Judecorp.

I am so effing pissed right now. It's a good thing it's Saturday because I could seriously strangle an HR person right now. (No offense to anyone working in HR.)

When we got all of the benefits information for my new job, we decided to compare the health plans with Jen's job. We thought we hit the jackpot! The coverage was good - REALLY good (one of the perks of working in the hospital system, I guess). And about $60/paycheck cheaper than Jen's. So of course I filled out all of the forms to sign us up, turned them in, and got a note so we could cancel Jen's insurance. Great? Not.

The new coverage starts June 1st, which is umm, Monday. I get a notice in the mail TODAY "verifying" my payroll deductions for benefits.

Instead of the "Employee + Family" health plan for $125 pre-tax/paycheck and the "Employee + Family" eye insurance plan for $16 pre-tax/paycheck, I am signed up for:

1. "Employee + Child" health plan for $81 pre-tax/paycheck PLUS "Non-Qualifying Dependent" health plan for $89 post-tax/paycheck
2. "Employee + Child" eye plan for $11 pre-tax/paycheck PLUS "Non-Qualifying Dependent" eye plan for $9 post-tax/paycheck

I am furious. FURIOUS. On so many levels.

1. Is this NOT something they could have mentioned ON THE SIGN UP FORMS?
2. Is this NOT something they could have mentioned IN THE BENEFITS PRESENTATION?
3. Is this NOT something they could have mentioned WHEN I TURNED MY FORMS IN?
4. The notice I received TODAY (05-30) which is dated 05-26 says that if I need to make changes, I can do them BEFORE 05-25.

EFF YOU to the benefits department for this oversight, and EFF YOU for sending something dated AFTER the "change date" and the biggest EFF YOU OF ALL to the effing Defense of Marriage Act for screwing my LEGALLY MARRIED family out of all of this money! That is *(&#(*^$ highway robbery and it is NOT right and it is NOT Constitutional and honestly? I am so angry right now that I can see why some people say they won't be friends with anyone who votes against marriage equality.

I am so sick of the "Attachment Parenting" community. I don't know why I try to stay involved. I am so tired of all of the parenting dick-sizing and general "I am better than you" attitude pervasive with these folks a lot of the time. Bleh.

Parenting is hard, and the majority of parents out there are making decisions they think are best for their families. Does it make anyone a better parent to point out the "flaws" in another parent?

There is seriously a post today about whether or not it is possible for an AP parent to have non-AP parent friends. ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? If Sarah uses a stroller and Bri does sleep training and Chris fed the twins formula and Valerie's daughter sleeps all night in a crib in her own room and someone else weaned their child after only 6 months - who cares? And if I don't do some of those things, we can't be friends? Seriously?

I don't understand these people.

Punk had her 6-month re-evaluation for Early Intervention, and as I suspected two months ago when they scheduled the appointment, they pushed her out of the program. I say "pushed" because technically, and by technically I mean according to the actual operating standards of EI in Massachusetts, a child who qualifies based on diagnosis rather than delay is eligible for an entire year of services. And she did, six months ago, qualify based on a diagnosis of abnormal muscle tone.

I also think they did some wonky scoring with the gross motor part of the evaluation because they scored her at 12 months, but when she was evaluated at my job during our training inservice she scored 11 months. She has not developed any new gross motor skills between now and then and since I was heading up that training and I am pretty much known for being a hard ass I feel like it was pretty accurate. I'm trying to mentally go through the evaluation and see where they could have passed her. It was amazing to see someone else interpret (wrongly) the test items. For example, there is one that says, "Standing: Throws ball with some cast" and basically is looking to see if the child is sturdy enough in standing to throw a ball with an overhead motion. So PT asks me if she can throw a ball and I am quick to say, "Yes, but not in standing, because she cannot stand." And she tells me it counts if she is standing against a sofa or table and I'm all OH HELL NO because umm, clearly it says "STANDING" and it comes after the test items like "Stands unassisted," and "Takes steps unassisted," and "Walks well (starts, stops, turns)." Seriously, people, you should not mess with my ridiculous knowledge of EI eligibility.

But whatever, I pretty much hate them anyway, so after they told me that my daughter wasn't eligible anymore (but oh, she is), I said, "That's good, I knew you were going to push her out anyway. You didn't want to come see her last month, either, and that's fine. I will keep my eye on her and if I am still concerned in a couple of months, I'll call a program in Springfield and start up again." And the director is all, "Why Springfield?" and I start by talking about how Punk is in a new child care in Springfield so it would make more sense and made sure to tack on 'and we don't really agree on how things are done anyway.' AND I HATE YOU.

She was totally not performing today and the house was full of contractors and plumbers and natural gas guys and electricians but even still she is a genius and way too cute for their stinking program anyway. And the stupid PT was going on about her progress when she is basically doing the same things she was doing at 11 months. So eff them.

Yes, I know she will walk someday. I am completely confident of this and have no real worries that she won't. But I don't understand why they are so reluctant to work with her. I mean, the whole reason I pursued this EI business 6 months ago was because she had the funky tone and wasn't delayed then and I wanted to make sure it stayed that way. But guess what, now she's delayed. Turds.

I am a 898983478934789374289 times better worker than they are. Argh.

I am really pissed about my kid's early intervention services. Or lack thereof.

When it all started, they were going to assign my kid a PT. Great! Except she's really busy. Boo! But she runs a swim group once a week so we would get to see her every week. Great! Except that it was right smack in the middle of the very important morning nap. Boo! So we went twice and it was simply too much. So then we were going to meet her at the Y before the swim group, so we could get some one-on-one time weekly and then go home and nap. Except she cancelled two out of the three times we were supposed to do that, and then I went to work on Thursdays.

