1. More catalog removals: still trying to get ourselves removed from American Girl. How did I ever get on their mailing list? I have never liked or been interested in their products. Their site is also supremely annoying. The opt out is so dysfunctional it took 7 tries. They require a birth date to enter this part of the site, then it kept freezing, then suggesting there were errors in the address that I entered (there weren’t), and then freezing again. After 7 failed attempts, I had to just email them.
2. We managed to sign up for another month of swim lessons despite leaving it til the last minute. I’m assuming it was still open because of the holidays. Nevertheless, woots!
3. Happened to spot that a Twitter / blogger friend needed a helping hand late at night, and I’m glad to have spotted it because we were able to help. It’s nice when things come together.
4. We had a really rough Sunday so I’m extra grateful that my favorite relative being here for moral support and actual physical support with walking the dogs and cooking and all the things that make up our days. I hate that the thing happened at all, but if it had to, I suppose it’s helpful that it happened when we have some support.
5. I’ve had senioritis all week because we have a short week. That seems counterintuitive. But the short work week also means more stress because there’s no real way to pause my work so I’ll have to work a bit over the weekend.
6. Tiny dogs make good lapwarmers.
7. A visit from my favorite relative means JB has been in good spirits all week long. Cheeky, definitely, but generally very little grumpiness.
8. We pulled together another big round for our Lakota families and that was amazing. Update is forthcoming.
PONDERING 1: Should we keep my once-beloved SPG AMEX which has now become the Marriott Bonvoy? Our free night benefit isn’t so easy for us to use given our current constraints and the annual reward is usually how I justify keeping an annual fee card. I can still transfer points to miles if I wanted to go that route but that doesn’t address the annual fee. Thinking on this one.
PONDERING 2: I finally separated the cash from the rental property into its own savings account several months ago and it earns a small amount in interest every month. Like $5. I currently funnel all interest from our emergency savings account into our “Director” fund (the account from which I make all our savings and investing contributions and the occasional spending disbursement as necessary). We pay taxes on all the interest now, whether or not I keep it separated, but should I continue to keep it separate on a matter of principle? Seems like I should. Thoughts welcome!
Done by Forty lost a friend and accurately describes the feelings I have often about mortality. We keep having to bury friends and family too soon: our parents, a friend at 13, another friend at 22, another friend who was only 25… it makes everything feels so petty, sometimes. Other times I remember that these daily moments, and the little things, are what make up life. It’s not petty, it just feels that way in the face of nothingness.
I also find myself feeling odd about aging even while planning to take care of aging DINK friends. I can’t believe some of my dear friends are pushing 80. What?? But it’s true and we can’t pretend it’s not happening as much as I want to bury my head in the sand. So we’re having hard conversations about how they want me / us to care for them when the time comes for them to need care.
I had this feeling in my heart when I started our Lakota giving early this year. I have to find some time to write a new update soon. In case you’re not into clicking links, and want to know what Kelly’s suggested, here you go:
Kelly 2/9: If you would like to contribute to the @IWRising abortion fund, which provides assistance to Indigenous people seeking abortion care in the US and Canada you can do so here:
Kelly 3/9: .@Chi_Nations
is a diverse group of Native youth w a mission to raise awareness of Native cultural identity. I did some education work alongside them this yr at a children’s event about colonization and climate change & was mad impressed. Support them.
Kelly 4/9: To support the fight to save the Indian Child Welfare Act (and so much more), donate to @lakotalaw. These folks fight for the rights of Native children and to keep Native children in Native homes. They also work to defend Native land.
Kelly 5/9: Another great option is the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance. NAFSA is dedicated to restoring, supporting and developing Indigenous food systems and ensuring food security for future generations.
Kelly 6/9: With Native voting rights under threat, this is a good time to support @4directionsvote. Their organizers are committed to the full enfranchisement of Native people. To fight Native voter suppression, you can donate here.
Kelly 7/9: My own people, the Menominee, are organizing against a proposed mine that would destroy our sacred sites and poison our water. You can help here.
Kelly 9/9: If you want to support one of the Native youth who helped launch the Standing Rock protests, who is now working to put himself through college, you can do that here.
