Status update

[Kolya]

I'm sorry that you have to live through this, montag. And I hope you get the help.

[Vasquez]

May the phone call bring good news, montag!
But still, 6 hours of week, and the rest is up to you... I'm still recovering from the rough times before mom went to hospital, but she lived with dad – who, to make things more merry, had taken up the booze again – however, they stubbornly refused any professional help (because hey, Vas can do a bit of this and that and we're okay!) until things went so bad they were forced to accept home care services. Thank God for the Scandinavian system, I would've killed either them or myself before long.

But I can't even imagine how incredibly hard things must be for you I hope I don't sound like a monster, but I hope the situation clears itself up in a natural way as soon as possible, before you're broken beyond repair.

[montag]

Thanks, Kolya and Vasquez! I got the feeling that, although she couldn't say as much, that the representative who saw us thinks I'm going to qualify for the program. Also this program is local to my county, and is funded by property taxes. I have another meeting on Monday to see someone from a federal program called Passport, which will (if we qualify) effectively cover my little monster with Medicaid. Because Passport is a federal program with a much larger budget, the amount of respite I may receive might go up to as much as 21 hours a week. We shall see! I have to admit to you all, I'm something of a hard-ass, but just thinking of 6 worry-free hours a week is making me tear up a little. The last time I squirted a few was over 20 years ago, when the girl I still think of as my "girlfriend" passed away after an auto accident. But just to give y'all an idea of how twisted I am, when the Pegster was smudging her poop around on the floor, it was all I could do to not die laughing. Her OCD is so strong that while I am telling her to ignore the mess on the floor and just work on cleaning her bum, she is ineffectually pushing a turd around with her fingers and the washcloths I am handing to her. It's funny, but I am more fond of her now than any other time in the past. 10, or even 5 years ago, I you had asked me to take care of her the way I do now, I would have told you to go fuck yourself, now I realize that she has always had some pretty serious mental problems that she never could control. I remember as a child, her father saying something along the lines of "your father made a bad deal when he married your mother, she may be beautiful, (and she was) but there is something very wrong with her." It's probable than if she had been born a few decades after the 30's, that she my have received treatment that could have helped her, but I get it now that she has always been off, so I just deal with her as she is today.

I hope I don't sound like a monster, but I hope the situation clears itself up in a natural way as soon as possible

No worries, Vasquez, my biggest hope is that she just passes away in her sleep one night. I have her set up in my master-bedroom with all her old furniture, most of it 50 plus years old, and my living room is almost a total recreation of her old one,(including the 27 year old sofa that no one was ever allowed to sit on) so everything is kinda familiar to her. To me, just passing away in the night surrounded by stuff you have known for decades would be the best way to go. Of course, that being said, I still have quite a few pillows, and I'm not afraid to use them!

P.S. the jury is still out on how close I am to being broken beyond repair

[scumble]

I had been feeling a bit crap because I've got a nasty cold. No matter how relatively good my situation might be it's still possible to get fed up. To be fair I'm a quite isolated Autistic single parent who has been struggling to find out why he's constantly knackered, maybe a bit like Yakoob. I just got prescribed some sleeping tablets that were helping and then a virus pounced on me. I'm grateful for family support however, and have been making some effort with the family as they put up with me. I'd been cut off from them effectively for years when I was in above implied marriage.

Harvester - sad to hear what happened, take care of yourself. Sounds like you have good family support

montag - I think you're doing remarkably well with a difficult situation, not sure how you are managing it. Like Vas I'm hoping you get yourself back soon.

I'll send good wishes to everyone else - Vas, VA, Yakoob, Kolya. I'd like to respond to everyone but haven't the energy. I think I've spent half an hour trying to write this much!

[Pyrian]

Get hard flooring. Tile, laminate, wood, whatever. You'll thank me when a stomach bug sweeps through your family and they're vomiting everywhere and your wife can't even approach any of the vomit without also vomiting.

[scumble]

Get hard flooring. Tile, laminate, wood, whatever. You'll thank me when a stomach bug sweeps through your family and they're vomiting everywhere and your wife can't even approach any of the vomit without also vomiting.

I can see the flooring might help there, as well as nose clips...

