By: Revanche

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (304)

March 30, 2026

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 336: Several months ago, I semi-joked to a friend that the number of “hikers died” stories I keep seeing in the news suggests that we should quit hiking as a quick and easy survival tactic. This article, and the many articles about hiking deaths below it, removed the semi and joking part of that. The only hikes I go on are the ones you can finish in half an hour with adults and 1.5 hours with dawdling kids. I had no idea how much further people are willing to risk going and how much more dangerous that is.

Money: I am so glad that I’m a giant nerd. I was reading Kiplingers over the weekend for funsies. As one does. I learned about the existence of the long term care premium deduction, though not enough information on whether we were eligible for it or not, and writing up that question to our CPA jogged my memory about the question I had about where our mortgage interest appears in our tax return. As it turns out, it was misplaced in another line/form. Correcting it reduced our state tax bill by $1000 and increased our federal refund by $3000. Nerd wins.

Year 6, Day 337: It’s been a while since the inflammation in my hands interfered with daily life. This week has been That Kind of Week. My hands were like oven mitts and my fingers could not function like joints, they were more like blunt instruments. Any attempts at fine motor control were an exercise in futility. Could be worse, though.

This article was kind of tough to read. I’ve felt the anticipatory guilt about this for years. I don’t want to spend another minute, or penny, on my biofather and/but my sibling’s incapable of caring for himself much less our father: The impossible task of caring for ageing parents who did not care for you: ‘There’s a lot of reliving old triggers’. I have no clue how I’m going to navigate that when the time comes.

Money: Oop, there goes $600, camp wanted to be paid in full as a deposit against the two weeks we’ve booked.

Year 6, Day 338: Woof. I’m the repository for my colleagues’ and reports’ frustration and hatred of the corporation and some days, like today, it’s harder than others to let it flow back out of me. I’m not allowed to rage quit. I am allowed to run calculations on when we could be Coast FI in case I absolutely lose it and do rage quit. Or get fired because they keep setting impossible targets for us to miss (probably more likely). My friend has her money on me getting fired or laid off by next spring and I don’t have a strong argument against it.

We’re all doing our damnedest but our industry is being heavily impacted by this evil corrupt administration. Except our corporate overlords are acting like that’s not happening at all and it’s not only business as usual, they’re going to demand huge growth every single year and by George, they’re going to get it by impressing upon us a “sense of urgency”. FFS yes that’s the only thing that was preventing us forcing sales to happen, a sense of urgency. If my eyes rolled any harder we’d be issuing BOLOs for them.

Right now our numbers, if correct, say that if we assumed 5% growth and 4% withdrawal rate, we are at Coast FI. If normal growth holds. Other calculators say we’re not at Coast FI yet, and if I change our assumptions to 4% growth and 3.5% withdrawal, that adds a couple years. I wonder whether one paycheck would cover our day to day expenses until we’re fully FI because we have a lot of benefits coming out of one employer and none of my calculations include a non-saving scenario. My guess is maybe but it’d be less anxiety provoking to have a part time income supplementing it given PiC’s workplace is constantly reorg-ing and doing layoffs.

I do wonder if the market will stagnate over the next decade or if that’s an outlier sort of possibility. The market is completely irrational so my guess is it’ll do the opposite of what I think it should do. Just in case there is, though, I also ran a very low growth scenario. Using 1% growth, we need $600k more banked to be set for CoastFI and retire in 11 years. Or $800k to retire in 6 years. I don’t like this set of numbers but it’s helpful to have a range of answers to work between.

Year 6, Day 339: I keep getting a weird version of what sort of feels like FOMO. It’s not that, though. What is it called when you really want to do all the things and you can only do 1-2 of the things and all those other things left on the list make you sad? That thing. I’m happy I got to do the things I did do and I’m frustrated that that’s all I could manage.

Money: A completely random Poshmark sale happened. I hadn’t bothered installing it on my new phone but my account is still alive and I just sold one of JB’s old costumes that SmolAc had no interest in. +$7!

Year 6, Day 340: I did not eat like an adult today. There was a reasonably healthy breakfast but it all went downhill from there. A donut. A bag of potato chips. Then a half hot dog with onions followed by a half hot dog with chili and a bag of Cheetos. As PiC noted, twas a very cheap dinner for the four of us and utterly devoid of most nutrition. Whoops. Ah well. Garbage meals are a once in a while thing.

I’m feeling betrayed by Tresemme. For the past year, scents that were once fine are now absolutely intolerable, giving me headaches and nausea. This has been a slow progression. At first it was just a couple brands of shampoo that I wasn’t attached to anyway (Dove, and something else), then I noticed my old stand-by Pantene must have changed their formula because their scent is now repellant. Then my Degree deodorant this past summer – terrible. Tresemme has been my one reliable brand for hair products. Today, I tried their argan oil shampoo and conditioner in the new packaging and the scent was repellent so I passed it over to the kids. They don’t care. I assumed it was because of the argan oil, whatever that is, so I grabbed the next backup set. The next bottle was also the new packaging but the same generic type of product: also awful. I think they changed their scent when they changed their packaging. 😭😭 Now I have to find something that doesn’t set off my olfactory receptors.