Year 4, Day 150: I was in a funk waking up this morning in so much pain. Nightmares all night meant my jaws ached from clenching. A new viral thing got hold of me this weekend and started up fresh mouth sores instead of throat sores, so that’s worse. My joints are extra cranky, probably from the remnants of Hurricane Hilary passing over. Tendons and ligaments were down for the count as well.
Sigh. I’d already emailed my ENT and set up a follow up with my primary so I just needed to try and get through it.
Our nice elderly neighbor (of gift card confusion) was badly injured in a fall a week ago and her husband gave me her phone number and address where she’s being treated so I could check on her. We ordered her some treats as well. She’s keeping a positive striving spirit about it but I know she’s in a lot of pain.
Year 4, Day 151: The orthodontist office manager really ticked me off. By email, they agreed to honor the old quote from last year, but not the discount that was included. Of course, they didn’t say the latter part until we had been in the office for almost two hours getting ready to pay for the treatment plan. I politely but irkedly pointed out that our delay to the treatment start was only because their prior office manager who was promoted had ghosted me for several months. A brief but pointed silence after she apologized for that followed, and then I nodded that she could proceed with charging my card while wearing my “I’m definitely not happy with this” face which doesn’t translate VERY well under a flo-mask but translated well enough that she interrupted herself to offer me a halfway decent compensatory $75 gift card from a promotion they were running for new patients. I was perfectly aware that they had a $200 gift card promotion but the $75 made up the difference, so I didn’t bother to push harder.
I am second guessing my decision not to wait another year to start this treatment for JB. We would have needed to choose the better dental plan at the 2022 open enrollment, but we didn’t know we needed ortho coverage until after open enrollment. We’d have to choose the higher priced plan this fall, and then we’d be able to use it January 2024.
– JB may well need to have another round of treatment when all their teeth are in. This treatment is only intended to help their jaw grow in a way that corrects an overbite and makes space for the incoming teeth which are already too crowded. We can only try to set them up for success and give their incoming teeth a chance to come in straight.
– Insurance will only pay $2000 one time for any orthodontic treatment.
– This is the biggest thing, though. There’s also a very limited window of time when the soft palate is just cartilage and this can be done. About 2 years? Roughly? Their dentist said last fall that she’d recommend getting this done ASAP though we had a couple years to do it.
If we wait until Jan 2024, will that window be closed? We don’t know but I don’t really want to risk making the treatment harder on them than it has to be or even missing the boat entirely. Remember, the recommendation was made in November 2022.
I’d mentally classified this as saving that coverage for later but that felt like lying to myself. It’s better to save the money earlier than later. I think I’m more at peace with acknowledging that we are choosing to spend the money outright now because it’s the better medical choice, and that it’s ok if we don’t use the ortho coverage later.
Year 4, Day 152: Having dodged the bullet with JB’s microaggression bully from last year, we were surprised that the kid who was hitting and kicking them last year came back for a third round of attack.
I don’t know why I was surprised, I guess I had the wild notion he’d learned his lesson. But since he hadn’t, we initiated another conversation with the principal and teacher to ask for next steps. The daycare would not have tolerated a third incident but I’m getting the sense that public schools do the absolute least possible when it comes to bullying.
Canvassing my friends across the nation confirmed this sense. It seems that schools won’t do anything to intervene unless they’re absolutely forced to.
The principal’s meeting with the kids and email back to us was so woefully inadequate I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I ran it past two public school teachers to confirm that I wasn’t overreacting, and they confirmed it was boilerplate cover your ass text and that I should push back. It took me a day and a half to compose myself enough to start formulating the reply.
I’m still not done editing.
In summary, this week feels like garbage, let’s compost it for something better.
I have the sneaking suspicion that I feel this way specifically because I loathe dealing with interpersonal issues. And also someone keeps being aggressive at my kid and won’t stop and the adults won’t do anything to stop it either.
