May 19, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 21: What a day (negative). I dislike most of the new people I’ve worked with for the past 18 months, they are so incompetent and make my life so much more complicated than it needs to be. Today’s confidential news was like a gut punch: Someone I actually like working with is scheduled to be laid off. I hate this so much. Within this new and larger structure, my voice is not valued or respected at more than one level above me so I can’t do anything other than be angry. So! many! incompetent people all around us so of course this one actually competent person gets laid off. 🤬 I made it a point to give positive feedback about them in case it did make some secret sort of difference. I doubt it will but I had to do something. In other enraging work matters, upper management seems to think it’s ok to handwave clear violations of labor law and expect I’ll just go along with it. Newsflash, I won’t. I will never be that person. So I fought an uphill battle about that as well. More reasons for them to hate me but I won this round for my people. It doesn’t feel like a victory, though. Even though eventually someone had to admit they were wrong and apologize (not to me, though, couldn’t possibly apologize to the person who caught your department-wide mistakes) for the royal fork-up, I’m furious that I had to fight the fight in the first place.
This all feels like a flipping exhausting, completely unnecessary, exercise. It sent me spite job hunting. Sadly I’m still not seeing anything I especially want to do instead. If only we had retirement money. I would like to be secretly retired. I could handle all the usual kid stuff that I do, garden, continue with doing my Helping People work. Sigh.
Year 6, Day 22: Week 40 of working out with a trainer remotely. Sometimes I feel a little stronger. Most of the time I feel like I’m struggling to make progress. He keeps inching up the workouts every week, one way or another, that’s what he’s supposed to do, but that confuses my sense of progress because I only focus on how I feel doing today’s workout. More often than not I feel like noodle arms or weak. I noticed that my arms are probably (can’t say for sure, I haven’t measured for actual data) bigger because the sleeves of tees that fit fine last year feels too tight this year. Maybe I should measure for actual data. Part of me remains in denial about my changing body shape because I love my Fat Rabbit Farm tees, they don’t make these three designs anymore, and I don’t want to give them up.
Year 6, Day 23: ’tis a rough morning when I’m the first one awake, much later than we should be. I was up working til midnight last night, everyone else was long asleep by the time I called it quits so I thought they got good rest but we’re all running a bit ragged today.
I visited the garden for a moment of peace and maybe a reset. Out of 10 seeds, the green beans are doing the most. 5 out of 7 have a healthy start with leaves! 2 are trying their best (mood). 3 never germinated (also mood). Of the 10 cucumbers, 4 germinated and they’ve not been doing more than peeking a pair of tiny leaves above ground. I encourage them but won’t get my hopes up. Of the 6 sugar snap peas I planted, only 1 germinated and is doing a fine job of making a bundle of little leaves. Sometime this weekend I need to fix part of the auto watering setup and run it to make sure it works.
Year 6, Day 24: My personal policy is never to open the door to unexpected visitors because they’re either evangelicals or scammers. I don’t hold with being evangelized at by any religion or scammed TYVM. Unfortunately, PiC was home when someone came by and learned the hard way about my firm policy. They asked for times he’d be home and his phone number to schedule a visit. Personally I don’t think there’s any reason any legit company would be sending people door to door without business cards or having contacted us through official means so I was even more skeptical than usual. I did a few searches and asked if they said anything about an energy bill. Yep, they said they’d be coming to “review your energy bill” for savings related to the “IRA”. And there’s the scam. They’ll steal our account number and transfer our account without our authorization and rack up charges.
It was an object lesson for dinner: scammers can get anyone. They come at inconvenient times, they get you when you’re distracted, they pressure you to give personal information face to face which can be socially uncomfortable to refuse. They do this because their tactics are effective. If they can get you off guard, you’ll make mistakes that they can exploit. That can happen to anyone sufficiently distracted.
Year 6, Day 25: It’s daddy long legs season. Every year, there’s a point in the year when they are out in abundance and keep swarming our front door trying to get in. I don’t know why they want in so badly but it gets tiresome catching and releasing them. We’ve evicted four of them already.
It’s ALSO the time of year when I’m scheduling meetings 2-5 weeks out and having to shake myself when it crosses over into summer: Oh! I don’t have regular school pick up that day. What DO I have? The summer schedule (with camp, without camp, with travel, without travel) might just break my brain.
