u/LumpyPeople4

I lost my wife in late January, I am mid 30s, and I have two toddlers at 3.5yo and nearly 2yo. I have been off work since losing my wife. Unsurprisingly, I am struggling with the idea of going back to work at some point. The kids are in daycare which is ran within a school, so it operates at school hours; the kids go from 8-2. My work wants me to return full time, though I may be able to work part time to match up with the kid's schedule. Full time scares me a lot just from the complete lack of time with the kids. I can put the kids into extended care until 5, but then its picking up the kids, driving home, by that point its 5:30-5:45 so I need to cook dinner, eat dinner, and then start bedtime routine and put them to bed by 8. There would be no real time with the kids, or time for them to just be kids outside of daycare.

Even working part time to pick them up at 2, there is anxiety in being able to get everything else done. Today we were kind of stuck inside just because of how hot it was, so we got groceries, got home and prepped dinner, and had a little bit of time to play. It was surprising how fast the day went when trying to make a somewhat healthy meal. I fear that even if I work part time I'll have to sacrifice a lot in terms of just healthy meals and will have to default more to fast and easy dinners which aren't necessarily the healthiest. My wife had struggled through college with some eating disorders, and became a feeding therapist to help children, so eating healthy was always very very important to her, even more so when it came to our kids. I also do believe that in general (especially here in the states) that all the crap in our foods has a heavy influence on our long term health. Having watched my wife fight her cancer and lose everything makes me want to do all I can to prevent that for my kid's futures.

The kids are very young, and they only get one childhood. The world has taken so much from them already, and I'm struggling with feeling if I return to work that I'd be taking away their childhood as well. Is it a terrible idea to not return to work? I think with our savings and the social security payments we could get by alright. The biggest concern would be healthcare. Has anyone else thought through this as well?

I lost my wife earlier this year, leaving me to care for 2 toddlers. My wife was a high earner and as such the kids get a decent social security survivor benefit. I am debating not returning to work in order to care for the kids, the biggest hesitancy I have is healthcare. I am trying to get an understanding of what coverage would look like for me and the kids, and it is just so very muddy.

If I leave work, I will also receive a caregiver's benefit from social security. My kid's social security payments will not be taxable as they are below the limits for children. I think they won't even have to file taxes at all, but still researching that. I am trying to understand if we would be eligible for medicaid or not, and the general answer appears to be that you need to apply and find out. In order to do so, I first would need to quit and thats a big leap of faith not having any idea on if we are eligible.

I think it all hinges on if the kid's social security survivor benefits count towards the family income. Many other in young widow(er)s groups have claimed that their kid's social security payments have counted in their states, but looking through some resources about NC it seems like maybe they wouldn't. Does anyone have any idea?

I am going to make a backup of my Mac library that is synced to my phone. The Mac says it's synced up, but my phone has been saying it still has 3 photos to sync. The photo count between both devices is 3 off. It's been saying that for a week. I've restarted, have charged every night, have paused and resumed the sync.

Is there any way to see what photos are not synced? I'm not even sure there even are any photos in reality because of how flaky the photos counts seem to be in large libraries.

I have gotten an Apple Watch recently for health reasons and am sad to have to take off my every day watch that was a wedding gift from my late wife. I am trying to replicate the watch face of my traditional watch best that I can on the Apple Watch, but for something so simple it seems surprisingly difficult.

I am looking for a white faced analog watch with navy accents (ideally the hands and positions on the watch). Seems like I can have one or the other, but not both. Style wise, Meridian and California seem to fit the bill best, but I can either have a white background with black hands/positions, or a black background with navy hands/positions. I'm not sure why it's so hard to get a face to customize both the face as well as the hands. Am I missing something simple to customize both, or does anyone have a watch face recommendation for me that can handle what I want?

I have my renewal approaching at the end of June. I was anticipating a 10-15% increase or whatever. I have a smaller home in a non violent weather area, the rates are around $100/mo. Last year I paid ~$1300, was expecting like $1500 this year.

My rate went to $1200 on my renewal notice, all the coverages went up marginally like normal. Idk if it is the same in other states, but in NC you have to approve any rate that is above the rate allowed by the state, it is always above the state allowable whenever I go shopping, so I don't get it, but whatever. The approved rate last year was $1100, so I was charged $200 over. This year it is around $1200, so I'm actually being charged $30 over when I do the real math.

Anyone experience this? I mean, I'm not going to ask Travelers about it, but just completely unexpected. Anything I should look at in my documents to make sure they aren't screwing me somehow? From what I can see, the covered amount is just as good or better. Is it maybe that the cost of replacement has gone up way more and now my actual coverage is lower than it should be and thus the lower price? Just trying to make sure I'm not getting screwed somehow.