Year 4, Day 153: Right when I least needed it, because I need to get that letter to the school done today, the brain fog moved in. If I really needed an answer to the debate of physical pain vs mental impairment, who loses? It’s definitely me but also mental impairment. I hate being in pain from top to toe but at least I can mostly think even when everything hurts.
I consoled myself with the thought that their barely sufficient action has ruined my week. 27 drafts in, because this other student is the offspring of a teacher at this school and I have to worry about reprisals against my kids from teachers for holding the administration accountable for protecting my kid against a bully (who fully admits to the bullying, by the way! Clearly he feels he has nothing to fear at this school!) I have such a headache.
My brain hurts. My face hurts. My rage continues to steam out my ears.
A polite but pointed “we’re not done, actually, until you take more than the bare minimum slap on the wrist action” email should land in their inbox on Friday morning so as to ruin her Friday. I’m feeling petty and I’m not ashamed of it given how little consideration she’s paid to my kid being hurt at school.
Year 4, Day 154: Friday food review! Actually. Nothing particularly exciting this week. I pulled out frozen chili for dinner one night and whipped up an experimental GF cornbread because we had no flour on hand. Now we have no cornmeal either. (Add to grocery list, note to self). The texture was wonderful but the butter didn’t come through well and the kids didn’t like it much. I’m guessing it’s because it didn’t have a lick of sweetness. Maybe I’ll try making it again and add honey next time. We had leftover takeout from a local Chinese place one night and … Huh. I can’t remember any other dinners. Oh, right, a frozen Costco lasagna one night and then rice, salmon, and broccoli one night. Very basic stuff!
Year 4, Day 143: Woof, it’s hard to tell but it’s possible that 15ish minutes of weeding for two consecutive weekends mornings utterly wrecked me. All my major joints so angry and swollen they’re radiating heat, and all my muscles are also angry. My body is more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than is healthy for a human. I wanted to wallow in bed all day. Couldn’t, of course. Monday being Monday, I had kids to get out the door, a hundred emails and a stack of reports to get through. Normally I’d pace myself more but I’m taking a day off to ferry everyone to appointments later this week and would rather clear the desk enough to ignore work on my ferrying day.
Year 4, Day 144: We didn’t make it a week before a report of a COVID case on campus cropped up. I’m not surprised. But more people are more surprised by the fact that we’re even getting reporting. Naturally, we then were notified that our district won’t be reporting cases anymore. What a sad state of affairs this is.
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Good news bad news on my health front.
I hate meeting new doctors. I never know if they’re going to take me seriously and I hate having to make them take me seriously. So meeting a new doctor this week about my chronic sore throat problem strained my nerves until we started chatting and I realized this guy is at least 5 years younger than me. He reminds me of my younger cousin! That let me relax a smidge. Then the fact that he listened carefully to everything I had to say was reassuring. He took a look and spotted the issue in my throat, and gave me a rundown on treatment options along with his opinion on each. That brings me to the bad news part. He thinks this is my body overreacting to viral infections that I’m picking up from Smol Acrobat. Every. Single. Month. So it overreacts by producing a truckload of sores in the nose and throat while it’s trying to fight the infection and then … Sigh. Chronic severe sore throat.
Year 4, Day 145: I frequently feel like a bad or inadequate parent. A combination of never feeling good enough to want to play with my kids and feeling like I should want to.
I try my hardest not to consciously compare myself to other parents as much as possible but it’s hard not to feel it crop up now and again. Today, I had two small moments of good: Smol Acrobat asked me to build rock towers for them and they were pleased enough with my builds to give me cheesy grins for pictures. JB wanted to play catch but PiC wasn’t in the mood so I took them for 15 minutes of 2-square. (Not enough people for 4-square.) PiC would usually indulge every request, regardless of his own feelings, but it was better that I did it. Even if my knees feel swollen to the size of soccer balls (they aren’t, it’s just the feeling of inflammation), it actually felt better to me to play than not today. And on an extremely bad body day, at that. I’m kind of proud of myself.
