May 29, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 59: A very Mondayest of Mondays – we have work up to our ears, unethical/shady customers, my ribs feel caved in and I can’t raise my arms to shoulder height because they feel like they’re getting dislocated, and of course, car trouble. Oh and then midday brain fog floated in that I want to box it. But I can’t because the arms, they cannot be raised. Ger-offa-me!
We have quite old cars and they’ve been relatively low maintenance. Certainly maintenance has been cheaper than any car payment would have been. My car started acting up on Saturday, which is unnerving at this age. I always wonder if this time will be more expensive to repair than it’s worth. That’s a mix of not being in charge of car maintenance and my usual catastrophizing tendencies (work in progress!) PiC is working on it but this week we’re effectively down to one car. We’ll make it work but it’s not great with the 2 different school dropoffs/pickups and PiC going to work onsite plus appointments this week.
We ran the diagnostic tool thingie (which I’m sure has a real name) which told us to replace the spark plugs and ignition coils. Crossing my fingers that this is all that’s needed. I’ll be grateful if we only need to spend a few hundred to get her up and running again.
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We’re meeting with a potential dogsitter this week. This person is much closer than our emergency sitter we’ve used for the past two trips. We really LIKE the emergency sitter, but it’s such an impractical distance to travel at the best of times.
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Year 3, Day 60: We’re coming up on the last day of school in these parts fast and we’ve been putting together JB’s camp schedule. The problem is, I don’t know a single soul at this new camp we’re trying for a few days. I do NOT feel comfortable leaving my kid there without a known reliable adult or any friends with kids there. I don’t know when I’ll be ok with that, probably not for a few more years. This means I’m going to be work-camping out all week at the new camp for the first week. We’ll be back at a known camp after that. Yes, I realize this seems like overkill but it’s my comfort level. That requires back up power packs with higher outputs since I can’t count on having an outlet to plug into. Now isn’t the ideal time to buy but now it when I need them and they were always part of the multi-layer plan to be prepared for power outages so I might as well test them out.
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I started collecting funds to hold for the Fall shipment of snacks for Penny’s students before folks disperse for the summer. $20-25 contributions go a long way when we all lift together! We’ll be able to set them up nicely in the fall and it’s really good to know we’re concretely helping hungry kids get some food during their school days.
I’m also collecting funds for the next Lakota family. I’m reserving $120 to ship 4 boxes and a stash of gift cards to shop the Thanksgiving sales this fall. I wonder if we can repeat last year’s Thanksgiving and Native Heritage Month drive. I really HOPE to but….it’s been a weird year for a lot of folks.
Year 3, Day 61: JB has been dealing with conflict with a kid in their class on and off all year. We hadn’t heard anything for months until this week, and a whole jumble of bad behavior came out. This kid tries to push a mutual friend to take sides, tells the mutual friend to keep a secret and loudly proclaims “DON’T TELL JB!” and tries to turn the other kids against JB at lunch. She tried on stomp on JB’s belongings and weaponizes a teacher-relative against the other kids. JB has tried to talk to her about it but the kid just rolls her eyes or denies having ever done anything wrong. In short, this kid is a giant jerk. It makes me angry on their behalf that this kid seems to go out of their way to be a jerk. We had a lot of talks about it, but there’s no real solution for a second grader beyond: stay away from people who treat you like crap. Then again, that’s true of many such jerks they’ll encounter in life.
I hope that the jerk either grows up over the summer, or disappears from JB’s life entirely, lost to the crowds of people that they’ll encounter as they change classes each year. I know there’s no guarantee they won’t cross paths again, but I can hope!
I’m also hoping this isn’t developing into a real bullying situation but it sure shows the early signs of being one.
Year 3, Day 62: Smol Acrobat woke 5 minutes after midnight and plaintively asked to sleep in the big bed after they calmed down. I caved and let them squirmy wormy all over my prone self as I tried to sleep and ignore them, they’re using grumpy at night when they’re getting sick and I worried.
