September 11, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I finally made time to go return a couple purchases to Michael’s. We usually only do curbside pickup for shopping but we had to go inside for the returns. I wanted to be surprised the lines were so long but I can’t be and I felt a touch guilty about that because I was briefly part of that problem. I’d purchased several organizer boxes for our small things early last month and threw in a stack of paint pads for JB. The paint pads are terrible! They were no better than printer paper and I don’t see the point of buying that thickness of paper for painting. The paint will soak right through. So they all went back and then of course JB begged to look around the store. We were masked, armed with sanitizer, had an ironclad rule that they could not touch anything which they’re pretty good about doing and strictly enforced a six foot rule while included not going down any aisle with any people in it, so it seemed like we could reasonably safely do this thing for a little while and be ok.
The colors and crafts were unexpectedly hard to resist, I think I forget how much I enjoy looking at crafting supplies, and we ended staying longer than intended looking at everything. Just before we could escape safely, I was sucked into the washi tape clearance bin, ten cents a roll!, so PiC and I selected a double handful, and I allowed JB to pick one item of their choice under $2. At the register I remembered that I had a $5 reward to use which covered all but the tax. It felt frivolous but, going into our sixth month of near total isolation, I have to remember that once in a while we need a little creative stimulation outside our homes and we’ve been especially sensorily deprived these past few weeks because the air quality from the wildfires make it unsafe to be outdoors where we’d normally be soaking up nature.
2. With thanks to Hawaii Planner for the initial idea, I found this banana peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal bars recipe and I made GF-sugar-free batch for me, and a regular non-GF with regular sugar and chocolate chips version for our friends.
3. For once, a long weekend didn’t feel like punishment and torture, either from a work or a family perspective! I ended up having to do some work to create space later in the next week BUT the actual official holiday was nice to have. I love working in even more isolation that is usual with remote work – it’s my favorite thing to knock out my inbox when no one is online to answer. 😀
Challenges this week: We are adding back a set of lessons for JB so that’s more logistics and planning and preparing. It should be worthwhile but it’s definitely a lot of work on my part to get it in order.
And of course, in order: pandemic, CA is on fire, air quality is absolutely terrible, health stuff going on, dear friend is very ill and we can’t see him, other dear friends are going through very hard times and I don’t have any more bandwidth to think of ways to help them. Seamus is currently getting PiC up in the middle of almost every night which is pretty miserable for his rest and my aching self continues to ache.
4. We discovered that JB can have a fully engaged, without real monitoring, playdate on Zoom with their babyhood bestie. Their parents have now declared that they will be borrowing our child for future Zoom playdates, no need for us to be around 😀 Which is fine with us, they have missed their friend so much. And when California stops burning, we can attempt distanced and masked trail rides for them.
:: It’s my birthmonth and I’d like to want a special treat but I just want a bag of donuts. But I don’t think sugar free gluten free low carb donuts worth eating can be found. Any other ideas?
September 4, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I just remembered to inch up our twice-monthly savings rate a little bit.
2. I’m really enjoying PiC’s version of the gluten free turkey and cheese burgers he’s been making for us on Friday nights.
3. We had a brief outdoors masked and distanced no hugging meet up with a couple friends we haven’t talked to for months. It was maybe about ten minutes but it was a nice tiny visit. I can handle socializing in those small increments.
4. I made the mistake of saying that I was a bit more relaxed this week because a lot of the balls I’m juggling are in other people’s hands and that felt like I invited some chaos but I think honestly it’s just the normal ebb and flow of stress, isn’t it? I found myself somewhere on the spectrum of mildly to moderately annoyed without spiraling into anxiety and grouchiness over the bad turns and was able to enjoy that minor moment of peace without spoiling it with looking for something to fuss about. That’s a new thing for me. Brain therapy is good!
Challenges this week: I don’t typically pay attention to celebrity news but the passing of Chadwick Boseman was shattering.
Minor frustration: we’ve only had two pieces of mail go missing in the past several years and both times, it was a check. Both times, they made it as far as being scanned and in our Informed Delivery email but never made it to us. The mail from the IRS telling us we owe them over $5000 found us, though! I guess given the interest they’d charge if we didn’t get that mail, we’re better off getting theirs than not. We’re both still juggling a TON of extra logistics because we’re trying to make time to help a friend and get some home maintenance on the road.
5. We had to make some decisions about furniture this month and we got through all of them without any conflict! We usually have such different tastes and desires and needs that I’m usually at least a little disgruntled by how much time we’ve spent on it but two things made a difference: having a timeline helped force focus and narrowed our choices. And our strategy of having me tell him what my priorities are, him going off shopping and giving me links to look at, and then narrowing it down together is working smoothly these days.
:: How was your week?
August 28, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. Every time I start to think our little $3 hydroponic basil plant is giving up, it stages a comeback! It’s put out several new lovely green stems fluffy with leaves. The odd thing is that these are sprouting out of the very brown stems that are connected to the roots. It’s a strange look but it’s fresh and smells great.
2. Our Lakota balance is creeping up again to nearly $100 between monthly contributions from giving friends and my last infusion. We should be able to help another family soon!
