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
Read More
September 30, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 166: Trainer time! I’m gaining confidence that I can do exercises without immediately sending myself into CFS / fibro traction and there’s something immensely uplifting about that knowledge.
Arms day is easier for me than legs day, and I attempted to max out my reps again. (spoiler: I was able to lift my arms again the next day. Yay!
TIL the acronym HENRY: High Earning Not Rich Yet. That’s us, since I define “rich” for us as being able to survive long term without our jobs. I’m always acutely aware that it can go away. My Great Recession scars are practically tattoos, they’re always out and always at least a little bit dictating my attitude towards money. We are currently high earning (though at the very bottom of the high earning wage scale in this area and compared to the other professions/industries around here, most daycare parent make multiples of what we both make combined), and we couldn’t maintain this lifestyle on one or no incomes. We splurge now and again, and we give more than we splurge on ourselves most months. There’s plenty of non survival (our survival that is) fat in our spending but I don’t consider it all non-essential. I would really hate to be unable to help folks out. But that’d be part of the reality of losing our incomes due to corporate cuts, along with other belt tightening we’d have to do. Actually, I can’t entirely blame the GR for my continually being on edge: PiC’s employer is going through yet another round this year, did I mention that? This is what, the fifth round this year. No wonder I’m always expecting it. What steams my cauliflower is that the parent corporation is doing Just Fine. They made many-digits of profit last year. Alright, I’d better leave it at that. We’re HENRY. Can’t wait to drop the NRY and the heartburn of waiting out round after round of layoffs, hoping we make it through another one. Between PiC’s income, benefits and the childcare being linked to his employer, we have so many reasons to hold on tight at least until kindergarten starts. Then it’ll be down to the income and benefits. Healthcare is such a huge question, and has the potential for such catastrophic consequences if you have a serious illness, I don’t know if I’ll ever not be nervous about that piece of the financial puzzle.
Year 5, Day 167: Everyone got up late again today. We weren’t late out the door but this waking up early is such a tough nut to crack. Even Smol Acrobat, usually an undesired reliable alarm clock, slept in. There’s something about this school year that’s making it all much more challenging.
Garden harvest: three snap peas, three mini cucumbers, and seven green beans! Our biggest green veg harvest yet!
Work: 👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼👎🏼
I’m preparing a brief to get into yet another tiff (of sorts) with corporate on behalf of my team to get them what they deserve. Ahhh there’s nothing like a combination of intense pressing deadlines AND political bullshit to navigate to ring in the fall season! This is just the beginning of this particular advocacy, and it remains to be seen if I have a particularly powerful person on our side or not. That’s what I find out next week – wish me luck?
Year 5, Day 168: Chores day for everyone. JB needed to wash their lunchbox, plan tomorrow’s lunch, grind coffee beans, and put away the new load of laundry. Smol Acrobat is responsible for their own laundry so they had to hang up their own clothes and fold their underwear and put away the utensils. PiC prepared dinner. I assigned the chores, babysat Smol during their chores to help them over the little bumps, then spent two hours submitting FSA claims, and trying to figure out how to earn a few miles for our Alaska mileage accounts.
I ogled these cakes from a local(ish) bakery. I want to try some of their flavors but not at $35 for 1-2 servings. I’m not feeling that level of economically secure.
Year 5, Day 169: This weather cannot make up its mind: one day hot, one day cold, two days hot, two days cold. One day hot, one day cold. Today is Full Winter. Tomorrow’s forecast? Full Summer!?
Unfortunately I can’t or I absolutely would, but still practicing naming the thing I feel like even if I can’t: just want to sit here and stare into the middle distance for a few hours doing absolutely nothing. Sadly, nothing in my schedule says: sure, relax. Today I’ve got to run an errand after school, tomorrow I’ve got to attend a school event so that means rescheduling my appointment with the notary to next week. This weekend is all costume making and kid-minding and food-cooking and then next week is chock full of meetings that were postponed from this week. I hate meetings. Loathe them. But these are actually necessary so I suck it up and forge on.
