Year 5, Day 295: Today was demoralizing. Or started off demoralized and just stayed that way. It’s been a long long haul of fibro and chronic fatigue taking turns kicking me in the teeth every day, for almost two solid weeks. I have very little spirit left.
I did get an enormous amount of work done, considering how much of my morning I lost to other people. Honestly it feels like most of my days are about other people and their needs. I don’t love this. It’s part of the management gig but sigh because after I get through the exhausting if necessary peopling, then it’s a full day of my own work waiting for me and there simply are not enough hours in the day.
Checked off many boxes at home, too: finished one portion of our complicated taxes; got our churning credit card in the mail and promptly made 5 purchases that I’d been holding (3 bills, a giant order for Lakota families, ordered my medication refills); scheduled a notary appointment for PiC to get paperwork finalized; scheduled a last minute appointment for JB to get their braces adjusted after a tooth semi-sort-of-suddenly fell out. It goes from wiggly for weeks to IT’S ABOUT TO COME OUT without any predictability. Normally that doesn’t matter but, with braces, each time a tooth falls out, it’s a whole thing with the wire poking them and everything.
I commiserated with a friend in the same position of limbo and we at least feel a little more confident that we’re both in the same boat. Stinks for both of us but… misery, company, and so on.
Year 5, Day 296: I started the day running at warp speed, getting JB out of the house before 8 am for the braces fix, and then getting back into work mode all before I normally get settled into work.
Despite how hard things are right now, and we’re both bone tired between the two kids, the two jobs that are Really Hard right now, and everything else we’re juggling, I’m also deeply grateful for our financial stability. We have a dry safe home (atmospheric river incoming). Our kids never go hungry (SmolAc’s wails of despondency when they suddenly need a snack notwithstanding). They don’t have any poverty-related health issues. We can afford for me to have therapy and to work with a trainer to work on my health issues. This GFM came across my radar from the book community as this author and her family are navigating a third bout of homelessness. They prepared as much as they could but they’re facing a real uphill battle. I nearly broke myself over what, 16 years?, to keep my nuclear family off the streets and paying their bills but a huge part of that success was because my hard work was combined with luck in a number of areas. This family’s working hard, they need a bushel of good luck. Failing that, for now, they need a few bushels of cash to see them through til that luck breaks their way.
*”all this could be worse” isn’t my coping strategy even if true. Knowing that doesn’t make anything feel less hard or bad. It’s just an observation because I’ve been there – barely making ends meet while working myself to the bone. Working this hard in precarity is different from working this hard and being relatively secure. We’re not the kind of secure where we never have to worry but the (not wolves because I like them but something else that stands in for the olden idea of wolves) are a lot further from our doors than other folks’.
Year 5, Day 297: I’m eating these very tasty brisket chips and just realized that most of PiC’s local friends (“the guys” we call them) make or buy yummy treats for holiday gifts. They all bake, or whatever you do to create some of these treats, and I find that yet another reason they are delightful. Other reasons: they’re solidly dependable, caring, family-oriented in a healthy not-creepy GOP sort of way. When we had that emergency a few years back and I asked them for directions, without explaining until the very end why and definitely without asking for help because I don’t DO that, they immediately mobilized anyway and got to PiC before I did (they were closer). They have reasonable, healthy partnerships whether they have kids or not.
I took this gaming Alignment Quiz the other day and could not answer question 15 because I have no idea what local people think of me or if they give two hoots about my well-being. I CAN answer that for PiC. His folks show up. Another guy in the group had to move his dad into a nursing home and all the guys were there when he needed help clearing out the mess left behind. They’re all in their 50s and they’re still moving friends! And no egos to speak of so no one got injured. I really like that about them.
Year 5, Day 298: My contributions to dinner all week have been takeout. Ordered burgers at the start of the week, picking up pizza today because we’re a mere two miles away and still somehow not in their delivery radius and I’m not willing to pay their delivery fees. I should do the comparison on the time vs fees.
I have so much hair after 3 years of no haircuts, I could chop 8 inches off and still have plenty of room to fix the mess before it gets up to my shoulders. IS IT TIME??
PiC discovered frozen mini corn dogs at Costco! We love them. What is it about foods in finger food sizes that makes them so much more enticing? Normally one corn dog would be a serving size. Pretty sure I had 9 mini corn dogs.
