June 25, 2025
I’ve managed our finances since, hm, probably always?, definitely since 2010 as a balance between living moderately in the present and aggressively saving and investing to protect against a future recession and/or job loss. Having been through a year-long job loss in the Great Recession transformed my already cautious financial brain to a very conservative brain. I insist on roughly a year of full normal expenses in cash / equivalents. I don’t count on unemployment or severance.
We got a stress test of this recently. What a shot of cortisol.
Like many big companies, PiC’s employer did another sweeping layoff. He had reason to believe he was affected so he texted me immediately. On seeing the news, I cussed a blue streak. Then fretted about all the benefits we’ll lose:
– daycare. Before this year, a layoff would mean losing the subsidized daycare entirely. This year, we would be allowed to continue, but at market rate. At a guess, that’s $3300 a month full time. Could we afford that if we were down to one income?? Big question mark. SmolAc won’t start kindergarten until Fall 2026, we need daytime coverage for at least 12-14 months.
– healthcare. We have good relationships with our doctors and don’t want to change! We could get insurance through my work but I hate that provider and really don’t want to start all over with new doctors. My health is a complete mess to manage and our current GP likes and understands us, that’s hard to get. I also want to use our dental benefit for JB’s next set of orthodontia. We’d have to balance the cost of COBRA against the cost of a new provider.
– healthcare FSA. I’d really been appreciating having a second FSA. We spend more than $6000 annually on FSA-eligible healthcare (mostly mine) and I’d hate to lose that second account so soon.
– Ditto 401ks. We haven’t had 2 401ks for very long, I want to save as much in tax-advantaged accounts as we can to make up for 17 years of not having one.
As stress management, while waiting to hear the official news and information, I started a list of things to do before the layoff was final. I was hoping that we’d get at least 60 days notice before he lost his benefits: submit all remaining FSA claims, examining the house maintenance jobs to cancel, running through the list of things we keep (JB’s sports, SmolAc’s daycare if we could swing it for another 14 months), cancel or cut down on (therapy twice a month instead of once a week, pause the trainer).
A couple hours later, he told me with huge relief that the cuts came unbelievably close but they missed him this time. He’s been working double time for the past several months across multiple departments, a ton of pressure and stress, and that extra stuff could be what saved his job.
Moments of reflection: I am so glad that we tolerated very lean months this year to max out our 401ks. My original reason was I wanted to have that done in case I rage-quit my job sometime later in the year. I’m toughing it out because it’s a crap job market right now but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. A layoff is also a second great reason! (Also, in that case, no rage-quitting).
I didn’t like that we didn’t have a clear and complete set of priorities for what must be cut at specific time points and at what budget levels. I’ve started a fledging spreadsheet laying out non-absolute essentials (housing, insurance, foods, utilities) like my extra healthcare stuff and activities.
We learned that his company’s severance policy is generous: salary and benefits are determined by tenure. If that doesn’t change, we could have extra buffer. I won’t plan for it because that CAN change at any time but it’d be something to look out for that would measureably push out our panic mode point.
It generally feels like it’s only a matter of time. My job is likely safe for the rest of this year and probably through half or all of next year. I can’t/won’t bank on anything beyond that. For PiC: it remains a complete mystery if and when the axe could fall again and this time take him with it. We have done ok on our cash holdings but I would feel a lot better if our investments were more robust as a second line of defense.
June 23, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 56: It’s my first glorious summer day with both kids away at camp and daycare – fabulous delicious solitude and silence! It’s amazing. There were interruptions. The roofer unexpectedly dropped by. Gave myself 18 minutes to add Miracle-Gro to the garden before planting the basil plants I impulse-bought over the weekend. I even cooked dinner! A pork sirloin roast, scalloped potatoes (cheater style, the Costco premade potatoes which are super cheesy), and green beans with Penzey’s Justice seasoning. Even with half a day of meetings and all those interruptions, this day felt SO GOOD because of the alone time. It would have been better with dogs but the lack of humans in the house for the workday period is so critical to my mental health.
JB is reunited with their former daycare compatriots so they’re also loving that. It’s a bit sad though, the kids are aging out of that summer camp program so this may be their last year together.