[montag]

Forgot where I left off, but here's the latest: I have been approved for respite care through the local program. (called E.S.P. - Elderly Services Program)
On Tuesday, a very nice girl came to the house for three hours, she played lifeguard for the little monster while she took a bath, and then hung out with her. Tomorrow another girl will come for 3 hours and do the same thing. So at the very least, I will have 6 hours a week to do my own thing, which is a big relief. On Monday, I have a phone interview with the federal program (called Passport) if I can get her into that program, she will get up to 21 hours a week of care. That would be great, but more importantly, if she qualifies for Passport, when the time comes (if it does) I would be able to place her in a really nice long-term care facility. This is a place that she has spent time rehabing from her previous injury's, and it is very nice, but very expensive. I've got my fingers crossed, but even if that falls through I have the 6 hours of help each week, which is still huge.
Also, I have hardwood flooring throughout the house, but it is covered with carpet now. Easy enough to pull it all up! As for nose clips, I have clothespins, which should work just as well. Also, I still have the spare pillows. Thanks for the support, you douchlers!

[scumble]

21 hours of help would be a great improvement - I'm wondering what you're living on here if you have to be a carer all the time...

[Harvester]

That's good news, Montag! I hope everything works about and that she gets the care she needs, with you getting some more time for yourself.

Yesterday I got my diploma (I already heard I passed the education several months ago). On my final grade list I was happy to see that the programming teacher awarded me with 10's (like A+, the highest grade) for all the programming parts of the education.

Soon I'll have a testing day at my boss' other company. There's a testing assignment (it's secret, I won't know what it is until that day, so I have no idea as to the difficulty) which I can spend one full day on. If I do a good job, I can become a programmer there for several days a week. Eventually, I'd like to program for 4 days a week. But I think I'll have to start out at 2, and spend the other 2 at my current job until they can find a replacement writer for me. But first I have to nail the assignment... I'm quite nervous about it... I mean not all is lost if I don't do a good job, but then the whole path to becoming a programmer will be delayed.

[scumble]

Fear not, Harvester, a delay isn't the end of the world. It helps not to get stuck in an area that can be demotivating and confusing. I ended up programming in the area of SAP - the big german ERP thing, but so many "technical" people in this area ended up there by accident, or the contractor fees were stupid in 1997 and they'd pay anyone barely competent. There are positive parts to working with SAP, but there are a lot of jobs that are mired in supporting some really awful, genuinely incompetent "software" that really needs to be rebuilt from scratch. The job I have now is also really two people's jobs and I can't do either one properly.

Maybe I'm describing a lot of IT out there. Not necessarily SAP, just that certain skills draw you into jobs that involve programming, but it's basically "support hacking" to keep critical systems that are just about working going. It's like mopping the floor with a leak in the roof you don't have time to fix.

[Tony_Tarantula]

Fear not, Harvester, a delay isn't the end of the world. It helps not to get stuck in an area that can be demotivating and confusing. I ended up programming in the area of SAP - the big german ERP thing, but so many "technical" people in this area ended up there by accident, or the contractor fees were stupid in 1997 and they'd pay anyone barely competent. There are positive parts to working with SAP, but there are a lot of jobs that are mired in supporting some really awful, genuinely incompetent "software" that really needs to be rebuilt from scratch. The job I have now is also really two people's jobs and I can't do either one properly.

Maybe I'm describing a lot of IT out there. Not necessarily SAP, just that certain skills draw you into jobs that involve programming, but it's basically "support hacking" to keep critical systems that are just about working going. It's like mopping the floor with a leak in the roof you don't have time to fix.

Sounds awful. Last summer I was working with the project lead for an effort that involved a complete revamp of how one of the German speaking banks (one of the top 5 in the world by total deposits) reports their deposit data for the consolidated entity. Not only was the work god-awful since I spent most of my time dealing with interfaces that felt like I was still in Windows 3.1, but the bureaucracy was the kind of place where (no shit) even correcting spelling change in project documents required updating three different trackers that each had to be approved by both the in-house project lead and the consulting team's project lead. Add on top of that the OCD tendencies and the perpetual air of vague panic that come with Germanic culture and you can probably imagine how crazy that one.

Forgot where I left off, but here's the latest: I have been approved for respite care through the local program. (called E.S.P. - Elderly Services Program)
On Tuesday, a very nice girl came to the house for three hours, she played lifeguard for the little monster while she took a bath, and then hung out with her. Tomorrow another girl will come for 3 hours and do the same thing. So at the very least, I will have 6 hours a week to do my own thing, which is a big relief. On Monday, I have a phone interview with the federal program (called Passport) if I can get her into that program, she will get up to 21 hours a week of care. That would be great, but more importantly, if she qualifies for Passport, when the time comes (if it does) I would be able to place her in a really nice long-term care facility. This is a place that she has spent time rehabing from her previous injury's, and it is very nice, but very expensive. I've got my fingers crossed, but even if that falls through I have the 6 hours of help each week, which is still huge.
Also, I have hardwood flooring throughout the house, but it is covered with carpet now. Easy enough to pull it all up! As for nose clips, I have clothespins, which should work just as well. Also, I still have the spare pillows. Thanks for the support, you douchlers!

