Year 7, Day 69: Welp, this might be me paying the price for thinking I could do two medical things in a row: a massage to loosen up the lumps that pass for muscles and a vaccine in the same week. It feels roughly like a giant jumped on me with two feet. After an extra 10 hours in bed on Sunday, I’m still feeling well below baseline. That’s a spanner in the works for this week. I’ve got a donation pickup scheduled for tomorrow but that presupposed that all of Sunday was going to be sorting community donations. That didn’t happen. Instead, SmolAc, still sick much more dramatically than I am, in both senses of the word has continued cosplaying a barnacle stuck to my side today. We did drop off together, then did a bit of light gardening for outdoor air, then snacked painfully and slowly. Lego time saved us both for an hour.
Year 7, Day 70: I cancelled the donation pickup for today and settled myself in for just chaffeur duties, puttering and nursing care. Not a lot of puttering happened but they seem to be at least less feverish today. Good thing I set my expectations really low for one, and my job no longer matters for two.
Told PiC not to bother trying to spell me, his job performance still matters (maybe, who knows how they decide who to lay off) and mine doesn’t. I’m only doing the barest of minimums now because they’ve squeezed the last blood they’re gonna get from this stone. For the next two months it’s all about my health and my family’s needs and anything I can do to help my staff get jobs.
Year 7, Day 71: Finally got my garden delivery! Soil acidifier, compost, and more soil since the potatoes are going to need hilling before I know it. The winds like to carry off a thin layer of soil every time we turn around, and last night happened to be especially gusty. I dug into the acidifier and compost first, spreading it around the blueberry and blackberry bushes. Fingers crossed that was done right / enough. I need help lugging out the 3 cubic foot bag of soil which – that sack and I barely made it into the garage so there it’s staying until I have a second big-enough pair of hands. SmolAc is currently in a mostly helpful phase so 70% chance they would pipe up “I can help you, Mommy!” and 100% chance they would be crushed under the bag.
Meanwhile I’m sprouting wee sugar snap peas in cotton out of pure curiosity and it’s neat to actually see the little sprout as it shows to come to the surface preparatory to emerging from the seed. No clue where they’re going to go. They can’t go in the bag that used to be dedicated to them, the mold spores are waiting to pounce. Could they thrive at the top of the potatoes soil mounds alongside the green beans that will be planted once the soil is heaped up? Worth a shot. My gardening is very haphazard.
Year 7, Day 72: Big medical mail day. I’ve been waiting on a reprint of a prescription receipt for 7 weeks for FSA redemption and last week had given up on it arriving. Even deleted it from my to so list so naturally here it is! The FSA would be maxed out eventually with or without it – therapy and medications add up. Next year I’ll be missing having two FSAs badly. My Ambien refill landed as did JB’s meds and the SPF 50 sunscreen we’re trying.
Speaking of Ambien, it’s a new as needed prescription. I haven’t had to use it too often, sheer fatigue has been enough many nights, but when I do it’s worked reasonably well. So far there haven’t been any weird sleep-calls or texts or purchases. That I know of. Hopefully Sleep Me is simply too uncoordinated to buy anything while on Ambien. My sleep set up has finally stabilized too. These days, I layer two shirts, plus a heating pad for the muscle aches, and layer 1 Oodie blanket and a beautiful gift quilt on top. That combination seems to ward off the cycle of temperature dysregulation of sweating a royal mess and then waking up shivering from having sweated through a shirt and hoodie (so gross).
Year 7, Day 73: My Bing point total isn’t high enough for a redemption but I do my research in advance of having enough points to redeem. Except that 3 for 3 redemption options are all out of stock and I AM NOW FORMING A CONSPIRACY THEORY. Something is wrong there??? Are my points going to disappear?? All my efforts gone for naught? I hope not. (A friend pointed out that it lines up with corporate shenanigans at the end of the quarter which actually makes a lot of sense – I recently learned that corporations will do crappy stuff like refuse to pay their freelancers for 2-4 weeks leading up to the end of the quarter or after. Just garbage behavior.)