Year 6, Day 57: It’s really time we replaced our meat thermometer. Yesterday’s roast was slightly overdone to my taste. Everyone else protested it was fine but I suspect they just felt bad I’d done all the dinner prep while they were out having fun.
We accidentally destroyed our meat thermometer two summers back and I’ve been cooking by guesswork since. Alas, that usually results in my overcooking meat a little by way of overcompensating because I worry about food poisoning. The IKEA lingonberry sauce made a very good addition to the pork, though, lucky we had that on hand.
There was a boatload of stress today, but we still limped over the finish line (dinner, bath, bedtime) somewhat worse for wear.
Year 6, Day 58: It’s been a wild week… month… 👀 Yes I’m going to have to limit this to the start of June. We had two electrical breakers blow so we couldn’t use parts of the house for several days. Thank goodness for the Yeti saving our bacon (literally, the bacon, eggs, and the rest of our food). We attempted to fix it ourselves but that was a no go because under the main panel’s door was a mess the likes of which I cannot adequately describe. Second “thank goodness”: we already needed a tradesperson out to fix several other long-standing problems and so we had them fix this too. Total cost: $25 at Home Depot because I impulse bought more plants and ??? for the tradespeople to fix the thing. We’ll have to return the supplies we didn’t end up needing ($85).
I spent half the day juggling the messages from the tradespeople to PiC and back because he couldn’t be here and needed to make decisions. I could make them but I didn’t want to. I care much much less than he does about the details, so if (when) I get the decision wrong, he’d have to live with the mistakes and I’d have to live with him. One key to a reasonable marriage? The person who cares most about the thing gets to make the decisions about the thing. I have opinions but they’re broader in scope, they’re never about the tiny details.
Year 6, Day 59: This is the first year we’ve all had Juneteenth off and it feels a little like a vacation day. A real one, not one where I have to plan and schedule and pack and pay and organize and whatever else before doing the day which turns out to be exhausting. Possibly also fun, but definitely exhausting. We also expect to have workers here for the whole day to get some maintenance done so my vague notions of going to the zoo or something went out the window before they took real form.
My very tired legs agree that’s for the best. I’d pushed myself to do a good chunk of my workouts earlier in the week and I’ve been feeling it every day since.
PiC even got to sleep in today, his belated Father’s Day gift. It was accidental, SmolAc got him up at 6, but when he fell back asleep SmolAc just carried on reading to themself until I went to the office.
Year 6, Day 60: Well, shoot. It’s a good thing that things shook out the way they did this week because after the tradesfolks started work, they found oh so much dryrot. That’s going to add to the estimate. O_O
June 16, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 49: Summer’s here and one parent friend is already sick of it. The kids are driving her up the wall with their drama; her dogs escaped the house and went on unauthorized walkabout; her pipes burst. I’m personally not looking forward to the work portions of summer, I’m back to working too late every night, or the bills for summer camp. But compared to this one friend, I’m doing pretty well. I’m hoping the rest of life stuff will be tolerable or manageable. I’ll take either one!
Smol Acrobat and I are feeling mildly under the weather though, that might be the stress and fatigue. They complain of a sore throat and my head hadn’t stopped aching all day no matter what I throw at it.
I did finally find cord locks that might work for SmolAc’s masks, fingers crossed.
Year 6, Day 50: We did our annual local pickup of the outerwear left behind and thankfully this year some enterprising individuals had already washed nearly everything by the time we turned up. Huge relief for me as the pickup only took about 30 minutes. I’d been bracing myself to do multiple runs this week to gather everything and wash it all while somehow still getting work done.
Back at home, I set up a temporary work station for JB. I was in charge of constructing taped up boxes, opening and hauling the giant bags. JB was in charge of stuffing the boxes full. They forgot to keep count so I only know we have four enormous boxes full of donated books and outerwear. We’ve got one half load to wash and pack up left.
Today was extra tough on that point, I had meeting after meeting after meeting which ate half my day. The donations ate a quarter of the day leaving me with very few hours to work so I squeezed some in waiting for JB to finish their activities and then logged many late night hours. Not fun.
Year 6, Day 51: My back twanged when I got up this morning, because apparently sleeping is an Olympic sport, and my left index finger tendon was strained. Just the one finger. No idea why.
