MFA Mama

prednizen

Man oh man, steroids are a mixed bag for sure. Last night I almost threw my iPad because I couldn't get Grey's Anatomy to download and Middle Child was pissing me off making a production of sweeping the hallway and singing loud and off key, and Hotter and Big Child were butting heads, and I wanted to eat EVERYTHING but my stomach hurt. Today I'm finally coughing up the chestful of pollen and city exhaust fumes and other nonsense that's been weighing me down and making me sweaty and tearful and short of breath. It's super-gross, and I know you all wanted to know. It's such a relief though, because as I clear it out my lungs are able to work again, and take deep breaths that relieve the awful feeling of air hunger, and it gives me hope that this was just a little hiccup, a thing that happens to people sometimes, and not The Beginning of The End. Because I'm not getting any younger, and had quietly worked myself into quite a funk. It's not lost on me that my next birthday brings me to my primary diagnosis' Median Survival Age. I don't feel anywhere near done (especially now that I can breathe again--I think low spO2, like low blood sugar, makes one overly pessimistic and prone to histrionics), and am trying not to get hung up on the number, because math can kiss my ass in general, and I've always been an outlier, and medical science produces new miracles every day. I think I'm going to try to see it not as living on borrowed time but rather as one more reason to be mindful of every day being a gift.

Which isn't to say I won't cry and drop the f-bomb at work tonight over something stupid like dropping a fork or a coworker being snippy, because Prednisone. But I'll also try to see the humor, and be kind to myself and those around me, because we're all human, and I know nothing of others' battles.

hippo

   Man, two people working outside the home gets crazy with children, and pets, and one car (and driver). I haven't quite figured out how to keep track of everyone's schedules (we have five iPhones, two kids in band/orchestra, one kid in the equivalent of Glee Club who is about to get a WTF LEARNER'S PERMIT, a set of braces to maintain, an overgrown yard, and too many damn animals), and to complete my joy, my lungs shit the bed again and I saw my doctor today and was put on some restrictions at work and a two-week steroid taper. Which means that after I dropped Hotter at work and came home I still had to make dinner while the boys dove at me with permission slips and Chromebook infraction notices and school supply requests, and this was me running to get the phone...to find out that they gave Hotter the night off TO TAKE CARE OF ME, meaning another hour and a half round-trip, with the younger two boys, to go and get him. Ho ho ho! 

   The good news is that the commute to work is apparently crawling with Pokestops, and the backseat was FULL of balls by the time we got home! So that's swell.

   How are all of YOU?

 

Brief

•   In April "Eclecstasy" ramped up the bullshit, and my doctor informed me that having caused me to question my own sanity (gaslighting), cut me off from my support system (the blog & its readers), and led me to doubt that anyone else would want me if I left, my job now officially qualified as an abusive relationship, and all the Xanax in the world wasn't going to make it tolerable. That made so much sense that I immediately sent out resumes.
• In May I got a fantastic new job at a local restaurant that serves locally- and sustainably-sourced foods and has GF options that are really GF, and just as I was poised to quit Eclecstasy in a blaze of glory and telling people about themselves The XY lost his job and the children's' healthcare benefits. So I had to maintain FT status at Eclecstasy in order to add them to my benefits, but I didn't want to quit the new job, so I accidentally ended up with TWO full time jobs. Oops!
• In June my dad died. I'm still not okay with that. In fact, it's bullshit. Also Big Child got braces.
• In July the MFA Minivan and my laptop died, and some truly egregious shit went down at Eclecstasy that made continuing to work there a legit safety concern. So I bought an iPad, and planned my Eclec-xit Strategy.
• In August I used my last pay cycle of double paystubs to secure financing, bought a Prius, and quit Eclecstasy! Whoo tits! Unfortunately The XY remains unemployed, so the boys and I now have insurance through Healthcare.gov - thanks, Obama :)
• So far September is going well aside from my dad still being dead. Highlights have included my driving to the Arctic Tundra to steal my MIL's cat under cover of darkness (yes, really, long story), Little Child starting middle school (DAFUQ?), and Hotter moving up from Roommate status by being a good spouse for many moons and GETTING A JOB. So we're now a two-income family of two working stiffs with a car loan, but I'm only one of the incomes! 
• How are all of YOU?

watch this space

   There is so much I'd like to tell y'all, but I can't...YET.

