December 19, 2025
1. I’ve finally cleared up the growing mountain of cardboard boxes in the garage, making it feel nearly roomy and spacious by comparison. That felt like a low effort fix. I need to make some decisions about where to store other supplies that are currently very cluttery where they landed during unpacking.
2. A treat: two free books from Ilona Andrews.
3. PiC built on my progress in the garage clearing out more stuff to hand down to friend’s kids and it looks so much better! Between this and my semi-obsessive organization efforts inside the house, there’s almost some order to be chaos.
Helping folks:
A small, disabled family navigating long term unemployment.
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September 24, 2025
Sometimes this exercise feels a little like grasping at straws to feel like I’m in control of something, since I’m in control of so little, but mostly it’s to help myself remember all the moving pieces.
Pros:
With my vastly increased responsibilities at work, my salary went up a bit (not at all proportional to the amount of work it increased by, of course). As usual, I won’t count on the bonuses. Even though they include that as part of my total compensation, a) not guaranteed because that’s entirely dependent on the larger company’s performance. I can only do my best and they could still fail to meet whatever pie in the sky targets they set. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Well, a little bit my monkeys, but not the kind I get to control. b) this year’s bonus isn’t paid til well into next year so next year’s bonus (if any) wouldn’t be paid into 2027 etc. As far as my financial planning is concerned, that’s all pretend money until (and if) it lands.
The SALT tax cap lift (effective in 2025) to $40K does help us, because our state and local taxes are so damn high. It’d be great if the taxes were lower to begin with so we weren’t paying $40k+ in taxes but here we are. Literally here, being in CA has a lot to do with why we’re taxed so much. My Alaskan friends aren’t paying anything like our property and state taxes and the SALT tax increase doesn’t even register on their radar.
Cons:
Open enrollment in October will bring some kind of healthcare premium increase. The only question is how much. I already pay around $10k/year out of pocket for our various expenses, that doesn’t include our premiums. I should go calculate how much those premiums cost. I tend to forget it once open enrollment is over.
We’ve always itemized deductions because of all our expenses which includes a fair lot of charitable giving. In 2026, we’re going to lose the charitable giving deduction as it exists now. Taking the standard deduction allows you to also deduct $1000/2000 for charitable giving but itemizers have a new threshold to exclude:
Beginning next tax year, a different provision sets a threshold for itemized charitable contributions, equating to 0.5% of a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income. For example, an itemizer earning $500,000 would need to exclude the first $2,500 of their donations before receiving any tax benefit.
I’ve got to do the actual math on that because I did it wrong before. ($500,000 to use their example, x 0.05% vs $500,000 x 0.05 which is what I did first. Oops. Very different results.) See? Good thing I’m writing this and double checking my work.
I’m really not motivated to read through the whole damn thing budget bill to find out what else is going to impact us but it feels like I need more than just the highlights from Kiplingers and co.
August 20, 2025
(this is very superficial, don’t expect any deep thoughts) Buddhism has been on my mind lately, partly because JB asked me to talk to them about it. I struggled to articulate our beliefs system because I grew up steeped in a Buddhist culture but we didn’t talk about the meaning of or how to be Buddhist, we just were. We just practiced the cultural norms without a lot of introspection.
We’re well into my fifth (!?) year of therapy now and I’m seeing concretely where it’s changed my ways of thinking and reacting. It’s helping me see what well meaning family members meant but communicated very badly in the wake of hard times.
When my mom passed, I was gutted. Might as well have hung me up like a dried fish, I was a hollow husk for months. Years, even. The only thing that got a strong emotion out of me was the pablum “don’t grieve, your mom wouldn’t have wanted you to grieve.” That brought out my old friend, rage. Now I can say, No, that’s wrong. She wouldn’t have wanted me to be in pain but my grieving had a place. Where else was my love going to go?
We grew up with a Buddhism that translated as: have no emotions rather than process your emotions and let them pass. During a time of war, and post-war devolution of the society and country that they knew, it makes sense that none of that generation had time to learn or consider healthier ways to process emotions. There was no time or space for that, and so they passed their traumas down in the form of emotion suppression and denial. I grew up an obedient kid with such repressed feelings, aiming to be the perfect robot, that as an adult I thought I was no longer capable of having feelings. My therapist suggested that I was, in fact, feeling so many feelings it was too overwhelming to handle. I didn’t love that but as we worked our way through, I’ve seen that she’s been right about more than one thing, including that one.
There’s a popular translation of “desire is the root of all suffering” from the Four Noble Truths. In a lot of ways, letting go of specific desires has been instrumental for my growth.
