February 29, 2016
Last week’s ode to the Internet was timely.
This weekend was a trial, made slightly less grueling by having some access to the outside world. Last week I dragged along, trying to muster some good energy pockets each day but utterly failed. The best I could manage was being patient with an increasingly grouchy LB when ze was home and becoming one with the sofa when ze wasn’t. By Saturday, it was no use denying it: another round of illness had come a-knocking and we were fool enough to open the door. PiC was on nearly solo parenting duties, I simply couldn’t stay awake. He kept sending me to bed, and intellectually it’s nothing to feel guilty about, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of not pulling your own weight.
And it’s hard to shake the feeling of uselessness when random body parts stop working. Like the left knee doesn’t bear weight so “walking” is really “wobbling”, or three fingers are so swollen you can’t bend them. Or standing up makes your head spin, dip and swim.
Thankfully, I got a little work and household management done online, amid the brain fog, so that restless need to accomplish something more than having bizarre dreams and sustaining life was fulfilled.
Tetchy Toddler
Granted, it has everything to do with being sick but LB was prone to grouchy outbursts not unlike an angry, thwarted hunting velociraptor. Keep feeding the wee beastie, y’all, a sick raptor-baby is naught to mess with.
And can you blame hir? It’s miserable coughing all night. Poor thing wakes up in the middle of the night burning up, crying, because ze doesn’t understand what on earth is going on. I feel like a heel walking away from the piercing “maaa maa maaaaa!” when we’ve done everything I can for hir and ze doesn’t want to be cuddled to sleep. Rough times.
I don’t know how single parents manage, half the time ze was sobbing because ze wanted PiC. Seamus and I were on standby to fetch and carry, slather vapo-rub and administer Motrin, but ze wanted hir dad and only hir dad for comfort.
Moody Muttley
Seamus is off-kilter too. He’s been refusing his antihistamines and vitamins for weeks. He grudgingly takes them under protest.
It’s hard to tell if something is wrong or if he’s just in an extended funk.
Could be he’s worn out being moral support from our weeks of being sick. He always gets up to join us when LB is sick and being tended to.
Dad and delinquent accounts
Dad’s been missing utility payments.
I know because I am still remotely monitoring the accounts, not because he has learned his lesson about telling me the truth.
$100 here, $80 there. $400 for the electricity, another $200 for the water and trash. They pile up month after month as he pays what he can, saying nothing to me about the rest. Add that to the more than $1000 we pay per month for his rent and and it piles up. As does the aggravation.
I’m deep breathing through it lest the frustration eat me alive. Our budget continues to bear the monetary cost, I refuse to let the cost of his silence be my sanity. But it’s a little harder each day that feels like everything is subtly wrong.
One-horse home
We’re still a single car household and the inconvenience far outweighs the savings. On days when LB and PiC are out together, Seamus and I are limited to going only so far as I can hike, and if we have to run errands, well, we can’t. Unfortunately, he’s too popular with random strangers which makes it unsafe to leave him outside while I run in to run errands. He and I only run errands where he’s allowed inside. In case you think I’m being paranoid, someone just tried to steal our neighbor’s equally cute and friendly pup when they’d run into a cafe to pick up an order. 30 seconds is all it takes for someone to walk off with our dogs. What is wrong with people??
Shaking it off
I’m getting some work filed away to make Monday less painful, and by extension, the rest of the week as well. Maybe, just maybe, we can shake this funk before Tuesday.
How was your weekend? How does your week ahead look?
January 29, 2016
It’s been a long week and that’s the truth. Before that, it’s been a long six weeks of cold and flu season.
After downing gallons of cough syrup, a sackful of cough and cold medication, even springing for a humidifier (though why was I dragging my feet on that for weeks?) so that I could stay upright and take care of EVERYTHING, I could really use a vacation. As long as the request line is open, let’s also say work is banned on this vacation, involves a lot of pampering with all the food I can imagine, and an extra person to help entertain LB so sleep can happen. Oh and at least shed the damn virus, please! Oh, and the best vacation ever would mean no packing anything.
***
There’s a great book with a great title that a long-ago therapist with lupus recommended to me: Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired: Living with Invisible Chronic Illness. It was recommended at a time when I was struggling with the experience of pain and fatigue, the limited and unnuanced language of pain and fatigue, the reality of pain and fatigue that is forever, and the frustrations of communicating my boundaries to family and friends who Just Don’t Get It.
Well, one of those times, anyway.
Abby does a great job of elucidating some of these frustrations, on the fatigue front. And Tim’s experience with pain is an exceedingly familiar one as well.
***
Right now a horde of things To Do is taking up ever-more limited brain space so I’m dropping them off here so as to clear my crowded mind.
- We need the replacement car, Seamus is outta luck for a ride until we find it.
- PiC needs to make a decision about possible travel plans in February.
