The end of the month is always rough. Today I gave away approximately $990 worth of groceries and grocery-store certificates to 14 families. What we give out is designed to last three days, after which there's another 87 days before they're eligible to come back for food from us. I've been meaning to test out our 3-day design, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I would like to try to make just the items we give out in a food pantry last my household three days. Here's the list for a household of 1 or 2 people. I challange you to try it:

1 jar of peanut butter
1 jar of jelly (if available)
1 box of cereal or oatmeal
3 cans of vegetables
2 cans of protein-rich beans (e.g. chili, garbanzo, baked, etc.)
1 can of tuna/chicken
1 boxed meal (e.g. Rice-a-roni, Lipton noodles&sauce, scalloped potatoes, Tuna Helper, etc.)
1-2 boxes macaroni&cheese (based on abundance in stock)
2 packages ramen
1 large can or 2 small cans fruit
1 box plain pasta
1 jar of spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce/paste
3 cans soup
1 jello
1 pudding
1 paper product
2 bars of soap
$10 worth milk, meat, fresh produce, eggs at local Cub, Hy-Vee or Fareway

All of these items are subject to availability. If we're out of cereal or peanut butter or spaghetti sauce, which is often the case, it's just omitted. There's nothing we can do really. I ask people if there's special items they need such as tampons or diapers or toothpaste and if we have them, we'll throw them in. Also available is flour, sugar, and other random baking items, like corn syrup and pumpkin pie filling that we can throw in. If there was abosolutely nothing in your house in terms of food and hygeine items, how long could you stretch out the items listed above? Let me know what you find out...

Sometimes I get calls from panicked people, people in crisis, people on neptune. Today Karen calls me up:

Karen: The electric company cut my power off and I don't know why!

Me: [I think to myself, I don't know why either, dear...] Well, have you called them up yet to see what the deal is?

K: No. I just got out of the hospital. I've had surgery and been away from home for a week or so. My son said there were some letters, but he's at school and I don't know where he put them. They increased my budget billing payments on me.

M: Why don't you try giving the electric company a call? I don't know anything that you don't at this point.

K: Well, here, let me see....yes, here's one of the letters they sent: "Due to a review of customer actual usage to adjust Budget Billing projections, we show you would owe approximately $215 at the end of the 12-month billing cycle in March. To adjust for this, your Budget Billing payments will increase from $113 to $149 for the next six months." How can they do that? *sobbing* I don't know what I'm going to do! I just hate these people!

M: It sounds like that's not related to why you were shut off, especially if it's not an actual bill. They're just letting you know that your next bill will be more than what you're used to paying. How about you try giving them a call and ask what you need to be turned back on. Their number is 1-800-ELECTRIC.

K: Okay. I'll do that and then I'll call you back.

M: I want to let you know that I won't be able to help you again with any emergency funds at this time. I'm all out of money for the month. If you're needing some referrals for assistance I'll be happy to give you some phone numbers and a referral letter. Remember to try and stay calm with the representative when you call. I know you're angry, but the worst thing you can do is raise your voice to them. Ask to speak with someone in Collections if you're not getting anywhere with the person who answers.

K: Okay. Okay, I can do that. Thanks.

After hanging up with her, I shake my head. Why do people always call me first. I don't have magical powers. I don't know things they don't. Why do they call me? Part of the reason, I think, is that they've come to me before and I've done the talking with the utility company and get them hooked up again. The utility companies are always a little nicer with us than with the customers. Mostly, I think, because we're nicer to them than the customers are.

People must just get so upset and start feeling so hopeless and powerless that they just completely lose the ability to think about causes and effects. They need someone to think for them for a minute. To give them some hope, some paths, some options. Sometimes I lose sight of my role as path sweeper. Some people have let the sadness of their situation scatter leaves and brambles across the rational path, the solution path, the path of possibilities, the path of responsibility. I need to remember that they don't expect me to work magic; they just need to borrow my sanity for a moment. I'm not in Hazy Shades.