After pushing and pushing, she finally agreed to go to the day care and meet with Jen. And I had to push her into it. And then she wanted to be "flexible" with the time ("Let's say some time between 12 and 2") and I had to 'gently' remind her that Jen was coming from work so she nailed down a time. I kept waiting for her to cancel, and my heart sunk when she called at 9:30pm the night before... but she just decided THEN to ask for the address. Argh!

And then when she finally did go and see my kid, I left Jen a whole list of concerns and things to talk about and the freaking PT was like, "Oh wow, that's great you notice that, it's really subtle, blah blah, it will be fine," and then said she will check back in another month.

OH HELL NO.

I have no idea why this is acceptable to her. A month is a HUGE amount of time for an infant and she's getting to the point where we've gone from being proactively monitoring things to HELLO, SHE IS DELAYED. Kids that were crawling and pulling to stand MONTHS after Punk are now cruising and standing alone and lowering themselves to the floor and all kinds of things that she is clearly unable to do. In a month she will be a year old and then what? THEN they will say she's a late walker and they should do something? Or maybe then she'll say, "Oh well, TECHNICALLY a kid's not a late walker until 15 months..." and then see her again in a month?

I am making a huge stink about this today. Just because I work in EI doesn't mean my kid doesn't deserve to get the right amount of services. I'm more than prepared to go to the Director today.

Well, the Punk-stuffing worked. She did not wake up at 9:30, I dreamfed her at 11, and she slept until 5, had some milk, went to sleep in the Big People Bed until 7. Sweet! Although all of that milk (7oz at 6:30, 5oz at 11) meant that she leaked through her diaper and was wet at 5. Oops.

~//~

I am so thoroughly cheesed about this morning.

Jen and I have an agreement that she will do the middle of the night feeding. It has been this way for quite some time, mainly because I am one of those people whose body decides that if I get up and move around at any time in the early morning, I am up for the day. It can be 2, 3, 4, 5... if I get up, I'm up. And that sucks. But Jen can go back to sleep anywhere, anytime, so it made more sense for her to get up for that. I hear the baby, wake up, wake Jen up, and she does the rest. Or that was the plan.

So at 5, Punk got up and I woke Jen up, and she changed her and gave her the bottle. And then came back in and told me she wouldn't go back to bed, I needed to try. I reminded her about our arrangement, and she told me that 5am was a "grey area" and wasn't the "middle of the night." Are you effing kidding me?

So I got up, picked up the baby, rocked the baby, she got sleepy, I put her back in the crib, she woke up. I left the room, she started to cry. So I went back in, took off her sleep sack, brought her into bed with me. Her pajamas were damp from the leaky diaper. She fell asleep. Jen was asleep. Ralph was asleep on my pillow. Everyone was asleep, except me of course.

At 6:30ish, Jen's alarm goes off, which wakes up the baby, who starts to cry. I get her settled back down and Jen goes to reset the alarm for more sleep and I say, "You are not resetting that alarm to wake the baby up again," and she gets up and heads to the bathroom. But I guess she had already snoozed her alarm, because seven minutes later, it went off. And thankfully I was able to resettle the baby and she continued sleeping, but I couldn't shut the alarm off because my arm was under the baby and my hand was over her ear. I had to lay there, awake and pissed, listening to Jen's mix CD and swearing in my head through the loud songs. Somehow she managed not to hear the music at all in the bathroom, so I got to listen to music while she went to the bathroom, while she got undressed, while she took a shower, while she got dried off and dressed, while she did her hair and brushed her teeth and all of that nonsense. Fin the Dumbcat heard the music, realized that someone was up, and came over for love... so I had to carefully block him from stepping on the baby over and over and over. Over half an hour later she comes out and says, "Oh shit, how did this happen?" Well, you hit snooze, that's how.

Gotta love getting up at 5am because it's not /technically/ the middle of the night. What the bleep ever.

Oh my god, somebody stop me from punching our real estate lawyer in the nose. Seriously.

We're getting into crunch time with no formal numbers. I know my mortgage guy is ON it and did everything on his end on time. He calls me at noon when I'm chowing into lunch - any word? No. He says he will call her again and remind her that the Loan Processor leaves at 2. No call. He calls again with a friendly reminder. And again, reminding her that the Processor is gone now but the Office Manager is here until 5. He calls me at 5 and says, "Hey, any word?" No. But while we're commiserating, she beeps in.

He calls back. She "has had so much work to do that she hasn't even gotten to LOOK at our stuff, but she will do it right now... can he wait an hour or so?" ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME? You are working a closing on Monday and you haven't looked at anything until after 5 on Friday? Are you the biggest douchebag in the history of douchebags?

So Jeff (who is a God) reluctantly agrees to wait around at the office instead of being at home helping his knocked up wife clean the house for some weekend guests. And the Office Manager reluctantly agrees to let Jeff call her on her personal cell (she left at 5). And now our house is putting two good people in a craptacular situation because our lawyer is a douchebag. And to reward her for all of this asshattery, she gets MONEY.

My god, I am livid. She will be very VERY fortunate if she does not get her eyeballs poked out with the pen with which I signed my damned housing contracts. I seriously want to walk in there on Monday and say, "Yeah, you're a douchebag and I hate you and I'm not paying you anything."

Instead I made myself feel better by spending a little extra to get us a hotel room with an indoor pool for the night before the closing. Because if I have to see her ugly-ass face, at least I can go SWIMMING.