Ha, those are great! I’m a Dying Dog married to a Stoic.
DH is a Dying Dog, I’m hovering between Martyr and Baby. 
I have a rant so mini I hesitate to post it. But if not here, where?
Someone at work has posted signs in all the bathrooms: “Please remember to flush after using. Thank you”. Now, I do give them credit for good manners and spelling all the words correctly. But I still find it super annoying to be nagged every day while I’m sitting on the pot. And furthermore: How many times did this actually happen? And furthermore: The toilets are broken half the time. And furthermore: Who has the time to print up and hang all these signs? And furthermore: Is it the same person who replaces the bags in the wastebaskets and doesn’t tie a little knot in them, so the first thing you toss in pulls the whole bag down?
Every day I have to restrain myself from petty retaliation, such as adding smartass comments to the signs, or perhaps a smudge of chocolate pudding. The other day I produced something particularly noteworthy in that room, and just because of the sign, was tempted to leave it. Nope! I took the high road.
We worked it out. I baby her when she’s sick, she leaves me alone when I’m ill.
Seems real obvious to me. Albeit personally inconvenient to you.
The mostly-real food categories are stagnant businesses with low margins. The snacks, frivolities, and junk food categories are booming with high margins.
It’s a no-brainer to refocus in that direction.
Please feel better.
That is great news! I came in here to bitch about the school district not calling me back about my son’s possible autism, and I just received a phone call - finally! - moments ago. Since my brief emails and phone calls weren’t working, yesterday I basically sent a novel listing all his symptoms. That did the trick. I was told someone will reach out to me next week. It’s hopeful to me to see your daughter making progress and knowing there are paths forward from where we are.
At the moment we’re trying to get a provisional diagnosis so he can get insurance coverage for ABA ahead of the official diagnosis. The alternative would be to wait 8 months - 2 years to get started. We asked about starting him in speech therapy but were told that it would be unlikely to help him, since his problem isn’t speech, but social skills. That leaves us with fine motor OT and gross motor PT as our currently available without-a-diagnosis options, so now we are on a waiting list for that.
I kind of feel like we fucked this up. Things didn’t feel right from the start. He didn’t start eating solid foods until 12 months, and only then (and ever since) a highly restricted diet. He was delayed in understanding gestures and pointing. He didn’t say “Mama” or “Daddy” until 19 months. We had him evaluated for speech by the school district, but by the time we got him there, he had “caught up” or so they said, but I think they were mainly looking at “does he talk?” not anything specific to autism. I assumed because he developed this robust vocabulary and started speaking in whole sentences and can name all his planets and shapes that his language was fine. But we felt something was off. And every time we talked about it with someone - even my neuropsych friend - the response was, “Well, COVID puts a lot of kids behind. He seems fine to me. It’s probably nothing.” And I can’t fault them for seeing it that way, but I want to fault myself for not pushing harder sooner. Twice for the autism screening he came up borderline at the pediatrician’s office, but she didn’t tell us to do anything about it. Prior to putting him in daycare we did the MCHAT ourselves at home and he came up borderline again. We decided to put him in daycare for three months and then reassess.
And in that three months… Jesus. Red flags all over the place. Now I’m seeing all the ways he stims when he’s excited or frustrated. Now I’m seeing that the vast majority of his speech is repetition and echolalia and rote memorization and not “talking” in any meaningful sense. Now I watch him stare at digital clocks for 20 minutes, stimming and calling out the numbers as the clock changes from minute to minute, and think, “How did I not see this?”
I’m in this weird nebulous state that’s not quite grief. Grief to me would imply that I lost something, and I don’t feel like I did. But I do feel like I am failing my kid that he is behind in all these areas, with a lot of frustration at all it entails to find, coordinate and afford care. I find it hits me hardest on the weekends because that’s when we are all home together and the challenges become more apparent. I burst into tears the other day because I lost my temper when he refused to take off his shirt, even with me helping. I wasn’t mad at him, but frustrated that I don’t know how to teach him to take off his shirt. I don’t know how to help him. That simple fact is getting me very depressed.
These are stressful times. And I’m not really into breaking out the black clothing, I don’t want this to be that kind of thing. I need to find a way to navigate it and help him and accept what I can’t change and embrace who he is. But it’s gonna be a minute.
The article also places blame on the overhead of importing the stuff from the US. Turns out, all Stouffer’s products (and I presume the other stuff being discontinued) are made in the US. For that matter, Swanson frozen dinners are made in the US, too. They are not owned by Nestle and will probably continue, but they’re generally way lower quality than Stouffer’s.
It appears that Canadians are incapable of making frozen dinners. Pisses me off mightily. There was a whole section of my freezer devoted to Stouffer’s entrees. It fit in well with my lifestyle of sloth. What a crappy way to start a new year! If their profit margins are too low they could just bloody well raise their prices, as they already did during and after the pandemic. Bastards!
Re: failing your kid—just a thought:
What’s the goal here? I assume it’s to get him to a happy and functional adulthood. In that sense, you’re not failing if you or the schools or anybody misses something, ESPECIALLY if you catch it later. I suspect you’re more than making up for it by paying attention and advocating: you’d be surprised how many parents don’t (and / or can’t, which is sad, or won’t, which is bad).
He sounds as if he’s simply not going to be on the normal timeline. So… fine. He’s on his own timeline: you have a dozen-plus years to get him educated and socialized. There’s plenty of time for that. If he’s behind or ahead for a few of them, so what? It will all come out in the wash. Just do the best you can, and make sure he knows he’s loved and his family is there for him.
I just hate it when people say kids are “behind.” No, they’re moving at their own pace. It’s not a race. They’ll get there.
I suspect that parenting is like that, too, and I’m going to submit an Official Straight Dope Request in triplicate that you Cut Yourself some Serious Slack on the parenting front: you sound like you’re doing great with a difficult situation.
