Year 6, Day 352: I love it when friends share their meals and the basics of how they cooked it. A former chef friend’s most recent texts jogged my memory about the pork belly I’d frozen last year and forgotten about: mince garlic and ginger, saute the salted pork belly and tofu, season with some mirin, dish sauce. I didn’t take the extra steps of adding greens and making a broth since we’d run out of both but it all went great over rice. Next time I might want to use ground pork instead, and try to add greens. SmolAc HATES fat (they’re weirdly obsessive) so the pork belly wasn’t a great fit for them.
I’m trying to return some 2 year old logo stuff to the local gym to get my money back. Nothing has changed with their logo so there’s no reason they should deny the refund but it turns out that it’s such an old transaction they are having tech problems with it. We’ll have to come back and deal with it next week since they couldn’t figure out how to process the refund. Fingers crossed they won’t have forgotten to figure it out in the interim.
Year 6, Day 353: On one hand, I’m making a real effort to put together a reasonably adult human wardrobe. A friend helped me pick a few nice linen-like pants which are perfect for warmer weather (which we don’t usually have….). I’ve picked out cute skirts from Maya Kern, my successor shop to Svaha, and am learning how to put them together to make actual outfits instead of just jeans + tshirting. For cooler weather, so far, I’ve got a pair of fleece lined leggings, 2 large Elhoffer Design sweaters from several years back and 2 chunky sweaters, plus my warm boots. That’ll work for more than one outfit if I can avoid being covered in dog fur or slobber (no guarantees). If I don’t need to care what I look like (most of the time) then it’s cargo pants or fleece lined cargos plus a tee and a hoodie.
(Flip side of the wardrobe rearrangement coin: I’ve extracted 4 maternity shirts for donation, 2 old shirts that are the epitome of threadbare, and 5 Svaha dresses that I’ll never fit in again (sad). We’ll see if the kids want a shot at them before I attempt to list them on Poshmark or donate them.)
On the other hand I discovered the existence of blanket hoodies, Oodies, on clearance and now I live in this giant blanket with the kangaroo pocket down at my knees. It’s so COZY. Like I needed another excuse to hunker down and never leave the house. (This is what I need a dog for, to force me to leave the house when it’s just don’t wanna and not a fibro/CFS thing.)
Year 6, Day 354: Good grief, the big feelings from SmolAc this morning. I don’t know why it was a trigger, or if it really WAS the trigger or if anything would have done the trick, but PiC sharing that the school would be doing school pictures today set off a complete sobbing meltdown. I gave it a few minutes before I came in to cuddle them (they will kick and flail and push you away if you come too soon), and helped them get back on their mental feet. They required a lot of cuddling and shepherding to get moving.
Ironically, they had a grand time at the picture session with their buddies, the teachers reported, so grand and so overstimulating that most of them conked out during the rest period. I’m mildly surprised they still do rest time at this age but this group seems to need naps far more than say, JB’s group. JB quit napping one day age 3 and never went back even once. We didn’t stop sending SmolAc for naps til just before they turned five because they were Always. So. GRUMPY. tired.
Anyway, we ended up being glad that they didn’t mind the photos and horrified by the news that the kids in the class, and in the whole center in fact, shared ONE CAP for all the pictures. OH NO. Please join me in hoping this is just a funny-horrible story to share later and that no head lice were shared among all or most of the kids.
Year 6, Day 355: The swim center has cancelled the kids’ swim lessons for the rest of the month unfortunately. The pool was undergoing some emergency repairs and they can’t get it done in time for any of the weekend lessons. This frees up our Saturday mornings temporarily but it’s still disappointing since their swimming was developing nicely.
We are now entering a new era of gardening: hardening off. I’ve never done this before but Smol Acrobat’s seedlings are growing so vigorously I want to give them their best chance at survival. They got to spend one hour in a shaded bucket to protect them from the wind and sun. We’ll increase their daily outdoor time by 1-2 hours a day until they get to the point of being able to overnight outside without withering or wilting.