I was very frustrated this weekend when I took my 8P jeans for a test wear. It’s the right size and fits at all points. Until I start walking around. Then they kept slipping. Argh! The mental load of this week has been such that it wasn’t until today that I realized I don’t have to return them and start shopping again. There’s this thing called a belt! It helps keep pants up! They’re not purely decorative! So I’ll be trying on some belts next week. It’s a pity how little processing power I had this week for common sense problems.
Murderbot is out on AppleTV and to my great disappointment, it does indeed require a subscription. I suspected as much but hadn’t ever had enough interest to see for myself. I can do a free 7day trial. Maybe I wait til all the episodes are out and then binge them in a week.
May 12, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 14: What a bummer of a morning. Both an 8 am call and missed one of my favorite neighborhood dogs walking by. PiC assured me that he fulfilled the petting duties but that didn’t help my need to pet a dog!
I’ve spent the last few weeks cajoling my seeds to grow to mostly no avail. One intrepid cucumber seedling peeked through, and I hoped for more but hope was fading after more knowledgeable gardening friends said the seeds were probably all duds. Then two more cucumber seedlings peeked out! And one sugar snap pea, and today, two green bean plants!
Last week’s exercise was a real struggle, my fatigue isn’t the worst it ever was but it’s heavy enough that it’s messing with even my internal mental motivation. Usually, even if I physically don’t feel up to it, mentally I still want to try. It’s been hard to find even that bit of mental desire to try, or feel stronger.
Year 6, Day 15: The cost of rice at our local Asian market is up 20%. We’ve pulled out storage bins so we can store a bit more than we usually do in case the next problem after higher prices is shortages and then empty shelves. I don’t know how long that situation would last but we want to have some really basic staples on hand for the worst of it. I think back to my parents’ refugee days, when all they had to eat regularly was rice and fish sauce. Even I can’t imagine things getting that bad this year, boy do I hope I’m right, and they survived that for a year. We will find a way to manage.
JB asked what else we’ll stockpile and I’m not totally sure at the moment. Dry goods are easier. I’m making sure that we have necessities. They each have a next size up coat, shoes, and underwear. We need next size up socks. Smol Acrobat has a stash of next size up hand me downs. JB’s stash is mixed. I probably need to get half a dozen pants. They’re tearing out their knees at a slower rate than previous years so that’s a relief.
Year 6, Day 16: I’m putting in an order at Weee! for ingredients for two recipes and that led to 40 minutes of spreadsheeting the grocery prices we paid at the local Asian market in the past six months compared to Weee!’s pricing. It’s a mix. Many of the small items we’d get (coconut cream, rice flour) are more expensive locally. But I never happen across error pricing online. That only happens in person, if ever (just over 2 lbs of pork butt for just under $6).
Had to work til nearly midnight. We had a roofing person come by for an hour to make decisions, I had to hunt down COVID booster appointments for everyone to make sure we’re as immune protected as possible before summer sets in. I had to have a consultation call with someone in a completely different time zone. The FSA claims had to be submitted because our cashflow is quite borked from an unfortunate confluence of expenses and we need to weather this moment of the year where expenses outpace the cash on hand.
Year 6, Day 17: No dogs again this morning but a crow friend was on our driveway and scared off by the kids rushing outside. They weren’t rushing at the crow friend, they didn’t even notice them I’m sure, but I did and I waved to them on their perch across the street before I put down a few treats. They were in the watching mood so they saw the treats and once the kids and I cleared out of the immediate space, the crows came over to pick up their treats before flying off.
That was nice but wuuuff I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed. There are so many things that I need to do at work, both day to day and at higher levels, but my brain’s really not feeling up to the bigger things.
On the home front I’m also feeling this anxiety. Our GP and the pediatrician have both approved our boosters, we just need to get all our appointments set up. We also asked about their policy on measles titers and boosters, the PA will ask about our getting titers done to test for immunity so that we know what we’re dealing with. I’m having regrets – a lot of these things were meant to be done in April but the days got away from me so they’re all landing in May when things are always hectic. Next year, I will do better with our boosters – we’ll get them in April, if we still HAVE COVID vaccines. Sigh. That existential dread doesn’t help anything. I think it’s worse this week between the fatigue and having no time to do my usual political actions.
