...what can happen next.
Four days before Christmas I slipped off the last step of a ladder and fell hard - all 180 pounds of me, at the time - on my right side. I missed 10 days work - non-paid, as my sick time was gone - on a work-comp claim
A week ago, I was in a car accident and have been off work ever since; again, without pay. Yesterday I failed the physical therapy exam that would have allowed me to return to work. Today I saw my PCP who took me off work for another two weeks, and prescribed muscle relaxers and 3X/week PT.
Last night at our therapy session, Jack shared with me that he'd gotten a very negative performance evaluation from his boss. He is a computer programmer for a very large bank. In August, he accidentally discovered that a 35 year-old colleague is making 10% more than he is. Without being too tacky, let me say that that is a lot more money than it sounds like. He also found out that although he has been employed there nearly twenty years (who stays at a career that long, let alone one job??) he is the lowest paid member of the team.
Although he could not share this knowledge with anyone, he approached his boss and asked what additional responsibilities he could be given to merit an advancement in title. (There is only one above his, and that would carry with it the additional income.)
His boss basically gave him a pat on the head, told him he was doing a great job, and sent him on his way.
Jack is not the type of guy to accept a non-answer as an answer, but what are you going to do when it comes from your boss?
Now he gets this - grossly tardy - performance evaluation that is absolutely terrible. It makes him sound like a slacker, and an entirely ineffectual employee. Also, there was a third party at the eval meeting, which has never been the case before. Can you say CYA?
Did I mention that Jack is two years from full pension? Gee, do you think that has anything to do with this???
We paid off a large bill last month, and promptly replaced it with an almost equal car payment. In case that sounds foolish or frivolous, my old car has 97k on it, and I put on about 400 miles/week. It will be a great school car for R.J. in a few months, but it wasn't going to handle that many more miles for much longer.
Yesterday R.J. told me, yet again, that he really, really, really wants to go to a very exclusive private college that is world-renowned for its music program. Total cost: 38,500/year.
I have no trouble telling my kids that they can't have everything they want, but at the same time I privately applaud his ability and confidence in aiming so high.
As a music teacher, and not as his mother, I can safely say that he would be admitted in a heartbeat. He is a good trumpet player, which are a dime a dozen, but a fabulous tenor with excellent relative pitch. Perfect pitch, in layman's terms. Excellent tenors are scarcer than hen's teeth - gee, how many hackneyed two-hundred-year-old phrases can I incorporate into this paragraph - and he is beyond excellent, even at 15.
Even with a full-ride music scolarship and a partial academic one, though, he would still fall short by about half the cost.
Leigh is headed for law school this fall, unless she chickens out. Even though she will be on her own financially, you can bet there will be frantic phone calls home the first year. I guess Jack will have to learn to say "no" too.
On the "little boy" front, Michael's shrink proclaimed his recent horrible behavior to be just that, and said that it does not have an organic source. She wrote him a refill for his Seroquel - an antipsychotic used to treat the mood swings of bipolar disorder - and that was that. She is a terrific dr., and I don't doubt her for a moment. It's just always easier to throw more meds at a situation than to modify behavior.
My grandmother used to tell me that "fear takes the place that faith should fill," so I'm not only paralyzed with fear, I feel moderately guilty as well.
I firmly believe that God will take care of us; S/He always has. But it's still scary to sit and wait for the actions of mortal idiots to shake our lives to the core.
So dear readers and friends, please send us your prayers/thoughts/vibes, whatever you believe in.
We can use all you can give...
Mel
Recent Comments