3. LOTS of friends on this list of Plutus Finalists, yay friends!
Challenges this week: Yet another friend has lost their beloved family pet. That’s three friends in as many weeks. My heart breaks for them.
Because I don’t seem to actually understand the meaning of “pace yourself” I am now: working on selling the rental, working on refinancing our primary home, figuring out if we can shift some big items to someone who needs it more, on top of the usual work – managing remote schooling – parenting – dogparenting/dogcare – grind. Deep breath. Â
The world is … too much. We are awash with Covid, wildfires are everywhere so people and homes are in danger, the air quality is horrible so it’s not safe to take JB out for long isolated walks and hikes and bike rides.
4. We borrowed a hot spot from the school and picked it up just in time so we would have it in time for the second week of school. This is good, we will have three people using the internet at the same time this coming week and I didn’t have confidence in even our upgraded internet to be stable under the heavy usage.
5. PiC and I finally had a meeting of the minds and selected some kid specific organizing aids. Finally!! It’ll come in stages so I started with the small stuff I could manage right away while we wait for the larger basket set to arrive. The key here is to teach JB to independently follow the organizers.
6. A completely satisfying weekend day: breakfast, cleared some household work, JB had a call to hang out with Auntie then I hopped on a call to discuss some supplemental enrichment and organizing plans. We had lunch, walked the dogs, went to pick up supplies and return the second case of the absolutely terrible strawberry mango sparkling water at Target. We also bought a refill on hand sanitizer because we couldn’t find it anywhere else for delivery. How ironic it is that to protect ourselves against Covid we had to go in a crowded store and search for AGES to find it? Everyone was masked, thankfully, but it was unpleasantly packed in there. Still we got what we needed and got out, then I got to work with the printer and tape to customize our personal bottles while JB had their rest time. After which point PiC and I crashed so we abandoned our child, him to nap and me to lay down and they did just fine for an hour doing scratch art and drawing and painting. A whole hour without more than marginally bothering me! We had dinner and crashed out. There were hiccups, there always are, but we made it over the finish and I felt both semi rested and like I’d gotten a lot done.
7. JB is coping really well with online learning, all things considered.
:: How was your week? What meals do you like to make ahead, if any?
August 14, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I just found $12 owed to PiC looking through the Unclaimed Property site! I was able to put in the claim for him electronically so a bit of typing and his claim is all set. We’ll see if they cough it up in 7-10 days.
2. We’ve been trying to buy local as much as we can, which often means paying a mark up, but we think it’s important to support local businesses. Mostly that means local restaurants but this weekend it meant the local bike shops. Unfortunately, PiC couldn’t get the shop to pick up their phones to find out if they had parts in stock and showing up at the shop that said it was open online revealed that it was not. They wasted a precious hour on an unsuccessful errand so we had to go to the local chain instead. Not that I think the small bike shops here are suffering. The sales in the bike industry around here have skyrocketed with COVID, and he’s reported seeing children’s bikes listed for as much as $800!! Who does that?? But there are quite affluent people in some of the areas surrounding us, so I suppose they’d be willing to pay that kind of money? I guess? I don’t know. The point is he was about to get a couple sets of tires and tubes for JB’s bike for $50. And plus the money we paid for the bike is still less than half the cost of a new one. Even if we’d started with a new bike, I suspect their aggressive riding would have landed us in the bike shop getting new tires sooner or later even if we started with new ones.
3. I went on an organizing fest on Sunday to corral all my jewelry and hair and makeup things into a semblance of order and though I’m grouchy that I ordered the containers literally a couple hours too late and had the price go up by $2 per unit, I’m not letting the $6 “surcharge” over what I had mentally budgeted take away from my triumph of untangling and sorting all those pieces. Most of it is cheap costume jewelry, but most of that has held up well enough that I should wear them more regularly.
Challenges this week: I wiped myself out on the weekend inadvertently. We went on an extra long walk on Saturday and my ensuing fatigue was DEEP. I could hardly summon the will to exist.
4. For the first time in five months, I went to Trader Joe’s with the family. We were lucky, there was no line to get in. We had our hands misted on the way in, stayed well away from others, we were all masked, I got to pick up a new GF item (Norwegian crackers!) to try out. I haven’t missed people very much since they only exacerbate my ever-dominant fatigue, but I have missed the opportunity to see foods on shelves and stimulate the menu brain.
5. I needed to tackle another area of my organizing and I got it done over the weekend. I gathered up my scattered, though reasonably small, costume jewelry collection and hair accessories into these neat crafts storage boxes. The neatness makes me really happy, as does regaining some of our limited counterspace in the bathroom. I really appreciate these small bouts of organizing energy because the end result, even if I spend money to get there, is so satisfying and the neater surroundings helps soothe my otherwise stressed soul.
6. My brain is currently obsessed with make ahead meals. I’ve got some experience putting up lamb stew and chicken stew, I’d like to expand my repertoire to include enchiladas and chili. Enchiladas I can manage just fine but I had to experiment with the chili. I think I’m going to work on a few more batches before I am ready to freeze ahead.