Year 6, Day 356: I grumpily ranted about this on Bluesky yesterday. We try to actively parent while balancing our guidance and encouraging independence for both kids. We’ve been pulling back a touch on managing JB’s socializing but as they’re only in elementary school and moving into middle school, we still actively engage with other parents so we’re not relying solely on our kid’s reporting which isn’t always accurate or complete.
I have this parent asking me for info on why this team splintered and I was rather shocked to find out that she didn’t know that happened until the final presentation, today. Her response: husband is the one who picks up from school. Ok, sure, but you don’t talk to your kid at all just because you’re not the picker-upper? Mind, I’m already cheesed off at her anyway because she refuses to make even a minimal effort like any of the other parents do. Not even when we ASKED her to take an active role in coordinating at get together. She ignored us, left it up to her flakey kid, and ended up with kids being left out because those other parents rightfully expected that a real plan would include their parent contacting the friends’ parents.
So when she asked me for details at last night’s event, I hesitated for a moment. I tend to be honest but their kid is the reason the group splintered. The kid eavesdropped on a private conversation, then deliberately used what they heard to cause unnecessary drama and distress. So do I tell her that her kid is the problem? I kinda want her to know her kid sucks but I landed on the side of Nope. Not my circus. We got through the thing and I am not required to care about her kid’s drama anymore.
A) I don’t feel like being used as her crutch because she can’t be bothered to pay attention. I have a full time job running a damn company, 2 young kids, no help aside from my spouse, & make the effort to at least know roughly what’s going on. That takes work! Her decision not to try does not earn her a place on my list. JB says “she deserves to know.” Sure. But she isn’t entitled to MY time and energy after not bothering. She can make some effort for herself. Asking me doesn’t count. I wouldn’t feel this way if she made any effort whatsoever but she doesn’t.
B) I also think she sucks in every way to do with this group project. They didn’t bother to engage with any parent (parental permission was required), they didn’t bother to make sure their kid was at the mandatory group meetings at school. They didn’t bother to make sure all the kids were invited to the practice at their place. There was no way any conversation about how her kid sucks was going to avoid how I feel about her right now.
All that was more than I felt like engaging on at this point in the night, or really, my life.
Year 6, Day 345: I want the job of giving away a billionaire’s assets in the vein of Mackenzie Scott’s giving: MacKenzie Scott Makes Another Blockbuster Gift To An HBCU. She’s making a real difference to institutions that are usually not prioritized. I’d like to do that. Preferably money from billionaires who are doing nothing but harm to the ecosystem, socially, environmentally, etc. though, that would feel much more right.
Related: My W-2 job sent around a shockingly tone-deaf gross note to colleagues stationed in the Middle East encouraging them to take time off now (and max out their vacation allotments) so that they can have a productive last half of the year. So you want them to use up their PTO because you can’t be bothered to extend the courtesy of PTO because of WAR? And then when that’s all used up and the latter half of this year continues to be a crazed rabid barrel of monkeys, you’ll what, fire them for needing more leave? Are all CEOs required to turn in half their brains when they get into the C-suite? FFS!
Paying bills! I was shocked to see our near-$4000 credit card bill. I’d totally forgotten that 75% of the summer camps were paid in this month, along with the payments for Spring Break that included one nice dinner, along with a lot of contributions to struggling folks.
Year 6, Day 346: It’s been six weeks and my cucumber seeds still aren’t germinating. I’m guessing our soil temperature just isn’t warm enough, though I could swear that it’s roughly the same weather we always have. So disappointing. My lettuce and onion seeds have never germinated, so I’m starting to think the real problem here is me. Oh but cutting back the blackberry bush last year was the right move! It’s put out several new branches covered in leaves now so I need to come up with a way to tag the branches as primocane or floricane as we get into the growing seasons.
