Year 6, Day 345: I want the job of giving away a billionaire’s assets in the vein of Mackenzie Scott’s giving: MacKenzie Scott Makes Another Blockbuster Gift To An HBCU. She’s making a real difference to institutions that are usually not prioritized. I’d like to do that. Preferably money from billionaires who are doing nothing but harm to the ecosystem, socially, environmentally, etc. though, that would feel much more right.
Related: My W-2 job sent around a shockingly tone-deaf gross note to colleagues stationed in the Middle East encouraging them to take time off now (and max out their vacation allotments) so that they can have a productive last half of the year. So you want them to use up their PTO because you can’t be bothered to extend the courtesy of PTO because of WAR? And then when that’s all used up and the latter half of this year continues to be a crazed rabid barrel of monkeys, you’ll what, fire them for needing more leave? Are all CEOs required to turn in half their brains when they get into the C-suite? FFS!
Paying bills! I was shocked to see our near-$4000 credit card bill. I’d totally forgotten that 75% of the summer camps were paid in this month, along with the payments for Spring Break that included one nice dinner, along with a lot of contributions to struggling folks.
Year 6, Day 346: It’s been six weeks and my cucumber seeds still aren’t germinating. I’m guessing our soil temperature just isn’t warm enough, though I could swear that it’s roughly the same weather we always have. So disappointing. My lettuce and onion seeds have never germinated, so I’m starting to think the real problem here is me. Oh but cutting back the blackberry bush last year was the right move! It’s put out several new branches covered in leaves now so I need to come up with a way to tag the branches as primocane or floricane as we get into the growing seasons.
We’ve been slowly filling up our Got Sneakers? bag since January 2024. They ask you not to send their giant FedEx bag until it’s full, and we don’t give up our shoes til they are worn through so it’s taken us a while but I think it’s nearly full enough to ship out. They used to pay $0.25 for the recyclable condition shoes but they don’t anymore so we just send these to keep them out of the landfill. I hope it does, anyway, they say: “All heavily used and damaged footwear is recycled to reuse materials or to convert waste into new energy.” Looks like our assessment of what was worn all the way through didn’t match theirs and we made a couple dollars from the last bag. Who knows, maybe we’ll make a buck or two off this bag.
Year 6, Day 347: Nicole and Maggie got me thinking about my sibling and the last time I saw a picture of him, he was basically like a feral hermit. Despite our always rocky relationship, thinking of that image of him hurts my heart.
Commenting on an older Nicole and Maggie post, they also got me thinking about how I’m most productive when I have something specific to avoid. I procrastinate when I don’t feel like doing That Thing but because there’s no end to the amount of work I have to do, it doesn’t feel like procrastination. It’s now redefined it as re-prioritizing. But if I know I need to do something I’ve been putting off, tattling on myself works pretty well. Telling a friend that it needs doing is often enough to make me do it. Maybe that IS a function of guilt.
$50 and one smog check later, my 24 year old car is good for another year on the road. I’m hoping we can hit 30 years and 250K miles before we have to replace it.
Year 6, Day 348: A friend shared amazing news that enabled them to retire early and I’m thrilled to my toes for them. So glad that a genuinely good thing has happened for a genuinely good person that I care about.
$$$. I found a set of cute sweaters for Christmas gifts. I DID considered off-brand types but they weren’t significantly cheaper than the brand name on clearance so I went with the original brand, picking from only the clearance bin designs.
Year 6, Day 349: Kaiser is finally starting to be affected by all the anti-vaccine bullshit from this administration. We used to be able to get 6 month boosters for the COVID vaccine under our own decision making. This year, we can’t. I did talk directly with one of the pediatricians who shared that Kaiser has been keeping their own data on COVID and it’s lower than previous years, though admitted that some of that is self reporting (or lack thereof) to go along with the officially reported diagnostics and hospitalizations. I’m trying to decide what this means for our year and how we protect ourselves. I was thrashed by a “mere cold” more than once this year.
Money: I made a second sale on Poshmark, that’s another $7 we can put away.