We’ve finally registered JB for a mishmash of gymnastics camps next week. They’re pretty excited about it. Today, I registered them for 6 consecutive weeks of summer camp at almost $500/week. ☠️
It’s starting to sink in that in addition to daycare, we’re paying another $2000/month roughly for camp.
Between these, and our recent car trouble, summer is $$$$!
Year 3, Day 63: Uf, another “big bed” night for Smol coupled with a 550 am “Mama, eat”. Nooooo…..
We need more postage for Ye Little Art Shoppe. We’ve had a steady trickle of sales but they’ve stopped for now. Thinking ahead, I’ll be with JB nearly all next week, working, monitoring their camp, and prepping their latest round of art to prepare new cards for the shop.
I won’t have time to fill card orders next week so I might as well treat next week as a rest and regroup period. That means I can order postage online instead of trying to add a trip to the post office with all our meetings and appointments. It’ll cost $1.55 extra but buying online means one less errand to run over a holiday weekend and I can get a variety of the new forever stamps that our local PO is too small to have. This might have to be my last indulgence for a few months.
I’m sad today. My friends from my working college days are in town and initially they were going to spend a day with us. But instead they’ve changed their plans to go sightseeing further north instead. I couldn’t afford the energy to go with them today, even though we haven’t been able to see them in years, before the pandemic. I understand but I’m sad.
May 22, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 52: There are days I’m tired of being the only working set of eyes around here. This isn’t one of those stereotypical overworked wives things. PiC sees all the clutter and cleaning that needs to be done, and maintenance and does his share. This isn’t a household fairness thing. It’s literally about eyesight. The two of them cannot find things!
JB let their backup set of glasses go missing, the pair that’s supposed to live in their backpack, and I was annoyed that PiC had to find this out when their primary pair broke. I was grouchy that I hadn’t remembered to follow up about whether they were wearing their glasses at school MONTHS ago like I’d intended. Anyway, he did the disgruntled first parent on the scene talk with them, then I followed up with the slightly calmer but still irritated orders that they were to spend the entire afternoon today searching for the glasses and doing nothing else until they succeeded.
6 pm rolls around, PiC had gotten dinner on the table, and JB still hasn’t found them.
Still irritated, I went through their desk area, knocking over the apparently never been emptied pencil sharpener in the process, vacuumed that mess up, and then checked their room. I found those damn glasses in 15 minutes without zero idea of where they had last been sighted.
Smol Acrobat had better have my finding ability, I refuse to be the only one that can find lost items in this family!
Year 3, Day 53: Smol and JB were sick all weekend and Smol spiked a really scary fever overnight so I was up all night with them making sure that the fever responded to meds. It did but it was a trudge along, trying to just get the bare minimum done, no-rest sort of day for me.
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Bless my GP, she doesn’t know whatall is wrong with me but she’s always willing to explore and test to cross things off the list if there’s even a semi plausible reason to consider it. While I don’t present with classic Cushing’s and she’s mildly skeptical that it is the (or a) cause for some of my issues, we’re doing a screening for it anyway just to be sure since I don’t object to it.
Year 3, Day 54: Squeaky and hoarse, Smol started talking at about 630 this morning. They made it through the night, thank goodness, without waking and crying like they’d done six times Friday night. They were even in a GOOD mood, thank more goodness. PiC was up too late working, and small miracle I wasn’t feeling as bad as usual, so Smol and I had an unusual early morning together. And it was ok! They were opinionated but not overly difficult.
Random food thoughts: Cilantro suddenly tastes like soap to me this week. Liquid Dawn, in fact. It’s never tasted like soap before. It’s always tasted like green stuff. Not great, not terrible, and I didn’t love or hate it before. But suddenly, it’s a mouthful of soap. Weirdly, that wasn’t terrible like a real mouthful of soap would me. Surprising but I didn’t hate it.
That was related to the cilantro that I stopped adding to the leftover pozole I had for lunch – absolutely wonderful. I love fresh squeezed limes. Also apple fritters. I love those unexpectedly crunchy little bits scattered along the edges.
