Year 7, Day 83: Some stranger on LinkedIn asked my laid off friend for a meeting about their former role ahead of their interview with former bosses. For the job they were laid off from. That struck me as weird but I can’t tell if it feels weird because I know their company and about the layoff or if it really is weird. Probably it just feels weird because from the perspective of knowing why so many roles are open these days. It’s fraught and people have non-disparagement clause to worry about.
I suppose they could be clueless or so centered on their own needs and wants they aren’t thinking about that. Or they could be smart enough to try sussing out if this is a red flag situation by seeing if the former employee had anything good to say about the company. Since they “couldn’t” speak about the company, that could point the applicant to this being a red flag situation. Or, it could be something entirely unrelated. You can’t really pull a lot of info from that short an interaction from the outside looking in. Ah well.
Year 7, Day 84: Every few weeks, Walgreens runs a loss leader on small Arm & Hammer laundry detergents: 3 for $7.50. I did the math and the per ounce price on the sale is better than the Costco price by just a smidge. Usually I wouldn’t bother with it on that basis alone but since it does beat the Costco price, I need saline solution, and I could also combine them with another BOGO50% off and a $4 off coupon on pads, they all added up to an order just big enough to qualify for $10 Walgreens cash back. I’ve got the $10 WG cash from the last one of those, so I’m out of pocket $30 for a $54 order with another $10 WG cash. That reward may have to be manually applied, for some reason their system is bad at applying all rewards, but luckily chat takes care of it so it hasn’t been a big time sink. We won’t need to buy more detergent for a good stretch after this so I can go back to ignoring the loss leaders for now unless I decide to add some of these to the donations box.
Year 7, Day 85: Something (viral) got both me and JB. It’s feeling cold-like since there’s no fever, just a sore throat and congestion for them and a sore throat and massive aches for me. More massive than the usual anyway. I am quietly resenting this. Every week I try so hard to get back on the fitness horse and I manage about three days worth of workout and then bam! Something like this derails me again. It’s so frustrating! But for once I made the smart call and put myself back to bed once I’d gotten everyone out the door.
Year 7, Day 86: Another day of enforced rest in hopes that this won’t get much worse. It’s messed up my sleep though. Resting during the day mostly means working from bed but there’s always a point where I feel like I’m too tired to live. Usually I force myself through but these past two days, I’ve curled up into a ball instead. Probably contributing to recovery but almost definitely contributing to unrestful sleep later.
I saved enough energy to try my chef friend’s suggestion for pork chops for dinner and they weren’t quite right but we’re getting closer to the juicy and not bone dry pork chop. Not quite there. Need to cut them thinner (from the Costco log) and try cooking through pan frying next time. These were thick chunks because I was exhausted when cutting up the log.
Year 7, Day 87: Frustration with my alternate income efforts. I applied to the Chase Ink Business card – Chase has been flashing signs at me that I’m preapproved! for this card! for months.
Ok fine, I have some brain available to do this. I did all my math, confirmed that I could hit the required spend for the bonus and thawed all my credit card freezes for the day to apply. Only to get the “thanks for applying we’ll be in touch” message. WHAT. I’ve been a Chase customer for … so many years. Have a Chase checking account and actively use my Chase Freedom card all the damn time. What’s the problem? If the bonus weren’t so good and we didn’t have such a big lump of expenses on the horizon, I’d have taken the hint and moved on. I really wish I had abandoned it. But no, I’ve been stupidly stubbornly trying to follow this through and so far this is what I’ve achieved with my efforts:
1) A secure letter stating “they are worried this application was fraudulent so call us”;
2) I’ve called them, had an automated message ask did you make this application? Yes? Ok then all set! You’ll hear from us in 7-10 business days!
3) But I don’t.
4) So called them again to get a status update to which Chase said what? what status? what application??
5) ARGH.
6) Got transferred to an agent to find out what the heck, and they told me I had to provide identification information – as if I haven’t been paying you people every month for the past 20 years and you don’t know where to find me or how to bill me – through the secure system by clicking on the link in the email.
7) The link in the email triggered a slow creeping feeling of “is this a long con of some kind”. Think about this one a lot. Reviewed my security measures: I logged into my Chase site using my password keeper, so I wasn’t going from a search site to a fake site (I’ve caught that a few times so I’m much more careful now about what sites I click on from a search page). I found the phone number to call from that site so I was talking to someone from Chase – unless they managed to steal and redirect the calls going to that number. I have no way to defeat that. My credit reports are all locked down again. I guess it’s not a scam? There hasn’t been any weird activity on our accounts.
8) Went to the email and supplied my DL which includes my DOB and address. But again, I reason, all my accounts are locked down. Am told to call back 24 hours later to finalize the application.
9) Call 24 hours later, they verify my identity again, and ok “you’ll hear back in 7-10 business days”.