I know I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again. When my daughter was 4, almost 5 years old, she had no functional verbal skills. She could not speak to advocate for herself, to tell us what she wanted or needed. And we didn’t know. We did not recognize it. We were looking at putting her in kindergarten and I thought our biggest problem was that she wasn’t potty trained. We called Child Find because we thought, “We can’t send a non-potty trained child to kindergarten.”
But they helped us see what we didn’t see. And now, with therapies and work and growing up, my daughter is 8 years old, almost 9, and going to school in a general education classroom. She can tell stories and read and write. She has come so far.
You aren’t fucking this up. You are doing everything you are supposed to do.
As long as I’m on a roll whining about discontinued convenience foods, one of the local grocery stores launched a line of store-made fresh (non-frozen) prepared dinners. They weren’t cheap but they were good and the portions were generous. There were about five varieties, my favourite being roast chicken breast stuffed with a sort of garlicky spinach and sausage with a generous side of fettuccine alfredo and broccoli. They must have got wind of the fact that I liked the dinners because they were abruptly discontinued. I believe there is a conspiracy to starve me.
That’s a good way of looking at it. I’m definitely veering toward a mentality of, “If we don’t fix this now he will never be able to support himself!” which is probably not very realistic. In CBT we call that catastrophizing and fortune-telling.
I’m so happy for your daughter. We’re just gonna keep on keeping on. He’s a great kid. I just keep going back and forth from trying to have a positive attitude to feeling overwhelmed by it all.
It’s an overwhelming thing. Give yourself permission to be overwhelmed. You are doing a good job even when you are overwhelmed.
Ugh. I’ve managed to get into an email pissing match with the corporate director of cyber security. I just want him to make a decision (which should be within his authority) on what I see is a relatively minor network change needed for our project. He wants to pass the buck and kick it up still one more level for review and approval. We’ve been trying to get this done for over six months now – it’s just been one delay after another. Any more buck-passing and it is literally going to be on the CEO’s desk. I’m so frustrated and exhausted from dealing with this stupid issue. Somebody just make a fucking decision!
His long-johns feel a breeze, so it’s CYA time? Same old story. Sorry.
Dropped’Em RX (a major mail-order pharmacy, affiliated with or owned by a major health insurer) has truly mind-bogglingly-bad communications.
In December, they sent repeated messages claiming that they had not heard from my doctor about a prescription refill. I called them, and was told “No, the issue is that it’s too early for that refill”. And the doctor’s office says “they never contacted us, but we’ll send another scrip anyway”.
Last week I got several messages saying they needed my approval to proceed with an order. No explanation as to WHY - but when I called them, I asked that they fill them. 2 days later, I got several MORE messages on the same topic. I called them - and the orders were in process.
Except for 2 of them. One was a blood pressure medication “we’re out of stock”. I looked at their website today and it says they’ve processed the order. Maybe they got some in.
The other was for ropinirole (for my restless legs syndrome). In December they said it was backordered but they would ship in about a week when they got more in. I think they did - they claim they did anyway, it’s time to go through the pile of mailing envelopes to be sure. But as of several days ago, they no longer had any in stock, with no forecast date of restocking. Ugh.
So I called a local pharmacy - and THEY don’t have it either. No news anywhere about a shortage (some older stories about the original manufacturer discontinuing the brand-name). So I can’t entirely blame this one on Dropped’Em. Except for the piss-poor communication.
Now, supposedly I can now get my 90-day refills at any pharmacy locally. That’s new, and I don’t trust it. But as I told the lady on the phone the other day “nothing about you personally, but I’ve had such bad service, that I am really looking forward to going on Medicare so I won’t be stuck with your employer any more”.
A year ago my employer changed our mail-order pharmacy provider. The new folks, who are a major name brand outfit cannot find their ass with both hands. The prior equally name-brand supplier was excellent.
I’ll get emails telling me a prescription has a problem, but they won’t include the drug name “for my protection”. And they’ll include only half the RX number. When you go to the website, the RX numbers are not shown on your list of prescriptions. You need to click the “details” link on each one in turn to see the number. They also don’t include the physician name on the details.
Of course when they do ship something successfully they send an email with the full drug name and the full RX number. “For my convenience.”
The only thing consistent about their automation and their customer service experience is that it’s consistently bad in many grossly obvious ways.
What do they think they are protecting you from?
A Nazi home-schooling network? Really? I’m sure this won’t produce any totally fucked-up kids who will need years of therapy to undo what their parents are doing to them. How is this not child abuse?
“But there is likely little the state can do to change and using and sharing such curriculum does not violate state law.”
"The review is one of “compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements,” the official said. Under Ohio law, the state’s Department of Education does not review or approve home school curriculum.
The homeschooling group has more than 3,000 subscribers and shares content and lesson plans through a social media messaging platform. They share “primarily resources for curriculum recommendations for elementary aged children,” the group’s very first message reads.
"We have fought hard for our right to homeschool the children,” one post from December reads. “Without homeschooling the children, our children are left defenseless to the schools and the Gay Afro Zionist scum that run them.”
Here in the USA we have HIPAA. Which is a health privacy legislative bogeyman that the medical industry emphatically does NOT understand, yet greatly fears.
All manner of silly secrecy and semi-secrecy is done in the name of HIPAA compliance. Much of which is legally unnecessary nonsense.
What they’re mostly protecting is their own fear of liability for something they don’t understand.
Whenever a business says “We’re doing X for your convenience” you should interpret that as “We’re doing X for our convenience”. “For your protection” is in the same category. Read it as “We’re doing X for our protection.”
Bizspeak: the only time they’re not misleadingly weaseling is when they’re bald-faced plain-language lying loud and clear.