Had a meet and greet with teacher this morning, as Wee Weasel starts school tomorrow. They gave us an academic calendar. Holy shit, kids get this much time off school?! Lucky bastards.
I don’t even know how working parents make this work. We are making it work by paying full time daycare for much less than full time caring, but nobody with a job that actually expects them to be there can keep up with this shit. I’m increasingly frustrated by the way the world of children seems designed for SAHPs and just fuck people who have to work. It’s especially frustrating given that most parents do have to work in order to support a household. So it’s easier to meet these schedule expectations if you’re a SAHP, but it’s increasingly harder to actually be one.
Fuck, man.
(He did love the classroom though. He’s really excited to start.)
Although we recently had another old doper admit that she was terribly excited to finally get to go to school. Until the second day. Somehow she’d gotten it in her little head that “school” was a one-day thing, not something that was 5 days a week 9 months a year for 20 years. Little her was Not Amused to learn this sad reality. And made that fact widely known to all.
My wife had her worst estate sale. We actually lost money.
I have been out of work since March. Got a new job, but haven’t started yet My wife and I both caught covid. Survived, but still have not started, issues on their end. Next week maybe.
Got the news this morning that my niece passed away yesterday. We do not know why yet.
Scrambled for a flight. My son in law took me, on the way he sasy he doesn’t feel well. Probably covid. And he acting out (mental health issues)
I get to LA, break the news to my mother about her youngest grandchild. Then find out son in law is doing laughing gas in my house and freaking the dogs out and being abusive to my wife (his mother) . He knows why I caught a flight, knows he forbidden to have any drugs of any kind at my house. My wife is gonna have to call the cops on him.
This. So much this. You done good for yourself and maybe (in time) for her. And now you know that while it can be nice to have someone, it has to be someone who respects you. Like you now respect you.
I think my takeaway from it all is that people can be enormously complex, and really extraordinary in some ways and really awful in others, and neither of them really cancel each other out. They just coexist and when you’ve been impacted by someone like that, you have to come to terms with all of it. Very few people are just all monster or all saint. And if I can get on my soapbox a bit, I think the desire to categorize people as either all good or all terrible results in a lot of people sweeping abusive behavior under the rug because everyone knows abusers are monsters and I know so-and-so has all these good qualities, therefore it can’t be so!
Maybe you’ll get lucky. In 2017, we were on a beach in SC, looking glumly at the overcast skies as the eclipse approached. But it cleared up just enough, just in time, for us to see things.
We’ve booked a place to stay in Vermont for next year’s eclipse - hoping for similar luck.
Booked a place to stay in Vermont, for the eclipse. Much cheaper than others - only 200 a night.
The owners just messaged me and said the system auto-accepted it but they have someone in place until mid May. And they are asking ME to cancel the reservation.
Should I do that? I gather they get in some trouble with AirBnB if they cancel versus me doing so.
Years ago when my mother’s brother passed away, the airline serving both areas (where my parents lived and where her brother was) booked Mom with a greatly discounted “bereavement fare”. Is that even an option anymore?
Never cancel at the request of the host. I believe that if you go to cancel you’ll be asked for a reason. One of those options is “host requested that I cancel”.
If you select that option, they will, IIRC, tell you to go back to the host and ask them to cancel.
You may be dinged for cancellation fees if you cancel.
If the host cancels, they are blocked from rebooking the property for the same date.
Sometimes hosts will realize they underpriced the property, especially if there is an event in town they weren’t aware of. Then they’ll try to get the previous booking to cancel so they can relist for more money.
Also, never communicate with the host outside of the AirBNB messaging system.
There are still “bereavement fares”. But given that most tickets are already sold at a huge discount off “sticker price”, the bereavement fares aren’t that great. What they are, is available at short notice. So you pay roughly what you would have had you bought 4 months ago, but on short notice. Which is still a real break versus the short-notice full price number.
Amazon is a major source of many of the goods I buy these days, but they’re beginning to piss me off. I ordered a bunch of stuff late last Sunday night, and the “guaranteed delivery” date is this Friday. I was fully expecting that, as usual, the delivery would happen at least a day or two sooner than the “guaranteed” date, but this is becoming less reliable. Here it is Wednesday evening and not even a “shipped” email yet.
For anyone wishing to tell me that they said Friday, so what am I complaining about, my answer is shut up and quit being a wise-ass. Every single item I ordered was and remains available for next-day delivery – but of course only if you pay Jeff Bezos the required bribe. You want free delivery? Like, FREE? Ha ha! Go to the back of the line, sucka, and stay there. We got payin’ customers to serve!
Money-grubbing bastards! It didn’t use to be this way.
To tack on to that rant: My Prime membership cost $147 this year. And half the shit they advertise as Prime shipping is NOT two days like it used to be. Fuckers.
Yeah, I’m getting a bit annoyed by “Prime shipping” being more than 2 days. Though to be fair, I still buy a lot of shit that ends up arriving the next day or even the same day, so it’s mostly an annoyance.
The one thing that Amazon has been doing lately that does piss me off revolves around returns. Recently I’ve been having a lot of problems with it. Three times in the past half year I sent in an item for return and they claimed it never arrived. And I have no proof I shipped them, because if I drop it off at a drop point obviously I don’t get a receipt, and even the UPS store won’t give a receipt since I’m not doing any business with them; they’re literally just hanging onto my pre-labeled package until a delivery guy grabs it.
The only return option that guarantees I get credit is taking it to Kohl’s. If I go to a Kohl’s, then I am handing it to an actual Amazon employee in the store (at least I assume they are since they wear clothes with Amazon logos on them). I get an actual receipt at that point. Best of all, I don’t need to box anything up or print a label, I can just hand them an item loose if I wanted (though I at least try to include the original packaging if I can find it).
So it sounds great, except the closest Kohl’s is a half hour away through a busy part of town that’s a real headache to go to. The usual UPS drop-offs I used to do are very close and convenient (on the way to the grocery store, or my kid’s school, or my work).
I’ve been buying and returning stuff for over 15 years and only in the past year have I ever had a problem with returns getting lost. I don’t like doing things this way. But it’s better than having to eat $60 because they claim they never got a package I sent them.
