October 31, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 220: Drat! Sera’s collar broke this morning. I’m not prepared to expend the brainpower I’ll need for picking a replacement because it’s never as easy as buying the same one we had – they never have the same one in stock when we need a replacement.
Update, yes, that took two flipping hours searching for anything like what we have now and then researching what IS available. Especially miffed because I tried PetSmart, Petco, Chewy, Target and no one had anything we needed in stock, so I ended up at Amazon after all. A, I could have saved myself a lot of time but B, I would have been annoyed at myself for not checking elsewhere first. Grump. In any case, I know it’s not realistic to swear them off entirely. My rule is we make an honest effort to buy elsewhere first, which we did.
My insides were out of sorts all day. Maybe they were set off by the (really, very minor in the grand scheme of things) routine disturbance of Sera’s collar, maybe I was already on the verge of it anyway. Couldn’t put a name to it however hard I tried, just felt like an emotionally shaken carbonated drink: agitated, anxious, unsettled, set to explode. I offered the inner simmering beast a stack of graham crackers to no avail.
Perhaps it’s the emotional kickback from being sick for two weeks and then having fun this weekend for the price of being physically wiped out. Perhaps it’s the temporary shake up at work that’ll settle down by next week. Perhaps it’s anticipating the launch of the Lakota Thanksgiving fundraising this week and hoping so hard for a positive response, and also anticipating/hoping for really good sales so we can buy the Lakota families so many needed things. Perhaps it’s anticipating another shoe will drop because when it’s been even a little quiet, I worry. Or perhaps my need to have all our holiday gifts taken care of by now; they most definitely are not.
Turns out there are plenty of reasons to feel unsettled…!
Despite my sorts being all over the place, something must be trying to place for me to wonder how to fix my chicken soups gone wrong of late (smitten kitchen to the rescue?) and even experiment with matzo ball soup. Neither the time or energy is actually available for these endeavors but it says something hopeful? delusional? that the desire sparks at all.
Year 3, Day 221: I slept like a bear hibernating for winter. Waking up in the morning felt like crawling out of a deep and cozy pit entirely against my will. (more…)
October 26, 2022
The Background
The Pine Ridge Reservation is part of a larger territory established for the Lakota in 1868 that was later broken up into smaller tribal reservations. The Pine Ridge reservation portion of the territory includes Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Porcupine, Kyle, Oglala, Wanblee, Allen and more, and is now home to about 40,000 Native Americans. Pine Ridge County, within the reservation, is the poorest county per capita in the nation. Folks on the reservation are generally living in very poor, cramped conditions. Household sizes range from single adults to families with 16+ children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom need food, clothes and education. As you can imagine, with limited income, the need for assistance is great. It’s common for families to lack heat, running water, clothing, and basic household supplies, even more common for large families to run short of food.
For the past five years, friends have contributed to a pool of funds and I’ve used them to help families on the reservation through the Okini. Each year, our effort grows a little bit more.
This year, we have deployed 20 shipments so far, mostly directly to families, and a few to the Allen Youth Center to share with families near the Center.
The Idea
Directly supporting more indigenous folks on the reservation would be an appropriate way to observe this federal holiday. To be more efficient on this occasion, I thought we could send a big shipment of basics to the Allen Youth Center to distribute.
I discussed this idea with the coordinator handling the Allen Youth Center and she confirmed they would welcome any help we could give, in any quantity. There’s a massive need for things like socks, diapers, OTC meds, blankets, coats, shampoo and conditioner, body soap, laundry soap, lotion, pantry foods, etc. COVID continues to be a big issue on the reservation and medications aren’t easily come by.
This would benefit approximately 100 local families that live near the Center.
