mynextmistake

You do need a shot of the lower half of the body. The first shot Jessa posted was a profile of the whole fetus, but the angle on the part below the abdomen isn’t very good. That’s why I said I could be wrong. I’m sure we’ll find out eventually, given this gang’s love of gender reveal parties.

It’s not a great view, so I could be wrong, but I think it’s a girl. Looks like she might have the three lines sign.

Well, yeah, but according to Jill Nurie is the only sister he’s dating. While we’re on the topic, what kind of name is Nurie? Did Jill make it up? It’s such an odd choice given that the rest of the kids have relatively normal names.

Okay, i’ve been trying to wrap my head around this for hours — canned potatoes? Who would buy canned potatoes? They taste like wet dog and cost more than fresh potatoes. I can get a five-pound bag of russets at Safeway for like $3, and “fancy” potatoes like red or Yukon gold don’t cost much more than that. Is boiling a freaking potato really that hard? How lazy are these people?

Day 978. My captors continue to torture me with days of endless monotony and wretched food. I amuse myself as best I can by anonymously emailing the female guard fake news items about the worldwide closure of Campbell’s soup factories and watching her resultant distress. I persist in my attempts to escape whenever possible. My strength and balance have improved with practice and I can now scale most of the cheap furniture with which they have adorned the hovel in which I am kept. My fellow captive, Yaaay, has developed a surprisingly useful penchant for stacking pieces of furniture on top of one another and then climbing the resultant structures. While I am not yet dexterous enough to do the same, I have been watching carefully and should soon be able to build something capable of reaching the vent above the dining table. Occasionally other opportunities also present themselves. Yesterday, for example, when the male guard was away from the hovel studying with Becky from the third row, the female guard freed me from my restraints and asked if I wished to help her prepare the tasteless potato chunks that were to serve as our makeshift dinner. I agreed in the hopes of securing some kind of weapon that could aid in my escape, only to find that the female guard had placed all of the knives and the arsenic packet just out of my reach. It was most vexing. It is now time for me to be returned to my cell for the night so I must once again hide this journal where nobody will find it. I have selected the cookbook shelf as a safe location this week.

A fair question, to be sure. Perhaps she’s going to start adding them to all her blog posts. Recipe (reh-suh-pee) for (for) buttered (buh-turd) toast (toh-st). Take (tayk) one (won) slice (slice) of bread (bred) and put (puht) in toaster (toh-stur). When (win) toast (toh-st) is (iz) ready (reh-dee) spread (spred) butter (buh-tur) on (ohn) it and enjoy (in-joy). Cathy is what my grandmother would have called some piece of work, but at least she shows affection to those boys. I don’t think i’ve ever seen a Michelle and Jim Bob interact with any of their grandchildren in a positive, natural way.

Mine. Miter. Mile. Mighty. You could also pronounce it “Mih muh.” Mission, miniature, million, midriff. Jill’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, but it wasn’t stupid of her to not assume everyone would instinctively pronounce “Mima” as “Me-muh.” I read it as “my-muh” initially and I speak English just fine.

My-muh.

I was joking. It doesn’t matter from a benefit calculation standpoint which parent stays home, but you only get credit for one stay-at-home parent. I was assuming Derick would be the one to work since his earning potential is higher.

Jill would be exempt in Arkansas because she is caring for minor children. Derick would not be exempt as a graduate student. The boys probably would because I think the only state which has work requirements for toddlers is Wisconsin.

According to what I found on the Arkansas SNAP website yesterday, the rules are stricter than that. Any able-bodied adult who isn’t working 30 hours per week or enrolled in a government work program can only receive SNAP for 3 months out of 36. After they use up their 3 months, they’re done for three years. So Derick’s not getting SNAP. Where it get so interesting, and more complicated than I originally thought, is that the ineligibility only attaches to the individual, not the entire household. So Jill and the boys could be getting SNAP if they otherwise qualify under the income and asset criteria.

I’m sure Derick could now list a multitude of reasons that such a contract would be unenforceable. Although to be fair, he might need some help from Becky in the third row.

They might be getting WIC, but they aren’t getting SNAP. Generally, able-bodied adults have to show they are working or are actively looking for work in order to qualify for SNAP. While I am usually in favor of expanding U.S. social welfare programs, i’m glad Jill and Derick can’t get SNAP. I leave my kid in daycare and work damn hard every day for my money. I don’t want it going to support a fully qualified, employable accountant who has decided that he needs an fourth do-over in less than five years.

Preferably with reinactments.

Derick doesn’t have a job. I don’t think he’s even pretending to be working now that he’s in law school. I really don’t see JB giving him that money, for a number of reasons. First, I don’t doubt he loves Jill, but I don’t think he’s so sentimental that he’d give Derick $30k a year just to keep her stateside. He’s way too cheap, and I think he also really believes that as the family headship Derick gets to choose the family’s course. If that means going to DA, JB would expect Jill to suck it up and go with him. Second, it would set a terrible precedent. If JB pays for Derick’s schooling, what’s to stop Ben and Jeremy and whoever else comes along from expecting he’ll pay for theirs? If he refused, it could cause serious strife in the family, and remember that JB’s world depends on his kids and their spouses keeping their mouths shut about all the family dirty laundry — he can’t afford serious strife. Finally, Derick has publicly been a huge asshole about TLC and the show. I think if JB were giving him thousands of dollars a year, he would expect Derick to stop biting the hand that feeds him.