Oh. It’s not that. It’s that my surrogate parents truly believe that the Jan 6 insurrection was engineered by the FBI and I’m feeling physical pain and discomfort sitting with that knowledge. I suspected that they might be thinking along those lines, but having it confirmed – emotional and physical pain.
Year 6, Day 18: It’s possible, on the third hand, my overwhelm is simply because I’m overwhelmed. There’s too much to do, and only one me. PiC does a ton of heavy lifting but as always, there’s always so much to do. I took the time out for a massage today. Iit is always incredibly painful to reset my muscles, and then I’m exhausted after. I managed to wade through most of my work, wish all the moms happy early Mother’s Day, put together a chicken pot pie (I’d cooked all the components a couple weeks back and frozen them)(also it turns out my frozen pie crust needs to be out of the freezer for 5 hours, not 1.5, to be workable), water the plants, clean up, make nuoc mao in prep for making thit kho later, open a sack of soil and hill my potatoes without accidentally burying the baby green bean plants.
It sounds like I got a lot done but I didn’t to take my friend’s dog for a walk or play fetch, clean the shower, vacuum any part of the house, scrub the tile, submit another FSA claim, try on my new trousers with work blouses to make sure they’re worth keeping, or find a belt for the jeans I took for a test wear yesterday. I’m sure there’s another dozen things I’ve forgotten. The list is always neverending but it’s felt worse this week. Also the Okini coordinator contacted me about some bigger needs that came up and I need to put together an email update to past contributors for the April donations and for this appeal in case folks can pitch in for these.
That leads me to: it’s been hard feeling cashflow-broke. We can absorb most impacts but I impulsively gave enough to put us in the hole for a couple months. Oops. I had to halt all giving this month and borrow a significant amount of money from our emergency fund. I was commiserating with a friend that it’s very hard to want to spend on all the things and save all the money at the same time.
May 5, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 7: I started making lists of consumables to stock up on a little bit. Who knows how long we’re going to be impacted by tariff related shipping failures.
I’ve wanted a deep freezer for years, but we’ve only now got room for one – if I’m willing to commit to it. Really a bad time to be waffly. My hesitation is the commitment is threefold: deep freezer, backup generator, and then the more trivial by comparison cost of filling it up. It doesn’t happen very often but if we have another 2-3 day outage, our one generator can’t keep everything going long enough to save the contents of the fridge and freezer and what’s the point of filling up a freezer and losing it all to an outage? But I hesitate. Even if I hadn’t just donated four figures worth of cash to so many people in need two months in a row, and had to cobble together a professional mini wardrobe, the costs of both a freezer and a generator would still be a solid hit. As it is, it’s a lot. We’re also circling back to the roof work. We got so busy earlier in the year, we never got that work started. That gave me time to save, thankfully, but this feels like the year of all the money going out the door while our investments are completely bonkers.
Year 6, Day 8: My psyche is still healing from the bruising on Friday. I can tell because my dreams have been especially weird and revolve a lot around people and betrayal. Getting booked for 6 meetings over the next two weeks also messes with my psyche. I hate meetings. I especially hate more than one meeting a week, that eats deeply into my solo working time and management time. All of them have a legit need, still doesn’t make them any more palatable.
Very annoyed I was too tired and busy this weekend to complete the Christmas presents book order for Independent bookstore weekend. Or day. Whichever it was, bookshop had their annual free shipping event and that might be the last one we get for a while. I may have to go browse our local bookstore which I love but I just can’t find the energy to try to make that happen.
Year 6, Day 9: The jeans arrived! While the nice soft sweaters I tried with them make me look odd and lumpy, I’ve finally sized up appropriately and have jeans that fit. I know I said this before, was it a few months ago?, but that fitting was so wrong. I’m up to an 8P, the 00P and 2P days are well in the back mirror. I’d clearly forgotten what it felt like to have jeans that fit right. Also I snagged a pair of cargo pants that also fit for $13. I’m assuming that this is the last of the new clothes I’ll buy for several years, barring business pants if I can find just one pair that fit. That should be enough for the level of business professional I’m willing to present. If nothing else, COVID, bearing 2 kids, and hitting 40 should have sufficiently aged my face so that I no longer look like a child and don’t need makeup and full professional attire to be taken seriously. Plus my “I’m too old for this shit” facial expression ought to carry me nicely.