Year 4, Day 146: Crossing my fingers that we settle into a manageable routine next week. I’m still recovering from my day of nearly back to back appointments for the family. Dentist, daycare dropoff, errand, doctor, short break, dentist again for almost two hours.
Back to School night is tonight and I couldn’t scrape together even an ounce of energy to go. PiC took the hit (and JB) while I prepped Smol Acrobat for bed. I’m not sure how I feel about the expectations for third grade but as usual, we’ll roll with it. Fundraising starts on Friday, that’s what we get in lieu of school supply shopping lists.
Year 4, Day 147: Food talk Friday! Just made that up. Sunday I used up all my egg boiling luck to whip up a batch of egg salad for our lunches this week. Win! We initially planned to do pizza one night to make the week easier but it didn’t work out so we made “fancy” ramen night with Costco tonkotsu bowls, roast pork from the freezer, frozen corn and soft boiled eggs (had insufficient luck left, they were too soft). But still an overall win. We had leftover small potatoes from my pot roast experience and that went into a yellow chicken curry (premade from Costco). Everyone liked that too.
I think this makes two weeks we didn’t wish we had done takeout to save some energy. I’ll want some soon enough, I’m sure.
*****
Housekeeping: You’d think we never washed the rugs around here. The bathroom rug is all fluffed up after I did a load of bathroom rugs and everyone is disproportionately happy about it. Small wins in the sensory department.
Year 4, Day 136: JB starts school this week which is both good and bad for me. They’ll finally be out of the house for a large chunk of hours during the work day, yay!! We actually have to be up and out the door by 8 am, siiiiiiigh. I’m not looking forward to that bit.
Mixed bag on the health front. My throat has been sore for 8 days, along with mysterious mouth pain that made me wonder “hand foot mouth??? nooooooo!” It’s not COVID after three at home tests, nor anything the family is susceptible to since I’m the only miserable one. HMF is generally very contagious so I am hopeful it’s not stealth HMF. I have no idea what it is but it stinks. I chatted with my doctor who’s putting me on 2 months of antacids to see if that improves anything before referring me to ENT.
On the other hand, I took Sera for a much longer afternoon walk than we usually take and I wasn’t gasping for breath or debating crawling back the last steps. That’s a huge change from the norm!
Year 4, Day 129: I am letting JB enjoy a true summer treat a few days this week: sleeping in as late as they felt like. Usually I make them get up by 930 so that their sleep patterns aren’t too disrupted but a day or two of teenage-late rising won’t hurt. They’ll have a full week to start getting up earlier until they’re back on track for the first day of school. That’s approaching fast.
We don’t do any back to school shopping for the kids but I will be gearing up to do shopping for the Lakota families. I knew I wouldn’t have time to take on a July family so we helped two families in June. My plan was to recover lost ground from being off work and then pick up an August family or tackle a bulk school shopping list. I’ve gotten a special request from the coordinators who are worried about the many requests that are going up on the Okini as the summer comes to a close. So many kids need school clothes and school supplies. We’ll have a phone call this week to talk about possible ways we could organize a bulk buying solution to make the most of our money.
Year 4, Day 130: My therapist and I were both right. She was right: taking some time off was incredibly refreshing, I haven’t felt so few symptoms in years. I was right about what would happen after taking time off: I don’t want to work at all. I want to do the things I care about buuuuut that doesn’t include this work. Since that’s not yet an option financially… welp. Here we are. Working again. Getting back into the groove of something I am quite good at but do not love for the sake of a paycheck and our future financial stability, utterly begrudgingly some days. Less so on other days.
A dear friend and I daydreamed about what we’d do with life-changing windfall money, as unlikely as it is to occur. They’d probably stay on their current career path for a spell, to show they could. Their spouse would keep a hand in. They derive joy from their work and would be happier continuing, but a fraction of the current volume would be sufficient to keep them happy. I personally have nothing to prove to myself, I’d just stay on to set my team up for success and negotiate for more money for them before I left. Without that bit, I could step away tomorrow and not look back. I think PiC would happily walk away from his job too if our income and healthcare were covered.
