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
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Week 25 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 25, Day 171: I stopped buying fast fashion many years ago but I kept the clothes bought when that’s all I could afford, and discard them only when they fell apart.
It’s kind of a surprise how long wearing some of these things are! Today, I’m wearing a shirt that I bought something like 12 years ago from Forever 21 and it still looks like new. No stains, tears, pulls or fading.
It’s a heavy work day as usual for Monday but some changes I made have borne enough fruit for me to be able to get through it in a normal work day for once. And it’s been a while since that happened. But at the same time, I still feel tremendous guilt over being an emotionally disengaged parent when I’m working. I don’t feel like this when they’re away, just when they’re here and happily bouncing everywhere and wanting attention.
Week 25, Day 172: I’m tired from not great sleep which helps nothing at all, but I’m also struggling with a terrible lack of patience and mood today. I keep hydrating with ice water to try and stave off a five alarm scream. I have a snack. I change tasks to get away from the minor irritants that are tickling the trigger. I make myself breathe deeply and speak clearly, calmly, and firmly to JB instead of letting them get under my skin.
I can’t decide if I want this day to be twice as long which would allow me to take some calming detours, so I can still get things done, or just be over already and start over.
Finally, a break to make an experimental batch of gluten free cornbread seemed to help.
Week 25, Day 173: I expected today to be a tough day because I had a long doctor’s appointment with blood work and that impacts my work schedule but I forgot the other impact. It’s utterly exhausting! And me being me, I was completely confused how much the appointment took out of me. I was so fatigued after getting home that I could barely rally my last remaining brain cells. While it was nice to chat with my doctor who I like and respect and who treats me with respect, I can’t say it was worth the loss of the rest of the day. I had to triage and ditch work early because I was approaching the point of being useless and two steps after that is worse than useless: making mistakes on important decisions. It was time to cut my losses.
Week 25, Day 174: Two hours of this morning were eaten up by technology gremlins and then another half hour was eaten by another gremlin. Then it was off to the races trying to finish a full work day in a little over half a day. Not stressful at all!
JB did their best to help out. They pronounced: you don’t have to stop working, I’ll make lunch!
As they are FIVE I had some concerns. But once I established they weren’t attempting anything that would later result in fire trucks, I sat myself back down to crack out some work and let the kid show me what they could do entirely unsupervised. And honestly, I was impressed. They made me a gluten free low carb ham and cheese sandwich with a side of carrots and two kinds of dip. They even insisted on serving it to me at my desk, a la Chef Dad, instead of just letting me know to come to lunch. They made the same for themselves and heartily enjoyed their lunch with the savor of independence at the table nearby. Really, I was impressed.
Week 25, Day 175: Unexpected letters from the IRS are never good. This one definitely wasn’t. I found out that I had missed a Pretty Big Line Item on a past tax year’s filing and I have no idea how that form never made it to me or into my records. But here’s where therapy paid off: when I tracked down the mistake and figured out it truly was a mistake, I was able to let it go emotionally. Normally I’d have kicked my own ass up and down the street for being so (insert various judgy phrases here) thus adding the pain of stressing and being angry to the pain of paying a whopper of an unexpected bill. I did have to suffer the pain of the two hours on hold to the IRS to iron out the final payment because I was disputing one small item listed, that was rough and meant I didn’t get to take a half day as I’d hoped, but I did get the paperwork finished up and ready for the mail. And thank goodness for my new habit of keeping more cash on hand than the absolute bare minimum of what’s needed to pay the next week of bills. That also saved me some heartburn.
It’s so strange learning to let myself make mistakes and not feeling terrible about them.
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
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Dividend income. We received $739.94 in dividends in August.
Claiming Funds. I spent quite a bit of time this month following up on cash back and money owed to us:
It took all month to get Achievement to pay up. I don’t know what’s going on with them but it’s really frustrating that their responsiveness has been so terrible. I’m on the verge of dropping them completely.
I had to submit claims to Mr. Rebates since the tracking on some of my purchases failed to register. Their customer service is great, though of course they are limited in what they can do during a pandemic with the stores.
I’m still trying to get our FSA to release our dependent care funds.
I finally joined ibotta and started inputting some receipts for their Any Brand credits. We don’t do much specific brand name shopping but I figured why not get money back for the shopping we already do? It’s tiny but I’m happy to take what I can get if we’re already spending – it just takes 20 seconds a piece. I could string those small 20-second bits of time into some side hustle if I were determined but frankly, I’m not prepared to take on any real commitment anyway so this isn’t a diversion that’s taking away from a grander purpose. It’s just spare change.
I finally had enough Swagbucks banked to redeem a $25 Visa gift card a couple months ago. They are 13% off which is 1 whole percent more than the standard monthly 12% discounted redemption discount, soI’d been saving them to coincide with a Birthday Swag-up. The $25 cost 2120 Swagbucks instead of 2175 (or the 2200 for a standard discounted redemption). I haven’t redeemed one for several months so this was nice.
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I just remembered to inch up our twice-monthly savings rate a little bit.
2. I’m really enjoying PiC’s version of the gluten free turkey and cheese burgers he’s been making for us on Friday nights.
3. We had a brief outdoors masked and distanced no hugging meet up with a couple friends we haven’t talked to for months. It was maybe about ten minutes but it was a nice tiny visit. I can handle socializing in those small increments.
4. I made the mistake of saying that I was a bit more relaxed this week because a lot of the balls I’m juggling are in other people’s hands and that felt like I invited some chaos but I think honestly it’s just the normal ebb and flow of stress, isn’t it? I found myself somewhere on the spectrum of mildly to moderately annoyed without spiraling into anxiety and grouchiness over the bad turns and was able to enjoy that minor moment of peace without spoiling it with looking for something to fuss about. That’s a new thing for me. Brain therapy is good!
