work, sewing, surprise visit and sunkist's caffeine content

[same_sky]

georgiamars asked me how they took it at work that I wasn't planning on coming back. Again, it's important to note that I work with wonderful people. They were so nice about it. During my maternity leave, I got a new boss. (I might have talked about the tatting guild at work, which was more of a crafting guild that started with me teaching them how to tat, and later one of the ladies taught us how to knit, and a couple of them how to crochet--the new boss is the knitting instructor.) So, although I have never actually worked for her, I called her yesterday afternoon to tell her I wasn't coming back. She was super nice about it--having five children herself, she was pretty understanding of why I was leaving. ;) Then I talked to the director of our department, and he was also very understanding--he had gone through the same situation when one of his children was born and they made the same choice. They both said that I may be able to return at some later date if I wished--no guarantees or promises made or requested on either side, but at least they didn't tell me that I smell funny and would be glad to see the last of me! ;) I really will miss my job, if not the actual part of going there every day. Being able to stay home with Evelyn is a huge weight off my shoulders, though.

I talked to K, who is still in the trenches there, and we went out to lunch today. She talked me into stopping in at the workplace on my way back home. Evelyn was good as gold during lunch, only crying a little bit at the very end. She was not terribly happy by the time we went in at work, though she did smile a little at queen_b980 and a couple other people. It was hot outside, she was tired, needed a diaper change and she thought she was starving. She was screaming her little lungs out when I put her into the car seat, but she promptly fell asleep a quarter of a mile away. Poor little baby, her mommy is very mean to her and takes her out on the hottest day of the year. I think it really did wear her out, though, because she's been asleep since we got her home and fed. I have taken the opportunity to get a bunch of sewing done. I am actually still enjoying the sewing hobby, although I wish I was better at it. I guess that will come with practice--it already has, to some degree.

There has been a lot of stuff going on here in the last week or so, because organizing our new life is rather a full-time job in itself. I am not exactly trying to be a perfect housewife here, but I have been keeping up with the house pretty well since I've been home. There have been a lot of phone calls to make and issues to research. M's group insurance is prohibitively expensive, so we've found an individual plan that's cheaper. By the way, even if you get health insurance from an employer, it may be interesting to look into individual plans now and then. They're not as expensive as I thought they'd be. I might have switched my plan even if I did go back to work.

At this point in this post, the doorbell rang twice. I ran to see who was there.. and opened the door to my parents. Surprise! They had certainly not let me know they were coming! So that was a pleasant surprise. I would say that it was a risky thing for them to do but really, I don't go much of anywhere so they were pretty much guaranteed that I'd be home. :)

Hey, did you know that Sunkist has caffeine in it? Those bitches. See, there's this thing--I love Pepsi. While I was pregnant, I tried to avoid drinking too much caffeine even though Pepsi has never tasted so very good in my entire life, so I started drinking orange pop instead, because it doesn't have caffeine, yo. After I had the baby, I really stepped up on the Sunkist instead of the Pepsi because I didn't want her to be irritable and caffeinated. We had a few instances where we thought it really did affect her when I had caffeine, and I have been doing without through cravings and hard times, but at least I had my Sunkist to get me through. In all that time, I had never bothered reading the label, though, until tonight when M pointed out that caffeine is listed as an ingredient. I looked it up and as it turns out, it actually has MORE caffeine than Pepsi. I have been craving Pepsi all this time but resisting it in favor of a drink I don't like as well, but on the bright side, I've been drinking it like there's no tomorrow and I still have a pretty good baby, so apparently it really doesn't bother her and dammit, tomorrow, I am going to have as much Pepsi as I want. (and i am not even going to tell you about how we would laugh at how the baby would start dancing around from all the sugary goodness when i drank it while pregnant. i guess that explains exactly why it made her so hyper. argh. I tried, at least. I really, really tried. EVERYONE knows that orange pop is caffeine free! Oh, and incidentally, apparently everyone knows that iced tea is caffeine free. Did you know that? Because I certainly didn't, until I started asking waiters about what they had without caffeine. 'what I learned is that wait staff cannot tell the difference between caffeine and carbonation. I would comment on the stupidty thereof, but you know, I have been drinking Sunkist for months thinking it had no caffeine so wtf do I know?)

Comments

[blookum.livejournal.com]

I drank Fresca for months before I noticed it was sugar-free.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Fresca is sugar-free? Who knew? :)

[e11en.livejournal.com]

Haha, your observation of your local wait staff cracked me up.

So, how does it work with quitting while you're on maternity leave? What do they pay you for and when do they stop? When I worked for a giant publishing company in Manhattan there were a lot of women who had babies while I was there. All but one decided to quit after the baby arrived. Actually, all but one had it in mind to quit all along but they couldn't say so or their maternity leave wouldn't have been paid. They had to come back to work for like two weeks, then quit, in order to get it paid for.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

My maternity leave was in two parts--the first part was accumulated paid leave--sick days and vacation days. They paid that just as if I was still working--I even accrued a couple of extra paid days off because I was considered to be working while on paid leave. After that, I had twelve weeks of unpaid FMLA. I work for the state (actually, a pseudo-state agency, which is supposed to mean that we can make our own personnel rules but as far as I can tell, it means that we follow both our own rules AND their rules so I'm not sure what's up with that) so I checked online to find that it said that if you don't return from FMLA, you "may be" required to pay back the money that the employer paid for your insurance during your time off. I contacted our HR department on Monday to ask if that was the case, and she didn't think so, but she asked the HR director and called the state personnel agency to find out. (The state personnel agency said they had never even heard of that. I guess that was just a covering-the-options line in there!) So anyway, because my last FMLA time is September 5, I can actually have insurance coverage through them until Nov 1, with them paying their part. I thought that was pretty cool. Of course, with me paying my part, our new plan is still going to be a little cheaper, but it's better coverage so we'll see. It's good to have the choice! And, the short answer was: no, I don't have to repay anything, or go back to work for two weeks. I am, however, planning on going back for one day in order to pass off any files or projects to the right people (though I think I'm actually pretty good as far as that goes already) and pack up my stuff, etc. My mom will come down to stay with the baby that day.

[e11en.livejournal.com]

You should send me an e-mail and tell me all the little details of this insurance thing that no one else would be interested in reading. Like who did you find this better, cheaper plan with and what does it cover or not cover that your work insurance did and blah, blah, blah. This is where I join the geek group. I'm not so much of a tech wizard but I am strangely fascinated by insurance plans. Maybe it comes from the three years I spent working for an insurance company (it was mostly retirement plans too, though for about six months I did work in short term disability where most of the claims were for maternity leave - hence my other geeky questions).

[courtesy.livejournal.com]

Oh that is too funny, sorry :)