August 4, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 98: For the past two weeks, the weather has been perfectly nice and I have sweated buckets, like I’m powered by an internal nuclear reactor. Nothing else is particularly wrong, so I have no clue what this is about. Meanwhile the most heat sensitive folks, PiC and JB, have been practically frolicking in the mild temps. Bodies continue to be Weird. Well, mine, anyway. Perimenopause?
Also my left shoulder tendon (or ligament, or muscle, I don’t know how one isolates which thing is twanging) has been stressed for three days which is not ideal.
First aid kit debate: hard case or soft zipper pouch? I saw a prepacked first aid kit in a hard case and it triggered my container avarice. Our freebie from Target or Walgreens ages ago is a fabric rectangle zip pouch (has the depth of the hard case but flexibility of fabric) but the inside is shedding plasticky bits everywhere now. I thought maybe a pencil case? But it’s not quite the thing.
Year 6, Day 99: I just realized that the tubing assigned to the sugar snap peas had pulled loose and the plant hasn’t been getting water! No wonder half of it’s suddenly dying 😭 I have to buy more tubing anchors but for the moment, my first task was to (finally) get the netting up on the 6 foot tall stakes. I did (to no one’s surprise) zero research on training the plants to grow on a trellis before now so the plants mostly leaned on a stake or two if they were at the right angle. This was my avoiding setting up a proper trellis but if I can get the plants to grow up the netting and stakes, I can continue avoiding a real trellis for another year!
Year 6, Day 100: Electronics hygiene! I had no idea how much keeping my electronics plugged in, while I’m working, impacted battery life but my one laptop went from 3-4 hours of battery life off charger to 60-90 minutes. It’s older, but not THAT old. There is a good reason for that habit – we kept having power outages so it was always a gamble if I let the battery run down naturally before charging back up. Now that I have a second laptop and the Yeti, I can change my habits. I’ve been super mindful to only charge the backup laptop as needed and my phone only gets charged to 80% most of the time. Their batteries are still in really decent shape, they still work even when run down to as little as 10%. Both the Pixel 6 and laptop only die at 3%, which is a vast improvement over the Pixel 2 that would turn off at 33%.
Year 6, Day 101: When someone who should have some idea of how much free time you have (none. I have negative free time) says something like “just add this half hour (or an hour) activity to your day like I do”, I just want to snap my teeth at them. It’s not like I wasn’t incredibly busy before kids. I was. I also didn’t underestimate how much busier I would be with kids. That’s part of why I didn’t want to have them in my 20s! Added to that, now I’ve got a job that’s tripled in worries and responsibilities with two young kids so no, in fact, it’s not possible for me to “just add an hour” to do a thing I want to do. I promised JB that we would look into a new sport for them this time last year. It’s taken me 12 months to create one gap in my schedule to take them to a new activity. I was interested in it too but homigosh the logistics of making one more thing possible during the school year is simply brainswoggling.
On that note, in two days, I’ve (deeeep breath):
- taken JB on a 2-hour excursion,
- done the laundry,
- collected and organized donation items,
- took out the trash,
- deep cleaned the bathroom vanity,
- directed JB’s room cleaning efforts with very specific targeted tasks (pull all the plushies out of X, canvass the whole house for all pens, pencils, color pencils, markers, crayons and put them in their homes, collect all hygiene related things and put them in their homes, sort through plushies to see which will be moved out),
- then taken JB on a 3-hour errand that’ll net $250 in gift cards in a month,
- coordinated our correspondence (addressed 6 envelopes and stuffed them with goodies, JB’s working on the letters, to family and friends),
- organized Christmas gifts for several niblings,
- set up a cart full of books for another set of niblings,
- hunted down and ordered a new backpack for JB,
- ordered a giant tote bag for our use,
- ordered the garden tubing anchors and set them up when they arrived,
- compulsively checked reporting on work KPIs,
- scrubbed the stove,
- started catching up on my workouts that have been neglected for 3 weeks due to travel (ow, my everything),
- ordered refills of several medications,
- ordered a sink drain cover so I can (briefly) soak and scrub our cast iron range grates,
- unplugged the toilet,
- figured out how to fix our Internet connection (only took 3 hours!),
- took JB to their activity,
- Did our net worth summary,
- Paid all the bills,
- Checked, sorted and recycled the mail.