Year 3, Day 55: FINALLY! I remembered to follow up on the form I need to volunteer at JB’s school. Now, to be fair, I only just got my required physical done recently so it wasn’t that I was dragging my feet. I just forgot all this week that I could ask them to get the form filled out now.
I’m not particularly in love with the idea of more socializing but I do want to have the option of going on field trips with them or helping out at the library or in the garden if I can make time, someday. Here’s hoping I’ll have enough time to get those forms into the school office before the end of the year.
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It’s pitiful that it’s taken me months to get around to the dog bedding laundry but it has. Today, today was the day! Sera’s 🐶 bed cover was swapped out for the clean spare, and washed with her blankets and sweaters. The washing bit isn’t hard, though timing things so I wash and dry everything before 4 pm is tricky when squeezed in between working, doing school pickup, and walking and feeding Sera. The part I’ve not had the energy to cover is, when the washer dries out, needing to vacuum the whole thing or else the lingering fur gets all over the next load of laundry. But today, I did it all. I was tireder than a sloth but fit into today’s rounds and now Sera 🐶 is snuggling happily with a fresh blanket and we are both happy. No wonder I live a small life. The simplest things are satisfying.
Year 3, Day 56: The mass exodus from Twitter (and maybe also the economy? I’m less sure about that part) has made fundraising for the Lakota families
REALLY slow this year. I confirmed there will be a post-school giveaway of lost and found clothes where I’ll gather many armloads of kid sized coats to ship to the Allen Youth Center this month, I confirmed that’s still on. My fingers are crossed we’ll gather enough funds to help out another family in June but it’s hard to say if we’ll be able to hit that goal.
I’ll continue throwing notes out into Twitter in hopes enough folks are still around who want to contribute. I’d surely appreciate y’all sharing too if you can.
May 15, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 45: Experiencing mild jealousy. JB’s friend is the 3rd of 4 kids and all the kids have been looked after by their grandparents. The older kids who are in school are dropped off and picked up by grandparents if the parents aren’t available, they also chauffeur the kids to all their afterschool activities. Entirely leaving aside the reality of the parents we have, I can only imagine how much we could give and save if we didn’t have to spend over $2000 a month on childcare ever over the course of JB and Smol Acrobat’s pre-school lives. Anyway, I don’t envy their lives. Four kids is just too many for me to wrap my head around. I just sigh over the imagined savings for a minute because I’m feeling our inability to do ALL the things. I need to save, and invest, and really want to be able to help a whole lot of people going through rough times right now. But with the huge $2300 monthly bite out of our budget, I’ve had to pull back. That is going to annoy me for a bit. I’d gotten used to being able to help folks more.
To go with that, I am mildly annoyed at myself. We/I somehow failed to increase our FSA contributions this year to the maximum $3050. How did I mess that up?! Ugh. Next year we’ll get it right.
Year 3, Day 46: Ant update: they still haven’t returned to the kitchen and might be gone from one bathroom. Several were spotted in the other bathroom today, though. Where to bait them…? They were inside the shower which gets wet daily. Outside the shower is too accessible to kids and Sera 🐶.
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Gripe: people like @trappercap on accessibility are the worst. American society is hugely inaccessible. This is related to games development but it’s so common to hear this kind of tripe with regard to accessibility in anything. It’s so frustrating as someone who could really use a lot of accommodations but constantly makes do, at my own personal health expense, without. Making things more accessible is often good for so many more people than you’d think at first. It’s not just for people who are disabled. Often it’s also good for the very young, or elderly, or new parents who have babies in strollers, or any number of other life circumstances that may be temporary but still difficult. (more…)
May 8, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 38: JB has been sleeping in Smol Acrobat’s room weeknights and the unlooked-for side effect is Smol gets JB up in the morning far earlier than their usual. This has slowly shifted everyone’s waking time earlier. Usually the kids blow that time playing because we can’t get it together, which is fun for them but exponentially less fun for us when we have to interrupt their play to head out. Then everyone is cranky.
