About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
Read More
June 6, 2025
1. We spent a ton of time with the kids this week and mostly it was good. To my surprise. There was a lot less fighting than I had expected. I very much needed this break from professional responsibilities and to have time with them that wasn’t our day to day frustrations.
Helping folks: if you wanted to help my friend’s family during this trying time, you’re welcome to send money that I will place in their hands personally. I can’t set up a GFM, I just don’t have the bandwidth for that.
We can use my Lakota links with the note “For Jose”:
Venmao: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
(more…)
June 4, 2025
Life with JB
Tangentially related to the luxury goods issue I’m seeing discussed online: JB & I discussed perceived & actual wealth recently. They felt like their classmates make them feel poor sometimes. Maybe by comparison we are, I don’t know! I’ve definitely compared our spending choices and noticed big differences. But I’m old enough, and in control enough of our spending, for that to be idle curiosity, rather than feeling bad about our own actual wealth vs their perceived wealth.
I pointed out to JB that real wealth gives you choices and the “right” choices will vary from family to family. Perceived wealth matters in some situations but it’s been a long while since it mattered in our lives.
Our choices revolve around our family traditions and helping folks, though we don’t advertise the latter to anyone offline. Folks online know we do this stuff because we rally the online community to help.
I also like to err on the side of scruffy-presenting because I like to be underestimated and also it’s revealing to me if people treat you differently when they think you’re poorer than they are.
We don’t own luxury brands (except my inherited Hermes scarf that I never wear b/c I’m QUITE sure I can’t pull it off) because we don’t value them or what they signal. Their signaling is quite the opposite of what I want to communicate. Also they’re not sufficiently greater quality than any moderately well made equivalent to be worth it from a quality perspective. We use things to death because it’s better for the environment and because it’s cheaper. Both reasons are high priorities. My Swiss Army backpack and suitcase of 20+ years do the job. Neither were prohibitively expensive, they don’t scream anything at all, and they are still going strong. Ticks all my boxes.
Flash-oriented relatives think we’re poor because of this. That’s ok! I like to fly under the radar. Aside from family money trauma where it’s just prudent not to become the Family Bank, it doesn’t bring us any specific happiness to know this chef was rated such and such on this or that list. I just want to enjoy good food, have a safe home and financial stability, and be able to help folks out. I hope that these moments for JB are few and far between because we’re never going to be the people who prioritize someone else’s perception over our own happiness.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol Acrobat declared their favorite color: blue, pink, purple, red. And orange. And black.
Pretty sure green and yellow only got left out because they were distracted.
Pupdate
It’s going to be months before we can adopt a pup. I’m using this time to both save our pennies, and search for a good rescue. I’d like another pitbull, they’re the sweetest of misunderstood breeds, so we’re trying to locate a rescue that seems to be responsible, fosters them out and generally knows what they’re handling. We love other breeds too but they’re more popular while pits are still unfairly judged, so we want to stick with them a while. My hope is that even if the rescue isn’t local, we’ll be able to convince them to adopt to us if we find a good potential fit.
Precious Moments
Once in a looong while, I let Smol Acrobat bunk with me. It’s less frequent because they make it very hard for me to sleep. But JB has been bunking with me. So then I have two extra logs in my bed.
Ok, SmolAc, when you wake up, who do you wake up?
JB.
Right. Not me.
Because you will be vewwy tired.
YEP.
*****
SmolAc, whining: Can I have dis (my toasted and cream cheese laden) bagel?
Me: You can have that now only if you put away the utensils without whining right after you’re done eating.
SmolAc: what if I do dem now so I don’t haf to do dem wayter?
Me: WHAT IF! Brilliant plan, go ahead. well worth having to wait for another bagel for myself.
*****
Your teef are going to break!
What? What do you mean??
I see dem! Dey are dented! Dey will break!
*****
After an unsuccessful hide and seek, Smol Acrobat was angry that JB wouldn’t give up their best hiding spot. I offered them bubble wrap to pop as a consolation. This was great but “Baby elephant is SAD. Baby elephant can’t pop bubble wrap because her hands are not very strong. I’m giving her space because she’s sad.”
