Tone-deaf post right here.
I am not seeing the connection to tax breaks for the rich. I do complain about that shit all the time. I guess I could have kept scrolling, but this person has a big voice and other people keep yelling the same thing, so why not. It got me remembering some things about my college loans too.
My loan repayment was $225 a month for 60 months and then $150 a month for about 100 more months. I know it’s not much, but that money could have made a difference in my life. I budgeted what felt like every single dollar for 10 years after finishing my bachelor’s degree. At times I could barely buy clothes. I could barely buy enough booze for what I needed. Later I limited myself to one time per month going out for coffee and a pastry or a meal or a live show with an $8 cover. I had to learn to cook every single meal. I had to decide whether I could drive somewhere by calculating gas costs if it was too far to ride my bike or ask someone for a ride.
I wonder if this Katelyn person had bank of mom & dad. I don’t know what she (formerly he at the time) went through financially while growing up in a rich white area and attending great schools with big-time policy people and networking connections that led to a foot in the door. I went to the cheapest school I could afford. I found myself on the giant state university campus with $300 cash, no bedding, miniature toiletries, no fall and winter clothes, no food money. My financial aid package — made up mainly of one scholarship and a federal Pell grant — wasn’t sufficient, so they let me sign up for loans. I sent away for free samples and ate at the soup kitchen. Sometimes half-off at the dining hall when it was about to close for the night. Bananas, peanut butter, tortillas.
I paid all of my loans all by myself. I paid it with cash that I earned from my job. In 2007, someone in a government office found my name on a list of temps at Kelly Services and hired me as a contractor. They helped me get a regular civil service job. I could only work half-time and it paid less than $1,000 take-home per month. I worked another part-time job which paid $400 a month maximum if I was needed every weekend. Usually it was $200. The government paycheck was at least consistent. I stayed partly because they all said loan debt forgiveness would be available in the future.
It’s now the future!
But I never qualified for the thing you had to have in order to be considered for loan forgiveness: Income-Based Repayment plan with 10 years of monthly payments. The interest would have added up to more overall. The monthly payments would have cost over half my paycheck. I guess I could have decided to not pay. Run the risk of the IRS garnishing my wages. Get a bad credit report. With no one to bail me out.
Hello I’m writing to you from the Sacramento, California area about a restaurant that a lot of people really love. I’ve never eaten here though.
From 2006 to 2011, I worked in the building across the street and would often ride my bike or walk through the alley right next to their kitchen back door. And it was stinky, greasy, and gross. Sometimes the door would be open, and I’d see the blackened floor with groady looking boxes and stuff piled up.
I know that kitchens get busy and sometimes it’s the worst until it slows down. My family worked in restaurants. That’s where I learned how to do a proper deep clean. So I’m pretty sure the floor and shelves and stuff weren’t scrubbed and then got dirty every day again.
Whenever someone suggests we go there, I’ve declined. I guess i still find it difficult to reconcile seeing that kitchen with how everyone says how delicious the food is. In a way I wish I was blissfully ignorant. I guess i don’t have that big of a problem with other eateries where I know it’s not sparkling clean. Like I was just in downtown Vegas, and went to some of the casino restaurants/buffets.
that’s all
I forgive you, my high school friend, for trying to set me up with an obese and kinda smelly older gal, to see if I was really for real. I wasn’t, because I wasn’t like a gay man, going for anything with a pulse. Large and pasty wasn’t my style.
I hope the cocktail waitresses and girls in bars forgive me for what I tried to pull when I was obnoxiously wasted. I thought I was being cute.
While waiting for the crosswalk at the Johnny Cash Trail near downtown Folsom, a guy walks up with 2 tweens and they’re talking about him giving them money to fix their chromebook. But actually, it’s about federal relief aid.
Like this:
“What if you took the money I gave you to fix your chromebook and gave it to someone else to fix their chromebook? Then you can’t fix your chromebook. And I’m not going to give you more money to fix your chromebook. Well that’s what Biden is doing with all our money.”
