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best news i'll hear today
Mar. 31st, 2020 03:28 pmI've been working from home since March 12, but for the first week (March 16-20) we kept sending the prince to day care, because it was open and they didn't have clusters of more than 10 people and the slight veneer of normalcy was good for all three of us. We had some anxiety about it, but. (It was the only place he was going, and I wasn't going anywhere at all once I'd gone to the pharmacy one time; Himself has been doing the grocery shopping alone rather than en famille on Saturdays, and we haven't seen the in-laws since March 8.)
On the 22nd they got the news that a parent of a kid in another classroom had tested positive. The parent nor the kid hadn't been in the place since the 13th (though who knows when the test was administered, for the results to come in that Sunday), but that was the push we needed to finally get all the way out of the pool. We made a child-care-plus-work-from-home schedule and started keeping him home on the 23rd. I've been able to work eight hours a day while Himself looks after the prince, and Himself gets about four hours to himself while I look after the prince. But Himself is starting a new job on April 21 (or, stop presses, maybe sooner), so we'll have to think of something else.
The new Families First act, which expands paid sick leave and FMLA and includes taking care of a minor whose school or day care is closed because of the 'rona as a reason to use those types of leave, kicks in tomorrow, and effective yesterday the day care did indeed close for the foreseeable future. Himself will not be eligible for family leave even under the new law until he's worked at the new job for 30 days, but I've been at my job for five years and haven't used FMLA since the prince was born, so.
And today I learned that while under the new law I'm entitled to 80 hours of extra sick time at 100% of my normal salary (up to some maximum that I think I'll max out, but whatever) - that is, two weeks - and 400 hours of extra family leave at 2/3 of my normal salary (up to some maximum ditto whatever) - that is, 10 weeks - I don't have to take that time all in a block. I knew intermittent FMLA was a thing, and it turns out I can use both the sick and the family leave intermittently as well - which means Himself and I can swap eight-hour and four-hour blocks and be covered at almost all of my salary and definitely all of his new salary for 24 weeks instead of just 12. And if things are still not back to normal by then, well, Himself will qualify for FMLA himself by then? And also, we'll have other problems by then.
Dear god I hope that's long enough for things to be back to some semblance of normal.
On the 22nd they got the news that a parent of a kid in another classroom had tested positive. The parent nor the kid hadn't been in the place since the 13th (though who knows when the test was administered, for the results to come in that Sunday), but that was the push we needed to finally get all the way out of the pool. We made a child-care-plus-work-from-home schedule and started keeping him home on the 23rd. I've been able to work eight hours a day while Himself looks after the prince, and Himself gets about four hours to himself while I look after the prince. But Himself is starting a new job on April 21 (or, stop presses, maybe sooner), so we'll have to think of something else.
The new Families First act, which expands paid sick leave and FMLA and includes taking care of a minor whose school or day care is closed because of the 'rona as a reason to use those types of leave, kicks in tomorrow, and effective yesterday the day care did indeed close for the foreseeable future. Himself will not be eligible for family leave even under the new law until he's worked at the new job for 30 days, but I've been at my job for five years and haven't used FMLA since the prince was born, so.
And today I learned that while under the new law I'm entitled to 80 hours of extra sick time at 100% of my normal salary (up to some maximum that I think I'll max out, but whatever) - that is, two weeks - and 400 hours of extra family leave at 2/3 of my normal salary (up to some maximum ditto whatever) - that is, 10 weeks - I don't have to take that time all in a block. I knew intermittent FMLA was a thing, and it turns out I can use both the sick and the family leave intermittently as well - which means Himself and I can swap eight-hour and four-hour blocks and be covered at almost all of my salary and definitely all of his new salary for 24 weeks instead of just 12. And if things are still not back to normal by then, well, Himself will qualify for FMLA himself by then? And also, we'll have other problems by then.
Dear god I hope that's long enough for things to be back to some semblance of normal.
