August 28, 2024
At a get together earlier this year, I commented that I was so impressed with our acquaintances’ willingness to uproot and move to try new things, even with kids. (I don’t want to leave my nice little hobbit hole for anything unless I absolutely must. Once kids and dogs are in the picture, things get infinitely more complicated.) Their mom grinned and leaned in close: that’s because what they didn’t tell you was we had to come and pick up the kids and drive them separately for the week they were moving.
That has stuck with me. I never account for the “invisible” (to outsiders) help because it is still something that never occurs to me. It’s a normal thing to have where people are close (physically and emotionally) to family or are well off enough to afford to pay for help. How many times have Nicole and Maggie reminded me that the daycare parents creating elaborate gift bags and throwing over the top parties quite likely have both? (many many)
I think about our younger friends who now have three kids and still travel and coach sports teams: how do they manage, I wonder. Oh, right, they have two parents next door who are always willing and able to take the kids. Or our neighbors who live with their parents and their brood have activities scheduled every day of the week. Even when I know they have help, it’s still not a thing I can wrap my brain around.
We discussed this in therapy recently. It struck me the other day that perhaps the reason my gut says I don’t have people or that I won’t ask for help for myself even in the worst circumstances, like when I was choking, is that it’s been so ingrained in me that I’m on my own. For half my childhood, I was a latchkey kid. I walked everywhere. If it wasn’t walkable, I didn’t go. That could just be learning regular independence, I don’t know. For 20+ years from 17 on, I was laboring under the heaviest burdens and didn’t think anyone in the family knew. But in the recent years after the estrangement, I learned that quite a few extended family members knew and they were on my side. Learning that they felt I was right was healing. But over time it’s been sinking in that for two decades and more, I was breaking myself, alone and ignored, to support my family while my dad was lying and stealing from me. That whole time, many of my family were aware and not one of them said a word to me. They spoke up for me to him if they could but not a word to me. I understand why intellectually, cultural constraints and maybe not knowing what to say etc, but I didn’t understand until last week how much that silence hurt. How much it has only reinforced my refusal to ask for help. Because if they knew how hard I worked and some of how much it hurt, my fibromyalgia was undiagnosed most of that time, and couldn’t be bothered to even say anything to me, well. I was definitely on my own. That’s entirely aside from the questions of self worth and having to prove myself which also complicates things. Or maybe it’s actually the same coin. I had no self worth because none of my extraordinary efforts were even distantly acknowledged by the adults I trusted in my life, aside from my mom whose health was so destroyed that she couldn’t do anything but feel terrible for me.
I’ll ask for help for my family. I’ll ask friends to care for the dogs or trusted loved ones to care for the kids. But for me? Nope.
I realize intellectually that I do have people now but my feral child-self snarls that I’m on my own and do not trust anyone to show up for me because they won’t. And even if they’re around now, they’ll all abandon me in the end. Case in point, the two very long time friends dropped me like a hot potato in the past 2 years. The first one, I don’t know why. The second one, I guess I don’t know why there either.
We talked for a long time about how this survival mechanism was set in stone over the course of my lifetime and I can’t expect to undo it in just a few years. I know part of me is afraid that undoing it is a terrible idea, that operating alone is the only way to be sure that you’re not let down. Part of me said, huh, you know this is the far less dramatic version of the Kate Daniels character arc: from “you have to be strong and alone” to learning to build connections and community and a family and trusting friends to have your back. When I’m reading, I know that’s the right thing to do, to progress, but IRL that hurt feral inner child is still snarling with fear and self protectiveness. I don’t really know how to tell it that it will be ok because I’m not sure it would be. Mostly this is an emotional fear but logically, who would be willing and able to help me if I needed it, aside from PiC? I can’t really name anyone. Everyone has their own lives and their own challenges and no one would or could drop those things to come help me out. Of course I also can’t think of any examples of anything less than catastrophe where I’d feel willing to ask either. Anything less than that is asking for too much.
My therapist reminded me: what would I say to JB? I know what I’m supposed to say but the words stick in my throat. It feels like a lie to say that we’ll always be here. We might not be. We set up concentric circles of safety nets around them, socially and legally, in case we die when they’re young but I look at this world and think, it’s not enough. I can’t be sure they’re going to be ok. I know that our people will show up for them in small ways, they do now, but things change. And what’s true for them isn’t as true for me.
Anyway. I’m picking at this like it’s a half healed scab. I’m not sure what the therapy equivalent of rebreaking the bones to let it heal properly is for this sort of fear but I’m still trying to find a way to be able to believe that trust is possible and not foolish.