These were on my 2 days off. PiC took care of dinners because I had no brain left to think about food. Mostly this was what I wanted to get done, so I’m not feeling particularly put out, but I did want to do a few more things that were just for me: baking biscuits or bread, and sewing a simple project. Maybe tomorrow.
Year 6, Day 102: Ah ha! My pencil case idea to replace the first aid kit was a bust, the one I picked was too small. I considered using one of our Costco turkey plastic containers but I’ve already doled them all out: 4 for JB’s art supplies, 2 for Smol Acrobat’s stickers and markers, 1 for my receipts and 2 for masks. I considered buying 4 extra large replacement pencil cases for JB and trade for the turkey containers, then realized it’d be cheaper to just buy myself one extra large pencil case. Duh. But no, that didn’t feel right. PiC suggested a tackle box. No, that didn’t feel right either. Too big, I want this to be small enough to fit in our current cabinets, a tackle box requires too much shelf space. Then I remembered! I bought PiC a washi tape container with removable slats several years ago, I’d bought some for my jewelry, and he’s never used it! It’s still in the garage! I ran to get it and transferred everything over and it all fit! 🎉 Money already spent years ago now being put to good use. I feel so accomplished. Go figure it’s something like this that makes me feel good and not the mile long list of things I’ve gotten done this week.
July 28, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 91: For the first time in 10+ years, someone I care about made a judgemental comment about my parenting and hurt my feelings. This isn’t the first time I’ve been criticized, it’s just the first time since I learned to stop running myself down as a parent annnnd it turns out that defense mechanism, though unhealthy, was really effective at protecting me from hurt feelings. It might be the first time I’ve thought, though I didn’t say it, “you don’t understand, you’re not a parent.” 99% of the time I don’t believe that you have to be a parent to understand that family dynamics can be complicated. I’m not sure this is that 1% of the time either, maybe my feelings were just hurt and they had a point, albeit an incredibly harsh and rather mean point. Not my favorite milestone! But a clear sign that therapy has removed some of my walls. Don’t exactly love the side effect but I accept it.
Year 6, Day 92: As a joke, I started listing my “good deeds” for the day in hopes of building up goodwill in the universe and had a weird amount of them today. I noticed some workers had locked themselves out and got the attention of their oblivious coworker. I gave strangers directions (the right ones, even, which is not usually my strong suit). I ran an errand for a friend. Donated a huge batch of points to help someone fleeing abuse. Someone else asked for a favor which is taking all week to figure out. I snapped a picture of a menu that strangers were struggling to read and let them zoom in on my phone.
Year 6, Day 95: I’ve been so full-on this week, I just read a headline that Cambodia is calling for a ceasefire. What?? I had no idea they’d been skirmishing with Thailand. We’re such a disaster here in the US, it’s almost hard to focus attention on anywhere else. Except Gaza. That’s always in the back of my consciousness.
July 21, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 84: I’ve become such a pillow hog. I want, depending on if I’m working or resting, 4-6 firmish fluffy pillows at a time. I’ve entered the stage of life where there is so much discomfort from pain, painsomnia, heartburn that strikes randomly, and sleep deprivation that I require ALL THE PILLOWS as recompense. I’m still searching for a good cushion of some sort that will properly support my neck and back when I have to work from bed. Currently the imperfect solution is a stack of 5 pillows but they eventually slide or squish down.
Year 6, Day 85: Nothing like realizing that in your haze of overworkedness and sleep deprivation, you’ve gone and written the giant check using the wrong checkbook so that giant check is being drawn on the account that doesn’t have that much money while the right account that has all that money is sitting RIGHT THERE. DAMMIT! I went through all the options and none of them were “the best one” so I picked the least troublesome one for the guy: writing him a fresh check from the right account today and then plan to beg fee forgiveness from the wrong bank account whenever they return the check as unpaid. Sigh. Call this the “dumbass / too tired to exist” tax. I knew I’d drop some balls because of how tired I’ve been but I didn’t think it’d be a five figure ball.
Year 6, Day 86: We have the good fortune of having basic dental insurance that covers two cleanings a year and we’re diligent about making sure everyone goes. I’ve finally completely shifted us to a relatively consistent Jan/Feb and June/July schedule which feels like a small victory. My attempts to keep all routine appointments out of the Sept-Dec period are a tiny step towards keeping that fall to winter period a little bit more sane. I enjoy my own time in the dentist’s chair, but miss coasting for months and months without having to think about yet another appointment.