- I need to find Seamus a sitter for when we’re visiting dog-unfriendly areas overnight. I’m as picky about dogsitters as I am about babysitters, oh boy. We love our one sitter but her availability is limited this spring. This kind of makes me want to quit traveling anywhere Seamus can’t come. Putting together any travel plans involves so many moving parts now.
- Speaking of travel, we need to book a rental car for two trips this year. Bah.
- LB needs to transition to drinking from regular cups and we have exactly no infant-toddler friendly cups or plates or anything. Shopping. Ugh.
- Subscribe and Save failed us a couple months ago and we’re about 3 days away from running out of pill pockets but they’re add-on items. Curses! *It occurs to me that he takes his fish oil gelcaps right in his food. Maybe I’ll try that for a dose or two of the antihistamine to stretch the pill pockets.
- Seamus needs an alternate antihistamine, the poor guy is breaking out in hives.
- Also we’re running out of tissues and what is with my mental block about overpaying per unit for paper products??
- My hair requires some sort of maintenance but at the best of times there isn’t brainpower to worry about that. I’m generally carted to the hair stylist under protest. Does anyone know how to use duck or alligator clips? I’ve broken 89% of my plastic claw clips and I need one of those biannual lessons in grooming. I’d love to lop it all off a la Mako Mori but that’s way too high maintenance. Trims every six weeks? Nooo thank you.
- We have to make a decision about LB’s childcare situation sometime this year. Current choices: spend a lot more and stay where ze is or spend the same for more time someplace I’m not yet comfortable with.
- I know the deadline is January 30th for tax documents but I’m slowly going ’round the bend waiting for them to trickle in. So far we have 4 of an expected 35 documents. FOUR.
Whew. It’s a mix of big and little things, only a few are really important. It’s just that being stuck in decision mode and not being able to cross anything off the list makes everything seem worse than it is.
How are you destressing for the weekend? Have a vent in the comments if you’d like to join me in shedding things preying on your mind before the weekend and otherwise, have a great weekend!
December 28, 2015
I feel prolonged guilt over the most nonsensical things. I was participating in a volunteer project years ago when the depression set in. I felt so bad about not completing my part of it, even though it was totally voluntary and it didn’t significantly affect anything that I stopped, that just a month ago I had one of those dreams where the person I “let down” (during only one of the worst times of my life) asked me about why I stopped.
Meanwhile, it’s been nearly 15 years since I’ve spoken to my maternal grandparents and some aunts & uncles. Not an ounce of regret. Didn’t invite them to my wedding and ignored them at Mom’s funeral because they’d been utter dipwads from forever before, and then harassed me every single day after she died because they wanted to pay for her funeral so they could pretend they loved her.
I read blog comments from years ago and get verklempt that I don’t know what happened to them (M is for Money, 444 express, The Quest – if you’re still reading, I can’t find your new URL?)
How can I be of service to you? When I’m in a really bad mood, or crappy stuff has been going on, my only refuge is sending a nice card or gift to someone else having a hard time.
Babies are weird! So weird that sometimes I refer to them as “just like a human!”
A majority of minorities. I know nearly as many lefties as righties and more people who hail from US territories than I know people from any state but CA. Offline that is. Online, where would you say you’re from? Originally or now. And: lefty, righty, or ambi?
When stressed, clean the house or balance the books. Going over spending and savings spreadsheets calms me down better than anything else.
I’m more likely to give money to charities, say, for refugees, than give birthday gifts to people I know but are well off. My $20 to a charity is likely to matter more than any $20 gift I could give someone who makes perfectly good money.
October 12, 2015
LB and I have been playing with Legos lately. (Truth? PiC and I have been playing with Legos a lot while LB gnaws on them, contemplatively.)
I connect a few, ze takes them for a taste test, pulls them apart, ponders the meaning of color.
While ze debates the delectability of yellow squares versus blue rectangles, I find myself aimlessly connecting more Legos. Invariably, I connect several larger rectangles using a variety of smaller pieces to make a platform and then build walls up.
I’ve never watched other people play with Legos but dollars to donuts they don’t always build a flat foundation first and a standard four walls before unleashing creativity. There’s simply no other way, though, not if I’m letting my subconscious lead the way. Nature or nurture questions aside, this is how I’m built to build. A firm foundation and then slowly build walls and a roof for protection.
Now that we’ve reached a particular level of stability, where I’m not viscerally worried that a missed paycheck or three would set us scrambling, my subconscious is now casting about for the next thing that comes after the walls.
What’s next?
What steps do I take to start building the next, perhaps final, stage of our life? Where do I go from here?