By dinnertime, I slumped over thinking “I am so tired, I can’t take it anymore” which of course leads to “oh no it’s going to be harder next year when JB’s self defense classes are later in the day and then the year after that when Smol Acrobat starts kindergarten and we won’t have childcare after the kindergartener’s early release midday aughhhh….” There’s really no resolution to that particular mental slide. I have no answers. It’s just auughhhh all the way down.
Year 5, Day 170: Well, I’ll be darned. I was dreading the arrival of an envelope from the Passport Services Agency today – we only just submitted our applications last week and the only reason I could think of that they would be sending anything to me so soon after processing payments is that they were rejecting Smol Acrobat’s passport photo. I accidentally sized their head a little too large in the prints relative to the 2″ x 2 ” size and the agent said maaaaaybe they would take it but they might not, and they would mail it back if not. You could knock me down with a feather when I opened it up and found that it was my very own renewed passport! That was less than 2 weeks from submission in the new online system to delivery! Fantastically fast.
Trainer time: It’s arms day again and I’m maxing out my reps while I still can. 24 lateral raises, 18 almost-semi-kinda pushups. I can feel the ache but it’s not terrible.
Money things: PiC mentioned the cascade of upcoming big home maintenance things: getting the roof replaced, and then the gutters, and then (this is really ambitious) finishing the exterior paint which was started seven years ago but never finished. That made me a little nervous so I made a savings bucket in our Ally savings account to start to trickle in cash for big house stuff. I didn’t love how it felt to take the cash from our emergency savings even if we did make up that lost ground over less time than I had feared. At least this way we’ll have some cash set aside specifically for these things. I also made a travel bucket while I was at it. Historically that’s always just come out of cash flow but we also haven’t really done much big travel in the past 5 or so years, it’s easy to cash flow a road trip or three. Bigger travel is going to cost accordingly.
Also looking ahead to 2025 moneywise – I think the 401K contribution limit is expected to go up another $1000. I’ve been plugging in some of this year’s numbers into next year’s spreadsheet and it looks like our cash flow falls over into the negatives by May. Part of this is because spending is high. Well, I guess that’s just really the whole thing: our spending projections are on the high side. Since my takehome pay is hard to calculate for next year, I’m being very conservative about how much that might be for now. I’m also conservative with PiC’s presumed takehome pay for the early part of the year as well. We usually “run out of money” early in the year in the first few drafts of the annual spending projections and we don’t ever actually run out of money in real life but even knowing that, I still hate the early draft feelings of augh the numbers are going negative! And I still have more spending to add! Especially since, in keeping with everything else that keeps going up, our annual property tax bill is now over $12k total so I have to bump up that specific savings bucket. I can’t reduce our property tax or the daycare bill or the mortgage or the half dozen other necessities. I can only reduce the not-survival stuff like giving and travel. Boo. Do not like.
September 27, 2024
1. People who haven’t spoken to me in years texted me a happy birthday this year and that’s topsy turvy because the one friend who has never forgotten and always called for my birthday didn’t (but she didn’t forget my birthday, she just didn’t know what day it was where she was 😆 so I’m amused).
(more…)
September 25, 2024
Our travel cost breakdown
1. Food and lodgings, $300
2. Gas, $150
3. Trolley for four of us: $42
4. Gifts and stuff (both for us and others): $500
5. Badges for 2 adults, four days plus Preview Night: $730. 2 children were free (vs $623 in 2023)
6. Dogsitting, $0 😔
7. Stupid tax, $0? I don’t remember anything that falls into this category. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, just that I forgot to record it if it did.
8. We added an extra entertainment this year and split ticket costs: $150 for our share of entry fees and locker rental.
Total: $1872
As always, this endeavor starts many months in advance. Badges are sold through a lottery system so it’s never certain that we’ll get in. I’m always grateful when we do.
A bit of history: A Saturday pass for 2024 cost $79. They also now charge a handling fee of $15 so it’s $94 to attend that one specific day. In 2005, that Saturday pass was $10. TEN DOLLARS.
