And seeing doctors, especially when they’re out of your health insurer’s network of approved physicians, is alarmingly expensive. My pediatrician charged me more than $600 for two well-baby checkups for my two pre-teen boys last summer.

As an older person (in my 50s), I should and often need to go the doctors more often. I have bad teeth, arthritis, and a history of cancer in my family. My boys also get sick at least once a year or end up in the emergency room. Stitches on the chin for my youngest when he ran into a pole (he wasn’t looking) and a daredevil dive on the bed, which almost resulted in a broken nose when he hit the headboard instead of the comforter.

Even when I know my doctor, seeing the gyno has got to be my leave favorite doctor’s appointment other than the periodontist, which has become more pleasant since my periodontist now lets me get gas. But I don’t think Medicaid will pay for that. I also need a mammogram and will ask about one when I see my Medicaid doctor, who works at a major D.C. hospital.

Now that I have the time to see a doctor, I’m going to take advantage of it. I need my health, not only for my own sake but for my children’s. They still need a mom, and I want to be there for them, even if I can’t keep up with them on the soccer field.

I’m just getting over the shame of being a Medicaid recipient, but I need it and don’t want to incur any more debt. According to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, we have more than 48 million uninsured Americans. I bet many of them would qualify for Medicaid if they knew how to apply, or that it was even an option.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on Medicaid, but signing up for it wasn’t as difficult as I had imagined. In D.C., Medicaid is offered through DC Healthy Families. Once you fill out an application, I’d take the time to visit the D.C. Department of Human Resources at 645 H St. NE rather than mail it in. The social workers there will help you through the process. Visit the D.C. government website for information on where to get an application. As long as you use a doctor that accepts Medicaid, you can get your eyes examined, a regular checkup, a mammogram and see specialty doctors if you need something unpleasant, such as a colonoscopy. Free transportation to and from appointments is another benefit. If your child has special needs, you can get special services for that, too.

My hair color and its length have changed enough since he asked me about girls to date that he might not remember me, but I didn’t want to take the chance. I’m self-conscious about using food stamps because it says I’m not successful, and I don’t want to leave that impression with any prospective mate that I’ve hit hard times, not that I’d date Ted. I don’t envision myself with a grocery store clerk. And I don’t mean to demean Ted. He’s a nice guy. I just don’t feel the chemistry.

Besides feeling embarrassed, I’m careful what I buy with food stamps. It’s not that I splurge on anything that would raise suspicions about why I was on food stamps. I don’t buy filet mignon or artisan bread. I buy things that poor people would buy.

I only get $176 a month to feed a family of three. Chicken nuggets and fried shrimp for the kids, iceberg lettuce (not the European kind), potatoes, milk, hamburger, a whole chicken, rice, bananas and the like keep my grocery bill in line with my monthly allotment.

The cats, unfortunately, are not covered by food stamps. So the extras—Purina Cat Chow and Fresh Step litter—are paid for out of my unemployment compensation, now called insurance, but I’m not sure what it insures against.

I don’t want to wait in line for hours next to what I imagine are stinky-smelling people who don’t want to work for a living. Well, maybe some of them do. But I bet the line was filled with the likes of homeless chaps, not unemployed professionals like me. His stunt reminds me of the 1950s TV show Queen for a Day, which featured housewives telling a live studio audience their stories of woe in the hopes of winning a new appliance.

But I’ve got to hand it to Bill, described as an anonymous mystery entrepreneur who would rather go around the country handing out money than spending $3 million on a TV Super Bowl ad. But Bill has a motive: He wants people to sign up on his website, which somehow allows registrants to be featured in a classified advertising video. For me, craigslist.com is good enough. I don’t think anyone wants to see me sporting a used QVC sweater in eight fashion colors.

According to The Huffington Post, Bill’s strategy to dole out dough seems to be working. He had 60,000 people sign up on his site in one day! Go Bill. Since Bill is in this for the money, I thought I’d send him an email asking if he’d help pay for the cost of this blog’s design services. After all, I don’t have much to lose, except another dent in my pride. No one’s going to fire me.