*She was probably right. Once the quarterly earnings were reported, along with 4800 layoffs, the ability to redeem points was magically back.
I’ve squeezing every single earning opportunity big and tiny because, of course, every penny counts. It goes into the mental piggybank for after the severance comes out.
We got a big check this week reimbursing past out of network medical care which was a happy surprise. It was immediately chopped up to cover upcoming big bills: dental expenses for 2 (2026), auto and home insurance, the little left shores up the property tax account. That settles my stomach a little bit.
Year 7, Day 62: I’ve never wandered into the clothing section at Costco before but after seeing Maggie‘s excellent linen pants recently I figured it could be worth a meander, and it was! We lucked into $7 and $16 shorts. But I had to guesstimate my size and sadly I was off by a small but significant margin on the $7 shorts. Turns out I’m not a size 4 and if I’d been thinking straight I would have gotten two sizes to try and return the one that didn’t fit. Drat for that miss. I did like the fit of the other pair though, and now that I think about it, am more than a little miffed that I found shorts that fit my waist comfortably but none of my pants do, new or old. It’s so frustrating to constantly be adjusting the waist of my pants whether it’s my cargo pants with sufficient pockets that keep sliding down or the jeans that require a belt to keep them up except that makes them too tight or the newer fleece lined cuffed pants that are an inch or two too short. I’m about ready to give up on wearing clothes in public and just slouch around in sweats or fleece like a Yeti.
Microburst of stress cleaning: I vacuumed the air vents in the hair dryer, modem and hard drives, and all around them. They’d been clogged with dust.
Year 7, Day 63: I’m data collecting this week to pull the bigger and/or recurring bills that we currently cashflow in order to pinpoint our required spending vs optional spending. I’d been deliberately relaxing about that over the years to train myself down to a lower level of hypervigilance but it means there are gaps on my spreadsheets to fill in now while I can still do something about it (set aside extra cash). While I have a sense of how long our halved income and savings will last, it’s a birds-eye view and I want a firmer grip on our new disposable income number.
I downloaded the Chase app to do … something, I don’t remember what but it set off a little cascade of really annoying effects. First, Chase locked me out of my account telling me that they had detected unusual activity. Friend joked that it was my buying spree at Sephora, and I thought maybe it was too, but when I called it was because I was using the mobile app and that was unusual. Ok?? Feels like you could have texted asking if that was me using the app instead of going into instant lockdown. Then they unilaterally decided that my having the app meant I have to use the app IN ALL THINGS. They changed my 2-factor authentication to: log in with password, go and log into the mobile app (with the same credentials) to answer a question to verify my identity. (What does that prove?? I guess it proves I have possession of the credentials and the phone but humph.) Anyway, fine, I schlep off to do that and *crickets*. No question to answer. I try again, still no question. And again. On the seventh try I quit, exasperated and called them to get a code and also ask What the Hell? The CSR was no help on the latter but after she gave me a code to access my dratted accounts, I found it on my own under Security and Privacy: I manually elected to receive codes by email. Like I had ALWAYS done before, no one asked you to change this, Chase. Annoying.
Year 7, Day 64: I get to submit PiC’s claims for found money. On that note, my checklists are absolutely bananas right now. Today’s count, where 3 items were combo items, was 28 checked boxes of chores, paperwork, file backups, phone calls, texts, scheduling, purchase tracking, purchase-making. The rest of the week isn’t much different either. I have calls and appointments every day this week. It’s boggling. I mean, yes, we were offline for a week not doing any chores but is this all backlog from one week? Usually it’s a work backlog needing slogging through, not personal/household things. Some are work related. Because of the layoff, there are extra calls to take and farewell notes to write and personal gifts to be shipped. And yes, also because of the layoff, there’s 30-60 minutes of job hunting per day, on average.
But the vast majority of this week is household money stuff. Or household (stress) cleaning stuff. It’s weird but here’s hoping that it’s just one week of playing catch-up and then it settles down a bit. Rest time and hiding under the covers time needs to be scheduled in here somewhere.