Year 5, Day 299: Trying to find some good in the small moments even as I compile my list of reasons to contact our Congresspeople. There’s a rhythm to stirring a pot of oatmeal for everyone else to breakfast on (too mushy for me). I reserved a whole half hour for myself to just do work without speaking to anyone else after my first meeting of the day. That gave me a tiny bit of equilibrium back.
The Costco shipments to the Lakota reservation are getting unstuck, supplies are getting to people who need them. The first family this month asked only for space heaters for all the trailers. We sent enough for everyone. The second family has a house that’s more winter tight (but that’s all relative) so they’ve been giving bed space to folks whose homes aren’t. They needed blankets and food as they hardly had enough for themselves. We sent a huge (Costco FTW!) shipment of food and blankets. I’m working on the third family but we’ll be clean out of money pretty quick. They have ten family members listed too. I’m trying to shake out a bit more cash because right now I can only get them a couple weeks worth of food along with the toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner, and soap. I’d like to add a few more things: toothbrushes, toothpaste, detergent, more food.
I absolutely know there’s no time for a dog right now, I can’t even make time to go borrow one for a walk. My soul doesn’t care about reality or responsibilities, it yearns for a dog snoring at the foot of my bed again. Can’t. But want.
Year 5, Day 288: A pain flare kicked my ass this weekend. Still is. Some of it’s probably the barometric pressure shifting on me, a good amount of it will be the stress lately and sleeping badly because Smol Acrobat bunked with us for a couple nights. “I wike your bed better, it’s bigger den our bed” they observed. Then why did I keep waking up to you sleeping on my head?
Trudeau’s speech made me sad in that, yes! We know this is unhinged behavior that none of us (North Americans who aren’t garbage) want and we’re also fighting what feels like a losing battle against it all. We’re still fighting but man was it hard not to feel so much shame to be an American in this moment.
“I hate most people, it takes all of my skill to hide that!” – Blake, Madam Secretary.
Boy do I feel that.
Half my day was eaten up with calls. I’m living my nightmare job right now. May this pass soon.
Year 5, Day 289: My stress cravings are getting very specific. I catch myself wanting a Cinnabon most days. Or an old fashioned donut plus a donut hole. Or a ribeye. Today, though, I survived on a glamorous half inch slice of quiche and small Gatorade because I had no appetite. My pain was so intense last night that I caved and took a tramadol. I’ve not taken one in two years for a very good reason: it alleviates my pain for a little while and then I pay for it five times over with side effects. Feeling like my bones are lava has become almost routine on bad days, but this is Day 3 of extremely high pain. So high that it actually distracted me from work. Work is usually my way of distracting myself from the pain and it’s rare for anything to break my hyperfocus when that’s in gear. The tramadol bought me 3 hours of blunted tolerable pain. It also bought me 18 hours of severe nausea. These trade-offs are NOT worth it. But what choice do I have? We really need better pain control options. This is awful.
PiC had to take over my school runs and JB’s activities today because I felt so awful. I couldn’t even feel guilty.
Year 5, Day 290: Pacing myself this week has been the pits. I’ve been mostly bedridden because sitting and standing are so fatiguing they send my pain through the roof into the stratosphere. I refuse to take the tramadol again, that is SO not worth it.
You know what’s great? Giant spoonful of peanut butter. Can’t take away pain or fatigue or that river of lava flowing through my bones but it is DELICIOUS.
Was super proud of a friend who has committed to making calls to Senators even though it was hard for her. I provided all the scripts and phone numbers I had collected from Celeste Pewter and cheered her from bed.
Year 5, Day 291: From Courtney Milan’s newsletter, the word I was searching for last week for this surreal moment in time: “I learned a word this week: hypernormalization.
It’s the word people used to describe what was happening in the Soviet bloc countries in the 1970s and 1980s, as people went about their daily lives deeply aware that the center would not hold, that everything was falling apart, but with nothing left to do but pretend that life would go on as they understood it.
It’s a word that encompasses the moment when a large number of us know what is happening to our country—know what we are seeing—but engage in a mass, country-wide kayfabe to keep on doing the things we need to do to survive as individuals, even knowing that some individuals won’t make it and that the world we know is rapidly deteriorating around us.”