Perfect timing for my free weights to arrive! They have been unpacked and relocated to their home for now.
The kids usually want scrambled eggs with cheese for breakfast (yes I feel a faint twinge of guilt for supporting Big Egg but that’s not a place where I can focus energy right now) so I generally oblige even though it’s not my favorite egg prep. Usually all versions get a “yum” of approval but today’s were so sublime, SmolAc had to stop eating and come to my office to specially say “thank you for the eggs, they were delicious!”
Year 6, Day 52: SmolAc’s daycare had a moving up ceremony for the kids going to their TK program in the fall. They were completely uninterested in it, examining their chair the entire time while other kids bounced in their seats or sang.
Father’s Day is this weekend and I have utterly dropped the ball on that – AUGH. I assigned a craft to JB to do while I assigned the photo printing part to me. It would be great if the Walgreens photo site actually worked, ahem! CVS is too far out of my way to squeeze in a run there before Sunday. Especially since my pain decided to spike today. Maybe JB’s got the right idea to start planning for their next birthday the day after their last one. That’s what I should do for these holidays that happen every single year. O_O
Year 6, Day 53: The final quotes aren’t in yet but we’re looking at a ballpark of $30k+ on repairs between the roof and the maintenance that’s piled up in the last eightish years. Plus another $$$$? for the painting that we’ve procrastinated on this entire time. I’ve got about $24k set aside for this purpose so we’re going to have to make a few adjustments to close that gap.
Now that I’m in the neighborhood of 6 months with a trainer and not quitting, I’ve proven to Financial Me that I’m taking this seriously enough that it’s ok to spend money on equipment. I am excited (emotionally) to use the new hand weights and resistance bands I finally bought but physically I’m about to become one with the floor so actual use will be exciting next week.
June 9, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 42: I’ve got an executive level meeting invite for a 3 hour meeting this month that requires 14-16 hours of travel. That doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not a key contributor at this level. I’m very much inclined to skip it since the timing is absolutely terrible for our family. It’s during the one week that I have JB signed up for a camp that requires me to drop off and pick up, it’s right before an exceptionally busy week, it’s right after we onboard another new hire. We cannot have me gallivanting all over the place when my team and my family both need me to be fully present.
In personal news, the whole ICE situation is overwhelming and frustrating. Details have been sparse and unclear. I’m getting information second- and third-hand and can’t be sure that all the information is accurate. Right now it seems like ICE is hopscotching him from state to state without any notifications to the family or letting him call home. I suspect this is intentional to stay ahead of any court orders that his lawyer might be able to file. His lawyer doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough to catch up. I’m not judging the lawyer, I have no idea what’s needed to get motions filed.
I had really hoped that I could at least leave the legal stuff (filings and advice) to the lawyer. The underage child keeps texting me asking for advice that should be directed to the lawyer, IMO. I’ve been pretty clear that I am learning as we go as well and that my only expertise here is in communications. But that only works if I can get information and a lot of the time I’m working with a quarter deck.
Year 6, Day 43: ICE situation: It’s been like pulling teeth to get any of the adults in the family to respond to me or to take actions the past few days. And when they do take actions, they often don’t update me so I have no clue where we are on anything. They were originally responsive but have defaulted to directing everyone to me even when that’s not practical.
I composed termination notices to their scammy lawyers for them to send but they didn’t send it because “we thought you were going to”. Well, no, I cannot cancel contracts on your behalf. So then they finally follow directions to contact the scammy lawyers and panic when the scammy lawyers call them back. “No I won’t talk to you, you go call Revanche.” But I’m not available …. ! We set them up with the press, I got a local reporter interested in doing an exclusive with the family, but they needed to decide who would talk to him. We got them in contact with our Senators’ offices caseworkers, they needed to sign releases to let those staffers get to work.
I’m not family, so I have no standing to be making unilateral decisions for them. Even though I was orchestrating everything for them, I need information and input from them before I can make an informed decision. But I have to ask questions multiple times and the only person responding to me is friend’s underage child. And when they do reply, it’s incomplete or lacks comprehension. I see that they are leaning on me to do what their remaining parent isn’t: making decisions, making judgement calls, figuring out how to bring their missing parent back. I’m not angry or resentful. I’m just recognizing what an impossible position I’m in. I offered them my time and energy in fighting this terrible situation but I always want to be respectful of their autonomy and their right to make the necessary decisions. Unfortunately, and I do understand – there’s a language barrier and likely a legitimate fear of ICE coming after them too, it feels like they’re hoping that I will do everything on their behalf. It’s just that I can’t.