I have 2 lines, my own and my late wife's. She has an annual iPhone upgrade on her line, mine is every 2 years. We both are on magenta max. At some point I am going to go into the store and try to get them to swap phone numbers on the lines so that way my number has the annual upgrade. I don't know how long I'll continue to pay for her plan, but at some point I'll probably downgrade it or port it out, but I'll keep the number in some capacity most likely.

I am getting an Apple Watch, if I get it paired to my phone number, will that muddy the line exchange between my wife and my numbers? Is it better that I just hold off until after I try and get the numbers swapped?

I was also just thinking of getting as a standalone plan to avoid any issues with swapping the lines. Is there a problem then changing that plan to a paired plan down the line? I'll be getting the $300 promo for the watch, not sure if that muddies a plan change.

I have 2 phones on Magenta Max with the hometown discount. I am currently looking at getting a Series 11 Apple Watch. The T-Mobile site lets me select the $300 promo, and also the $5 Watch Plan Plus with Beyond Savings plan for it, but then it drops all the promos at checkout. Chatting w/ T Force they say that the Watch Plan Plus with Beyond Savings plan is not a valid plan to activate the $300 off promo. Changing the plan to the standard $15/mo plan makes the checkout look good.

Sam's Club is running a $90 promo right now on the Series 11 which makes bringing my own watch plus a $5 plan a better deal than getting $300 off and a $15 plan. I asked T Force if I could bring my own watch and get the $5/mo plan and they said no, I have to give up my Magenta Max plan to do so. I'm not giving it up since the pricing I have is very good on it.

I cannot just bring my own watch and add a line on the website, at least not that I've found, so I cannot verify what price it would be. Is it true that I need to give up Magenta Max? If so, I'll probably just take the $300 off promo instead.

I am a newly single dad after losing my wife earlier this year. My kids are toddlers, and I had the realization while slipping on the stairs (and catching myself) that if I get incapacitated at home while the kids are also at home, we are all toast. The kids are not old enough to know how to dial 911, let alone get a phone out of my pocket if they even knew how to call. People probably wouldn't go prodding around the house for a few days if they hadn't heard from me, at that point the kids are probably toast from lack of water.

That leads me to being interested in an Apple Watch for the fall detection so at least there possibly could be emergency services called (hopefully) if I am incapacitated. Is there any performance difference between the two models? I'm figuring maybe differences in some sensor hardware possibly makes one more sensitive or something, idk.

Also, how far away can it connect to my phone? I am debating getting cellular just for the sake of having connection to emergency services if I am going downstairs and leave the phone upstairs or something, but I would say 90% of the time I should have the phone on me. Will it connect to the phone from across the house if I do end up with just GPS only? I presume if I have cellular and do NOT pay for service (or have never activated it), that it'll push through an emergency call anyways. Is that a safe presumption?

Thanks for the help!

I am making a backup of my own right now by exporting all my items as the unedited originals. If I add up the photos and videos at the bottom of the library (it is fully synced), I get ~41k items. When I do cmd+a to highlight them all in order to export, in the top right (and in the export window) it shows there are 4 more items selected than what the library claims to exist. Why is that?

I am merging my wife's library into my own. I have already gotten a local copy in the form of a .photoslibrary stored on an external drive. It has ~32k items and I can go through the import windows on my own library just fine. I am trying to have it add all the photos into a new album just so I have one way to sorting her photos from my own. The import preview all looks great, but when I go to actually import the data that I do not already have, ~30k items, nothing happens.

I thought maybe I pressed cancel instead of import or something, so I try the import again, it comes up w/ a window stating that another import is already in progress (Apple needs to do better in terms of showing progress/statuses). I find the little status wheel thingy by the zoom bar, and it says 0 of 30k items imported. I run to the bathroom and I come back and it's just gone. No more status wheel, recently saved has no new photos, the folder that it created itself to import the photos into is empty, etc. I was able to start the process for another import again, so that dialog box saying something else is already running was gone.

I've tried multiple times with the same result, it just craps out a minute after trying to do the actual import. The import preview works great though, I can see all the photos, it processes what it assumes are already existing photos in the library, etc. I've done restarts, tried having it import direct into the library vs a folder/album, I've tried it fresh from a restart without starting anything else, etc.

Has anyone ran into this before? I get its a good size of data (~200gb), but it's nothing outrageous. Running on an entry level M4 mini, so I think it should have plenty of juice to complete the task.