Year 4, Day 131: My local friend notified me that they have a ton of household goods collected for the Lakota Reservation. That’s great!
More than three extra large shipping boxes worth. Oh. Oh boy. I canvassed a local business we frequent to ask for their large shipping boxes when they next get merchandise in. If they thought I was very weird they hid it well.
Now I have to figure out how to make time to pack and ship it all.
Orville Peck’s voice is something!
Year 4, Day 132: I’m not ready to say I’m feeling rested after sleeping but I am noticing that I’ve slept like a rock a few days this week. Deep sleep, undisturbed by constant nightmares, is so unusual I can’t recall when that was last the norm.
Year 4, Day 133: JB enjoyed a full day of fun with an Uncle they adore and haven’t seen in three years. I got time to cook two pot roasts for a special going away dinner for said Uncle and made some progress on every work item on my very long for a Friday list of work priorities. They got the better deal but I’m not dissatisfied.
I omitted the tomato paste and flour and used red wine this time, using this recipe, and it seems like the wine is the one variable that’s been missing and much needed for a successfully delicious pot roast. My past pot roasts have been almost good enough but not quite. I’ll need to pick up some reasonably priced red wine to keep on hand for the next ones instead of using a rather pricey Pinot that was gifted to us four years ago and had been gathering dust all this time. I’d also splurged on a large bag of small potatoes and they were perfect. Minimal prep needed and they didn’t fall apart.
Year 4, Day 122: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is very apt for me right now. I’m navigating a few relationships that are rough right now and it feels like the emotional white water rapids. With one, I’m very unsure if any of it is personal, or if it’s just what the other person needs, or if what the other person needs is NOT me in their life. Which leads to a lot of sadness and wondering what I did wrong. This situation just affirms my lizard brain’s conviction about my inevitable abandonment. When people know me, and I care about them, they leave me.
With another, I’ve shared some deeply personal and upsetting information that dredged up a lot of bad memories about mutuals and they’re digesting it but the loss of that enormous pressurized rock in my chest where I’ve held it in so long has me spinning out of balance. I know they need time to digest but my anxiety is out of control with catastrophic thinking. It goes straight to the worst case scenario and starts planning for that, while also direly wishing bad things would happen to me “and just be done with it”. I mean, I don’t want to leave my kids but this is a pattern I recognize that goes waaay back to when the financial abuse started. It was always too much. That load was immensely heavy.
Year 4, Day 115: A friend is celebrating a big decade birthday and commented well, at this age, they’re all big aren’t they. Better than the alternative, anyway. On an almost related note, I hate that a favorite author is fighting cancer but she also tells the best stories during treatment and it’s hard not to appreciate these Twitter threads (I very much recommend the Clocktaur Wars duo and her Paladin series having just re-read them):
Year 3, Day 116: I actually remembered to put sunblock on before taking the kids to the park but still got sunburned. Unfair!
At least I won’t need an extra blanket and heating pad tonight?
This wracking cough is still plaguing me morning and night. Sometimes midday, but less often. I feel less horrible than last week but still frustrated at being sick for so long. I’m grateful that my doctor prescribed both heavy duty cough meds that I requested without question. We’re super fortunate to have good healthcare providers right now and hate that everyone doesn’t have equal access to care like we have.
Oh, speaking of doctors, I’ll have to see a dermatologist about this lump that mysteriously appeared in 2020 when I had no time to care about anything not dire. At the time, I assumed it was a weird body acne thing that would run its course but here we are, 3 years later and it feels like time to name it or get rid of it. The consultation will be about (I hope) removing it. I also hope it’ll be a simple procedure.
I am genuinely puzzled why society continues to expect less from cishet men than trained pets. None of this strikes me as funny. It’s more like she’s laughing because otherwise she’d have to cry about how useless he is.
This lady shared 5 dumb things her husband did when she was in labor. I helped translate. pic.twitter.com/Wcq46m1YVC
Year 3, Day 117: Overhearing an acquaintance talking about her writing process, I couldn’t help but think about all the writers I currently admire, the stories and characters they’ve devised that I love, and what sort of styles they’re known for.
