Day Off

 A few weeks ago, I applied at a caregiving company that was basically a start up at the time. It was disappointing, because she hired me, did onboarding, and then told me she didn’t have anything for me to do. So I forgot about it, went to work at that shitty ABA place, only lasted into my second week or so, and then started with this caregiving company that was reluctant to hire me because of my location and the distance. But they are only scheduling me 15 hours a week, and I was not worried about that. These places have constant crises and are always calling you to work extra. And they did ask me to work one extra shift for someone else- but the one doing it most often is now the lady with the start up company. She did some marketing I guess. She’s also having a lot of emergencies. There is a lot of last minute stuff that, if you agree to work last minute, she’ll give you a gift card of $25, $50 or $75, depending I guess on the severity of the situation. I got a $50 gift card from her for working Sunday night for her. I relieved another caregiver at 7:00 pm, who in turn came back to relieve me at 7:00 am. This lady said her Amazon gift card balance is now over $500. She’s waiting until it reaches “enough for a she-shed.”  That’s a good idea! Because of this night shift, I worked about 24 hours straight. I worked 2-6 pm for the other company, then 7pm-7am with the start up, then 9-2 with the original company again. It was totally fine, because I have not been sleeping well at all. I will be up anyway without melatonin, and sleeping with vivid nightmares if I do take melatonin. I came home and slept about 12 hours with no nightmares. Maybe working 24 hours is the trick to getting peaceful sleep. I did, however, feel like dry heaving on the final drive home in the afternoon. I didn’t dry heave, though. 

The lady with the start up then asked when I can work with a married couple, and there’s a pretty awesome shift differential for working with a couple instead of a single person. I told her I am off Tuesday and Friday from that other company (and weekends) so she scheduled me Tuesday, Friday and Sunday with the couple. I’m now holding off on telling her any more with the hopes of more gift cards for last minute stuff. 

Today I’m off and resting up. so far i have Saturday off, but keeping it open in case she has another emergency last minute thing. I think what happened with her, is that she hired a bunch of people and then had nothing for them  then they all moved on to other things.  Those other things probably offered more than 15 hours a week like my other thing, so I’m one of the ones telling her yes more often.  

I’m looking forward to getting nice checks again.

Ignorance

 The Handmaid’s Tale had a famous quote. “I would like to be ignorant; Then I wouldn’t know how ignorant I was.”  

When I was a young person, I used to pray to God to make me knowledgeable about issues affecting children and other vulnerable populations so that I could be a wise advocate. After my very short stint as an RBT trainee in an ABA center for children with autism, I kind of wish I could take that prayer back. Dear God, that’s enough knowledge. Thanks God, but no more awareness, please. I have become too aware. I have gone down several anti ABA rabbit holes, and I just wish I had never been made aware of this issue. I have been reading things from autistic adults who went through ABA as children, parents of children who both regret it and are for it (both sides with parents), speech language pathologists, teachers, occupational therapists, and a professor named Alicia Broderick who has written and speaks about “The Autism Industrial Complex”, Autism speaks and their advocacy and how all of it led to ABA being one of the only options available for many families. 

I am just so sad. I am sad all the time. I have anhedonia, but it’s not the only thing. 

A week ago, I applied in person at the office of a caregiving company who said they needed someone in Montgomery. I live an hour away in Hempstead, and she was very reluctant to hire me, because of the distance , but I was able to convince her to. So now I’m caring for an elderly woman in Montgomery, Texas. It’s what I’m used to. It’s not anything I need to learn. I know how to do this. The lady and her family are all very pleasant. But I was trying to avoid this work in order to avoid getting attached to someone and then them dying on me. For now, though, it will do. I like doing this, and I like this family, but I’m dreading her dying. I really am. The last lady I took care of in this capacity passed away 23 months ago. The lady I started caring for this week reminds me a lot of her, and there are so many similarities. Her first name is the middle name of the last lady, she has the same number of kids (opposite number of boys and girls though). 

My husband still works at the inventory service, but once he was able to take his new birth certificate to get a new drivers license, he also got in Indeed and started job hunting. The manager and his wife have really turned on both of us. Kevin started to vent to me a little bit about their antics, but I believe he has stopped due to how upset it was making me. So I try not to get upset about it so that he tells me more. Kevin hasn’t job hunted since 2009, and I helped him with resume words and such. Then he got really discouraged when a company’s aptitude test crashed on his laptop. His discouragement made me discouraged, but I tried not to let it show. I just wish I knew why the manager and his wife, my old coworkers who I thought were our friends, have turned on us so badly. He has continued to apply on indeed and plans to go tomorrow to a company that only wants people applying in person. 

Maybe someday, things will be back to being as good as they were. I don’t know, though. I’m just so sad all the time, and I have nightmares every night. 

Driver’s License Drama

 Kevin’s license is expiring, so he went to the DMV. I know that Texas recently started requiring birth certificates for license renewals, but Kevin didn’t believe me. It’s new, I explained. Still, he didn’t believe it until he actually went. He doesn’t know where his is, and has to order it from the state of Massachusetts where he was born. But, he doesn’t know the name of his biological father, nor does he know what his last name was at birth. His mother married his first stepfather when he was about two, and that’s who’s last name he and I have. His current stepfather is his mother’s third husband. I actually wasn’t even sure if his mother and biological father were married, so I asked what the name was on his birth certificate. Was it his mom’s maiden name?  The only thing he told me he ever knew about his biological father was that he was Italian. 

With needing to order his birth certificate, he had to ask his mom. He just never cared before, even though she’s always offered the information to him. She told him the first, middle, and last name of his biological father and asked if he wanted to know why they got divorced. He didn’t, but he told me the name and I burst out laughing, because it’s the most ridiculously Italian name you’ve ever heard. Then I googled him, only to find an obituary from 2003. I clicked on it, and him and Kevin were frickin twins!  It was kind of hilarious how much they looked alike, actually. I showed Kevin, and Kevin laughed at the resemblance. Kevin then started sharing a lot of memories of his first stepfather, whose last name he ended up with. It’s clear that that’s the one who earned the title of dad. 

Then he told me, thank goodness his mom is still alive because he would have needed to know this information in order to renew his driver’s license.