The Details
Initial pricing gave me a sense of how much money we’d need to supply just a few families (these are examples so this won’t necessarily be the pricing available near Thanksgiving):
Kirkland Diapers Size 1-2, 192 count, $26 ($9.50 off until Oct 23)
Kirkland Diapers Size 3-6, 222 count, $36 ($9.50 off until Oct 23)
Limit 2 per member, 2 boxes in each size: $392 pretax
Or socks! Good quality socks from Costco range from 3-5 pairs per package and run $10-13 a package. If we wanted to send 2 packages of socks to ten individuals so they’d have a full week of clean socks, we’d need $200-260 pre-tax.
12 boxes of diapers and 20 packages of socks requires about $720 with tax. I’d love to supply a lot more than that, but any of these items in volume is going to cost a lot, even on sale.
The Plan
With our usual giving circle and a few extra folks pitching in, we’ll be able to send something like a dozen boxes of diapers and 20 packages of socks. But if we are lucky enough to get much more funding, I’d like to send the following.
- To the Allen Youth Center: boxes of diapers in every size, cases of wipes, socks in various sizes, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, children’s ibuprofen, children’s cough and cold medication, thermometers, blankets, sets of shampoo and conditioner, packs of bar soap, lotion, pads and tampons, hand soap, dish soap, laundry detergent, men’s coats/sweaters/vests, women’s coats/sweaters/vests, childrens’ /sweaters/vests in various sizes, pairs of kids boots in various sizes, a selection of pantry foods.
If we somehow still have money after this, I will work my way down this list!
- We’ll supply families listed on the Okini, most of whom live outside the AYC area and wouldn’t benefit from the supplies shipped to the Center. I pick one family at a time and shop for them. This takes a lot of time and attention as I shop for every individual in the family according to their sizes and needs. These are sent directly to the family/families.
- The Okini holiday list, published mid-November: we’d pick a family and buy the requested gifts to be sent directly to the recipients.
- Pine Ridge’s neighbor, Rosebud Reservation, has a holiday party for their people each year and ask for supplies for the meal, gifts for their elders (socks and gloves), and gifts for the kids.
I’ll shop the best possible sales that are available at the time we have funding. With my full time job, full time parenting and life, I can’t optimize every single sale but I always do my best to make the most of every penny that comes in.
The Need
We’ll need our community’s help to help Indigenous families this holiday season. If you’re able to contribute funds, we would deeply appreciate your help, as would the families! Sharing this post widely would be a great help as well.
Important: To accept a wider range of donations, I’ve teamed up with my dear longtime friend Ruth Tillman. She and I go back over a decade and I trust her implicitly with financial matters. She’s publicly visible, whereas I remain pseudonymous, and she can accept money on behalf of the project at:
- Venmo: @RK-Tillman
- PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
- Cashapp: $ruthkt
Please add a note that your gift is for Pine Ridge and include your email address to receive updates.
October 24, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 213: I’m still hacking up a lung but a little less than yesterday so here’s to small improvements. But I discovered a painful bump, pimple?, on my shoulder and how am I still getting these in my forties? Is there no peace to be had??
Over the weekend I sent out a message to our giving group that helps me support folks on the Pine Ridge reservation year-round. I floated the idea of making a big purchase, taking advantage of the upcoming Black Friday sales, to send bulk basic goods to the reservation. Supporting indigenous people for Thanksgiving feels like the right way to observe that federal holiday.
Some folks were able to contribute quickly (yay!) and I started hatching shopping lists. One thing led to another, namely prices adding up really fast, and I started brainstorming ways to make the impossible happen.
Two boxes of diapers in each size (12 total) comes to $350 pretax. Just 10 packages of good socks comes to $280. I wanted to send a variety of supplies: socks, gloves, diapers, warm sweaters and vests, OTC meds, shampoo and conditioner, soap, lotion, and holiday gifts for kids (sports balls, puzzles, books). COVID is still a huge problem, the coordinator confirmed, and they can’t afford even the basic OTC meds.
Once again with the money we have, it’s variety vs volume. I hate having to prioritize.