Year 6, Day 339: Taking a minute to be oh so very grateful that I’m not sick right now. I spent so many weeks of this year flattened like a pancake from the sick and fatigue that I get flashbacks sometimes. I am so so grateful that I’ve managed to stay at my rough baseline of yuck, uncomplicated by some virus or another, for three whole weeks.
We took the kids to see Mychal Threets talk and then to explore a new-to-us park that PiC’s noticed several times. It was huge and there were friendly dogs there too so I got a really good dog fix and they got to play at a pretty neat playground. It was soul-cleansing.
Money: Ah ha! Costco gas receipts are valid for the ibotta “any receipt” redemption thing. $0.25 in our pocket.
Year 6, Day 340: I’ve been thinking about things I’d rather do/enjoy doing. I love working around and taking care of animals. I like cleaning and bandaging up wounds (also for humans, not just critters). I don’t enjoy the constant needs of human infants or baby animals, that’s a bit too much. I don’t want to go back to school and I have never gotten past my antipathy for math and my brain doesn’t hold on to new information as well as it used to so probably medical training isn’t in the cards but I would like to take that 3 day wilderness survival care training class. I wish it weren’t 3 days, though.
Put all together, this means I’d like to be a part time basic injuries only Night Nurse / pet bather (not groomer, I can bathe dogs, clean ears, and trim nails but I can’t clip and make them pretty) / pet less intensive care treater. The last time I did a flight of fancy for my future career was when I was 17, working full time, saying I’d like to be paid to do X. After months of applications, I got a very low paying job to do X, and built my entire career up from that by acquiring a whole lot more similar skills. Maybe it’s time to see if putting that out in the universe will work again. *Patient hat on*
Year 6, Day 341: Text I received: “Territorial Seed Company: Growing basil at home is a game-changer for flavor!” Not if it just DIES ON YOU. Harumph. I bought both sweet basil and Thai basil plants last year, planted them in the garden, and two weeks later they were all dead. #bitter Every time someone says that it’s so frugal to grow your own herbs I silently demand to know exactly how they’re being kept alive because I missed that class.
Year 6, Day 342: I was reading this article from Kiplingers, How to Protect Yourself and Others From a Troubled Adult Child: A Lesson from Real Life, and this line struck me: “Alex made clear that his parents refused to have Gabe arrested — and he could still be, for assault, vandalism, terrorist threats — and taken to a mental facility. I spoke about this with two clinical psychologists, who asked not to be identified because they are not involved in Gabe’s case. They both indicated that the fact that he has not been arrested is evidence of the parents being caught in a spiral of enabling.”
It reminded me of something my biodad said to me when I was a kid. “Even if a parent knew of a kid’s wrongdoing (or vice versa), I still have to protect that family member from outsiders if the police showed up.” 8 year old me felt like that was off somehow but couldn’t put the reason into words. It occurs to me now that even if he wasn’t laying groundwork, he absolutely believed he deserved to be bailed out of all his problems by his parents, then his sibling(s), and later, me and there’s definitely a corollary to that early belief.
Year 6, Day 340: Well. That was short-lived. JB came home with a sore throat and a cough and since they have insisted on bunking with me since my last depressive/suicidal cycle, I now have some version of what they have. I’m starting to think that it’s unwise to express gratitude for health because the universe takes that as an invitation.
Money: This headline made me snort “Gas in US hits $4 a gallon”. It’s been over $5 here for so long I can’t remember when it hit that amount, but just two days ago I saw a few stations charging well over $6. PiC was wondering why Americans are so obsessed with gas prices. I don’t really know the answer to that but I speculate it’s to do with our national culture of driving over public transit and ever-larger cars. Especially in California, we tend to also drive incredibly long distances regularly in addition to the trend to large cars. (Collective us, not us-us because he bike commutes as much as he can and I don’t commute at all.) Mind, this isn’t about deeper impacts of gas on the economy like the cost of delivering groceries which is actually a big problem. The reactions we’re thinking of are all people who are primarily concerned with their personal price at the pump.
Year 6, Day 336: Several months ago, I semi-joked to a friend that the number of “hikers died” stories I keep seeing in the news suggests that we should quit hiking as a quick and easy survival tactic. This article, and the many articles about hiking deaths below it, removed the semi and joking part of that. The only hikes I go on are the ones you can finish in half an hour with adults and 1.5 hours with dawdling kids. I had no idea how much further people are willing to risk going and how much more dangerous that is.
