Back to Work

Gabe has been working at Stonebrook, a skilled nursing facility right off of Denkinger these past couple weeks now. He is one of their per diem SLP's and is usually getting 6-7 hours a day when they only have him booked for 4. With all the paper work and waiting on patients to finish up other activities, he is getting good hours and I think enjoying what he is doing. He did skilled nursing and whatever else he does with older generation people during one of his internships so this is good review for him and is giving him the experience he needs to apply other places in the future.
We were in the car yesterday driving to Jamba Juice talking about how this summer really has worked out well for us. The school year ended and we were not sure about what we were going to be doing, or where we were going. We decided not to renew our lease on the apartment and move in with mom and dad for a couple weeks. Luckily we had saved enough for our basic needs for summer. Gabe's company said they were looking for work down south, but they only work with school districts and not really anything else. The summer programs here in California are being cut, except special ed programs. So at the most Gabe would have gotten 4 weeks of work out of the 3 months off. The only other SLP who is contracted in the district told Gabe about an opening position at a skilled nursing facility in Concord that she usually works at but she didn't want the full time position she had before. So Gabe applied. It looked like it was between him and this other guy and we found out that they had hired the other guy based on experience. I immediately thought it was pay related. The other guy was probably cheaper. And he was. He was right out of grad school and so I guess technically Gabe wasn't hired based on experience. He had more than the other guy.
But they still wanted him for per diem hours and so he took that. It was better than nothing. And no other place was going to hire for 2 months left in the summer. Yeah, it had already been a month since school had gotten out. But we counted our blessings and were happy for the hours of work, and for the time we had been able to spend together the past month.
So Gabe went in for orientation and they told him that he would most likely have hours every day, at least 4. We were quite surprised. I was expecting maybe 4 hours 2 days out of the week,... maybe. But that was another blessing. They didn't hired that other guy afterall. Instead they hired 3 per diem people, I'm guessing so they don't have to pay benefits, and Gabe gets as many hours as he likes. The great thing is now, that he is getting skilled nursing experience, school experience, and also Early Intervention hours, all of which look great on a resume and especially so close to finishing grad school which will open doors for us later, we hope. And he can continue the per diem hours as well as the EI hours while still working during the school year. If he wishes. I would like to have him home at nights. But luckily that is something we do not have to decide now.
And mom and dad have invited us to stay the summer with them. Which helps significantly. We pay them what we can in rent to help with staying here, so hopefully we don't cost them anything.

It really has worked out better than I expected it would. I actually don't know what I was expecting, to be honest. It just all... worked.

So now we don't have to stress for the moment.

And I'm 17 weeks along today. 3 weeks until we find out the gender of this baby! I keep thinking its a boy. In my head its a boy. I don't know why. Gabe wonders how I will react if its a girl, and I really don't know. I think of Sydney having a little sister and them playing together and that makes me happy too.