i have to go to the social security office this morning and clear up one more confusion in my son's ssi . . . again. it seems to be a requirement for them to periodically either muck up or confuse the whole social security thing. a couple of years ago they started sending his moneys to a bank account that had been closed for 18 months. no, i didn't tell them to do that and it took half a dozen phone calls, two visits, and three months to fix. and a year or so ago, they realized my son was getting child support and that they had over paid him. mind you, i had given them the paperwork from the beginning, it was on the printout they gave me, but they weren't counting when setting up his payments.

this time it's more confusing, although it can still adversely impact our income. hell, it's already adversely impacting our income and our income can hardly afford to be adversely affected at the moment.

see, ssi apparently runs at least 3 months behind. so, when saxy lost his job is right about the time his income kicked in for taz's ssi. we got cut $200. makes sense even if it occurred a bit late. even good old public aid only runs a month or two behind (you report at the end of one month, it takes affect at the end of the following month). but ssi isn't quite that on top of things. so, saxy loses his job 3 months after he gets it, and we lose the extra income they just started counting. i figure, no big, 3 months minus $200, we can make it. it'll take a little more work than we're used to, but we can do it. i have made it on less.

or so i thought.

the next letter i get says they've overpaid us and barring us repaying them the couple of hundred they say we owe, they're going to start taking that out of his checks too. now, that's getting a bit thin even for me. then, to add to the confusion, i get a letter this weekend stating that they counted too much of my hubby's income as part of my son's resources and now they owe us money. add to that that they are increasing his ssi again to its previous levels and i am so confused. they've paid us the money they claim to owe us, but are we paying them back in september still? is my son's money really going back up? or am i going to find out they overpaid us again?

as much as we need the money, and as much as i don't really want to stand in line for 15 hours, i'd rather have a clear understanding of exactly what's going on than to be surprised when they decide they've made yet another mistake.

in the mean time, saxy and i have both signed up at monster.com. so far, they have jobs listed up the yang for nurses, sales, and a job or two for biochemists, but not a damn thing for english majors who haven't worked in almost 10 years.

i definitely have the wrong degree for california.