Naturally my current task is trying to find a slot on the calendar to add a “dabbling in — lessons” this summer before they return to school. There’s a local place but we’ve been warned that the traffic and parking in that area is terrible and that’s off-putting. For being SoCal born and bred where terrible traffic and bad parking is so common, my tolerance for that is almost non-existent. We’ll see. I promised JB that we’d give it a shot to see if we like the place and the sport enough to put up with the inconveniences. No pun intended. No clue how we’d make that work during the school year but if we can fit in 2-3 lessons before school starts, that should be a good taste.
Year 6, Day 87: Here’s an exasperating thing. I’ve developed a scent aversion to my deodorant. Both Degree and Suave which have been totally fine and don’t irritate my skin. It’s just that suddenly, I cannot stand the smell. This is really quite annoying. I bought some Dove deodorants which smell better but don’t work half as well. Also annoying.
I’ve been utterly dislocated in space and time this summer. Everything that should be routine hasn’t been. My weeks of alone time for whole days – nope. Instead it’s been travel and work stuff and home maintenance and more. My brain has gone into a weird (self protective?) huddle where it never really knows where I am on a map. Even when I was just walking around SF which I’m reasonably familiar with, my brain refused to connect to anything as familiar. I might as well have been in the city for the first time.
Year 6, Day 88: I was feeling Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer in my bones, so I put that on, following by Journey’s Any Way You Want It. Wilson Phillips and Hold On was next, as I contemplated how many of my friends who keep getting into bad relationships could do with taking those lyrics to heart. Pat Benatar’s We Belong came up next in the rotation and my heart felt gripped in maudlin remembering.
Very longtime readers were around during a tumultuous period of life when my coworkers and I loved to play Pat Benatar but everything else in that office was pure hell. I carried the awful from that job for years, took me ages to shed most of the defensive mechanisms. Rcently a colleague from that time affirmed my recollection of the toxicity and evil. They were further along in their career back then and even they were horrified by the pure meanness that dominated that office. Grateful that’s so far in the rearview that it’s just the occasional momentary ICK that sets in thanks to sensory memories.
July 14, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 77: It’s backlog city at work, with pretty rough waters ahead. No one is loving this. Nor am I loving how many times the blog has been acting up this week. This is very annoying.
Also annoying: The house maintenance is still not done. We’re through 78% of the interior work and I’m so fed up, I don’t WANT to do the last 22%. It doesn’t have to be done right away, thank goodness, because that’s another $5000 and 2 weeks of disruption when we do get to it but *deepest disgruntled sigh* I am tired of living in drywall bits and dodging plastic covering. Can we please just have everything back to normal for a while?
Background listening: the Magnum PI reboot.
Higgins: Oh no, he looks angry.
Magnum: That’s just his face, isn’t it?
#ItMe
Year 6, Day 78: I’m stressed to my very marrow with deadlines, impossible KPIs, and … well. Need there be more? Oh yes, and working myself into the ground, late in the wee hours every night. I finally had to take a night “off”. It was off in the sense that I didn’t do actual productive work. It was not off in the sense of having turned off the stress meter.
I decided to combat stress with “stress”: Examining our tax spreadsheets closely to better understand each line of each Schedule. This sort of thing usually starts with frowning but over time as I pore over the instructions, it forces my brain to let go of the things I can do absolutely nothing more about and focus on learning something. This time: SALT. I didn’t realize that I’d been slowly mentally miscategorizing what actually falls under the SALT deduction and today’s close examination cleared that up. It’s comprised of the state and local taxes we pay (on our W2s), state and local real estate taxes, and state and local personal property taxes. The italics were necessary for my brain to actually absorb what specific taxes they’re talking about. Now I know where my car license registration deduction belongs (personal property tax)! I reorganized our spreadsheet to follow the exact order of Schedule A. Honestly it hasn’t really mattered since 2017, because of the $10,000 cap but if the cap has really changed to $40,000, then getting these numbers all right will matter this year.
I do still need to figure out which part of the property tax payments fall into the 2025 tax year because ours are split weirdly across years and it’s too late for my brain to take this information and do anything useful with it: “Only taxes paid in 2024 and assessed prior to 2025 can be deducted for 2024. State or local law determines whether and when a property tax is assessed, which is generally when the taxpayer becomes liable for the property tax imposed.”