We’ve been slowly filling up our Got Sneakers? bag since January 2024. They ask you not to send their giant FedEx bag until it’s full, and we don’t give up our shoes til they are worn through so it’s taken us a while but I think it’s nearly full enough to ship out. They used to pay $0.25 for the recyclable condition shoes but they don’t anymore so we just send these to keep them out of the landfill. I hope it does, anyway, they say: “All heavily used and damaged footwear is recycled to reuse materials or to convert waste into new energy.” Looks like our assessment of what was worn all the way through didn’t match theirs and we made a couple dollars from the last bag. Who knows, maybe we’ll make a buck or two off this bag.
Year 6, Day 347: Nicole and Maggie got me thinking about my sibling and the last time I saw a picture of him, he was basically like a feral hermit. Despite our always rocky relationship, thinking of that image of him hurts my heart.
Commenting on an older Nicole and Maggie post, they also got me thinking about how I’m most productive when I have something specific to avoid. I procrastinate when I don’t feel like doing That Thing but because there’s no end to the amount of work I have to do, it doesn’t feel like procrastination. It’s now redefined it as re-prioritizing. But if I know I need to do something I’ve been putting off, tattling on myself works pretty well. Telling a friend that it needs doing is often enough to make me do it. Maybe that IS a function of guilt.
$50 and one smog check later, my 24 year old car is good for another year on the road. I’m hoping we can hit 30 years and 250K miles before we have to replace it.
Year 6, Day 348: A friend shared amazing news that enabled them to retire early and I’m thrilled to my toes for them. So glad that a genuinely good thing has happened for a genuinely good person that I care about.
$$$. I found a set of cute sweaters for Christmas gifts. I DID considered off-brand types but they weren’t significantly cheaper than the brand name on clearance so I went with the original brand, picking from only the clearance bin designs.
Year 6, Day 349: Kaiser is finally starting to be affected by all the anti-vaccine bullshit from this administration. We used to be able to get 6 month boosters for the COVID vaccine under our own decision making. This year, we can’t. I did talk directly with one of the pediatricians who shared that Kaiser has been keeping their own data on COVID and it’s lower than previous years, though admitted that some of that is self reporting (or lack thereof) to go along with the officially reported diagnostics and hospitalizations. I’m trying to decide what this means for our year and how we protect ourselves. I was thrashed by a “mere cold” more than once this year.
Money: I made a second sale on Poshmark, that’s another $7 we can put away.
Year 6, Day 339: Taking a minute to be oh so very grateful that I’m not sick right now. I spent so many weeks of this year flattened like a pancake from the sick and fatigue that I get flashbacks sometimes. I am so so grateful that I’ve managed to stay at my rough baseline of yuck, uncomplicated by some virus or another, for three whole weeks.
We took the kids to see Mychal Threets talk and then to explore a new-to-us park that PiC’s noticed several times. It was huge and there were friendly dogs there too so I got a really good dog fix and they got to play at a pretty neat playground. It was soul-cleansing.
Money: Ah ha! Costco gas receipts are valid for the ibotta “any receipt” redemption thing. $0.25 in our pocket.
Year 6, Day 340: I’ve been thinking about things I’d rather do/enjoy doing. I love working around and taking care of animals. I like cleaning and bandaging up wounds (also for humans, not just critters). I don’t enjoy the constant needs of human infants or baby animals, that’s a bit too much. I don’t want to go back to school and I have never gotten past my antipathy for math and my brain doesn’t hold on to new information as well as it used to so probably medical training isn’t in the cards but I would like to take that 3 day wilderness survival care training class. I wish it weren’t 3 days, though.
Put all together, this means I’d like to be a part time basic injuries only Night Nurse / pet bather (not groomer, I can bathe dogs, clean ears, and trim nails but I can’t clip and make them pretty) / pet less intensive care treater. The last time I did a flight of fancy for my future career was when I was 17, working full time, saying I’d like to be paid to do X. After months of applications, I got a very low paying job to do X, and built my entire career up from that by acquiring a whole lot more similar skills. Maybe it’s time to see if putting that out in the universe will work again. *Patient hat on*
Year 6, Day 341: Text I received: “Territorial Seed Company: Growing basil at home is a game-changer for flavor!” Not if it just DIES ON YOU. Harumph. I bought both sweet basil and Thai basil plants last year, planted them in the garden, and two weeks later they were all dead. #bitter Every time someone says that it’s so frugal to grow your own herbs I silently demand to know exactly how they’re being kept alive because I missed that class.