   In the meantime, here is this. I find that melatonin helps. You're welcome :)

Figure One: Click image to see source.

obituary

   I was shocked to find that the local paper wanted over $100 to publish the obituary I wrote for my father, so I'm publishing a redacted version here instead. He outlived just about everyone who would have cared anyway, and died yesterday morning on the other side of the world:

Dr. XXXXXXX XXXXXX, PhD, 92. MFA City native, United States Navy Veteran, clinical psychologist, and lifelong champion of civil rights. He was preceded in death by parents XXXXXX and XXXXXX and brother XXXXXXX, and is survived by daughter MFA Mama and grandsons Big Child, Middle Child, and Little Child. In lieu of flowers please contribute to Alzheimer's research.

semicolon

   Some of y'all may have noticed that the blog required a password to access for a bit; that is no longer the case but I have unpublished all posts written since getting hired at my current workplace.
   I love my job. The company I work for is full of amazing, kind, and caring people. However, when you end up defending your mental health and general harmlessness to someone so high up the Corporate chain their salary probably has more than one comma in it as a result of something you wrote in jest on the innernet, it causes you to question the wisdom of sharing anything deeper about your life than recipes and cat pictures in a forum where it can be selectively copied and shared by someone who might wish you ill. The chat about mental health in question was not a result of anything I wrote on here, but rather on the facespace, and I have aggressively pruned my friends list on there as a result (if I unfriended you and you are not a co-worker of mine, I am sorry and it is nothing to do with you or anything you said on there, I just decided that for that to be a safe space I needed to remove anyone who worked for the same company, and anyone whose doorstep I would feel weird showing up on to borrow a cup of sugar).
   It's kind of funny that my blog has survived The World's Most Acrimonious Divorce and a certain online character's eight-year campaign of stalking and harassment, but a family restaurant shut me down in the end. See that right there? That is humor. I'm not bitter or angry about the decision to remove a lot of my archives and, for now, stop writing here, particularly since the end result of the above was that I was deemed harmless enough to keep my job (hooray!).
   Is this the end of my blog? Doubtful. Even when something is really hard and scary, endings are a bad idea, particularly if you're feeling angry, sad, or alone, which is the idea behind Project Semicolon, whose eponymous punctuation mark I have borrowed for the title of this post.* I'm just pausing, for right now, to focus on cultivating a general attitude of gratitude, being a better, kinder human being, and attempting to convince everyone around me that my offbeat sense of humor doesn't make me a threat to myself, my employer, or anyone really (except possums, down with possums). If you want to find me for some reason, my e-mail address is on the About page, and I have not closed my Twitter account (although it is protected--you have to request to follow me there). And if you eat out and receive exceptionally great service from a thirty-something with clunky black glasses, it's always possible that's me, so please, tip your server :)

 

* Please do not take my reference to Project Semicolon to mean that I am considering suicide or engaging in any sort of addictive behavior or self-harm. I just like their general message of "here is where you could have chosen to end a sentence, but continued on."

unsurprising

   So. The Situation. No news is no news. I had already predicted that my doctor would be displeased with the combination of "mass" and "significant family history of cancer in area of mass" and send me to a specialist, and that is exactly what happened. I see a surgeon on the 16th, and before you go to tell me that it's great they were comfortable with waiting that long it's not, really. That's just the soonest I am not scheduled to work a double shift, and I can't miss any work before then or we're going to get evicted and/or the power will get shut off. If I'm going to drop dead I'd prefer to do so indoors, with climate control (I'm not planning on dropping dead any time soon, although part of me thinks it's dumb to even pursue further evaluation because I can't miss any work and if this IS the worst case scenario can't afford treatment; I'm pretty bitter and pissed at life at the moment, for the benefit of any readers not in possession of a firm grasp of the obvious) (yes, I'll fucking go anyway).

   If we're looking for good news I suppose there's this: apparently the fact that the mass is "mobile" is a hopeful sign. According to my doctor the cancerous ones tend to anchor themselves in place pretty quickly, so while it's no guarantee, most likely this is either benign or in a very early stage (proximal lymphnodes are unremarkable). So hopefully this will JUST be financially ruinous and add another scar to the collection that have cumulatively ruined my chances at stripping my way to financial solvency.

   And that is all that we will say about The Situation until the 16th.

   Distractions welcome.

cranky

*   Yesterday was an absolutely grueling day at work, but I ended up making really good money, thank goodness.

*   FUCKING HEALTH INSURANCE. I am now insured (whoo tits!) via an individual plan, but they are declining to cover Pristiq until I have met my deductible, so I am pretty much paying a $340 flat-rate fee for the all-the-doctoring-you-can-stomach-each-month plan PLUS paying out of pocket for meds. This is not going to be sustainable longterm, particularly since January marks the start of a new fiscal year during which I get to meet a NEW deductible. God damn fucking health insurance!

*   Also, The C(o)unty decided that since my chickens are now legal and they can't ruin my happiness THAT way, they would issue me a citation for 2013 property taxes on the MFA Beater AND the original MFA Minivan, demanding that I pay within five days or come to court. And naturally they delivered this four days into said five-day period, so I had to scramble and come up with some money I didn't have for THAT, too.

*   The Situation has ramped up in its urgency, and I have an appointment to do with that in a little over an hour. Good thoughts, mojo, vibes, wishes, etc. are much appreciated there. I will tell y'all what The Situation is as soon as I have some answers and the time to relay them (those of you who are friends with me on The Facespace already know what this is about, which I say not to tease the rest of you but just so that my close friends who read here know there aren't TWO situations).