Money: I am so glad that I’m a giant nerd. I was reading Kiplingers over the weekend for funsies. As one does. I learned about the existence of the long term care premium deduction, though not enough information on whether we were eligible for it or not, and writing up that question to our CPA jogged my memory about the question I had about where our mortgage interest appears in our tax return. As it turns out, it was misplaced in another line/form. Correcting it reduced our state tax bill by $1000 and increased our federal refund by $3000. Nerd wins.
Year 6, Day 337: It’s been a while since the inflammation in my hands interfered with daily life. This week has been That Kind of Week. My hands were like oven mitts and my fingers could not function like joints, they were more like blunt instruments. Any attempts at fine motor control were an exercise in futility. Could be worse, though.
Money: Oop, there goes $600, camp wanted to be paid in full as a deposit against the two weeks we’ve booked.
Year 6, Day 338: Woof. I’m the repository for my colleagues’ and reports’ frustration and hatred of the corporation and some days, like today, it’s harder than others to let it flow back out of me. I’m not allowed to rage quit. I am allowed to run calculations on when we could be Coast FI in case I absolutely lose it and do rage quit. Or get fired because they keep setting impossible targets for us to miss (probably more likely). My friend has her money on me getting fired or laid off by next spring and I don’t have a strong argument against it.
We’re all doing our damnedest but our industry is being heavily impacted by this evil corrupt administration. Except our corporate overlords are acting like that’s not happening at all and it’s not only business as usual, they’re going to demand huge growth every single year and by George, they’re going to get it by impressing upon us a “sense of urgency”. FFS yes that’s the only thing that was preventing us forcing sales to happen, a sense of urgency. If my eyes rolled any harder we’d be issuing BOLOs for them.
Right now our numbers, if correct, say that if we assumed 5% growth and 4% withdrawal rate, we are at Coast FI. If normal growth holds. Other calculators say we’re not at Coast FI yet, and if I change our assumptions to 4% growth and 3.5% withdrawal, that adds a couple years. I wonder whether one paycheck would cover our day to day expenses until we’re fully FI because we have a lot of benefits coming out of one employer and none of my calculations include a non-saving scenario. My guess is maybe but it’d be less anxiety provoking to have a part time income supplementing it given PiC’s workplace is constantly reorg-ing and doing layoffs.
I do wonder if the market will stagnate over the next decade or if that’s an outlier sort of possibility. The market is completely irrational so my guess is it’ll do the opposite of what I think it should do. Just in case there is, though, I also ran a very low growth scenario. Using 1% growth, we need $600k more banked to be set for CoastFI and retire in 11 years. Or $800k to retire in 6 years. I don’t like this set of numbers but it’s helpful to have a range of answers to work between.
Year 6, Day 339: I keep getting a weird version of what sort of feels like FOMO. It’s not that, though. What is it called when you really want to do all the things and you can only do 1-2 of the things and all those other things left on the list make you sad? That thing. I’m happy I got to do the things I did do and I’m frustrated that that’s all I could manage.
Money: A completely random Poshmark sale happened. I hadn’t bothered installing it on my new phone but my account is still alive and I just sold one of JB’s old costumes that SmolAc had no interest in. +$7!
Year 6, Day 340: I did not eat like an adult today. There was a reasonably healthy breakfast but it all went downhill from there. A donut. A bag of potato chips. Then a half hot dog with onions followed by a half hot dog with chili and a bag of Cheetos. As PiC noted, twas a very cheap dinner for the four of us and utterly devoid of most nutrition. Whoops. Ah well. Garbage meals are a once in a while thing.
I’m feeling betrayed by Tresemme. For the past year, scents that were once fine are now absolutely intolerable, giving me headaches and nausea. This has been a slow progression. At first it was just a couple brands of shampoo that I wasn’t attached to anyway (Dove, and something else), then I noticed my old stand-by Pantene must have changed their formula because their scent is now repellant. Then my Degree deodorant this past summer – terrible. Tresemme has been my one reliable brand for hair products. Today, I tried their argan oil shampoo and conditioner in the new packaging and the scent was repellent so I passed it over to the kids. They don’t care. I assumed it was because of the argan oil, whatever that is, so I grabbed the next backup set. The next bottle was also the new packaging but the same generic type of product: also awful. I think they changed their scent when they changed their packaging. 😭😭 Now I have to find something that doesn’t set off my olfactory receptors.