I’m in no way prepared to spend $1200 on a robot vacuum, but can I just say: this one empties itself?? Half the point of getting a robot vacuum is preserving my energy and my concern is having to fight with the vacuum to empty the bin constantly. With two dogs and kid, I’m pretty sure we’ll fill the bins a lot. I am almost tempted to wait a couple more years for my bot vacuum so we can get this one. But maybe not…
Avocado slices!
I didn’t know that I wanted to know how to slice avocados perfectly before but this is great.
Mental illness speckles my family tree like leaf mold.
The bipolar uncle who cackled uncomfortably like a cartoon character, his mirth punctuated by random outbursts of rage. The cousin fallen prey to the lure of drugs to quiet his anxiety, lost when the drugs pushed him to suicide instead of helping as he’d hoped. Then his brother couldn’t handle the anger and loss and pain, he was finally diagnosed as bipolar and refused to be treated. Then Mom’s dementia and anxiety and depression, desperately intermingled, trapped her in a dizzying kaleidoscopic world until she passed. My dad was, and remains, a hardcore narcissist. If he doesn’t actually have NPD, his life and choices certainly mimic it very strongly, and he raised a son who was the same.
Mostly this kind of thing is hushed up by the family, as if not talking about it means that it doesn’t exist. That doesn’t work, family. It hasn’t protected any of us.
Some of got lucky. Some of us danced with acute depression and/or anxiety, lasting weeks, or months, admitted it, got help, and finally made it through to the other side. Humbled and a little wiser about the realities, and vagaries, of mental health with some tools to manage that anxiety and depression, we’ve understood the struggle a little better. And some of us who won free still live with the specter, daily.
My brother wasn’t one of “some of us”. He didn’t have a sharp psychotic break. He didn’t step in and out of schizophrenia, managed and not. It was almost a gentle transition. He’d always had delusions of grandeur – he flashed through get rich quick schemes like credit cards. Braggadacio fed his outsize ego which fueled his arrogance in an endless loop.
He never worked harder than when he was trying to dupe me, our parents, or family and friends. He was the first to fall head over heels for the earliest MLM scams of our time, dragging our worried parents and their connections in with him. He managed two quarters at the local state college before dropping out with parking tickets and failing grades trailing in his wake.
He slipped into the warm embrace of true delusions easily, just like he’d done every night when we lay in bed in our shared room, dancing through one imaginary scenario after another. His created world had always been far more desirable than the one welived in, the one of bills, of hard work, of gritting your teeth and dealing with the daily mundanity that keeps the car running and the water on.
Is it any wonder then, as his delusions deepened, as he swatted away our reality to create a new world for himself where he didn’t have to do any actual work, that it simply wasn’t clear if this wasn’t just another one of his long cons? (more…)
1. We had a dear friend come stay with us for the weekend. We haven’t spent time with them in months and this was a very nice visit. I got curious to see how much use our guest room gets annually, this year was a low occupancy year, so I checked our calendar. We’ve hosted 6 separate individuals or family groups for a total of 39 days. We normally would have closer to about 50 days in a year, but fewer separate individuals/groups. We use that room as a laundry room in between visits so that I’m not cluttering up our sofa with to be folded clothes, so it gets good use year-round.
2. We had another unplanned visit from PiC’s friends and he had a good time catching up with them. JB was over the moon because those friends brought over their infant and ze loveswee babies. The wee baby really liked zir, too. Luckily I like these friends.
3. I’m pretty happy with my change to our spending/saving spreadsheet style over to a checkbook register style than a single calendar view. Again, it’s imperfect because I have many needs and desires for tracking our money but I am quite happy with this current iteration. It lets me get more granular than my calendar vies did before and I can much more easily keep an eye on when expenses get really lumpy and our checking account runs low. This is good. FOR NOW. 😀
4. I tried using an Oxi-Clean paste to scrub our bathroom grout and it worked really well! My hands hurt like the dickens because there is such a thing as overenthusiastic scrubbing but boy is that grout clean.
5. Did you know that Target does price matching? I don’t know why I keep forgetting that but it solved my mini-dilemma about a gift that would have been cheaper on Amazon. The CSR on chat was able to get that done in a minute.