I think she’s 100% right about this too: “I firmly believe that if nothing is done, historians will place the end of the United States as a democratic, constitutional republic somewhere between a few days ago and a few months from now.”
I’ve been checking in on my people and making sure they know we’re here for them. I don’t know how, or if, this country survives these body blows. Maybe it doesn’t. But we as individuals and people may survive if we take care of each other.
We expect a few lump sums of money this year that’s mostly meant to pay for the roof but I’m also earmarking direct aid for people I’ll never meet offline who are in need or are community organizers or activists themselves.
Year 5, Day 292: I love Smitten Kitchen, I knew they wouldn’t fail me when I didn’t know how I was going to cook those spareribs I got on sale.
I spaced out the cooking process across DAYS because I haven’t been able to sit up or be out of bed most of this week. Mixed the spices one day. Dredged the ribs another session. Then popped them in the oven in the morning to bake for HOURS. A friend asked me how I get anything / everything done / survive between my health and my life. Well. This kind of budgeting is one way.
You know what’s funny about sending holiday cards super late? Five friends have texted me delighted to have received it. This doesn’t happen during the year-end holidays, no one cares or has time to care at that time of year.
Costco had no eggs and we are just about out. I feel vaguely like a failure of a quartermaster because I’m usually on top of these things and get enough supplies to hold us over for a while or ration supplies to make it stretch. PiC was advised to get there between 9 and 10 am to get eggs so they do have some, they just run out quickly.
Year 5, Day 281: There’s something I can’t stand about the audio of dubbed TV shows or movies. The voices always sound too breathy and feel mismatched to the people they’re dubbing. Even when I’m not looking at the screen, that offness remains.
Wrote to all our Congresspeople again today to tell them, again, we do NOT want bipartisanship with this administration. I don’t want to see one single CA Senatorial vote for any of their nominations or bills or anything.
Stand up for trans rights, immigrants rights, reproductive healthcare rights. Stop pissing away what little goodwill remains for scraps of recognition or Republican “cooperation”. Also instructed all of them to SPEAK UP against this federal funding freeze bullshit.
Although I’m being worked into the ground, I’m also keeping it front of mind that I cannot exist solely to deal with W2 work, chores, giving and activism alone. We must carve out room for rest (even if it’s not enough) and joy. We need to sustain for many more days, weeks, and months. We don’t have to pretend life is NORMAL but we do VERY much need to deliberately choose to have good in every one of our days. We’ll burn out spectacularly if we don’t.
Year 5, Day 282: The “purge if you don’t miss it in a year” cycle doesn’t work for me. My regret cycles kick in at 2-4 years, and I never know which it’ll be for, or if it’s silly.
At the moment I am regretting getting rid of my Top Shop leggings a few years back. I’m wearing the one remaining pair under my cargo pants for warmth so it matters very little how they look or fit, it only matters that they’re oh so soft. Then again, I don’t think I’d still fit at Petite 2 size anymore, so maybe this is rose colored glasses at play too.
JB is so bitter that they have the day off school tomorrow but isn’t allowed to stay up late tonight doing crafts. We still have to get up for the dentist early tomorrow morning. I don’t think I knew they had the day off when I made the appointments but it worked out, mostly.
Year 5, Day 283: Smol Acrobat loves counting my reps for me. After 30 lateral raises, 14 squats and 15 glute bridges: “what are you doing NOW.”
Lying on the floor like roadkill, kid, I’m tired!
It’s been a hell of a day. Meetings all morning, then getting into actual work but an idle checking in on people led to finding out I have to take more meetings because folks have needs that need to be heard and their managers have totally dropped the ball so I need to pick it up. Fahhhhh.
I’m extra tired. So tired I WANT to cry emotionally but physically am just too damn tired to and who has the time to anyway?
This all-the-meetings! life is hell and I hate it. I’d like to think or know that it’s temporary but due to upcoming reorganizing, probably some of it is here to stay. I have to figure out how to share the pain so it’s manageable workload and not just pain.
Soothing background show for the day: Man on the Inside. So many The Good Place alum, I hope they keep adding more in the second season.
Year 5, Day 284: We’re saving for the roof replacement and travel and replenishing the dog fund. It feels very jarring to be thinking of these trivial things (and how do we suddenly have tiny poppy plants spread all over the place?) this week with everything going on.
