Mixed trio

1. So the amended budget relief bill has passed the House, with most of the amendments the Senate added stripped out. Now it falls to the Senate to pass or punt it. They have four days before layoff notices go out and three weeks before the city shuts down. I hope they can pull their heads out of their asses and compromise before then.

Meanwhile, I've realized a problem with the move back to Michigan plan is that if we haul all of our stuff back to Michigan, then gets called the next week to get offered his job back, he'll get kicked off of unemployment if he turns it down. Yet at the same time, our lease is up at the end of November, and I certainly don't want to get to February or so and run out of money only to be stuck with another 9 months of lease. So it's going to be a weird timing act balancing the likelihood of the crisis being resolved versus needing to move. Assuming it's necessary.

Sigh. I don't do limbo well.

2. We went to a church picnic Sunday and had a lovely time. There were four babies in church today and we had a good time talking with two of the other sets of parents. One of the babies was a day older than Alec and K had a great time playing with his 2 1/2 year old brother, so I'm hoping we might be able to get together with them.

We've had the worst time trying to meet people since we moved here. It's been a combination of weird work schedules that prevent us from going to the places where we could meet people, having a small child and bad luck. We perhaps haven't been as proactive as we could have been in following up on continuing to get together with people after having an initial social contact, but, well, our phone receives calls too, so it's not like it should all be on us. This is the first time in a long time that I've had multiple good, long conversations with people I'm not related to or have known for 15 years. It makes me hopeful.

3. Alec and I had a productive thirty minute nursing session tonight. It wasn't enough to fill him up - I eventually ended it because he was getting frantic and handed him off to his father for a bottle top-up. But I had pumped less than two hours previously and got only two ounces when I pumped again after feeding him when I would have expected at least four, and he drank only two ounces out of the bottle when a typical feeding for him is 5 1/2, so he clearly got quite a bit of milk from me.

It took a while to get up the will to try again. First I had thrush, then he developed painful reflux. And as it turns out, I felt so defeated after his one months appointment where he was only half a pound over his birth weight despite bottle feeding on demand that it took a while to get up the courage to trust that he would get any real nourishment. But as it turns out, I really hate bottlefeeding in the middle of the night and would give quite a lot to be able to breastfeed him in bed, especially when I find myself dropping the bottle on his face as I accidentally drift off and lose my grip. I also have the pressing dealine of wanting to be able to breastfeed him on the plane when we fly to California next month. Even if we have to give him formula as well, I really don't want to have to figure out how to pump on the plane and there's no way I won't have to relieve the pressure somehow on a six-hour flight. I don't feel the need to work towards exclusive breastfeeding; I like being able to hand him off to B so he can do a late-night feeding or nudge him to get up with the baby in the morning. But the ability to breastfeed when it isn't convenient to pump would be the best of both worlds.

It seems like as I had hoped, getting older has increased his strength. I was reflecting today that it should have been a hint to me that when I was in the hospital, I was marvelling at the fact that my nipples weren't hurting at all despite all of the breastfeeding. I suppose they wouldn't if your infant isn't sucking on them with any real suction.

Workforce

I had my first day back at work on Saturday. It was a quiet day due to the holiday weekend. We actually often get a lot of people on nice days since people like to go into the park on nice days and will then wander in to check us out. But I think a lot of people had plans, or were getting their last trip to the shore in so I was spared having to do much work.

Leaving the baby wasn't too bad. It helped that I was only gone for 6 hours and he was home with B. I'm not sure it will be as easy when I have to start leaving him at daycare when I work on Fridays. Of course, part of my feelings about daycare are currently being colored by the fact that every time I go to pick K up, crowds of children, their upper lips glistening with snot, gather around Alec and reach out to touch him. It's all way too reminiscent of the first day I dropped K off at daycare as a baby, when I saw a two-year-old with a snotty nose and thought, "Here comes our first cold." And lo and behold, by Friday night we were all drowning in baby mucus. Colds aren't a huge problem. But this is Swine Flu season and Alec isn't old enough to get vaccinated. This doesn't exactly make me thrilled to place a small baby in a daycare surrounded by two dozen walking plague carriers, even only one day a week.

***

However, the daycare issue may be moot, because the entire city of Philadelphia is teetering on the precipice. And I am not exaggerating in the slightest.