Oh, ok.
“Baby elephant, how do you feel? You’re ok? Ok, baby elephant is not sad anymore! Baby elephant wants to go wif me.”
Baby elephant: I’m still a widdle angry. About my job.
WHAT JOB, baby elephant?
June 2, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 35: How many times did I have to remind myself that it was Monday? So many. On the one hand, holiday. On the other hand, much needed day to deal with this truckload of absolute WTFery that landed at my doorstep Sunday. Someone we met several years ago was snatched by ICE and the family’s been at their wit’s end not knowing what to do. They’ve tried retaining lawyers and the first one just gave up and the second one was scammy and useless. I’ve known of the family but they’ve not had any occasion to be familiar with us before yesterday when I heard the news and immediately asked more knowledgeable people for a bit of advice. It’s been a whirlwind of work since: talking to various family members trying to reach a bilingual adult who could answer questions and give me enough information to reach out for help.
Yesterday’s focus was on getting in touch with elected officials’ staffers and getting sufficient information from the family to work with. I was up til midnight on calls and collating information from those calls.
Today’s focus was running down every possible lead for a new lawyer, looking for community org support in dumping the scammy lawyer, and scanning in their paperwork so they have electronic copies. I’ve worked out an agreement with the family that I’d write all the emails, they will do the follow-up phone calls.
We’ve sent out dozens of requests for legal assistance in hopes that one of these sources might have capacity to help.
I feel like a jerk for struggling to feel hope. There are just too many bad things happening in this area right now for me to feel like any of these efforts will pay off. We have to try but knowing that a raft of CA immigration judges were fired as recently as last month and knowing from our House rep’s staffer that ICE frequently deports instead of responding to information requests from Members of Congress, it’s hard to feel like any of these will pan out.
Year 6, Day 36: I spent half the day corresponding with MoC staffers and fielding the email replies from the people we contacted. One person was actually helpful.
We’re combing the area for lawyers, the ones that the local Rapid Response team recommended aren’t answering their phones or if they do answer, they’re too busy to help. The local immigration activist org helped a little. They looked at documents and gave us some basic assessment advice but they’re too overloaded to help. One of the three local attorneys recommended by the Rapid Response team had someone answering phones, everyone else’s numbers just went to voicemail, and I did an intake with them for the family. Then we got a response from a highly recommended firm, that one seemed very promising and we set up an appointment for tomorrow. The local attorney finally got back to us – they’re too busy to take the case. Figures. It’s a hellscape. We’re all on tenterhooks.
Year 6, Day 37: Our neighbor is currently obsessed with the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She’s not concerned for herself, she’s worried for her next two generations. I’ve known and worried about this myself but to the point of buying earthquake insurance, not to the point where she is now: she’s pushing her adult children to sell their homes and move somewhere out of the subduction zone. Hawaii will sink! Alaska will too! We need to MOVE before it happens!
I get it. The worst case scenario is really bad. But we have no idea when this might hit and the impossibility of getting a timeline makes that uprooting feel almost unreasonable. They have jobs, multiple kids thriving in different schools, all involved in their various activities. They’d have to start all over if they were to pick up and leave. I’m not arguing with her, I just see that it’s really hard to justify that level of change in the face of a possible terrible natural disaster someday. I don’t doubt that it’s likely coming, we just have no idea when it’s happening.
I got curious and I found a recent study – it must be the press from this that has her in a lather, she hit all the highlights of this study when describing the potential of the disaster.
Year 6, Day 38: We got to the point of having a real lawyer to retain and the ICE pulled a fast one. He was moved in the middle of the night without warning, and without telling notification to his kin where he’s being sent. None of the ICE detention center or field office phone numbers are in service. The locator site is vague and has no information. I’ve been at a loss for what else to do. I keep wishing I’d known about this last week thinking, look at what we’ve been able to muster in 4 days, two of which were weekend/holidays. If we had known when he’d been detained, we could have done more, faster. We were so close.