6. We’re slowly making the last of our charitable contributions for the year.
Just thinking: I’ve been pondering things I want to add to our lives but we can’t yet accommodate in our regular budget. For JB, self defense lessons, $100/month. For me, Pilates classes specifically geared towards seniors and people with disabilities, $200/month (but also, time, who has it??). For Sera, one training consultation, $300/each (holy moly. This is the one training group that comes recommended by a rescue group we have history with, I can’t even get other trainers to return my call). For all of us, $$$$$ for home maintenance projects we need to complete. I also need orthodontia work and have made some initial inquiries into Invisalign but I really don’t feel ready to face it yet.
:: If you have grout and tile cleaning secrets, please share! I really need a more energy efficient way than “spend an hour on each 3×3 scrubbing til my hands hurt”.
I don’t really understand how Gladwell’s response isn’t to listen to the people he hurt, who were already hurt, and do better. Instead he hides behind legality. Very Poor Form. Also, for me, his behavior is an object lesson in being very careful about giving copyright permission and control over interviews and quotes and recordings of your voice. People can and will take you out of context.
I took the Yours, Mine & Ours (or, just Ours) quiz to “Identify what’s most important to you and learn what could go wrong if it gets ignored.” I was disappointed in our quiz results, though. Even though it acknowledged we’re good at talking about or considering money, it just talked about how fighting about money is a big relationship killer. Well. Duh. That’s why we talk about money: so we don’t fight about it. I don’t know what I was expecting from a 6 question quiz though. What’d you get?
Leia/Washington
I will never not imagine Carrie Fisher delivering that last line.
Thinking ahead to kindergarten / elementary school
Kindergarten is 8:30-1:30. Grades 1-5 is 8:30-2:30. Spring break is a week, Thanksgiving is 3 days off, Winter Break is two weeks. Summer is 10 weeks.
How on Earth do working parents deal with that????
Aftercare and summer camps for summer, I guess. But I hate the mental load that we’re going to have to take on for that and honestly I’m not thrilled with the idea of trusting my 5 year old to various groups I have to get to know before I feel like they’re trustworthy.
I’m feeling obligated to just pick up JB and keep zir home with me while I work. For kindergarten, it’s just one academic year, and that’s just … about 5 hours to fill before PiC gets home and we need to do the dinner/bath/bed trio. Hm. Hm. Hm. I’m not sure. Note – the obligation is entirely in my own mind. PiC is investigating aftercare options.
He’ll support me if that’s what I really want but he’s really in favor of getting aftercare. I suspect I just don’t want it because I hate having to get to know and trust new people all over again.
My parents never had childcare really, it was all on Mom’s shoulders to drop us off, pick us up, feed us, and everything in between. That meant that sometimes we were left waiting an awfully long time to be picked up after school as she was stuck at work late most days. I remember sitting outside the elementary school under a tree, reading a stack of books, waiting for hours hoping she hadn’t forgotten me entirely.
I’m not trying to reproduce that situation, taking it all on my shoulders, and PiC wouldn’t let me anyway. But I still feel this pull to keep JB home with me after school and I haven’t parsed out why, precisely.
When is it “tattling”?
I need to do a better job of differentiating between when I want JB to tell us about someone doing something wrong and when it’s not necessary or appropriate. We have been encouraging zir to resolve differences with the kids in question, which ze is getting better at, but we also need to discuss what things fall under “don’t tattle” (when it’s not causing anyone harm, and it’s just an annoyance that someone isn’t following the rules) and what falls under reporting actual harm.
This immediate “don’t tattle” admonishment was giving me hives because it’s too all-encompassing and I didn’t like that feeling of just telling a kid those two words without further explanation. Like this author, I don’t want to feed into a culture of silence for lacking nuance.
Because here’s the thing – we don’t want kids to lie, but we also don’t want them “snitching” when other kids do something wrong. How are they going to know what to do and when without more specific guidance? For example, when accused of wrongdoing and they know another kid did it, are they supposed to tell us the truth or stonewall? Personally, I always want the truth whether or not I’m going to be the one authorized to follow up on the other kid, but people call that snitching. What’s your take?
