Yes, if it were just me or my husband and me, I’d go IP. I think I probably need it (or maybe it’s about 80/20), but we cannot afford to do it. I am seeing my pdoc Monday morning; I will let him know about my mood plummeting. And I have the cell number of the phone he keeps for urgent matters that are not 911 but still very pressing.

We can’t do it with my daughter though. Hubby has to leave for work before she even gets up. We did use a good church based childcare here when I attempted my last failed job. Even if they discounted the childcare (which they will in times of hardship), the earliest they open is 6:30 AM, and my husband has to leave for work around 6:15 AM. My daughter definitely will not get herself up in the morning, and it is such a struggle to wake her, that would just be another burden on my husband’s plate. He already told me he is going to have to work into the evening or night tomorrow to deal with all the stuff the school has dumped on him this week,pack double lunches for him. They gave him 2 preps- physics AP 1 (which are the go-getters, hoping to take the physics 1 AP test at years’ end and get university credit for physics 1 (this will be his first year teaching AP, but among the teachers, it’s seen as a reflection of good work, a bit of an honor to teach AP). Then, the second prep they gave him is physics si-op, largely composed of ESL students (he speaks no Spanish), but he taught Si-Op physics 2 years in a row. So he has the go getters and then the kids he says need gentle encouragement, a bit of babying, much prodding along the way, many of them working 2 part time jobs to help their families get by, who are exhausted and could care less about physics. And 2 preps is always harder, but he said the admin could have made it easier on him by giving him the AP class for half his classes and plain regular physics for the rest. But the admin at his school is very inconsiderate of teachers. He is also part owner of a nanotechnology company in India; the CEO read my husband’s Ph.D. thesis on making carbon nanotubes and wanted to build a nanotube reactor based off my husband’s design (which his boss patented, giving him no credit), but minor changes could be made, and they accidentally used a different material for some part of the process because that was all they could afford (husband’s graduate advisor was Rick Smalley, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the Buckey Ball, money was no issue for him), but that actually made the nanotubes much more pure than any currently on the market. They consult my husband regularly on problems they have or if he thinks aa idea will or will not work out and why. It does not make any money to pay us yet, unfortunately, but the company is getting very good press in India and even won an award for a startup company from DOW Chemical. It is very likely that within the next 2-5 yr, he will travel to India to be on site for awhile, at which point, he is optimistic the company will be able to pay him a salary. I really think he needs to tell them he needs payment for all the hours he spends researching, thinking, and consulting (because this is very complex stuff; it’s hard thinking, and a wrong decision could cause an explosion or horrific accident, killing or injuring one person up to everyone on site), even if he does hold a decent share of stock in the company.

None of that helps us now though.