A Beginning And An End

Ok, eldest son has been safely deposited at kindergarten, youngest is camped out with the Little Einstein's & Supreme Leader is... I'm not sure what she's doing. She keeps mentioning a shower... nope, she's talking about cooking. Nope, she's talking about me cooking. We'll ignore that. I've got a cup of coffee, my bagel and the computer all to myself. (Just an aside, 'cause it's what I do, cream cheese and dulce de leche on the bagel of your choice. You MUST try this. I'm going to name it the Captain Fat Ass.) Feed Reader is off so I'm not distracted (oh, and another aside, what reader do you use? I've got News Fire and I'm trashing it soon. According to it half of the bloggers I follow, including Dooce, have not posted anything in months.) and I guess I should start a new paragraph at some point but I'm wondering if there's any point now. Should I just keep rambling on and on, bouncing from topic to topic and... no, I'm annoying myself as well.

Ok... again with the ok. Alright, so I've been dancing around this topic for a couple of months now, and I've started this particular post about a dozen times and deleted all of them. Now I'm just fed up with it and want to get past it. I'm unemployed. Gainfully, but still unemployed. Eight weeks ago my department was pulled into a boardroom and told the company had decided to centralize us to Toronto. They told us they'd be more than happy for us to continue working there, but the commute across three time zones just wasn't that appealing.

We were given three options. One, find a new position within the company and keep working. Unfortunately there are not a lot of openings at our particular level and to drop a level would be like the captain chaining himself to an oar. No thanks. Even positions at our level really suck outside of our department. And positions above? Meh. Honestly, I've needed to leave for a long time, I just needed a boot in the ass.

Second and third options were basically the same and revolve around the financial package. Second is to take a lump sum and walk. Which sounds all well and good, but there's always a catch, right? The company's standpoint is basically this: we're giving you this money even though we didn't have to. We don't really want to either but some idiot in HR decided we should a long time ago and because we haven't figured a way out yet we're going to skim 25% off the top JUST BECAUSE WE CAN! After that, the government steps in and rapes the remainder, leaving me just enough to buy a squeegee. Hmm, tempting but...

And finally, take your entire package in bi-weekly payments as if you were still working and get taxed as if you were still working. And yes, there's a catch to this too. If you happen to find a job while you're being paid out, the payments are cancelled and you only receive 50% of whatever is left. Hmm, so you're going to pay me to stay at home and I can't get another job for a year?

STAY AT HOME DAD!!! WOOT! I'll let you guess as to which option I chose. Taking the lump sum, finding a new job and paying down some debt obviously wouldn't have been a bad idea. Taking the opportunity to spend a year with my children though? An opportunity that, short of a lottery win will never happen again? I couldn't pass that one up. And as luck would have it, this is the first year they are both in school at the same time. I think we're going to have some fun. And just think of the blog fodder!

I was going to go on a bit more about this, but my little monkey is demanding attention and it's becoming fairly obvious (and disgusting) that he has his first cold of the year. For some reason he can't do a puzzle he's done a thousand times already. Plus it's almost time to pick up the big monkey and apparently I need pants for that.