May 14, 2024
I have been cycling through ALL the phases of grief. My best coworker is gone. (Seamus was my supervisor: he had clear expectations of when I would start and stop work, and he would enforce them.) Sera would come to work with me when she was ready, sleep nearby, we’d go for walks, and come back to work after. We hung out all day long, in the quiet and in the bedlam when the kids were home.
When we first brought Sera home, the only being who truly existed for her was Seamus. It was love at first sight until the day he died. She coexisted with us humans but she was still too scared, scarred, or resistant to bond with us. She wasn’t ready. She was responsive to training over time for basic commands, but it was the work of years, not days, to bring her personality out of her fear and trauma-hardened shell. It was beyond hard, day to day progress was almost impossible to discern. We sought the advice of trainers after a couple scary incidents, and kept working at it. A friend helped us find a dogsitter that was experienced with reactive dogs, those vacations helped her meet and relax with friendly dogs. That wore away the edges of her trauma further.
Regardless of the trauma and fear, she was always ever-patient with the kids, only retreating to hide behind my legs when they were bickering or screeching loudly. (She never could tell when it was happy screeching or upset screeching. It’s ok, Sera, I couldn’t either.) The kids were scarily loud but she clearly never felt threatened by them the way she did with other dogs. The kids could lay next to her, lean on her, petting her nose, or her paws, or her tail (never her favorite bits to be petted) without any twitching. But she was always allowed to walk away, she was never cornered, and she would when she was over it.
Towards the end, when she’d refuse the medicine rolled in a pill pocket from me, she’d take it from Smol Acrobat a few times. She learned to trust them and even maybe enjoy their company a bit. If they left the house without her, she’d stand by the door, or sit by it, worrying there quietly until they came home or I called her away. I noticed she certainly didn’t do the same for me, when I went to run errands and returned, she’d always be curled up asleep on her bed. I wasn’t miffed. (Maybe a little, what am I? Chopped liver?)
We had finally started seeing the fruits of our training on walks in the past year. When she’d look across the street and see a dog she didn’t know, instead of lunging, growling, or barking, she’d look at me for a treat instead of reacting. I was so proud of her when she met a neighbor puppy and she just treated it like an annoying child of a dog. She appropriately disciplined the overeager pup with a lot of loud growling, but zero malice and zero fear. The moment the puppy submitted, and stopped ramming her like a freight train, she stood back calmly like nothing had ever happened. It was like a little miracle. I was even more proud of her when she spotted a dog that HAD aggressed her, out of fear, on meeting, and she just looked at me for a treat. They had history but she was still ok with seeing the dog pass by without reacting.
Several months ago, she stuck with me, following me from room to room wherever I went, every time I went in and out. It got so that I minimized my movements after a certain time. Bath and bed meant getting settled in bed for good, or else she would heave herself to her weary feet and come with me, slightly accusing: “Why did we have to get up again?”
I’d gotten in the habit of narrating the events of the day to her: “It’s ok, Sera, I’m just going to pick up JB right now. You can stay in here if you want.” “Time for walkies, Sera!” “It’s ok, Sera, I’m just dropping off Smol Acrobat, I’ll be back in an hour.” “It’s ok, Sera, we’re all going to hit the road together, no one’s leaving without you.” “We’re off to JB’s class, Sera, we’ll see you in about an hour.” Every day, I catch myself starting to tell her where I’m going or reaching over to pet her, or apologizing for yelling at my computer. She didn’t like that any more than Seamus did. Even the kids were attuned to our habits. Two weeks ago, I was putting on my coat, and Smol Acrobat innocently asked, “Are you taking Sewa for a walk?” I wish, kiddo.
She had her favorite sleeping spots to rotate through during the day, but at dinner, she laid by my feet. Occasionally she’d squeeze under my chair to lay under the table where other people could pet her with their toes but usually, she was just off to my right.
She even had friends of her own! The owners of the neighbor puppy adored her, she helped their pup learn some manners. Smol Acrobat’s little friend who was afraid of dogs loved her. They named their plushie after her, saying he wanted a dog just like her. Seamus was so well-loved and I had wanted that for her, too.
Then this year, she fell ill. I spent nearly every waking moment caring for her: six walks a day, 5 home-cooked meals a day, medications twice a day, bloodwork every two weeks, desperately trying to get through the worst of it and into remission. Most dogs die in the first two months of diagnosis. When we crossed the three month mark, and then approached the four month mark, I started to hope. I started to think maybe we had a shot. But we didn’t. The disease progressed too far too quickly.