Forced myself to do all the sets of pushups scheduled for one day today, then forced myself to work late. My brain and arms are floppy noodles.
Year 6, Day 10: We’re seeing a lot of this absolutely ridiculous “just farm / hunt your own food” stuff on Bluesky in response to the slashing of the FDA and food standards. A whole lot of people forget that today’s foods and other consumables are only what they say they are on the packaging because of regulations and inspections and all that, don’t they? And a whole lot more swallow TikTok or whatever trad wife nonsense is spouting the “homesteading is easy” line without a lick of sense. I tell you, if we had to farm, just us right now the way our home is, for survival, we’d starve. Even if I put real effort into it, if we had to do that on top of our normal lives, we’d never make it. Even if we had actual farmland, weather and weeds that don’t sprout, and pests and predators and insects could easily devastate whatever crops you grow before you managed to harvest anything! How about we don’t let go of the wonders of modern life with foods that are available year round even during the starving time, and foods that are what they say they are, and medications that are what they’re intended to be, and clean water and air? Good grief. All these ignorant hateful people romanticize a fake perfect past that never existed and we all have to suffer for it.
Year 6, Day 11: The flippin ants are back!! Argh!! I’ll have to add boric acid to the mix. It’s somewhere around here.
I was on edge most of the day and couldn’t figure out why until I realized that it was a week ago today that my staff’s parting gift was a knife in the back. Right. Even though that’s likely in the rearview, it’s still haunting me with the ghosts of “having to trust new bosses to know my integrity and back me up” which historically is a thing I don’t, and they didn’t, do. I spent the day, and the weekend, primed to defend myself against the boss and HR. Turns out my boss didn’t want to see the proof that I documented of all the ways I provided Benedict Arnold support, they just wanted to know if I was ok and to apologize that I went through that alone with HR, without them. That was deeply unsettling. I’m not ready to extend trust to them yet but apparently my reputation, and my dealings with them directly, were enough for them to know that I’d never do what Benedict claimed in their call to HR, and that I would have gone above and beyond for them like I do any of my team. It’s true, I just didn’t expect to be treated like it was true, or humanely, after HR.
April 28, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 365: Had a heck of a pain flare up last night thanks to an unexpected hike on the weekend. I think the Celebrex might have helped around midnight. It’s harder to tell if it’s the medication because the pain got a lot worse before it got better. I also didn’t get full relief the way I did with other meds but it was enough to let me sleep without the horrible nausea side effects. If that’s really the med, I can accept that compromise.
I tried on a bunch of clothes today. Out of 6 blazers, none fit. The oversize “boyfriend” look will probably never work for me. Before, that long and large fit overwhelmed my slight frame. Now that I’m 30 lbs heavier, but still short, it overwhelms in a dumpy sort of way. Highlights the belly I’m not trying to showcase. Of the 12 shirts, only four may work. I need to try them on with appropriate pants now, though.
Year 6, Day 1: My emotional burnout is pretty fierce. We had a situation develop with a friend, they’re in crisis, and none of us knew to what extent they were struggling until this week. When some? most? all? of the truth came out, it hit me like a freight train. I had a near panic attack. The similarity to the way my parents variably hid developing bad situations from me until it was nearly impossible for any single person to fix, and then I had to fix it, whew. It was so clear that even I had a good idea of why I was shaking like a leaf. I turned to a more grounded friend who helped me through the responsibility spiral. It wasn’t my fault for not knowing what was going on before it got this bad, and it isn’t entirely on me to fix – I can’t. It’s too much for any single person. After texting a few friends who were closer, to the person and to the situation, thankfully they were able to let me know they had the first steps of handling the crisis in hand. I am taking a step back to assess what I can actually handle without mentally or physically crippling myself. It’s probably not a coincidence that my hands swelled up today shortly after the news came out, just like the good ole days!
Year 6, Day 2: In more trivial matters, I’ve been holding on to my jeans that are uncomfortably too small out of a silly stubbornness which means that I haven’t been wearing them at all for months, it’s too uncomfortable! Duh. I found a sale that brought the price down to less than $20 so I’m picking up a couple pairs in hopes that they’re the right size and that I’ll actually be able to wear them. The too small pairs will be put away for handing down. After finally adjusting my thinking on too small clothes, I’m starting to look forward to having pants that fit.
