About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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October 29, 2020
Lulu Wang and Adele Lim on Lessons From ‘Mulan’: Why Hollywood Must Reimagine Asian-Inspired Stories
Thread on murder hornets.
Imagine being so bad at money and business that you nickel and dime Shonda Rhimes over a Disneyland pass. Shonda Rhimes who was making ABC literally Billions Of Dollars. Honestly, nickel and diming anyone who is making you that kind of money makes absolutely no sense but SHONDA RHIMES. Come on! I hope that exec got ALL the blowback, professionally. Regardless of any of their (likely specious) reasons, that was a really stupid decision. Anyway, she deserved far better than to be working with such knobs so I’m glad for her that she left. Good. For. Her!!
Chrissy Teigen and John Legend lost their third child. As a pregnant mom right now, I can only imagine their pain and grief.
Emily Guy Birken had to fight a really nasty inheritance battle after her dad passed.
As I fight with my open enrollment debates, this 2021 tax year update for the 2022 filing season from Kay Bell is really helpful.
Cheating sled dogs
https://twitter.com/OtterRunKennel/status/1320856468082561027?s=19
October 27, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,905.47; Rural libraries, $346.69.
Week 32 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 32, Day 220: Mondays keep on Mondaying. I had to walk away from my desk to make dinner leaving 70 emails and three hours worth of other time sensitive work and I was in a real mood about it.
I was in a mood most of the day though, from having to reel through a dozen management decisions to finding out that our Joybird order wasn’t just delayed in transit. They hadn’t even started making production until this week. It was slated for delivery starting tomorrow through the end of the week. I was livid, in fact, because they were a month behind and wouldn’t you think that warranted some kind of proactive notice? Not only did they not bother to give us a single update until I started contacting them, they took a week to answer my email and ignored all subsequent contacts. Couldn’t get them to reply to an email, texts, or even answer their phone. I can handle delays if I know about them. But delays like this and a refusal to make sure we’re updated honestly says to me that this is a shady company that isn’t going to come through and can’t be relied on to honor their refund policy if the product is shoddy. Especially when I see the absolute bonanza of complaints from other people trying to get them to answer emails and phone calls for months.
I’m preparing myself to have to dispute the charges if and when they fail to deliver what they promised.
I did catch myself on the verge of blaming myself for not doing deeper investigation into the company, an unhealthy go-to reaction when I’m mad at someone’s shortcomings but feel helpless to change it. I turn the anger back on myself for not seeing it coming.
But I did due diligence, I did do research, and I did check with people who’d used them before. It’s not like I just jumped in feet first eyes closed, and it’s not my fault they stink. I’m getting mad all over again typing this up because we moved our old sofa out already to make space, timing was an issue, and I need a sofa. I need to find a back up sofa option because I have my doubts that Joybird will ever come through. Highly do not recommend.
Worked super late this evening. Did not love that either but I find that even if it’s exhausting, the reduced stress when I do the extra hours and see an actual reduction in my workload for the next day, it matters. Plus during the day sometimes I have to deal with administrative nonsense and at night I can focus solely on my work.
Week 32, Day 221: Seamus’s puff pastry looking ear is worse but the vet isn’t very concerned yet. He’s thinking it needs another few weeks to start to reduce in size. I hope so. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by it but I don’t want it to progress to the point where it does bother him. We’re crossing our fingers that he’s beat his multiple infections, we should find out later this week.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that Joybird is a terrible company and after being given a chance to rectify their error they chose to obfuscate and basically use 1209 words to say the product was going to be a month late, too bad so sad. PiC and I were disturbed by the sheer volume of negative experience being reported this month so after a proper fume and grumble, I did some research and talked extensively with the AmEx rep to confirm the best course of action. I decided to take one last shot at getting them to cancel the order on their own.
Tuesday was no less a terrible day than Monday but with second late night at my desk, I might have done enough for tomorrow to be less terrible.
(more…)
October 26, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,905.47; Rural libraries, $346.69.