Unlike with our other beloved pets, with Doggle who died suddenly, with Seamus who declined incrementally over weeks and months, this was clear-cut after a trip to the ER showed bloodwork that took away the last bit of hope. As painful as that last week was, we were able to do all the last things. Take all the last pictures, give the last hugs and kisses, offer the last treats. Share my lunch, which I have never done in my life. She was never a cuddler, or a lap puppy the way Seamus was, and it both filled my heart and broke it all at once when she cuddled and laid in my lap for the first, and last, time.
I am so lonely without my shadow.
March 26, 2024
I think they’re mostly organizational and social anxieties.
- Forgetting to pick up JB from school (Again grateful that Noemi mentioned phone alarms ages ago which gave me a tool to snap me out of my focused fugue)
- Booking a flight for the wrong day and/or time (am vs pm or vice versa)
- Running out of diapers for Smol Acrobat when we’re out and about (also related to are we ever getting them potty trained???)
- Saying something really stupid and/or too true to another parent at school in a moment of unbridled honesty
- Forgetting the stove on and causing a fire (PiC has actually forgotten it twice and I haven’t but it haunts me.)
- Oversleeping and missing another staff meeting (this has happened once in my entire career)
- When once-close friends stop talking to me, I wonder if I’m too much work as a friend. (at least once)
- I can’t start or finish certain types of projects or commitments. I can’t identify in words what the pattern is but I shy away from taking on certain things because I know I can’t finish them. It’s not a rational weighing up of commitments and choosing not to overcommit. I overcommit all the time. It’s something more visceral than that.
- The sight of dishes piled high in our sink, in between emptying and reloading the dishwasher, reminds me of how I felt when I used to see that in the family sink. And that always brings on embarrassment and regret for not being more proactively helpful to my mom when I was growing up, and particularly not in my early teen years. I had more of an excuse as a late teen. I started working full time at 17, supporting the household, so I’m less guilt-ridden over not keeping up with the dishes from 17 on. But that math struck me today. I’m still punishing myself for not being a better kid between the ages of 13-17. Why do I feel so bad that, for a short span of teen years, I wasn’t as responsible as I am now? Maybe I’m now old enough to fully empathize with how my mom must have felt as a more than full time working mom with a spouse who was (self described as) useless as a co-parent. She died when I was 27. It feels like I didn’t get enough time with her as an adult (9 years) to atone for how shitty a kid I had been (since birth I guess, I was a tough kid). Or at least I hadn’t gotten enough time with her to repair our relationship so that I didn’t feel like I had to atone for being a crap kid. Or maybe while I knew I was loved by one parent, I don’t think I ever felt liked except by a very few people. No wonder I don’t feel likeable.
- Not being loved or part of a family beyond the little unit that PiC and I created here. The teen years, if they do that whole rebellion and hate your parents thing, will be hard.
March 12, 2024
I started writing this the week after the weekend’s events but ran out of time and energy to finish it as we cleaned up.
I knew that the weekend’s atmospheric river could bring us some real grief. High winds are dangerous – we had a narrow miss with our car and a lamppost in last year’s last big storm. Floods from the excess rain are dangerous, too. We keep getting just soaked a week or so ago so the soil’s not ready to absorb any more, making flooding more likely. Our own neighborhood is less likely to flood but still, being aware of the risk, we try to stay out of the way as much as we can.
We’ve been added to our emergency / disaster preparedness kid over the past several months. Our latest purchases were a set of cheapish lanterns and an expensive electric generator on Black Friday. The Yeti 3000x was on sale but I still wondered if that was an extravagant overly paranoid purchase. I stopped second-guessing this weekend. In fact, I think we need a second one!
Day 1: Our power went out several times on Sunday, so of course, hubris set in. I stopped worrying so much about a few hours of outage at a time. Then it stayed out the last time. PGE gave us a really big window for power restoration on the last one, and the affected area on the outage map showed that well over 10,000 residences were affected just in our region. This was true of the top half of CA on the outage map. That last estimate was well past the 4 hour window of safety for the perishables in the fridge, so we hauled out the Yeti and went through all the first time set up pains by lantern light while I grumpily kicking myself for not doing the test run I had intended to do before we needed to. The kids squabbled, played, and bickered while PiC and I discovered the shortcomings of our plan: the extension cord for the fridge seemed like it didn’t work, the extension cord has to be flat for the fridge to be pushed back again so it instead had to hang out obnoxiously blocking our path.