Here’s my letter:

Dear Bailout Bill,

I missed your recent trip to Washington, DC. I don’t think I’ll be able to catch you again because I no longer have a car. Some schmuck slammed into my aging Audi before the holidays when it was parked along a residential street, severing a tire, which caused more than $9,000 in damages. I’ve decided to “go green” because of it.

I’ve got a sob story, just like all the other poor folk who come to you. But I’m trying to write my way out of my mess rather than wait for pennies from Heaven to fall on me. I’m the anonymous blogger for Girl On the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures at www.girlonthebrink.com.

The site has gone live, but I’m in the process of seeking grants to pay a $2,500 fee for a new design. I thought you might be interested in helping, and I would be willing to incorporate a video ad from your site on my homepage if you like the idea enough.

Sincerely,

Ann Powers

I hadn’t thought of Medicaid either. But the city government offered it after reviewing my finances. I used to get confused between Medicaid and Medicare. Now I don’t. Medicaid is for poor people, and Medicare is for old people. Right now, I’m poor.

Before my appointment, I needed to figure out a way to get to a poor part of town to meet with executives at a do-gooder organization, not for a job interview but to help strategize an energy conservation campaign. I’m anxious because I need to make it back home in time to change into my poor clothes—jeans, sneakers, plain shirt and fleece jacket. The poor look is further enhanced by no makeup or jewelry, and I let my hair air dry after my shower, which I still take.  I never pull out my Blackberry while in a waiting room. I silence it.

The meeting with the execs goes great, and we’ll be partnering on the campaign. There’s no money in it for me, however. When you’ve been unemployed for a while, it’s important, at least for me, to keep a sense of self-purpose. Helping others, even when I need help, makes me feel good about myself and proves I still have a moral core. I don’t empty my pockets of change into the hands of a panhandler, but I’ve flipped the poor guy selling Street Sense, a newspaper about the homeless, a dollar every now and then, but not lately.

I got a new eye prescription from doctors who work at a major hospital. I was afraid of subprime healthcare, given it’s Medicaid. But the big shocker came when I went to fill it at an eyeglass store the health-care facility recommended. I mistakenly thought that the store filled Medicaid prescriptions, but after picking out a pair of frames and adding in the lenses, the technician told me that’s not the case. I couldn’t swallow spending what would have been close to $600 on the eyeglasses and left, determined to find a better deal on the Internet. I did on eBay at Optical Needs and for about half that amount. I bought them. Medicaid is supposed to pay for my eyeglasses, but no one at the number listed on the back of my card can tell me where I should go.

Actually, I got more from him than I got from the IRS. Uncle Sam, with his finger poking you in the face (you’ve seen the posters), just doesn’t get it.

In any case, if I wasn’t exactly  bringing home the bacon on food stamps, I’ve now brought home the hog. Now I can stop eating rice pockets, an oven-toasted generic cereal with 12 minerals and vitamins. This is definitely fat-free food because 15 minutes after I’ve eaten it, I’m hungry again.

Like now, I have a hankering for a banana, the yellow-skin variety (you didn’t know I like Asians?), but my fruit bowl, sadly, contains the Chiquita kind, I think.

My trip to Antigua for sailing week this week? Perfectly justified. You see, although I am shackled by my mortgage (keeping the house for the kids; in a divorce agreement; ex says house wouldn’t sell in today’s market; not convinced given we live in classy Northwest D.C. neighborhood), I’m practically debt free.

Yes, the Congressional Budget Office should hire me, or maybe I should become a debt counselor. I’d tell other jobless folks who got screwed by their boss to fight for more, especially if they’re over 50. I paid off all but $2,000 of my credit card debt with the severance I got from fighting my ex employer. In fact, I got an email the other day that showed an uptick in my credit score. I have borderline “good” credit.

I’d advise others to do the same: pay off as much debt as possible and use their debit card, which teaches you how to live within your means.  At least it makes you think twice before buying a La Perla bra, or for a guy would it be a Zegna tie?

Bras, ties—they’re the unmentionables that make my advice worth a look behind the hood.

