May 29, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I finally figured out our dishwasher problem! I’ve been cleaning the filter after every two wash cycles and STILL kept having grit and residue on our bowls. It turns out that my first question was the right one: was it to do with placement? For whatever reason, our square bowls can’t be loaded up front. They fall on each other or something and block the water flow so they don’t get rinsed properly. That means if we load round bowls up front top rack and square bowls in back top rack, I don’t have to yell and fume at the dishwasher. (Of course it then immediately left some sediment on a bowl in a totally different area so that’s a new problem for another day.)
2. I was able to trim most of Seamus’s nails without a fight and struggle, and then managed to trim 4 of Sera’s claws. I had to pin her down after the first one, though. They both got treats after. The pet dremel has been amazing! I wish the pet attachment (the plastic guard) had been available when I bought mine, though, I keep accidentally getting myself. (It’s fine though, nothing serious.)
3. I finally organized our financial spreadsheets into one place for PiC. I’ll have to teach him how I use each of them, and he’s not allowed to change things in there without telling me or else I’ll start thinking I’ve lost chunks of memory, but he needs to know how to get in there and work on money things if I’m unable to. I also need to consolidate more of our emergency information but this was a good step.
4. JB and I cleaned their room together. I rearranged their closet, and cleared out an entire dresser drawer of outgrown clothing, and sorted it all into size specific hand me down bags. I’ve been needing to do that for ages and it felt so good to get that done. Bonus: JB does chores better when it’s alongside one of us so I asked them to tackle the rest of the room and they put away all the books and toys and reorganized the toy stand without complaint because they felt it was a team effort. It just looked that way. Really it’s just me needing to corral the clothing explosion, organize things the way I want to, and winnow out the outgrown clothes without clawbacks. If I let (made) them sort the clothes, they’d mourn every item and end up crying in a pile of outgrown wardrobe, swathed in at least two shirts but still have a belly hanging out. They did try to keep one sweater. Out of two large bags of clothes, just one sweater is pretty good so I allowed it for two more wears. We had a few fraught sad moments and I advised them to thank their favorites for being such great pieces and bid them farewell. Surprisingly, that worked. Thanks for the idea, Marie Kondo!
Challenges this week: I am starting to miss little things. Going to the library. Going to stare at all the crafts at Michael’s. Recipes for lemon flavor baked goods need to come with an intensity level so I know to triple the lemon juice and lemon extract.
5. We enjoyed a Zoom picnic lunch with family on the weekend and they all did art time together for a while after we ate. Everyone was sleepy and content.
6. I even took most of Monday off! I worked in the morning but resolved strongly to break off for the rest of the day and I followed through. Go me!
7. JB interpretive danced to my singing of JoDee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California”.
:: How was your week? Have you been scorched by this heat wave?
May 22, 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, $1551.58; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I learned to play Uno for the very first time this week and it was fun!! I’d forgotten how to just have fun, a little bit.
2. My friend is reading through my archives and texting me quotes. This one made me laugh because I still do this: “Tell me honestly, now, is it really weird that when I sustain a really fantastic-looking injury, I want to show people? I’ve got a newish 1 inch by 2 inch gash across the top of my foot from an altercation with an unfinished edge of a desk, and I had to fight the urge to snap a photo and share it. It’s mostly a morbid fascination that’s probably not shared by the world at large.” We discovered that we both do this thing! I have someone to share war wounds with again!
3. In this moment, I really don’t miss anyone. I know that will change when we get into the summer when we have plans, but at this time of year I normally have my nose to the grindstone so that is feeling a little bit “normal”. Minus all the frustrations of being overloaded with work, cooped up with very few safe outlets because even where things are opening, people refuse to wear masks and I can’t risk catching this thing.