I hate it so much I asked a couple of my high profile friends if they’re willing / able to help boost a bigger effort this year. Part of me secretly hopes it’ll be a massive success and we’ll be able to help so many families in one fell swoop. Part of me wonders if I’m biting off more than I can chew. Another part of me is pretty sure that I am. But I have a plan! It just needs money and good bargain prices!
It’s a good thing we had daycare today, we normally don’t on Mondays, because I got all my work done and set up some structure for a big fundraising effort this year.
FYI: you’re witnessing a real time obsessive spiral. I now have 50 links for dry goods and pantry foods that I’d like to buy to outfit X number of families and the cost most definitely leapfrogged the current budget by several leaps and bounds. One can dream, though, yes?
I also cooked dinner! Pork roast, rice, and bok choy. And Smol Acrobat even ate their dinner like a halfway civilized human! Except for the part after they calmly set their own bowl aside and demanded my plate. They wanted to eat off a plate like everyone else.
All in all, not a bad day despite how I felt physically. (more…)
October 18, 2022
Continuing on from part 1:
There’s the journey and planning…
This quote from the Fioneer’s interview with 1500Days has stuck with me. This isn’t a new idea, Carl’s been saying this ever since he retired: “FIRE won’t necessarily make you happy, and this was the case for me. My life was better, but not happier.” I bear this in mind as I navigate this whole thing.
I’m not counting on FIRE to make me happy. I have quite a few ways to enjoy my life already. Mainly I’m looking to remove obstacles. Removing fuel from the stress fire to use a very CA analogy. Getting back that 20/30/40+ hours a week and headspace to let me focus on the things I will continue to juggle: our money, our kids, hobbies we don’t spend time on now.
I’m thinking of Jim’s 2016 thoughts on how to transition to early retirement, and how he might have done things differently, and his updated thoughts on the matter in 2021 since he has a second chance at this retirement thing. The main point he raises is one that Tanja’s been talking about for years as well: retire TO something, not just FROM work. I think a lot about the things Tanja writes about – like our holiday plans that will be $$$ if they happen but I’m choosing them anyway because I don’t want to forget and let life pass us by. That’s something I’m very likely to do. I’m also contemplating how a friend was even busier for the 30 years of her retirement doing passion projects than she was during her intense career and I would be surprised if we didn’t have a similar shift to working hard on things that we care about, whether or not it pays money.
Like my friend, I doubt any of our efforts would yield income, that doesn’t happen to be a norm in the kinds of things we are interested in. It’s far more likely that we’ll be spending our own money to support others.
Maggie asked me if I really honestly think we won’t make any money after retirement, and really honestly? I thought we’d work a lot on things we care about and we won’t make money from it. But also really honestly, I’ll want to make money. Not enough to support a whole lifestyle maybe but enough to matter.
Originally this post wasn’t about retirement
I started a draft three years to ask: Where do you find your fun and fulfillment? I was thinking about how some days, it’s hard for me to remember what I did for fun when I could do almost anything, health and money permitting. The kids are holding me back! But so is work. So is my decrepit body that can’t remember the vitality of youth.
Anyway, chatting to Nicole and Maggie about what one might do in retirement made me think more about what I envision long term. Medium term, I have 17 more years of children in the house so if we retire anytime between now and 17 years from now, we still have at least one kid at home. Hawaii Plan gives me an idea of what the latter half of that range might look like as older kids need us less.
In that event, I have days, nay weeks, of short term things to do. My dream is that upon retiring, I’d sleep for a week. Then I’d go to the library, fill a backpack and tote bag full of books, and read for a week. I’d stop only for meals, walking the dog, bathing and getting into bed to read some more. Then sleep for another week. Maybe two.
Then I’d have some sort of routine of reading, binging shows, thinking and writing, grooming and walking the dog, growing more than just one container of food plants, learning to cook more of the delicious foods we get at restaurants now for lack of time (soondobu!). Of course I’d continue my giving projects and maybe pick up something activism related that my body can handle. I’d love to pick up more frugal activities, couponing and maybe even a spot of eBay reselling a la Katy Wolk-Stanley. I enjoy a bit of that but not when I’m extra pressed for time and energy. I’d love a first year something like Purple’s first year of retirement.