Year 6, Day 329: Heat wave time! For us, it’s very unlikely to be terrible. Everyone else is getting 90s and 100s. Our forecast is well under those highs so I get to enjoy this as our one random week of “summer” and then we’ll be back to our normally moderate temps.
Money: Most days it feels like we’re losing the neverending slog of people needing help, the list grows exponentially daily, so it was nice to have there two good updates: Nikos: Surgery went well on February 26th, and Niko has slowly been recovering in the hotel room. I’ve been contributing to keep Amber afloat for months and she’s finally starting to get her feet on solid ground. Winifred is a midwife now. Progress, any progress, is welcome and I hope they continue to improve.
Year 6, Day 330: My day is packed. Meetings, work, school meeting, work meeting, friend needs an ear, back to work, back to school to pick up, shovel down dinner, back to school for an evening math activity for the kids. 😵💫
I was deeply annoyed with SmolAc while we tried to get out the door. They eat at a snail’s pace and compounded that with whining they aren’t hungry. Our policy used to be “respect the kid’s intake assessment”. That doesn’t work with SmolAc because “I’m not hungry” actually means “I don’t want to eat this / I’m bored” and in short order they’ll be asking for a snack. They would live on snack foods if they could.
I insisted they eat almost a full serving (for them, that was a quarter of a serving for any other kid) before leaving and once we left, like clockwork the whining for a hot dog started. I refuse to negotiate with the terrorist so we marched them home to finish the perfectly good food we had waiting there.
The event itself was fun for both. JB did fifth grade level activities with their friends and we helped SmolAc try out the kindergarten activities. They impressed a second grade teacher with their penmanship. That was a bit of a surprise for me, too.
Money: Cigna keeps declining my wellness claim saying that the benefit is not covered for the insured. Except it is a covered benefit! Even their rep sees that it is. So that’s a 25 minute phone call to get my $50 payment. I’m willing to bet that this is some AI-powered bullshit in play. So annoying!
Year 6, Day 331: Summer weather means I get to hang our clothes to dry! As long as I get the timing right. Most of the year it’s too damp.
I can’t believe I missed the book birthday of the 15th Incryptid book: Butterfly Effects! I’ve put it on hold and it’s 8 weeks away. *Grabby hands* I’m working through Discworld again for now to keep my brain busy since all my library books either came in and were read or are on hold for weeks still.
Money: I earned a $50 gift card from our health provider researcher surveys. Chucked that into our internet account to pay a future bill.
Year 6, Day 332: Summer weather means summer smells in the morning that take me back to summer school and grade school days. That hit of baking asphalt rising up to mix with the nip of still cold air, maybe a concrete layer in there with some earthy leafy vegetation. I’d assumed that was mostly a SoCal combination of scents but turns out nope, it can be replicated just enough to make me feel like I should be walking to high school or something. Not that I ever want to relive that period. High school was fine but it’s not something I ever felt any need to go back to. There are a few people I miss from back then that I didn’t manage to stay in touch with but that’s all.
Money: We got a confirmation that bonuses will be paid at the end of March but we don’t know who is getting how much. S’pose that’s enough good news for one day.
Year 6, Day 333: Registration for summer camps feels like a contact sport. The regional animal camp booked solid in under 7 minutes. The number of slots available is low but good grief! Actually registering for anything in the city or county offerings is fraught, they all book up within the first half hour or less. It’s a good thing I’ve honed the ability to type really fast in registration forms but also they really need to offer more services. I do wonder if they’ll be able to offer more advanced swim lessons when they have the new pool built some far off date in the future. JB is at the most advanced level they offer for now and unless we want to enroll them in swim team (no, not really, that’s a 5 night per week commitment), they don’t have a lot more opportunities to hone their skill.