This is the third night in a row that I’ve sat up working til 11. This trend can stop now, please and thank you.
Year 7, Day 65: One byproduct of the layoff, and my attitude towards the whole place (now doing the barest of minimums), is the space to make a conscious effort in my personal life. Focus on prioritizing the things that fill my bucket, notice good stuff around me, and be there for the kids even if that experience isn’t exactly filling my bucket.
To whit: how did it take me a year to realize the chairs at my bodywork place are incredibly soft and comfortable?? I’m not in frequently, but have sat in them a few times. ‘Tis a cloud for my posterior!
Or this weekend, my therapy appointment was rescheduled so I humored SmolAc wanting me to come watch their swim lesson. PiC is the swim parent but they still want my approval. Normally I’d use the free time to do more chores. This time we all went to swim and the library.
Year 7, Day 66: This is momentous – SmolAc was reminded to put away the clean utensils and they just did it without whining. A summer miracle.
There is a soy and tofu festival here and I didn’t know about it?! I missed my chance at a local chocolate festival, too. They changed their format in the last year or two from doing a really big gathering of chocolate vendors to making us schlep all over the Bay Area to visit the individual shops. Gas is too expensive for all that!
Planning (paralysis actually) for my next microburst of cleaning: I saved some dryer vent cleaning kit/recs somewhere but indecision has got hold of my ankle. Will I have to move the whole dryer? I really don’t want to – high risk of scratching up things or squashing my fingers. But I can’t imagine any kit will be good enough that I could clean the whole vent through the lint catcher opening, it’s so restricted. In which case, we come back to – what’s the best kit for my needs?
Year 7, Day 55: We’ve been doing a LOT of walking the past week, much more than normal for me, and my fatigue and pain are (mostly) only ratcheting up a couple notches rather than zipping straight to the top of the chart. This is novel! I’m curious whether this could be a potential new low baseline when I’m not working a huge horribly stressful job, but it’s too early to tell. There are also the variables of travel/vacation mode, a lot of family taking care of everything in ways that won’t be possible at home, being deprived of my laptop so being unable to attend to my usual schedule of household responsibilities and so on. Removing the job aspect is only one variable.
My hands have been swollen every day for the past two weeks. That’s an unusual reversion to the pain points of my youth. I’m used to working around the hand mitts (it’s awkward) but I’ve become accustomed to roving pain giving me a bit of relief by way of changing daily pain points rather than these stationary pain points.
There aren’t a lot of merchants that we use yet and the Newegg gift card hack was dead by the time I got there, only a week after the promotion was live! But we need more pimple patches and back pocket supplies (little sunscreens and hand sanitizers) for when we have to travel REALLY light, so I picked some up using the deal.
Microburst of stress cleaning: I tackled our medicine cabinet: discarding expired meds, recycling empty bottles, putting all our reusable baggies in a new clear box to get a better view of what we have on hand.
Year 7, Day 57: The kids have begun anticipating the COVID booster for our summer travel and that reminded me that I need to decide if we’re going to pay out of pocket for it since Kaiser has stopped paying for, or approving, more than one shot a year. Since I am functionally still (if not diagnostically / officially) immunocompromised this is a problem. I have access to antivirals for now but my immune system is still trash. Annoyingly, Costco used to list their COVID vax prices but don’t anymore. It used to be about $125 per person? I can’t find pricing for CVS or Walgreens. They all say something about accepting outside insurance but don’t list the price for uninsured patients.
Microburst of stress cleaning: The chaos drawer that’s never once been organized, full of reused storage, rubber bands, bag clips, etc, has been completely cleared out and set to rights. SmolAc was so confused when they opened that drawer, they closed and opened it a few times wondering if they were in the wrong room.
