Hump Day Wednesday

[sarahandben108]

We're half-way through the week!  What's up?

[sarahandben108]

I awoke to snow on the ground again. Second time in October. It's not a lot and will probably be gone by lunch. However, my dreams of a mild snowless winter are slowly fading away.

[doxiemama]

Boo to snow. I’m not ready for that.

I made it through almost 3 innings of the game last night before I fell asleep. A far cry from 2004 when I would stay up til 1am every night.

[thatgolfb]

Hello, all. I actually came in here to post yesterday and then got busy again and abandoned my post. Lol. Work was just insane. And then I had both kids with me after work, but I also did some veggie chopping and meal prep for the rest of the week. Nice to get that out of the way.

I hope everyone is doing well!

[quinn]

Awwww now I want to watch mrs. Doubtfire

I found a way to make AJ not freak out when put in the playpen... just put ds3 in with him! Hahah they had so much fun wrestling and jumping together. I got to sweep and mop!

[thatgolfb]

Oct 24, 2018 7:19:08 GMT -6 doxiemama said:

Boo to snow. I’m not ready for that.

I made it through almost 3 innings of the game last night before I fell asleep. A far cry from 2004 when I would stay up til 1am every night.

I don't envy east coasters when it comes to sports games. So late!

[thatgolfb]

Oct 24, 2018 6:40:50 GMT -6 sarahandben108 said:

We're half-way through the week!  What's up?

Let's try this again.

[roloma]

Oct 24, 2018 7:32:18 GMT -6 quinn said:

Awwww now I want to watch mrs. Doubtfire

I found a way to make AJ not freak out when put in the playpen... just put ds3 in with him! Hahah they had so much fun wrestling and jumping together. I got to sweep and mop!

I did a version of this the other morning when I was ironing clothes.  I put DS1 and N in N's crib and let them chase each other around and jump up and down.  It worked like a charm.

[pootsen]

Good morning! I’m so happy to not be at work today (vent below). C is napping and DS1 is at school. Plans for today include early voting, the library, and picking up a few things from the store.

PDQ

I just need to get this off my chest... I’m so disappointed in the company I work for. Our 2019 benefits came out this week and they are making changes to our PTO. We do not get a separate sick bank, holiday bank, or vacation bank- everything gets taken out of one pool of PTO. They are going to start limiting the carryover of PTO hours at the end of the year to 120. So for a full time employee that’s 3 weeks. Anything above that will not be paid out (you could cash out extra PTO in the past) but will be forfeited. So say a woman gets pregnant and is due in January- the max they could get paid is 3 weeks of PTO. We do get STD, which covers 60%pay for 6 weeks (8 weeks for c section), but again, we have to use PTO to cover the remaining 40%. I did the math and that comes out to getting paid for a maximum of 6.5 weeks for a 12 week FMLA leave.
The disgusting part of this “use it or lose it” policy is that they presented it under the guise of encouraging employees to use their PTO to spend more time with their families and prevent burnout. Yeah, well when you have to use PTO for a maternity leave, Illness/death in the family, or a planned surgery, it sure would be nice to save some up from year to year!

They also took away the ability to share a family medical plan with a domestic partner. This affects one of my coworkers who has been with her SO for 13 years. Now they will have to pay an extra $400 a month for him to get his own (crappy) insurance through his employer. My coworker still has to pay for the family plan for her and her daughter. I work for one of the biggest health care companies in the Midwest and this just sickens me. Sorry this was so long.

[doxiemama]

Oh pootsen I’d be pissed. Those are huge changes.

[jules1614]

pootsen those changes are awful!! The pooling of pto/sick bank wouldn’t be a big deal if they let you carry it over. I work for a very large healthcare organization and ours has been combined for years. It kind of stinks but we are able to carry up to 400hrs. And we don’t lose it, we would just stop accruing new time until you use it or chose a payout (but the payout is only 90% and there is a max). That is super frustrating for fmla in the early months. The domestic partnership seems so so so backwards! Like more companies should be moving forward with acknowledging domestic partnership as current day families no longer fit the “traditional” picture.

ETA- I think I misread that you use to have separate pto and sick bank but looking back I think you meant it’s always been pooled but now you have a max and you can’t carry much over. Which is really really crappy

[sarahandben108]

Oh wow pootsen. Those "benefits" really do suck. The sad thing is that the healthcare industry in our country is pulling in record gains. You'd think that they would be more considerate to their employees. I feel like until there is less of a monopoly of insurance companies or unless there is more oversight from the government, this is just only going to get worse.

[thatgolfb]

pootsen, that really sucks, I'm sorry. I understand why the company wants to do away with being able to accrue, and consequently, pay out so much time, because it is a big financial liability, but I think that they should be implementing a better maternity leave policy in that case. I work for a public university health care system, and we have a cap on our vacation time, but no cap on sick accrual (and they are separate). I hope they don't do away with it, but I could see it happening since so many employees are now at retirement age and are cashing out.

[thatgolfb]

We have all said this so many times, but maternity leave in this country absolutely sucks.

[clucky]

At the IL's again. I'm attempting to arm knit.

[pootsen]

jules1614 agreed- I didn’t used to mind the pool and we get a fair amount of PTO to cover things but I really didn’t have much when I went on mat leave because I did use 2 weeks for vacation the summer before. BUT we saved up a bunch of money in our savings to use while I wasn’t getting paid. Not everyone has that luxury. Now I’m sure women who are due in the beginning of the year are going to be forced to go back to work before they’re ready. It’s just so sad.