I am still not trustworthy in the eyes of our PR woman. I made a big mistake last winter in telling a reporter that I thought the utility company disconnecting service in the middle of November for an overdue $20 was "ridiculous" and got our agency in a minor jam. Part of my job, I guess, is making nice with the evil utility overlords so they'll accept our promises to pay out of our emergency funds and such. PR woman says "it's their money and they have a right to demand it, or else deny service." The crime-fighter in me wanted to say, "fuck off, you making-four-times-as-much-as-me, out-of-touch whore. No one should have their heat cut off in the middle of an Iowa winter regardless of their ability to pay." But instead I just nod (which is silly since we're on the phone) and say, "I'm sorry, Julie. I understand completely. It won't happen again."

That was the first time I ever spoke to the public as a representative of my agency and I didn't quite understand the politics involved. Before I did the interview, I alerted PR woman and she OK'ed it, giving me zero advice. Now, everytime a reporter comes to me for information about programs that I administer, I give them Julie's number (which is protocol). She calls my director, who knows little details about what I've been doing and always has to come to me eventually to get program usage numbers, personal interest stories, and information on what we need the most.

So today, Shelia, my director, has me grab my accounting book and sit in her office while she's on the phone with the reporter. She turns the volume up so I can vaguely hear some of what the reporter is asking. Then, she slyly repeats the question in the beginning of her answer so I can, mostly off the top of my head, rattle off the answer. Speaking of ridiculous...

Today I participate in the Housing Coordinating Board meeting that my boss got me started going to after she took forever and five days off to be with her ailing mother out East. I love Bev. In her shaky voice you can hear the outrage burning in the pit of her stomach as she tells us the day has arrived when Americans have spent more money on luxury items than necessities for the first time in history (no cite available) and yet there are still people in our community without homes, without clothes, without healthcare (if you need a citation, come spend a day with me in my office). She knows what's up and she feels it more than I can. Despite all the very sad stories I've heard, somehow I've been able to maintain a pretty emotionless interaction with the people I serve. The only emotion I really feel at work is severe frustration: frustrated that our emergency funds aren't very flexible - I can only use them for very specific purposes, frustated that people can't take "no" for an answer even when there really is absolutely nothing I can do, frustrated that even in our relatively small agency there are so many administrative problems and bureaucratic issues... But, I've never sobbed, like Jill, one of our caseworkers, after listening to Stephanie tell about how her granddaughter's dad beat her to the ground outside her home in front of the child, whom Stephanie is the primary caretaker for. Last night's episode of Charmed brought me a couple tears, but Stephanie's story... just a pair of sympathetically wrinkled eyebrows and a hug for Jill.

What is wrong with me? I think it's just survival. There are so many heart breaking stories, I wouldn't be able to get any of my paperwork done if I was sobbing every ten minutes. Maybe that's just what my agency needs... No paperwork to get done because all the workers are actually emotionally connecting with the families we're serving. That would show them, don't you think?

Sometimes they get to me. Answering my phone at work today reveals a familiar voice. Raina calls me every other month to see if we can help her again or if I happen to know of any new places she can apply for help paying her natural gas bill.

Let me give you some background: In Iowa (and perhaps in many states, although not Illinois), the state Utility Board mandates that all electric and natural gas companies must respect the Winter Moritorium period of November 1 - April 1. During this time the companies are not allowed to shut off utility service for non-payment for any household approved for the Federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). As the title suggests, this is a federally subsidized payment to heating companies for low-income families, which I facilitate for my county. It's a one-time payment for the year, usually in the neighborhood of $200 dollars/family. Our agency and the utility companies stress to these approved families that if they don't pay a dime all winter, it will catch up to them in April and their service will likely be cut off as soon after April 1st as the company can get a person out there. Still, we have a couple families that always seem surprized to open their mail on some chilly late-March day and see a big, red, 12-day notice of pending disconnection.