Eventually it occurred to me that this timing was suspicious. He had an appointment at the detention center with a scammy lawyer that was just there to bilk the family on Friday. We scrambled to get a legit lawyer in place before Friday so they could see him instead. What if they always would have done this? What if it only took this long for them to deport because they knew he didn’t have competent legal counsel in place, they only shipped him out now because his legal representation was supposed to show up. My reddit savvy friend said that’s very likely, they’re seeing this trend reported. And we know their flagrant disregard for due process. People who are legitimately following all the rules and showing up to immigration court are being grabbed from the courts even if they’ve had successful hearings. There is a complete disregard for anyone’s rights.
Now we’re pressing the Congressional staffers to help us find out what happened to him. Where is he??
Year 6, Day 39: I had such a good week and a half without scheduled meetings so of course they all hit all at once. Everyone needed me for a call for big and small reasons and I was scrambling from one call to the next. I didn’t manage to escape the vortex for several hours. Woof.
On the bright side, I have been going through old pictures, tagging a specific set, and remembering some good dog memories. It hurts but it’s also joy. I miss these dogs so much. They were such an integral part of the family. It feels like we have multiple dog shaped holes in our lives everywhere we go.
Frustratingly corporate is still holding up my raise. It’s taking so long I’m starting to think I should just go job-hunting to show that my salary is indeed deeply below market and I have other options. Exceeepptt it’s possible the current economy is such that I don’t have other good options. There were some earlier in the year but now? After all the federal cuts? After all the federal grants pulled across a whole lot of Bay Area specific industries? Our friends here last weekend told us they’ve got friends who have now been out of work for a year and counting, and corporate cuts are continuing to impact their circles. The Microsoft layoff was a huge one – 6000 people. Hawaii Planner has been going through the wringer, interviewing. Maybe being patient and exasperated continues to be the better bet.
I find it offensive that articles refer to these layoffs as “trims fat” btw. What the hell is wrong with y’all? Cutting people because you let crappy AI take over their jobs isn’t trimming fat. Also I’m so sick of the AI race. It’s brought nothing but garbage, fraud, more fraud, and more work for my company with zero gain. The corporation has handed down an edict that we use their crap AI tool because that’s supposed to benefit the company by 15% but it’s certified crap – it never gives the right information and it never identifies the sources of the bad information. So if you’re credulous enough to ask it for factual information and don’t fact check, you get the wrong answer every single time. The only thing worse than my sense of direction!
Sigh. Lots of ups and downs this week but mostly downs. I would really appreciate a shift in the winds.
EDIT TO ADD: I tried to answer N&M’s comment but the WordPress app is acting up. I would have to set up the GFM for fundraising and I don’t have time or bandwidth to manage that right now so if anyone would like to help out, we can use my Lakota links with the note “For Jose” for now:
Venmao: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
May 30, 2025
1. I cut my hair in under 15 minutes. 🎉 Of course the 3-4 inch chop was undetectable and SmolAc told me that it was my turn to get a haircut after theirs.
(more…)
May 26, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 28: Last week sucked, and then the weekend was completely draining too but for different reasons. I accidentally set off a PEM crash with my workout Friday night so I woke up in pain and feeling really sick on Saturday. We had plans on Saturday! hate so muchWe weArgh. re taking a couple friends out to an outdoor event for their birthday and there was a chance of petting livestock. I really didn’t want to miss it but it wouldn’t have been responsible of me to go if I was as sick virally as I felt. Thankfully, by noon I could tell that this was all pain-generated ick. Safe to go! Of course while that adventure was fun, it was also a bit of a lot. I was as wrung out by the end of Saturday as at the start. To make matters worse, SmolAc was sick and was complaining of leg pain that was so bad that half their body would tense up like a stiff board when the pain hit. Every 3-5 minutes. I massaged their legs every few minutes until 4 am so they could sleep. Naturally they woke up fresh as a daisy and I was wrecked.