It feels like we’re living in 1930s Germany. I know many people outside the US see the same thing when they look at us. Even though we’re safer than most being in California, my gut screams that we have to fight and plan for the worst.
Asians have historically been OTHER. Just because we’ve been temporarily useful in recent years as a model minority (which is bullshit, not safety, and woe to most Asians who believe otherwise) we’ll be a target just as much as our fellow minorities. We may not be the first but our turn will come. I sure as hell don’t plan to be compliant. We have to fight to help the folks on the front lines, now. Trans people, sex workers, they might be first because the world thinks they’re expendable, but no one who isn’t a cishet white male is safe. I remember the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese internment camps and Korematsu v. United States and the millions of racist indignities before, in between and since then.
Soothing background show for the day: Madam Secretary. I find the competence and (sometimes unflappability) of Tea Leoni’s Elizabeth McCord and Bebe Neuwirth’s Nadine Tolliver comforting.
Year 5, Day 285: I shared CA Senator phone numbers with two more people, asking them to call and leave voicemails when bad shit is happening (when is bad shit NOT happening these days) to pressure them into taking action.
I called the Costco feedback line to thank them for maintaining their line on DEI policies and not caving to pressure internally or externally both as a customer and a shareholder. 1966 positive calls today, she said! This is important that they hear from us that they should be continuing to hold this line. I need to get a phone number to yell at Target. Wait, here’s the number to yell at Target, or (thanks to Celeste Pewter).
Nicole and Maggie have lists of actions, pick one or two that you can do? Jan 26 and Feb 1.
I chose a new churning credit card: Chase Sapphire Preferred, 60000 bonus points for $4000 spend in 3 months. I should have done this last month, the kids’ dental bill alone was $1000. But we have more coming up, hitting that requirement will happen pretty quickly. Making a note for myself that I should plan to do this early next year. Again that double feeling of surrealism with planning: will we be here next year? Will we be able to make use of points hoards?
Year 5, Day 278: A plague is upon our house. Having successfully taken down JB, the (noro?)virus moved on to me and I’m wiped OUT. It’s gotten PiC too. Smol Acrobat has a whole different set of symptoms so we’re collectively a mess. Days and weeks like this remind me – we definitely can’t have a dog for at least another year. It’s too hard to get sick, be unable to rest because you need to keep someone else alive, even harder when you need to keep a pet alive and well. My antivirals are doing a fine job of keeping me off death’s doorstep but it can’t make me well.
It’s fine, I miss my dogs deeply but we need this time and energy cushion so I’ll be using this time to rebuild the dog savings account. We can always build money margin by saving more and earning more where possible but I don’t know how to build health/energy margin.
Year 5, Day 279: Now obviously I’m nowhere near being a billionaire so there must be something I’m missing but I have a quibble with this quote from Warren Buffett: Real estate is generally a “good investment” during times of inflation, according to Buffett.
“They’re the businesses that you buy once and then you don’t have to keep making capital investments subsequently. So, you do not face the problem of continuous reinvestments involving greater and greater dollars because of inflation,” he said during the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.
No subsequent capital investments? Nothing like general maintenance and replacement appliances (we provided fridge, microwave, stove and oven), or refurbishing the whole place when a tenant trashed it? I got out of real estate because I tried to keep rent low, and that meant that the ongoing costs of maintenance and the cost of lost rent weren’t sufficiently covered. Even if the tenants always paid on time, there’s always something that needs to be maintained annually. My friend with multiple rental units ran through all of their reserves carefully built up over the entire several years they have been doing rentals because one tenant both refused to pay rent, drove away fellow tenants, and trashed two places. They have to start all over rebuilding so they can continue to provide appropriate maintenance for the remaining tenants. My other friend with multiple rentals who is committed to ethical landlording with low-priced rent, doing all the work themselves and promptly, hasn’t broken even in years. I’m well aware there are many predatory landlords and rental companies out there who are more than making ends meet but it’s hard not to look at that statement without full on skepticism about how exactly they’re avoiding any further investments. Though I suppose he’s probably talking about a much larger scale than anything I’m talking about.