Last March, we found out that the city budget woes that had us biting our fingernails over B's job had gotten much, much worse, to the point that every city department would have to undergo unbelievably deep cuts if we didn't find a new revenue stream. And after the usual political wrangling, the mayor did, in the form of a sales tax increase. Crisis averted, yes? Not quite, because the tax increase has to be approved by the state legislature, something you would think wouldn't take long at all. However, here we are six months later and the state of affairs is that the House, controlled by Democrats, passed a bill that simply approved the tax increase. Then last week, the Senate, controlled by Republicans passed a bill that approved the tax increase and contained some strongly anti-union measures cutting pensions and putting collective bargaining rights in jeopardy that affected every city in the state. The House can't possibly go along with this, since they're all up for re-election next year and most of them won't make it out of the primaries if they lose union support.

Here's where we stand: the House is supposed to vote on Thursday, and they are exceedingly unlikely to vote for the Senate version. If they send make amendments and send it back to the Senate, we will hopefully get something bearable. If they send their original version back, the Senate has indicated that they won't vote for that and we will be at an impasse. Bear in mind that this is the same legislature that as of September 8 has yet to finalize the budget that was supposed to take effect July 1, so that gives you a good sense of their ability to compromise.

As for us, if nothing passes before then, 3000 city workers will receive layoff notices September 18, and their last day of work will be October 2. All of the city libraries, rec centers and parks will shut down. Six fire engine companies will be shut down and over 900 positions in the police department will be laid off. Garbage collection will go to every other week and thousands of light bulbs will be taken out of street lights. The city will essentially cease to function in any meaningful way. It goes without saying that and I will both lose our jobs, but that almost pales in the face of the big picture.

We'll be okay. I've already talked to my mother and since she hasn't sold her house yet, if the worst happens we will move in. We have no savings thanks to the goddamn cat and her goddamn string swallowing, so we'll have to borrow money to make it through October, let alone move, but thankfully we have nice parents who have yet to not support us when we needed it. B will have unemployment for at least 9 months and I was told when I left my online job that I could have it back pretty much any time I wanted so I'll start that again and we'll be decently well off financially. Part of the stimulus package was covering 65 percent of the cost of COBRA, so our health insurance will even be relatively affordable. Honestly? There's a piece of me that gets really excited about the idea of moving home and living in my lovely large childhood home, ten minutes from my mother and less than three hours from 's parents. However, it's certainly not worth unemployment and the price the entire city would have to pay.

A fascinating turn of events

So! Remember when I wrote about the city of Philadelphia attempting to make up a billion dollar budget shortfall by making huge cuts to city departments, including closing 11 libraries and laying off 110 staff? Matters have taken a fascinating turn:

Neighborhoods losing their libraries were understandably upset, and some filed a lawsuit to prevent the library closings. Today, a judge granted the injunction to prevent the library closings on the quite reasonable grounds that the mayor neglected the little detail of the law requiring city council approval for closing city facilities. The mayor is a bit of a high-handed moron.

But here's where it gets fascinating: the reason libraries were being closed was that there was no way to cut the library budget without cutting staff (since staffing makes up 85% of the budget), and staffing is already thin enough that losing any more positions meant that not all libraries could be adequately staffed. But the layoffs have already happened. People are leaving their jobs this week. And even if they somehow rehired all of the laid off people, they had managed to get the number fired down to 59 by reducing the rest of the positions through attrition - people retiring, quitting or transferring.

I truly don't know what they're going to do. There has been a truly moronic plan floating around for all of the libraries in the city to be open three days a week, which sounds like a nightmare of confusion for both patrons and staff. But how are they going to keep the libraries open without enough people to run them? And if they start hiring, where is the money going to come from?

The money issue is the sticker, and the reason that while I don't like the idea of closing libraries, particularly when we thought it could be affecting us badly, I couldn't see an alternative. The city really is short on money and cuts are being made across the board. Even the mayor is taking a pay cut. I can't point to any place they could take the money from, and as valuable as I think libraries are, I think police and sanitation are pretty important too. It sucks to lose your closest library, but the ones closed were the smallest ones and no person in the city will live more than two miles from a library branch.

All I know is that whatever happens, the next few weeks are going to be highly interesting.