Year 7, Day 58: All of the ARGH. Delta Dental won’t cover part of JB’s recent procedure because their definition of requirements for coverage do not match the procedures. That’s another $600+ out of pocket I have to cover. That’s in addition to two sets of braces, another oral surgery, increased auto and home insurance policies…. the list isn’t endless but it feels like a wallop. We still have income through the end of the year but mild to moderate financial surprises make me very uncomfortable now.
On the bright side, I have found the documentation to submit my claims for some missing money. The really old address one 3 homes back was causing some consternation. This will result in maybe $12 if it comes through. I should find out in something like 2 months since these are very tiny cash-type claims.
“Unclaimed property law allows up to 180 days from the date that we receive a complete claim package to review all documentation and make a decision on whether or not the documentation supports the claim. Property owner claims that involve cash only may be processed in as little as 30 to 60 days. More complex claims, such as those filed by heirs, involving multiple owners, or involving businesses are generally processed within 180 days.”
Year 7, Day 59: I’ve been manually updating all my file backups. I maintain a networked and a non-networked backup. I’d like a third layer, honestly. This double layer backup system helped me with the claims. Some files were inexplicably missing from one system and I was able to retrieve them from the other. I do need to spend some time figuring out how to manually back up the photos though, they’re currently backed up automatically into the networked system and I can’t easily drag and drop from there.
Microburst of stress cleaning: I went through all the Halloween candy, discarding old candy so I could finally wash and put away the buckets that have taken up permanent residence on the counter in the past few years. The buckets were replaced with a nice basket to hold snacks and the fresh candy. Even the counter got scrubbed! I will not confess to how long it’s been since it’s had a proper scrub but the fact I can’t remember should tell you it’s been too long. This is the price of keeping two kids alive and working two jobs – we have let things slide around here.
Year 7, Day 48: JB and I had the school lost and found project scheduled and we’d invited one of their friends to come help out since they were bored at home. I didn’t expect Friend to be a great deal of help but having the extra set of hands did make a difference aside from being a bit of company. We had to load, and then unload, 15 bags and 7 cases of books, open all the bags, construct all the shipping boxes, sort and pack the books evenly so they didn’t overset any single box, check the zippers to make sure they worked on all hoodies and jackets, and then do team lifting after we’d stuffed the boxes as full as we could. We completed a huge 2-5 day task (depending on whether 1 or 2 of us was working it) in five hours (with a break for lunch and rest). We even got the boxes to the shipper in the same day – that’s never happened before. Very proud of ourselves!
Year 7, Day 49: I’ve taken some time off work to visit family and am observing the changes in my body while I’m offline. Lots will probably remain the same but it’d be nice if anything changed. These first days I see my fingers are EXTRA swollen. I can tell because my ring that usually fits as expected is instead leaving giant grooves. Too tight rings always provokes anxiety over possibly having to cut it off! Never have had to but it’s felt like it’s gotten close.
Sleeping in some mornings has been really nice. The overall stresses of the past few? several? years has messed with my sleep a lot. For months I wasn’t sleeping much, then it felt like the full sleep debt was called so I was an anchor dragging myself out of bed. PiC’s massive sleep debt was also called in and he was actually able to sleep in until 1030 this week. I wonder if I can even learn to nap in the future.
Year 7, Day 50: My supply of scent-acceptable shampoo and conditioner is starting to run alarmingly low so it’s time to scramble again. What sounds like it won’t offend my scent receptors?
A price comparison of these five items surprised me:
Herbal Essences Shampoo Grapefruit – 13.5 oz
Herbal Essences Conditioner, Grapefruit – 13.5 oz
Herbal Essences Eucalyptus – 13.5 fl oz
Herbal Essences Eucalyptus – 13.5 fl oz
Herbal Essences Conditioner Tea Tree – 33.8 fl oz
With a May 20% off promo code, this comes to a total of $50.35 pre-tax at Walgreens, $55.32 after tax. I’ll submit a P&G rebate offer for $15 off $50. That’ll bring us to $40.32. There’s also 3% cashback from MrRebates but I won’t include that in my price comparisons. I also get $10 in Walgreens cash for the order but since that doesn’t defray the costs of THIS order, I won’t count that either.