*   Hotter thought the one day this week that I am not working a double or trying to work a double due to The Situation and a job interview would be a fine time to go back to sleep after his alarm went off, so I had to get up early and drive Big Child to school. THANKS FOR THAT, HOTTER.

*   No matter how I juggle it, there is just no fucking way we're going to make rent this month, which scares the hell out of me. I thought we'd be okay, but then $200+ bills started popping up out of the woodwork like goddamn financial whack-a-mole, and I can't let the power get cut off because obviously, and I can't let the phones get cut off because same, and I can't not fill the Pristiq because that's what's keeping the wheels from coming off entirely, and I can't not have health insurance right now because The Situation (yeah, it's medical and very much a potentially worst-case-scenario type of thing, although currently I at least FEEL fine), even if said health insurance is crappy enough that I still (SURPRISE!) have to pay out of pocket for prescription meds for right now. The possible silver lining to today's Situation-related appointment is that the testing involved may well eat up my deductible and render Pristiq a $40 co-payment instead of a huge fucking expense, and hospitals at least bill you instead of demanding it all in advance. I am currently out as of yesterday, and waiting to fill it until after today's hospital-stravaganza just in case, because that is what passes for optimism in my life right now.

*   Oh and it's a minor thing in the grand scheme, but I have identified my nemesis at Eclecstasy. Two months without a professional nemesis was nice, but all good things, etc. I'm not sure the other party feels the same way about me, but I find it convenient to have someone toward which to channel all of the frantic hate in my head and heart and figure better someone at work than someone at home and so GAME ON, BITCH!**

*   How are all of YOU?

** Eh, not really. I would never behave unprofessionally at work, because I like my job, but liken this to how, when I was a kid and would go to ballgames with my dad, we would pick a random player on the other team to boo at. I may only boo at my "nemesis" inside my own head, but it beats the other things rattling around it there currently.

gratuity

   I've gotten comments and e-mails on the posts I've written about getting stiffed by large parties asking about the "autograt," and thought I'd go ahead and explain.

   Yes, you have probably gone out as part of a large group and seen a gratuity automatically applied (usually 18%, sometimes as much as 22%) to your check. But thanks to some tax law changes that went into effect in January, that's less and less common. According to the IRS, tips are strictly voluntary, and automatically-applied service charges are therefore a WAGE, not a TIP. This causes there to be additional fees and administrative dealings on a server's employer's end when there is an "autograt." Some employers still allow the autograt and absorb that cost in the name of employee goodwill and retention, because it's a fact of life in the restaurant industry that large parties don't tip (they either assume there's a gratuity included because that used to be standard practice across the board, all assume someone else took care of it, think $20 is sufficient even if their bill was into three or four digits, or just don't give a crap). Eclecstasy, being a corporate-owned, multinational chain, apparently crunched the numbers on what it would do to The Bottom Line to eat the cost of allowing the autograt across all locations and said "y'all are on your own, suck it up," doing away with the "autograt" as of January 2014. Employees have raised a fuss on the company's website and been told, essentially, "nothing personal, just business."

   This is a huuuuuuge hot-button issue among employees, some of whom have seen their income diminish by half or, in the case of "destination stores" in tourist towns who see lots of large parties of guests from other countries where gratuities aren't even A Thing, stopped breaking the federal minimum wage by working at Eclecstasy, meaning that by law the company bumps them up to that and that is all they make. This means that since Eclecstasy servers tip out to the bar, runners, and bussers based on SALES not TIPS, some servers lose money by working at all, and are quitting in droves. In the case of locations where that is the norm, I don't blame them. In the case of the MFAville Eclecstasy, we aren't really a "destination" store, it's only maybe one night in maybe twenty that I walk out of the place with less money than I had when I walked in, and the rest of the time working there is lucrative enough that it still averages out to Very Good Money, so while I think it's shitty of Corporate to take the stance on the autograt issue that they have, and bitterly resent that one night in twenty because it's really disheartening, on the whole I'm not as fussed as servers who have been with the company long enough to remember what the money was like BEFORE this went into effect and don't think it's worth quitting over, to ME, in THIS location.

   Which isn't to say that I haven't scheduled an interview with Eclecstasy's biggest competitor for Friday. The lack of "autograt" IS the difference between my making enough at Eclecstasy to not need a second job and my needing to find something else now that I've settled in there in order to build up a cushion for when the MFA Minivan goes to The Big Junkyard In The Sky/I need surgery/Hotter's donor organs fail or whatever the next big giant crisis over here is. If the competitor hires me and I like it there AND they still apply the "autograt" that may become my new main gig. Nothing personal, Eclecstasy, just business.

aware

   Apparently October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

   I'm getting the girls checked by a professional on 10/3. And how about you?