Year 6, Day 342: I was reading this article from Kiplingers, How to Protect Yourself and Others From a Troubled Adult Child: A Lesson from Real Life, and this line struck me: “Alex made clear that his parents refused to have Gabe arrested — and he could still be, for assault, vandalism, terrorist threats — and taken to a mental facility. I spoke about this with two clinical psychologists, who asked not to be identified because they are not involved in Gabe’s case. They both indicated that the fact that he has not been arrested is evidence of the parents being caught in a spiral of enabling.”
It reminded me of something my biodad said to me when I was a kid. “Even if a parent knew of a kid’s wrongdoing (or vice versa), I still have to protect that family member from outsiders if the police showed up.” 8 year old me felt like that was off somehow but couldn’t put the reason into words. It occurs to me now that even if he wasn’t laying groundwork, he absolutely believed he deserved to be bailed out of all his problems by his parents, then his sibling(s), and later, me and there’s definitely a corollary to that early belief.
Year 6, Day 340: Well. That was short-lived. JB came home with a sore throat and a cough and since they have insisted on bunking with me since my last depressive/suicidal cycle, I now have some version of what they have. I’m starting to think that it’s unwise to express gratitude for health because the universe takes that as an invitation.
Money: This headline made me snort “Gas in US hits $4 a gallon”. It’s been over $5 here for so long I can’t remember when it hit that amount, but just two days ago I saw a few stations charging well over $6. PiC was wondering why Americans are so obsessed with gas prices. I don’t really know the answer to that but I speculate it’s to do with our national culture of driving over public transit and ever-larger cars. Especially in California, we tend to also drive incredibly long distances regularly in addition to the trend to large cars. (Collective us, not us-us because he bike commutes as much as he can and I don’t commute at all.) Mind, this isn’t about deeper impacts of gas on the economy like the cost of delivering groceries which is actually a big problem. The reactions we’re thinking of are all people who are primarily concerned with their personal price at the pump.
Year 6, Day 336: Several months ago, I semi-joked to a friend that the number of “hikers died” stories I keep seeing in the news suggests that we should quit hiking as a quick and easy survival tactic. This article, and the many articles about hiking deaths below it, removed the semi and joking part of that. The only hikes I go on are the ones you can finish in half an hour with adults and 1.5 hours with dawdling kids. I had no idea how much further people are willing to risk going and how much more dangerous that is.
Money: I am so glad that I’m a giant nerd. I was reading Kiplingers over the weekend for funsies. As one does. I learned about the existence of the long term care premium deduction, though not enough information on whether we were eligible for it or not, and writing up that question to our CPA jogged my memory about the question I had about where our mortgage interest appears in our tax return. As it turns out, it was misplaced in another line/form. Correcting it reduced our state tax bill by $1000 and increased our federal refund by $3000. Nerd wins.
Year 6, Day 337: It’s been a while since the inflammation in my hands interfered with daily life. This week has been That Kind of Week. My hands were like oven mitts and my fingers could not function like joints, they were more like blunt instruments. Any attempts at fine motor control were an exercise in futility. Could be worse, though.
Money: Oop, there goes $600, camp wanted to be paid in full as a deposit against the two weeks we’ve booked.
Year 6, Day 338: Woof. I’m the repository for my colleagues’ and reports’ frustration and hatred of the corporation and some days, like today, it’s harder than others to let it flow back out of me. I’m not allowed to rage quit. I am allowed to run calculations on when we could be Coast FI in case I absolutely lose it and do rage quit. Or get fired because they keep setting impossible targets for us to miss (probably more likely). My friend has her money on me getting fired or laid off by next spring and I don’t have a strong argument against it.