This is the first morning we’ve intentionally left as early as possible, like we did last school year, to drop off both kid which means the work day can finally start at a reasonably early hour. If we can make this our new routine, we might all be a little less stressed and cranky by the end of the day.
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It’s May 1st! I don’t know why that feels so portentous or something but it does. Also my neck really hurts and that feels like an ill portent. Why are heads so heavy?
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A few more checklist items for the Wells Fargo account bonuses: setting up the $1000 direct deposits to the new accounts (done), linking those accounts to an outside-Wells account so I can transfer all our money back out later (done), checking if my qualifying spend had posted to the CC yet so I can pay that off (checked, not yet). I LIKE doing these bonus things if I can find the energy, it yields so much ongoing dopamine.
Year 3, Day 39: BOO 5 am wake ups with Smol. I zombie parented for an hour until PiC took over at 6 am. I crawled back into bed, sure I’d regret not staying up, but that rest helped my neck to feel about 70% better. What a huge relief that is!
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May 1, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 31: Ok. I SAID I would take the year’s finances as it comes instead of reprojecting our spending and saving but someone could have called me on the blatant lie. That’s most certainly not how I work.
As much as I hated doing it, a week of not doing it reminded me that I hate not having a balanced financial roadmap much more.
I’ve subtracted the cost of daycare from our planned monthly savings and reprojected a lower savings rate for the rest of the year. If we end any month with more than expected due to lower spending, I’ll push that to savings too.
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I don’t have the patience for more than a 2-3 minute meditation so I’m sticking with the Body and Sound Meditation (3 mins) in my attempts to recenter my brain and my body.
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After yet another high pain weekend, this being my third week of flare-up, I had no appetite for eating or cooking. PiC’s been handling our food for the past few weeks and was drawing a blank on dinner ideas.
We got Thai takeout but once again my generic Asianness worked against me. I ordered the pad see ew with mild spice, everything else non spicy, to keep the kids from inhaling my favorite dish. I am not Thai but alas, being mistaken for a native is common and means that “mild” for me is the equivalent of a firebomb. One of these days I’ll learn to order under a pseudonym.
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April 24, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 24: The kids have been deeply into building JB’s old magnetiles set and a bin of 40 year old Legos handed down from our friend last summer. This is tempting me to buy a larger set of magnetiles that are on sale. But do I really want another set of magnetiles in the house? Yeeess … we could build taller! wider! more!
Do I want more stuff in the house that I’m constantly decluttering? Dammit. No. The answer is no, self, no more magnetiles. Even though it’s a lot of fun.
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My fibro flare continues. It feels like I’m a walking lava monster. I’m currently theorizing that this is a reaction to the cold-like virus that Smol Acrobat brought home last week. I haven’t had symptoms other than my own green snot, but Smol’s been a dribbly snot factory this entire time. Not that it matters a how or why this flare-up started, I’m just speculating while grumping about pain that drains all my daytime energy and doesn’t let me sleep at night. Rude.
My therapist had offered me this link to guided meditations and we tried a short one. I’ve been pretty jumbled up recently. I know things are ticking off my anxiety (less alone time than usual, my routines have been and will stay upset for at least a month, anticipating an unpleasant upcoming week with unpleasant people, I’m covering for absent staff, etc).
I know that all this transitional stuff knocking off my routine is putting me off my stride. I know what the problem is. But knowing doesn’t dissipate the tension it generates. The stuff still fundamentally sets off my fight or fight reflex which cannot be satisfied, so there’s a self sustaining feedback problem going on. The guided meditation helped a little bit so I’ll be trying to do a short one each day to see if it reminds my body how to let go a little.
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I didn’t know that Smol Acrobat knew how to say: handbag, castle, medicine. That was a surprise!
They’ve been trotting around for the past few days saying ohhhkay (in a really mellow tone) to everything and it’s weirdly cute.
