June 22, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
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.
I learned how to make paper balloons.
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 immense pressure 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.
June 15, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
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?
Therapeutic Bostons
June 10, 2026
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.
June 8, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
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.
Therapeutic otters
June 1, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 27: I’ve got maybe 3 months left. I’ve calculated the PTO to be earned and, if the math is right, I’ll have 3 weeks to add to the severance runway. Did the same for my sick time and am booking off large chunks of that before the end. After the severance and PTO run out, we have 14 months, or 12 months (plus some healthcare, some house maintenance and no dog), in liquid funds. We have an ok amount of time after my severance runs out if my job search is as bad as, or worse than, the last one.
Using the same conservative monthly amount (covers needs, a few wants) to break down all our major assets, we have 12 years of spending in the brokerage and 13 years of retirement savings. Emergencies, large home repairs and other things of that nature would shorten that timeline. If the retirement savings grows minimally (3%) between now and 2036, that stretches to 21 years of monthly bills. That’s a super simplistic view, of course, and intentionally so. I needed a very basic framework to share with JB because they started worrying about losing our home if I don’t have a job anymore. I’d previously said we could pay off the house, which we could, but I found that being able to say “Even without a job, I have our bills covered for 25 years” gives them a more concrete way to understand they don’t need to worry. I don’t feel like I got this because 25 years doesn’t cover retirement (intentional or not) but the breakdown gives me a place to set my feet when I tell them not to worry.
Year 7, Day 28: The fog is hovering so low this week, it feels like we’re wrapped in winter. The pumpkin plants and the one sugar snap pea plant have been sitting outside sheltering in a bucket for five days and nights and seem to be thriving despite the wind and fog so they might be ready to put into the container. Not sure when I will be ready to put them in, though. Definitely not today. My body is giving me a warning buzz that if I do much physically, I’m going to crash. Yesterday was a high-energy expenditure day, so this isn’t a huge surprise. This does cast a bit of a pall on my job-hunting. Everything I read turns into an “I could do that, I have done that, I don’t want to do that all over again”. I’m so tired.
I did an hour of research looking up all the bits and pieces of legalese that I don’t know enough about to agree to, still waiting on the lawyers I’ve reached out to for some replies. Did a volunteer job training and then a task that I trained for. Submitted some FSA claims. Researched candidates for the upcoming primary. I’m in a pickle where I don’t like either of the candidates that I have to pick between so it’s a matter of choosing the lesser evil.
Year 7, Day 29: One of my crow friends showed up solo today, they’re usually in pairs, and landed right on the driveway waiting for treats! They have never done that before! That was a bit of a delight. They even stayed there while I rolled treats to them. So far, only the ravens have been this bold. The crows usually stay up high on street lamps or the roof or the car and wait til I set down treats and walk away. They show a decided preference for dog treats, too, peanuts will be eaten but last. Actually, is that right? Maybe they’re saving the best for last? Do crows do that?
Bigger picture thoughts: We’re not planning to sell the house or move, we’re happy where we are, so that’s not in the plans for the short or medium term. Prices are so high here that we couldn’t make an even trade. We’d have to plan to leave the area, or the state entirely, if we wanted to sell and keep any money. The idea of having to pack, move, unpack and rebuild community all over again is more than exhausting. I’m not good at it!
Year 7, Day 30: It’s deeply irritating to see billionaires fined for anything less than $999M for crimes. Anything less than that is the equivalent of them waving off a gnat! What’s the point?
I now maintain three budgets simultaneously: 2026 with my layoff (real); 2027 with my layoff (real); and 2027 (projected worst case with loss of 2 incomes). This gives me a place to project costs in both scenarios and to know what I can and can’t do with our money. I realized last night that I had added unemployment income but not healthcare costs to the 2027WC, so I’ve added a $2500 monthly expense using an employer estimate of the cost of COBRA for now. That year I’ll need 9 months of saved cash to clear all our bills.
That makes it ok to buy one large callable CD at 4.1% for 18 months right now to earn $500 over the expected 3.1% in the savings account where it’s sitting. I usually buy non-callable CDs but it’s worth buying the callable one now for the slightly higher interest rate for however long it last. Our remaining cash will stay put until we see what’s what. I’m keeping an eye out for other ways to earn extra $500s and more.
Year 7, Day 31: Today’s worries: I’ll need a job again in a year and there won’t be any kind of job worth doing and definitely not paying well enough for the effort.
6 months of severance won’t keep us afloat long enough. (So I’ve decided to negotiate for more after all, the worst that can happen is they say no. Maybe they’ll agree to half of what I’m asking for. Who knows.)
I’m afraid that things won’t come together in 6 months, or 12 months, or 18 months and I’ll have to figure out something while at the end of my tether instead of making this a time to rest and recuperate and then stepping gracefully into a new good growth period like this one turned out to be after the last recession / layoff.