NOTE: I started this post many months ago and added to it as I researched options but events 2020!! got the better of me.
Item 1: water heater
After a grueling weekend of social obligations that had my legs seizing up, I drew a bath for myself for the first time in 2 years. No joke. And by the time the tub was partly filled, the water was tepid. Disappointment.
Now that the furnace installation, oh luxurious furnace bringer of warmth and comfort inside, is well behind us, I’m looking ahead to another old appliance that we knew was on its last legs when we bought the place. To be honest, I was hoping it would crap out in the first year when we still had our warranty purchased by our agent.
Of course it chose not to oblige during the warranty period so I’m debating whether it makes sense to replace it before it dies or if we should just use it til the bottom falls out. I’ve skipped many a comforting and soothing bath because it’s just not warm enough for my bones but I sure would like a real bath.
Linda ventured into the world of the tankless heater a couple years ago, and our former neighbors were talking to us about them before we moved too.
My internal debate has gotten this far:
Tankless pros: smaller footprint, lower energy needs
Tankless cons: PG&E doesn’t give rebates for tankless water heater units, it won’t work during a power outage, it’s 3-4x as expensive as a traditional tank heater.
They did offer incentives for solar water heating which would work alongside conventional water heaters, but we live wreathed in fog most of the year so I’m a bit skeptical that this could work for us. They state: You might get a rebate of up to $4,366 and a 30 percent federal tax credit. We already missed the boat on the 30% federal tax credit, that expired Dec. 31, 2019, but it looks like there are lower tiers of tax credit through 2021 according to TurboTax.
I’m pondering if it makes sense to have solar alongside tankless, would that help us with the power outage non-availability of water? Though thoroughly inconvenient, I can deal with multiple days of power outages if we still have hot food and hot water. I’m not so sure of my equanimity without. I don’t want a solution that requires us to give up more room in the garage then we already do with the existing old style water heater though.
Does anyone have experience with replacing water heaters? Are you using solar, tankless, or conventional heaters?
Item 2: The Exterior
Our front and back yards are a travesty and not at all useable. We also have a TON of other exterior work to do:
– Bolt and brace
– Replacing dryrotted boards
– Replacing our gutters
– Fixing the drainage problems
– Painting
– Functional landscaping to remove and prevent the resprouting of the jungle that has sprouted after all my efforts at weed eradication last summer
PiC has a lot of aesthetic interior projects he had wanted to tackle this year in addition to the functional stuff, painting and putting up hanging hooks and suchlike, but it’s been too much of a year to get into it. I have zero interest in painting, myself. He did commit to some hanging hooks though.
We drew up a master list to figure out our priorities because we needed to budget for maintenance spending and still hold back some cash for the inevitable surprise something happening, but honestly, I have no clue what we will be able to get done this year considering we will need help for the bigger things. Getting a contractor / sub-contractor has proven to be nearly impossible.
I’m also not prepared to have PiC risk himself on a high ladder to do gutter work during this period where our city is again becoming a hotspot for COVID.
Item 3: The Interior
We had some big ticket items on the list.
The (used when we bought it) sofa was aging badly.
I love our bed but the mattress was at the end of its life for me (my pain issues are very affected by mattress quality) and we just don’t have enough real estate. I had lobbied for a king size bed when we had to replace this mattress but it wouldn’t have fit. With me the size I am, and with the back pain ramping up to a high screech, the need for more bed had my tiny voice squeaking I TOLD YOU SO.
We spent money on both bed and sofa at the same time which was a heck of a hit but well worth it. Not that the sofa has actually ARRIVED *glares at Joybird*.
I’m still thinking about how long we can get by with this washer and dryer. They each have issues but they still work so I’m hoping to push replacement well into next year. 🤞🏼
:: Did you have any must-do maintenance around the home this year? Did it get done? How are you prioritizing?