Money: camp registration has taken a chunk of my brain. I found a $50 off code for one camp ($600) but rescheduling to make it work with everyone’s schedules meant the other week of camp was 5 days and full price, so we paid $1126 instead of $1061 for both. It was initially a 4 day camp, then a 5 day, but now it’s 2 5-day camps. That’s fine, I prefer the new schedule that means their friends will be going to the same one and that’s an extra uninterrupted work day for me.
Year 6, Day 322: I’m so unsettled. Insomnia last night was severe, but the fatigue was mostly at a bit of a distance. I was able to pull some weeds, plant a few seeds, air out the house and do all the laundry, buy gifts, clean and pay bills this weekend. All this was followed up by a nap I didn’t want but sorely needed. It should feel good to have managed as much as I did but instead I just feel like an overshaken bottle of soda. Maybe this is a weird side effect of DST?
Money: We have had Giving money come in since our last support push but I’ve been thoroughly overwhelmed so had to wait a bit to pick our next family from the One Spirit Okini list. This time, I selected a mom whose kid needs clothes and kitted them out with some of each of the requested items (jeans, tees, hoodies, underwear, socks, a pair of shoes). I bought a few pieces in the next size up, too. It sets my mind at ease when I have the next immediate size of clothes on hand and wanted to give a little of that peace to this mom. We also loaded them up with multiples of the requested hygiene items: shampoo/conditioner, body wash, toothpaste/toothbrushes so they ought to be stocked for at least several months.
Year 6, Day 323: Time for another grocery takeaway! Once in a while, our neighbors get a badly timed grocery delivery and ask us to come take some produce off their hands. I trotted over today and picked up eggplant, bok choy, avocados, zucchini and some frozen chicken. PiC’s ambitiously saying we should cook all of it when I was going to split it further with another neighbor. We’ll see if we actually manage that but in the meantime, I’m moving along the big sack of apples that I would normally have fed to the dogs to a friend whose dogs can enjoy them. I really wanted to find some horses to share those apples with but I’m not friends with any local horses at the moment. Now that is definitely a problem that needs solving. Anyway these little food shares fire up my gratitude engine. I’m glad to share what we have with our neighbors and that we have enough. And these little extras that we get frees me up to give more to the people who don’t have enough outside of our circles. I like to think of it as a giant community cycle of some kind, maybe concentric circles where we push out help from our center, even if we never meet the people we help outside our local circles.
Year 6, Day 324: Trainer stuff: I’ve been struggling to get back to my “good” performance in working out: completing all sets assigned on my 3-4 days of written workouts. The CFS kicked my ass for several weeks, the depression spiral and suicidal ideation period was another asskicking. Overall time and energy have been hugely scarce on top of all that, and some days had to be rest days.
I have never gone a week without doing some sets but it’s never what I’d call enough. It feels like I’m wasting my trainer’s time because so little progress is made one week to the next. But this is a mental exercise in seeing the service of my trainer as separate from my performance of the workouts. If my body could just consistently improve, I wouldn’t need him to begin with.
Money: I’ve redeemed our Cigna Wellness Incentives for the kids and myself as our dental appointments are all done. That’ll be $150 in our pocket which covers the premium. PiC’s $50 when he does his well check will be profit in our pockets.
Year 6, Day 325: DST is kicking everyone’s asses. SmolAc sat up crying hysterically for an hour? hours? in the middle of the night, I don’t know when it was or how long. Just that I had to cuddle them until they finally settled down and fell asleep at 2 am. I’m so tired.
Work stress: I can taste actual adrenaline, I’m so stressed these days. I hate this.
Money: JB’s friend is asking for bookstore gift cards for their birthday. What’s an appropriate amount to gift kids turning 11-12? I’ve usually spent $20-25 per kid when gifting books or cash for the younger set, usually shopping from Bookoutlet if I can to save some cash. I’m not sure if $25-35 or more makes sense. To add to the confusion, this latest party involves the host telling us that they’re giving the kids $40 worth of credit to use so I have an idea of what they’re spending on the party itself. I don’t usually know that.