Year 5, Day 280: Related to billionaires, I was thinking about this Courtney Milan thread about money and dopamine. My corollary theory to hers is that people whose only hobby and dopamine generator is the pursuit of more money are up a creek, existentially speaking, when they can’t derive dopamine from making or spending money anymore.
On my own personal scale I’ve experienced this in a multitude of ways. In the early days of this blog I needed to work inhumane hours to survive, and then my brain correlated the dopamine of survival = the dopamine of thriving, therefore the path to happiness must be working too hard all the time. That’s one pattern and a brain muscle memory that I still have trouble breaking back out of when I have an intense period of working. Last week, for example. And when the thing you’re expecting to bring you dopamine doesn’t anymore? Problem. That was also last week for me. I did so much work and felt zero satisfaction. It was frustrating.
Then there’s just forgetting how to have fun or relax. That happens a lot for me, too.
My personal fix: I try to pay close attention to small pleasures. Having a batch of cute small inexpensive but well made earrings I can swap in and out without pain is this month’s tiny pleasure. Maybe next month’s too. I hope I’ll always cherish this tiny feeling of satisfaction.
Year 5, Day 281: Woke up exhausted, as usual. Nearly spread sour cream on my bagel exhausted. That’s not great but not unusual. Not as usual: those episodes I’ve have now and again at night? It hit me when I got up this morning. Even after a lot of water, Gatorade, some food and a lot of sitting, the dizziness, dark spots on my vision, and feeling like I was on the precipice of vomiting (but without nausea weirdly enough) remained all morning and afternoon. Absolutely awful.
And then there are so many reasons for the perpetual screaming in my head this week.
Taxes and the inability to know anything right now. I have no idea if we’ll owe, last year was weird in enough ways I can’t even guess, and I cannot do anything about it until the end of the month or mid Feb at best because our documents take forever. Mid Feb may be optimistic even.
Work: so many unanswered questions. So many answers I did get, and don’t like.
Worrying about friends in bad relationships, I wish this one were never a line item but it feels like it always is.
I need a deep therapeutic scream, join me?
Year 5, Day 282: I have no idea what happened to the Friday entry! Which is kind of apropos for how this whole week has gone.
Year 5, Day 271: PiC found our local HMart and got Korean takeout for dinner!! It was SO good. Gochujang, so good. That was the one bright spot for the day. It was nonstop today, starting even before the day began with an 11 pm kid-call for comforting and a 5 am wakeup because one kid didn’t feel well and then the other kid didn’t feel well, and then it was morning and time for questions, emails, checklists, to do lists, questions, chats, updates …. ! It was nonstop with people needing things.
There’s something awful going around right now. This one’s not COVID, flus A or B, or RSV but definitely something that overlaps the same symptoms. I know several people are down with the ick. I hate that we still got gotten even though we mask. It’s not perfect of course, but it probably keeps our infections down to a minimum. Even if it doesn’t feel so best case scenario when you’ve got a kid hurling the contents of their stomach.
Sometimes the state of my brain feels like I can’t learn new stuff because I keep forgetting and then relearning random old stuff. Like the definition of an archipelago.
Year 5, Day 272: We found garlic toum at Costco and it’s amazing (the brand is Toom) – highly recommend. The kids eat so many fresh veggies with it.
I love the ol Donyo Lodge Wildlife Live Stream, it’s so soothing when I’m frustrated with software.
I’m on Week 24 of trainer workouts! And uhhh I am starting to crave some kind of feedback. Maybe this was set off by my doctor’s appointment last week. My doctor (who is the exact same age as me, mind you) commented that she thinks we’re good parents and that she’s proud of me for being self aware and acting on that self knowledge. Having gotten an A in doctor’s appts, now my dopamine seeker wants approval on working out. Tsk. Some impulses are as bad as sugar cravings.
I’m still not reading the Vulture article reporting on Neil Gaiman yet. I intend to at some point, when I have the bandwidth. That said, while I appreciate my friends giving me a heads up that it’s a tough read, it was awfully annoying to have total strangers exhorting me not to read it to protect my peace. You know what, mind your business!
Year 5, Day 273: Our neighbor’s lab is adorable and sweet and hilarious. She walks by our house at least once every two weeks when we’re outside and it just makes my entire day because she wants ALL THE PETS and I want to GIVE all the pets! A match made in heaven. We touch noses and then it’s off to the races: skritches til my arms cramp up. She has that really beautiful thick water dog fur which requires really strong fingers.