Year 6, Day 44: ICE situation: It looks like we’ve lost this fight. He’s no longer in the ICE database and the family is telling me that he’s now in his home country where he is not safe. I don’t know what else we can do. Once they’ve gotten him out of the USA, they can bar him from reentry for years. I am honestly at a loss. And his kid is distraught, of course. He was their primary breadwinner so this is devastating for him and them both. I knew we faced some really long odds but, still, the final reality is like a cold lump in my stomach. It’s even more disheartening that this is the reality for so many people, regardless of their actual status. The legal retainers have cost them at least $4000, unless they were able to get some of the scammy lawyer’s retainer back, and that was a tough stretch. Even more so now that it looks like he won’t be able to resume working here.
Talking about this with my friends who are also children of immigrants, we feel such shame and indignity and fury at the attitudes that have led us here, particularly from other immigrants. We can just about understand white supremacists, but refugees / immigrants supporting this BS? After they benefited from whatever policies allowed them to come here? Slamming the door in the faces of people who have the same needs that they once faced? That’s hypocrisy and selfishness to the highest degree. It’s shameful. And maybe it’s not guilt precisely that I feel when I reflect on my/our failing to save him from deportation over an administrative error that could have easily been corrected if he had a little more access to his rights and to bilingual assistance; maybe this is survivor’s guilt that it could have been us and it was him and his family. I hate this so much. We’re gathering money to assist the family through this rough patch while they try to navigate their new reality.
There’s going to be a whole lot of hypernormalization going on as we have to keep living our lives knowing this is happening to many families. I’ll be donating money to the local community organization that did help, and looking into sharing the ICE related materials from the Rapid Response network.
Year 6, Day 45: We’ve been cramming our necessities into two 2009-era carry-on suitcases. Carry on size-limits have changed since, I’m sure. I looked up the capacity of carry on bags and it’s somewhere between 37-47L. We’ve needed more and/or larger luggage for years as the kids got older but I handwaved it because dropping diapers would open up space. It’s true we don’t have to pack diapers anymore but nevertheless both suitcases are stuffed to the brim when we have to travel for more than 3 days. If we pick up odds and ends while traveling, even expanded it’s not possible to fit everything into the cases anymore.
We have to visit family later this summer and I finally remembered the suitcase situation in time. Macy’s had a sale on my preferred brand, Victorinox with the lifetime guarantee including wear and tear, so I ordered a large suitcase and an attachable tote. The current cases are maybe 50L? capacity. The large case is twice the capacity at about 102L and the tote gives us another 47L. This should finally be enough space to keep everything in the suitcases instead of needing 16 extra tote bags hanging off our arms and suitcase handles. Fingers crossed that packing inflation doesn’t happen. Though I sort of want to start occasionally carrying our own towels because it turns out that I’m fussy about the smell of other people’s towels.
Year 6, Day 46: The rate at which these kids are plowing through my first aid kit’s bandaids this week is much higher than usual. JB with the giant bandage needs, SmolAc with the many small bandage needs. They’re both a LOT more accident prone than usual this week.
I’m mildly annoyed that I keep getting these emails: “Great news! You are pre-qualified for a generator or battery rebate. Prepare for outages, including Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS), with a $300* rebate on the purchase of a qualified generator or battery.”
But we are never eligible! They have our address, they should be able to easily tell if we are truly qualified, and yet they keep wasting my time telling me we’re pre-qualified for a thing we aren’t eligible for. And like a rube, I always go check. Of course, I would love to be eligible for a rebate on something I already want to buy for our disaster prep, but I’m just as glad not to be in a high enough threat area as required to be eligible.
We’re hosting a longtime friend this weekend and we’re all going to be so glad to see them. They are wonderful with the kids and so the kids will hog them as much as humanly possible. It’ll be a miracle if we get any actual adult time to hang out and catch up so we’re just going to plan to feed them well and thank them for being awesome. It’s been one hell of a week.