I wanted to call the Burial Assistance Program run by D.C. Department of Human Services and tell them I was thinking about dying to find out if I was entitled to burial benefits in case I got slammed by a Metro bus while crossing the street (this is more common than you might think), but I didn’t know how the person on the other end of the phone would react.

Good thing for the D.C. government’s website, because I was able to find the answers online. If you want to get buried in a box, and I imagine that’s all you’d get, the program will fund your funeral services for up to $800. But you might want to consider saving the government some money—after all, city services are hurting, too—and go for cremation for $450.

The government’s website urges families in need of assistance to “apply right away.” Am I missing something? Time of death isn’t something I knew I could plan for. Unless you’re in a hospice, which I’m not, I’m not sure I’d wake up one morning and take the X2 bus from the Gallery Place Metro stop to apply.

I imagine the conversation would go like this:

Me: “I’m here to apply for burial benefits.”

Burial rep: “Who died?”

Me: “Well, I’m thinking about it.”

Burial rep: “Are you worth less than $800?”

Me: “That depends on what day of the month it is. After I pay my mortgage, property taxes, insurance, utilities and feed and clothed my kids I think I’ll meet that eligibility requirement.”

Burial rep: “Do you live in the District of Columbia? I’ll need proof of residency. If you’re homeless, I can make an exception.”

Me: “For now I do, in a house I’m struggling to hang on to. Are you going to bury me in a cemetary, or throw me in a landfill?”

Burial rep: “That’s up to your family.”

The rules get more complicated, and the D.C. government has prepared a policy manual that covers the fine print. Once you apply, the government promises that it “will make an eligibility determination as quickly as possible.”

After filling out forms I had downloaded and gathering the required documentation, I thought how difficult this process must be for people who never graduated high school or don’t know how to read or write, let alone for those who come from another country.

You start to think that the people who need these services the most aren’t getting them because they don’t know that they’re available, and if they do, it’s too much trouble to assemble the required documentation. One of the required documents to apply for TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or welfare) is a copy (and that’s good enough) of your child’s Social Security card. If I had known I was applying for welfare, I wouldn’t have done it because it makes me feel shameful. But the government fools you into thinking that you’re not that poor with these gibberish, convoluted names.

I had to supply my kids’ Social Security cards and birth certificates, two letters from unrelated individuals stating that I lived in the same house with them, any income statements, and my tax bill, which would provide me more food stamp benefits. I couldn’t find one son’s Social Security card, so I mocked one up in Photoshop. I scanned the card for my younger son and then used Photoshop to recreate a card for my older son. I should have gone down and gotten a new one, but I was too lazy, and the instructions were much more involved than opening up new bank account.

The unemployment office doesn’t need to see original documents. Copies work just fine, and when you fax them, who’s going to know? You may think I have committed fraud, but he has a card, in the house, somewhere.

I’m sending a few things back—one of his flannel shirts he had given me, and a book that I don’t want to read and some other stuff I told him not to send. If I had to draw parallels between work and relationship layoffs, this would be the equivalent of returning the office key and credit card to its rightful owner.

Unpacking two years’ worth of memories that I thought were meaningful is not at all like unpacking your office belongings, which I still haven’t done. I know what’s in there—manila folders, papers, pens, and, yes, the Super Plus tampons that I had stuffed in the side drawer. These are things I can live without, and losing my job didn’t break my heart—just my bank account.

Losing my boyfriend did break my heart. Somehow, I need to begin anew—with a job, in love and in life. My girlfriend said I deserve better, and that he won’t ever find a woman as special as me. Someday, she said, he will realize what he’s tossed away. I know she is right. But the pain I feel runs deep, and my tears run through it.

In the end, time, in both circumstances, is our friend. Time heals, but once you’re wounded, you may never fully recover. Yes, enough to keep going because you have to. Life moves on, and the trick, I think, is learning how to move along with it. But sometimes people have to lose something to realize what they had. I hope he realizes the special gift he threw away.

Americans are on my side, according to a recent poll by Nielsen. Despite turbulent times, we’re watching more, not less, TV, though broadband subscriptions are down (no new houses, no new subs). We’re watching more than 151 hours of TV per month, or six hours more per month than last year. That’s an all-time high.