We’re all doing our damnedest but our industry is being heavily impacted by this evil corrupt administration. Except our corporate overlords are acting like that’s not happening at all and it’s not only business as usual, they’re going to demand huge growth every single year and by George, they’re going to get it by impressing upon us a “sense of urgency”. FFS yes that’s the only thing that was preventing us forcing sales to happen, a sense of urgency. If my eyes rolled any harder we’d be issuing BOLOs for them.
Right now our numbers, if correct, say that if we assumed 5% growth and 4% withdrawal rate, we are at Coast FI. If normal growth holds. Other calculators say we’re not at Coast FI yet, and if I change our assumptions to 4% growth and 3.5% withdrawal, that adds a couple years. I wonder whether one paycheck would cover our day to day expenses until we’re fully FI because we have a lot of benefits coming out of one employer and none of my calculations include a non-saving scenario. My guess is maybe but it’d be less anxiety provoking to have a part time income supplementing it given PiC’s workplace is constantly reorg-ing and doing layoffs.
I do wonder if the market will stagnate over the next decade or if that’s an outlier sort of possibility. The market is completely irrational so my guess is it’ll do the opposite of what I think it should do. Just in case there is, though, I also ran a very low growth scenario. Using 1% growth, we need $600k more banked to be set for CoastFI and retire in 11 years. Or $800k to retire in 6 years. I don’t like this set of numbers but it’s helpful to have a range of answers to work between.
Year 6, Day 339: I keep getting a weird version of what sort of feels like FOMO. It’s not that, though. What is it called when you really want to do all the things and you can only do 1-2 of the things and all those other things left on the list make you sad? That thing. I’m happy I got to do the things I did do and I’m frustrated that that’s all I could manage.
Money: A completely random Poshmark sale happened. I hadn’t bothered installing it on my new phone but my account is still alive and I just sold one of JB’s old costumes that SmolAc had no interest in. +$7!
Year 6, Day 340: I did not eat like an adult today. There was a reasonably healthy breakfast but it all went downhill from there. A donut. A bag of potato chips. Then a half hot dog with onions followed by a half hot dog with chili and a bag of Cheetos. As PiC noted, twas a very cheap dinner for the four of us and utterly devoid of most nutrition. Whoops. Ah well. Garbage meals are a once in a while thing.
I’m feeling betrayed by Tresemme. For the past year, scents that were once fine are now absolutely intolerable, giving me headaches and nausea. This has been a slow progression. At first it was just a couple brands of shampoo that I wasn’t attached to anyway (Dove, and something else), then I noticed my old stand-by Pantene must have changed their formula because their scent is now repellant. Then my Degree deodorant this past summer – terrible. Tresemme has been my one reliable brand for hair products. Today, I tried their argan oil shampoo and conditioner in the new packaging and the scent was repellent so I passed it over to the kids. They don’t care. I assumed it was because of the argan oil, whatever that is, so I grabbed the next backup set. The next bottle was also the new packaging but the same generic type of product: also awful. I think they changed their scent when they changed their packaging. 😭😭 Now I have to find something that doesn’t set off my olfactory receptors.
Year 6, Day 329: Heat wave time! For us, it’s very unlikely to be terrible. Everyone else is getting 90s and 100s. Our forecast is well under those highs so I get to enjoy this as our one random week of “summer” and then we’ll be back to our normally moderate temps.
Money: Most days it feels like we’re losing the neverending slog of people needing help, the list grows exponentially daily, so it was nice to have there two good updates: Nikos: Surgery went well on February 26th, and Niko has slowly been recovering in the hotel room. I’ve been contributing to keep Amber afloat for months and she’s finally starting to get her feet on solid ground. Winifred is a midwife now. Progress, any progress, is welcome and I hope they continue to improve.
Year 6, Day 330: My day is packed. Meetings, work, school meeting, work meeting, friend needs an ear, back to work, back to school to pick up, shovel down dinner, back to school for an evening math activity for the kids. 😵💫
I was deeply annoyed with SmolAc while we tried to get out the door. They eat at a snail’s pace and compounded that with whining they aren’t hungry. Our policy used to be “respect the kid’s intake assessment”. That doesn’t work with SmolAc because “I’m not hungry” actually means “I don’t want to eat this / I’m bored” and in short order they’ll be asking for a snack. They would live on snack foods if they could.