Good to hear. My massive clan of in-laws has some people with significant health issues and community support makes a huge difference. It helps that my father in law is very active in his church community and his organization did a lot to help them pull through.

And yeah, 6 hours is a massive relief. Where I'm working now I generally get 6 hours total of free time during the week so I can see how much you could do with that.

Do you have access to any support groups or community organizations? I've always found that when you're dealing with a shitty situation the single biggest saving grace is if you have friends or people in the local community to support you through the troubles, even if it's as simple as just emotional support.

I had been feeling a bit crap because I've got a nasty cold. No matter how relatively good my situation might be it's still possible to get fed up. To be fair I'm a quite isolated Autistic single parent who has been struggling to find out why he's constantly knackered, maybe a bit like Yakoob. I just got prescribed some sleeping tablets that were helping and then a virus pounced on me. I'm grateful for family support however, and have been making some effort with the family as they put up with me. I'd been cut off from them effectively for years when I was in above implied marriage.

Yeah, I can relate. There's a few of those finer skills I've struggled with....some people might have wanted to diagnose me, but I think it's more a personality flaw where I simply don't give enough of a shit and am more interested in being right. It makes me a great at helping friends get out of shitty situations, less so when people need a shoulder to cry on. Being married definitely helped but..... well, that "asshole" part is still there and working in finance definitely doesn't help that tendency. It's still been a hell of a slog getting myself up to the point where I can actually compete and function in this world.

OK, I've got a suggestion if you're open to it. Try Toastmasters the public speaking group. I've seen some truly brilliant improvements in my old club. We had a guy with severe disabilities who had, through the organization, become such an amazingly good orator that he was easily the best storyteller I've ever seen and won numerous tall tale competitions. If there is ever an NPR show about folk-tales they need to hire him to read it. I also saw a guy come in who was so shy/socially dysfunctional that he could barely speak to a group. Within 6 months of regular attendance he was standing up giving speeches better than your average scrub giving a wedding toast.

Also look at sales seminars. Don't laugh here, but Jordan Belfort's material is great at that. He spends most of the time talking about himself but his specific tips on how to control the tonality of a social interaction are gold and good enough to justify the total time investment. I noticed an immediate improvement in results from networking calls after studying it.

[Pyrian]

Maybe I'm describing a lot of IT out there.

Definitely.

Not necessarily SAP...

...But pretty dang often... I swear that product has an entire industry based around supporting it. I don't know how they sell it.

...so many "technical" people in this area ended up there by accident...

Well, it seems to be a supply/demand thing. If you can support and maintain SAP, you'll always have a job.

[scumble]

Sounds awful.

Could be worse. At least I get a nice car to drive. A nice German car... I've seen some of the ridiculous bureaucracy you speak of. For me the problem is miserly under-resourcing rather than that mind you.

Yeah, I can relate. There's a few of those finer skills I've struggled with....some people might have wanted to diagnose me, but I think it's more a personality flaw where I simply don't give enough of a shit and am more interested in being right. It makes me a great at helping friends get out of shitty situations, less so when people need a shoulder to cry on. Being married definitely helped but..... well, that "asshole" part is still there and working in finance definitely doesn't help that tendency. It's still been a hell of a slog getting myself up to the point where I can actually compete and function in this world.

Some of it sounds similar - I've got no idea whether you're on the spectrum though. I think my isolation has less to do with being shy or not being around people, it's generally feeling disconnected, out of sync with interests of people my age. I've considered volunteering as a way to meet people in the right setting mind you, and like you say some group may be useful. Don't know if I'm that interested in public speaking specifically. Most of my trouble is around sensory problems making most social things hard to follow so group situations may become unpleasant even when there's some common interest. I think I've been prevented from developing very far because I got into a bad relationship too early as well, so I lost a lot of time there. It's all quite complicated. Very hard to shed old emotional stress. It's probably getting better mind you...

[scumble]

Well, it seems to be a supply/demand thing. If you can support and maintain SAP, you'll always have a job.

Possibly, as it's so entrenched. Probably many of these big systems got entrenched because the people making the decisions didn't know what they were buying. A side effect of corporate decision making by the non-technical, getting exaggerated ideas of cost savings that they could take credit for and increase their bonus, then leave to get another nice director's post...