10) 3 hours later, I get the SAME secure letter stating “they are worried this application was fraudulent so call us” again! WHAT. THE. FUCK.
11) I wait a day to call back and ask what in the name of this cursed reality is going on, please, what is the problem? They insist there is no problem, it’s just standard processing. Y’all are wasting my time because nothing is wrong??? I assured her that I know it’s not her fault and I’m not mad at her but if I have to spin around this vortex again, you can forget the application, I will be moving all my accounts somewhere else because I have Had It.
“I totally understand,” she says, “you can check your email every couple of days for an answer, but it should be complete now and the secondary team is processing it so you will receive a card in the mail in 1-2 weeks.”
The card that you still can’t tell me is approved or not. That card.
Year 7, Day 76: Microburst cleaning: I bought a bulk pack of customizable compartment bead organizers and used one of them to organize my desk supplies. I’ve been using an old desk drawer organizer to hold odds and ends: binder clips, paper clips, rulers, calculator, staplers, tape measures, post it notepads, etc for the past 15 years but it’s very inefficient because it sits on a medium height shelf and I can’t see into it. Mostly I grabbed things by feel and memory.
This was a terrible way to inadvertently encourage detritus build-up, and a really ineffective use of vertical space. All the small items fit into two closed boxes after I extracted small supplies from another medium bin and organized them together. That emptied 90% of the tray and freed up 1/3 of the medium bin. The remaining larger items were rehomed into the free space in the medium bin, and voila! Neatness! This freed up some shelf space with better accessibility. It’d be even better if I could have it set up as a mini shelving system so they’re not sitting atop each other and could be pulled out but this is good for now.
I might tackle the kids’ Legos with the remaining boxes. I got into the beads briefly on the weekend but it turns out while JB has a vast variety of beads, they aren’t in the quantities I’d thought. They have wide variety but not deep supplies. We’ll need pivot to more shallow boxes. It’s possible we didn’t need all 8 of these deep storage bins but we’ll see.
Year 7, Day 77: Sticker shock at the produce shop we used to frequent: Corn on the cob was TWO DOLLARS AN EAR. Nectarines were $4 per pound. Asparagus was $6 per pound. If we didn’t need to bring produce to our friends’ BBQ, I would have fled empty-handed.
Five of my colleagues are gone now with another 15 of us scheduled to go in a bit over a month. I continue to harbor both deep resentment along with that weird layer of relief, but the bitter is stronger right now.
Year 7, Day 78: The ten bags and giant box of cousin hand me downs and community donations are sorted! I plopped on a stool and went through everything quick as I could, picking out a few things to keep, discarding anything that wasn’t good enough to share, and packing everything else. Four out of five pairs of sneakers went to recycling, one pair is in good shape. A stack of what might have been cloth napkins are quite yellowed, I might try to wash them before donating instead of sending to fabric recycling.
I kept a stack of undershirts for JB; a couple books in perfect condition; a set of heavy duty kids cups in rainbow colors which deeply pleased SmolAc – they hand washed them immediately. I kept a small crossbody bag with so many zippers to test. It seemed much too small at first glance but in the trial run so far it’s been quite nice to have all the separate pockets for keys, phones, wallets, masks and more for a quick outing like a dropoff and return home. If I keep this, I need to cover up the weird logo on the front. A cute nerdy patch would do the trick. I also kept a pair of squishy house slippers. The terrycloth doesn’t feel pleasant, but they’re free and squishy so good enough!
What’s left for donation fills two enormous boxes. I would fit in them comfortably with room for a kid to squish in with me. And I’m not tiny like I once was! Lots of clothes in good condition that have just been sitting closets, backpacks with plenty of wear left in them, that sort of thing. Once I do a sweep of our kids’ outgrown clothes to add, two more ~ 40 lb boxes will head to the reservation. That’ll make 7 moving boxes this year woo!
Year 7, Day 79: I just got the paper bill in the mail for a procedure a few months back. Delta Dental won’t cover part of the procedure so I thought we’d owe another $600 but they wrote off more than half of the remaining balance as a courtesy (proactively even, this is the first bill I’ve seen since getting the denial letter) so that trimmed it down to $200 we have to pay now. Whew, I appreciate that!
All phone calls this morning trying to get my CalABLE account problems squared away and to get Kaiser scheduling settled. Three hours of attempted phone calls (they kept saying we’re too busy, call later) or waiting on hold whisked away the last of my energy and I put myself to bed for a few hours of much-needed rest.
Year 7, Day 80: It’s July so of course the weather is All Gloomy. It’s so foggy that it feels like a light misting rain. I suspect this means the green beans I tried to start outside are not coming out of their shells. Maybe I need to bring them in to attempt inside germination.
I think my cleaning energy ran out for the week. I’m feeling deflated and depressed (not necessarily in the clinical sense, more in the metaphysical sense of feeling soul-crushed) and ever so tired.
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?