Year 6, Day 3: We’ve got package accords with a neighbor: when one of us travels, we ask the other to pick up any packages left at their door. Sometimes if we see strangers roaming the neighborhood, it’s not often but a pack of roughhousing teens we don’t recognize that have started displaying slightly questionable behaviors like wrestling in the middle of the street (it’s not a safe street for this), or worse, random adults going from house to house to house looking for someone without identifying themselves, we grab each other’s packages first and tell them later. I appreciate having this extra bit of caution and mutual community action on a small scale. They texted us this week to grab a package for their teen I’d seen it when cleaning the front yard and meant to ask if they were home or not. PiC popped over and picked up three.
Neighbor groaned: I only knew they bought one thing, I have no idea what the others are.
I guess we’ve reached that stage of teens ordering things without asking first. Obviously their parents seem fine with it, but it definitely got me wondering: in today’s society, when are parents letting their kids buy things on their own? Especially ordering online? I’m not sure where I am with it. I seem to recall buying some things on my own, self funded, when I was about 15, but I didn’t start ordering online til I was 17.5 and that was only because I needed to try to find books for college for better prices than the college bookstore. I’ve definitely not yet let JB experience online shopping.
Year 6, Day 4: What a completely shit day at work. I’m still decompressing from the choices people made today in a vain attempt to game a system for personal gain, at my expense. I can’t quite say it shakes my faith in humanity, first you have to have faith, but I am definitely regretting the months and months of care, compassion and flexibility. They outright lied, saying we had done nothing for their needs. The things we did do to be flexible for them? Well, they spun as retaliation. It’s absurd but our HR only cares about how things look and not how things are. Never mind that I have reams of documentation of the support, and their enthusiastic agreement with that support, in writing. That doesn’t matter to them. As far as they’re concerned, I screwed up on this person’s say-so. That stings. And the people who know me best and trust me implicitly are no longer in charge. I know where I made mistakes in the bureaucratic processes now, but they were not mistakes in the things that mattered. Anyway, my error is trivial compared to the shock of learning they had weaponized all of the work we put into supporting them to play the victim. I’m hurt, angry, and bitter. I’ve vented to friends and my therapist and shed really angry tears. I want to throw things. (My therapist is happy that I’m so openly angry and sad and hurt. Apparently, therapeutically, this is healthy.)
This will teach me to go the extra marathons for people. I wish them all the consequences they were happy to inflict on other people with their lies. Selfish bastards.
April 21, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 358: I went into the weekend with one goal: to cut my hair (again). I’ve been taking 2-3 inches off at a time since I’m a novice and have no idea what it’ll look like each time I chop it. It feels like about 4 more inches off the back would be right.
What I did instead: a rescue run to drop off stuff at the pool, filled up gas, therapy, set up a new spreadsheet to track some data, took everyone to the optometrist, ordered two pairs of glasses, picked up a pair, got one eye exam, went to 2 grocery stores, 3 loads of laundry, took the kids on a 4 hour adventure into the city via BART (by myself! I never take them on adventures by myself), yelled at our Senators about the SAVE act, ICE and illegal deportations and the Democratic leadership’s general uselessness fighting this fascism and laid in bed regretting at least a few of my decisions. No coincidence, I’m giving the Celebrex a test run. This is the new pain med my pain pharmacist prescribed to use instead of tramadol which makes me sick sick sick.
Maybe the hair will go next weekend.
Year 5, Day 359: I still need to set up time for an ADHD diagnosis, which is more for the kids than me at this point because I have new! improved! (maybe?) coping mechanisms. Upping my depression meds helped. Adding sixteen alarms to my life helped. Adding lots more organizing pouches to my bags helped.
This post at Nicole and Maggie‘s had me thinking: did I have lifelong symptoms? I dunno, how would I remember? Maybe. I remember being socially awkward all my life. I get on best with ND folks generally, NT people confuse and annoy me more than not. Like when they have an issue but don’t address it directly. Or spend a lot of time on chitchat before finally getting to the point. But is that ADHD or “I’m fecking BUSY, people, come on?” I’ve learned to read some social cues by mimicking the humans in my life who are comfortable with other humans. I hyperfocus or popcorn work: I’m either 100% locked in or spend 1-3 minutes at a time on 15 different projects.
I had RSD like whoa for most of my life. I’ve been actively working on diminishing its power over me.