Year 6, Day 79: HOOOOboy. 7 hours of meetings. What a crap day. I did manage (thanks to Costco readymade foods) to put dinner on the table in reasonably short order: scalloped potatoes, beef kebabs, sauteed green beans and broccoli. I was disappointed in this bag of green beans, though. We normally handpick every green bean from a local produce market but I was in a hurry at Costco and threw a bag of their prepackaged green beans into the cart. I should have noticed the condensation that was going to lead to bad beans.
I bought the last two items our Lakota sponsee requested recently. Once I send the shipping information, sadly, I’m going to end our sponsorship. The organization asks that we send packages 4-6 times a year and talk to the individual to build a relationship. I started off strong at first, sending packages every 4-6 weeks but, without judgment – this is purely observational – the sponsee’s communication is very sporadic. It’s tough under normal circumstances, it takes a lot of effort to get enough information to work with but it’s feeling impossible now. These past 24 months, my work has increased exponentially. I can barely manage to throw hot food on the table twice a day for the people I live with. Chasing down my sponsee to get more than a few words now and again takes time that I simply don’t have anymore. This also feels crappy because the point of a sponsorship is to build a relationship. I hate failing at that but I’ve already been failing them from this aspect. So rather than beating myself over the head with guilt for not being able to be five people at once, I’m going to need to step away.
Year 6, Day 80: I still hold close a daydream of a time when I’ll have the time, money, energy and stamina to ride horses again. It’s what I’m working towards every single time I do a few minutes of exercises. That, and the ability to heft a large dog over 55-60 lbs into the car. I can’t adopt a dog I can’t lift since I’m the primary dog caretaker. It’s my own personal rule, I hate being dependent on other people to care for my own, even if it’s PiC. Sometimes that’s just pure practicality, it’s easier for me to break away and take the dog to the vet than for him. He handles more of the kids back and forthing, I handle the dogs’. No idea when all the planets will align.
I found a local barn today and got overexcited considering all the lesson options they have. I know how to ride but my body has to do the slow and steady rebuilding of foundational rides again before I can even think about asking to jump. I miss it so much it hurts (but what doesn’t?) and I feel that urge to be cruel to myself for my body’s shortcomings. Now that I know what it is, it’s easier to redirect and not fall into the negativity spiral.
Anyway, barns made me think of boots and I went looking for work boots. Used to be, I could buy a work boot style for $20 at Payless and they’d last me several years, protecting my toes from mischievous hooves. Now, browsing Boot Barn, there’s nothing with a heel and steel/reinforced toe under $100 and ranging up to $250. I’m looking for something like this. I’d also need a helmet and comfortable riding pants, when the time comes.
Year 6, Day 81: Every day I end my day trying to remind myself that we can only do what we can do and I can only do so much. I’ve already wrecked myself twice this week trying to do more than my body can handle.
Some things are getting better at work but not enough and not fast enough, so it’s back to feeling like I can’t get enough done in any single, even 18 hour day, anymore. I don’t like this at all.
July 7, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 70: We’re scrambling to get everything financially important done today. I hate when month end, quarter end, and first half of the year all clang together like four sets of cymbals. Yes, like the seasonal time changes, this happens every year but like every year, this one feels like the worst.
I did, however, set a small record for myself in how many records I managed to approve/process within the business day. Self congratulatory pats.
Year 6, Day 71: My Synology photos app went off the rails and it’s taken 3 hours to figure out how to fix it. It kept claiming that there was no network connection. If there’s no network connection, how am I connecting to the Internet with every other app?? It wasn’t Synology itself, I can access that and upload/download files easily. It’s not Photos the program, PiC’s mobile connection using the iOS app was updating just fine. It’s just mine that’s being a jerk. Sigh. I hunted through article after article trying to find the fix but nothing posted in the past four years with similar keywords made sense. I finally tried logging out and logging back in. It’s the logical first troubleshooting step. But it wouldn’t let me log back in. 🤦🏻♀️ I had to change the password, reset the whole thing from the desktop app, change the password on the app and finally got access again. But it refused to update any of my pictures taken this week. Ugh.
Year 6, Day 72: I have this beautiful row of cucumber plants about 6-8 inches tall but none of them show any inclination to put out flowers of any kind. The one sugar snap pea plant that managed to grow at all, by contrast, is suddenly popping out flowers today. I count 8 flower clusters, and two of them are already shedding the petals as the wee tiny peas are starting to peek out. Exciting! The green bean plants have remained rather spindly so I was losing hope that they would make any beans but today I spotted the world’s tiniest green bean budding from the top of one of the plants.