That same cart, with a $3 Herbal Essences coupon and 5% off with the Target circle card, came to $57.45 pre-tax and $57.13 after tax at Target. There’s a Rakuten 1% off as well.
I was glad to see it worked out this way because we are trying to avoid shopping Target.
I don’t love that these are all more than I’d normally pay. The old standby of Tresemme used to price out at about $3.50-$4.25 per 28 ounce bottle after coupons and discounts. But the changed formula now induces headaches and nausea. Can’t be perimenopause according to my OB because my oral BC already gives me a steady supply of estrogen that would make up for a perimenopausal drop in estrogen.
Year 7, Day 51: My other layer of layoff worry. This is so much pressure on PiC. He’s not been happy at his job for a couple years. He was happy with the change at first, 2020-2022. But the constant layoffs, while we’re grateful they’ve missed him so far, have more than tripled his workload. It’s taking a significant toll on him. He’s not complaining about needing to keep it together because we’re down to just his income but it’s very hard to plan to rest and recover when he’s now the sole income provider and is under SO MUCH pressure.
I feel immensepressure to figure out how to dive into another high-level high-income job when I really don’t want that life anymore. But let’s be honest, it’s still a bit of a puzzle to figure out what I want and can do, anyway. They don’t always match up. All the things I really want to do require a physical ability that I haven’t had in decades but maybe things on that front could change after I’m finally released from this particular level of hell.
On that note, PiC’s company just did another mass layoff. The last one was only 6-8 months ago! He was thankfully not cut and/but will be slowly learning about the impacts of those cuts, pile on the extra work!, over the next few weeks. This is why I always have some empathy for how hard it is to be left behind in a layoff too. You still have income but going by his experience, your quality of life seriously deteriorates over time. If you care, that is. In my company the people left don’t care and are garbage at their jobs (HR ahem).
Year 7, Day 52: The burden of meal planning and prep and cooking hasn’t been on me OR PiC for a few days and I can’t fully express how much of a weight it lifts off my whole being. Usually I have to engineer this sort of thing to create that space but the family time has even rendered that part moot. We’ve also gotten some sleep even though the kids are actually up first every day, they’ve been playing quietly without bothering us until we both wake up. It’s because of the novelty more than anything, this won’t last since we do have to get back to work but I’m enjoying it while it does. Heck, we’ve even been able to let PiC sleep in late twice. He normally always has to be up with the kids because I’m a slow waker with the pain and fatigue delaying sleep for hours but I’ve been able to fall asleep by midnight a lot of nights instead of 2-4 am so he’s gotten a turn at the mid morning waking.
Year 7, Day 41: Somehow we landed on some cruise lines’ mailing lists which is starting to make me batty. We don’t cruise. Stop sending us junk that I have to clean up! I usually email these places and tell them to stop mailing us shit but Silversea especially pissed me off claiming that brochures sent from their name and address aren’t being sent by them at all, they’re coming from travel agents. Oh really? Travel agents who want our money but won’t get it because we won’t use their services because we don’t see the middleperson in this mailing at all? That makes a lot of sense, yep!
I just remembered the cocktail that I liked a while back, so this is a reminder to myself order this drink: Blackberry Vodka Mojito. I hate rum but always forget that’s what’s in mint mojitos until I taste it and then sadness. (I also hate gin.) Vodka and tequila are fine in reasonable amounts, so is white wine, so if I MUST drink an alcoholic beverage (practically never) I really ought to stamp this one across the inside of my wrist so I don’t mistakenly order a cocktail of regret yet again. Since I imbibe about once every 5 years, the chances are very high that I’m going to forget.
Year 7, Day 42: Last week’s ask results:
A) deeply irritated that the company is completely unreasonable and refusing to budge on anything important. I can’t tell if this is a firm position or if it’s the healthcare position of “always refuse the first ask no matter how justified” so I’m going to push back.