Year 3, Day 25: Whoops. So it’s Picture Day for Smol. We don’t usually care about school pictures but in the spirit of fairness, agreed to get a small package for them like we did for JB. One time in their daycare “career” per kid. We had to pay for the package ahead of time (which I thought was sort of silly, and that was foreshadowing for you).
JB absolutely loved their photo shoot but that was pre-COVID, we were able to be there, and toddler JB was a total showboat for the camera.
Poor Smol Acrobat found the whole experience frightening. We couldn’t be there for it. The big flashbulbs were popping. They were separated from their peer group and taken to a strange room with strangers behind big cameras. I was 0% surprised that they cried and refused to take the picture. Poor kid. We decided it wasn’t worth distressing them to try again. We get plenty of candid photos.
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I’m happy about two food treats we splurged on: a po’boys and beignets lunch and a stack of banh mi that’ll make three meals for everyone. That cost $109.
I’m equally happy about a surprise Poshmark sale. A perfectly new-with-tags dress I can’t wear leaves my closet and $16 comes back to me. This only thrills me down to my toes so I suppose it’s fair that it’s not much money compared to our spending on food.
Twitter was good tonight too. It gave me this thread of my favorite kind of accidental eavesdropping, when people are talking to pets/animals (DAMN, @baddestmamajama went private, I hope she’ll be public again later so we can enjoy the thread again), this amazing cartwheeling teeballer, this kitten, and this commentary on the nexus between madness and gender. And this cat.
This is the good stuff I’ve been missing.
Year 3, Day 26: Our wind feels like getting ice water dumped over your head. *shiver*
Testing my physical limits today, to see if I’m through this flare, and the results are mixed. My muscles are still upset, my bones are less so. That’s a bit of progress but I’m still relatively sidelined. So even though I got through my critical work early enough that I could have gone with JB to their library activity, my body was staying planted right here.
I used this time to process an Old Navy return. I’d bought myself a shirt, in addition to clothes for gifts, but it didn’t fit right. Organized more clothes for the Lakota Giving Box I’m filling, I’m hoping to stuff it to the brim with jackets the end of next month. Sent a Coffee on Ko-Fi to an artist because I want to support them a bit but I can’t afford their super high quality jewelry. It’s amazing art but the pieces that are my style are wildly outside my price range.
Who doesn’t feel this tired? While I’ve always had prepper tendencies by nature, after all we’ve already been through, I’m not volunteering to navigate through a post-apocalyptic world.
Year 3, Day 27: I feel ~100 lbs denser this morning. As if every part of me is exponentially heavier and thus requires more energy to move.
But the good parts of this morning: one load of laundry, done! one dental cleaning, done! (I love the dental chair, it’s so soft and cushy) one UPS drop off return, done!
After a couple hours of intense work (and an ill advised 2/3s of a delicious chocolate hazelnut piroshky), naturally, I crashed. Since I couldn’t actually tap out, so I just kept slumping down further in my chair.
Year 3, Day 28: This tweet gave me a good laugh today.
I disagree. Wealthy people might spend less money on attire proportional to their income/cash flow but I do not think that wealthy people, as a group, spend less in absolute dollars consistently enough to make this a rule of thumb. I think spending on clothes is much more related to each person’s inclinations and career and a whole host of other things that aren’t defined by their money.
I have a handful of wealthy friends. The ultra-wealthy think nothing of spending $500-1000 on a single high quality piece of clothing. Or they DO think about it and it’s worth it to them.
If I look at myself as an example of being relatively financially comfortable, my conclusion is the same. I came from being deep in the hole, paying off so many tens of thousands of dollars of debt for my parents, to being reasonably comfortable on our two salaries. Mostly, I dress the same as I did back then. Jeans, t-shirts, and a sweatshirt. I still wear the sweatshirt my cousin gave me back in 2006.
Yes, we can both afford to dress better. No, getting to this level of “rich” did NOT give either of us better taste. We do have a few very high quality pieces. I bought him a nice watch (nowhere near $1000), I bought myself a few pieces of clothing from Elhoffer Design. We both have very warm coats. I do own more cute earrings but that’s more about being able to wear them without an allergic reaction and less about having money.