I’ve checked the watering system and found a couple nozzles had fallen out of the planters so I’ve reset them so we’re not losing precious water to the ground.
Year 6, Day 73: I normally never order fish at a restaurant, aside from fish and chips. American restaurants generally over season or over-something-it like they’re trying to hide that they’re preparing fish, and all that effort takes away from the fundamental deliciousness of the fish itself. My one exception is made for Italian restaurants. They’ll serve a whole deboned fish that always lets the actual fish shine.
I still have happy memories of picking a whole fish to be roasted and deboned at the table in a small hole in the wall place in Florence two decades ago; I’m not so secretly always hoping to repeat that experience. We rarely eat out these days but I recently had the choice between a filet mignon or a whole branzino and jumped at the branzino. Scrumptious.
Year 6, Day 74: I had to rescue a friend, temporarily, from the airport. Their flight delays made me think they’re even more cursed than Nicole and Maggie! Two flights were delayed several times and finally cancelled and the third was delayed. It must have taken 42 hours end to end. I felt so bad for them. All I could do was bring them a snack and keep them company for a bit when it was safe for them to leave the airport. They apologized for messing up any July 4th plans we might have had but I assured them that this year in particular, there’s nothing to celebrate about Independence Day in America. I wish there were.
July 2, 2025
This Ask the grumpies: How much to put in a 529 redux has me kicking around numbers a bit.
We’ve saved maybe 1-2 years worth of undergrad at an expensive school per kid or maybe 4 years worth of undergrad at a lower priced state school. I frontloaded a large lump sum of savings for JB back when they were born.
When they were 2, thanks to a commonsense hipcheck from Nicole and Maggie, I switched to saving for retirement in a brokerage since I didn’t have a 401K and had missed a decade of retirement savings by that point. No tax benefits but the brokerage was the next best thing when the choice was between saving and not saving. I maxed out our Roth IRA for several years but stopped when cashflow tightened up. The thinking was that our incomes in retirement, and therefore our taxes, aren’t likely to be higher than our highest earning years – our tax rate now is probably higher now than it would be in retirement. But who knows! We can only make our best guesses and hope for the best.
I’ve been putting most cash gifts into the one 529. I also keep a separate savings account for cash for them both to be split equally as well, and have been debating when I split the one 529 into two. Maybe if I split it now when it’s reasonably even, it’ll reduce my math / accounting requirements later.
We’re in between the pole positions, financially. We’re not low income but we also couldn’t afford any $100k/year university.
We’re having some conversations with JB about the kinds of thinking they need to put into the decision of which school to go to, and it will need to extend beyond “bestie is going there”.
They asked about vocational schools like cooking school and about university like Stanford (their uncle is affiliated) and there are so many considerations for each of the things they suggested. We talked about each a little bit, and about how they also have to balance more practical considerations like the cost of the school and what kinds of jobs and salaries they could get after graduating from each of those schools. If they want to be able to pay their bills after school, they have to consider how much their loans would cost, if they spend more than they have in their 529.
They also need to consider what broad types of work could be fulfilling. I mentioned that job satisfaction can come from lots of things about the job. Not everything about a job will be fulfilling, it IS work after all, but if you have enough big/small things, that’s good enough.
They said: I know you get your job satisfaction from yelling at people who don’t do what they’re supposed to.
I had the impulse to argue but…. while that’s imprecise, it’s not wrong. I modified it to: I get the MOST satisfaction when people do as they’re told. But if they don’t do what they’re told, and I want to yell at them, I can. (Not my staff, I never yell at my staff, it’s external clients who suck. They lie a lot. So many lies. So much fraud.) I also get a lot of satisfaction from the act of getting things done. So the parts of my job where I can just get things done, those are good parts of my day. I also like setting policies and teaching other people to think critically about our policies and to make suggestions for better policies. I like it when people learn to do a good job. (I don’t like the act of teaching, I hate that part, but I like having taught and gotten the information imparted to the right people.)
They’re only ten so they have lots of time to mull things. At this point, I just want them to start developing a sense for what things bring them satisfaction and which things feel bad as they build up a profile of possibilities.