Day 2: We snuck the behemoth over to PiC’s work into an abandoned corner to charge. We knew that charging devices was permitted but felt sheepish about bringing the whole power station. We got enough power to get both freezers back down to 0 degrees and keep the fridge running overnight.
The libraries were opened for charging services too but we didn’t want to take up an outlet spot away from someone who didn’t have an alternate location to go to. All the local businesses in our local area are down. It was so weird to see all blacked out while it’s business as usual across town.
Our 6 pm power restore time was pushed AGAIN to midnight and at this point I’m skeptical we’ll get anything.
Can’t vacuum, can’t run the dishwasher, can’t wash clothes. Kinda feeling like I’m in a weird version of Vietnam on grandma’s farm where everything shuts down at sunset because there’s only generator electricity and that’s wasteful if you don’t need it.
This was probably the least worst case scenario possible, so it was perfect for a stress test. Boy, was it stressful. We made it through this ok, but the many gaps in our coverage make me uncomfortable.
What we’ve learned
We need better lanterns. The UST solar LED lantern is the best one but sadly we only bought one several years ago. I was being cautious of buying too many at first without testing them first. Too cautious, they’ve discontinued the exact one we have and love. This is the one they have now. I’m really hoping the quality of this one is just as good.
The Yeti can run the fridge off a full charge for 31 hours uninterrupted with about 40% charge left. It can probably up to 36 hours or more uninterrupted. The fridge draws a range of 8 to 420 watts variably. We can stretch that even longer if we unplug it for 2-3 hours at a time every so often. We bought an extension cord for the fridge, so that it can be plugged into the Yeti without being pulled 2 feet away from the wall, and I did another stress test. It can keep one fridge going for a full 24 hours with 9.7 hours left until it ran dry. We could stretch that out by only keeping it plugged in for 4-6 hour intervals as needed.
We need more variety in food. PiC and I both felt sluggish after the high carb Mountain House dinner the first night. Maybe that was mostly the stress that was dragging us down but it’s worth being more on top of the variety. REI had a 10% off backpacking food sale so I ordered 13 replacement Mountain House meals, a few of the same, a few new meals, to replenish our stock. This gives us variety in types of meals but not the starch theme so I’ll have to figure that out.
Edit to add: we also have the Anker Power Bank 737, and the Anker PowerCore+ 26800, plus a very old Anker PowerCore 13000. These covered our phones, lanterns and other smaller miscellaneous things that needed USB charging. We never ran them down this time. I keep them fully charged between uses just in case.
November 3, 2023
1. I planted 3 new onion sprouts and 3 sweet potato sprouts. Fingers crossed that they all take!
2. The 6 first onions we planted just passed 60 days in the ground. I think they need another 30-40 days before we can attempt to harvest them. Sources suggest that we wait until the green tops turn yellow and fall over. Only the tips are yellow just now.
3. I alternate between feeling quite pleased with the current plants in the ground, feeling impatient for a harvest, and feeling like I should grow more things that we have no room for.
Challenges this week: What A Week.
I need about six days to recover but instead we have a busy weekend trying to get Comic Con tickets and then our friends’ kid’s big birthday on Sunday.
No wonder the holiday season always feels like such a slog.
(more…)
July 18, 2023
JB and I were discussing spending habits and inclinations. I shared that I’m happiest when I preserve half of my spending budget. Even if that money was earmarked for spending specifically, I like coming home with half of it still in my pocket. Budget. Whichever.
They like to leave it all out on the field, so to speak.
It occurs to me that when I think of spending in retirement, I get nervous because it feels more constrained. It worries me to have a ceiling on what we can spend. But even if I didn’t set a ceiling on our spending, our incomes necessarily provide a ceiling. We don’t have a money tree to harvest when we’ve spent all available income. We have to stop spending sometime. Doesn’t matter if it’s an artificial or real ceiling that we’re choosing to stop at, we have to stop.
So what’s different about having a set budget in retirement?
Is it because artificial ceilings feel safer, knowing I COULD dig into the allocated savings if I want to? Or is it because we’d presumably be only spending and not saving in retirement, and the mode of “not saving” is only associated with bad memories because the only times I wasn’t saving in the past were for bad reasons?
Maybe it’s a spicy cornucopia of everything. But I should spend some time thinking about this and how to adjust my attitude a little over the coming years. I can’t be in Prepper (Chaos and Emergencies are Imminent!) mode for the rest of our lives.
Related to this:
Maggie tipped me to this podcast interview with Mindy and Carl of 1500Days. I mainly know Carl through his blog and mutual friends, Mindy has supported a number of my initiatives in the past. I know them but don’t know-know them.