Year 5, Day 360: I’m not feeling good today, but am noticeably less wrecked than Monday and Tuesday. I was testing my Celebrex for pain on Sunday and Monday night. Is it just coincidence that fatigue was extra high the day after taking them? Or is it a side effect? Maybe I was just feeling like a million pounds slug because pain was high enough to try my newest heavy hitter. That’s also logical.
Work is both wildly unsettling and settling down in various (and maybe opposite) ways. We have been working really hard at hiring people we hope will be good and long-term fits for my department. Now we’re deep in the thick of training which is the even more painful (because it takes so long) part. While handling that micro-level stuff, I’m also working on (juggling) several projects that will change policies for the whole company. Then I have to build business strategies to keep my people employed through the rise of fascism in America and that’s about where my brain goes squeeeeee squeeeee squeeeeee like a DSL modem. I’ve advised my non-US counterparts that this “weird Americans are being weird again” is really a deeply dangerous version that threatens the fabric of our democracy, and we may not come back from that. Let’s strategize around that, y’all. The folks who don’t live here (that I know) truly don’t understand how bad this really is, they think it’s business as usual with the volume turned up a bit.
Year 5, Day 361: This is a complaint. I have to find some presentable professional wear clothes by summer. a) I don’t WANT to and b) have absolutely no clothes look like they’d be both presentable AND comfortable at the same time. I’ve combed through my usual resources of a reliable petite fashion blogger to get ideas and after hours of searching and brainstorming, everything in me is rebelling. A couple hours of light online shopping later, I hate even the idea of clothing. Also I seem to have gone from a 00P to a 0-2?? (which I made my peace with post-first-pregnancy, mostly) to 10/Medium?? At least that’s what the size charts say.
I will deal with the numbers shifting, it’s mostly unsettling living in this body that still doesn’t feel like mine yet, but the idea of having to build a professional wardrobe again, urkk. My brain and my performance is completely unrelated to the clothes I wear but well, no, not true. The more comfortable I am (sweatpants and hoodie!) the better work I do. But what I feel good in is the barest nod to decency. I change out of my sleep sweats into my work sweats. I DO wish I could roll up in my existing wardrobe, either indoors sloth or geek comfort chic, but instead I’ll have to spend real money on business clothes that, if I’m lucky, I only have to wear once a year. No matter how much I’ve proven myself, I really doubt the new to me higher-ups are going to look at sloth-me and say yeah, let’s trust her decisions will yield multi-million dollar revenues. Humph.
Alright. Having gotten that off my chest: maybe it’ll be enough to find 2 blazers and 2-3 trousers to mix and match with casual tops and shoes. Keywords: Machine wash, and “never wrinkles”. Fingers crossed!
Year 5, Day 362: This was a 3 days of workouts week, we alternate between 3-day and 4-day weeks, but it still felt quite challenging to get through them all. I still have quite a bit to do by tomorrow. He’s planning to move me off the regular planks once I can achieve 3 1-minute planks but it feels like cheating if we do that before I can do them all three in a row. I break up my exercise sets across days, have never done 3 planks in a row, and as I tell JB, cheating in exercises is only cheating yourself. I’m not actually stronger if I’m cheating!
I’m stress shopping: treats and toys for my canine and feline niblings. Three Christmas presents done, one dog and five cats to go. I might send them a bit early too, save myself some year end packing and shipping stress. I’ve got the clothing half of the presents for the human niblings and need to buy their books soon.
We also had gift cards to use up so I combined them with sales and promotions to stock up on: Shampoo and conditioner, my current favorite St Ives pink lemon and mandarin orange scrub, wrapping paper since PiC is on a gift wrap kick right now, parchment paper (kitchen), eraser pads, hair removal stuff, and dishwasher detergent. I have no idea what’s going to happen with tariffs and the cost of living but these are consumables that we always use and I feel a little bit better for having a full stock on hand at least. For now.
April 14, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 351: This day started with the surprise visit of a neighbor dog as happy to see me as I was him. That was really nice. Lots of kisses and skritches. Every morning should start with a dog visit until we can bring home a dog friend.
I spent 2.25 hours trying to order pet food from not-terrible places to ship to the reservations. That is way too much time for what result I got out of it: having to order one part of the shipment from PetsSmart and 2/3 of it from Amazon. I also tried to get electricity hooked up for a family but we’re going 3 rounds of email and calls trying to locate their account and we’re not there yet.