PiC wants to do more cooking, outdoor sports, and hiking. Things we already do in a very small measure.
Once the kids are largely out of the daily routine picture, maybe we’d need more. He doesn’t think he needs much more, and if he gets to go outdoors every day and then come home and cook dinner, I guess he’d be right for a while.
The things I loved 25 years ago: eating good food (SO MANY CARBS), playing with dogs and horses, horseback riding, running, hiking, doing other competitive sports, grooming dogs, reading, reading, reading, the occasional glass of wine or beer or a good cocktail.
What I love now: cooking and baking for my family, petting and playing with our dogs (I rarely see horses anymore, so sad), reading through my painsomnia. Writing this blog. Connecting virtually with friends. Some travel when that was possible. Sometimes I still love eating. My relationship with food isn’t the love affair it once was.
My world narrowed so long ago because of my health. Without a pandemic in play, I’m pretty happy!
I once said that there’s a ton more I’d like to take up but can’t for lack of time and money. I wish I’d written them all down at the time I said that just so I could review and see if I still want to plan for them. But since they’re lost to the hazy mists of memory, I’m pondering what kinds of projects would be meaningful.
There are lots of activities I want to do:
– Learn how to sew and knit, just for my own enjoyment and convenience. I’m unlikely to ever do anything serious with it. That’s something I’m practicing being ok with – not needing to justify a hobby as being useful before I’m allowed to enjoy it.
– There’s a chance taking up calligraphy OR just learning to write with fountain pens might make its way into my life. That also would be just for fun.
– Get in good enough shape to get back on a horse regularly.
– Traveling for food experiences. Surely someday in the years ahead, it’ll be safe enough to travel and enjoy delicious food in other countries. I want to hang out with Maggie and Donna in Alaska. I want to go back to Thailand. We must visit Japan and Indonesia for the first time. I have friends in DC I haven’t seen since JB was born. Friends in Pennsylvania we haven’t hung out with since before the pandemic. Friends in Arizona and Louisiana and Tennessee and and and. There are actually a surprising number of places and people I would like to see.
– Learn three languages. Or five. I’ve got a smattering of Spanish and Italian. I’d love to be conversant in both, plus Portuguese (I hear Portugal is expat friendly if it ever comes to that), Japanese, and Mandarin. Also if I ever reach fluency, that opens up even more new worlds of books to read.
These are all just for fun things. I’m divided on how to assess my level of fulfillment with this thinking exercise because I have a worrying habit of equating self worth with productivity. It’s time to flex the muscles of doing things for enjoyment and not only because they can bring in income.
If I keep working at it, I should be able to pinpoint what I want to do for true fulfillment and not just to scratch my codependency (need to rescue or caretake) itch. Fostering kids and dogs may fall into that category but until I know I can handle it in a healthy way, it’ll have to stay at the bottom of the list.
It occurs to me that I should include, for the sake of remembering that it’s part of my list, volunteering with the local CASA chapter if I can handle that in a healthy way. That remains to be seen. In that category, I also want to try to volunteer to be an adult literacy tutor (not sure if I would be any good at this) and volunteer to help refugees settling in the States.
:: What would your plans for retirement or semi-retirement look like?
October 17, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 206: Hello, hindsight. We meet again. Taking my COVID booster when I was mildly sick and rundown from sleep deprivation was a terrible idea. Not only that, I failed to take the precaution of staggering my and PiC’s appointments like I did our initial vaccines. So I got much worse over the weekend, and even PiC and JB got taken down by the mutant virus. Not COVID, thankfully, we tested everyone twice.