B) Vision Plan reimbursement. They said it’d take 20 days but it’s been paid! Saved: $59.03 of the $61.80 paid.
C) The sharpener warranty: They said it’d take 6 weeks but they shipped a replacement without any fuss! Saved: $21.50 (They were $16 in 2020, now $20).
Thinking about how prices have risen, I noticed that my gardening gloves were previously $14 in 2020, now they’re $19. Thank goodness I’d gotten an extra pair back then when I realized they were a good fit.
Year 7, Day 43: I’d shared a while back on Bluesky: Going down to a 1-income household while still being a party of 4 for an unknown period of time is in fact causing me a lot of underlying stress and anxiety.
I’ve been the breadwinner since I was 17. Yes I have saved intensely for this situation whether it was me or him. No that doesn’t help my stress at all.
Not that PiC hasn’t been an equal breadwinner because he has been and his income and mine have always been joint funds equally regardless of how much each earned. This is my amygdala freaking out over my lack of personally earned income.
That and the fact that for a while we can’t help anyone til I figure out what we have to do to stay stable and that’s been as much a part of my identity as being an income earner has been. This sucks in many ways.
I’ve been sitting with this feeling and thoughts because, as I said, everything (but the money) about this job sucked. So why all the anxiety? I yell at myself a few times a day.
Ironically, all the work I’ve been doing in therapy is why I’m so scared and anxious. I’ve been making room for my own health needs: feeling feelings, a lot of pacing physically (which means: NOT doing), and trying to get a lot more rest than I ever got in the past. I always needed more than I was getting but my fibro and CFS are now at a point where I must have a roughly 3 to 1 ratio of rest to exertion to recover from low exertion activities or my body shuts down. I’ve been cancelling or rescheduling appointments when the fatigue is high because driving isn’t safe when I’m this impaired. I don’t know if it’s accurate to compare to drunk driving because I’ve never really been drunk nor would I ever drive after having had a drink but I bet it’s similar.
I made it out of the last layoff by near killing myself proving myself at the next job. I am not the same person anymore. I can’t do that. Maybe also won’t. I shouldn’t. That means I now have to find another way to get through this next period which is boding to be incredibly rough. The corporate world has gotten immeasurably more cutthroat and corrupt. The world where you could build a business on the internet has been massively impacted by two godforsaken Trump presidencies and the huge push to steal and sell back our data by AI companies. So many small businesses that once thrived are struggling since Twitter went down.
What chance do I have? I don’t know but I’m scared that it’s “not much”. I don’t want to learn what it’s like to be unable to provide for my family. Of all the ways I thought I might parallel my mom’s life, I didn’t think this would be one.
Year 7, Day 44: The WordPress app is finally allowing me to compose again 🎊 buuut calling my reply comments grr so I’ll drop my replies to comments here.
@Alice: Yes, thankfully we will be able to make changes to PiC’s health coverage because of the layoff so that’s good so long as he continues to dodge those bullets himself.
I’d love any thoughts you want to offer on self-employment, any time!
@Linda: Thanks for the recs and the contribution! It will be so good to focus on helping folks again.
I used your wool socks to keep my feet warm at night when I could still generate warmth on my own! These days I require the help of the heating pad to get started and it’s a strange juggle trying to get warm enough only to hit too warm too warm suddenly.
@Linda: absolutely excruciating. I’m trying to make the best of it, since it is income for a while longer, but it feels like getting little hairs plucked at random times. Unfortunately the company refuses to budge on any terms for anyone for any reason 😒
Year 7, Day 45: @Tragic Sandwich: I hope neither of us need to put this information to use any time soon but we might as well have the knowledge. 😐
@Rae: congrats on your cucumbers! It’s a delight to eat from your own garden!
@Hawaii Planner: Well, that’s a bummer that UI takes so dratted long to pay out! My memory of the slowness is hazy but I’m sure things have gotten worse since 2008. Do you recall how long they will pay, by any chance? Is it a 6 month cap?