We’ve been talking about the nuance with JB, and ze recently brought up a situation between two classmates and asked, “Was that tattling?” So we’re thinking about it, at least.
Precious Moments
Another circle of life
JB: mom, do Lions eat zebras?
Me: Yes if they can catch them.
JB: Then they EAT them! *gasp*
PiC: There was a Wildkratts book about that.
Me: What does it say?
JB: That.
Me: Oh.
PiC: It’s called Lion Pride. They also talk about honey badgers.
Me: What about honey badgers?
PiC: Lions don’t mess with them.
Me: Why not?
JB: Because they will BADGE them.
Me: Yeah … that’s no good for anyone.
Me in bed after a rough day and night
JB: Hi Mom! You can take as much as you need in bed. But don’t take too much time, or else you might not come with us! 5 minutes later…
JB *bursting in*: Mom. Mom. Can I have … Mom, are you …. Mom where’s your head???
Me: *should I tell zir I’m in the bathroom?*
Priorities
Me: It’s taco night!
JB: I don’t LIKE tacos!
Me: -____-
PiC: Ok, can I have your tacos?
JB backpedaling: But … I need da pwotein!
:: Were you a latchkey kid or did you have a parent or adult at home when you got out of school?
“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.” James Baldwin
1. Carrying on with the task of getting ourselves removed from mailing lists, this is the Direct Mail link for The Container Store. This is the link for Prana. Someone put me on the American Girl catalog list. It irritates me that my name got on there in the first place and that they require a birthdate to “check out” even for catalog cancellation when that’s none of their business and their form is crappy.
2. I just had an epiphany that I didn’t have to do a work thing I hate doing manually and figured out a formula for it. WOO. It should not have taken 9 years for that to occur to me but the important thing is that it did.
3. I had several days as a solo human taking care of the household and dogs, and wow didI get so much done! Not only did I get caught up on a lot of work, I took the dogs on longer walks gradually and even still had some time to myself to read a book and clean. Bonus: refusing to meal plan or cook at all was an amazing break. I just ate leftovers and threw together random pantry things until I ran out. Happily.
4. This was last week but I forgot to record it and I am still happy about it: I caught the one day Sprouts sale on gift cards ($100 gift card for $89.99). We shop there a fair amount and I love saving 10%.
5. I caught the last day of the Petco $30 off $100 purchase and replenished our supply of XL dog Advantix for much less than I’d get it anywhere else. Normally the 12 month supply is $130 before tax. I paid $109 after tax. Flea-free and savings – an excellent combination.
It feels like I accidentally opened the floodgates for spending.
6. After several years of ill-fitting sweatpants (two pairs “borrowed” from PiC and a pair that were a silly purchase because they were totally oversized), I indulged myself with a pair of sweatpants that actually fit ($12). Pockets, warm, and they fit! Pure luxury.
8. I also picked up a really warm pair of slipper socks ($11) which are also pure indulgence. But my feet are cold constantly and this is another way to keep warm without running heat.
9. I picked up four packs of underwear for PiC but none of them were right so they all went back and instead I picked up two spare sets of flannel sheets since we have entirely abandoned our cotton sheets. Originally we were going to have one set of cotton and one set of flannel. But it’s cold all year round here, there’s no good time to go back to cotton sheets.
10. I made a $300 goof. I have about 13 subscribe and save items that I skip most months because it takes 6-8 months to need enough items to make up a full 5 item order and maximize the S&S discount. This is partly because we aim to keep consumption to exactly what we need, and partly because I’m trying to shop at Target more. Well. I forgot to cancel this month’s order and I woke up to a horrifying notice that all my items had shipped. 😱 Luckily I went into my account just to see if I could cancel anything and was able to cancel all of the orders. WHEW. I won’t do that again!!
11. Even if we both feel overwhelmed, I generally feel like we have evenly divided all our household chores. I asked PiC today if he feels our distribution is still even. He thought about it: including all the bookkeeping, grocery runs, daycare duties, etc? Yes. He thinks so. It’d be nice to have less work to divide but he also feels like it’s pretty equal. That’s good.
:: How was your week? Do you have a good distribution of work in your household?