Sooooo everyone stayed home today. JB because they got sick last so are probably still very contagious, and we don’t want to spread their germs. Smol’s usually off on Mondays. We had tried arranging a day of care but it didn’t actually work out since they were sick within 72 hours of today. Me because I got little sleep and my body aches are phenomenal. PiC is still symptomatic but well enough to care for the kids so I can get some rest.
I’d gotten enough done on Friday to only have minimal important work to do today and I dispatched that, and the rehemming of JB’s uniform, quickly and crawled back to bed.
PiC covered the child minding for a few hours so I could be a lump in bed until a work emergency flared up. Thankfully I’d rested enough to take over and whip up some pantry dinner. My large batch of poorly composed garlic ginger rice from a while back was liberated from the freezer and turned into a decent rice porridge to go with the chicken adobo I’d cooked with some excellent foresight on Saturday before things all went kersplat.
(more…)
October 11, 2022
What would we do in retirement?
I’m thinking of the many pieces of an early-ish retirement puzzle as we wend our way in that general direction. This is a very long term work in progress. At a guess, we have ten more earning or accumulation years before we’ll be set. I’m definitely not focusing on an end point yet given the vagaries of the market and my own tendency to need to get to a goal, any goal, long before I’m due to arrive. Pretending we’re laughably far away helps mitigate my tendencies.
These posts are to help me ruminate because I won’t get everything all in one or even ten passes. It’s a good bet that my thinking will change over time, too.
I’m thinking about this in, of course, the form of lists.
– How do we get there?
– Where exactly is there?
– What will we do when we get there? (Probably most importantly)
How (much) do we save for retirement?
Correlated: how much will we spend?
What’s a “safe” withdrawal average rate for us? I don’t know what I’m comfortable with yet so I’m guesstimating 3.5%. I very much agree with Tanja’s thoughts that in general, the “safe” withdrawal rate suggests there is a percentage that we can always withdraw that will be fine and sustainable when in reality, it’s better not to expect level spending. That’s been borne out by my own personal experience of the past twenty years. Some of our increasing expense was down to improving our lifestyle baseline, allowing myself to spend on things that I couldn’t afford before.
Good and sufficient amounts of food, mental health care, physical health care, dental care, clothing that fits, making our home warm and dry, to name a few. This is different from true lifestyle inflation and setting higher anchor prices but I know there’s some of the inflation as well. Is having kids lifestyle inflation? It feels like it. Everything is more expensive with kids! They eat so much …!
I’m not comfortable with the fallback plan of popping back into the workplace if I took time off and it didn’t work out. My industry is conservative and small. The likelihood of an easy re-entry is miniscule. I only know one person who has lucked into a good return to the workforce in this industry since taking time off. Thus, I am loathe to make a plan that relies on going back to work as a failsafe, especially because my health won’t allow me to do what I had to do the first time around to prove myself. PiC’s preferred work and field is similar. There’s not a good reentry point for him when so many equally qualified and currently working people are vying for the same jobs.
While I want to do nothing but rest for a year, afterwards I’ll want to do something to generate income. Whether that desire bears fruit is a whole other story. None of my creative endeavors tend to generate much income.
Also, I don’t want to have to rely on that income. I want it to be bonus money, or else that’ll mean I traded a relatively secure consistent income for inconsistent income and a lot more stress.
My money questions:
- How much do we need for living expenses up to age 60 (covered by our brokerage accounts and short term money on hand)?
- How much do we need from age 60 on (covered by our 401k and IRAs)?
- How much is good healthcare and how do we find it (??!??!)
Definite expenses:
- Housing (plus taxes, insurance and maintenance)
- Transportation (plus maintenance and insurance)
- Healthcare – the biggest question mark of them all
- Travel and entertainment
- Kids – lessons, activities, sports (??)
- Food
- Utilities
- Clothing (minimal now, it’ll increase once the kids stop living in hand me downs)
I took our highest annual spending to roughly guesstimate how much we need to spend in the future without cutting back on our current lifestyle.
