Due bills

Oct. 1 is almost here, and that means two things to me: The mortgage is due and I'm a year older. I'll talk about the added year on another day; it's the mortgage that has me more worried, as I'm sure it does many Americans.
As I've said earlier, the severance from work is now gone, and while unemployment checks continue arriving (although there was a hiccup last week), my part-time work isn't about to pay the bills. We're not in danger of foreclosure so far, but I wonder and worry about finding steady employment after seeing our checking account so low and payday for my wife not until the end of the week.
One question I've raised at the Job Connections meetings I go to and when I meet other unemployed people, is how they do it, how they keep their financial house in order. I'm sure there are daily stories out there to be told, if only a publication wanting some journalistic scrutiny and insight into these tales would pay me to tell them. I'm not talking a "Grapes of Wrath" story, but the daily life stories such as in the excellent book "Nickel and Dimed."
I'm now reading Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and have always found such nonfiction amazing reading. Newspapers have told some of the stories of people affected by the sour economy (Where's my bailout?), but not as much as I'd like to in a book, much like Barbara Ehrenreich has done. Now I just need to find someone to pay me to do it, because the bills keep coming.