even respond to a commission-only job because they need diapers RIGHT NOW, or they need to pay their power bill RIGHT NOW.

I have 6 more people so far who are interested in what I am offering, but there is only one of me, so I took on just two, and it is harder than it looks to teach someone what you do, without having a formal training program already in place (I am developing it as I go).  With just a little bit of help I could do so much more.

I welcome your thoughts on having a paid training incentive for a commission-only job.  Post a comment to let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions?  I can use all the extra brain power I can get.

The word “CAN” appears 13 times in this post :-)