Year 6, Day 326: Having a bit of an existential crisis internal scream-fest. The existence and use of AI is destroying my professional world AND destroying the one planet we have and the helplessness I feel about that, though we fight against it daily – literally, is eating my sanity. I was just telling a friend that if all we did was bullshit anyway I could just shrug it off some. But I can’t. The stuff we output actually matters. So, between the massively organized fraud that people are perpetuating and the use of AI to create utter slop in ways that are going to deeply impact (actual real life things I can’t get into here but it’s serious), oh my GAHHHHHH. We are fighting against it, daily, and have been since the first ChatGPT came out. It’s grinding me down.
Money: SmolAc was invited to a birthday party and hah! The stack of books that I bought for the last party they were invited to (but arrived too late) can now be wrapped for this kid’s gifts. MRSP: $40. I paid $22. Stash of gifts, FTW.
Year 6, Day 315: Day one of solo parenting. PiC is away at a work thing this week. I’ve been bracing myself for this for weeks, telling myself that I would moderate my expectations for work and household stuff. The goal: keep the kids fed, clothed, alive, get them to and from school. Don’t break myself trying to do the impossible.
How we coped: burgers at the local place with outdoor seating. Stern directions to head DIRECTLY for the shower after we got home. Everyone in bed for math tutoring and reading time. SmolAc was happily sandwiched between us “reading” while we painfully inched our way through one equation after another.
From The Diplomat – Callum: You’re a military-industrial complex papered over by a Constitution.
Boy does that description of America hits home especially hard since this administration has been murdering right left and center and has torpedoed all the soft diplomacy we used to do through USAID.
Year 6, Day 316: Day two of solo parenting. I had a very tight timetable for dropping off JB and SmolAc this morning to get back in time for a meeting. I made all the runs in exactly 60 minutes and managed to get to my meeting in time. Score! JB had an afterschool activity at school so that bought me an extra hour to “rest” (working from bed). That helped.
Picking up JB late meant that I went straight from school to the orthodontist, then to pick up SmolAc a little earlier than Monday in hopes that we’ll be able to get dinner on the table earlier, get homework done, and get to bed earlier. That’s not how things worked out of course.
We got home much earlier yes, we ate dinner earlier also yes, but JB ran into trouble with their math homework and I had to teach them how to do it step by step, work through several problems, and then figure out how to create a story around how to solve that type of problem that would stick in their brain.
We did not hit the 8 pm bedtime. We did not remember to take out the garbage bins. We definitely did not have 5-7 minutes for my workout. But we survived intact.
Year 6, Day 317: Day three of solo parenting. And there’s my limit! Did the drop-offs this morning again. Kept running into people we know who haven’t seen me in months (PiC has been doing this run to save me time) so they wanted to catch up. It’s touching that they seemed so delighted to see me but that took a whackload of energy. I drove him and felt the exhaustion buzz set into my limbs.
The best encounter was a surprise appearance of our neighbor dogs who nearly shivered out of their skins with excitement when we spotted each other. I adore them and the feeling is mutual and I never walk away from them wondering if they actually like me or if they’re just being polite/friendly like I do with humans.
The one really good thing this week: the crushing suffocating relentless fatigue of the past several weeks has finally lifted. I’d forgotten what it felt like to only have pain without dragging the 1000 lb weight of fatigue with me and it’s so tolerable. My fingers are randomly swollen. My lower back aches. My upper back and shoulders are tight as a drum. And it’s still so much better than being crushed by fatigue. I am grateful. (Update: It lasted one day. I’m still grateful for the experience of that one day.)
Year 6, Day 318: A friend shared that her Asian ex-GF has gone to become a police officer in the Bay Area and my brain stuttered to a stop. WHAT. Really? In the years 2025-2026? That PD is notoriously racist even for police.
It also made me reflect on this scene from The Diplomat that felt similar though I wonder if one could legitimately make the argument the CIA is both a rotten agency AND still does SOME good. I don’t know enough about them to comment on that. I definitely don’t feel like we can make that argument for American police. I don’t know of any police that do any amount of good sufficient to counterbalance even a fraction of the evil they do.
