MFA Mama

the job is good and Typepad is GREAT

   The new job is good. It's really nice people working for a nonprofit dedicated to a GREAT cause, and they're busy enough currently to need an administrative temp. I don't think it has long-term potential, which is too bad, but it should last at least a couple of weeks, and that's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick (which is a saying down here in The South, although I've actually been the recipient of such a poke and can say that just about anything up to and including a compound fracture is preferable, so I guess it's not really saying much--THE JOB IS NICE, THE END).

   Typepad? Is GREAT. Those of you who follow me on the Twitter may already be aware, but yesterday I logged into WellsfuckingFargo's website to see if everything had cleared (yes, I still want to dump them--THEY SUCK and have HORRIBLE customer service, and they LIE right on their ATM machines where it says that cash deposits are credited instantly) and was horrified to see a $119 pending chunk out of my meagre balance. Of course I clicked to see what had unexpectedly eaten up 90% of my net worth, and it was my yearly Typepad subscription fee. Did I agree to that? Yes. Last year, however, they deducted it on May 20th, and so I had set a reminder for May 18th. This year apparently they deducted it a little earlier, which probably has something to do with leap years and business days and I DON'T KNOW, I'm sure it makes sense to SOMEone, but that someone is not writing this post.

   I logged into Typepad and clicked around the back end of my account, thinking that maybe if I downgraded to month-to-month billing (the yearly rate is a better deal, although obviously not so much if it causes the next thing to hit your account to generate an overdraft fee) that would fix things. Obviously I was not the first person to panic and have that idea, however, because next to the option to do that was a disclaimer stating that doing so would not cause a refund to be issued, but rather a credit on the account that they would then deduct your monthly fee from until it ran out. CRAP! So I fired off a desperate support ticket explaining that I knew I'd agreed to this being automatically deducted, but thought I had another eight days, was unemployed, etc. and asking if there was ANY way to get the yearly fee refunded and go month-to-month until I was more financially secure again. Since I'd been live-tweeting my freakout, I let my followers know that I'd placed it in Typepad's hands and was just going to hope their customer service folks were as understaning as Amazon.com's are (yeah, Hotter signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime and forgot to cancel it, and a very nice Amazon.com employee unknowingly SAVED HIS LIFE on Friday by refunding THAT). Best case scenario, I thought I'd maybe get a refund of $119 minus the cost of one month's Typepad Pro service, but realistically I was expecting an admonition to re-read the Terms of Service. I went to bed last night worried as hell, but resigned to waking up to bad news. Instead, while I slept, Typepad was ON IT!

Figure One: Look how friendly!

    I checked my e-mail on my first fifteen-minute break at work, and found an INCREDIBLY nice note from Melanie, a Typepad Community Manager. She explained the date discrepancy in a way that made sense, and that yes, the TOS gave them permission to deduct the money when they did, but went on to say that she understood that life happens, and in light of my longstanding relationship with Typepad they wanted to try and help take the pressure off, so she refunded THE ENTIRE AMOUNT and APPLIED AN EQUAL CREDIT TO MY ACCOUNT. I thanked them profusely, and they were very gracious:

Figure Two: So. Very. Nice.

   You guys. I may have teared up a little in my cube. Of course what Typepad did helped me avoid (another) financial headache, and obviously I'm thrilled with the credit, especially since it's hard to justify paying that kind of money for something that is just for me and can't be eaten or worn to work, given our circumstances. But this was just...well. If you've never been really, really broke, you might not get how huge this was. You get used to hearing "no." To EVERYTHING. Things like sobbing on the phone to your bank, and never picking up a number you don't recognize become part of your daily existence. You come to expect smug annoyance from everyone you do business with, if not outright hostility. It's a relief to even be able to deal with a company via e-mail just so you don't have to hear it out loud, because you already hear it out of your own mouth on a daily basis. No, I can't pay for your eye surgery so you can see better. No, you can't go on that field trip, it costs too much. No, no, NO! The negativity can become overwhelming and start to color your entire outlook. When Typepad not only DIDN'T say no, but went the extra mile and did something nice that I hadn't even asked for, it meant a lot more to me than avoiding an overdraft fee or three and getting to blog for a year for free; it reminded me that there's more to say and hear than no, a lot more to life than relentless negativity. It lifted my entire mood, and helped me put my best foot forward today at the new job. 

   Am I going to stop bitching so much about my life? Probably not. It's not easy, and I'm only human. But I will never do it via any other blogging platform :)

only in America

   This morning I took my last generic Synthroid tablet, and so after today's temp gig I stopped at Kroger prepared to fork over every penny I had to my name to refill that, because my thyroid is a lazy asshole and hypothyroidism is no fun. I've never really gone without medical insurance; I went straight from my parents' policy to a policy through my first "real job" to the XY's policy to an individual one, and from there to The Hotel California's employee plan. I was worried, because even though I know that Synthroid is a cheap drug to fill generically, I figured a doctor or pharmacist's idea of "cheap" and mine would probably be in two entirely different ballparks.