June 30, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 63: There’s one thing I hate about our neighborhood. Behind many houses, there’s an easement. Only some backyards actually have access to it. I don’t know if there’s any intentional planting, but I can tell that the birds have spread seeds from some neighbors’ fruit plants along with whatever was there to begin with. There are all KINDS of plants growing behind the fences and they keep coming through the fence and over the fence and *deep sigh* You know what? I paid a hell of a lot of money for a very low maintenance backyard suited to my health needs. Why do I still have to spend a full weekend day trimming back and ripping out the growth that’s not even mine several times a year?? A couple hours of actual work but that took the entire rest of the day and night (plus pain meds, plus a really hot shower, plus a nap, plus more pain meds) to recover. Adding insult to injury, this weekend I find that the deep dark forest behind our fence has put so much pressure on the fence that it’s snapped a board in half. Also, it’s creepy.
My other complaint is less about our specific neighborhood. JB’s summer camp this week requires me to take the twistiest, windiest roads, and I hate them so much. Twice a day, every day this week. Why did I do this to myself. This is probably the last, or next to last, year that JB can do the easy summer camp that PiC can do the dropoff and pickups for.
Year 6, Day 64: I didn’t realize this until I started commenting at Hawaii Planner‘s. I thought we were on 6 months with my trainer, and patting myself on my back for this longest record of consistently doing exercise every week since the fibro took over, ever. Even though I have over 40 weeks of records – that math simply didn’t work out in my head. It’s actually coming up on 11 months of consistently working out minus about 4 really bad weeks where I couldn’t do as much as half of my planned workout. It’ll be a year in August. Seeing as how all my previous attempts to work out in the past twenty+ years has ended up with me bedridden for weeks at a time, this is pretty cool.
I’m trying to get all our FSA claims in order and had to ask a pharmacy for a duplicate RX printout for a couple meds that were accidentally shredded in a moment of overzealous cleaning. They offered to fax them to me. I don’t have a fax number, folks, I’m just a normal person.
Year 6, Day 65: Every so often, even after I have eaten a balanced lunch, my glucose levels suddenly crash and it’s a frantic race to get sugar and protein into me before I collapse. This can happen when I’m at home or working at another site, and when I’m out of the house, it’s a real scramble if I didn’t bring snacks for the kids that I could eat. I finally bought a case of protein bars at Costco as an easy/lazy solution to getting caught without calories.
I loaded two bars in every bag I carry, feeling slightly silly about the whole thing. Since then, every single person except me has devoured one or more of those bars already. PiC scarfed one, SmolAc has had two, JB has had two. I’ve taken to carrying three with me at a time now so that there will still be one left for me. My own Devouring Horde.
This whole week has been unsettled. I’m preparing for a big deal work conference, training new people, trying to get my flood of work done, and we keep having people show up at the house with not a lot of warning to work on various bits and pieces. We need the work done and we have some advance notice but it’s still weirdly(?) disruptive having people show up at random times, coming and going, and having to oversee a little of it at least to make sure they’re doing what we asked for. I will be so relieved to have peace and quiet when this is over. I’m mildly annoyed we didn’t schedule this better – during the school year when I have little to no expectation of peace and quiet. I’m supposed to enjoy a few days of a few weeks of uninterrupted quiet!
We had three sets of tradespeople coming and going today and it was just too much. I need peace and quiet, and I need it now please.
Year 6, Day 66: As much as I complain about this week’s summer camp and the twisty windy roads, it IS a nice thing for my brain that I’ve finally mostly memorized the directions to a new place. I have trouble with my memory with the CFS and it’s reassuring when I can learn a new thing and keep it in the noggin.
This mental map won’t be particularly useful to me later, we’re unlikely to do this camp again because the low price tag was accompanied by a rather sad and unimaginative program where the camp managers would either send the kids outside to eat lunch and just “play outside” for 3+ hours at a time but not let them back inside when it was too cold, or send the kids to sit around bored for almost an hour before camp pickup time. I don’t object to kids sitting around bored in principle, but I do object to not providing any sports equipment for them to DO something with that time and energy otherwise why did we pay money for what I could do to them at home? Also it was meant to be a pool-focused program and the kids weren’t getting nearly enough pool time some days, nor did they follow through on activities they advertised.
Year 6, Day 67: TIL that swapping out oil for melted butter, adding an egg, and swapping out water for milk will vastly improve the result of a boxed cake mix! New knowledge brought to you by complaining on Bluesky that Betty Crocker cake mix just doesn’t do the trick for me these days. The cake always tastes like it’s missing something.
I’ve been spending the week glaring at the long list of reimbursements that were processed but still haven’t landed in our bank account. Come on! Land!