Don't get me wrong. Out of the 909 families I approved for the assistance program last winter, only a handfull, for one reason or another, bring in the big huge $1,000+ gas and electric bill and expect me to work some magic and plead to the utility for their pardon. Outside of the winter moritorium I do get about $1,000 a month of emergency money to help prevent disconnection of gas/electric service or to help reconnect service. Raina is one of these people that calls me up this past April, and our agency, along with 3 other local organizations, whittled her bill down so she could go back to making budgetted payments of $200/month. She calls me today, now the middle of August to see if she's eligible for that help again. Technically, I'm allowed to help a family with up to $500.00 of emergency money each year (the cap is $200 per crisis). There are so many families in need of these funds throughout the year that I really don't like to approve the same family for help more than once a year because that's basically taking that money from a new family who's bound to come in tomorrow: a woman who's partner took off and left her with all the bills, a man who just got laid off from his unskilled job of 22 years, a college student who's trying to make it on their own, but is learning from their mistakes. I just can't reason spending another $200 on the same family, who never seems to achieve anything resembling self-sufficiency, where every month is a crisis, no matter how many times I help them out, year after year. And for this I feel bad. I don't know that my judgement would make sense to Raina, when her baby's on a nebulizer, and her husband's still laid off, and there's a problem with her welfare check... So I lie. Sort of. I tell her we can't help now (but I don't offer when she would be elligible again.) I guess it's not really a lie since I kind of make the rules. But, I've made exceptions for other people. A particular former staff member has been helped three times this year, though I was upset about that (I was out of the office and our director made that decision; if it was up to me, I wouldn't have done it).

Am I a scrooge? I am a bit of a tightwad with my emergency money. It breaks my heart to have to turn away an old farm widow who's traveled 20 miles in the middle of July for help on her $50 electric bill because I spent my last $200 for the month on a repeat family. I'm realizing that my reasoning probably makes perfect sense to you. Those welfare queens and all their sick children. Why don't they get a job, quit smoking, and stop making babies?

The thought wanders into my head some days too... but then I see Jennifer and her two little boys. She works down at the Taco John's. She makes too much now to qualify for welfare payments, no food stamps, no child care assistance, no LIHEAP anymore. But you can tell it's hard... She comes in for food every now and again (no income requirements here for a food pantry) when shifts are low. Maybe she could go back to school and get a better job. But then, who would make your tacos?

Last night I helped a man in a wheelchair across the street and it made me angry at you. I was in my Cutlass enroute to a meeting that I was already late for and approached one of the ba-zillion stop signs in the little downtown area of Ames. All of a sudden I realized I needed to give the chunky soles of my sandals a little bit more pressure on the brake than my toes appreciated in order to avoid cutting off the brick-path crosswalk where a man was trying to cross. I hate those drivers who stop beyond the Big White Line at stop signs for that very reason: you're likely to either hit a pedestrian or bike-rider or uppity Schnauzer-on-too-long-of-a-leash OR at the very least cut off their path and cause me to muttter "Dickhead" under my breath at you in hopes that it will make you less rude in the future.

So, last night I was one of those drivers and stopped just a tad over the red bricks laid to denote the crosswalk and there's Nick in his wheelchair to my left, stuck in the road between the hump of the middle of the street and the ramp from the sidewalk. He waves me on to pass him and complete my turn. "Don't wait for me to cross; you'll be late for your meeting and for work tomorrow too if you wait on me," he seems to be saying. And I do complete my turn, looking around frantically for a pedestrian that could lend him a hand and allow me to continue on, guilt-free, and be only a few minutes late to my meeting. There's a middle-aged couple crossing the street perpendicular to Nick. I figure they'll take care of him, but by the time I'm halfway down the block and look in my rear-view mirror, they're opening the door to the jewelry store and Nick's still stuck between the hump and the ramp, waving on other vehicles.