Spending: We were freer with our spending than usual and there were fewer deals than usual. Normally those two things wouldn’t appear in the same sentence together! But I’m very happy with the things I bought for myself. I finally indulged in a piece of jewelry from Adorable Mayhem – her stuff is all handmade and really cute. I couldn’t justify spending much on myself in the past, and especially not with two grabby hands kids in a row, but they’re finally old enough to know better and she happened to be selling a line of tiny animals bearing weapons. I couldn’t resist. My little hamster wielding a flail makes me very happy. As does my (very cute) wallet that is finally the right size ($30). I’d been using a $20 wallet from Target that was simply too big for my hands for the past 2 years. It’s too big and too heavy, but I made do. Now I have one that’s comfortable for me to hold, not so heavy, and doesn’t hurt my hands after a bit.
Favorite moments: JB boldly made a beeline for the adults sitting at the table at the bookstore booth to ask if they had specific books. Unfortunately the adult in question was a special guest author, Adam Nimoy, who was thoroughly confused by the customer service question. I was laughing as I steered them to the actual bookseller on his right and then we got out of there. (On reflection, he could have been just a little bit gracious about it. He pulled a face and asked the bookseller person “Do i have a WHAT??” You’re sitting at a bookstore booth at Comic Con and a kid is looking for a book, is it really that outrageous they’d just ask the first adult human looking like they’re available for help? I still think it’s funny but I also don’t think much of the guy.)
Walking into the restroom, a little girl behind me yelled “I like your skirt!” When I turned to say thank you, she yelled “I like your mask too!” (We weren’t the only maskers but we were in the minority so it was a nice callout.)
Smol Acrobat yelled Wolverine! (the kids mostly know the Avengers, but Wolvie is my old time favorite) and the cosplayer waved to them with a grin and popped claws for them.
JB had taken a picture with a giant Pudgy Penguin cosplayer. I showed it to Smol Acrobat who was fascinated and wanted one of their own. We wheeled (in their stroller)
Clever cosplays we loved: Kobe-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi master costume in Laker colors.
The Indiana Jones cosplayer in a wheelchair with a rolling ball behind their head above.
The Avatar cosplayers who brought awesome props to mimic bending.
The Remy (Ratatouille) rat riding on the human’s head.
That moment when we were driving home when I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with my body. It felt funny. I keep prodding mentally, what’s this? What’s going on with me? And then it finally sank in: I’m actually feeling relaxed. It’s been a year or more since I actually felt that way.
I’ve put in a calendar alert for the next returning registration battle. Fingers crossed.
September 23, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 159: COVID vaccines are being administered nearby but they still don’t have them for 5 and under so I’m waiting til Smol Acrobat can get vaccinated so the kids can go together for moral support. PiC and I have to remember to do ours separately so we don’t have a simultaneous crash and burn like we did last fall. It was totally unexpected. We’d been relatively ok after all the prior boosters/vax after the very first round so we let our guard down for the Fall 2023 shots. JB was a champ at covering for us but I don’t want them to have to do that again.
Smol Acrobat has been sick for a few days and they finally got me this weekend. It appears to be the standard preschooler congestion/fatigue/cough/ICK virus that circulates every other week, but I tested both of us today and we’re currently negative on COVID. I’ll test again in a few. I had the luxury of being able to rest half the day Sunday because PiC took the kids, but there’s no rest on weekdays between work and school drop off and pick up and activities.
Year 5, Day 160: Operating at about 30% today, having gone to bed early but unable to sleep for physical discomfort and then unable to rest for the psychological warfare my subconscious is waging against the nightmares. PiC heard me shout in my sleep last night, I remember that waking me up too, because of some vampire-ish type of nightmare.
With 9 direct reports, someone always needs something. It gets unwieldy when it’s three somebodies all needing something at the same time. It’s not all handholding, though sometimes (and more lately because of THINGS and REASONS) it is that too. Ultimately I’ve got to make some changes in my department. I don’t love them but reality has set in, especially as at least one person is in crisis and needs me to be really present for them in a way that isn’t sustainable in the long-term the way I’m overloaded now. My hope is that we can support them through the crisis and in the meantime I will be restructuring enough so that I am prepared for future needs. I wish I could have had real support when I was grieving my mom’s sudden death or overwhelmed with my pain and fatigue issues, even if I didn’t know I needed it or how to ask for it, so I’m committed to providing it here.