But. I’ve done a thing! Ordered samples to QC whether this staff thank you gift idea is good quality, made a list of who I’d need to hand deliver their gifts to in order to save on shipping costs, run shipping estimates for the people who live too far away and must have shipping. I’ve plotted out a timeline for ordering and delivering all the gifts.
If the quality is good enough, this is going to run something like $700 for the whole team? I hope not more than that. For now while I wait, I write out cards. That’s the hardest part.
May 25, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 22: Butts. Home insurance and earthquake insurance are due this week. That takes the shine off my win against Comcast – they had several outages and I got them to credit my account $20 though they tried to put me off after $5. Our credit card bills were temporarily sky-high this month thanks to JB’s surgery and SmolAc’s party that we’d planned well before this layoff happened (sigh). I considered cancelling it but it didn’t make sense to cancel the only party of this kind that they’re going to get. We don’t do big parties yearly.
I’ve been saving cash gifts for the kids to use in their futures, outside the 529. I didn’t want to lock ALL their future money into that one vehicle, they’ll need to pay for necessities at some point, too. Finally decided to put that money in a short term CD for now to grow it a bit more. That buys me some time between now and CD maturity to make a decision on where it should grow next.
Year 7, Day 23: Struggling with feeling like a failure today. It’s not just because I received the first of what may be many rejections to job applications, this was one that I absolutely expected. Knowing it was coming doesn’t seem to shield against the sadness that comes with the slog. My inability to envision a path into the future now is also tough. I agree that there are no future proofed jobs, and the world is more unpredictable than ever. There should be some comfort in knowing this mess (both the work and the world) isn’t about me but right now it all feels like it’s too much and hopeless.
It’s a sad work or “work” as the day goes on from bed kind of day. I’ve built up my pillow fort and thrown my Oodie on top and snuggled in to do what I can. This week’s focus has been negotiating the agreement of what we will commit to doing before departure and trying to find and close every possible loophole.
Year 7, Day 24: I’ve never stopped doing my little points earnings things: MyPoints, Swagbucks, Bing, Evidation, Fetch, Ibotta, MrRebates, Rakuten (still want to call them ebates out of long habit). They are each the tiniest of drops of money but where they had become gravy with two good incomes, there’s a new (returned?) sense of urgency to tick all the boxes to supplement the soon to be dwindling income with every possible penny.
My friend who is currently out of a job is as unconcerned as I am concerned. I have never had her outlook on life, or the supports that allow her to develop that outlook. But I’m trying to inch my way towards the happy medium between the two of us. It’s an excruciatingly slow process. My amygdala is screeching all the time, the only change is in volume. My efforts to take deep cleansing breaths and leave the screeching in the background is not aided in any way by the bleakness of job market.
Year 7, Day 25: Holy unexpected price drop, Batman, our car registration went down $62 this year. That feels like the only bill that’s gone down, what a savings. Feel free to imitate the … uh, DMV … other bills!
I’m sad today. I can get out of bed today, yesterday I mostly needed to stay in bed, but I’m sad that I finally hit a milestone salary only for it to be ripped away. I’m sad that I had my own 401K for only a very short time (though glad I did max it out every chance I got). I’m sad that I had my own FSA for such a short amount of time when I’m the person who uses the bulk of the account(s). All of this makes me feel like a burden and a failure. Losing my whole income means that I have to pull back on direct aid, that makes me feel like garbage. I know I have to put my oxygen mask on first and I also know some folks are living on such slim margins that stopping my help will likely make a measurable negative difference.
Things I will not miss: the bureaucratic stupidity with which every section of this company was run. The stupidity and laziness of the HR department which has screwed up payroll a dozen times, caused distress and frustration with regular HR questions and with this entire layoff.
Year 7, Day 26: Moments of TV levity. Elementary, when Joan takes Sherlock to task for using the memory of Moriarty as an excuse not to move on with his romantic life and he realizes she’s angry with him. He says “Watson?” in such a pleading tone.
JB asked me last night if there’s any chance we would lose the house and have to move because of my losing my job.
I hadn’t thought about that but they were so anxious about the unknowns that I did the quick math. Accounting for cap gains taxes, 1.2 times the amount we still owe. I have a little more than twice that amount in just my regular brokerages without touching any retirement savings. I wouldn’t because it doesn’t make sense to liquidate for the full amount but I COULD. So that’s a point of anxiety relief for them and a useful data point for my own anxiety.
May 18, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 15: I wanted to try this roasted cauliflower recipe from Smitten Kitchen but we only had florets and no pumpkin seeds, so I accidentally overroasted the cut florets instead. Whoops. SmolAc claimed to love it, though, so we’ll try again tomorrow with a much shorter bake time.
