April 27, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 5 and 6 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
This is a record of our weekdays. Video calls with other kids have been spectacularly Not Fun.
Week 5, Day 1: Most of the time, I’m dropping quick money updates in PiC’s ear. He may listen, he may not, but he knows I’ve got it. Things are exceptionally topsy turvy because he actually asked for a check in on our finances. Since I’m obsessively on top of them, it was easy to give him the birds’ eye view. Basically: we’re on the right track, we have a plan, I tweaked it a bit, but as long as we keep our jobs and incomes, we will be ok. We stash lots of cash in case of job loss, but you know I’m going to worry if we do lose a job. It’s how I’m built.
Jenny got me thinking about the Dragonbox apps as way to incorporate math for the kiddo. I would have to find my iPad and charger though. 😬
PiC has me concerned about his job security. I don’t want to have to add worrying about his job on top of my not sleeping, and my extra heavy workload. I just do not want one more thing on this plate please and thank you. I last resolved to go limp on this one and I am very bad at it.
Week 5, Day 2: This was a particularly grumpy day. JB was defiant and rude and frankly bratty most of the day, and simply could not deal.
I was not in the best form myself and my patience wore thin by the time I hit the 6th repetition of simple instructions that they refused to follow. Thank goodness for the one day of warm sun to at least somewhat offset the high level of grouch of the day.
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April 13, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 3 and 4 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
This is a record of our weekdays. We are attempting to set up the occasional video call with other kids so that they can socialize that way.
Week 3, Day 1: Why are Mondays always just the worst? They just are. It’s not even that I dread work, it’s just the day always starts off with me feeling physically slow and sluggish and often also mentally slow and sluggish. My 5yo coworker also complained of being tired but they mostly didn’t want to leave the cozy bed. Me neither, kiddo. Evidently my Monday woes stem from not feeling well on Sunday carrying over. I had to crash for the morning for a while. JB brought their art to hang out bedside with me and narrated their art projects for an hour. I mumbled barely coherent responses most of that hour, they didn’t care.
Seamus just keeps on trying to force us all to be in the same room together.
Week 3, Day 2: Our leadership has confirmed that they think we should be financially ok for several months and no one should be worried about layoffs and that is a huge relief. I’m so grateful to know that I just have to worry about making it day to day with our million concerns and not about losing this job. I was definitely not lucky in job security during the Great Recession so I have a great deal of empathy for the people losing their jobs now.
Since they could be wrong, since we can only make our best guesses on the information we have now and that keeps changing (and is likely inaccurate), I’m doing a lot of balancing of our budget day to day to both be supportive of the local economy and communities in distress and to bolster our own finances.
We’re looking at all the ways we can put cash back in our pockets: requesting our cash back from cash back sites, submitting requests for our dependent day care reimbursements, following up on FSA reimbursements, requesting refunds for services that won’t be rendered for a while from very large corporations that can bear the costs, filing our federal tax return now (we’re due a small refund).
This cash gathering is to balance our spending ahead on services we won’t be getting from smaller businesses until much later to try and help keep them afloat.
Other places that need help:
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March 30, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Week 2 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
This is a record of our weekdays. We are attempting to set up the occasional video call with other kids so that they can socialize that way.
This week’s menu planning: Roast pork shoulder, veggie curry, a rotisserie chicken from Costco. I meant to also make dumplings and tandoori chicken from scratch but PiC surprised me with that rotisserie chicken on our last run to Costco for a few weeks.
Day 1: I was finally mentally ready to get my act together and set up a tentative schedule for JB. I don’t know if we can manage this same thing all week but I like the general outline that gives us some structure and some chances to get work done without having to entertain.
8 am -8:30 am, Breakfast
8:30 am – 9 am, “art lesson” – watching an artist draw something new and copying it
9 am – 10 am, Call with Auntie – practice writing
10 am – 10:30 am, dance party with music
10:30 am – 11:30 am, free choice (probably art)
11:30 am – 12 pm, snack
12:30 pm – 2 pm, walk dogs and have lunch
2 pm – 2:45 pm, rest
2:45 pm – 3:45 pm, solo free choice – aka work at my desk but do not talk to me
3:45 pm – 4:30 pm, numbers/math time – maybe a few worksheets that they enjoy doing. *Note: couldn’t find it. Oh well.
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm, movement of some kind.
5:30 pm – 6 pm, inevitable lost transition time to whining or tiredness
6 pm – 7 pm, dinner (more…)
March 24, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Money
Our spending went way (waaaaaay) up this month because of the stocking up on food and medications and the house repair which had nothing to do with the pandemic, just the weather.
The groceries were manageable, I focused on sales and specific recipes to make the most of our food and prevent waste. I also picked up a lot of apples and oranges that will last a few weeks in the fridge to stretch out time between grocery trips.
The real kick in the teeth was the medications and Seamus’s final labwork. I think we spent about $800 all told on his stuff. But we simply cannot risk him going without his pain medications due to any interruption in the supply lines.
I canceled both our dogwalker and my massage therapy but I paid the former anyway and bought a gift card from the latter to help the business with a bit of income while they have to be shut down. Luckily, my brain therapy is already remote so I will keep that appointment this week.
As much as our budget can bear, I’m trying to anonymously help out folks who have lost their income.
We are both very fortunate that, for the moment, our jobs are relatively safe. We don’t know how long that’ll be the case and I have always planned against the worst case scenario happening and will continue to do so but I won’t forget to be grateful. The not great thing is that PiC had finally located some jobs to apply for and we don’t know if the companies will freeze hiring. I hope not. He’s been unhappy in this job for so long, I sure hope he still has opportunities open. But either way, we know we are so incredibly lucky and we are grateful for our current financial stability however long it lasts.
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March 23, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Week 1 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
I haven’t written anything substantial about this because I’ve just been too busy trying to deal.
We had begun taking steps weeks ago. Around March 1st, PiC and I were adding moderate overage to our canned and frozen food stores.
A week later, I started cooking up fresh and frozen stores to make actual meals in case I got sick myself. (Not that PiC wouldn’t care for me but he’d also have JB and the two dogs to care for. That’s a lot for any one adult.) Traffic was noticeably light going to and from work this second week of March, many employees who could were already working from home. Unfortunately since we have no help, and we both had to work full time and on site (PiC), we weren’t prepared to make that shift. Still, it was in our future and I was going through our stores of supplies to create a Treasure Box for JB.
By March 14, I was on the verge of pulling JB out of school. We had planned to spend the weekend finalizing our stock up of our supplies and start to hunker down. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans for us, and we had to spend the whole weekend fixing the house instead. That was frustrating but we were so (so so so) very fortunate to have a couple of friends who were available and willing to come help us with the repairs and with entertaining JB. I haven’t had local friends in a long time and I’m still stunned by their generosity.
By the evening of March 15, I couldn’t justify keeping JB in daycare even if they stayed open. I didn’t want to risk them being exposed to anyone who had been exposed to the germs over the weekend. We made the call when we went to bed.
By Monday when this post goes up, it’ll be Day Ten in calendar days but I’m only recording weekdays.
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