This could be the start of the renaissance of my life. I spent 15 years climbing out of and barricading ourselves against poverty. When I take a good look around, I realize that we can afford to take some risks now. Typically the time to take risks was a decade ago, in my 20s, but I couldn’t. Now, with a brand new child and aging parents on both sides, it would seem that now isn’t the time to take risks either. But! We have good savings, a variety of investments, and for now, we’re in relatively decent health. (Well. PiC is. We have good health insurance anyway.)
I don’t want to forever take and make the safe paved roads. I want that luxury of knowing when my next payday is, sure, but that desire is cohabiting with the need to grow and challenge myself.
I, no, WE can afford risk now. Some risks. I can’t afford to ignore the spark that pushes me to try. Dendrites die when you don’t use them. Motivation gutters when ignored too long, like a fire deprived of oxygen. I’ve long considered myself an intrinsically powered person, driven by circumstances. This period is, perhaps for the first time in my life, an opportunity to try for something purely because I want to and because I want it. Whatever it is. This is a real luxury that many of us enjoy in America / in a first world nation, should we be lucky enough to be born with a few resources and have both the awareness and ability to choose to partake of it.
September 23, 2015
Optimistically I hatched an almost plan to celebrate the whole month, like some of my friends who love life do. Just an “almost plan”, because that thought was as far as I got. In part to make up for my lack of enthusiasm in previous years, and in part to add to my new habit of doing small good money things each day.
It’s been half a decade since I felt comfortable with my birthday and it was nothing to do with age. For a few years, in my 20s, it was actually even fun. I shared the week with a dearly departed uncle. Then one year, he fell ill. It seemed like a small thing, until it wasn’t. I hoped, and hoped, and hoped that we’d have a miracle. But we didn’t. Then our birthweek became the week of losing him. And it’s just never felt right since.
Even when I’m not fully cognizant of the reason, a malaise sets in around 2-3 weeks before the actual day and I spend that whole time trying to convince PiC to cancel everything, when “everything” is hardly any more taxing than having dinner because I can’t think of my birthday with joy without being reminded of our joke that I was “4 days older than Uncle”, and it feels like my breath is sucked away as I remember he’s gone and it’s not fair.
We weren’t close close, not talk on the phone every other day and finish each other’s sentence close. But we were kindred spirits. I admired and respected the hell out of him and he recognized me as one of his sort, seeking my back-up in faux-arguments and treating me with an easy warm fondness unique to him. Above all, he was a good man who’d made good for his family and I wanted nothing more than to match his example.
That’s my whole trouble with anniversaries and special dates. The big ones tend to remind me of those I’ve lost, more than anything, and I haven’t been great at turning that around.
But each year I try again. We’re only given so much time and I’m trying not to waste what we have by forgetting to live while mourning, grieving rather than remembering.
There’s a lot more I want to do and each birthday is a reminder to get off my duff and do it.
I don’t usually ask for anything for my birthday but this year I will: would you share a fond memory or a fun thing you’re doing?
June 3, 2015
A fellow PF blogger, Jessica of Mo’ Money Mo’ Houses, is launching her new podcast today and I was happy to give a shout about it. I read Jessica’s blog back when she first started out a few years ago and have popped in from time to time, when I can since my reading time has been severely curtailed, and it’s great to see that she’s launching a fun new project.
Jessica’s guests will be sharing their experiences in debt reduction, getting spending under control, and entrepreneurial ventures including side jobs and quitting their 9 to 5 to become their own bosses.
You can find all the podcast episodes at momoneymohouses.com/podcast and tell her what you think by leaving a review at her iTunes page.
And as a little thank you for checking out the podcast and giving it some love: a Giveaway!
You could win:
One $100 Amazon gift card
One $50 Amazon gift card
One “Mo’ Money Mo’ Houses” bag from Bow & Drape (valued at $75 and totally unique!). Here’s a photo of what it looks like.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
December 23, 2014
As a kid, unprincessy things were my forte. I slew invading insects and marauding spiders, climbed walls, played in the dirt and the trees and insisted on pants with pockets, darn tootin. If I was wearing frills or pink, or Lord help us all, BOTH, you’d know from the look on my face that I was only tolerating it because I was told to.
So M.R. Nelson’s latest, Petunia, The Girl Who Was NOT a Princess, put a smile on my face before I even got into the story. It sent me back to a time and a place when things were so much simpler and gender issues were dismissed with a scowl and a determination to do whatever I wanted even if Dad said that “it’s not suitable for girls”. No one else had the nerve to say that.
But I digress.
Fully expecting to find the kind of story I could relate to (though I suppose I’m long past those days of defiance) and I wasn’t disappointed. This is a story of a kid who unabashedly enjoys playing her way, whether or not she’s quite in line with her compatriots.
It’s a cute romp that touches on being your own person, which is wonderful, and also gently suggests that keeping an open mind can be a great thing.
I’m reviewing this just in time for a last minute Christmas book gift, if you’re needing something light and fun – it’s an e-book available at Amazon!