June 2, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 35: How many times did I have to remind myself that it was Monday? So many. On the one hand, holiday. On the other hand, much needed day to deal with this truckload of absolute WTFery that landed at my doorstep Sunday. Someone we met several years ago was snatched by ICE and the family’s been at their wit’s end not knowing what to do. They’ve tried retaining lawyers and the first one just gave up and the second one was scammy and useless. I’ve known of the family but they’ve not had any occasion to be familiar with us before yesterday when I heard the news and immediately asked more knowledgeable people for a bit of advice. It’s been a whirlwind of work since: talking to various family members trying to reach a bilingual adult who could answer questions and give me enough information to reach out for help.
Yesterday’s focus was on getting in touch with elected officials’ staffers and getting sufficient information from the family to work with. I was up til midnight on calls and collating information from those calls.
Today’s focus was running down every possible lead for a new lawyer, looking for community org support in dumping the scammy lawyer, and scanning in their paperwork so they have electronic copies. I’ve worked out an agreement with the family that I’d write all the emails, they will do the follow-up phone calls.
We’ve sent out dozens of requests for legal assistance in hopes that one of these sources might have capacity to help.
I feel like a jerk for struggling to feel hope. There are just too many bad things happening in this area right now for me to feel like any of these efforts will pay off. We have to try but knowing that a raft of CA immigration judges were fired as recently as last month and knowing from our House rep’s staffer that ICE frequently deports instead of responding to information requests from Members of Congress, it’s hard to feel like any of these will pan out.
Year 6, Day 36: I spent half the day corresponding with MoC staffers and fielding the email replies from the people we contacted. One person was actually helpful.
We’re combing the area for lawyers, the ones that the local Rapid Response team recommended aren’t answering their phones or if they do answer, they’re too busy to help. The local immigration activist org helped a little. They looked at documents and gave us some basic assessment advice but they’re too overloaded to help. One of the three local attorneys recommended by the Rapid Response team had someone answering phones, everyone else’s numbers just went to voicemail, and I did an intake with them for the family. Then we got a response from a highly recommended firm, that one seemed very promising and we set up an appointment for tomorrow. The local attorney finally got back to us – they’re too busy to take the case. Figures. It’s a hellscape. We’re all on tenterhooks.
Year 6, Day 37: Our neighbor is currently obsessed with the Cascadia Subduction Zone. She’s not concerned for herself, she’s worried for her next two generations. I’ve known and worried about this myself but to the point of buying earthquake insurance, not to the point where she is now: she’s pushing her adult children to sell their homes and move somewhere out of the subduction zone. Hawaii will sink! Alaska will too! We need to MOVE before it happens!
I get it. The worst case scenario is really bad. But we have no idea when this might hit and the impossibility of getting a timeline makes that uprooting feel almost unreasonable. They have jobs, multiple kids thriving in different schools, all involved in their various activities. They’d have to start all over if they were to pick up and leave. I’m not arguing with her, I just see that it’s really hard to justify that level of change in the face of a possible terrible natural disaster someday. I don’t doubt that it’s likely coming, we just have no idea when it’s happening.
I got curious and I found a recent study – it must be the press from this that has her in a lather, she hit all the highlights of this study when describing the potential of the disaster.
Year 6, Day 38: We got to the point of having a real lawyer to retain and the ICE pulled a fast one. He was moved in the middle of the night without warning, and without telling notification to his kin where he’s being sent. None of the ICE detention center or field office phone numbers are in service. The locator site is vague and has no information. I’ve been at a loss for what else to do. I keep wishing I’d known about this last week thinking, look at what we’ve been able to muster in 4 days, two of which were weekend/holidays. If we had known when he’d been detained, we could have done more, faster. We were so close.
Eventually it occurred to me that this timing was suspicious. He had an appointment at the detention center with a scammy lawyer that was just there to bilk the family on Friday. We scrambled to get a legit lawyer in place before Friday so they could see him instead. What if they always would have done this? What if it only took this long for them to deport because they knew he didn’t have competent legal counsel in place, they only shipped him out now because his legal representation was supposed to show up. My reddit savvy friend said that’s very likely, they’re seeing this trend reported. And we know their flagrant disregard for due process. People who are legitimately following all the rules and showing up to immigration court are being grabbed from the courts even if they’ve had successful hearings. There is a complete disregard for anyone’s rights.
