I did the same song and dance that I’ve done with HHSC since 2014, whereupon for some reason the boys’ child support cases would be referred to the child support office for enforcement in spite of the fact that Monster’s child support order has had a good cause waiver on it since custody was finalized, barring the two weeks in which enforcement efforts were taken because of a screw-up that probably got someone fired, and the fact that I was literally never told that I could request one in Bub’s case until 2014, which would have completely bypassed a custody, support, and visitation order being drawn up to begin with. (More to the point with Bub’s child support case and everything else related to it: I was told that if I “didn’t comply”, we would lose some of the benefits that our household gets. I was never informed that I could have claimed good cause since the start, continue to get those benefits, and not have to cooperate once it was approved.)

However, when told that Bub’s good cause waiver “wasn’t approved” by the chief ombudsman (although I had originally been told by a representative that both waivers were approved and quickly got the impression that this was not something I was supposed to know, that HHSC and the child support office were merely choosing not to honor my youngest son’s good cause waiver in attempts to enforce the child support case of his that never should have been drawn up to begin with), I began leaving comments on their social media pages. I began talking about what was going on, which ultimately drew the attention of HHSC because I was frequently using phrases like “endangering my child” and “endangering my family”. I decided that it would be worth my while to lodge a daily complaint on the child support website against the chief ombudsman who insisted on leaving a potentially unsafe case open for active enforcement, then going so far as to send messages over the child support website stating that I was no longer comfortable with her involvement in my children’s cases. I sent a few more internal e-mails about… why this was even happening to individuals working for HHSC that had helped out when this had happened in the past. Along with filing a formal complaint with the HHSC Ombudsman every single day, I filed a complaint about Bub’s case on the Federal Child Support Agency’s website (or whatever the specific name of it is). The squeaky wheel was going to get the grease or a lot more people were going to know about this. And I contacted Legal Aid again.

I made it clear that if I was going to have to litigate over this, unless I couldn’t (I did STEM prior to the onset of disability, not law) that I wanted to be compensated in the form of all of the arrears on Bub’s child support case or the maximum that you can get from a civil case. Maybe assigning a dollar value to it helped out…

At any rate, imagine my surprise yesterday afternoon when I get a call from someone at the HHSC Ombudsman’s office stating that Bub’s good cause waiver was being upheld, that enforcement would immediately cease on the case, and that we had nothing more to worry about as it related to HHSC and the OAG potentially jeopardizing us. (Now all I have to do is actually get disability for myself someday, don’t I?)

For some reason, after our SNAP renewal the state has seen fit to refer Bub and Monster’s child support cases to the OAG (Office of the Attorney General) again… in spite of the fact that good cause waivers exempting them from this benefit requirement were approved for both cases as of May 2021. I’m not sure why this continues to happen like clockwork as it mysteriously has since 2014, but I’ve been initiating closure requests on both cases since they opened and will continue to do so each day. I also e-mailed the contacts that I have from HHSC and the OAG, and I’ve made sure that there is a paper trail of me not having revoked either of the good cause waivers. In addition, I submitted a formal complaint to the HHSC ombudsman. The last time that I had to do this, I was in the process of acquiring a lawyer through Legal Aid to litigate. As soon as HHSC and the OAG found out that I had done this, they immediately put both cases back into non-enforcement where they stayed for several months. I’m merely chronicling this here to attest to the fact that it has once again happened, it continues to periodically happen in a problematic way, and I want it to stop.

And this is due to the Omicron variant, which is said to be able to sidestep immunity from vaccination.

Because no one would quarantine or will mask and socially distance unless they have to, I think we’re going to spend a lot longer in this pandemic than we should. And then there’s the whole matter of people not getting vaccinated who are able to get vaccinated, making things worse. “But it has a 99.2% survival rate!”

I’ll get around to posting pictures of what we got for Christmas (Sol Invictus) as the kids stay still for them.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to join a few more Discord servers — you can indefinitely mute notification noises from entire servers “until you turn it back on”, which is great — that have to do with gaming. I figured that it couldn’t hurt to be a member of more than just, like… two servers, and as much as I like Supernatural I didn’t want to put all of my eggs into the Supernatural basket. It’ll still be there, but I don’t want it to be the primary (or only) reason that I use Discord. I’ve also found that I don’t have to feel as though I need to hide participation in gaming activities like I do participation in fandom ones from those who know me in real life, and the more problematic aspects of participation in certain fandoms caused me to begin doing this in approximately… 2012. So yeah. Not only do I not know anyone in person who would be interested in fandom — all of my friends are the faithful members of the “general audience” that gets slipped into debates — but it’s also not something that I would feel comfortable bringing up to them, and that’s not something that I feel bad about. I want to continue participating in hobbies and interests, being able to talk about more of those hobbies and interests with all of my friends without first having to scrutinize whether or not I “should” dependent on what type of friend they are… and as stated, I don’t want all of my eggs in the same basket.

For the record, I don’t see this as a “goodbye” or me announcing that I am leaving fandom or anything.

It’s just me announcing that I may not be quite as available to do fandom-related things as I had previously been because I want to engage in other hobbies and interests as well. I may not be “around” as often in that sense, and that’s okay. But for the people who have known me longer than my participation in various fandoms, especially those that have known me as a gamer, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of them.