   So you can imagine how relieved I was to find that paying out of pocket for generic Synthroid was entirely within our budget.

   I went from relieved to pissed, however, when I realized that I'd been paying $11 MORE each month for the same medication WITH insurance.

   Only in America.

GOOD NEWS!

*   I have a job!

*   The job is through Temp Agency #1, non-physically demanding, full-time, pays pretty well, and starts Monday. No idea on duration yet, but at the very least this should help us get our feet back under us and let me secure individual health insurance once more. Yay!

*   I have to cultivate a "professional appearance" over the weekend on a shoestring budget, which will involve doing my roots, spending some time at Goodwill shopping for business-y clothes that fit, and probably lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth.

*   Happy Friday! 

*   How are all of YOU? 

Pollyanna

   Last night I was chatting with a friend of mine about how awesome Temp Agency #2 is. "If I keep working jobs for them at the rate I am, it'll be about equal to what I would've gotten from Unemployment," I gushed. "So you guys'll be okay then," she asked, hopefully. "Um. Well. I crunched the numbers when I got the initial letter from Unemployment, and with that plus the child support and Hotter's disability we'll be able to squeak by for a couple of months if need be, as long as nobody except the children eats and nobody except Hotter takes any prescription drugs. And he probably gets enough protein from the gel-coatings of various capsules and tablets to sustain life, so things are looking up," I said. "Um..." she typed. "SHUT UP, it's better than a week ago when we were going to get evicted and NOBODY was going to have any food or prescription drugs! This is a POSITIVE thing."

   Just call me Pollyanna.

yay and boo of the day

YAY: Guess who has two tits and a job interview next week? Okay well technically I have the tits now, but...damn. I ruined it, didn't I?

BOO: Not only did the Hotel California not give me the six hours of PTO I requested a good week before the parting of the ways on my last paycheck, but they also deducted the full cost of two weeks' benefits from my last paycheck...which was dated four days AFTER my last day of employment with them. Fuckers. That kind of took me all the way back down from "Temp Agency #2! Job Interview! WHOO TITS!" to "I'm going to die alone, in a cardboard box under a bridge."

   What are YOUR yays and boos from today?

Temp Agency #2

   When I first started temping, I was involved with more than one agency. More recently, it's been down to just one, which I have referred to since Winter 2011 as "Temp Agency #1." I heart them. They're positive, upbeat, and they don't care about my stupid blog. I still work for them. I did a job for them on Saturday. LOVE.

   But now...well. I'm kind of cheating on them. With a new job that, to keep it simple, we'll just start calling Temp Agency #2. An innernet friend and reader turned friend of the MFAmily referred me to Temp Agency #2 about a month ago, and I signed up but didn't actually take on any jobs, because at the time I was busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest with my full-time job. But...we all know how THAT ended up going. Temp Agency #2 is a 24-hour operation wherein employees work from home. It pretty much monetizes that thing I do when I'm panicking about money and aimlessly search the innernet at all hours. And so late Saturday night I started accepting jobs from Temp Agency #2, and I can't say enough good things about them, y'all. They're FUNNY. An employer with a sense of HUMOR? BRB, just gotta decide where on my body to tattoo the logo.

   All day Sunday I worked little jobs from Temp Agency #2 in between filling out job applications (I hate to quote Dr. Phil, but I am of the belief that if you do not have a job, your full-time job UNTIL you have a job is to FIND a job, and since I am accustomed to working weekends I have been plugging away steadily), and I am hooked.

   Temp Agency #2's user interface is so slick and easy to use! Temp Agency #2's training materials are hilarious! Temp Agency #2 + MFA Mama = TRU <3 4EVAR. If they offered benefits I would make them my full-time job and never look back.

   Sadly, Temp Agency #2 doesn't offer benefits. But they just might give me a way to keep my family afloat until I find another job that does, and that? IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.

in which I will eat my feelings as soon as UPS Ground permits, and invite you to join me

   Hey there my chickens. I got some disheartening news yesterday from Unemployment; my erstwhile employer seems to have a strong desire to go scorched-earth with this enire situation, which...well. While I can't say it was unexpected, it WAS unwelcome. And depressing. In a "if I can't find a job in the next couple of weeks things are going to get REALLY ugly around here" kind of way. I mean, there's a phone hearing scheduled where everybody gets to say their piece, and people are urging me to try to claim "whistleblower protection" (umyeah, I noticed several federal labor law violations and brought them up to management through the "open-door policy" right before they suddenly, after two merit-based increases in a row and a glowing review less than a month ago, decided I sucked at life in general and my job in particular) (and that's not EVEN the part I can't tell you due to pending investigations) and there's a CHANCE I could still prevail, but I'm really hoping to find another job before the hearing date. Mostly because I really need another job, but also because I just don't even want to deal with these effers. I'm so very disappointed in the company I worked for, y'all, you don't even know.