Courtney Milan did a great explainer on the tariffs. I’ve been sharing this with people who aren’t plugged into the better sources of news (not mainstream media which fails on many fronts). I’ve also been recommending that they follow Celeste Pewter on Bluesky to get good political commentary and actions to encourage them to educate themselves a bit more and to hopefully take some action.
Year 5, Day 352: What a day. I woke up with blood pressure-brain problems so I was woozy all day long. Had a 2 hour call. Had to follow up on the Lakota orders, it wasn’t certain which would ship and which wouldn’t. Had to check in with staff to assign them more work and answer questions. SO many questions. OMG.
I catch myself staring at my to do list like there’s some magical line item that I can add that will fight fascism and make this country the place it should have been but has never been, and adding precisely nothing. There are a thousand things we can do, it’s just today, in this moment, my brain is stuck. It’ll shake loose, it’s just *waves hands*.
We’re also very close to ticking over into Year 6 since COVID and I wonder if it’s time to change the titles of these posts. COVID is obviously here to stay. We’re not likely to hear much about it with this completely reckless, thieving, homicidal administration. I don’t know what to switch to, though.
Almost back on track with my workouts after the big derailing in January. My stamina still feels hollowed out, though, not sure if that feeling will go away anytime soon. Occasionally I do feel stronger, though, and I’m grateful for those few feedback moments.
Year 5, Day 353: Lucky timing, border collie friend caught me early so we had a quick game of catch. I can never pet her anymore because my only job is to PLAY and dispense TREATS. Oh well.
I’ve been in a holding pattern for so many things, for months, that it feels weird now that most of them are resolved. Is this how it feels when stress levels are reset from Excessively High to Medium? This is good! I’m just a little wobbly.
- We’ve filed our tax return, paid the state and received the federal refund (surprised and relieved).
- The raise negotiations that were held up for months concluded abruptly (got an increase. not what I deserve but in this economy I’ll take it for now). Now the waiting for the paperwork begins.
- We’ve met the minimum spend on the first churning credit card, bonus points deposited. The second churning credit card has arrived in time for us to pay for the big insurance premiums. (Our home and earthquake polices went up again, of course. Mrgh.)
- The restructure at work is almost done, we know all the essential changes and people can live with them.
- We took a day off and had an overnight trip with the kids that was pretty good. I’d been dreading the trip, worrying that SmolAc would be in Bad Traveler Grumpy mode. They were excited, though, so that helped.
I took advantage of the sun and the school minimum day to pull weeds for a quick half hour and worked up a sweat. Pretending that I can work my way up to my trainer’s level of buff. Hah!
Year 5, Day 354: My phone camera has started doing this strange thing. It strobes black vertical bars across the screen that causes the pictures to be partly blacked out. It seems to only do this indoors, but it’s cropping up at places where I’ve taken hundreds of photos and videos. I can work around it by taking a video and snapping pictures as I record but that doesn’t work for portraits. I don’t intend to buy a new phone so soon, this one’s only 3 years old! I’ll have to figure out a fix somehow.
In other phone news, PiC’s phone croaked so we ordered him a new one. Just like that, we hit the minimum spend on the card that just arrived today.
Year 5, Day 355: The slow motion ant infestation is making me lose it a little. I find them in the kitchen, put down bait. Two days later, I find them in the office, put down bait. Two days later, kitchen again. Bait, again. Two days later, bedroom. Bait. Four days later, bathroom. ARGHHHH!! It’s like they have us surrounded and every time I bait one area, they send their scouts in another room.
April 7, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 344: I’m having an irrational thing. I set a high retirement contribution rate last year to max it out in the time I had to contribute. Having already tightened the belt to adjust to our much lower cashflow, it made sense to keep that contribution rate this year in case I had to quit in a huff if everything fell apart. (I’m still on the fence about that. Things are supposed to get better but “better” is relative!) I’m suddenly very impatient and want it done. Even though it would cut my take home pay to very little cash, I want to increase my contributions to max it out right now. Why? I don’t know! I am pure impatience.
Ten hours later: Ohhh this is my version of cutting my hair to pretend I have control when I have no control! I am waiting on several important financial things and I can’t do anything about the punkasses who are dragging their feet. That’s why the overwhelming urge to do anything.