I park in the first spot I see and leave the car running. As I trot down the block in the direction from which I had just driven, a young man passes in front of Nick and continues on, entering the Jimmy Johns on the corner, not even seeming to take note of the battle going on between metal and cement and biceps only a few feet away. By this time I'm pretty furious but I don't let it enter my voice: "Hey there! Looks like you're a little stuck... Can I give you a hand across the street?" I'm not sure what kind of brain is in the body in the chair, so I'm cautious, but Nick nods his head. It becomes apparent that he's at least a little developmentally challanged and I try to wheel him swiftly, but not so fast that he's freaked out. Safe on the opposite corner, I ask Nick, "Which way are you going now? I can help you over the other hump." His arm makes a big gesture and his index finger points crookedly, but mostly to the left. "Here we go!" When we get the other side of Main Street, now kitty-corner to where Nick
started, he lets out a delighted squeal and reaches around the chair to shake my right hand. "My name's Nick," his lips struggle to get out. "Hi, Nick," I hold onto his overly-firm grip, "My name's Melissa. Nice to meet you. Where are you on your way to?" He says something that I don't understand and I ask him to repeat it, twice, in fact. But I never do catch what he's saying. "Oh, I'm new in town," I hear myself saying, even though I've now been here a year and a half, "you're good to get there on your own?" He nods his head wildly, "see you later!" I think he tells me as I jog back to my car.

I'm angry at you because you might think I'm a super nice person to stop what I'm doing, be extra late for where I'm going and dash to help a man in a wheelchair over the hump in the street. I'm not a super nice person. I'm just a normal, reasonable human being and you should be too, you jewelry-buying, sandwich-eating, lazy shmoes. Normal, reasonable human beings stop and take a moment or two to help other human beings by doing something really easy (get a man in a wheelchair 50 feet) when it's really hard and a little humiliating for that other person to struggle in public to acomplish (get your not-so-strong-developmentally-and-movement-challanged body 50 feet). Nick might not understand humiliation, or he may be used to the whole process by now. But, he sure seemed extraordinarily happy to get a little push.

I curse the little highs I get from helping other people, multiple times a day at work and also little events like this, because it shouldn't be novel when you do what you can to minimize suffering of any kind. It shouldn't be something worthy of note at the dinner table or in a blog. It should just be life...doing all you can to look around you for opportunities to spread love, build trust, and encourage harmony. If that's too hippie, touchy-feely for you, try opportunities to be a normal, reasonable human being. Otherwise, you might as well be on Neptune.

Today I learned that Jeremiah makes more money than me. He asks me if I can move my not-yet-sorted-because-my-volunteer-didn't-show-up-today canned goods off of the food pantry floor and into the hallway so he can mop tonight after we've all gone home to our family dinner time. He grew up in a small town whose name I can't remember now, but begins with an 'L', near a bigger town whose name begins with an 'A' in North-Central Iowa. There were 21 kids in his graduating high-school
class, he tells me. He wasn't real smart, he says, so he's glad he didn't grow up in a large school system like Ames. But, he's worth more than $8 an hour so he quit his job at the hotel for his current gig with Story County Maintenance. I don't know how I came to know these things about Jeremiah since I only remember asking him how he was as he breezed by my office door, but I start to really wonder why after four years of higher education and a B.S. I'm only making $8.37/hr.

The answer seems simple, I guess. It's because of my chosen field, it's because of budget cuts, it's because it was supposed to be temporary until my partner finished his M.S. But I could be someone else with this job. If I were a single mom with just one child, this wage would put me at 145% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines and I would qualify for the very services
I'm adminstrating. That seems a little twisted... But since I'm an over-educated single woman living in sin with her parter and children are a long thought away, I can't really complain. Stephanie up in Hamilton County can though.

There's something about summer that makes the pressure rise. Whether the electricity in their Section 8 apartment is getting shut off tomorrow, or they just got layed off from their 40K job and want to know how they can apply for rent assistance next month, the calls are twice as many and twice as strained in the heat of August. Even in my over-cooled basement
office, their voices break me into a sweat and my heart races trying to think of where I can turn them to for help. The second to worst answer I can give is "I don't know who can help you." The worst is, "there's no one who can help you." I don't ever really actually give the latter answer, although I often think it while I'm giving the former. My eyes panic as they scan my referral phone number list...is it under 'C' for "Community", or 'S' for "Services"...?