I was so stressed by an email at work (it was the opposite of what we needed to hear) it sent me on walkabout through the house so I decided it was time to get my planks out of the way. Now, I don’t hate any of my exercises but do hate that it never feels like planks are getting any easier. I need to do them earlier in the week. By the end of the week, I’m out of time and energy with planks left to do and they don’t always get done. So that email was kind of a lose-win situation.
Year 5, Day 274: JB and I are whining in equal measure about (respectively) homework and work. I’m indulging in excess whining since it’s easier to match their mood than it is to ask them to get it together.
Sometimes I wonder about other people’s finances. In a nosy curious kind of way. We’ve got multiple neighbors with four kids in multi-generational homes with expensive cars and taking expensive vacations (several week trips, international, and theme parks like Disney and the like) every year. I’m so curious about how much that all costs because I couldn’t swing that. We make ok money for here, not that kind of money. Ignore the six figure car. That’s just a “won’t” (even if we could. But we can’t). We priced out Disney last year for a two day pass and almost passed out at the cost. Well over $2000 for the four of us for 1 day. Are we just cheap? Because that seems really expensive. Maybe we’re just cheap?
Maybe the older generation pitches in? In my family the elders are provided for, they don’t contribute financially though they might help around the house. Oh well that’s actually probably the difference isn’t it, they didn’t have to pay for daycare for any of the four kids. At an average of $2000/month per kid, four kids for say five years, they did not spend $480,000 for daycare. That pays for quite a lot of vacations.
Now I’m curious how much we’ve paid for childcare over their lifetimes. If I were on my computer, I’d go find out.
On second thought, best not to.
Year 5, Day 275: You know what I like about Elementary? On my 6th runthrough of it. There’s a pattern of Sherlock growing as a person and however begrudging he may seem about affection in the beginning, truly embracing the value of Joan as a person and as a partner, but there are moments I didn’t catch on in previous viewings like the moment when Joan snaps at Sherlock about his being tetchy with his professor friend and her annoyance with Sherlock who chooses to be alone. He says in this incredibly hurt tone: “Watson?!” but later in the episode, he obviously takes in the point of her upbraiding. It’s a little thing but I liked it.
This, friends, has been an intensely hard week. With sick kids, and intense work loads, our household is a shambles. And I am TIRED.
Part of my stress response to uncertainty is to work more, which is only contributing to the fatigue and stress cycle. Admittedly I actually did need to log some extra hours to clear out a backlog that was going to cause real problems in a couple weeks, so that’s actually a relief but when it’s just about caught up, I forget how to cycle back down to more acceptable levels. I’m waiting on some pretty important answers to very important questions, and it’s not like working myself into the ground is going to do anything at all to change that outcome right now. I need to stop working after dinner, for a start.
Year 5, Day 264: Day 17 in a row of being with one or both of my children. I’m tired. I’m so tired of the “Mom! Mom! Mom! (They did, they said, can I have, when can we, I need, they hit me, they’re taking my …)” When did this become a Mom household?? You have a father! I just really need several hours in a row without any humans in my immediate vicinity. Dogs, cats, and Corvid crew welcome. PiC gave me a few-hours break today, taking both of them away for the morning, thank goodness, which flew by almost as if it were mere minutes.
I ran training, checked on all the paperwork, followed up on Lakota orders, set up shipping labels for community donations, dealt with management problems and minutia, processed my feelings of general resentment about work stress. I sat with JB for an hour guiding them through another round of organizing their things into the appropriate bins and baskets, and assigned them 15 minutes of carrying on with the work solo while I worked. I pondered my radiating hip pain (entirely self inflicted because I agreed to go on a hike yesterday, foolish mortal), and I pondered the former friend who called me selfish and self-centered. Even if that outburst was more about whatever was going on in their life than me, those words were calculated to hurt and they continue to sting.
Year 5, Day 265: This week’s stressor: the unknowable. A friend was speculating that my life – I don’t make friends when people are incompetent and a LOT of incompetent people have entered our sphere over the past 12 months – is going to get so much worse for me this year. They’ve got a front row seat to some of the shenanigans from last year and had more time in the corporate grind than I have had so their prognostications are likely to be accurate. I have so much to do in 2025 but lack any confidence that I will get the proper support or recognition (by which I mean both title AND money) for it. In fact, I think it’s quite likely I will be left in the lurch (without support from higher ups) by the summer and my entire self doesn’t know what to do with this likelihood other than hate it.