I want to plan for a moderate lifestyle: to have reasonable freedom of choice, the ability to buy anything we need, a few things we want, and give to others.
I’ve roughly outlined how much we need invested in two separate pots of money (the first two bullets above) and run several different calculators to validate my guesses.
Healthcare costs and education costs for the kids are still big blanks that I can’t fill in. A knowledgeable friend suggested that we budget $12k per year if we retire before Medicare and that both makes me faint and sounds realistic.
I don’t know what the kids will ultimately do for college. We just know we’ll have some money saved and plan to cashflow some expenses for them. They may still have to take some loans if they choose more expensive paths than we had budgeted.
We’re far enough away that I don’t have the information I’d need to fine tune the financial goals. I’m making minor adjustments here and there to focus intensely on investing in our brokerage and that’s good enough to worry on for a few years as far as money goes.
Am I missing anything big?
What does retirement look like for us?
I can spend my time figuring out what we plan to do with those reclaimed hours and years because I want to retire to something, not just drop work and then feel adrift if my hobbies alone aren’t fulfilling. Then again, I can’t imagine I have to worry about that TOO much for the next 15 or so years. Our kids are our biggest priority, and biggest expenses after housing, assuming they’ll have educational expenses. So their needs provide a soft landing for a transition. Then there are so many possible hobbies! I’ll dig into that later. For now, I’m enjoying the feeling of forming a structured plan even though dire warnings about the future are hard to shake.
Also, just a quick consideration of future possible expensive curve balls: I will continue working on my mental and physical health. That costs money.
Familial curveballs: I’m fairly sure PiC’s parent has enough money for their needs, they have an estate even if we don’t know the details.
I still feel like there’s another shoe that’ll drop on my side of the family but I’m doing my best not to think about my abusive parent or brother. It’s hard not to feel like there’s unfinished business there. I am glad to have laid the groundwork that I don’t have anything more to give them after they used me as a bank for so many years. They contributed significantly to destroying my health, without remorse or care for me, I don’t owe them one more cent. (Repeat repeat repeat, in therapy and out, since I obviously still feel some guilt over this. But I don’t owe them the rest of my health or life.)
My surrogate families are generally ok financially. My niblings are a vast group of kids and I plan to be modestly generous with them since there are so very many of them.
Alongside the structure and planning, though, is the realization that we have a long road ahead of us, both in getting to retirement and in spending time in retirement if we are lucky.
I want take advantage of this long path to do all the thinking and planning of what life after retirement might look like.
This got too long so I’m stopping here and picking up in a new post…
October 10, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 199: Another Monday at home with Smol Acrobat. Mondays continue to be the hardest day of the week. You’d think that would work for me. I prefer to get the hard stuff out of the way first. Maybe I should remind myself of this when the grumpiness meter rises.
*****
I was catching up on old posts this weekend and Hawaii Planner’s post reminded me of my first gift card snafu: Lack of organization is expensive. It was maybe ten years ago that I went to the trouble of buying $500 Costco gift cards to meet the minimum spend on a credit card bonus.
The gift cards were intended to cover gas and groceries at times that I wanted to keep our credit card bill down a bit, or just to have some non cash backup money in our wallets.
I didn’t have a good system in place back then and I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that I didn’t fully use up all the cards and maybe ended up negating the bonus value we earned. Since then I’ve tended to stick with either physical cards that I label with a date and a balance or I add the gift card to my online account for the specific store. I only feel confident about the latter for some, larger corporate type, stores though. I lost $119 in Munchery gift card credit when they went under and I’m still salty about that. I regularly buy Target gift cards during their 10% off promotions which we use as gifts a lot and picked up a few Penzey’s gift cards when they have the $35 for $50 sale so I’m always open to better tracking systems.
Year 3, Day 200: The dawn came draped in a grey, gloomy, break out the puffer jackets, fog blanket that matches my cotton brain and mood perfectly.