But other than that? We are walking proof that how you start is often how you carry on. Making enough money to make ends meet and a little more did not come with a magic style boost for either of us, and we don’t mind! He likes his free t-shirts and I like my three identical black sweatshirts I bought during pregnancy and a pair of athleisure pants from ten years ago. Money =/= magic.
Related thought: more generally, if you’re poor and hope to succeed in higher income fields (barring computer / tech because that’s probably a weird industry for dress norms), you probably need to dress more nicely than you might normally. My friend who entered the i-banking field from a non-wealthy background had to drastically upgrade her wardrobe in order to look like she belonged. When I entered management, I had to dress up much more formally to look my age and be taken seriously. Now that I’m senior management, I’m back in my preferred uniform and my reputation speaks far louder than my hoodie.
Anyway I’m not trying to make any academic points here. I just think it’s as silly as the proclamations that only poor people buy new cars or buy new phones or whatever the current faintly derogatory declaration is.
If you earn enough, that’s what is going to make you wealthier, not just abstaining from new technology and looking like a slob.
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It was a beautiful sunny, even warm!, day and that went a long way to boosting my mood. I’m soaking it in and holding it as a hedge against next week when I will be dealing with some Unpleasant People TM. Wish me luck?
April 17, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 17: Sunday was a perfect beautiful weather day. Smol Acrobat and I took a late morning walk with Sera, and that was the last time I’ve felt close to ok.
I’d missed my Friday’s medications and assumed that’s why I felt off balance Saturday but that was just the beginning of a fibro flare. The rest of Sunday was agonizingly painful. It very much felt like my entire lower body was molten lava and I needed to lay down for hours and nap for an hour just to maintain consciousness all day. This morning was 50/50 whether I’d be plunged back into the lava so I restricted myself to sitting at my desk with extremely short ventures to the kitchen and bathroom. My bones were on a low-medium simmer all day but thankfully the sitting helped enough that it didn’t flare up beyond that.
JB and PiC went on a BART and museum adventure. I was mildly jealous in the abstract but definitely couldn’t have gone. Any walking veered dangerously close to Doing Too Much. I had to rest.
Year 3, Day 18: I hate how I feel in my body after Smol’s arrival. I feel lumpy and heavy. Specifically, I’m carrying too much extra volume in my belly. It’s weird. After JB I also had this problem but it didn’t bother me as much.
Going no or low carb might help. But I don’t wanna. Pretzels! Girl Scout Cookies! English muffins! They have a firm grip on my heart.
I should do it this month if I’m going to do it. It’d be the easiest time to do it. PiC has some time off this month and is using it as a staycation so he’s running all the errands and doing a lot of cooking.
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Speaking of food, Safeway had pork shoulder on sale for $1/lb. We always jump on that. What I didn’t account for was that Safeway doesn’t package them by halves (about 8-10 lbs each). They do the whole shebang, at 16-20 lbs each. We went for it anyway, thankfully it was cut in half at least, and one went into the slow cooker and one went into the oven for a slow roast. Now we just have to make space for some of both in the freezer. I really wish we had room to have a deep freezer.
We kept our old fridge when we moved. That is really luxurious! Buuuut…. my hoarder self, along with my realistic chronic pain and fatigue self, really wishes we had a deep freezer too so that I could stock up on sales and freeze more than a few meals ahead for bad weeks. We can keep about 3 entrees in the freezer along with all the other foods we normally keep in rotation. I tried reminding myself that, without one, we don’t have to worry about the additional energy costs but that is small comfort when we run out of prepped meals. Ah well. We pay in other ways, like for prepared meals from Costco or take out, so it’s not like that saved costs are a strong reason not to. We just don’t have the space for it.
Year 3, Day 19: It’s probably not a good thing that I’ve passed on my mild-to-moderate obsession with Hello Kitty to both kids. This could (will) get expensive.