I insisted they eat almost a full serving (for them, that was a quarter of a serving for any other kid) before leaving and once we left, like clockwork the whining for a hot dog started. I refuse to negotiate with the terrorist so we marched them home to finish the perfectly good food we had waiting there.
The event itself was fun for both. JB did fifth grade level activities with their friends and we helped SmolAc try out the kindergarten activities. They impressed a second grade teacher with their penmanship. That was a bit of a surprise for me, too.
Money: Cigna keeps declining my wellness claim saying that the benefit is not covered for the insured. Except it is a covered benefit! Even their rep sees that it is. So that’s a 25 minute phone call to get my $50 payment. I’m willing to bet that this is some AI-powered bullshit in play. So annoying!
Year 6, Day 331: Summer weather means I get to hang our clothes to dry! As long as I get the timing right. Most of the year it’s too damp.
I can’t believe I missed the book birthday of the 15th Incryptid book: Butterfly Effects! I’ve put it on hold and it’s 8 weeks away. *Grabby hands* I’m working through Discworld again for now to keep my brain busy since all my library books either came in and were read or are on hold for weeks still.
Money: I earned a $50 gift card from our health provider researcher surveys. Chucked that into our internet account to pay a future bill.
Year 6, Day 332: Summer weather means summer smells in the morning that take me back to summer school and grade school days. That hit of baking asphalt rising up to mix with the nip of still cold air, maybe a concrete layer in there with some earthy leafy vegetation. I’d assumed that was mostly a SoCal combination of scents but turns out nope, it can be replicated just enough to make me feel like I should be walking to high school or something. Not that I ever want to relive that period. High school was fine but it’s not something I ever felt any need to go back to. There are a few people I miss from back then that I didn’t manage to stay in touch with but that’s all.
Money: We got a confirmation that bonuses will be paid at the end of March but we don’t know who is getting how much. S’pose that’s enough good news for one day.
Year 6, Day 333: Registration for summer camps feels like a contact sport. The regional animal camp booked solid in under 7 minutes. The number of slots available is low but good grief! Actually registering for anything in the city or county offerings is fraught, they all book up within the first half hour or less. It’s a good thing I’ve honed the ability to type really fast in registration forms but also they really need to offer more services. I do wonder if they’ll be able to offer more advanced swim lessons when they have the new pool built some far off date in the future. JB is at the most advanced level they offer for now and unless we want to enroll them in swim team (no, not really, that’s a 5 night per week commitment), they don’t have a lot more opportunities to hone their skill.
Money: camp registration has taken a chunk of my brain. I found a $50 off code for one camp ($600) but rescheduling to make it work with everyone’s schedules meant the other week of camp was 5 days and full price, so we paid $1126 instead of $1061 for both. It was initially a 4 day camp, then a 5 day, but now it’s 2 5-day camps. That’s fine, I prefer the new schedule that means their friends will be going to the same one and that’s an extra uninterrupted work day for me.
Year 6, Day 322: I’m so unsettled. Insomnia last night was severe, but the fatigue was mostly at a bit of a distance. I was able to pull some weeds, plant a few seeds, air out the house and do all the laundry, buy gifts, clean and pay bills this weekend. All this was followed up by a nap I didn’t want but sorely needed. It should feel good to have managed as much as I did but instead I just feel like an overshaken bottle of soda. Maybe this is a weird side effect of DST?
Money: We have had Giving money come in since our last support push but I’ve been thoroughly overwhelmed so had to wait a bit to pick our next family from the One Spirit Okini list. This time, I selected a mom whose kid needs clothes and kitted them out with some of each of the requested items (jeans, tees, hoodies, underwear, socks, a pair of shoes). I bought a few pieces in the next size up, too. It sets my mind at ease when I have the next immediate size of clothes on hand and wanted to give a little of that peace to this mom. We also loaded them up with multiples of the requested hygiene items: shampoo/conditioner, body wash, toothpaste/toothbrushes so they ought to be stocked for at least several months.