Now we’re pressing the Congressional staffers to help us find out what happened to him. Where is he??
Year 6, Day 39: I had such a good week and a half without scheduled meetings so of course they all hit all at once. Everyone needed me for a call for big and small reasons and I was scrambling from one call to the next. I didn’t manage to escape the vortex for several hours. Woof.
On the bright side, I have been going through old pictures, tagging a specific set, and remembering some good dog memories. It hurts but it’s also joy. I miss these dogs so much. They were such an integral part of the family. It feels like we have multiple dog shaped holes in our lives everywhere we go.
Frustratingly corporate is still holding up my raise. It’s taking so long I’m starting to think I should just go job-hunting to show that my salary is indeed deeply below market and I have other options. Exceeepptt it’s possible the current economy is such that I don’t have other good options. There were some earlier in the year but now? After all the federal cuts? After all the federal grants pulled across a whole lot of Bay Area specific industries? Our friends here last weekend told us they’ve got friends who have now been out of work for a year and counting, and corporate cuts are continuing to impact their circles. The Microsoft layoff was a huge one – 6000 people. Hawaii Planner has been going through the wringer, interviewing. Maybe being patient and exasperated continues to be the better bet.
I find it offensive that articles refer to these layoffs as “trims fat” btw. What the hell is wrong with y’all? Cutting people because you let crappy AI take over their jobs isn’t trimming fat. Also I’m so sick of the AI race. It’s brought nothing but garbage, fraud, more fraud, and more work for my company with zero gain. The corporation has handed down an edict that we use their crap AI tool because that’s supposed to benefit the company by 15% but it’s certified crap – it never gives the right information and it never identifies the sources of the bad information. So if you’re credulous enough to ask it for factual information and don’t fact check, you get the wrong answer every single time. The only thing worse than my sense of direction!
Sigh. Lots of ups and downs this week but mostly downs. I would really appreciate a shift in the winds.
EDIT TO ADD: I tried to answer N&M’s comment but the WordPress app is acting up. I would have to set up the GFM for fundraising and I don’t have time or bandwidth to manage that right now so if anyone would like to help out, we can use my Lakota links with the note “For Jose” for now:
Venmao: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
May 26, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 28: Last week sucked, and then the weekend was completely draining too but for different reasons. I accidentally set off a PEM crash with my workout Friday night so I woke up in pain and feeling really sick on Saturday. We had plans on Saturday! hate so muchWe weArgh. re taking a couple friends out to an outdoor event for their birthday and there was a chance of petting livestock. I really didn’t want to miss it but it wouldn’t have been responsible of me to go if I was as sick virally as I felt. Thankfully, by noon I could tell that this was all pain-generated ick. Safe to go! Of course while that adventure was fun, it was also a bit of a lot. I was as wrung out by the end of Saturday as at the start. To make matters worse, SmolAc was sick and was complaining of leg pain that was so bad that half their body would tense up like a stiff board when the pain hit. Every 3-5 minutes. I massaged their legs every few minutes until 4 am so they could sleep. Naturally they woke up fresh as a daisy and I was wrecked.
Year 6, Day 29: We were meant to see a heat wave this week in Northern California. Our little pocket rarely gets the full predicted temps so at best I’m hoping to get a 10 degree bump for a couple days. When we get as many as 2 warm days, it’s enough to get some seeds to germinate or seedlings to grow a tiny bit more. So far the few warm days we’ve had have coaxed the green beans and a couple cucumber seedlings out at a time. I planted another round of green bean seeds with the potatoes and hope more sugar snap peas might make an appearance later in the summer. They did last year and what a fun yield we had for 3-4 weeks before powdery mildew shut us down.
In organizational news, I’ve been working on filling in spreadsheets with all clothing purchases for myself and the kids, electronics, and some common consumables so I can track how much I paid (and how long the clothes last and their care instructions when the tags are faded). Not everything will be in there, I’m not trying to make this a huge time sink, but whatever I can easily reference online will go in there. It’s just good to have a quick reference.