Year 5, Day 161: I’m still feeling under the weather but compared to how I would normally be feeling three days into any virus (steamrollered), this isn’t nearly as bad (very mild congestion, continued fatigue). That first day of rest must have made a real difference because that’s the only difference between the last time I got sick and this. My system is overreacting to the virus today with absolutely delightful (not) mouth sores despite the antivirals, though, and that’s making eating a real trial.
I powered through so much work today in an attempt to keep the decks clear for a shorter day on Friday. We’re going to get the kids their passports and then I get to test out the online passport renewal process that just opened today for myself. Tiny squee of excitement.
Year 5, Day 162: Trainer time! This is the third workout of the week and despite the viral things going on with me, I decided to push my limits a bit. The trainer usually gives me a range, say 3-8 lateral raises, or 2-5 pushups (modified since my wrists can’t handle that pressure). I aim for the middle of the range most of the time, hover at the bottom of the range on bad days. Since good days are far and few between, I figured that a not-bad day is good enough for attempting this. Plus I was emotionally disregulated like WOW this afternoon and the challenge felt like a good way to shake my brain loose of the crankiness. I did 20 modified pushups and 32 lateral raises with light weights. Will I be able to lift my arms tomorrow? NO ONE KNOWS.
Year 5, Day 162: Oops, my updates for this day and Friday were lost to the ether! I won’t fully attempt to recreate them but just the most relevant bits: YES I was able to lift my arms today and it wasn’t a big deal which conversely was a big deal because that’s really cool. I am getting a bit stronger and not getting punished for trying to work out again! That’s such a huge thing.
Year 5, Day 163: This was both a busy day and a good day in that I cleared a lot of work in not a lot of time, so PiC and I were able to have lunch together. We haven’t done that in a very long time. The bad part was we both ate too much and nearly succumbed to food coma! 😀 In the end, we made it through the worst of the comas and finished out the week.
September 20, 2024
1. This week I learned: “Thalassophobia is the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water, such as the ocean, seas, or lakes.” *Raises both hands* that’s very much me!
2. Wallaby is such a funny word to say.
(more…)
September 18, 2024
Life with JB
Our friends with kids between ages 7-11 who go to a different school were telling us their sixth grader was the last one in the class to get a cell phone. That even kids as young as second graders already have Apple Watches and phone and all the devices. So even though they didn’t plan to do soon, they gave their 6th grader a cell phone and it’s already caused a lot of problems.
Also, maybe related maybe not, or maybe it’s just a compounded thing, they’re now really struggling with the kid’s attitude problem. It feels like that switch to mega-attitude happened overnight, they said. I’m not so sure about that. We last spent time with them two years ago and the kid was pretty flipping disrespectful then. Here’s hoping it’s just a phase but I honestly do wonder how unhealthy it is for kids as young as second grade to have cell phones. I suspect there were kids in JB’s class who either had a phone or access to one earlier, one of them was pestering them last year about sharing their number for messaging. JB’s allowed to use my phone to text people we already know but I think it’s way too early to let them use messaging things unsupervised. Of course I’m not quite sure when is the right time. Only pagers were around when I was a teen, cell phones weren’t common until college. Developmentally THAT felt like probably the less damaging timing but that’s not realistic for this generation.
They definitely want a phone but we still have to have a few more talks about conduct and safety and so on. Heck, before we put a phone in their hands, we need to have the puberty talks.
Life with Smol Acrobat
More chores: I’d taught Smol Acrobat to hang up their clothes in May, once, and then we never got back around to it. But when we did, they remembered how! I was so proud.
They’ve been helping put away clean laundry more often. JB obviously also loves this development. Smol Acrobat is on duty for: toilet paper refilling, hanging up their own clothes, putting away the utensils, and running deliveries from room to room. They also help with the actual laundry if they’re around but I do it during the week when I’m alone most of the time. That’s not too shabby for a three year old. I’ll have to think of what’s next for JB to do as Smol Acrobat starts to take over their responsibilities. Putting the bins out and taking them back in might have to go on the official roster.