As much as I hate the idea of job hunting, that’s the logical thing to do. I rewrote my LinkedIn as practice for rewriting my resume. Having lots of feelings about this whole thing. Wrote a recommendation for my staff, will write more later.
Kicking myself over making silly mistakes like donating to international GFM campaigns with the wrong credit card so that I got hit with a foreign transaction fee. Rookie mistake! I have a credit card for these things that do NOT charge foreign transaction fees. Sigh. It’s really not a large amount at all, it’s the principle of wasting any money at all, ever.
Year 5, Day 266: Second stressor: The Santa Ana winds have made the fires so unbelievably dangerous in Southern California. I grew up there and even in early adulthood the fires didn’t seem this bad back then. It can’t just be my imagination, CA wildfires must generally be a lot worse in the past decade or so. I’ve checked on a lot of our friends and family, the fire came within a mile (!!) of one of our families but they’re safe, thankfully. So much destruction has occurred and none of it is contained.
Third stressor: I hate change. I haven’t changed my doctor in 13 years, we have only moved once and I have no desire to move again if things aren’t dire. I hold on to clothes until they fall apart or don’t fit anymore. All this to say: when faced with big changes in my work life that I have zero control over and will deeply impact my life and my family’s lives, my stomach churns with stress and I hate it so much. This is in addition to the world being terrible, on the larger scale.
I also realized something about myself though can’t explain it. I toil in obscurity. I do some big and important things (in some respects) professionally but very few people know my name, what I do, or why it matters. And most of the time this doesn’t register on my list of things that matter. It does register when I think about needing to suss out job opportunities and regret not having a strong professional network for referrals. But the moment there’s a chance of visibility on a wider scale, I drag someone in front of me as a human shield, “take him instead!” Best I can say is that this is the same as my thing about fame and money: I’ll take all of the money (so I can do good things with it), I want nothing to do with the fame.
I know what I’m good at and I loathe masking. I haven’t had to operate as the completely professional version of me for more than a decade, I’ve been a more human version, and I’ve gotten used to that. It still takes energy but less than when I face high level corporate executive types and lawyers. When that happens, I feel awkward and put on my professional armor defensively. Except it doesn’t fit the way it used to. It’s happening more than it used to now, and it’s going to keep happening. Deep deep sigh.
I suppose they’ll have to deal with what they get: a well seasoned professional (smells of rosemary?) who has none* fucks left to offer in service of politics and nonsense. (*To quote Smol Acrobat, “none means zero”.) I deliver great work, I don’t have the energy for the other nonsense. Except can I continue to deliver great work if the other nonsense becomes part of my life?
Year 5, Day 267: I haven’t slept well all week. That’s the work stress taking chomps out of my sanity and confidence. Bits of Tiffany’s “I think we’re alone now” has been stuck in the back of my mind with just barely discernible lyrics so it took me 3 days to figure out what song it was. That one I can’t explain.
There’s been a lot to stress about and a lot of extra drain on my energy dealing with those stressors. I had this whole plan to make this year go smoothly and then my cabbage cart was kicked over. ARGH. Imagine me throwing those cabbages back into the cart, muttering direly to myself, and those cabbages are hours-long conversations with various key people and flashes of “oh shit, I forgot that thing too!” That’s been my week.
I freely shared with JB that I am SO TIRED. Dragged myself to and from school pick up and afterschool class. We ran out of Hawaiian rolls so I searched the internet (can’t even call it Googling anymore, what’s going on 2025) and decided we’d whip up a cornbread to go with the pulled pork. Right. Whip up. The slowest whipping up ever. We did manage it, we used Sally’s Baking Addiction’s cornbread recipe which has twice as many ingredients as I like but it was very tasty. If I can, I’d like to make a couple more. One to eat, one to freeze. Ambitious.
Year 5, Day 268: The stress-induced heartburn continues. The endless documentation for various management needs continues. The seemingly-endless backlog of work continues. The fires in LA continue.
