can I have a flippin' phone number?

Someone told us that maybe what we are going through is in a way getting our Phd in understanding people in poverty. This is by far the worst degree I've ever done. I've done a lot of school. Some people even think I'm kind of smart- have good people skills- can figure a lot of things out. But the hoops people in poverty have to go through are impossible I tell you- IMPOSSIBLE.

Our kids get Medicaid right now, which is a total blessing 'cause we don't have money. Medicaid can be awesome. They pay for everything- no worries- that is if you can get in and stay in. They make you renew every 6 months or so. But I'd figured we'd passed that unit- I mean we've probably filled out the same form at least a dozen times (I've helped the refugees fill them out too). We got a renewal form in Aug. So we filled it out and sent it in, as always- promptly (they give you 10 days to fill it in from the date they sent it- or something real regimented like that- you know another hoop for people with crazy lives and few resources to jump through). But for Secret Agent B and I, it's kind of a no brainer- we've got a copier/scanner computer even that we can zip our pay stubs through and we sent it off.

Then I got a letter in the mail, that made no sense. It didn't explain much of anything except it had my kids names, medicaid and denied on it along with other none sense, so being the smart person I am, I figured I should probably check into this unidentifiable paper. First problem- the phone number is some 2-1-1 number. I've been babysitting during office hours, so I have to make this call while watching 3 children under the age of 4 and after navigating their phone tree it tells me I have a wait no longer than 18 minutes (it was longer), but I eventually find a nice lady who looks up my info. and calmly tells me that my kids are no longer on medicaid- that they got our paperwork Aug. 21st, but it was never processed because their medicaid wasn't going to run out until the end of Oct. and now it's Nov.1st, so we automatically got a letter saying we are denied. (???) She didn't seem at all ruffled by this and said she'd transfer me to our local office, so that they could process our paperwork (RECEIVED AUG 21st). There was no nice recording saying how long the wait was- I think it was infinity. I hung up and decided to just make the call myself.

This is where I got really screwed up. While I know where their office is physically, I had 3 kids and no way to go there during office hours, so my only option was to call. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to find Medicaid's phone number. I am not joking. It's not on the kid's medicaid card, or in the phone book under governement like some phone tree told me. It's not under Taylor county, or Texas, or medicaid or Texas Human Resources and Services, not in the white pages or yellow pages. I finally went online and found a wrong number that at least told me to hang up and call *** (the right number).

There I reached Miss PMS herself. Apparently I am in a special system that only certain people in the office can look up and those people don't actually exist in person- they are just a name with voice mail that is never returned. So I call up Miss PMS again after leaving a message I'm not sure will ever be checked, to kindly ask if she can tell me the name of my case worker. She swears on a stack of Bibles that she can't look up anything, ANYTHING on my file.

So why do they have her answering the phones?- I wonder. And am I so dangerous that they have to put me under lock and key so that only some person with special credentials can locate my unprocessed file.

The good news is that my kids are extremely healthy, AO#1 is just getting over a double ear infection, so he's not due for another one in hopefully forever, they just got their yearly check-ups and aren't due for another year. Maybe by that time, we'll have this medicaid stuff figured out or perhaps the CEO will send provision for this and PLEASE graduate us out of this IMPOSSIBLE program. We get the message- being poor sucks- SUCKS! They have to be infinitely smarter than I have ever been.

They should make a new survivor show- survive as a homeless person, or a person with no car, phone, resources, or someone who has to be subject to the maniacal systems offered to people in poverty. The reward: homes, cars, phones, jobs, resources, for the best 100 friends they made on the streets and in poverty.
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While I was in the horrid system of repeating mundane music, that was not nearly varied enough for an hour long call, I checked prices for flights to Canada for Christmas. (My family is flying us up). They had skyrocketed and none of the flight itineraries were even doable (12 hour layovers in Minneapolis for example). I was really distraught over it and kept begging the Lover for a solution through this. I was fighting with what I was seeing online and what I was knowing as experience in this faith walk of ours, that He always sees us through in all that we need.

I didn't even want to tell anyone of blog about it. I needed peace so bad. Then a friend offered us a vehicle to drive up if we needed to. Then I called my mom and she was at peace and said not to fret and just wait it out until after Thanksgiving and we'd figure something out (this from the one who called each week to see if I'd looked into flights). As I'm on the phone with mom, Agent B goes online and the prices are back to what they were, the flights were reasonable again, even favorable and His peace has returned to my head and heart.

Thank you Lover, for more than anything else, more than a program, or a flight, or a schedule or even food to eat, all we need is You and Your peace.
-signing out.