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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June 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I redeemed $10 in PayPal money from Achievement and $25 from Bing search rewards. Still waiting, Achievement!
2. We reached my increased savings goal of one year of basic expenses for both our home and the rental. Woo! Previously I would have just made myself be patient and let the rental income cover itself but those reserves were more than wiped out during the refresh and with COVID, it just made sense to put up our own cash as a buffer just in case. If we don’t need it later, great, but I’d rather have it to cover the mortgage in case the tenants need assistance than not. I can breathe a little easier financially after I do a final accounting of how much the rental owes me and how much it needs to build up its own buffer.
3. For the first time since this pandemic started, I felt like a halfway decent parent with the energy and the desire to take JB on a little mom-kid adventure on the weekend. Nothing fancy, we just walked to a safe empty space for them to play. But that much has been beyond me for months. The burden has been entirely on PiC to do all the outdoorsing and I had begun to despair that I would ever feel even close to normal again. I know it won’t stick for long but I’m very glad for the moment.
Challenges this week: In a seemingly endless game of “Pandemic Stress vs Diet?”, my joints flared up so badly I couldn’t raise my arms or use my wrist for a couple days. Friend’s cancer diagnosis is on the Very Not Good end of the spectrum.
4. I cooked a tofu and ground turkey scramble that got two thumbs up from everyone. I even got to enjoy it twice before stress appetite shut that down.
5. PiC has had some great luck with picking out tasty fruit on his re-supply adventures. Except for that one mealy peach. Yuck. But mostly we’ve been fortunate to eat lots of fresh fruit.
:: How was your week?
June 18, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Three months after Breonna Taylor was murdered in her bed, there have still been no arrests. This is unconscionable. Beyonce’s open letter addressing the AG points out the utterly obvious fact this is unacceptable.
Sign a petition: Demand justice for Breonna Taylor. They’ve passed a law under her name to ban no-knock warrants (because as we’ve seen, the police are notoriously scrupulous about following the law since they’re also subject to it /sarcasm) but as of Monday, they STILL HAVEN’T ARRESTED HER MURDERERS.
Done by Forty is matching donations up to $1000.
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop. There are so MANY good points in here that reinforce what the community and the statistics are telling us. One final idea: consider abolishing the police.
I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.
I had never heard of any of these Asian activists before and they did important work:
Michelle’s life lessons during COVID are good reminders
Teachers Face A Summer Of Soul Searching. What Do They Do In The Fall?: “By August, elected officials will give themselves credit for discussing things, as if discussing a problem actually solved it. Some will insist that Corvid-19 is no worse than the flu and we have to put America back to work. Others will admit that the money they approved is not nearly enough to meet the demands. District administrators will complain that they don’t have the necessary resources, but they’ll still get no more help.
And by fall, individual teachers in individual schools will have to figure out how to do the best they can with the little that they’ve got. The district guidance they get will range from restrictively stringent to hopelessly non-existent. Mostly, they’re going to have to figure out how to cope on their own.”
Scalzi on Gen X and trans people. At the time I watched Ace Ventura, I didn’t know anything about trans people but I do now and I’m deeply uncomfortable with how comfortable that movie was in othering trans people. I’d also like to know why women are so deeply threatened by trans people having rights, and by trans activism. In what way does their having rights negatively impact women? Rhetorical question, other people having rights doesn’t take away my rights unless they have the right to harm others with impunity. Like cops and basically our justice system do. But that’s not a small minority of people having more rights, that’s a group of people opting into a system that’s set up to allow brutality. And I’m sick of the argument that trans people are the perpetrators of violence against women. The VAST majority of cases where a man who has abused a woman in my personal life or in the news, it’s a cishet man operating with impunity. He didn’t need to pretend to be a woman to do it. Hell, look at our president! FFS.
Nicole and Maggie reminded me of a cake memory / ritual I used to have. I suspect I got away with it because my parents were too busy to notice. What did you get away with because your parents were too busy to notice?
We are the boiling frog
Text of @IAmSyiDavies’s tweet: As someone from a country that has witnessed a civil war, totalitarian leaders, ethno-religious pogroms, state-sanctioned brutality & the slow eradication of human rights under the guise of criminality, I can frankly tell Americans: You don’t know what you’re playing with.
https://twitter.com/IAmSuyiDavies/status/1269663701633622018?s=19
June 15, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
More of a Lawful Good, then
JB was so sad we couldn’t go to the park to play. We’ve got an empty field thing nearby and they’ve been enjoying it a few days a week, staying 20 feet away from anyone who might be there.