[montag]

wtf

plumbing problem here! lil monster may have flushed depends, wish me luck

[Pyrian]

My 4 year old tried to flush her mom's pad a couple weeks ago.

[mxleader]

I recently started my 2nd new job since moving from the Northwest to Arizona two years ago. It's soooo hard to find good coffee here but the beer is okay. I've been so busy trolling Facebook groups that I haven't been around here in a while. Is everyone still alive?

[scumble]

No, we're all dead and our backup bots have taken over posting on the forum.

I was thinking montag was saying his mother had tried to flush herself down the loo.

[montag]

I was thinking montag was saying his mother had tried to flush herself down the loo.

She already did that a couple years ago. The first safety toilet seat/grab rails thingie I installed on her toilet just clamped on, somehow she managed to undo it. That left her with just the large bowl on the toilet itself, which was big enough for her to drop into. Once I was satisfied that she hadn't injured herself, I had a good laugh about having to pull her ass out of the toilet bowl.
Since I can't be arsed to figure out what I'm doing wrong with Multi-Quote:

@scumble I'm living off my substantial savings! Seriously, I have been able to pick up a few jobs building built-in bookcases/closet organizers. I can only take on relatively simple projects, ones that I can go and take measurements, then build them here and then go back for just a few hours to install them. I also run a little business out of my garage building engines and installing forced-induction kits and doing suspension work for some old customers and their friends. (I live fairly close to a local race track called Mid-Ohio, and have a handful of good connections there) If I can keep her from falling and breaking anymore bones, I think I can manage for a few more years.

@Harvester Congrats! I'm really glad to hear good news from you, and I really appreciate you taking time to give your support to me. I know what you are going through is much tougher than anything I am dealing with. Best of luck to you, and keep on keeping on.

@Tony You may be surprised to learn that You are part of my support group. I have always tried to find time to check in on a few forums that I am a member of, and even more so lately. I stay pretty current with CommChat and Gen Gaming, and I really enjoy this forum more than any other than I am a member of, even though I can't post with any regularity. I always read your (and everyone's here) posts and links, and I have to admit (begrudgingly) that you often make some good points, and forced me to reevaluate some of my own positions. Don't let that go to your head though, I'm still basically a left-leaning gun owner who wants free healthcare for my mother, but not for me, and have never collected unemployment but believe that some people deserve it, the whole world would be better off if the USA would just butt out, but we can't just cut ourselves off from the rest of the world. As far as real support groups go, the trouble is, if you have to keep eyes-on your family member 24/7, you don't have time to go to a support group meeting. Plus, support groups are for pussies! Just kidding, but I am more of the swallow all the bad stuff, and just deal with it, nobody ever died from an ulcer school. (or did they?) But really, taking care of the little monster isn't the worse thing in the world. So she poops on the floor sometimes, and then plays with it, is that so bad? (I just wrote that!) It was pretty horrifying when her "lady" parts turned themselves inside-out, but the surgery for that went well, so that's in the past for good now. In the meantime, she is still (for the most part) happy. If it were me, I would rather be dead, but I want her to hang around for awhile. It's funny, but I am much more fond of her now, even when I have to help her clean her butt, than I ever was in the past. Also, and I believe you are also a fan, I try to find time almost one night a week to play a few rounds of MWO. So protect your armor, if it's missing or low, my Locust will be there to rape you. I have machine guns, and I'm not afraid to use them!

[Vasquez]

Oh scumblyyyy, if you work for SAP you work for Satan! But you're still darling.

Harvester, congrats on your diploma!

montag, I'm happy to hear about the 6 hours, now let's hope for the 21 h upgrade!

My status update: feeling a bit better, thanks to a 4-night getaway in a convent! Wrote a little, but mostly just roamed the town, went to museums and to Turku castle (spent 6 hours there, aah). Now I'm thoroughly soaked in art and history Somehow seeing the centuries old bones and artifacts etc. gave more perspective to my situation...

[icemann]

Nothing horrible or bad going on with me at present. Got about 5-6 weeks of teaching work (in games development related units mostly) left, and getting married at the tail end of that.

Then it's 4 months minimum of no work with the teaching (since you can't allocate for semester 1 units next year until about February). With the fiance suffering from a combo of depression and anxiety (she had a breakdown about 2 years ago and has had that since then) it's hard for her to find paying work that she's happy to do. She's doing a course currently in early childhood education (my idea) since she loves kids. But she hates the work experience that comes with the course, so that's not looking like it'll work out. Prior to the course she'd been out of work for 4 years. I've been in and out of work since finishing my university course (games development) finished in late 2010.