There was a LOT of food for thought in that episode. It’s really interesting to hear how two people, one of whom retired early and the other of whom still earns money, view their money and their spending habits.
I had to laugh at how many habits we share, how many times I nodded in agreement with something Mindy or Carl said, even as I recognized our shared irrational fears. My need for control, and my fear of lack of control, have always played a huge role in how I handled our money and it’s a slow process in undoing those fears and worries.
Carl said: “My money hoarding tendencies were borne out of trauma and insecurity.” While this is still true for me, I am working on it.
Much like the issues I have with my dad, my deep-seated insecurities born from a childhood where people I trusted betrayed me repeatedly, I’m identifying where those issues drive fear responses and am slowly unraveling those tight reactionary cords twisted around my heart.
I don’t have half as much fear as I used to about money. We save a lot for the future and we also spend on huge ticket necessities like childcare, camp, my therapist, some extracurriculars, take out to make our lives easier, convenience foods also to make our lives easier. If we had lower incomes, I would have much higher anxiety and feel the need to spend less. Making more money absolutely enables me to relax more than ever before because I can save and spend on the income we have.
The x-factor for me feeling comfortable with spending and retiring, always, is the healthcare question. Our employer-sponsored healthcare plan is the next to cheapest one offered and it’s still excellent and it’s still very expensive. We pay about $4000 in premiums, annually. The employer pays $19,000! That’s $23,000 for a year of premiums. Granted, we have really excellent coverage.
We haven’t needed very extensive care, the worst has been my labor and delivery x 2, but my doctor orders labs and x-rays and other things as needed just to rule out more serious ailments whenever my body does the weird things that my body does. I’ve never once had to argue with them about covering anything, or get pre-approval, or been retroactively billed for anything they retroactively decided not to cover. That last part is almost priceless.
When I see horror stories, which are all too common, of folks who have necessary procedures and treatments denied, I can easily imagine the hours of fear and stress of fighting with the horrible healthcare companies which only care about making a profit. We know they automatically reject claims with the knowledge that some people will be too sick or too tired or not knowledgeable enough or don’t have enough time to fight back. We know they don’t give half a hoot about people’s health if they can generate higher profits or instant savings. The vast majority of healthcare companies are absolutely nefarious.
July 11, 2023
How do you think you’ll be remembered? How do you want to be remembered?
I was thinking about this four years ago and shelved it. It’s hovered in the back of my mind as I take notes for my elder friends I will have to write obituaries for.
It bubbled back up after a recent therapy session: What would people say about you at your funeral? What do people think of you as a person? What do YOU think of you?
It’s always made me wonder if people know how they’d be eulogized. What would be the summary of their existence?
I buried this post because I wasn’t ready for that level of introspection. I’m probably still not, given my reaction to similar questions in therapy (I make it a point NOT to think about that!)
Back in 2017….
I’ve kept JB alive for going on three years but that’s a reasonably human accomplishment. Besides, after the first year, that’s less of a hazard pay situation and more of a fight the toddler’s instinct to self destruct. Our home was the result of a lot of hard work but survival isn’t a true achievement. (Well, it is, but not in this context.)
My soul is searching for learning and doing. My brain is craving new things to read and do. BUT. My body says no. It is succumbing to fjaka. Weariness weighs down my limbs, lava boils my joints (metaphorically but I also feel it literally), and no amount of metaphorical browbeating can get them to buck up unless and until they’re ready.
My brain craves a hit of accomplishment dopamine very regularly, was satisfied by the tangible completion of the house renovation weekly, and now that I’m off that particular hook, I’m in serious withdrawal. For someone who usually believes she can do anything, being in an “idle” refortification phase of life feels both strange and sometimes deleterious.
Now in 2023….
With the addition of Smol Acrobat, I still feel like my achievement wheels are spinning in mud. I don’t know what matters for me.
I did pick up sewing which has been an incredibly painful, though satisfying, hobby, when I finally figure out how to do something new. I’ve learned how to attach zippers and sew packing cubes and I’ve repaired (sort of) my longtime travel backpack.
I still measure my successes in the tiniest of measuring cups: did we feed everyone with a minimum of stress this week? Did we make it to each commitment on time this week? (Usually) Did we help out a Lakota family this month? (Usually) Did we send a birthday card on time? (Sometimes)
How would you want to be remembered?
My hope is that I’ll be missed, that I meant enough to someone for my absence to matter. I hope I’ll have helped people.
Don’t know that I can ask for more than that.