Joint birthday parties have become a thing this year for the pre-preschool set. Daycare parents are combining their birthday parties not just for siblings but for classmates. I don’t think I get along with anyone enough to want to co-plan a birthday party.
Every night, PiC asks JB about their day. Smol Acrobat usually goofs off or talks to me during this ritual. Suddenly this month, they wanted in on this. “I want to talk about my day!” And then they reel off several disjointed phrases that may or may not eventually make sense. At first none of them did but now they’re getting better with practice. They’re a bit of a late bloomer verbally so this is rather charming.
Pupdate
I should remove this section but I can’t quite bring myself to yet. Realistically we’re at least a year away from being ready to add the heavy lifting of adding a rescue pup to the family. But in my dog deprivation, I started browsing rescue listings and that helped for a minute, but only a minute. Then it turned into sadness again. Sadness for the dogs and sadness that I know I’m not ready yet.
But borrowing our neighbors’ dogs has been a decent treat. I appreciate them trusting me with their pups for short playdates.
Precious Moments
I gave Smol a small art kit for a longer car ride. Just some scratch paper and a little Ziploc of mismatched crayons. “Whoa! Dat’s impwessive!”
*****
Crossing the bridge, JB called their attention to the water around us: Das beeeoootifooo!
*****
JB: hey mom! I have a riddle. Well, not a riddle. It’s a question I know the answer to. What do mice use for swords? It’s not a joke.
*****
Smol Acrobat just said very aggressively: I making a cookie for YOU because you were WISTENING!
*****
JB dressed Smol Acrobat up in their old Batman costume and taught them to growl: I’m Batman!
Yeah, ok.
Then they instructed them to growl: I have nine limbs!
Wait what?
*****
JB, angrily: Homework is the WORST!
Smol Acrobat: No! I’M the worstest!
Anything to be part of things with JB, I guess.
*****
Smol Acrobat: I’m angwy!
Me: that’s so sad. You have chores.
SA: no, I have no hands!
Me: ok, then do them with your feet.
SA: …..
September 16, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 152: Reminding myself as much as I legitimately hate almost everything about my job right now, I hate self inflicted injury and being poor more. So don’t quit don’t quit don’t quit. All the department heads are frustrated, and demotivated, right now, and I can’t fix it for myself or for them. I didn’t cause it and it’s not my business to fix, but it’s so EXTRA frustrating that we’re all so unhappy. (Is the strength of my quittiness correlated with my lack of dog? Very possibly.)
Some of the fruits of my shopping spree have started to come in. The Vogmask is a nice alternative mask to have on hand. I’m still primarily wearing the flo-mask but there are times that it isn’t suitable. The IKEA delivery finally arrived so I organized the utensils drawer that has been annoying me for almost a decade. It’s really quite satisfying to see it nice and neat. It led to bagging up a lot of utensils for donation too, which is a good thing to do regularly. I’ll do a more thorough sweep of the plastic utensils that accumulate over time later this week.
Trainer time: this is the start of Week Six! I haven’t been able to do more than three consecutive workouts in more than 20 years and I have missed that so much. I’m not feeling any stronger yet, it’s much too soon for that, but I’m feeling that challenged feeling of striving for something harder than I can do right now without the usual getting knocked on my fibro/CFS ass follow-up and that’s really something. Week SIX. So planks are still harder than they have any right to be, but I’m enjoying the assumption that I will keep doing this and therefore eventually get stronger. The modified pushups and the lateral raises are still very satisfying.
Year 5, Day 153: My goodness the weather has turned. It’s viciously hot in most places but firmly turning into fall here. The heater went on this morning for a spell, I’ve been bumming around in sweatpants instead of shorts. The gloom was so close in that the curtains had to be drawn around 6 pm. I don’t mind exactly, it’s just that weird feeling of living in the shift. But also weather in general is just strange these days. Just last week we rode out a heat wave.
PiC had picked up a precooked Irish stew from Costco and it was perfect for tonight. Smol Acrobat was a bit of a butt about the potatoes but otherwise everyone else was happy with mopping up thick gravy with their carb of choice and the very filling carrots, potatoes and generous meat chunks. It’s probably just cheaper to buy this than to make it from scratch. It’s certainly easier!