   BUT! A very generous and all-around awesome reader gifted me a Groupon to this AMAZING gluten-free bakery, an actual honest-to-Moses gluten-free JEWISH bakery, with gluten-free rugelach and hamantaschen and challah and OH MY G-D I THINK I JUST HEARD MY SCALE CRY OUT IN TERROR!* I placed my order just moments ago, and I can't WAIT for it to get here. Said awesome reader is also of Jewish extraction and gluten-free, and assures me that the baked goods are as good as they look in the pictures, which...well...oh my.

Figure One: I...need a moment alone with this image. Image borrowed from Katz Gluten-Free bakery's website.

   As soon as I placed the order, I got a happygram in my in-box welcoming me to the fold, with a share-able referral link for anyone who might be interested. If you buy through this link, you get 35% off your first order, and I get a $10 credit, so it's win/win. 

   That's my good news/bad news for the day. How about you?

 

* Kidding. I've lost seven pounds in the past six days on what I am tentatively calling the "OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIIIET!" Which it's probably ten kinds of sad that that gives me a little thrill, but at the moment I'll take what I can get.

good things from today

*   I found a coupon for a free oil change and tire rotation, both of which the MFA Beater was sorely overdue for, and took it to a local garage and had that done. Didn't cost me a cent! I thought I'd have them at least diagnose the Beater's current issues, but the place had a $99 diagnostic fee to even look at it. I, however, had a low-cut top on and managed to get out of the guy at the register that there's a fairly easy and straightforward way to test whether one's plug-wires are bad (that is what we suspect the issue may be) without paying $99 to find out. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME, THESE ARE DESPERATE TIMES!

*   Tomorrow I've got a temp gig through Temp Agency #1 for four and a half hours that seems fairly straightforward. It's only tomorrow and next Saturday, but it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

*   I weighed myself and have lost five pounds. While I do not recommend the stress and poverty diet, you can't argue with results, and I am still thirteen pounds above my goal weight so am hardly wasting away.

*   The garden is really starting to take off! I'm anticipating a bumper crop of strawberries this year, and the spinach looks really good, and the squash seeds I saved from an organic butternut have sprouted.

*   I saved the best for last! Thanks to the kindness of a well-connected reader we'll refer to as The Pristiq Fairy, I don't have to worry about missing any doses of the magic pill that keeps me from becoming a total basketcase any time soon. That is a HUGE weight off my mind! I mean, I'm still pretty damn situationally depressed at the moment, but it could be SO MUCH WORSE and I am so very thankful that my husband and children don't have to watch me fall apart the way I do if I miss even one dose of Pristiq (which is the most I've ever missed since starting the stuff six years ago--I'd hate to think what I'd be like after, say, a week).

positive things from today ETA

   In an effort to be less depressing up in this piece, I'm going to start trying to focus on the positive things in life on a daily basis, or some such shit. So here are some good things from today:

1. This cake. I didn't actually get to eat any of it, because GLUTEN, but Big Child was just SO very happy and appreciative, and I love that I have the skills to make or make up any kind of cake my kids want for their birthdays. I also made deep-dish pizza from scratch at Big Child's request, for his "special birthday dinner," and the MFA Children pronounced it to be "better than Domino's, which means it's REALLY good because Domino's is good!"

2. The MFA Honeybees. I keep writing posts about them in my head and then not actually writing them, because I caught some heat for getting the bees due to our being poor. But you know what? The bees are amazing, and are contributing to our household in the form of honey, wax, and pollination of the garden. So Stalky, et al can suck it. They also contribute entertainment (the bees, not Stalky and friends). To wit: the other day it started raining while I was down at Squatter Workshop. I poked my head out the door to see what the bees were doing, and saw a surprising number of them still coming and going. "HUH!" thought I, "maybe they still work in the rain?" Then I looked a little closer and saw that they were actually piling out of the hive, taking wee tiny bee-poops in midair over the baby pool in the apiary garden, and doubling back. I laughed for a solid five minutes--they are actually smart enough to be all "OMG IT'S STARTING TO RAIN, LET'S GO DROP THE DUNG-BEETLE LARVA OFF AT THE POOL IN CASE WE'RE TRAPPED INSIDE FOR A WHILE!" (bees will not poop inside the hive, and can actually get sick from prolonged freezes where it's too cold for them to nip out for a quick poo) Then today I took this photo of the hive entrance:

Figure One: How great is it that you can see where they're tracking pollen all over the entryway? The Queen probably doesn't think so. She's probably all "AND WIPE ALL SIX OF YOUR DAMN FEET ON THE WAY IN, I DIDN'T HAVE FIFTY WORKERS SCOUR THAT LANDING BOARD WITH THEIR MOUTHPARTS THIS MORNING FOR NOTHING!"