I probably know all this already, but I’m going through Jim Wang’s Recession Prep list anyway just in case I’ve missed anything.
Increase Your Emergency Fund. ✅ The usual guidance is 3-6 months but I lived through the Great Recession, so nope, I’ve always operated on a 12-18 month cash buffer. The monthly dollar amount was much lower about 8 years ago, though, so I had 15 months based on those numbers. I’ve now revised that up to use the current monthly dollar amount and recalculated – we have 12 months of cash or cash-like instruments.
Avoid Big Purchases. ✅ Define “big” was my first thought. Here he refers to car and house purchases. I was defining it as $100-300, so there’s a range. Cars: We have no plans to buy cars or houses. I do have a small maintenance fund for each, cars and house, to pay for smaller repairs, too. Both need beefing up, we can’t do anything major like install solar on it.
Renegotiate Your Debt. ✅ We only have the mortgage and the interest rate is under 3% so we are leaving this alone.
Add Income Diversification. 🚩 I’m feeling very YUCK on this point. We have some crafty things to do both for fun and money but they depend on sales and are unlikely to be a steady trickle of dollars. I keep looking at online leads and getting fed up when I see all the AIness of everything in every possible gig. Barf.
Keep Saving for Retirement. ✅ and 🚩 We’ve taken care of this for the year in our tax-advantaged accounts. I also invest separately for our retirement because of my lost investing time, but might have to put that on hold. I hate that part.
Be Realistic About Your Risk Tolerance. ✅ and 🚩 My investing style is Very Aggressive along with Buy and Forget it. Fidelity likes to neg me about this. But Fidelity also likes to neg us about our contribution rates being too low after we’ve maxed out a 401K so what do they know anyway. My current plan is not to use money from our portfolio until 2028, so for now, we’re leaving everything there alone. I need to set a date for re-evaluating that but that’s a later thing.
Start or Update Your Budget. 🚩This would just be refining the budget, for us. I haven’t quite got my head around how to trim our budget. We spend most freely on food, and then on fun experiences. We picked up a few museum memberships this year before the whole implosion so … we’ll make the most of those and then let them lapse.
Review Your Emergency Plan. ✅ I’ve been doing this review in chunks. I feel responsible! There are some bits that I still don’t have information for (like how long unemployment will last), but I have mapped out some key actions to take. The first day after my last day of work here will heretofore be referred to as G(ot)TFO day.
1. GTFO day: Apply for unemployment
2. GTFO day: Contact PiC’s employer to upgrade our vision plan and remove the working spouse surcharge. That will increase his take-home pay by a little bit after both things are reconciled.
3. GTFO day: Contact Fidelity to roll over my 401K. Do I want to stay with Fidelity or to roll it over to Vanguard?
4. GTFO day: Gleefully delete all the work related bookmarks that are saved in my browsers. Export an updated set of bookmarks for my records.
5. For the next 6 months: Monitor that they actually pay the severance correctly and on time. They have historically not been able to do either thing.
6. For the next ?? months: Stay on top of the unemployment requirements to continue getting paid.
Year 7, Day 34: I’ve had an intermittent sore throat for three weeks. Four weeks? I expect that’s the stress expressing itself in immune insufficiency – my body’s so tired and strained under the stresses that it’s trying to fall sick to any virus that comes along.
Kameron Hurley nailed it: “Flooded with cortisol, your body coursing with adrenaline, you’re expected to sit quietly and walk quietly and speak quietly and smile and smile and be a villain. While I certainly have drug assists for these things, a number of stressors hit all at once these last two months, and it’s made it feel like I’m being chased by wolves AND bears while my family is simultanerously on fire and there is… nothing truly physical I can do with all that energy. My body wants to fight it, to outrun it, but the actual way to deal with these challenges is just…writing more fucking emails and moderating my speech during difficult conversations. Afterwards, you just want to run around the street screaming about how ridiculous it all is.”