October 23, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,905.47; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Saturday’s plan: organize the Smol Acrobat’s two dresser drawers to ensure we have age appropriate clothing on hand through six months and put everything else in storage. What really happened?
1. I worked on our ballots (almost done!) with 13 measures and school board people to vote for. Why do we always have SO MANY MEASURES?? It makes voting a real chore. I will check my choices against those of a much politically savvier friend.
2 I tackled the research for open enrollment. This year has a new twist which has eaten my brain. An HMO that acts more like a PPO with a deductible and comes with the option of an HSA and limited FSA (for vision and dental only). I’m very much not a fan of the PPO-like HMO, we’ll have to pay for services in full up to $2800 a year before coverage kicks in for anything that’s not preventative. My x-rays alone last year when my back was an issue was billed out at $1900. I didn’t pay a nickel for that, last year.
I’ve never had an HSA option before and I was excited. Then I learned that we lose our general FSA and HSA contributions and gains are taxable in CA so we’d be looking at a significant jump in our state taxable income. We double our federal pre-tax deduction but it might be a wash compared to the increased taxable state income. I’ve asked our tax person to run some numbers for us on that front, meanwhile, I need PiC to get a hold of the negotiated rates for the HSA-HMO.
Most years of my life I haven’t had health insurance but in my adult married life I’ve had great insurance. We always opted for the HMO for ease of use and to avoid this out of pocket maximum dance. I’m not looking forward to that being part of our lives.
3. Ordered Seamus’s medication refills and also called the vet to get a written prescription to submit.
4. Worked for 90 minutes to clear up some mess ahead of Monday. Monday me better be grateful. (Spoiler: Monday me failed to be grateful because Monday was crammed full of personal and professional issues.)
5. Another two hours organizing and paring down the family photo albums meant I was in shouting distance of finishing. That’s 8 hours I’ve spent on this project across several days. I must have started with nearly 2000 photos because I’d winnowed it down a massive amount and hundreds are left. I was initially feeling guilty discarding a batch of photos of my estranged sibling but today’s work revealed that even keeping only the photos with him and someone else in them leaves with me with over 100 of them. Guilt gone!
I never touched Smol Acrobat’s clothes!
6. Sunday had to be desk reclamation day. I’d left my piles and piles of photos all over my desk. If I didn’t get that squared away, I couldn’t work on Monday. And I couldn’t deal mentally with the chaos. Four more hours of sorting, discarding, and transferring resulted in a final photo album, with many photo slots doubled up or more. Looks like an accordion and I don’t care! The photos are consolidated in an album which went with the contents of my medium box into one large box and I can wash my hands of the mess! One day I may even sit down to sort and discard duplicates of the school era photos. The album spanned 1978-1990, my photos span 1994-2008.
7. I tackled packaging up Halloween pouches for the zoom Halloween scavenger hunt we will do with JB’s friends, then I organized SA’s dresser. I’m sure there were other things I wanted to do but I’m D-O-N-E.
Pumpkin banana bread will have to wait another day.
Challenges this week: my sciatic nerve pain is an all day every day thing now and it’s the pits. The news is a mess and depressing as all get out.
We attempted to satisfy a craving I had with take out and were appalled to see so many people are dining indoors and outsiders in such crowded setups – lines going out the door and wrapping around the sidewalk and the block – that they may as well not be masked or distanced. Since the restaurants were set up on the sidewalks, there was no safe way to walk past diners without being right on top of them. We didn’t even try to park. It was a disappointment, three different places were the same way. After many hours on this “adventure”, and a few tears from JB who was homesick because when you’re 5 and haven’t been on a 9 hour road trip in ten months you forget what an hour feels like, we managed to scavenge some dinner and managed to feed ourselves by 9 pm. Sheesh.
I asked Joybird for an update on our sofa. Their updates have been non-existent up to now and I don’t think we’re going to be getting it anything like on time. I could live with that if they were proactively telling us what’s going on and not leaving me in the dark so I wonder if they’re just scamming us. After three days of trying to get an answer, we found out they have been six weeks behind schedule and hadn’t even started making it until this week. But somehow they still think we should trust them to deliver. I cancelled the order. We won’t be shopping from Joybird again.
