Reported…to the popo for identity, brain*, thought theft.
& we got tossed out of work for plumbing issues & told to work from home for the rest of the day. I asked if we could expense any TP we might use at home this afternoon. 
* My IRL name is Hans Delbrook, yanno
I am, am knowing gNOT, of thees HANS personne.
…[/serbo-croat accent]
… (more fun than googling)
Ok, ok! I got three easy but supremely nagging deadlines knocked out - two reports and an application.
Stupid start to the day but finished strong. I’m going home now.
Let me help you out
Well, it’s been a shit day.
My son started Observation Week at a school for kids with autism, ADHD and other learning differences. We were really hopeful about it. Got a call about 10:30am that we have to pick him up because he threw a fit. So I had to leave work in the middle of an insane work load and pick up my kid… on the first day. They’re giving him one more chance.
Trying to do damage control without spinning out. Instead of working I am trying to enroll him in the local public school so he has a place to go when he gets thrown out tomorrow (I am putting that at a 70% chance.) Because I already stayed home with him last week because we had no child care so I can’t do it another week.
I think we fucked up this summer, somehow, but there was so much going on it was hard to course correct. He has just been escalating more and more. My husband and I had to work out some stuff between us. And the boy had surgery. We haven’t had a moment to breathe. Now we have a plan, but maybe a plan too late to salvage his chances for this great school.
I’m trying not to catastrophize but if this continues it’s just not sustainable. We are under so much pressure and strain right now and nothing seems to give. And we just bought a new house. My husband can work up to supporting on one income if necessary but we’re going to lose a lot of money until he can get to that point, so I can’t just leave my job immediately or maybe at all. My husband was only now getting caught up. And I don’t actually want to leave my job. I’m just increasingly feeling like I’m being pushed into this corner and I can’t get out of it.
You know how therapists say you can be outside your window of intolerance? I’ve been out of mine for a long time.
August can officially suck my non-existent dick. First Dolly Parton, then Tim Curry, and now my 84-year-old aunt just died.
My dog died a couple weeks ago. Fuck August!
So my kid had a big meltdown on his first day at the new school and I had to go pick him up in the middle of the day. I thought we were cooked, but in actual fact the school wants to work with us now that they have a better sense of his situation (thanks to my husband who insisted on talking to the admissions director.) The boy had a much better day yesterday. Meantime I’m trying to get him registered for public school just in case because we’re probably going to be in limbo for a while.
Today I have to get fucking dental work and I’m not getting work done today either. That’s three days of getting no shit done because of life crisis.
But I had a beautiful revelation today as I was freaking out about my US Grant deadline: I don’t have to do a good job.
The big monster one is not likely to be funded anyway.
I have to do a good job most of the time, but there’s no reason I have to kill myself to do an A+ on this stupid grant. I had a stressful month/week (missing three days of work this week due to crisis with my kid) and I’m not at my best, the timeframe was unreasonable to begin with, and my coworkers aren’t moving on it anyway, so this is partly on them. I reached out Tuesday about what I needed and nobody bothered to reply or call me.
Therefore I hereby decree: All I have to do is submit something.
Obviously I will do my best to make it quality in the time I have left, but being able to accept that it won’t be my best work has been a relief. I need to let go of the perfectionism.
I’m still working through the weekend though, which sucks.
@Catamount, @Dung_Beetle, I’m sorry for your losses. This stupid month is almost over so let’s hope for better Septembers.
Thank you.
And yes, it’s very true that we don’t always have to do our best, particularly when it’s made impossible!
The boy continued to have behavioral problems today and had to be picked up early and the new school asked us not to return this week. Maybe in the future, they said.
Here’s my rant for that: why do you have “observation week” the first fucking week of school, thus guaranteeing that the kids who don’t make the cut, who by definition have serious neurodevelopmental issues that even you can’t handle, have to transfer to some other school after classes have already started, guaranteeing no time for the parents to meet with the teacher or IEP team or in any way prepare the public school for their child’s matriculation? It’s fucking shitty.
I had already put in the paperwork for public school registration but they have not yet responded, so my child currently has no school to go to. We’re working on it.
It’s been a tough week.
My child decided this was the night, of all nights, to ask how babies are made.
Naturally his first question was, “what if a hundred million sperm fertilize the egg at once?”
No thank you.
Huh. I wonder if the histories of these threads could be interesting data? Are more people stressed/unhappy to the point of posting about it in a recurring pattern? My guess is certain months (like September and December) are worse while others (like July and, yes, August) are better
Not that I’m curious enough to actually research how many posts each thread runs or anything. (Lazy)
This is a job for Kornacki!
Clicking on the “monthly-mini-rant” tag at the top of the screen takes you to this screen,
which seems to suggest you may be right (although it seems the tag was only used
from May 2025, so not a great data set !)
No mini-rant this time. A mega-rant, and an anti-rant.
The worst has happened with the fucking Camry. I thought it had sprung a small oil leak but it turns out to be a coolant leak. It needs a new radiator. Fuck that. I’m actively looking for a replacement but I’m skittish now about anything used. I should have kept my beloved Sebring. The VW dealership nearby has a nice looking used Passat, but the LXW looked into it for me and it’s apparently not safetied, meaning as-is so probably has a lot wrong with it. I may just lease a new car and be done with it, but not until I get an estimate on the house which I’m putting up for sale.
In better news, the Ukrainian plumbers strike again! Though it was only one of them this time. The stopper mechanism in the ensuite bathroom sink had broken and sunk down into the drain, where it couldn’t be removed, so the sink was useless. He told me that typically the stopper assembly and faucet come as a single unit, but he’d go off and try to find just the broken piece of the stopper mechanism, which he did. As always, his services don’t come cheap, but he always does a terrific job and an ordinary plumber might have taken the easier, more profitable route and replaced the whole faucet assembly for three or four times the price.
I still don’t know what’s going on. The next-door neighbours remodeled their house years ago to turn it into a sort of hotel – not commercially, but they have a large extended family that stays with them for weeks or even months at a time. I don’t know if the yappy dog belongs to one of the visitors but it’s been here for a few days at least. But whoever owns it makes it difficult for me to enforce the city’s anti-barking regulations, because as soon as it starts up, they immediately haul it inside. So it never lasts long enough for me to make a meaningful record of it as the city complaint office requires.
At least the owner is taking responsibility by taking the pup inside.
How old is the Camry, and how much will replacing the radiator cost?
On the face of it, this doesn’t seem to me to be a reason to look for another car, unless the Camry is so old that this might be the first of a bunch of expensive repairs.
It’s 2007. Its market value is roughly around $2K, maybe less. The rad replacement would cost over $1600. Plus it has other, less pressing issues, but issues nonetheless.
I’m pretty much ready to spring for a new car on a lease basis.
The tag is a relatively recent and (IMHO) extremely welcome addition to these threads.
I remember you deciding on that. I feel bad that I advocated getting the Camry.