I remember hearing the same.
ETA: We did. It wasn’t official apparently, but a developer making unofficial comments. Why Microsoft is calling Windows 10 'the last version of Windows' - The Verge
And it’s such bullshit. I can’t get into my website because you think I’m a robot? You’re a robot!
An employee has a 5 year old daughter and a 3 year old son. Their father sees the kids and pays support off and on. They’ve never been married, but share custody informally.
The daughter told her mom some troubling things, and mom is going to court to gain sole custody. Part of the information gathering involves an exam at a hospital. The daughter was upset about going to the hospital, so mom was showing her pictures of Kizzy, our new puppy, who the daughter has met and loves.
I sent more pics and videos and, on my gf’s suggestion, offered to bring Kizzy to the hospital as support, if the hospital allowed it. Well, it turns out the nurse there was all for the idea. Everything went smoothly, Kizzy was a wonder dog.
As I was on my way out, the nurse brought a bunch of handouts about a program where volunteers bring dogs (or other pets) to pediatric patient care for visits. I explained that I was doing this for a friend’s kid, and I really am not into the kind of thing the nurse was discussing. Well, the nurse went from smiles and rainbows to glares and thunder. Apparently I’m a dick
That nurse just wanted to see more of your wonder dog.
Today was the one day I had a hard deadline at work to do something important.
I get up very early so I’ll have enough time, and of course baby wakes up and wants a feed. So I feed baby, get her back to sleep, go into the office (aka spare bedroom) and log on. Not 5 minutes later I hear strange noises, and go to check on the baby. Realised what the problem was when I put my hand in a patch of sick. She’d just thrown up all the milk I fed her. Cleaned baby up as best I could, woke up my partner, and handed her over along with a clean onesie, and tried to get back to work. She vomits again. All over the bed. Partner gets up, tries to clean up baby again, gives baby water. She pukes it up on the landing carpet. He cleans up again. Partner needs the loo, so he hands me the damp, vomit covered baby and disappears. Baby vomits on the desk, on the carpet, and on me. More cleaning up. Baby cannot keep anything down, even water. We call the doctor.
You will be unsurprised to learn that I had not got much work done yet. Partner tries to get baby to sleep again, but every time she starts to nod off she wakes up and vomits. After a while I decide to try and feed her again, but she drinks for one minute and then pukes all over me. I change my clothes again.
Doctor finally calls back and tells us to take her to urgent care. My partner wants me to come to help if she vomits in the car, and I want to come, but I have Important Work Thing. We change baby into a clean onesie again and I reluctantly let them go alone. On the plus side, I am finally able to get some work done. But poor baby is in hospital with something possibly serious. I worry that if they want her to stay, I won’t be allowed to see her due to Covid restrictions.
But thankfully after a few hours they send her home, and I am once again handed a vomit covered baby to hold while trying to work. She was sick on the way to the hospital, and she was sick again on the way back from the hospital, and my partner has to clean up the car.
With some help from my colleague we more-or-less got the important thing finished on time, and now baby is having a long nap and hopefully recovering. The fifth load of washing is in the machine and the sixth is ready to go.
Oh, and her nursery rang to tell us she isn’t allowed back for the rest of the week. Nursery is turning out to be very poor value for money; you send your kid in, and they immediately catch something and have to stay home.
Yuck. Sick kids are such a hard thing about parenting. Did they determine what is wrong? I’d be freaking out.
I don’t look forward to how much daycare is going to increase the spread of general illness once we feel safe enough to get our son started. He’s only been sick twice in the first 15 months of his life. How can anyone get work done when they have to watch a sick kid? What a bind.
@DemonTree’s experience notwithstanding, sick kids are generally pretty easy (or at least ours were). They generally sleep/doze most of the day. You do have to be alert for the dreaded starting-to-barf sound, but otherwise give them a spot on the sofa with a barf pail and let them sleep with the TV on.
The real problem is the “24 hours without a fever” before daycare/school will take them back. At that point, they’re healthy, bored and wired from not doing anything for however long they were sick and demand a lot of attention.