Just off the top of my head: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Ursula Vernon, DJ Older, Nnedi Okarafor, NK Jemisin, Fonda Lee, Seanan McGuire, Kate Elliott, KB Spangler, Nghi Vo, Cassandra Khaw.
In my 20s, I dreamed of being able to write books/something that people would enjoy reading but had no faith I’d ever have the skill. My former English teacher always reminded me that Amy Tan didn’t write The Joy Luck Club until her late 30s, there was plenty of time. Some years on, having developed a bit of a mentor-mentee relationship with a very established writer, I asked this writer to read a post I’d written here for feedback. His feedback was insightful but I didn’t have the chops to properly address it. Maybe it’s worth revisiting, it’s been over a decade since I first wrote it, but now in my early 40s (and I know that old saw “it’s not too late until you’re dead”) it feels like if I was capable of writing something worth reading, or had an idea worth the time, that compulsion would have happened by now. Not to compare myself to Terry Pratchett in terms of skill, but in terms of that drive to write, this anecdote feels like evidence I just don’t have it in me. It doesn’t feel like I’ve got anything worth saying that needs my voice to say it.
Umberto Eco said: I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
Maybe my yen is faded. Perhaps it’s time to put that dream to bed instead of continuing to feel vaguely dissatisfied with myself for not accomplishing anything. Because if we’re honest, I haven’t found a way to squeeze out extra hours in a day to spend on writing, and no one (who isn’t, say, Terry Pratchett) gets better at writing without a lot of practice, focus, and good feedback.
And entirely aside from that, the author stories from the trenches of having to market their books nonstop is utterly depressing. I’m terrible at marketing.
Terry Pratchett once rang up a friend and said, “I’m exhausted! I need a break. I’m taking a six-month sabbatical.”
Six months later his friend asked him, “Hey, how’d your sabbatical go?”
Terry said, grumpily, “I wrote two books.”
— Owl! at the Library 😴🧙♀️ (@SketchesbyBoze) July 19, 2023
Year 3, Day 118: There’s almost something laughable about elderly relatives accusing us of being overly indulgent and permissive with Smol Acrobat, while complete strangers comment that they are well behaved in public (timing is everything). We’re tired, and we are trying to gentle parent, but we’re neither indulgent or permissive when it comes to the important things. Some folks just aren’t happy unless they’re dousing other people with their unhappiness and can’t feel good about themselves without insulting someone else. Must be sad to be them.
Separately: I was lucky enough to have a long heart to heart with a chosen parent about all kinds of family history including abusive parent figures and how we’ve coped with it. We’re fundamentally such different people and we have very different coping mentalities, and I’m so grateful to have found a parent in them.
Naturally, my gut couldn’t accept that they like me for me. No matter who it is, some part of my brain starts second-guessing why they put up with me. The imprints in my psyche after years of knowing that half my family of origin had no love for me, but not understanding why, keep floating to the surface. Who am I to deserve love? Nobody, that’s who.
I keep reminding myself it’ll take time to erase those marks.
Year 3, Day 119: It’s been a busy week. Mostly good, some bad, but having support from my chosen family so that I could steal a few moments without having to mind them constantly has been unbelievably amazing. I miss my community, I miss my chosen family, and it’s been pure joy to see Smol Acrobat bond deeply with Grandma. They’re far more selective about who they’re close with, whereas JB was expansive, and so this is the first time I’m seeing them really invested in a relationship with another person outside of our nuclear family.
Year 4, Day 108: When I was 17, I started my first full time retail type job. Before then I’d only worked summer part time jobs and for my parents. I met lifers whose motto was “don’t rock the boat” because they just wanted to make it to retirement (15 years off) no matter how miserable they were. I experienced managers who were so inept they cried at work over their “best friend betraying them” (a direct report). I met people who slept with married people and got pregnant. I met people who slept with coworkers and got pregnant and even though they were unhappy, decided they had to get married for the sake of the kid. I met people who slept with coworkers and broke up, making the night shift super awkward for everyone.