Another example is my coworker with a hx of leukemia. She never knows if she’s going to get sick d/t her compromised immune system so she always has a ton of PTO saved. She will be able to cash some out but will end up losing a bunch.

[clucky]

pootsen the company (HUGE food company) I worked for did that. The sales force wasn't able to use their sick days due to lack of coverage and not being able to carry over work from day to day. While the HQ employees and account managers were able to use theirs. We also had floating holidays in the mix, because holidays are big days in the grocery stores and actually doubled or tripled our work without more help (14 hour days for the week leading up, it suuuucked).

Anyway, they only let us carry over 5 days and could cash out all but 10 days. It was nice they put them in a pot for use and being able to schedule our days, but the lack of carry over sucked. That being said, someone had to cover the carryover and there just wasn't enough in the workforce. You also couldn't ever donate to a co-worker, which made it even crappier.

Not covering partners is bull. Arent they common law at that point?

[jules1614]

Oct 24, 2018 10:01:43 GMT -6 clucky said:

pootsen the company (HUGE food company) I worked for did that. The sales force wasn't able to use their sick days due to lack of coverage and not being able to carry over work from day to day. While the HQ employees and account managers were able to use theirs. We also had floating holidays in the mix, because holidays are big days in the grocery stores and actually doubled or tripled our work without more help (14 hour days for the week leading up, it suuuucked).

Anyway, they only let us carry over 5 days and could cash out all but 10 days. It was nice they put them in a pot for use and being able to schedule our days, but the lack of carry over sucked. That being said, someone had to cover the carryover and there just wasn't enough in the workforce. You also couldn't ever donate to a co-worker, which made it even crappier.

Not covering partners is bull. Arent they common law at that point?

Unfortunately Wisconsin doesn’t recognize common law marriages.

[beefinch]

Hey guys. Hope everyone and their families are well!

How are our babies turning 1? (If not already and soon) E turned 1 on the 19th!

Had a great family day.

She’s currently in her play pen with her new toys before bedtime in 45 minutes.

She’s just so much different to what C was, he was just happy to sit there and do nothing basically, but E, my god, does not STOP. Always going to things she’s not meant to (her favourite things are wires... why?!)

She can crawl so fast now, and is so nearly climbing up on things, all she has to do is to figure out that she has to push up in the other foot.

All around a happy baby, we are very lucky to get 2 good babies. Only whinges when we don’t get food in front of her quickly enough.

H has started bugging me another baby ALEADY. Dude we said that we were waiting 3+ years until we wanted a third and I am not budging on that. So he can swiftly remove that idea from his head.

Period talk for a sec - my periods are not remotely regular yet. Is that normal when the baby is 1ish years old? With C I just went straight to having B/C that didn’t give me periods (for a year and a half before getting it taken out), I’m not on anything right now (billion percent not pregnant) as I’m waiting for my periods to figure themselves out. My last period was about 5 weeks ago and that period was 2 weeks long?!! Before that I didn’t have a period for 3 months. Just don’t know if it’s ‘normal’

It’s not bugging me or anything but just odd because before kids I was like clockworks every 28 days.

Anyway love to you all!

[doxiemama]

Oct 24, 2018 9:08:17 GMT -6 thatgolfb said:

We have all said this so many times, but maternity leave in this country absolutely sucks.

Quoting for emphasis. It can’t be said enough.

[laurensc927]

Hi beefinch good to see you! I was told it can take a while for periods to get back to normal. I stopped pumping 3+ months ago and just got my 2nd pp last week.

[laurensc927]

Oh pootsen that sucks!

[blabbermouth]

pootsen, that sucks 😣 if you just had proper government managed mat leave like us Canadians that wouldn't matter as much. Still sucks to lose it either way though.

Hi beefinch, happy birthday to E! Nice to see ya.

[laurensc927]

Hi from the Berkshires I don't think I packed appropriately, it is cold up here. On the way up MH said he was excited to sleep 😂. Maybe we won't be doing as much hiking as I anticipated.

Mil has H the next few days. I asked her if I should cook or if she would? She said you make a little I'll make a little then asked me for some of waffles and muffins I make. Well her idea of making a little was buying grapes, yogurt, and sweet potatoes 🙄. Thank god I had stuff in the freezer to send. She better not ruin my good eater lol.

[laurensc927]

Talk to me about goodie bags, the kids that'll come to Hs party will range from 4-10. I'm thinking goldfish, fruit snacks, temporary tattoos. What else?

[grumpycat]

Oct 24, 2018 17:41:01 GMT -6 laurensc927 said:

Talk to me about goodie bags, the kids that'll come to Hs party will range from 4-10. I'm thinking goldfish, fruit snacks, temporary tattoos. What else?

I did goldfish, a small coloring book, a Halloween duck, and the pumpkin the kid painted as the goodie bag (we had mostly 3-5 year olds). I've done Melissa and Doug coloring pads + a box of crayons in the past. Stickers are always good too. Or mini puzzles, fun socks, etc. Basically the target dollar spot lol.

[clucky]

laurensc927 also snap bracelets, they are a bit for that age range and not too expensive. You can find them at Oriental trading.

[rooskie]

Late but that stinks pootsen. They redid our vacation last year so we have to use it unless our managers approve carry over. In my department some managers will allow it but mine won’t. It’s BS.

We also have to use it by the fiscal year end. Which is when accountants are busy. So I worked from home a lot.

[quinn]

beefinch!

Happy 1st birthday to E!