In my case, it's not that I can't find work. Prior to uni I had worked in call centers for about 8 years and just got to a point and where I was like fuck this. Very soul destroying, working in places like those. University life saved me from that. Only problem there is that by the time I left uni, I struggled to force myself to do jobs that you did only for the $$$ and not for any other reason. I'd had my fill of that with call center work and wanted to do jobs that I'd actually enjoy. So after uni I tried getting work in the games industry for a few years whilst building up my portfolio of completed projects (that you'd have seen me showing off in the "What are you making?" thread in gen gaming) before eventually giving up and unsuccessfully trying to force myself to do the $$$ jobs. I didn't mind tech support work on the call center end, so still went for those, and it was whilst working in one such job that the fiance had the break down. After that, was out of work for about a year and then I took the plunge and tried out teaching. I was 100% sure that I'd fail at it, but I did it to answer the question in my mind as I have a "go to your grave with no regrets" policy. Surprised myself and did great at it. Hence why I'm in that now.

Teaching work at uni's is a bit of gamble, in that you never know from semester to semester if you'll get work or not + the 4 month gap for summer holidays. I'd love to do this for the next 10 or so years, as for me it fits me like a glove. Being a night owl, morning shift jobs never worked well for me. Energy drinks were my best friend in those. With this I get to sleep in (to an extent), work for only short hours at the actual uni and do all the rest of work (assignment marking) at home in the hours that suit me (late hours). Lots of answering student emails from home also. I find it all great fun. For me it's the next best thing to working in the games industry (which I'd wanted to do ever since getting a Commodore VIC 20 back in the 80s), since I get to teach what I'm already extremely fluent in (games dev / games theory in general).

I just hope that when the work dries up this year, and with the fiance not working that we can stay afloat with the mortgage. Time shall tell. I had originally planned to pump some extra cash into the mortgage from all the money I'm making (marking assignments nets you PLENTY of extra cash), but moving into a used flat brings with it numerous essentials that are either broken or in need of an upgrade. Upgrades / fixes already done:

* Purchase of washing and dryer combo machine
* Leaking pipes and toilet
* Broken roof down piping (for rain run off etc).

And with extras to pay for the wedding that the family isn't covering, the money all just vanishes. Upgrades/fixes still needed:

* Upgrade of water system, as the one we have is a gravity fed system that was built back in the 80s and doesn't allow for hot and cold water to be used simultaneously.
* Split System for heating and cooling. This place has no heater, and gets cold as ice in winter.
* New television as the one we have only works with a couple of channels. The rest fail to work. I've tested out smaller TVs which detected all the channels fine.

Also concerned about overall electrics as I've had two blow force portable heaters explode (literally) in just the two months that we've been here. The first I'd used for 3 years at my parents place without ever an issue.

So yeah. All the money planned for mortgage bonus payments (to bring down the overall weekly repayments) has gone elsewhere. Grrr. Anyways, this post was supposed to have gone for a paragraph, and I've typed up a page. So that's my life at present. Random ramblings.

[scumble]

Oh scumblyyyy, if you work for SAP you work for Satan! But you're still darling.

You're clearly gorgeous and art-soaked! At least I don't actually work for SAP, but I'm stuck with the accumulated incompetence of previous "consultants" on an SAP system.

icemann - I guess there's a lot going on in your life. Hope your fiance can find something she can do, as it can't be helping that she feels unable to keep something going, at least that seems to be what you're saying.

[icemann]

Yeah she struggles to stick to anything work wise. Prefers to be at home. Which is a big change from prior to her having the break down.

I guess anyone would be quite affected by something like that. The reality though is that we've got a mortgage to pay (and hopefully pay off quicker), and she wants to have kids in a few years. So there's just no way that on my sessional (semester by semester) wages that I can earn enough to pay for everything. Makes things difficult.

[scumble]

It seems to me that it would be better for her to prioritise her own mental health and not worry about children for the time being. Struggling with mental health and young children is not good, I can say from experience. I'm not saying you're the same, in my experience it was children that caused things to really fall apart eventually. Had I been aware of the issues at the time I would have resisted children.

I can't say I can advise anyone whether or not to have children, but I feel it's often not taken seriously. The thing is if people knew what they were getting into humans would have died out... We can at least attempt to be rational.

[icemann]

Sounds fair. I've always been very meh about having kids. It's just not anywhere at all on my priorities list, but it's important to her and you have to make sacrifices for those you care about. That's how I look at it.