It was a whole lot of life in one little building. In retrospect, I’m grateful for all those experiences that informed what I was looking for out of work and out of life: I didn’t want to have to keep my head down when work conditions were terrible for fear of losing my only job. I didn’t want to have to suffer silently. I didn’t want to let people be stepped on and stay quiet. I wanted to stand up for myself, to advocate for better working conditions, to advocate for everyone. I wanted options, respect, and no drama.
While I don’t necessarily feel like I have a lot of options now in case things go sideways, I do have the latter two in spades and that’s meaningful.
Year 3, Day 109: I’m sure everyone already knew this and I was just too stubborn/unmotivated to try but it turns out cornstarch is the secret to frying up slabs of tofu that don’t stick to the pan! I used some notes from this recipe and added cornstarch and garlic powder for my first attempt at frying tofu while following actual directions instead of winging it. I didn’t even need a spatula to flip them! Didn’t even use a non stick pan, either.
The garlic flavor didn’t come through at all. It smelled good but I couldn’t taste it. I won’t waste garlic powder next time but I will keep the steps of prepping hours ahead to let the liquid drain and adding cornstarch.
Year 3, Day 110: We spent $20 on a couple bags of raised bed and potting mix to add to the potato bags. I’d filled them maybe halfway a couple summers back. We grow small potato crops now and again, half a colander full at a time. I figured, even if I don’t grow a great deal more because we’re constrained by volume, a good soil top-up would do us good. Lots of plants are poking their way up through the replenished soil now, so I’m hoping for enough potatoes in a harvest to share.
We joke that these are the most expensive potatoes ever, $100 starting up a few years back and $20 now, and we most certainly have not gotten $120 worth of potatoes out of them but I have really enjoyed having an incredibly low maintenance little garden to dig in now and again and fresh potatoes to eat. It’s rare for me to say it’s not about the money, it’s about the fun, but that’s exactly what’s going on here.
Year 3, Day 111: I’ve been sad about my brother and our lost relationship lately. I saw a car that reminded me of his two best friends in high school. They were a set and I cared about them too but we all fell out of touch after they graduated from college and moved on with their professional lives while he remained stuck in the ditch of life. In what was probably a foolish attempt, I tried emailing the one I could find a work email for to see if he might want to catch up. It’s been three weeks and he hasn’t answered.
Maybe my email went to spam, he doesn’t remember me, or he doesn’t want to know me anymore. I’m still in touch or friends with most of my high school friends, 23 years on, and had always assumed we’d still be friends too. So that’s another small sadness.
Year 3, Day 112: The idea of the “friendzone” is such a weird concept to me. Is it some Harry met Sally “men and women can’t be friends” thing? Maybe it’s because I didn’t date much in my single years. I had a couple boyfriends through my twenties but generally most people weren’t interested in me. The (very) few that were weren’t a good fit. I didn’t recognize or reciprocate their interest. We didn’t stay friends after we stopped going to the same school. Maybe that’s what they mean by friendzone: I was fine being their friend, but they had only hung around in case I changed my mind, not because they valued my friendship or me as a person. Doesn’t seem like a worthwhile (or respectful) reason to stick around, if you ask me. I would hate to find out that someone I believed to be a friend had been hanging around solely in hopes of having a different relationship.
I have four male friends, dating back to junior high through college, who are very close, through-thick-and-thin-type friends. They stood in as my date for the occasional event that required one, without it ever being an issue for us or our respective partners who weren’t available because we were friends and only friends. Never once has the idea that we had zero romantic interest in one another diminished our friendship. We’ve openly acknowledged the fact that we had zero attraction to one another at one time or another without any awkwardness or stress. It just is. We’re best friends and best as friends. I cherish that. I wonder if people worrying about being friendzoned are open to having a deep non-romantic relationship with folks of their preferred gender or if that’s the only goal.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