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I thought my fibro flare up was over yesterday but the brain fog effects are lingering. My short term memory is either not encoding or incredibly hard to access. I’ve missed two scheduled plans this week already. Our lives are a touch too complicated for my taste and current ability but I’ve not forgotten about a therapy appointment in years so that got under my skin.
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Using the AT&T Fiber advertising as leverage, I negotiated a reduction in our internet bill that has been steadily creeping up since COVID started. It’s now $55 a month, down from $76. This will help cover my increased pledge for Shep’s move to escape anti-trans legislation.
I also calculated precisely how much I’d need to charge to my Wells Fargo Active Cash Card to redeem the $200 bonus plus the 2% cashback in increments of $25. Between our two cards, we’ll get $450 in bonuses. Most of that’s already been sent out to support friends and folks in crappy financial situations.
On that subject, I’ve been pulling in direct aid support from a wider circle of people back to my primary contacts because so many of my main people are going through very rough waters right now. I may keep the direct giving circle tighter going forward. Many of the wider-range people that I give smaller amounts to haven’t been acknowledging it. I don’t mean thanks, I don’t need that. I mean there’s zero reaction, emoji, anything to indicate the money was seen and received. It makes me wonder if the money is noticed/received/going to the right hands. Rather than worry about whether they’re getting it, I’ll adjust our giving strategy to those who do confirm receipt. It’s a minor thing but it matters.
Year 3, Day 20: Smol Acrobat’s got a fever and green snot and I am also infected. This is the pits. They sleep terribly when they’re sick and that means I don’t sleep with all the wake-ups.
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We’ve been defending against multiple ant invasions this year. Several weeks ago, I stopped one incursion into the kitchen. This week, the ants pressed their advantage by invading three fronts simultaneously, eating holes right through our walls. I watched one push chunks out of the wall in horror and fascination. I hate them in the house so much! I’ve put down boric acid in several places hoping that it wards them off again but am not holding my breath. I’ve wiped down our outlet covers with vinegar in hopes that it’ll deter them from that point of entry. Their three room attack, spread from the front to the back of the house, makes me think that our walls are full of ants. *shudder* 😭
PiC’s pointed out that other people pay for a regular exterminator service and I really don’t want to have to do that. Cross your fingers for us?
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In other massively underappreciated efforts, we cleaned Sera’s ears. One of them was a bit infected so I also medicated it. She drooped for an hour after, as usual, and it’s pitiful! But I’ve got to make time to clean them more often.
I’ve been trying to brush her teeth most days of the week, some weeks are more successful than others, but she especially hates the ear cleaning. Smol Acrobat tried to “help”, so they were entrusted with feeding Sera treats to mollify her while I did the dirty work.
She was unmollified.
We’re going to be at odds for the several days of her ear medication course. I can deal with that.
Year 3, Day 21: All week my stomach has been on strike against breakfast. No matter what I ate, or how little, it transformed into a belly full of knives within half an hour. Just awful. It’s putting me off even trying to eat in the mornings until I’m too hungry to wait any longer.
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I had been paaaaaaatiently waiting for our CPA to confirm that our taxes had been filed. We reviewed final details last week, made some tiny corrections, and it’s been silent since then. I assumed she was swamped – though most Californians have an automatic extension – and figured I’d hear soon enough. Instead both CA and Federal refunds landed this morning. Too swamped to email but not to file. In a choice between the two, that’s the right priority!
Uncharacteristically, I dumped them both into our checking account. Usually it goes straight into investments, however, I am looking at the year’s income and outflows plotted out and the spending estimates are currently outstripping the income estimates by A LOT. I didn’t revise the credit card spending (on food and other household supplies) down when I added the $2000+ daycare bill, so that’s one root cause. The overage amount is greater than the total daycare will cost, though. I didn’t really feel like doing the legwork. *hides face*
Correcting the projections isn’t worth the work; our monthly spending fluctuates a lot from month to month. My compromise is to leave it as is, adjusting the amounts in real time, and trusting that we will ultimately spend less than my rough space-holder projections. Meanwhile I’ll keep trimming fat and creating little bits of extra income too.