Challenges this week: Therapy was unexpectedly tough. We explored the idea that you can have emotions or feelings without any obligation to act on them. That is a completely foreign concept for me. I’ve always had action and obligation tied to feelings. Growing up, family meant obligation. You were duty bound to love them, which means take care of them, make them proud or add to their reputations by visibly doing well in life and sending money home and caring for them in your old age. Love was nothing BUT duty and action. And in my current life I express and perceive love through action. What does it mean to acknowledge the complexity of loving and hating someone at the same time? To me, it means having conflicting needs to both distance myself and do for them. Which is, of course, not at all ideal.
<– I also have trouble with this idea for myself ….
When thinking of other people, it’s obvious. I don’t love them solely for what they can do for me.
But I do think I have to do things to “earn” or prove my worth for love. It literally doesn’t make any sense to me that someone would choose me as a person they’d like to have in their lives just for the sake of having me around. My utility is my worth. Which is probably not a great thing to believe.
4. They are nowhere near out of the woods but we got a little heartening news – a friend’s cancer is not the worst it could be. So we have some hope for treatment. Please cross your fingers that they come up with an effective treatment plan.
:: How are you keeping healthy and occupied?
May 15, 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, $1,051.58; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. PiC and JB teamed up to make me sugar free, gluten free, keto cinnamon rolls and they’re great! I’ve been craving them for months. (Correction: they weren’t keto. They do need to be so I’ll be fiddling with the recipe some more.)
2. My Mother’s Day was spent tackling a part of the yard that has also been bothering me for weeks. I did a big chunk of it on my own in blessed quiet, such a soothing activity to chop and prune back the overgrowth.
Then PiC and JB came out to help for an hour. We got so much more done than I had originally envisioned. My arms may fall off and my back may not work for a week BUT IT IS CLEANED UP. WOOOOO!!
3. We were able to help out a couple more Lakota families (but we ran out of money before I could get the laundry detergent and sheets, sadly).
Challenges this week: JB was really struggling to be human this week. I felt like an anxious pile of sludge, making half my food taste like soap or just nothing.
4. I skipped therapy this week because I’ve been so physically drained and ill that I couldn’t pull myself together to do hard brain work. It was the right call.
5. This bit of genius led to an easy experiment.
I poured the blended ricotta into two small Pyrexes and ended up with two baked ricottas that were pretty good!
It was mostly not sweet (on purpose) and I couldn’t taste the lemon juice or the vanilla. On review, it seems I should have just picked one or the other. Next time I’ll try lemon juice and lemon extract. Next time after that, I’m going to skip the sugar entirely and blend in a little bit of mango if we have it on hand. What flavors would you try?
:: What good things have you enjoyed this week, big or small?
May 8, 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, $659.86; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. Finally, a gluten free low carb no sugar bread for me! I replaced the oil with bacon fat, the honey with sugar replacement and just recklessly added walnuts to the dry ingredients. Fabulous. I piled fresh Brie and sugar free jam atop each toasted slice and four slices later, admitted that that was lunch.
2. Someone who loves me decided that I was in need of delicious dumplings and salt and pepper tofu and made that happen. They were right.
Challenges this week: loved ones are getting furloughed or being laid off, and another loved one is undergoing diagnostics for what the doctors suspect is cancer and there’s very little we can to do change their circumstances. We can just be there for them from afar.
3. Jenny reminded me that I love looking at fabrics: jellyfish, constellation animals, and CAT NOODLE. I really wish I were handier with a needle and thread to justify buying these ultra cute fabrics.
4. I also love looking at bento boxes. I’m not all inspired to do any of the work but I adore looking at other people’s creativity and ideas.
5. I’m practicing gratitude: for relatively decent health, for financial stability, for a loving chosen family.
:: How are you keeping healthy and occupied?
May 1, 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, $659.86; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. Frozen Indian food trays from Trader Joe’s are a lifesaver when it’s Friday afternoon and everyone’s brain is a bucket of slugs.
2. Secret Life of Pets 2 is on Netflix! I must have known that at some point but I forgot so was quite pleased to find it the other night.
Challenges this week: I was asked to take on an incredibly difficult task and it took quite a lot of soul-searching and checking in with potential support people to help me do a good job. I think I can do it but it’s going to be painful, nerve-wracking, and I’m going to feel bad about it no matter what happens. It does help to know that I can only control my own performance and nothing I do will be a key to changing the outcome.