I am merging my wife's library into my own. I have already gotten a local copy in the form of a .photoslibrary stored on an external drive. It has ~32k items and I can go through the import windows on my own library just fine. I am trying to have it add all the photos into a new album just so I have one way to sorting her photos from my own. The import preview all looks great, but when I go to actually import the data that I do not already have, ~30k items, nothing happens.

I thought maybe I pressed cancel instead of import or something, so I try the import again, it comes up w/ a window stating that another import is already in progress (Apple needs to do better in terms of showing progress/statuses). I find the little status wheel thingy by the zoom bar, and it says 0 of 30k items imported. I run to the bathroom and I come back and it's just gone. No more status wheel, recently saved has no new photos, the folder that it created itself to import the photos into is empty, etc. I was able to start the process for another import again, so that dialog box saying something else is already running was gone.

I just tried processing the 2nd time, and it failed again. It starts, then after clicking a thing or two you get the rainbow ball of death, it unfreezes after a minute and the import is just gone. I'm going to try a 3rd time to see if I just leave it up and don't touch anything if something will happen.

Has anyone ran into this before? I get its a good size of data (~200gb), but it's nothing outrageous. Running on an entry level M4 mini, so I think it should have plenty of juice to complete the task.

I am moving an iCloud synced library onto an external hard drive. It used to have optimized space on and now it is set to download locally. I have got it on there, but I am not sure if it is fully downloaded or not. iCloud says I have 177gb of data, the local copy is 203gb, and every time I open a video the size of the library will change slightly.

At one point during the original syncing it synced all the data and at the bottom of the Photos app it did say "downloading 30,000 pictures" or whatever. It now just says "last synced 5 minutes ago", so it seems like it is done, but the changing library file size without additional photos being generated concerns me a bit. Is there any way to check?

I have an old laptop that has a iPhone backup from 2019 that I am trying to retrieve. The laptop is still working for the most part, but it is from 2011 or so and is starting to show its flakiness a bit.

The backup is 5.72gb, I am copying it onto an external drive. Initially it starts copying it and says it's only transferring 260 items (the original folder as 9977 files), at a size of 190 bytes. Doesn't make a ton of sense, also takes like 2 minutes processing that which again doesn't make a ton of sense. Overall, the transfer window seems to work as intended at for this initial transfer, then it says to copy over some folders it needs admin privileges, so I hit okay. At this point things get even more weird, it asks me if I want to save over the folder that was originally created. I figure it is now trying to actually do the copy, so I save over the original. It still has the original transfer window up saying its 260 items at 190 bytes, and the name of the file is updating as intended in the window, but it says its at a 0 transfer speed with 0 items remaining. It takes like 15-20 minutes to finish up, and when it does I have 6.36gb of data vs the original 5.72gb. The folder number is correct, but the file count is 11209 vs the original 9977 files.

Does anyone have any idea on what's going on? I was planning on backing up the back up incase anything happens to the computer while restoring it, but this has thrown a wrench in that. Is there a way to copy/paste as an admin, or to activate admin mode or something so it doesn't have to query me about it and maybe that makes it go smoother? There is no right click option for paste as admin because that sounds completely unnecessary, yet here we are.

I am 3 months out and have toddlers. Today I needed to get an online recipe for dinner, but I didn't know what site my wife used. I went on her phone and got the link and sent it to my phone through text. Just seeing that notification on my phone with her photo, for a split second it just felt like the world was right again. I truly felt at home in that moment. It made me realize, while here at the house with the kids, though I would rather be here than at some other house, it doesn't truly feel like home anymore. I haven't changed the house at all, there just isn't the same peace anymore.

It used to be after a long day, you get to your house with your couch and your blankets, get to change into your sweatpants or whatever and get all cozy in your bed. Now its just kid of hollow, the coziness and comfort isn't there.

I love spending time with the kids, I wish I could quit and never go back to work. They are my only real source of joy. But even with them here in this house, it doesn't really feel like home still. Somewhere between home and some Airbnb or something. Almost like being back at my childhood home, its familiar, its safe, but its not home.

Unless I lose my job we'll be moving to a bigger home at some point. This house has always been too small for us, even with just one kid. I'm fortunate enough that I can hold onto my current house and rent it out as I'm not ready to get rid of it yet. But in any situation, does anyone with young kids feel the same way? Has it changed over the years? It is what it is, but it does make me sad just feeling the disconnection between what I feel for our house and what I presume the kids feel. Same with a new home, I fear that I'll just feel like a prisoner in that house with my wife never have even seeing the house, let alone have fingerprints throughout it. It's just sad thinking that what the kids will view as their home, where they feel cozy and safe, I do not feel the same.