Year 6, Day 323: Time for another grocery takeaway! Once in a while, our neighbors get a badly timed grocery delivery and ask us to come take some produce off their hands. I trotted over today and picked up eggplant, bok choy, avocados, zucchini and some frozen chicken. PiC’s ambitiously saying we should cook all of it when I was going to split it further with another neighbor. We’ll see if we actually manage that but in the meantime, I’m moving along the big sack of apples that I would normally have fed to the dogs to a friend whose dogs can enjoy them. I really wanted to find some horses to share those apples with but I’m not friends with any local horses at the moment. Now that is definitely a problem that needs solving. Anyway these little food shares fire up my gratitude engine. I’m glad to share what we have with our neighbors and that we have enough. And these little extras that we get frees me up to give more to the people who don’t have enough outside of our circles. I like to think of it as a giant community cycle of some kind, maybe concentric circles where we push out help from our center, even if we never meet the people we help outside our local circles.
Year 6, Day 324: Trainer stuff: I’ve been struggling to get back to my “good” performance in working out: completing all sets assigned on my 3-4 days of written workouts. The CFS kicked my ass for several weeks, the depression spiral and suicidal ideation period was another asskicking. Overall time and energy have been hugely scarce on top of all that, and some days had to be rest days.
I have never gone a week without doing some sets but it’s never what I’d call enough. It feels like I’m wasting my trainer’s time because so little progress is made one week to the next. But this is a mental exercise in seeing the service of my trainer as separate from my performance of the workouts. If my body could just consistently improve, I wouldn’t need him to begin with.
Money: I’ve redeemed our Cigna Wellness Incentives for the kids and myself as our dental appointments are all done. That’ll be $150 in our pocket which covers the premium. PiC’s $50 when he does his well check will be profit in our pockets.
Year 6, Day 325: DST is kicking everyone’s asses. SmolAc sat up crying hysterically for an hour? hours? in the middle of the night, I don’t know when it was or how long. Just that I had to cuddle them until they finally settled down and fell asleep at 2 am. I’m so tired.
Work stress: I can taste actual adrenaline, I’m so stressed these days. I hate this.
Money: JB’s friend is asking for bookstore gift cards for their birthday. What’s an appropriate amount to gift kids turning 11-12? I’ve usually spent $20-25 per kid when gifting books or cash for the younger set, usually shopping from Bookoutlet if I can to save some cash. I’m not sure if $25-35 or more makes sense. To add to the confusion, this latest party involves the host telling us that they’re giving the kids $40 worth of credit to use so I have an idea of what they’re spending on the party itself. I don’t usually know that.
Year 6, Day 326: Having a bit of an existential crisis internal scream-fest. The existence and use of AI is destroying my professional world AND destroying the one planet we have and the helplessness I feel about that, though we fight against it daily – literally, is eating my sanity. I was just telling a friend that if all we did was bullshit anyway I could just shrug it off some. But I can’t. The stuff we output actually matters. So, between the massively organized fraud that people are perpetuating and the use of AI to create utter slop in ways that are going to deeply impact (actual real life things I can’t get into here but it’s serious), oh my GAHHHHHH. We are fighting against it, daily, and have been since the first ChatGPT came out. It’s grinding me down.
Money: SmolAc was invited to a birthday party and hah! The stack of books that I bought for the last party they were invited to (but arrived too late) can now be wrapped for this kid’s gifts. MRSP: $40. I paid $22. Stash of gifts, FTW.
Year 6, Day 315: Day one of solo parenting. PiC is away at a work thing this week. I’ve been bracing myself for this for weeks, telling myself that I would moderate my expectations for work and household stuff. The goal: keep the kids fed, clothed, alive, get them to and from school. Don’t break myself trying to do the impossible.