Year 5, Day 153: Every morning, when I realize it’s not a “kid activities at the end of the day” I heave a sigh of relief. I’m so relieved that today is one of those. I have a list of things for JB to do when they get home and that’ll buy me a few hours of peace while they tootle around the house.
About five(?) years ago I had a massive allergy attack seeming bout of ridiculously obnoxiously persistent itching. My scalp was a mess. My hands and feet would sprout rash like patterns randomly. Allergy tests revealed no answers so the allergist advised me to stay on a very low dose of antihistamine daily ongoing once all the itching calmed down from the higher dose. A few months ago, having had no flare ups in years, I idly wondered if it had finally settled down enough that I could stop taking them but waved the question away. Long story long: I unintentionally forgot my antihistamine four nights in a row last week because I refilled my pill boxes incompletely and the answer is NOPE. I cannot stop taking them! It’s now been five+ days of non-stop itching even with 20 mg of antihistamine daily. What a terrible unforced error.
The California fire season feels like it’s year round nearly. There are three major fires that I’m aware of right now and at least one of them has forced evacuations of people I know. It was touch and go for the second group / fire but they said the evac orders were cancelled.
Yipes! I forgot it was still a trainer day until 10 pm. I got out of bed to finish the second half of my exercises. I wonder what the problem is with my brain. Originally to avoid setting off the fatigue and pain, we decided on an every other day schedule. The day immediately after I do a workout, I wish it was a workout day again. But the day after that, I forget that it’s a training day. This is consistent whether it’s a weekday or weekend. Maybe I should try four days in a row, ride the momentum? Or maybe two days, skip a day, then two days.
Year 5, Day 155: My Corelle order arrived! I’m a little iffy on the larger serving bowls we bought, they’re much bigger than I envisioned and where am I going to store them? But I am delighted with the little dip bowls and appetizer plates (my picks). Our prior set of dip bowls are down to 3 survivors out of …. 8? maybe? I remember the first one I broke about 8 years ago. Then I broke two more microwaving butter in them. The other 2 were someone else’s fault. The new little bowls are both microwave and dishwasher safe they are adequately protected from me. Not if I drop them, though, RIP first bowl. Originally I’d been yearning for a set of metal dip bowls – it’d take some real doing to break those! Sadly, the only set of metal bowls I liked was out of stock. Happily, Corelle came along with a 40% off Labor Day sale and that brought the price point down to a much more palatable range.
This also got me thinking about how it must be so American to think of holidays synonymously with sales. Do other countries do that nearly as much as we do? Surely not?
Also! I finally did my passport pictures! I have no idea if it’s any good, I can only hope. While I was at it, I did pictures for the kids and printed all that out as well to get moving on their passport applications. JB’s has expired and Smol Acrobat hasn’t had one yet so it’s time if we plan to try any international travel in the next few years. The State department claims that Oct-Dec is their slow period (low volume), let’s test that claim because I know of some people’s applications taking 6-12 months in the past year.
Year 5, Day 156: Oh my stars and garters, to quote the good Doctor Hank McCoy. It’s been a WEEK.
Lots of mutual aid this week. Friends with medical problems, cash crunches of the two digit to four digit varieties, evacuating the SoCal fires, Diane Duane’s book sale, and more. Also getting called on at the last minute to help a high schooler edit some writing. Once an English major, always an English major?
Nightmares every night leave me wrung out and exhausted by morning. Complaining about it at Bluesky caught the attention of someone with similar problems and they dropped me a line letting me know about a medication they’ve used to great effect for eliminating the nightmares. I immediately scheduled an appointment to talk to my doctor about it.
At work, a few small things slowed down just enough for me to catch my breath for a second, then I was pummeled with more personnel problems. It’s of the unfortunate event variety, not a performance issue, but I am going to fight to support and keep someone through a tough personal time. It’s going to land hard on my team but I will find a way to make it work. That’s the right thing to do. There are moments, especially when I hit the 10 pm still at my desk mark, when I wish I was willing to be mediocre at my job. I can draw some lines but that one, I can’t let go.