8. We got a small refund from the rental property escrow! It’s nice to put money in when we’re contemplating a lot of money going out soon.
9. I finally put in my first order at Penzey’s which was exciting! I also happened to wait long enough that they had a promotion: buy 5 spices and the cheapest six spice is free. In writing this I realize that I forgot to get one more spice mix I wanted. Darnit.
:: How was your week?
October 22, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,816.35; Rural libraries, $346.69.
This headline exemplifies my whole life motto: You can be grateful for what you have … AND strive for more
Prickly business: the hedgehog highway that knits a village together
Ode to Joy
I miss playing music so much more than I expected. Once I finish the seemingly neverending task of clearing out the office, I’m making space for a digital piano.
https://twitter.com/jadedcreative/status/1238081405713821698?s=19
October 20, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,816.35; Rural libraries, $346.69.
Week 31 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 31, Day 213: We had a talk with JB’s tutor about the two priorities we’re balancing: academics vs structure. Structure is the part that they have always had with daycare scheduling to prepare them for the way a traditional classroom is run, vs the learning itself (academics).
Kindergarten completely lacks consistency and structure. We never know what they’re going to be doing at any given time of the class session, or even what time the class will end. Daycare was incredibly structured down to the five minute mark and we always knew what they were expected to be doing at any point in the day. Our tutor expressed concern that if JB were to continue on a trajectory where they are academically a grade level or two above their current grade but continue to lack that ability to handle the structure, skipping a grade would be a real problem. We appreciated that insight but we realize that JB’s social development isn’t progressing at a pace that I would think skipping grades could work well for them in the next year or two. That could change, but at the moment, with the few opportunities they have to socialize, I have my doubts it’ll shift much over the next year.
We decided that within the tutoring session, focusing on the academics will be our higher priority. PiC and I will continue to work on balancing flexibility and structure across the whole day so that they aren’t completely feral by the time first grade starts.
Today I introduced a short post-kindergarten class exercise session. We took the dogs outside for a very short walk to a safe part of the street where I could send JB to do wind sprints. I posed this as their “real dog owner training”. They need to build up strength and stamina if they’re going to have a hope of keeping up with running Sera one of these days. Then they get to do a quiet activity of their choice for up to 40 minutes, followed up by an assigned chore. We’ll go into lunch and rest time before their afternoon educational session from there. (more…)
October 19, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,816.35; Rural libraries, $346.69.
Surprise! Chores!
I’m pleased with the occasional initiative JB continues to show. They got up early one morning and while I still lay abed, they set up the dogs’ breakfast without being asked AND remembered the whole rigamarole of the kibble, and the supplements, and the medications, and the everything. Seamus’s dietary needs are many.
They can also be responsible for most of the laundry now. They load the washer and start it after an adult has poured in the detergent. They check and spin it again if it hasn’t spun enough water out. They can transfer to the dryer and then they hang up and put away the clean clothes. I generally do the sorting first just to make it more efficient (and I like sorting). I also do most of the folding but they’re good at folding the dish towels.
The initiative is still very sporadic though.
Education
I will leave this space free of my rant about the state of education for the moment but commenting on JB’s education: we spent the entire summer cobbling together a consistent education stream for them.
We were very lucky to have the help of a trained teacher to do the actual teaching and I added occasional supplemental classes through Outschool to give them some variety. They’re exploring all kinds of fun educational experiences as and when I can fit them into our schedule: “visiting” the cultures of other countries, dance, literature and math.
I was oh so grateful we had that solid foundation when they started kindergarten. JB is well accustomed to regular remote learning if done well (that part remains to be seen) and the regularity of a five day school week. Whether I feel like that formal education structure is best for them is not relevant right now, it’s what we have.
Different generations
Breakfast when I was growing up: small bowl of rice porridge, maybe soy sauce.