I deeply wanted a family of origin that loved and valued me, a family that would make amends to me for their many wrongs (lying to me, stealing from me, wrecking my financial life for even the smallest gains for themselves). It was an indirect route to healing that had to start with realizing how much pain I felt because of their actions. From there, I started to see how much of my overcompensating, trying to save everyone from their mistakes while telling myself protectively that I’ll never be good enough, was a terrible coping mechanism. As I unpicked the habit of hurting myself preemptively, I started to see that they’re not capable of anything I needed. He can’t love me and that I don’t have to accept his pitiful excuse for “love”. I wasn’t obliged to punish myself for “not being good enough”. I could finally stop longing to have a better dad. It’s not happening. I don’t have to forgive and forget, I don’t have to rebuild the bridge, I can just accept that’s the way it is and live my life.
I deeply wanted some other family members to see me as worthy of a genuinely warm relationship. But that’s not possible! They decided years ago that I was not worthy of being part of their family. For years, I tried so hard to prove that I was worthy. Now I understand that it’s about them and their needs / issues, which is not reflective of my value as a person. That has let me take a step back. Instead of yearning for the highly improbable, I now set boundaries that are healthy. I can be the version of me that is best for me around them (mellow grey rock, baby! Go, Captain Awkward, truly LOVE Captain Awkward) and just be. It’s remarkably freeing not to spend energy trying to prove I’m worthy, and instead just protect my peace.
It sounds all very simplistic and obvious, but it took a lot of years for me to slowly disassemble the self-harming coping mechanisms I’d anchored my whole personality onto, and build something better in their place.
March 19, 2025
Bag (including backpacks): in the face of absolutely no evidence, I persist in searching for the one that is a perfect size, shape and color bag that will suit all my needs at all times. This despite the fact that I cycle through about 4 different bags at any given time depending on where we’re going and what we’re doing. I’ve actually spent the past year carrying my old backpack instead because I’m often bringing work with me and if not work then it’s just easier to grab the same backpack with all my things than to repack a bag.
Wallet: same thing on a slower cycle. Every few years, the wallet I’m using doesn’t suit for one reason or another and I need to find a different one. And yet I’m always sure that this next one, this will be the Right Wallet forever. Like my needs will never change.
Pen: this one changes depending on how my hands feel. The pinnacle used to be the Dr Grip. Then it was the Pentel G2 for a while. Then I wanted to go back to Dr.Grip and saved up my rewards to redeem for my ridiculous obsession and discovered that the balance of the gel grip to top of pen ratio doesn’t work for my hands anymore. Argh! I recently discovered the very discontinued Zeb Roller 2000 which is the perfect fit for my hands now and that’s extra sad because all I can find online are laments about this pen being discontinued. My search continues.
Dumplings: this one is real. There really is only one true perfect dumpling and those are the dumplings my mom made. Other dumplings may be good but none of them touch Mom’s dumplings. I can still almost taste them. I have experimented to see if I can duplicate the recipe and came close but I’m still slightly disappointed.
What’s your White Whale?
January 29, 2025
I could not do this without y’all, my online community, contributing to help make heavy lifting a little lighter all year round. I email the contributors who want to hear from me by email 4-6 times a year depending on what life is doing. People contribute depending on their own personal factors and somehow it all works out that we can help people.
Some numbers for 2024: 217 jackets and sweaters.
15 giant boxes. Giant means they’re always big enough to fit a small adult or maybe even two.
We spent several weeks washing donated bedding and clothes, and packing up books, toys, and shoes for shipping to the Allen Youth Center for distribution to the local community.
We sent 20 towels to the Youth Center which was offering hot food and showers to many unhoused folks this spring.
We helped 9 families directly with all their needs.
We bought diapers, wipes, and formula for an infant. We bought loads of canned food, pantry foods, and dog food. Household goods: soap, shampoo, conditioner, dental supplies, cleaning supplies. We bought winter boots, winter coats, warm socks, clothes for school, clothes for toddlers, clothes for elders. We sent piles of warm blankets to families whose trailers had no heat or insulation.
The quilting community donated a sewing machine, 23 lbs of fabrics, and all the necessary quilting supplies so a quilter could carry on her family tradition.
I can’t tell if this covers the amount of work that actually went into it, feels like it doesn’t look like much, but as a friend reminds me, every little bit counts.
And it’s true: every single penny and every single dollar makes all of this possible.
I’ve been shopping for our January families, so as always, your donations and sharing are most welcome.
Send a gift to any of the following with a note saying “Pine Ridge”:
Venmo: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
Please supply your email address if you’d like updates on where the money goes.
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.