Year 6, Day 30: The last of our COVID boosters are scheduled this week for all of us ahead of summer crowds, travel, and infectious waves. It continues to feel very weird to be getting boosters for travel, logging air miles from credit card bonuses, and processing refunds for returns while ALSO staring down an existential crisis with our democratic republic under attack and our human rights being eroded every day.
We’ve left public comment on this issue of the FDA deciding unilaterally to reduce access to COVID vaccines, it’s so infuriating. If people don’t want them that’s on them, it’s despicable to limit it for the rest of us who do want that level of protection.
I got my own booster this week and am mildly annoyed that the vaccination clinic is always so balky about it when we have doctor’s orders in the system. Quite sure that our PCP is the one most qualified to say what we should get between the GP and the injection clinic.
I’m worried we won’t get an updated vaccine approved and recommended in the fall for the newest variants. I’m worried about symptoms I already have becoming much worse if I catch it. The brain fog isn’t the same thick fog these days as much as it used to be, it’s more frequently like cookie cutter chomps out of my brain where words I know simply don’t exist anymore.
Year 6, Day 31: I couldn’t get away from work early enough to make it to a family event at SmolAc’s daycare this afternoon but did stop in time to cook dinner from scratch.
I threw together rigatoni carbonara with pan fried broccoli using Penzey’s roasted garlic and Penzey’s Justice seasoning instead of pepper and pepper flakes, and using my precious hoarded Zingerman’s Nueske Applewood smoked bacon. We had cracked black pepper and more grated Parmesan for topping the pasta at the table. It’s a simple meal but awfully good with the right ingredients. I took extra time cooking the bacon to render a lot of the fat and drained it to give the remaining bacon extra crispy edges. This is a very thick cut Bacon so it doesn’t crisp the same way as thin bacon does but it holds up really well for this recipe. I didn’t pay $22/lb. I stocked up when it was last on sale at $12/lb. That’s still pricy enough that I ration it and in between times it stays hidden in the foil bag it shipped in 😆
Year 6, Day 32: Argh. Everyone’s job (at least around my level) got a lot bigger this year and none of us are coping with it super smoothly. We’re managing, but everyone has a week, or an issue, or a department that we hate so much for making our lives so much harder and some days, it’s harder to be at peace with it than others.
Semi-professional wardrobe woes: I hate the current trend of puff sleeves, had to search hours for less offensively puffy sleeves. I had missed the two-week return window on several pairs of pants from Aritzia. ARGH. Two weeks! It was my fault, I had recorded the return rules but I felt terrible one weekend and then was too tired the next weekend to remember. Thankfully the CSR helped me with an exchange so that I could get a full refund and try a different line. The new line arrived today and nope. High rise pants make me look and feel like an overstuffed sausage. So those go back too which should conclude this round of professional wardrobing roulette. That leaves me with two pairs of jeans plus a belt, two pairs of trousers I’ll have to hem carefully for length, and four blouses. That should do for the next year and change. Please be it.
Not professional: I wear my Svaha skirts every summer but only the two twirl skirts (2020 and 2022) fit now. The midi skirt and 3 fit-and-flare dresses (from 2020 and 2018) are too small for me which stinks, I really liked them. I can’t decide if I should sell, donate or keep them for JB. For now, I wanted two more skirts in the rotation. While I don’t love the waistbands that I could see, I really loved the designs, and they tout giant pockets (a must) so I’ve splurged on a few skirts from Maya Kern‘s latest release to try. I hope they’re great quality and look as nice in person as they seem to be online.
May 19, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 21: What a day (negative). I dislike most of the new people I’ve worked with for the past 18 months, they are so incompetent and make my life so much more complicated than it needs to be. Today’s confidential news was like a gut punch: Someone I actually like working with is scheduled to be laid off. I hate this so much. Within this new and larger structure, my voice is not valued or respected at more than one level above me so I can’t do anything other than be angry. So! many! incompetent people all around us so of course this one actually competent person gets laid off. 🤬 I made it a point to give positive feedback about them in case it did make some secret sort of difference. I doubt it will but I had to do something. In other enraging work matters, upper management seems to think it’s ok to handwave clear violations of labor law and expect I’ll just go along with it. Newsflash, I won’t. I will never be that person. So I fought an uphill battle about that as well. More reasons for them to hate me but I won this round for my people. It doesn’t feel like a victory, though. Even though eventually someone had to admit they were wrong and apologize (not to me, though, couldn’t possibly apologize to the person who caught your department-wide mistakes) for the royal fork-up, I’m furious that I had to fight the fight in the first place.
