How are you today?

I am sick. (Not COVID, I think just a bad cold). It’s stupidly cold. (It’s warmed up to 5 f. ). I have a headache and I ache all over . To make it worse, I have done something to my hip adductors, and lying down is actively painful.

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My partner was on her way back from returning a book to the public library yesterday when someone rear-ended our minivan. Partner is okay; the baby was with her in the car and seems to be doing fine as well (though, if you ask her, she will claim “pbsssbthp ma ma ma ma ma”).

So yesterday afternoon was a flurry of arranging for grandparents to sit with the toddler, asking one of our daughter’s friend’s mom to pick up the older two from school while I go and pick up my partner and baby from the scene. And then phone calls; all of the phone calls. The tow lot, the insurance company, the rental car company, the body shop.

Everyone is okay; no injuries as far as we know. My partner called our family doctor to see if she should get checked out, in case something comes up later.

I really don’t want a repaired minivan, because repaired cars are never the same. And I really don’t want to have to go find a new (used) minivan, because its one of the hardest kind of vehicles to buy these days.

So, I’m thankful that it’s just stuff that’s been damaged – but it sucks that it happened at all.

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Sorry to hear this. Thankfully everyone is okay.

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I gave my letter of resignation at my job today.

I gave them a full 2 months (I’ll keep working through to March 22nd) because I want them to have as much advanced notice as possible. They did right by me, for the most part, and I’m sad to go… but they hired for the only management position above me from outside the company (my direct supervisor has worked at the store for almost a year, and I’ve been with them for 7 years), and every year saw a $1/hr raise meaning that I’m now making just barely more than minimum wage for incredibly stressful work, long hours, no weekends, and no possibility of advancement.

Plus November and December are hell.

Jason, one of the owners, said that they’re sad to see me go. I don’t think he knows yet how true that will turn out to be, but I do still wish them well. They treated me like family in many ways, and I honestly have very, very positive feelings for almost everyone I work with. I will miss them.

The new job (that I start in April) is only 2 days a week, which is great because it will give me more time to write and create and paint and do all the things that I want to do to make money, while also giving me enough to survive (theoretically, at least… the hourly wage I was making at my old job was $23.50 an hour, the new job starts at $25/hr).

Still, terrifying. It’s just an office/data entry position, simple grunt-labour that I’m hoping I can adapt to quickly… after looking for work for years and not getting anything, my partner found me this position through an old boss of hers. I’m cautiously optimistic about it. I just need something that lets me keep writing long enough that I can just write. That’s all I really want to do… whether I can do that faster than AI makes writers obsolete (I mean, it won’t really, but it could kill the industry for sure) is a big question.

As I said. Terrifying. But we’ll see.

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Best of luck, sir!

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That’s huge! I hope it goes well for you :slightly_smiling_face:

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Any job is a big move so good on you for making the jump

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Godspeed, Marx! All the success!

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In similar news, the company I’ve been working at for the past 14 years aren’t doing well, so I’ve just had official notice that I’m being made redundant. I’m at least getting 3 months notice and a decent bit of redundancy pay, so I’m not panicked. Just need to remember how to apply for jobs …

For similar reasons, my boss is looking to sell the flat I’ve been renting from him for the past 9.5 years, so that’s fun.

:upside_down_face:

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I would say, “Buy the flat,” but with the job uncertainty going forward…probably not?

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We did get first refusal, but I doubt my meagre savings would get us a mortgage and then I’d have no savings left.

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Amazing. Exciting. Before you posted this, I just checked in on your Amazon page to see how everything was going. Caitlin Morcos is over 100 reviews! That’s pretty neat, too.

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There’s loads of good advice on Ask a Manager. I’m using it to rewrite my CV/resume at this very moment

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Hey guys still alive. Still dealing with post-concussion syndrome. And still active with my therapy.

I think the hard thing that makes my therapy hard or even just generally talking to a doctor. I usually know more about my family specific situation due to years and years and years and years of training.

Before I had kids I was a support provider for adults with developmental disabilities with high need support.

There is one care facility in our state of Oregon, that is akin to the ghost stories. The horrible place where people who couldn’t speak out were mistreated. The horrible place where people who couldn’t speak out were mistreated

I’ve worked with a client who went there long before I had children.

So when my children were diagnosed level 3 autistic sub-diagnosis, ADHD, receptive and expressive language disorders and intolerances to any easily pre-packaged food including all forms of happy meal.

And if I go to a doctor or a hospital or anything like that.

They’re going to assume that it’s because I’m plus sized. They mischart my information. And they assume that I need a community resource person to come, tell me and train me how to parent my children.

When a call from a community resource person is literally the biggest waste of my time because I know more about the programs and such than they do.

I know more about it than my therapist because every now and then she’ll suggest something.

And I will feel resentment if I need to stop and explain it to her. Why it’s not a viable option.

Because I’ve already been there done that, we’ve already tried.

Also, turns out I have a umbilical hernia that’s hidden in a fat pocket. I guess it called an occult hernia. And ovarian cysts.

But all that aside!

We’re going to the Capitol tomorrow! Oregon Senate Bill 91. I am signed up to speak. And we’re bringing our oldest.

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So, we went to the Capitol today, which went well overall. Just a small correction to superjaz’s post above, it was for Senate bill 538. 91 was the original bill that was passed but flawed in that it is very limited (only 150 out of 1500 or so parents are allowed to be paid caregivers. The rest go on a waiting list.) due to underfunding and forgetting to account for paying the case workers. This bill is to address the original’s shortcomings.

Our older kiddo came with us and did well overall. Got a little bored, I think, so kept trying to go places he shouldn’t, like the areas right outside congresspeople’s offices. Also had a minor incident where another child had a toy that he had at home and he wanted to take it. Thankfully, all the people there are pretty familiar with kids like ours, so it was resolved easily, and only caused a very minor disruption.

superjaz spoke to the panel and did a great job. I had the task of trying to keep our kiddo from whooping into the other microphone or just tapping it to make noise, which I did with mixed results. Thankfully she was one of the first speakers, as our kid was getting restless so I took him back to our car shortly after. We got her not much later, as we had already been away from home for over 3 hours and it was getting close to dinner time, and we had a good hour drive ahead of us.

Very proud of my wife for speaking at this and advocating for herself, our kids, and a thousand other families in the state.

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Congratulations :slight_smile: I’d be way too scared and a nervous wreck… I hope it will turn out well.

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Let us know how it goes.

Things are a bit better here in Virginia. When COVID hit they allowed parents to be paid caregivers, and then advocacy groups have so far successfully kept it. It has, however, been stripped well down.

Obviously people abuse the system, and there were situations where parent-caregivers obtained authorization for basically 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If not that, simply excessive allowances. They also do regular home visits and, after COVID, found a lot of basically typical kids had gotten into the system. So they’ve put all sort of “guardrails” around it and stripped more reasonable families like us of many of the benefits.

Still, I get paid (my wife is the “employer” on paper) for a certain number of hours each week. It’s below minimum wage and isn’t all the hours that E gets cared for, but anything in is a nice offset to the otherwise expensive care that special needs kids need.

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Yeah, the program was in full effect during the pandemic. I believe parents had to work through an agency, at least my wife had to, so I assume it was all parents. Nice thing was, it was like $23/hr or something, so well over minimum wage. And this still goes against the monthly allotment of hours each kid gets, so nobody can do 24/7 or anything like that, and it would be in conjunction with any other caregiver hours. For instance, her brother provides care for both kids, but doesn’t use up all the allotted hours for either one, so she could get the remaining hours.

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