How we coped: burgers at the local place with outdoor seating. Stern directions to head DIRECTLY for the shower after we got home. Everyone in bed for math tutoring and reading time. SmolAc was happily sandwiched between us “reading” while we painfully inched our way through one equation after another.
From The Diplomat – Callum: You’re a military-industrial complex papered over by a Constitution.
Boy does that description of America hits home especially hard since this administration has been murdering right left and center and has torpedoed all the soft diplomacy we used to do through USAID.
Year 6, Day 316: Day two of solo parenting. I had a very tight timetable for dropping off JB and SmolAc this morning to get back in time for a meeting. I made all the runs in exactly 60 minutes and managed to get to my meeting in time. Score! JB had an afterschool activity at school so that bought me an extra hour to “rest” (working from bed). That helped.
Picking up JB late meant that I went straight from school to the orthodontist, then to pick up SmolAc a little earlier than Monday in hopes that we’ll be able to get dinner on the table earlier, get homework done, and get to bed earlier. That’s not how things worked out of course.
We got home much earlier yes, we ate dinner earlier also yes, but JB ran into trouble with their math homework and I had to teach them how to do it step by step, work through several problems, and then figure out how to create a story around how to solve that type of problem that would stick in their brain.
We did not hit the 8 pm bedtime. We did not remember to take out the garbage bins. We definitely did not have 5-7 minutes for my workout. But we survived intact.
Year 6, Day 317: Day three of solo parenting. And there’s my limit! Did the drop-offs this morning again. Kept running into people we know who haven’t seen me in months (PiC has been doing this run to save me time) so they wanted to catch up. It’s touching that they seemed so delighted to see me but that took a whackload of energy. I drove him and felt the exhaustion buzz set into my limbs.
The best encounter was a surprise appearance of our neighbor dogs who nearly shivered out of their skins with excitement when we spotted each other. I adore them and the feeling is mutual and I never walk away from them wondering if they actually like me or if they’re just being polite/friendly like I do with humans.
The one really good thing this week: the crushing suffocating relentless fatigue of the past several weeks has finally lifted. I’d forgotten what it felt like to only have pain without dragging the 1000 lb weight of fatigue with me and it’s so tolerable. My fingers are randomly swollen. My lower back aches. My upper back and shoulders are tight as a drum. And it’s still so much better than being crushed by fatigue. I am grateful. (Update: It lasted one day. I’m still grateful for the experience of that one day.)
Year 6, Day 318: A friend shared that her Asian ex-GF has gone to become a police officer in the Bay Area and my brain stuttered to a stop. WHAT. Really? In the years 2025-2026? That PD is notoriously racist even for police.
It also made me reflect on this scene from The Diplomat that felt similar though I wonder if one could legitimately make the argument the CIA is both a rotten agency AND still does SOME good. I don’t know enough about them to comment on that. I definitely don’t feel like we can make that argument for American police. I don’t know of any police that do any amount of good sufficient to counterbalance even a fraction of the evil they do.
Stuart: How are you not furious? Eidra: Stuart, I am a young tiny Asian American woman at the top of one of the most baldly paternalistic arms of the UG government. I am furious all the time. If I could go after terrorists and human traffickers with an organization that didn’t have an 80 year legacy of racism and human rights violations, I would. Stuart: We should be getting this for the recruitment video. Eidra: There is not another better CIA or America. The ones we have are fucked up. We make compromises. Some days we feel ok about that. Some days we have gin.
Year 6, Day 319: Confusion. The garden faucet has had a slow drip for months. I’d made the mistake of using it and then it wouldn’t shut off completely. I can’t replace it because the jerks here before us installed some kind of bizarre lock on the faucet that our handy friend says has to be cut off if we don’t have a key for it. There is no key for it. I stuck a jug under the drip and have been using that to water the garden until I solve the problem. I went to do the usual garden watering dump today and the jug is empty. The drip has stopped?? Woo!
I haven’t had time to figure out how to fix our oven yet. Maybe it will also mysteriously fix itself? Please?