I look at the guy a little more closely. Big guy, kinda sunburned. He’s wearing one of those farm worker straw hats that are so trendy now, and a tank top, both with the word ALOHA printed pretty big. The logo was recognizable to me as a well-known business in Hawaii that coordinates a lot of fundraising by selling clothes items. VH07V raises tens of thousands of dollars to help local organizations.
I had to ask myself, is this guy’s words really the spirit of aloha in action? Or he’s just buying stuff on his vacation & don’t give 2 shits what it means. Also, what is my kuleana in this situation? I did mutter “that’s not aloha” to myself but didn’t say anything to him directly.
“If you no like something, you no need say something.” I just went by that today.
I was driving down the road and saw a girl trying to handle a suitcase, backpack and a small duffel bag. It was about 5:30 p.m. The sky was darkening and it was starting to rain again.
I turned to my mom and said, “What is this young girl doing? We need to pick her up.” So my mom jumped in the back seat and the girl stepped in, packing her pink suitcase, black bag and school backpack into the front passenger space. “Family troubles,” she said.
She was crying so much she could barely tell us her name. My mom and I both said it was going to be ok. that she needs to care for herself first, and that it’s smart to go to a safe place.
Choking back her tears, she told us part of the story.
She’s just turned 18. Her parents made her drop out of school last year so she could work and take care of her three siblings, ages 6, 7, and 8. Her parents are at home, probably not working. They swear at her. She was enrolled in a GED class but her parents took her out of it so that she could babysit. She can’t discipline them because she’ll be disciplined herself. At age 10, her brother went to jail and she became the babysitter because he was gone. 4 years later she started working her first job. She still has an on-call job at a tourist activity rental business.
My mom encouraged her to pass the GED so she can move forward with her life.
We dropped her off at the low-income housing complex where she could stay with relatives.
I do not believe this story is that uncommon. Wish I could help more.
‘Ōlelo or Hawaiian Language stuff. Some California ppl named their rehab company “Akua.” As if “Aloha Poke” wasn’t bad enough. Or claiming a patent on DNA from plants used in cultural practices.
My cousin is down there, possibly two of them at CHAZ. They’re both just finishing their first year of college, so young adults. Their parents are helping build tiny homes, sew blankets, masks. My cousins are cooking food and considering their futures, which I imagine I would have done at that age too. Me, right now. I am at a house with people whose faces looked really fucking shocked when I said my teenage cousin was baking cookies and bringing them to CHAZ. (I left out the detail about how he figured out how to put the letters BLM into the cookie dough.) And they’re laughing about what might happen when the Hell’s Angels come through town. I just decided I should stop talking. There’s nothing I can do here with my words. Yeah I guess I gave up.
Secondly, a friend was protesting in Seattle and got pepper sprayed by police. People here are asking why whether my friend understood the bigger picture and if she agreed it was right that she got sprayed even if it was an accident.
i still feel uncomfortable and anxious. i guess it does nothing to compare to my previous job – but i never felt like i wasn’t supposed to speak, and i never felt like i shouldn’t exist. instead at this place I’ve been going to the dark side and gnawing off my fingernails. Haven’t done it to this degree for probably 7 years.
Would she have posted something like this? I’d hope not. How embarrassing.
“Mommy, Mommy guess wat? My underarms pits is sticky & I don’t kno why? & I have hairs I can see it”
“Happy Thanksgiving” was blasted to everyone by text message and Facebook status update all day. I didn’t do that this year. During the holidays I think of the big family parties back in Kauai and my friends scattered around the country. And I want to leave a simple answering machine message or say hello. I decided not to call any relatives this year either.
I told myself I didn’t want to be the one people groan about when the phone rings and it’s yet another person from the Mainland wanting to talk.
Certain people didn’t call, and others did. I missed my Grandma’s voice most.
Mom I created a delicious feast from scratch. Pop and i yelled at football on the tv. Both my brothers called. Dad texted me. A friend visiting from out of town called me. Another friend on their way to visit their family left me a voicemail. My boyfriend/ex-fiance/friend and I went to a meeting this morning. And there were two nice cats who let me pet them.
I appreciated the lovely things that happened today, and that’s that.
the k factor 