The nice thing about your kids catching everything in the giant petri dish that is daycare, is that the do not catch everything when they are old enough for school. When my sister taught kindergarten, she said you could always tell the daycare kids - they were the ones who knew how to stand in line, and were almost never sick.
Well, the last bout of illness my son had was pretty exhausting, but the whole family and the nanny got sick. My husband and I had to take turns working and doing childcare while we were also sick. Not fun.
No, they checked her blood sugar, and took her temperature, and looked in her ears, and kept her there for observation for a while. But she didn’t vomit at the hospital, only once she was in the car on the way home. They said we should give her a rehydration mixture, but she wouldn’t drink any. I was freaking out earlier, but she’s had a long sleep and some milk, and fingers crossed seems to be better.
Daycare sucks for illness; she’s basically been low-grade ill ever since she started nursery, and she keeps getting a fever and then they send her home, and we have to take her for a Covid test and keep her home an extra day while waiting for the results. We’ve been alternating using holiday time, since it’s basically impossible to work while looking after a toddler. It’s probably worse because she spent the first year of her life in isolation, never catching a single cold.
I think when she’s a bit older we’ll be more able to do this. Right now she wants to be held all the time when she’s ill.
Don’t you get sick days?
For years I’ve had a Tilley hat. Olive green, well worn, fit my head perfectly. I felt so COOL when I wore it. I hate umbrellas so I wore my hat when it rained. I can’t find it. I know I wore it Saturday at the barn. I looked everywhere at the barn, inside my tack trunk, behind my tack trunk, in the office, in the lost and found. People don’t steal stuff at the barn. I left my saddle in the aisle for 2 days and it was still there the next time I came out. It’s not in my car (its usual living space), not at home. The horse isn’t wearing it, neither is the cat. I truly am crushed. I could buy a new one, but it just wouldn’t be the same. I’m not Catholic, but I did the St. Anthony’s prayer.
Yes, but I’m part-time, so my sick and vacation time accrue slowly. I couldn’t put off all the work until the following week because I had hard deadlines to meet that week. Such is the nature of my job. So I believe I worked about 12 hours that week, the absolute minimum I needed to meet the deadlines. And I lost income for the rest.
My husband has no sick time, he’s in private practice. Any time he misses is lost income.
Oh, right. It’s unfortunate when you’re ill, but at least being part time you get to spend more time with your son. I wanted to go back part time, but the company wouldn’t let me.
Heartless capitalist swines the lot. Come the revolution my friends…!
Yes, part-time has been a good arrangement for me, both in caring for my son and helping me stay on top of mental health issues. I have a very flexible job and not sure I’d go full time even if I could.
We do plan to put him in daycare within the next year or so (hoping he can get vaccinated when he turns two in March), but that would be five days a week. And while I’ll appreciate the time to get extra work done around the house, I will miss taking care of him.
Oh, no, that’s horrible! I haven’t been there, but I sure do understand how bare your poor head must feel now. My Dorfmann is over 25 years old and I would be devastated if I had lost it.
Did you check all around where your car was parked? Did you stop anywhere on the way home where it might have fallen out of the car door? Could it have slipped between a car seat and a door? Did you search everything you brought home with you in case it got mixed in with something?
I hope you find it!
I’m so glad we don’t have kids. Or hats.
She’s projectile vomiting again. 
We really thought she was getting better. She hadn’t been sick since this afternoon, she kept a feed down and even ate a little bit of food at tea. But now she’s been sick twice in a short time. What if she has some kind of blockage so it’s all coming back up?
I lost a hat about 14 years ago on the PATH train into New Jersey and I’m still upset about it. It was a glorious knitted rainbow hat with earflaps and side braids. I’ve never been able to find another. I went to a Dope fest in NYC and got a tremendous compliment on it from another Doper, and I remember saying, “Thanks. It’s more extroverted than I am.” They got a kick out of that.
The thing that irks me most of all is that if I hadn’t been so shy, I could have turned around as I exited the train and shouted, “Hey, can someone hand me the hat I dropped?” But I was too afraid. Thus I live with the burden of my cowardice forever more.
Shoulda just tried being a “dick.” You know, thanked her, taken the flyers, said “I’ll be in touch,” and left.