I think his debt is likely to be educational debt. According to the University of Arkansas law school website, in-state cost for tuition, fees, and books is $8500 per semester. That’s $17,000 per year for three years, or $51k total. Then when you add up rent, utilities, phone charges, food/sundries, clothing/shoes, health insurance, auto insurance, gas for the car(s) and the occasional treat for a family of four, even in dirt-cheap Arkansas you’re looking at what, $1200/month minimum? So add $15,000 per year for living expenses and the total amount Derick’s degree is going to cost them is $96,000. Their earned income for this period is $0, so that hundred grand has to come from somewhere. It’s not coming from grant aid. The University of Arkansas financial aid site indicates that their need-based grant aid is largely provided through federal grant programs, with the remainder covered by two state grant programs. As a graduate student, Derick is ineligible for all of these programs. I know people have speculated that Cathy is covering the costs, but i’ve seen nothing to indicate that she has an extra $30k a year lying around. And you know JB’s cheap ass isn’t paying the bills. I suspect he’s borrowing, probably quite heavily. Which would be fine if he was going to graduate and find. Job where he can pay it back, but sometime within the next year he’s going to see something shinier than law school and bolt, leaving $50k in debt and no way to pay it off.

So Jill R thinks that two adult siblings who go out with their parents are on a date? Has she started snorting her Plexus?

Last one for a while... Day 827. This morning, the male guard rose early and filled his backpack with the heavy books he regularly transports to a nearby location called “law school.” The female guard said that she could make him breakfast as soon as she found the can opener (which I had, in a small act of rebellion, hidden the night before in an untouched box labeled “medical things”) but he told her not to worry because Becky in the third row had already made him a sandwich. After he left the hovel, the female guard spent quite a long time glaring at the law school student directory and occasionally stabbing one of the pictures in it with a kebab skewer. She then decided to free my fellow captive, Yaaay, and I from our cells and take us outside for our exercise interval. We went to a curious location called “the playground,” where there were large wooden structures to climb on and little plastic chutes that allowed a quick egress from the upper levels to the ground. While we were there, a curious thing happened — the female guard seemed to become unsure of Yaaay’s identity. She continually called his name, but each time he responded she immediately asked him if he was “Happy.” I do not know who this “Happy” person is, and judging by his negative responses, Yaaay does not either. It was most peculiar. After a while, she gave up and marched Yaaay/Happy and I back to the hovel. She said she was going to make dinner, but soon remembered that she could not find the can opener. Unable to cook without it, she put us into the car and drove us (restrained, of course) to a Chick-Fil-A, where she purchased a bucket of deep-fried chicken parts which we ate in the car on the way back to the hovel. Once we arrived, she placed us both in our cells for the night. I attempted to sneak out in order to hide this journal, but the female guard was sitting on the couch stroking the kebab skewer and chanting about Becky the Ho of the Third Row, so I was unable to return it to its previous location. I shall have to hide it in Yaaay/Happy’s room. The laundry basket should work well, as it is very seldom emptied. I shall now set my mind to figuring out how I can construct one of those playground-style escape chutes so I can escape through my own window.

Thanks everybody. I’m just down, I guess. It’s been a really rough month. But i’m glad I brought some laughs to you!

I’m disappointed in myself for this one. I feel like I’ve misplaced my funny.

Day 613. It has been a long while since I last risked penning an entry in this journal. While the female guard continues to show herself to be incapable of understanding anything more complex than her recipe for cold cereal, I have suspected of late that the male guard, who has a certain air of reptilian intelligence about him, is beginning to see through my carefully cultivated mask of placid idiocy. Several times now I have had potential escapes thwarted by his refusal to take me out of my restraints. Yesterday, for example, my guards dragged a plastic tree into the hovel in which I am kept and began to adorn it with garish ornaments to celebrate the birth of their cult leader, Jesus. My fellow captive, Yaaay, was permitted to assist with this process, but the male guard refused to allow me out of my cell to help. It was almost as though he could sense that I planned to bind him and the female guard together with one of their strings of tacky blinking lights and stuff their mouths with tinsel before letting myself out the front door and hitchhiking across the state line. It was most vexing. I can only hope that he will soon resume his schedule of “studying” with Becky from the third row until the early hours of the morning and will not pay as much attention to me, allowing me to resume plotting my escape. Until then, I must once again secret this book in a spot where it will not be found. This time, I have selected a truly inspired hiding place — the bag of the vacuum cleaner, which has not been changed in years.

It’s unfortunate that they’re so overburdened that they can’t step in to protect starving children. That’s probably why the Rodrigueses live there.

If she wants a home-based business, an MLM is not the way to go. An astonishingly large number of people don’t earn any money in those schemes. Many of them actually lose money. But they all teach you to fake it until you make it, so Jill brags about selling enough to buy herself a diamond ring when in reality she likely hasn’t made a red cent off plexus and is paying for her jewelry with money she should be using to feed her emaciated children. I cannot even express the level of contempt I have for Jill. She is a terrible excuse for a human being. Every single one of those children should be removed from her home and placed in foster care immediately. They’d have a chance at a normal life, and Jill would lose all of her grifting fodder and have to start earning her own money. She’s unqualified for any legit job, but maybe there’s a niche market in the amateur porn industry for women who have had 14 kids. She’s already dressing the part.

West Virginia has work requirements for SNAP recipients. Either Jill or David could be exempted from the work requirement because they are needed to care for the children, but the other one of them would have to get off their ass and find a job in order to qualify.