It was a real mental slog today with the layoff-with-no-information still plaguing everyone. We still need the necessary information to make decisions, like say, LAST DAYS, and we’re *shocker* being strung along. Still. I had a medium chat of commiseration with my colleague who feels as despondent as I do today. They responded to my feelings of failure using my own words from last week which, ok, fine, fair play. We did the best that we could with the information that we had. For all that I regret not foreseeing this exact outcome on this timeline, my therapist reminds me that this is very consistent with all the reasons that I hated the new parent company coming into our lives in the first place. They’re callous, inefficient, incompetent, and entirely about money and power. I hated that at the start of my career, I hate it now at the end of this part of my career. I might be done with this industry. I’m good at my job but I’m terrible at the politics and you can’t survive in senior to executive leadership with my attitude towards politics (deep sincere loathing). I’m worse at tolerating incompetence, and it’s quite clear that that is the only way to thrive in this corporation and probably most others.
Year 7, Day 16: I’m less tired than yesterday but then burned some of that precious recovery going to my annual eye exam. I HATE eye exams. I always feel like I’m failing and this time, the results for the only test that I’m “good” at (the peripheral vision) were bad. The doc thinks that it was due to fogging in the visor thingie. We skipped the eye dilation in favor of the horribly blinding bright flash photos to view the optic nerves; that always makes me feel sick. The nausea wasn’t as strong as usual but it did leave me off kilter enough that, on my way home, I misjudged the distance to the curb and bounced off it a little bit. I almost panicked at the impact but managed to get myself into a parking spot safely. The rubber of the tire is a little chipped but I think it’s ok? I hope it is.
My mood isn’t good but the heaviness of yesterday eased up enough for me to do a handful of to-do items and that helps my mood immensely, generally. Submitted a praise nomination for an award for the compassionate nurse from last week. Submitted a change in camp schedule for JB. Submitted a request for a replacement debit card for PiC. Stopped by the bank and deposited cash from PiC’s recent sales.
Year 7, Day 17: I rescheduled one of JB’s camps for August to get around a schedule conflict. I hate how public school doesn’t just give us the whole year of scheduling in one go when most of these things that they give us so little notice for was set in stone for months! That’s going to cost a $25 cancellation fee which feels much less negligible then it used to feel. This reminds me I need to do an estimate of what camps that both kids might attend next summer to estimate what we should contribute to the 2027 FSA – best case scenario planning (assuming PiC still has his job in 2027) to go with my worst case scenario planning. I contain multitudes.
I’ve gone through our election ballot and selected most of our candidates for most position. I’m stewing over the governorship – why do we have SIXTY ONE candidates?? Argh. This is how we end up with a pair of Republicans in the general election! GRR.
Year 7, Day 18: A friend shared this cool site: https://reciprocard.com. You can check to see if you have reciprocal privileges at another library!
I spent 15 minutes looking at high-level job listings and have concluded I hate them all. I want to be independently wealthy, volunteer, and give my time and money to help people and animals.
MakeItSoPicard.gif.
We toured the middle school and the tour was led by sixth and seventh graders which was moderately annoying. We also didn’t get sufficient information on electives selection which I didn’t realize til long after we got home. SmolAc loved it because they snacked their way through the whole thing.
Year 7, Day 19: I’m feeling a lot like Stephen Colbert about my Schrodinger’s layoff: There are more important things in the worlds. I’m mostly concerned for my staff (and my financial future). I have no interest in litigating it at all. My colleagues/staff are all taking it really hard, and my primary job is to support them. Maybe I’m just numb (my instinctive coping mechanism), or being reasonably financially stable in a time of crisis for once (novel!), or because I’ve been through one of these already and they haven’t, or I know there’s simply no point in demanding to know why a corporation bought a perfectly good company only to strip it for parts. This happens all the time. Red Lobster. Party City. A hundred other companies I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Private equity is of the devil and so is “line go up” corporate business management. It’s all the same: they only care about extracting value and kicking the husk into the corner.
I’ve always been at least a little fatalistic about the world and corporations specifically, so really, after I absorbed how quickly this went down, I also have no desire to prolong the pain by worrying over how and why they can be so terrible. Because they have continued to be awful, of course. My laser focus is on getting my staff taken care of and making sure they pay me every penny that they owe me before I get the hell out.
I give myself a little job hunting time every day, and a little do whatever the heck I want on my chore/to do list every day. I’ll start to volunteer at the local rescue soon because they have remote volunteering options!, to give myself a little joy in my life, to try to offset the weirdness of being unemployed when that final day comes. I also need to think of what to send each of my staff to personally thank them for their time and efforts since they started, for the last day. My old bosses sucked – they couldn’t even be bothered to take a minute to say goodbye to me when I left my last job to come work again for my Good Boss, I won’t have that last day go unremarked for my people no matter how this ship went down.