Year 5, Day 345: JB has to start a medicated eye drop regimen that runs $100 for a 3 week supply. *faint*
We just had our eye exams and their rate that their myopia is developing is concerning. They’re not willing to do the overnight contact lens therapy, I’m not willing to fight with them over this yet, so we’re starting out with the eyedrops first. If they can get accustomed to that without having a total meltdown every night, maybe we’ll work our way up to the contacts. Maybe. I feel bad for them. They got my aversion to letting anything ever come near the eyeballs but they did not get my good vision. Their eyesight is worse than mine is right now. This is worrisome.
My eyesight is a touch worse than last year so I need to replace both my computer glasses and the distance glasses I completely forgot to start using when they were prescribed … uh 18 months ago? I’d prefer to use my own frames which means bringing them to the eye doc and hoping they don’t screw it up. I’ll get a cheap pair from Zenni first to hold me over during that lens replacement time. My computer glasses allowance is only $90 for frames. That is silly low and I don’t want to pay another $250 out of pocket for new frames that won’t fit well with my office headset if at all possible.
Year 5, Day 346: I’m negotiating for a raise right now and the ghost of anxiety is fluttering in the background. Surprisingly, it’s just a friendly little ghost. Even though the negotiations are with an entirely new person I don’t know or have trust built with, which brings all the baggage of their social expectations of women to just take what they’re given if anything, my past 20 years of negotiating raises for myself and for my team and teaching my friends to just go for it has blunted those nerves. Here’s hoping I get an answer (and that it’s yes) this week so I can map out the rest of our budget year.
My tax person has been uncharacteristically slow this year. I KIND of assumed that the WTFness of the world played into that but she didn’t say. Still, she managed to submit our return this week and to my relief given the wanton destruction in DC, the returns appear to be somewhat automated in some way because the money hit our bank today. This covers our CA state tax bill.
Year 5, Day 348: We went on a little adventure. My biggest goal was for us adults to not have to think about what to feed people for at least a whole day.
I have learned some more things about myself on this trip and all of them are: Digital disconnect makes me itch. I prefer to remain in civilization with all the trappings thereof. I hate not having the option of GPS, I hate not being able to download another book from the library when the painsomnia is up. I hate the blanket of cold that comes from having only canvas between me and the rest of the world instead of walls.
My friends and PiC have all gently pushed the idea of camping for years. One of them accidentally made it sound kind of fun but my very gentle brush with the wilderness this week, though I love nature, reminded me that even if my curiosity is piqued, I’m no longer built for such things. This very thin veneer of camping was enough to remind me how I like my creature comforts.
We did have fun! It was dusty and dirty and muddy with one of those single “stall” showers with the showerhead that makes me think of MASH (probably only because I have never been to a real campsite) and I didn’t mind all that, it’s roughly like the barn life I grew up with. But I’m in pain and discomfort daily, who needs to add “roughing it” to the list of challenges? Even with the softest beds, my body was all NOPE til 4 am this morning.
Year 5, Day 348: I forgot to update my spreadsheets for the monthly Net Worth update so I had to do it today. WOW. The last time I checked VTSAX, it was trending down a bit but nothing alarming. Today? That was a significant drop from Monday to Friday. It’s not personally alarming because we’re currently very fortunate on multiple axes (and are hyperaware that could change at any time): we’re still accumulating assets – this drop means we’re investing in the same assets at lower prices. We also have W2 income and don’t depend on that money to pay the bills.
Of course you know that I think the bigger picture remains extremely alarming. The executive branch of the government is disappearing people, admitting it, and saying we don’t have to offer due process to SOME people. I would hope that people would realize that if some of us don’t have due process, none of us have due process. The government just has to disappear you and make vague claims that you were suspected of terrorism or some such noise, and refuse to tell anyone where you are. If they can do this to legal residents, and they are doing it and admitting it in open court, then they can do this to citizens just as easily.
I keep wondering if our country and democracy are going to survive this period. It feels absolutely surreal to see people in the PF community taking this administration in stride as if we aren’t in constitutional crisis and as if this new regime isn’t going to do lasting damage. It’s as surreal as still having to go about our everyday lives, raising the kids, making dinner, and dealing with work (both the important stuff and the minutiae). What’s the phrase, fiddling while Rome burns?