3. This morning I totally went back to bed with Hotter and Isis after the kids went to school and wallowed in bed with them until almost noon, and I'm not even sorry. Today's round of online job applications still got done when I got up (the Beater is still mostly out of comission; we're taking it for an oil-change and a repair estimate tomorrow and once it's back up and running I'll be pounding the actual pavement more), and with any luck I won't have that kind of snuggle-opportunity too many more times before I'm working full-time again (I am still working part-time for Temp Agency #1; I never stopped and they are searching for a fulltime temp-to-hire gig for me so I'm doubly glad I maintained the connection with them). Hotter is an excellent snuggler, and since we're both bi we take turns being the big spoon.* Isis then jumps in and littler-spoons whoever the little spoon is, and it's like a cuddle conga-line. It's pretty fabulous, actually :)

 ETA: 4. Today I had the distinct pleasure of watching this episode of Last Call Brittany live, and participating via the live chat (I'm probably fucking the terminology ALL up--can you tell I only joined Google + in order to see my very favorite author and Twitter-friend, Tiffany Reisz, on this show?). I'm already Twitter-friends with several of the ladies who were on the panel, and thought "man, I wish I was public so I could @ a couple of the others," and then thought HEEEEEEY why not? So I made my Twitter account public again, because Temp Agency #1 doesn't care about my social media proclivities, my ex and I have reached a blessed accord of sorts wherein he doesn't give a fiddler's fart what I do unless I'm in front of him and vice versa, and Stalky, as always, can eat an ENTIRE bag of dicks and choke on the balls. There's very little she or anyone else could do right now to make my life any worse, and while that has its obvious drawbacks it's also kind of liberating.

* That was a joke, people. One's sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether one is the big spoon or the little spoon. I have no idea why I feel the need to add in this disclaimer, but do not need a lecture on perpetuating stereotypes. If you're getting het up over an innernet-stranger's perception of sexuality in re: spooning within the confines of their own damn marriage then you probably need a hobby and/or psych meds, but this IS the innernet. 

triple coconut cake

   I realize I mostly post super-healthy recipes on here. This is not one of those. Big Child just turned twelve and asked me for a "coconut overload cake, like last year!" Unfortunately, last year we were so broke that I was totally improvising, and I don't even remember what the hell I did except that it involved lots and lots of coconut. So I Googled around for ideas, decided to go for a pudding cake since Big Child likes really rich baked goods, and saw one otherwise-gross recipe that included flaked coconut in both the cake AND the frosting.  BRILLIANT! While I couldn't actually taste the cake (STUPID WHEAT WITH ITS STUPID FUCKING PROTEIN!), I liked the idea of adding to the (god this is a douchey word, but bear with me) mouthfeel with something to give it a little texture.

Big Child's Twelfth Birthday Triple-Coconut Cake

The Cake:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 3.5-oz packet of coconut-flavored cook & serve pudding
1 and 1/3 cups water
3 eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 cups unsweetened flaked coconut - you can use sweetened if you MUST, but remember you've already added sugar via the pudding and I think sweetened would be cloying

Beat eggs and oil together, add pudding powder, then add cake mix and water in alternating halves and once mixed, beat on highest setting or, if you prefer, WITH FEELING, for three minutes. Stir in coconut flakes and bake in two 8- or 9-inch pans for 35 minutes at 350 (if you use 9-inch pans, check at 33 minutes or it may get a little darker than you want it to due to the pudding mix adding sugar). Cool in pans for 15 mins and then on racks or plates until cool enough to frost.

The Frosting:

4 oz neufchatel cheese
2 oz coconut oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 tbsp heavy whipping cream
2-3 cups confectioner's sugar
2 cups unweetened flaked coconut

Toast the coconut flakes in a dry pan over low heat until golden. Set aside to cool. Beat the neufchatel cheese and coconut oil together, then add 1 tbsp heavy whipping cream and vanilla extract. Add confectioner's sugar one cup at a time, correcting with the other tbsp of heavy whipping cream as needed until you have the right consistency--you want shiny but not loose, forming nice peaks and ripples. Beat in half the toasted coconut, saving the other half to coat the frosted cake.

   Frost the tops of both layers, stack them, then frost the sides and coat with toasted coconut. If you can do this and have it come out looking neat and pretty you're a better woman than I am, but according to the MFAmily Gluttens it will be so delicious you won't care (I tasted the frosting and it was gooooood). Write "Happy Birthday" in gloopy cursive with one of those super-nasty HFCS gel frostings, top with re-lighting candles if you're a wise-ass like we all are here, and sing the birthday song. WHOO, TWELVE!