This all feels like a flipping exhausting, completely unnecessary, exercise. It sent me spite job hunting. Sadly I’m still not seeing anything I especially want to do instead. If only we had retirement money. I would like to be secretly retired. I could handle all the usual kid stuff that I do, garden, continue with doing my Helping People work. Sigh.
Year 6, Day 22: Week 40 of working out with a trainer remotely. Sometimes I feel a little stronger. Most of the time I feel like I’m struggling to make progress. He keeps inching up the workouts every week, one way or another, that’s what he’s supposed to do, but that confuses my sense of progress because I only focus on how I feel doing today’s workout. More often than not I feel like noodle arms or weak. I noticed that my arms are probably (can’t say for sure, I haven’t measured for actual data) bigger because the sleeves of tees that fit fine last year feels too tight this year. Maybe I should measure for actual data. Part of me remains in denial about my changing body shape because I love my Fat Rabbit Farm tees, they don’t make these three designs anymore, and I don’t want to give them up.
Year 6, Day 23: ’tis a rough morning when I’m the first one awake, much later than we should be. I was up working til midnight last night, everyone else was long asleep by the time I called it quits so I thought they got good rest but we’re all running a bit ragged today.
I visited the garden for a moment of peace and maybe a reset. Out of 10 seeds, the green beans are doing the most. 5 out of 7 have a healthy start with leaves! 2 are trying their best (mood). 3 never germinated (also mood). Of the 10 cucumbers, 4 germinated and they’ve not been doing more than peeking a pair of tiny leaves above ground. I encourage them but won’t get my hopes up. Of the 6 sugar snap peas I planted, only 1 germinated and is doing a fine job of making a bundle of little leaves. Sometime this weekend I need to fix part of the auto watering setup and run it to make sure it works.
Year 6, Day 24: My personal policy is never to open the door to unexpected visitors because they’re either evangelicals or scammers. I don’t hold with being evangelized at by any religion or scammed TYVM. Unfortunately, PiC was home when someone came by and learned the hard way about my firm policy. They asked for times he’d be home and his phone number to schedule a visit. Personally I don’t think there’s any reason any legit company would be sending people door to door without business cards or having contacted us through official means so I was even more skeptical than usual. I did a few searches and asked if they said anything about an energy bill. Yep, they said they’d be coming to “review your energy bill” for savings related to the “IRA”. And there’s the scam. They’ll steal our account number and transfer our account without our authorization and rack up charges.
It was an object lesson for dinner: scammers can get anyone. They come at inconvenient times, they get you when you’re distracted, they pressure you to give personal information face to face which can be socially uncomfortable to refuse. They do this because their tactics are effective. If they can get you off guard, you’ll make mistakes that they can exploit. That can happen to anyone sufficiently distracted.
Year 6, Day 25: It’s daddy long legs season. Every year, there’s a point in the year when they are out in abundance and keep swarming our front door trying to get in. I don’t know why they want in so badly but it gets tiresome catching and releasing them. We’ve evicted four of them already.
It’s ALSO the time of year when I’m scheduling meetings 2-5 weeks out and having to shake myself when it crosses over into summer: Oh! I don’t have regular school pick up that day. What DO I have? The summer schedule (with camp, without camp, with travel, without travel) might just break my brain.
I was very frustrated this weekend when I took my 8P jeans for a test wear. It’s the right size and fits at all points. Until I start walking around. Then they kept slipping. Argh! The mental load of this week has been such that it wasn’t until today that I realized I don’t have to return them and start shopping again. There’s this thing called a belt! It helps keep pants up! They’re not purely decorative! So I’ll be trying on some belts next week. It’s a pity how little processing power I had this week for common sense problems.
Murderbot is out on AppleTV and to my great disappointment, it does indeed require a subscription. I suspected as much but hadn’t ever had enough interest to see for myself. I can do a free 7day trial. Maybe I wait til all the episodes are out and then binge them in a week.