All the FMLs

Thank you for congratulating me. I agree that my father's response was probably just from shock. He called me not long after we hung up the first time and apologized for reacting that way. I am the youngest of his children and his only daughter, he may just not be ready to let me go yet. He has only been married once, to my mother, and they have been married happily for 22 years. I appreciate the advice that was given and I plan to talk to him more about his concerns when he gets back this coming week.

OP here :) First of all, thank you all for your advice! I'm afraid though, that it's a rather small company (around 10 full time employees) so we don't have an HR departement. I'm not sure about the difference between "being fired" and "being laid off", but my situation could be described as: "being fired because my company decided to save some money and that they didn't need someone on the position I'm currently working at." Here in Germany we get ALG (Arbeitslosengeld, roughly translates to "unemployment money") for a year after working for at least two years. It's around 60% of the persons original salary. The catch is: you only get it, if you're fired or quit for (very) good reasons (harassment, threats, etc.). If you quit without one of those reasons you don't get anything for 1-3 months. Also you don't get it for 3 months if you're fired because of anything you did (stealing, forgery...) So it's a tricky situation right now. I wrote my boss an email explaining most of the things you stated (that I feel uncomfortable forging his signature, for example) and asking whether it wasn't possible for me to just write the notice and have him sign it as soon as he's back. This way I have to set the date back, because I can only be fired with a 2 months' notice which isn't stricly legal, but he agreed to it. He isn't really that bad of a person, actually that whole idea came from HIS boss and he was just the unlucky messenger. So yeah, I'm going to write the notice and put it on his desk to sign once he gets back and hope, the whole mess turns out alright.

Just to clarify, no I did not allow this person to take any mice. Live feeding is illegal in the UK (where our rescue is based) and the majority of the mice we have are ones that came from illegal 'feeder breeders' that were shut down by the RSPCA after being proven to be selling mice for use as live feed. Some of these mice have been hand reared by me from the day they were born if their mother had abandoned them or died herself, so there's no way in hell I would let them go somewhere they would be used as food. Hope this helped anyone who was asking questions!

Honestly it was 100% my fault I teared. Going deep in the realm of TMI this is pretty much what happened. I didn't have an epidural so I was feeling the "ring of fire" like a mofo but he had told me to hold off on pushing for a moment because he was trying to relubricate and massage me open more so I could push my sons head out. Would have worked fine if I hadn't had a crazy intense contraction which made me push extremely hard while his fingers were in there, which made me tear right through. He did an amazing job stitching me up. Really after he realized who I was his interest was more in how I healed and if he stitched me up ok. Apparently he was super new and it was only his 4th day working in the hospital as an attending doctor. He was great though. I was really happy with my experience overall, except for the tearing through to my butthole part.