This wasn’t a short week but it was mostly challenges.
:: How are you keeping healthy and occupied?
April 24, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. JB is at their best after rest time. My fatigue was up one day after they’d had rest so they came in to give me a hug, tuck me in, and said, let me know if you need anything!
They came to check on me and update me twice more in the next couple of hours while I rested.
2. My friends are all over the map, have been for the past 20 years, and so we’ve gotten pretty good at long distance support. I am so grateful that my friends are just in my pocket if I ever need them.
3. My toes are ice blocks every night and it takes me hours of shivering in my bed to get warm. I can’t sleep with ice toes.
I could not take one more night of this and ordered myself a $20 sherpa fleece blanket to lay on top of. It is a perfect cloud of warmth and fuzziness and I am extremely happy to be warm at night. Now I wish I could fashion a robe out of this blanket and stay in it all week!
Challenges this week: I think I’m getting even more introverted as a result of all these conference calls. I normally avoid them like the plague, I speak to no humans for 8 hours a day and then only to my family afterward.
4. PiC had his heart set on a specific bike for JB who has outgrown their free hand me down. He found it at Costco for $30 less and no shipping costs than the original shop. I still think he should have checked around for a hand me down but we also aren’t in a position to be checking out used goods. (This is the trade-off of not having school to go to: JB normally has access to all kinds of physical exercise equipment and we didn’t have to spend money on it at home. Now we do because they need a lot of physical activity and there are limited safe ways to get it.)
5. When PiC made it to the grocery store and he managed to get most of what we needed and mostly on sale. No strawberries, but blackberries and raspberries were on sale.
6. I had to pick up some educational supplies for JB’s lessons. I added some craft supplies to the pile since we never really had a lot of those things on hand for arts and crafts. I’m grateful for the $25 gift card that we received a few years back for their use!
:: How are you keeping healthy and occupied?
April 17, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $640.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. Weekends seem to be the time for my body to say NOPE THAT IS ENOUGH and I have to crawl back into bed for several more hours of lying down. PiC and JB are understanding, thankfully, and with no work to do aside from basic survival like eating and walking the dogs, it’s not so bad for them either. At age 5, JB is reasonably independent and I can rely on them to responsibly watch a bit of TV, turn it off as agreed, then report back in for other activities.
2. PBSKids.org yielded a treasure trove of lovely printables with activities we could do. We took the Spring Color Wheel for a walk and JB stopped every ten steps to draw another plant they saw that fit into our color wheel.
3. TMobile’s freebies this week included a free postcard, designed and mailed for free, so I shot a photo postcard off to a loved one who is sheltering in place alone. It was super easy, didn’t require an account, and I loved it.
Challenges this week: Stress is trying to eat me alive so it’s made me feel sicker than usual, my appetite is all off, and so is my sleep. BOO. I keep saying I won’t stress about PiC’s job and I’m saying it again but it’s mostly to try to keep the stressing low.
4. I found my Very Old iPad, and the charging cord, but not the charger adapter. I repurposed an old one in hopes that it’ll bring the tablet back to life but I’m not sure I remember my password anymore! Oh dear. But I may have to reformat the whole thing anyway judging by this error message:
5. Finally! Put the last stamp on the 6th envelope that needs to go out today. We have belated birthday cards, Easter cards, and other letters to loved ones that have been piling up on my sideboard because I haven’t had time to walk them to the mailbox. We’re shipping a box of goodies to sick homebound family and that means I can schedule a pick up for the box AND the regular mail. Yay. We also ran into our postperson on their regular rounds and they confirmed that they were getting the masks they needed to do their job more safely. I’m glad. They are good people.
6. I’ve been wanting to do ice cream in a bag with JB and was excited to find this post on it but dismayed that we need half and half for it or some equivalent. We only have fat free milk right now.
:: How are you keeping healthy and occupied?