When PiC was growing up: bowl of cereal.
JB: Bowl of raisin bran, scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh mango and strawberries.
We ALL eat the same meals now (except for the parts I can’t eat), so it’s not like I’m blaming them for the choices we make. It’s just a huge contrast!
Pupdate
Seamus is losing senior dog friends left and right, as his cohort ages, and it’s so sad. They were all getting on in years and it was time for each of time, but it’s still heartbreaking. I’m glad he has Sera to keep him a bit engaged, even if he doesn’t necessarily appreciate her. They have a bit of a bond though, they check on each other every so often and she functions a little bit like his remora fish, cleaning up after him after their morning treats.
I keep tracking the number of Happiness Rolls he does every day. Once he stops having Happiness Rolls, loses mobility, or stops eating or drinking, we’re going to know it’s time. It’s very important to me that we do our best to get that right. We want him to squeeze out every good day and bit of joy he can but not hold him in misery because we’re too selfish to let him go. We know people who have been holding their suffering pets hostage to their emotions and it’s absolutely awful. When your pet hasn’t been able to get up or walk to tend their basic needs in months and has seizures almost regularly, it’s not a secret that they are suffering.
I think it’s been three years since we brought Sera home and for the first two and a half years, I was pretty sure she didn’t even like us. She was happy to eat our food and wanted to show submission but she was only bonded to Seamus, she didn’t want much to do with us humans.
We’ve spent loads of time on her training, even though it was frustrating to feel like we were pouring in gallons of energy into a bottomless pit. She’s still very reactive and therefore cannot be trusted off leash or on leash with JB. Not that she’d ever deliberately hurt JB, she’s simply still not capable of paying attention to the human on the other end of the leash and would absolutely drag JB face first on the ground to go after a dog she thought was menacing her. Well, she previously couldn’t. She’s finally making some progress. She looks at us when she sees another dog, anxiously and ever so briefly, but she does break that intent gaze voluntarily sometimes and that’s a world of difference from her earlier levels of hypervigilence. She’s also very much into the treats I’ve been getting her and she’s learned what heel means, though she won’t STAY heeling so that’s the next step of training. Her sit game is weak but she’s recently learned down!
What I find absolutely fascinating is that she listens to JB. (Seamus categorically will not obey JB unless there is obvious bribery. He considers himself above them, and he’s been a mature adult longer than JB has been alive so his judgement has been trustworthy much longer. But that’s diminishing now in his 15th or 16th year. It’s funny to hear JB adopt my low deep training tones to try and exude authority over him because it does not work.) Sera, though, will obey JB when we’re home. She’s obeyed commands to go to bed, sit, and lay down. She’s obeyed the sit and stay when JB is feeding them, and she’s sort of obeyed, about as well as she ever does for anyone, the “walk” command which is her release to go eat. JB scruffs her as best they can to “help” her slow down which is also hilarious because a five year old cannot possibly hold back a 60 lb pibble dashing for her food bowl. But they try.
Random questions
How do we make chips?
How do bears get their sounds?
What does ‘dire’ mean?
***
Things I didn’t expect my five year old to know about: Baba Yaga (thanks to Itty Bitty Hellboy which is a great read)
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Amelia Bedelia moment
In one of their lessons, JB learned to make fish decorated with tissue paper. On a day they needed something to keep them busy, I asked JB to make me a school of fish for my office.
They taped together a few sheets of paper to draw a large building with a sign at the top: “Fish school.”
***
Believe me, I know you.
JB: Can you ask if mom can come on our walk?
Me: they just want me to come so I can walk Seamus and they can go fast with you and Sera.
JB: NO!! I JUST WANT YOU TO WALK WITH US. *Offended face*
Outside two minutes later…
JB: ok! Mom can take Seamus, you (PiC) ‘n’ me can go first.
Me: AH HA! J’accuse!
:: What were your favorite kinder-level books? What was your favorite childhood breakfast?