I’m limping along on 2.5 hours of sleep today. My body had a bizarre reaction to absolutely nothing, acting as though I’d taken Serious Pain Meds. I hadn’t but most of the night was spent feeling drug-induced nausea sans drugs. I can’t express how very annoying that was! But I’m thankful that if it had to happen, it was before a daycare day so I had the option to find an hour or two to rest. Most days, that’s not an option at all.
Our unexpected half day power outage reminded me that we still need some things for (minor) disaster planning: a UPS for our modem and server, a backup battery for our garage door opener, and portable generator big enough to power our fridge/freezer for short periods if we have an outage for longer than five hours. That’s at least a couple thousand dollars or more in the case of the portable generator, but I’m hoping to spot a good sale. We already have a gas generator but it’s only safe for outdoor use. This graphic made me laugh. Yes, doubling and tripling your generators DOES create “even more power”.
Year 3, Day 201: I ran out of nesting on this comment thread at Nicole and Maggie and I was still pondering. Is there such a thing as an authentic or unauthentic life? My religion doesn’t say anything about it. I do think that our actions speak louder than our words. But I’m also not sure if I believe that we are who we act like we are, either. It feels too final. But maybe the idea isn’t that we’re immutably who we are, just that whoever we act like is who we are in that moment and if we choose to change, then that’s who we are.
Then again, my cotton brain has not improved since last night’s sleep was terrible too. I was adrift in what felt like a conscious sleep most of the night, so it’s possible my synapses are just not connecting.
*****
Three weeks ago I decided to start writing cards or letters regularly to an older friend who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. I don’t want to jinx myself but I’m now in the middle of my third letter. I’ve sent a letter once a week for two weeks now, and this would make the third. They’re utterly mundane letters but I hope they bring a touch of diversion in their boredom.
Year 3, Day 202: Massage day!
I spent 20 minutes clearing up emails and checking for critical stuff and then headed out for a session. It was both massage and brain therapy, my massage therapist and I had a wonderful conversation digging deeply into our behavioral patterns (perfectionism, dismissing and ignoring birthdays and anniversaries because we learned that we and our accomplishments weren’t notable, subtracting joy and substituting duty for it) and we have offered each other homework. She asked me to write a list of what used to bring me joy and what brings me joy today. In turn, I asked her to consider what she might enjoy in honor of her birthday. It’s nice to have someone to talk to about this as I mulled over my therapist’s suggestion that I’ve blocked much of what brings me joy because I don’t think I deserve it.
After getting home, I did get right to work as soon as I gathered up a nice snack for myself and realized: I normally wouldn’t even do this much because I’ve convinced myself that I don’t even deserve to eat or drink first. Wow this pattern runs deep.
Year 3, Day 203: A routine rapid test round turned up three negatives for the rest of us, and a faint positive for Smol. I’m starting to think they just don’t work for Smol. We took them for a PCR test and that turned up negative (thank you 2-hour PCR testing!) It’s baffling. But they ARE a bit sick. They have a runny nose, aren’t napping well, and seem to be running a temperature. Can’t really confirm that last so well, none of our three thermometers are behaving.
Which reminds me! Target’s running an early Deal Days thing and I have a list of non-essential things to buy. Some hangers, my supplements, the plastic bags for our storage space. I’m trying to balance what we need and not get suckered trying to meet the minimums on the Buy $50 of X and get $10 back deals.
We have our COVID boosters tomorrow, and three of us still need flu shots. PiC’s employer took care of his flu shot already. I meant to do our flu shots today and adult boosters tomorrow but Smol can’t and I shouldn’t if I’m also feeling unwell. Even if it’s not Smol’s viral thing bothering me, I’m rundown from this week’s inability to sleep.
I’m already taking a risk keeping our boosters appointments but we’ve waited weeks for these and I’m not willing to wait another 3-4 weeks for another appointment.
Also! I love Aliette de Bodard’s books and you may too!