That said, I can’t get into watching NBC’s hit reality show, The Biggest Loser, though my kids seem fascinated by obesity. But the fat people on The Biggest Loser aren’t nearly as obese as the 1,000-pound man on, I think, Discovery.

To see this one guy being moved off his bed like a pizza off a paddle and then onto a stretcher of some sort was freakish, especially when the camera didn’t turn away from an exposed ball, which kind of jiggled but not really.

Those hospital gowns can only cover up so much, but they’re probably made in China, and the people are pretty small there, so I’m not surprised the guy didn’t get proper coverage. But it (the ball) left me gasping about how huge it was and what the other part might have looked like. It was all I needed to see and think about before I changed the channel.

I wasn’t turned on: I was turned off. So, back to American Idol. I think Ryan Seacrest will host American Idol for as long as Pat Sajack has spun the wheel on Wheel of Fortune. And what happened to Vanna White? She doesn’t even have to turn the letters anymore because of technology, which I’ve come to believe is the New New Testament’s true savior. All she does is slink around in borrowed gowns and press buttons that light up letters in a clue, in case you’ve been out of touch or won’t admit to watching.

Now that the Bachelor is over, I’ve resorted to watching DWTS, a bad acronym (and show) for Dancing with the Stars. They’re not really stars but are making more money than me so I won’t trash them too much. Think NFL players and rejected bachelorettes.  The rest fade from memory, except for Apple co-founder Steve “The Woz” Wozniak, a major upgrade to the show and who I fear is about to get voted off for being a bad dancer.

Other than that, I don’t troll the TiVo looking for shows that my ex recorded, thinking that I’d watch them when bored. I don’t get bored watching TV: I fall asleep. Honk-shoe.

Shocked and shaken the day after being turned loose, I sat at home and came to terms with being out of a job like millions of other Americans. We’re all hurting and stressed out about holding our families together. I have an odd situation. I’m living with my ex-husband, not in a big rambling mansion where we don’t bump into each other, but in a modest-sized house that conveniently has a basement apartment that we used to rent out.

We take turns living in the basement—two weeks downstairs and then we regain the privilege of living in the main house. We split costs fifty-fifty. Our children, ages 9 and 11, love having both parents so close by. But it sucks for developing a new relationship, the next logical step after a divorce in normal times.

We are both in survivor mode—my ex is also looking for a job. He lost his the day after Barack Obama was elected president. It is not the change we had hoped for.

But finding love while finding a new job is secondary to figuring out a way to keep the house out of foreclosure and paying the rest of the bills to keep warm and fed. Still, I don’t know how I’ll find a work-life balance if a relationship isn’t part of the equation. Not to mention that saving for retirement is not something I think about now because I have nothing other than the dwindling equity in my house, which, if I can hang onto, may buy me a van rather than a villa in a warm place.

Just thinking about the process of collecting unemployment was demoralizing. The last time a company laid me off was in the 1980s, and I remember having to visit an unpleasant part of town and wait in line to fill out forms to collect unemployment.

I dreaded the thought of doing this again and began to make phone calls to find out where I needed to report. Turns out, I could do it all online through the DC Department of Employment Services—just a click here and there, answer a few multiple-choice questions about the circumstances of my unemployment and then click submit. I also had the option of signing up for direct deposit. It all seemed too easy, and it was. I checked the wrong box for why I was let go. I chose “fired” when I should have clicked “laid off.” The unemployment office won’t release benefits to you if you’re fired.  I didn’t know that until I called to find out why my unemployment compensation wasn’t being deposited into my checking account.

In unemployment lingo, fired means you were let go for misconduct, while layoff refers to eliminating positions because they’re no longer necessary. To me, layoff means the promise of returning to work, something temporary. I didn’t think I was going back to work at the place that let me go, especially after the way they made me feel like a criminal on the day of my departure. I was left feeling bruised, disillusioned and disheartened about keeping the American Dream alive.  And now I couldn’t even undo my self-inflicted status as a bad employee rather than one just caught in what was beyond my control.