Stuart: How are you not furious? Eidra: Stuart, I am a young tiny Asian American woman at the top of one of the most baldly paternalistic arms of the UG government. I am furious all the time. If I could go after terrorists and human traffickers with an organization that didn’t have an 80 year legacy of racism and human rights violations, I would. Stuart: We should be getting this for the recruitment video. Eidra: There is not another better CIA or America. The ones we have are fucked up. We make compromises. Some days we feel ok about that. Some days we have gin.
Year 6, Day 319: Confusion. The garden faucet has had a slow drip for months. I’d made the mistake of using it and then it wouldn’t shut off completely. I can’t replace it because the jerks here before us installed some kind of bizarre lock on the faucet that our handy friend says has to be cut off if we don’t have a key for it. There is no key for it. I stuck a jug under the drip and have been using that to water the garden until I solve the problem. I went to do the usual garden watering dump today and the jug is empty. The drip has stopped?? Woo!
I haven’t had time to figure out how to fix our oven yet. Maybe it will also mysteriously fix itself? Please?
Year 6, Day 308: A sad and scared worry. On the weekend, I’d been up and about for maybe 1.5 hours doing basic chores and my body buzzed with the sort of exhaustion warning that means the longer I do this, the harder the crash will be. I’ve “rested” (doing almost all the usual parenting and some of my work and some of my housework) for almost a month. What if this is my new baseline of awful? What if, unless I do something drastic like quitting my job (in this economy/fascist country??), this is the best/most my body can do?
My job sucks right now so obviously I am not fundamentally averse to quitting but I am completely averse to not having income and the consequences of that (eventual poverty). That’s the curve my mom’s reality took: work really hard to build a solid foundation, get sick, lose eveything. That takes very little foresight to predict if I don’t save and invest enough first. (And even then I occasionally wonder: really, how safe is our net worth?)
I wish it wasn’t a choice between potentially gaining health improvement in the short term by way of committing myself to the long term consequences of having cut my income at the peak of my career.
Year 6, Day 309: Today I’m reminding myself that the reason that I stay at my current job is that I have a level of autonomy that would be difficult to get elsewhere in the industry and that it’s entirely remote and that latter bit is what makes it possible for me to survive having a full time job while being a full time parent and doing all the other things that I need/want to do. I will still be sad and complain now and again but those are the two things I have to come back to – these are the things that would be very difficult to find in the COVID+6 years world where everyone is irrationally hot to get bodies back into office despite there being ample evidence that many jobs could be remove (and therefore more accessible to the disabled community). My therapist doesn’t think it’s healthy for me to think of myself as disabled but if I require a job that lets me work from bed for two months, or else I wouldn’t be able to survive doing my work AND being a parent, I’m not sure what else to call it. I don’t need to be called disabled but anywhere else in the professional world, what I need to do well at my job and manage life would be considered an unreasonable accommodation.
Year 6, Day 310: Is it ironic that while I’m still slowly shedding the tentacles of depression that bonded to my brain, death metal felt very soothing? Maybe but hattip to Fleshgod Apocalypse (a friend’s rec) and later on, The Hu, for helping ease my mind through a rough patch.
Shutterfly sent one of their “A glimpse of your memories from twenty years ago” emails and it served me a picture of me with an old friend, and an even older friend who died of cancer last year. Wow that hurts.
Year 6, Day 311: I love dental cleanings. I love that it’s only a 7 minute drive away. I especially love when I get what feels like an A or B at my exam. I got a “looks good” from the dentist, a “looks pretty good, not much build-up” from the hygienist and gum measurements show some improvement since my last exam. My goal is to have no 4s or 5s in 6 months. Hope hope hope.
Other things that are good: one friend’s divorce from a suddenly awful spouse who just upped sticks is final. Two more friends are divorcing abusive husbands. I hope their dissolutions are quick and drama free, I don’t trust those men even an ounce.
Trading unhealthy relationships for better circumstances FTW!
Year 6, Day 312: An unseasonably warm day today was an unanticipated treat. We’ve had a couple weeks of rain on and off. Even hail and a thunderstorm once! That was actually pretty neat since we don’t get a wide range of weather here.
I’m dragging into this Friday but at least still practically upright despite all kinds of staffing drama this week. I’m still putting a few of the smaller fires out but the worst of the solvable problems this week have been.