My hair is down to my waist again, it’s now been another 2-3 years since my last haircut and I don’t want to go to the hair place because they don’t mask and I don’t know if they vaccinate. Not that vaccination will stop transmission, it’s just the principle. I’m this close to just hacking off several inches myself and damn the consequences. Except for the first time in ages, it might matter what I look like. 🙄
All that wasn’t enough, we foolishly decided to let the kids go to the school Movie Night because the PTA sent out a call for volunteers to staff the snack bar. I was far too tired for that but went and sat with the kids through the movie while PiC did the volunteering. We cleaned up afterward and trudged home. Stick a fork in me, I’m done!
Year 5, Day 257: It’s getting so we need a third suitcase for family travel. We’ve crammed four humans’ worth of clothing and necessities into 2 small suitcases and a mini one up til now but it’s time. I’m not looking forward to trying to make a decision about what to get. The last time we got a new suitcase, it was a free one from Alaska Air for breaking the wheel on my older suitcase (Swiss army, they sent me a replacement wheel). That’s just a little too big to be a carryon but not big enough to hold a great deal more. It’s maybe about 23-24 inches compared to the 21 inch.
It’d probably be best to get a standard carryon size to make it easy to use for both air and car travel? Or maybe we need to just go medium checked size to have enough space for us adults and the two kids can use the smaller ones as they get older.
Year 5, Day 258: Good grief what a terrible season. So many of our friends and family got sick and/or injured these past two weeks, I’ve started holding my breath whenever someone texts, hoping that this isn’t another illness or injury. It took me two full recovery days to try and get past the worst of my symptoms which were then followed up by several days of hands swollen up like oven mitts.
It was also a really hard day with the kids. They kept taking turns whining for HOURS until I snapped and made them go out on a “walk until you STOP IT” nature walk with me. There were moments I vaguely entertained notions of walking into the sunset and disappearing. It was nice to just pretend to think about for a few minutes. Unexpectedly, eventually they ran out of whine and tuned into the nature around us. Minor miracles. They picked flowers and rosemary and we made it home intact. Emotionally worn down but intact.
I’ve got brand new white hairs and can confidently say they’re from the kids. STRESS.
Year 5, Day 259: Our last visit of the holiday season was a really good restful one. It’s usually our first visit but I rather like ending the whole grueling ordeal with a comparatively peaceful person to be around. We also had the opportunity to care for a dear friend who was unwell. They’ve so often cared for and about me and I haven’t been around for the past decade to help out when they weren’t well. This time we were able to return one of the many favors. It’s a good feeling.
This week’s self soothing activity: Finalizing all the details our spreadsheets to shift over to 2025. I had to clean up some messes and update our tax spreadsheet as we rolled out of 2024 and into 2025.
Year 5, Day 260: My mail order pharmacy won’t cover omeprazole anymore. They had the audacity to say that “it may cost less to purchase OTC”. For a quick comparison, 42 tabs of 20 mg omeprazole at Target is $18. 60 tabs of the same from the pharmacy has been $8. I knew that they were going to change medication coverage but didn’t know exactly how it would impact us, now I am starting to get a glimpse . It looks like I should (maybe?) still be able to order it online for in-person pickup at the normal price, at least.
Ah-ha, corporations are good for something. SFO is booked solid through March 31 for Global Entry appointments and won’t take walk-ins. PiC’s coworker told him that the company pays for the TTP people to come every so often to handle applications for employees and families so he managed to get the kids scheduled for this month. We’d like to plan a trip but I cannot do that until all the paperwork is taken care of, it gives me the collywobbles booking travel without the passports and TTP and all that done.
They were advertising a 5x match on donations before December 31, but I went to the KIND site and they’re now showing a 7x match. I’m wondering if that’s accurate. Either way, I made them our first tax-deductible donation of the year: migrant children are going to have a really rough time of it with this administration. The Young Center also does good work on this front. Their Charity Navigator ratings: KIND, The Young Center.
Year 5, Day 261: All those poppy seeds that I thought the ants or the birds took? They were slandered. Many seeds have burst into not-quite-bloom, but germination and grown into green plants! This was a delightful discovery, like a little reward for surviving the holidays. I’m getting some plant therapy in now, pulling the grass and clover that’s sprung up around the flower plants too. I can’t call them weeds without a flash of guilt now, thanks to The Spellshop.