Year 6, Day 29: We were meant to see a heat wave this week in Northern California. Our little pocket rarely gets the full predicted temps so at best I’m hoping to get a 10 degree bump for a couple days. When we get as many as 2 warm days, it’s enough to get some seeds to germinate or seedlings to grow a tiny bit more. So far the few warm days we’ve had have coaxed the green beans and a couple cucumber seedlings out at a time. I planted another round of green bean seeds with the potatoes and hope more sugar snap peas might make an appearance later in the summer. They did last year and what a fun yield we had for 3-4 weeks before powdery mildew shut us down.
In organizational news, I’ve been working on filling in spreadsheets with all clothing purchases for myself and the kids, electronics, and some common consumables so I can track how much I paid (and how long the clothes last and their care instructions when the tags are faded). Not everything will be in there, I’m not trying to make this a huge time sink, but whatever I can easily reference online will go in there. It’s just good to have a quick reference.
Year 6, Day 30: The last of our COVID boosters are scheduled this week for all of us ahead of summer crowds, travel, and infectious waves. It continues to feel very weird to be getting boosters for travel, logging air miles from credit card bonuses, and processing refunds for returns while ALSO staring down an existential crisis with our democratic republic under attack and our human rights being eroded every day.
We’ve left public comment on this issue of the FDA deciding unilaterally to reduce access to COVID vaccines, it’s so infuriating. If people don’t want them that’s on them, it’s despicable to limit it for the rest of us who do want that level of protection.
I got my own booster this week and am mildly annoyed that the vaccination clinic is always so balky about it when we have doctor’s orders in the system. Quite sure that our PCP is the one most qualified to say what we should get between the GP and the injection clinic.
I’m worried we won’t get an updated vaccine approved and recommended in the fall for the newest variants. I’m worried about symptoms I already have becoming much worse if I catch it. The brain fog isn’t the same thick fog these days as much as it used to be, it’s more frequently like cookie cutter chomps out of my brain where words I know simply don’t exist anymore.
Year 6, Day 31: I couldn’t get away from work early enough to make it to a family event at SmolAc’s daycare this afternoon but did stop in time to cook dinner from scratch.
I threw together rigatoni carbonara with pan fried broccoli using Penzey’s roasted garlic and Penzey’s Justice seasoning instead of pepper and pepper flakes, and using my precious hoarded Zingerman’s Nueske Applewood smoked bacon. We had cracked black pepper and more grated Parmesan for topping the pasta at the table. It’s a simple meal but awfully good with the right ingredients. I took extra time cooking the bacon to render a lot of the fat and drained it to give the remaining bacon extra crispy edges. This is a very thick cut Bacon so it doesn’t crisp the same way as thin bacon does but it holds up really well for this recipe. I didn’t pay $22/lb. I stocked up when it was last on sale at $12/lb. That’s still pricy enough that I ration it and in between times it stays hidden in the foil bag it shipped in 😆
Year 6, Day 32: Argh. Everyone’s job (at least around my level) got a lot bigger this year and none of us are coping with it super smoothly. We’re managing, but everyone has a week, or an issue, or a department that we hate so much for making our lives so much harder and some days, it’s harder to be at peace with it than others.
Semi-professional wardrobe woes: I hate the current trend of puff sleeves, had to search hours for less offensively puffy sleeves. I had missed the two-week return window on several pairs of pants from Aritzia. ARGH. Two weeks! It was my fault, I had recorded the return rules but I felt terrible one weekend and then was too tired the next weekend to remember. Thankfully the CSR helped me with an exchange so that I could get a full refund and try a different line. The new line arrived today and nope. High rise pants make me look and feel like an overstuffed sausage. So those go back too which should conclude this round of professional wardrobing roulette. That leaves me with two pairs of jeans plus a belt, two pairs of trousers I’ll have to hem carefully for length, and four blouses. That should do for the next year and change. Please be it.
Not professional: I wear my Svaha skirts every summer but only the two twirl skirts (2020 and 2022) fit now. The midi skirt and 3 fit-and-flare dresses (from 2020 and 2018) are too small for me which stinks, I really liked them. I can’t decide if I should sell, donate or keep them for JB. For now, I wanted two more skirts in the rotation. While I don’t love the waistbands that I could see, I really loved the designs, and they tout giant pockets (a must) so I’ve splurged on a few skirts from Maya Kern‘s latest release to try. I hope they’re great quality and look as nice in person as they seem to be online.