I’m taking my antivirals every day in hopes it’ll be enough to fend them off. I’m taking my antidepressants every night to help me survive another day. We discussed adding an anti-anxiety med but my doc advised that it should be expected to take some time, on the order of 6 weeks or months, to work right. Given my huge spike in anxiety is caused by the layoff and the whole mess is presumably going to be over in less than 6 months, it seemed like overkill. But maybe it’s not. Maybe the state of the world – horrible as it currently is – has me on edge enough that it might actually be worthwhile to consider starting anxiety meds to help because I’m only ever half a step back from the cliff’s edge these days.
Year 7, Day 35: I’m so irritated by almost everyone these days. People not bothering to show up for meetings that were only held for their personal benefit and then wanting a special catch-up (have neither the time nor the patience for that), or arguing with me about the meaning of the words that I said – I think I’ll be the boss of the actual meaning of my words thank you very much. It was actually more irritating because another person in the exact same conversation understood precisely what I meant.
I’m generally irascible but these things feel like they cut to the bone a bit more than they ought to.
Year 7, Day 36: Filed under the “The worst they can do is say no (and in doing so, deeply irritate me but I’ll be MORE irritable if I don’t ask)” heading, in order of worst to least worst irritation:
A) I’ve got negotiations going about the exact text and severance amount for our separation contracts (that will deeply irritate me when they argue with me because they definitely will);
B) a Vision Plan claim for my glasses for going out of network;
C) and a warranty claim for a 5 year old pencil sharpener that is trying to work but can’t. The last one is really an at least I tried before spending new money on a replacement thing but honestly every penny always counts for one reason or another.
Oh look, it’s basically my current boss! Not the one who told me I don’t have a job anymore, the one who I directly report to but couldn’t be bothered to say a word about that since it happened.
Anyway. If I still reported to him I’d have to be stressed about his utter lack of engagement but now I can just shrug.
Year 7, Day 37: On the one hand: The job and the company have been 100% horrible and I have hated everything about working for them outside of the paycheck, so big picture, leaving is good for my health and my family.
On the other hand: The timing is harder to make peace with. I wanted to make it to next bonus season and invest that; I wanted another year of a 401K. So the timing is not horrible but not good.
I’m neutral on it not being on my own terms. Leaving on my own terms would likely have looked like holding on until I couldn’t anymore and then going to a new job, probably without much time in between to decompress. This way means I continue to be paid for months after I stop working, it buys me time off for decompression.
So I’m not panicked for the short term, we can cover the bills through next year. But the long term – that I have concerns about. We have enough to do the bare minimum for a long time but not to live comfortably long term. This is one variation on my nightmares: My husband’s care costs have reached £65,000 – we’ve had to sell our flat.
We can handle a layoff and even two for a while. But a long term or terminal illness means not only are we out of the sick person’s income but also we likely don’t have the caregiver’s income either. Stack on top of that: possibly we’ll have then lost our healthcare coverage either due to increased costs or lack of access. Then you’re eating up your resources in huge chunks.
For example, PiC’s subsidized employer provided healthcare is about $400 a month. Paying for COBRA for that same healthcare plan, which only lasts 18 months, would cost 6x as much: about $2500. That’s more than our mortgage. Oh and we’d still need to pay for our mortgage and property tax, utilities, eating.
A friend says that my financial planning is trauma-informed and they’re not wrong about that. But it’s also lived experience informed. I remember what happened when my parents sold their business and my mom got sick and suddenly the money was gone with no more coming in. I remember what it was like to suddenly have to carry the weight of the whole family alone. I won’t be alone this time but the numbers going very bad, very quickly? That’s a very familiar scenario.
Year 7, Day 38: Kicking myself. There was 2% cashback on the thank you gifts that I ordered. I’d been dithering over putting in the order for a few days waiting to see if it would go up but it didn’t and I have a pretty strict timeline to make sure these go out on time. Finally clicked that submit button, felt like I’d accomplished something. The next day I find the cashback went up to 10%! ARGH. That’s significant with the order this size ($800). I know I couldn’t have known but I’m still irritated and kicking rocks a little bit.