I explained that it looked like maybe the ordinances weren’t allowing us to play and we’d get in trouble for violating them. I suggested that, well, since no one was really there, maybe we could go anyway and just be very cautious with masks and touching nothing and bothering no one.
JB: NO! We’re not allowed!! We’ll get in trouble!
Preparing for kindergarten
I’ve submitted all our kindergarten application forms, even though we all have no freaking idea what’s going to happen this fall, and followed up to make sure JB’s preschool teacher has submitted their part. I’ve submitted our lottery entry for the after care program even though that wait list was last reported to be 200 applicants long and I honestly doubt we’ll get in. I’m doing all the “right” things because I’d rather have done them than not if the state of the world starts to come back together in time for some version of fall schooling.
It still feels incredibly unlikely at the moment but we don’t know. We need some semblance of organized childcare and education again but PiC and I both feel very strongly that we’re not comfortable with sending JB back out in this without more and better widespread testing, and some kind of effective treatment for COVID. Waiting for a vaccine is too far out, that’s 1-2 years out at least, but if we have ways to treat it, and contact tracing and testing, that would be a reasonable start.
We got an update from the afterschool program that EVERYONE is now on the waitlist for the foreseeable future.
Kindness Jar
I’ve been looking for ways to repurpose all our medication bottles, I hate tossing them out (recycling but it feels like the same thing) if we don’t have to. JB snagged one of my reserved-with-hope bottles and PiC helped them decorate it for a Kindness Jar. Every time someone does a kind thing, you get a marble for the KJ.
JB has been … Overly Enthusiastic about counting kindnesses.
Mommy cooked breakfast, that was a kindness!
I thanked Mommy for cooking breakfast, that was a kindness!
I petted Seamus, that was a kindness!
We’ve got a real fan of sheep here
It started back in April.
Now, everyone gets compared to a sheep.
JB: Your computer has such a good memory! Like a sheep!
JB: I have a good memory, like a sheep!
Precious Moments
Someday this kid will be able to identify us correctly.
They came running out in the morning: dad??
I called through the bathroom door: he’s outside with the dog.
JB: Oh. Are you Daddy or Mommy?
Me: ….. What??
I still don’t know if they were serious.
Who’s the boss?
JB: I hope I don’t get thrown in the ocean when I die.
Me: ?
JB: I mean, in my case. I don’t want to get through in the ocean in my case. Because there are sharks.
Me: After you die?
JB: Yes!
Me: Do you mean coffin?
JB: yes!
It’s not as fun as you think, y’know?
JB: Why don’t you have to wear glasses?
PiC: I had eye surgery, so I don’t wear glasses anymore.
JB: I wish I could have eye surgery!
Oh because I’m the only klutz around here
JB, holding up the bit of plastic that covers the end of new tape rolls: Mama, you have to take this off, or you cannot use that tape. Just so you know how it works, because I would not want you to get another ouchy.
June 12, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. While my personal diet has been terrible, stress tummies are a thing, PiC and JB have been eating a whole lot more fruit than before. PiC continues to do all the grocery shopping and is doing a lot more food prep now that our time commitments are balanced differently.
2. I haven’t been able to cook lately for weird appetite reasons, they come in waves, so it was really nice to be able to make a dinner this week. Bonus: JB called it a super special dinner. Double bonus but also a normal one: PiC cleaned the whole kitchen after. He always does clean up whether or not he cooks but it’s just something I appreciate every time.
Challenges this week: We can’t let the protests just fall by the wayside. There is a lot more fighting to do before we have accomplished anything real. A dear friend has cancer and it is advanced enough for us to be SERIOUSLY concerned. I keep overcommitting to causes I care about and then wondering why I feel stretched too thin. Well, duh. It’s mostly fundraising related organizing but it’s more than time to be sensible when there’s a lot to complete on my current commitments. I have resolved for the umpteenth time that I’m not allowed to pick up or start ANY new projects at all until the end of summer. You’d think a planner personality would know when they were taking on too much.
