Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession Read Online Free PDF

in my thirty- three year career, the unthinkable had happened: I'd been fired. I was so upset I even left my fifty dollar Apple mouse in the terminal . Enjoy, stranger who found it!
    In the meantime, my finances were crumbling. The severance money was trickling away, gone to support Nigel and Aurora in the enormous Issaquah house. Doreen had never paid me, and there was no way I could ask her for money now.
    The reason I was going to Seattle was to see a bankruptcy lawyer. Rachel , a successful business owner, had peered over our landfill of debt, took in a lungful of stench, and determined th at this was the only solution. BING BING! I had just hit two key bumpers of The Great Recession: bankruptcy, and foreclosure. I had long ago stopped paying the mortgage on North Bend. Our renters had decamped, leaving the place a trash heap, and we were so underwater I could have waved to the giant octopi on the floor of Puget Sound. Oh well, there went our whole down payment: $160,000. In later days – when I couldn ’ t afford gas and had to cruise down Hayvenhu rst Avenue in neutral – the enormity of this sum hit me , and I marveled like Belzoni before the pyramids. But then, in July 2009, it was all still a game – Monopoly money.
    Throug h the graces of Chapter Eleven , g one was the credit card debt (and credit cards) ; gone was the house we had been so proud of. I managed to hold onto the truck and personal items , but jettisoned something else that in Am erica makes you a criminal. John Edwards (despite being a giant dick) had it right: there are two Americas. But it’s not the Haves and Have Not s: it’s the Good Credit s and Bad Credits . If your credit is bad, you might as well sneak over the border to Mexico . Most employers now check, so you can’t even get a job. If your company blows up, like mine did, that makes you a Future Bad Employee. Thank you, KKK! As I said during my standup, I kne el each night and pray : “ Dear God…. please make his dick fall off.”   I hope it already has.
    So I crept back to L.A., simultaneously relieved and ashamed. I didn't give a damn a bout defaulting to bank s , especially WaMu ’s successor : they had fucked me over, and the pleasure was mutual. I rony Alert: If Chase hadn’t let me go, they could have saved $650,000!  Yes, since my mortgage, HELOC, and credit cards were all courtesy of – you guessed it – WaMu   Can you say “ dumbasses ”?  I know you can!   BTW, these are the people in charge . Which explains the now four-year Recession.
    I have to say that I felt bad where smaller creditors were concerned: the horse vet who had saved my Percy, charging many thousands of dollars; the CPA who did our taxe s ( Rachel had paid for the bankruptcy).
    I returned to her C astle , jobless, bankrupt, and homeless. Every day, as I fired out résumés from her office , I saw th e army of servants in motion to serve t he One Percent : the maid, who cleaned on e storey a visit; the five gardeners, taming a spread that rivaled the Kaanapali Hilton; the construction guys, all of them Latino , repairing an outdoor light ; the pool man, keeping it clean ; and the exterminator, spraying the periphery of the manse in what looked like a Haz Mat suit. Unemployment might be over twelve percent in L.A., but Rachel was doing her best to keep the number from rising.
    One weekend, I was swimming in the squarish pool (adjacent to the spa and founta in). Oddly, I was the only one who seemed to use it . I got out, dryin g off by the wrought-iron table where Rachel sat with her husband Miles.
    "How's it going?" Miles asked. It was a rarity for him to address me. I had k nown him since junior high, but, when asked to supply a funny anec dote for his 40th Birthday , came up blank. Still, he was a nice guy . His Mom was a Holocaust survivor , and, like most adult children of same, he was very conflict-adverse. Logic could solve everything. Emotion was not to be shown, not even at his best