Month: June 2019

A Different Version of Sandwich Generation Living?

Black cat
Top Seniority Cat, the grande dame of our household.

 

Can I consider myself back in the sandwich generation if my kid who lives at home is now 21 and the elder in my care is a cat?

The 21-year-old, M, is an adult who is working on starting a business. Yet I have to issue chore reminders, plus figuring him into groceries and meal planning. Also, he’s experiencing nagging health issues and likes for me to go to some appointments with him to take notes.  So there’s some parenting going on.

Meanwhile, top seniority cat, Luna, still has some spunk at age 17. But she is sometimes confused, about half deaf as far as I can tell, and increasingly needy. Her thyroid levels are up, so I have to administer a drop of cream to the inside flap of her ear once a day. She does not care for this and hides under a bed if she knows it’s coming. Luckily for me, her hearing loss means I can sneak up on her.

Unluckily for all of us, she’s taken to yowling at top volume at various times of the day and night, until someone shows up to pet and comfort her. She sounds like she’s being murdered. This happens if she finds herself alone in a room and/or we’re all asleep when she needs our love. It’s a lot like having a baby, really. “Who got up with her last time?”

Often, I’ll find her in what is now our spare bedroom, sometimes with her nose nearly to the wall, as if she can’t remember how to get out of the place. Maybe she wants to come to us, but can’t find the door?

We love her, but being awakened multiple times per night frays the nerves of everyone in the house. So I’ve started following her thyroid medicine with a “reward” of wet food containing tuna…and DRUGS. I drug her at night. After that, we’re good to go until around 5:00 in the morning, when the yowls commence. Getting up once at 5:00 — that I can do. So much better than the previous 3 or 4 times per night.

Not that I baby her. Oh no. Well, maybe. I really want to tear out the old, disgusting carpet in the spare bedroom and convert that space to my office/writing area. But I keep putting it off, because the cat spends so much time in there, and it might upset her. Poor thing is already confused.

Basically, she has her own bedroom. Where we cater to her needs and her whims, all day and all night, whenever we’re at home. She’s an old lady, after all. She deserves some comfort and ease.

 

 

Temp to Fire – Predatory Employers

silver macbook pro
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

I don’t want to hear one more word about Millennials being entitled or having no work ethic or being snowflakes. Not a word.

My firstborn, who at 24 is at the tail end of the Millennial generation, has been working a full-time office job and a part-time retail job for a year with no benefits from either — no paid vacation days, no insurance, no retirement plan. No benefits because the full-time office job was on a “temp-to-hire” basis through an agency.

Several people started with the company at the same time, and their one-year anniversary came up this week, the point at which the contract stipulated the Corporation Who Must Not Be Named had to hire the workers themselves, providing benefits, etc. if it wanted to keep them on. The corporate overlords elected not to keep them on and cut them all loose to start over with a new batch to whom they could avoid providing benefits. It’s not temp-to-hire. It’s temp-to-fire.

This is the culture of employment we’ve built in our society. It’s predatory. 20-somethings who have done everything right get used for a while and then spit out. There have been many angsty messages back and forth the past couple of days between the son and me.

My silver lining is seeing how much he’s matured, and how much more resilient he is than he has been in the past in the face of unexpected set-backs. He applied for five jobs within 24 hours of being let go. And this morning he messaged to let me know he’d had a phone interview already and was on his way to fill out hiring paperwork for a call center job. He says he plans to take it not because he expects to enjoy it, but because it will pay the bills. He’ll keep looking for other jobs in the meantime. That really is a leap in maturity. (Hold that thought — I’ve already had to come back within a couple of hours to update that the call center job had complications and is not an immediate start. So he’s looking into other short-term options.)

As angry as I am at corporate American in general, and my son’s ersatz employer in general, it’s heartening to see my kid has grown into someone who handles adversity with a good attitude and a plan of action.