I'm super close to my dad. It was just me and brother growing up, and he was close to both of us in different ways. He took me bra shopping on my wedding day, as an example. Right now it's really really difficult to watch him aging, because he's not quite as all there as he used to be, and physically there are a lot of limitations, which is really hard for him.

Matilda and I attended a memorial yesterday for her friend Lucys' dad, Blake. He was only 56, died of cancer that he'd been fighting for the last three years.

He was such a great dad. His life revolved around his family, and he took such joy in it.

Really wonderful memorial with so many funny stories about him. Blake was the quintessential Cali dude. Skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding. (Like, he was snowboarding before it was a *thing* and then when it became a thing he was ranked 8th in the country.) Lean and tanned and blonde hair, and happy to light up.

But the flipside was that he grew up in a family of property managers and owners, so he went out with his dad fixing plumbing and wiring and carpentry from the time he could walk. Had a kit of 100 year old plumbing tools he inherited from his dad and used them on buildings with 100 year old plumbing. Had a thing for MGs and bought every dilapidated one he found and fixed it up.

He could fix anything anywhere, and he'd drop all his stuff to help his friends fix their stuff. Never walked past a debris box without finding a treasure. Lots of great stories by his family and friends but the last one was emblematic:

"This was the moment when I realized Blake could take any negative and turn it into a positive. We were driving in one of his MGs and the engine caught on fire. Just went up in flames. He calmly pulled over, and turned to me and said, 'This is great! My mom just got me a fire extinguisher two days ago!"

My dad and I shared some inappropriate coping mechanisms tonight. After a week at home recuperating, he was ready to walk to the pub. We went don the street to have 3 or 5 beers.

This 80 year old man can still outdrink me.

Oh, dads. I have a lot to say about my relationship with mine, but I'm not up to it at the moment. Overall, a wonderful man. I wish I had a better relationship with him, but he still can't even say he loves me out loud. I mean, I know he loves me. Still.

Not really in a place to talk about my dad right now. It's been a hard month and change.

I spent my entire therapy appointment this week talking about how to set a boundary with my dad that's going to piss him off, so I'm not a great source here.

It's okay if it's not great. Mine's not, either, (although I never expected it to get like this.)

I keep freaking out about this and I've mentioned it in Natter and I know I maybe over reacting but I just feel like...damn at work I feel like I'm screwed no matter what. If sales fall and my commission doesn't cover my pay then all I get is my pay and I don't get any commission and I got into a deficit and don't make commission until I crawl out of that hole. If the store does something like close but gives us paid time for closing and I only get my hourly rate I'll be screwed. I did the math and unless I can get creative with non productive time (time spent doing things besides selling that are necessary) I'm looking at having a pay check that will be almost half of what I'm making now. Which won't be a lot.

It's just got me super anxious.

I don't blame you, that would make me anxious as well. Have you spoken to the powers that be about this? You just went back to commissions like 5 minutes ago, and wasn't part of the deal that commissions were going to be sufficient to make up the difference? Are they approachable?

I vaguely talked about it yesterday with our HR manager. I haven't worked a full week so I don't know what is going to happen but once I agreed on the hourly rate it was set until May when they can revisit it. So I can't change my hourly rate at all but if I could change my hourly rate to be higher it would mean I would go into a bigger deficit much faster and then in May they could switch my pay rate to lower but I would have to earn my way out of the deficit so I would still be stuck with the low pay.

I am going to work this week and see how it goes and I'm going to figure out who is covering the dept when I'm not there and talk to them about ringing sales of shoes under my numbers, well the ones who aren't commission .

I am not the only person who is on commission or who has just switched and I know that other people are going to be effected but right now it's just stressing me out on top of everything else.

PArt of this stress is brought to you by the fact my medicine costs me $250/month out of pocket until my deductible kicks in...which will be june this year I think