I’m looking for more easy to make, freezer friendly all in one meals to make ahead so we can have at least a week of pre-made meals set aside for the hard days.
I’m hoping for a sale on Pyrex soon. After thinking about it for days, I decided the most environmentally friendly and flexible long term answer to freezing foods ahead of time is glass with lids. I don’t want to do disposable baking pans nor do I want to freeze in foil because that’s apparently imparted a funny taste to some of my frozen foods.
:: How was your week? What meals do you like to make ahead, if any?
August 7, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. We discovered that not only does Gott’s Roadside have gluten free buns that are pretty good, I seem to be tolerating that carb content well enough that I can enjoy a burger WITH a bun!! WOOOOO. Of course that feels like lifestyle inflation because, my goodness, it’s a $9+tax burger. But it was a burger on a bun which I haven’t had in ages so I’m still happy. *happy burger dance*
2. Our friends sent JB a lovely Comic Con in a box gift and that was just so thoughtful and lovely.
Challenges this week: Technology has been kicking my behind. All week, Wi-Fi has mostly been working for everyone BUT me, and I’m right next to the router. My old laptop that JB is using for lessons is a touchscreen and the touchscreen function just quit. My phone’s necessary basic apps just quit and I spent many many hours fixing it to no avail. We mirror computer screens to the TV so we can oversee lessons from afar and that keeps disconnecting but refusing to let me change it. On a very minor note, I had to cancel our Highlights subscription for High Five Espanol, the bilingual magazine, it was nowhere near the beginner level I was hoping to share with JB. I had a few years of high school Spanish and a little workplace Spanish under my belt, and this was above my level. So that was a disappointment.
3. I had another fraught nightmare about fighting with my dad over some life news and in the dream I absolutely told him off for all the selfish manipulative hurtful things he did. For the first time in two decades of these nightmares, I didn’t wake up feeling upset by the fight. Instead, I felt mentally and emotionally unburdened. Working with my therapist has let me open up to the idea that it’s actually ok for me to be mad at a parent and say so. Culturally, the very idea has been anathema and I think I’ve even subconsciously not allowed myself to feel that anger in a real way, I’ve just been making myself feel guilty for even feeling it because that’s a “betrayal” of my family values. As if his actions that caused the valid anger were not the much worse betrayal of our supposedly shared values! It’s interesting that I intellectually knew that but very clearly did not feel that deep down. It wasn’t my fault that he made the choices that he did and I am allowed to have feelings about how he harmed me and my family. I don’t have to feel guilty about those feelings. This is some progress!
:: How was your week?
July 31, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. We tried roast beef for my sandwiches and I’ve discovered that a good cheese and roast beef sandwich on the keto bagels that PiC makes for me is kind of like a keto friendly cheeseburger! Such a happy food discovery.
2. Two, wait three more, great discoveries: our local dumpling shop set up their own online ordering system so I know the money we pay goes entirely to them, we got 10% off an order over $25, AND they sell frozen bags of their dumplings so we can just stock up on those to avoid too many take out runs for when I’m not up to making our own dumplings.
3. I keep nickel and diming myself on every single purchase to control budget creep but finally said florf it! and bought myself a few much-wanted e-books on Kobo. They were all great. My brain is happy. And of course it wants more. Because I gave it a cookie, so now it wants milk, and a straw and and and…! I am so predictable.
Challenges this week: I caught a one-two punch with the rental and had to sacrifice half a work day to figure things out. It was not fun. We are two weeks out from the supposed start date for school and we still have zero information to go on. We also just found out that PiC’s company has a large number of layoffs planned and we have no information other than “a large number by the fall”. Of course that news has put us on edge.
4. Weirdly enough, after starting the process of making decisions based on what I want and need instead of what I “should” do financially, even though nothing is resolved yet, I feel a hundred pounds lighter. I’m less moody and grouchy overall and I have an extra half bucket of patience. It’s a much missed, now unfamiliar feeling. I don’t know how long it’ll last but I really like it and hope it’s here to stay. I’m going to need every ounce of patience I can get!
:: How was your week?
July 24, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1608.94; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. JB asked for chicken noodle soup at the perfect time. I had a half carton of chicken broth to use up and I used that for a starter base plus water, onions, salt, pepper, and a dash of cumin and garam masala. Odd but it worked!
2. I made a Thai (ish) chicken curry on Sunday and it was a hit! It was chock full of goodies: tofu, straw mushrooms, chicken, bamboo shoots, and bell peppers. My hand still hurt too much to cut up an onion this time but it still turned out well.
3. This was such a lovely note to wake up to one morning.
4. Sir Patrick Stewart with Sonnet 91.
Challenges this week: My pain flared up again, this time in alternating wrists and hands and arms. I worked through it during the week which was alternatively good and then bad for it but then made it a real point to rest on the weekends and maybe most importantly, not feel guilty and horrible about my body’s failings. We should be at SDCC right now and I’m feeling so sad we’re not.
5. After lots and lots and lots and lots of medication, and an equal amount of passive resistance on his part and grumpy insistence on my part, Seamus is better!!!
:: How was your week? What would make next week better?