Challenges this week: I don’t typically pay attention to celebrity news but the passing of Chadwick Boseman was shattering.
Minor frustration: we’ve only had two pieces of mail go missing in the past several years and both times, it was a check. Both times, they made it as far as being scanned and in our Informed Delivery email but never made it to us. The mail from the IRS telling us we owe them over $5000 found us, though! I guess given the interest they’d charge if we didn’t get that mail, we’re better off getting theirs than not. We’re both still juggling a TON of extra logistics because we’re trying to make time to help a friend and get some home maintenance on the road.
5. We had to make some decisions about furniture this month and we got through all of them without any conflict! We usually have such different tastes and desires and needs that I’m usually at least a little disgruntled by how much time we’ve spent on it but two things made a difference: having a timeline helped force focus and narrowed our choices. And our strategy of having me tell him what my priorities are, him going off shopping and giving me links to look at, and then narrowing it down together is working smoothly these days.
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
I recently found out that a friend had Covid and I didn’t know when she was down with is so she shared her blog post. Btw, this is one reason we get along so well: “I work from home. I don’t even want a job if I can’t do it from home. I hate going in the office, I hate the politics involved, but most of all I hate daily socializing with people I’ve already met and yes judged. I already know I’m going to dislike many of the people there because if you’ve worked a lot of jobs like me you can spot the types.”
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 23 and 24 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 23, Day 157: JB was really excited for their first day of school. I am really hoping things shift but it bothers me greatly that their teacher keeps harping on how she wants to see them back in the classroom “soon.” It makes me think that the teacher isn’t taking this seriously enough and that she’s getting their hopes up which is rather cruel when we have no idea what’s around the corner. These kids have been through five months of COVID and it feels like she’s dangling bait in front of them with this “soon” commentary. I hope she stops.
I don’t know if this was a happiness hangover thanks to the weekend but despite the numerous challenges of the day, and the Mondayness of the day, I didn’t spend my day infuriated and frustrated as usual.
We had lots of fun on the weekend one day and I spent the other day getting almost my entire to do list done. I finished up all but two items off the remaining list today and caught up on my work backlog.
Things are still grim with various fronts but for the first time in months, a Monday didn’t feel like the Absolute Worst. I’m very grateful.
Week 23, Day 158: Day 2. Oh. My patience from yesterday ran out. Darn! (more…)
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. Every time I start to think our little $3 hydroponic basil plant is giving up, it stages a comeback! It’s put out several new lovely green stems fluffy with leaves. The odd thing is that these are sprouting out of the very brown stems that are connected to the roots. It’s a strange look but it’s fresh and smells great.
2. Our Lakota balance is creeping up again to nearly $100 between monthly contributions from giving friends and my last infusion. We should be able to help another family soon!
3. LOTS of friends on this list of Plutus Finalists, yay friends!
Challenges this week: Yet another friend has lost their beloved family pet. That’s three friends in as many weeks. My heart breaks for them.
Because I don’t seem to actually understand the meaning of “pace yourself” I am now: working on selling the rental, working on refinancing our primary home, figuring out if we can shift some big items to someone who needs it more, on top of the usual work – managing remote schooling – parenting – dogparenting/dogcare – grind. Deep breath.
The world is … too much. We are awash with Covid, wildfires are everywhere so people and homes are in danger, the air quality is horrible so it’s not safe to take JB out for long isolated walks and hikes and bike rides.
4. We borrowed a hot spot from the school and picked it up just in time so we would have it in time for the second week of school. This is good, we will have three people using the internet at the same time this coming week and I didn’t have confidence in even our upgraded internet to be stable under the heavy usage.
5. PiC and I finally had a meeting of the minds and selected some kid specific organizing aids. Finally!! It’ll come in stages so I started with the small stuff I could manage right away while we wait for the larger basket set to arrive. The key here is to teach JB to independently follow the organizers.
6. A completely satisfying weekend day: breakfast, cleared some household work, JB had a call to hang out with Auntie then I hopped on a call to discuss some supplemental enrichment and organizing plans. We had lunch, walked the dogs, went to pick up supplies and return the second case of the absolutely terrible strawberry mango sparkling water at Target. We also bought a refill on hand sanitizer because we couldn’t find it anywhere else for delivery. How ironic it is that to protect ourselves against Covid we had to go in a crowded store and search for AGES to find it? Everyone was masked, thankfully, but it was unpleasantly packed in there. Still we got what we needed and got out, then I got to work with the printer and tape to customize our personal bottles while JB had their rest time. After which point PiC and I crashed so we abandoned our child, him to nap and me to lay down and they did just fine for an hour doing scratch art and drawing and painting. A whole hour without more than marginally bothering me! We had dinner and crashed out. There were hiccups, there always are, but we made it over the finish and I felt both semi rested and like I’d gotten a lot done.
7. JB is coping really well with online learning, all things considered.
:: How was your week? What meals do you like to make ahead, if any?
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, $1,732.74; Rural libraries, $321.62.
‘I Have Stage Four Cancer, But I Will Not Live Like I’m Dying.’ I can’t help but think that JB’s morbid streak comes from me because when I read articles like this, I think harder about all the ways I have to figure out how to replace all the things that I do in our family should I be out of the picture. But that’s a rather transparently desperate attempt to impose control over something you can’t control. I couldn’t replace PiC with systems and preparation if our roles were reversed. Not by a long shot.
Week 25 of COVID in the Bay Area.
