Princess in a recession

I just started my blog and I already have a request! My aunt Julie read my blog and told me I HAD to include my welfare letter in my blog. This is a letter that I wrote to her after standing in line for five hours at the welfare office. Yes, I said the welfare office.

First, let me explain that I moved to Houston last October from San Antonio after a series of events that could fill an entire book (which I am still thinking about writing)not just a blog. I literally packed up my sh** and moved over night. Literally.

I had to completely start over (and in this economy is a challenge in and of itself). Julie opened her doors and helped me take the steps towards a normal life as a single mom. So while it's uncomfortable to admit one of those steps was to get medicaid for Jack and foodstamps to supplement my jobless ass.

What I didn't know at the time was it would take six months and hours of waiting in line for this to happen. All I will say is the welfare system, at least in this writer's eyes, was not set up for me or people like me that need it, BUT that is besides the point....

The point is that after hours of standing in line I got VERY restless and irritable. So near the end of this journey I just HAD to send her an e-mail to detail my experience.

Now remember that I said I started waiting in line in October 2008?.... please note the date on the letter... Just to give you an idea this was my fifth trip to the welfare office:




Sadie's continuing adventures at the welfare office‏
From:
Sadie Wright (sadie_wright@hotmail.com)
Sent:
Fri 4/03/09 8:32 PM
To:
Julie Ruffino (jaruffino@yahoo.com)
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Thought you could use a break... So I get to the office around 8:30am this morning to turn in my application. I stand in line over an hour behind a woman ( and I use the term loosely, very loosely) that keeps farting. I almost vomitted twice. She is wearing a halter top and NO bra and black yoga pants... neither of these things she should be wearing...And she's a bigger girl so I have the extreme pleasure of staring at all the glorious back fat that a shirt that fit would otherwise conceal. Lucky me! She brought with her, her young son who's maybe 4 who keeps giving me all these little punk glances. What I really wanted to do was take the little baseball cap off his head and beat him with it, but then she would fart and I would lose all track of time and space so the urge to beat him came and went. Then she started talking on her phone about "This fool she used to talk to". Her half of the conversation, in front of her son, went like this... "So you remember that n**** I used to f*** around with? and then when I had went to call him and text him he ain't trying to call me back? Well, he had called me the other night and I ain't stupid so I axed him straight up why he callin'...He said "Do you really want to know?" (We were all about to find out!!!).....Basically, in english, she goes on to tell the friend that he had been f***** around with another girl the same time that he was f***** with her and that it was getting too hard to keep up with them both so he dumped her (probably because of noxious gas) and then the other girl dumped him so he called her... Then she farted so I blacked out and missed the end of the story, but when I came to her son was pulling on her yoga pant "mamma, I'm hungry" to which she replies "shud up, boy I should lef you at yo daddy's house."

**end letter**



With all the hours of standing in line I have a lot of observations of the people that I waited in line with that I would love to put to paper. So I may decide to make this one in a series of princess in a recession blogs.