May 23, 2025
Helping folks: Lily Meade could really use some help. Her situation is so hard. I hate that healthcare in this country is so tied to income and employment.
(more…)
May 21, 2025
16 months ago, I was pondering our neighbors, and I’m pretty sure I wrote about them even earlier than that but I can’t remember where that post went or how to find it.
We’re still friendly with our package safety neighbors. They’re always busy so we don’t hang out but we always wave hello and proactively help them out with their packages when they’re at work or traveling. We usually let them know when we’ll be away so they can keep an eye on our place.
We’re still friendly with one set of neighbors of many kids and much travel. They’re still doing lots. We’re usually always at pickup around the same time but occasionally one of us will miss or need the other to help and I’ve come so far as to learn to text them to ask for an assist with bringing JB home if I absolutely can’t make it. That’s blocked off on my work calendar, I won’t compromise on that at work but once in a while an appointment will run long or something will come up or someone will be thrown by the long weekend and forget pick up time. It’s good to have a fallback person.
We’ve made friends with the neighbors with three dogs. We yell at bad drivers together. When my job was a little less crap, I was stealing a dog or taking their kid for a little playdate every now and again. Whenever there’s someone shady on our street I text them and the more belligerent partner runs out to investigate. The wife asked to put us down as emergency contacts because their relatives are unreliable and their youngest knows to come to our house if anything weird happens and they need an adult, if their parents are around. I like both parents quite well. I’ll be sad when we don’t see each other at school pickups anymore. I’ll just have to borrow dogs more.
The one set of neighbors where the wife was distantly friendly but the husband wouldn’t even look at us? Complete turnaround on that guy. SmolAc started shouting hi to him randomly one day and it completely startled him. He started saying hi back, and even saying hi first from afar. Then his wife and I started talking a bit more about PTA news and random things and she offered us some hand me downs for SmolAc one day, so we got to talking some more and established our mutual loathing for horrible presidents. That was a good reassurance to have. The husband has a fun little hobby that SmolAc expressed much interest in over the years, the husband dropped by this week to invite PiC and SmolAc to go for a spin with him, how cool is that?
This reminds me of the former neighbors who used to avoid us because we had dogs, the husband had a total phobia. But when JB came along, they were so charmed by infant JB, they made our acquaintance. They were then completely won over by Seamus and converted into dog lovers. It’s great. It’s funny (and sometimes weird) how a baby can open doors where people are previously hesitant. In this case it’s great, we’ve remained friends for almost a decade and still see each other.
(It was weird when, to one Asian lady, I was invisible until I was pregnant. Then she was all smiles and friendly. What the hell with that? The former neighbors at least acknowledged us and it was clear why it didn’t go beyond that, he was obviously terrified of the dogs and we gave him a wide berth out of respect. But this lady looked right through me for years until pregnancy. Super weird.)
We have speaking acquaintances with half a dozen other neighbors almost entirely because I love their dogs and their dogs love my attention.
One of those dog-only neighbors recently had their first baby, and naturally I didn’t know the baby’s name or the wife’s name, so I addressed a little baby gift to the Dog’s New Human Sibling. I was assured by at least one parent that it was amusing, not offensive. I thought it was less offensive than addressing the gift to only one parent anyway. And, as a dog person, it’d tickle my funny bone to get a gift addressed to my dog’s human siblings. I left them our numbers in case they ever needed a hand with dog or baby. I don’t know their situation but it can’t hurt for new parents to know there’s someone nearby they can holler to for help now and again.
I made the acquaintance of two of our oldest neighbors on the block when I was having a rage walk. They’re well into their 80s and 90s, and have so many stories to share.
Building community is not easy, there are a lot of people who aren’t friendly at all and I’m really glad that our next door neighbors that I loathed left, but I’ve made a really conscious effort to build some ties in our very local community. I’ve always wanted something like that and didn’t think it was possible. Thank goodness for kids and dogs, so many connections were easier to make at first because of one or the other.
How do you get to know local folks and make new friends?
