Rant of the Day

[yayfulness]

Two important things have happened in the past four days:

1. I realized that I would love to spend the rest of my career working with affordable housing, and that I'll probably have that opportunity if I choose to pursue it.

2. Ben Carson got appointed as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Let's just say that I'm a tad bit worried.

[Portia]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/opini ... erica.html

Hope your puppet-of-Kremlin President is worth it, America!

(I'm insured through my workplace, but with one grandparent having offed himself and the other having a very apparent anxiety problem, I don't know what, exactly, a Republican thinks one ought to do to not have a "pre-existing condition.")

[Shrinky Dink]

I was interviewed for a promotion at work over a month ago. They told me it would be a while before they got back to me ("after the new year") and they still haven't. Is it ok to ask how their decision making process is going?

I really want to know because if I get the promotion, we'll stay in this area for a few more years at least, but if I don't, we'll probably be looking for job opportunities elsewhere. I just really want to know where my life will be in six months but I don't want to come off sounding desperate (even though I am).

[Whistler]

It sounds reasonable to me to ask, but it probably depends on your company culture and how comfortable you feel asking your supervisor (or whoever knows).

[mic0]

Yes you should absolutely ask! just likeyou said here, how's the decision making process going? And also ask when they will have an answer for you. In my opinion, waiting on them only hurts you, they don't care about your time line and could sit for a while just not realizing you are waiting.

[Shrinky Dink]

I asked. Their initial reply was, "Oh, they didn't tell you?" and with that one sentence I knew that not only did I not get the promotion, but they forgot me. The second part hurts worse. I really wish I would have asked sooner.

[Whistler]

that's disappointing that they didn't even remember you

[Emiliana]

I let someone back into my Facebook-life two days ago and I already regret it.

[Emiliana]

It bugs me when teachers don't want to learn new things. I mean, really.

[Shrinky Dink]

Oops I did it again,
I found a lump, it's not what I want,
Oh baby, baby,
Oops I hope it's benign, won't ruin my liiife
Am I still cancer free?

^coping mechanism

[Emiliana]

Oops I did it again,
I found a lump, it's not what I want,
Oh baby, baby,
Oops I hope it's benign, won't ruin my liiife
Am I still cancer free?

^coping mechanism

My mom and her sister drew up designs for Breast Cancer Barbie (with detachable boobs and hair that really falls out!) as a coping mechanism. Coping mechanisms are important!

But seriously....I hope things are okay. *hugs*

[Shrinky Dink]

It's a cyst!!! A normal cyst!!

[Cognoscente]

Hooray!

[yayfulness]

This past month has sucked. Let me count the reasons why.

1. My wife lost her job working remotely for a company in Utah, and had to take a retail job because that's what was hiring immediately, so now she works more hours for less money.

2. I applied for my dream internship doing affordable housing work for the county and then got the internship, which is great, but that was a month ago and I'm still sitting at home doing nothing with my life. I've been told that I'm finally done jumping through hoops and I should be able to start on Monday, so that's a relief at least. Being functionally unemployed is horrible for my health and for my outlook on life.

3. Because of the change in employment, we started looking for cheaper places to live. But the housing market here sucks epically, and nobody wants to take tenants with a cat, so after a month our best option (IF we get chosen over other prospective renters) gives us barely 10% monthly savings in rent, which is not really what we had in mind.

4. Oh, and remember how I said my wife is working more hours and getting less money? That's not true anymore, because some idiot decided to get drunk in the middle of the day and then drive his truck into the back of my wife's car at a red light. Luckily she doesn't have any serious long-term injuries, but her wrists are still messed up enough that she can't do any serious work with them, so she's stuck on unpaid medical leave.

5. Also our car was totaled. The good news is that insurance did everything quickly and is going to pay off everything we still owed and cut us a decent-sized check on top of that, but the car-buying process basically controlled our lives for about a week and a half and caused a ton of stress.

6. As a side effect of that process, I discovered that I haven't been paid for my job as a research assistant in several months. That shouldn't be too hard to resolve, but it's frustrating and we really could have used the money.

7. In the middle of all of this, my mom had to get rushed to the hospital to have a pacemaker put in. She's 65, the same age that her mom (who died when I was 14) was when I was born. My dad turned 70 last month. My in-laws are about the same age. It sounds like everything is fine now, but it made me realize that the odds of one of them dying in the next few years are actually pretty high, and the odds of any one of them living long enough to see our as-yet unborn children reach adulthood are basically zero. That was fun to realize.

There's been some good news to go along with all of this. My wife had already started working a second job before she lost her first one, and while it doesn't give her a ton of work, it does provide some useful supplemental income and it's the sort of thing she can keep doing while she's still recovering. My parents have been really financially generous with us, which is basically the only reason that we aren't expecting an eviction notice next month. We're on California's zero-deductible health insurance (THANKS, OBAMA!), which means that we don't have to be terrified of medical debt. Jessica picked a good time to start going back to church; we had dinner brought over for most of last week, which makes a huge difference when you literally can't afford groceries. We'll probably get a ton of money in restitution (eventually) if the driver can afford to pay. And our new car is a Prius - an old Prius, but still a gas-efficient hybrid like I've wanted for years - so I'm just one man-bun away from being a Certified West Coast White Liberal (TM) now.

So things could be a lot worse. But they could be a lot better too.

[Emiliana]

Dang. That is a lot of not-fun stuff happening...

[Whistler]

That sucks. I hope your internship gives you some stress relief!

[Zedability]

I set up a 24 month payment plan with the hospital after Baby Z was born and apparently they stopped processing my automated payments in May (???????) and now I'm in pre-collections (?????????????) and their online system won't let me set up a new payment plan (????????????????????????????????)

As far as I know, I didn't miss any payments

[TheBlackSheep]

My ultra-TBM (stake patriarch, former stake president, etc.) paternal grandfather died this week. Five or six years ago, when my youngest sister graduated from high school, I happened to be ready to introduce my family to a girlfriend for the first time. (She wasn't my first girlfriend, and I had been out for years, but she was the first girlfriend I made them specifically aware of, and they would meet her a few weeks later.) My mom, without consulting me, told all my grandparents at that time that I am queer and that I had a girlfriend. This grandfather did not speak to me that weekend or afterward, and I stopped making attempts to see him. I avoided family gatherings. That weekend, his wife, my Nanna, only spoke to me to tell me she hated my hair, and other than one birthday call she also has not spoken to me. This has brought up so much stuff for me and I can't even decide whether to get to the funeral or not. I regret nothing about how I acted over the years, but I'm sure people will assume I do. I'm sure they already do.

This is also compounded because my maternal grandmother died about two months ago, and there has been considerable drama following that event with the only post-Mormon relative I have (my aunt) which has resulted in me cutting off communication with her.

[Emiliana]

This is a really minor one, but.

When you're reading someone's facebook post about how she's struggling right now because their new baby doesn't sleep, and you think it's going to be a refreshingly honest post about motherhood.....

....aaaaaand then it turns into a sales pitch for the pyramid-scheme direct-sales "wellness" company she works for.

[Shrinky Dink]

^I'm guessing it's Melaleuca.