3. Some spreadsheet mistakes rankled but I tracked down most of them and reconciled the final missing $5 out of pocket and considered that a worthwhile trade for not spending the time tracking it down. It’s all for a good cause anyway.
4. A wonderful story about Highlights reminded me how much I loved the magazine growing up and how I would have loved getting a subscription. We can afford it (especially during a sale) so I’m ordering a one year subscription for JB to see if they enjoy it too. If you wanted to order a magazine subscription from them today, use this code for 10% off: Flash10
5. On a day when neither of us knew WTF to make for dinner, we manage to heat up a frozen GF pizza, make GF pasta Alfredo from scratch (the three ingredient kind, not the heavy cream kind) and a summer salad of spinach, strawberries, green apples and toasted walnuts. It was nowhere near low carb but I’m just too tired to be coming up with palatable GF low carb no sugar meals these days. We need to eat something. Turns out brown rice pasta Alfredo pretty much seems like….Mac and cheese. It earned two thumbs up from the Mac and cheese aficionado.
6. I figured out that I don’t need to set up a meal train for friends dealing with radiation and chemo, I can just order food for them from us and call it a day. We’re testing out Goldbelly which is more of a splurgey type site but it gives us access to a lot more options than I’ve been able to find in single meal format rather than a commitment to multiple deliveries weekly. I’ve sent these friends plenty of meals in the past for convalescence and it was always a lot of work coordinating with those healthy food delivery places. Healthy options are harder to find here but it’s the happier medium between delicious food they’ll have to cook (Zingermans) and delivery services that may be overwhelming with frequency and coordination requirements. I had to know when they’d be home three times a week for several weeks last time. Not as easy as you’d think.
June 11, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Hasan Minhaj’s much-needed call to action for immigrants and people of color. I will never understand immigrants I know who supported 45.
I’m glad Abby wrote this: Why I stand with the protesters. Property damage sucks, but preventing the continued injustice of taking human lives is far more important. I see counter protester types out there ready to and armed to protect Ross and Hobby Lobby – why don’t you folks care more about actual living breathing humans?
I’m glad to see Joe and Tawcan discussing racism, privilege, and inequity. I’m glad to see Deb choosing to speak up. I’m glad to see Jim seeing what he’s been missing all these years and speaking up. Same for JD. It matters, and it’s important for people who haven’t been seeing racism or seeing but not speaking up for fear of putting a foot wrong to try anyway.
I never learned about the Ocoee Massacre of 1920.
Donate to These Orgs to Support Black Trans People: “Black trans people often face a specific set of structural, institutional, and personal barriers to accessing basic needs like housing, employment, and safety due to the intersections of their identities. According to 2012 data from Lambda legal, nearly one in two Black transgender people has been to prison, and Black trans people are also much more likely to face discriminatory policies and threats of sexual assault once behind bars.”
24 LGBTQ+ Organizations You Can Support Right Now: “After the unconscionable killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd at the hands of the police, LGBTQ+ advocates are using Pride 2020 as an occasion to speak out on against the racial injustices that still plague our country.”
How Asian Americans Are Reckoning With Anti-Blackness In Their Families
Huge news that the Minneapolis PD is supposed to be disbanded. I’m waiting to see how this will really play out but in the meantime I’m blown away by these rates of ineffectiveness against crime they have been.
A few good things:
A tiny bit of levity, the Pixar dog.
Corina Newsome and #BlackBirdersWeek and in NatGeo
More #BlackBirdersWeek, bird hieroglyphics, and tiny bat!
Do you know about ponies?
Are you spending or saving or both?
What Miser Mom is doing.
I’d like to see this cat, please
I feel for people with cat allergies but also I feel for this cat who just really wants to be in a library. I want to be in a library all the time too, Max.
June 8, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 11 and 12 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
I had to change the day numbering so I would remember what day we’re on, total. It’s been that long.
Week 11, Day 69: A half day at work for me today! WOOOO. We had a very hot (for us, nearly 80 degrees F) day and I was basking in walking around in a tee shirt even in the house. It’s normally so frigid I’m in three layers all day long.
Week 11, Day 70: I woke unexpectedly early but crawled right back into my nest and then woke up late after 8. Oops. On the other hand, JB got enough rest and got themselves all dressed and ready, AND even remembered their assigned chore for the morning. Extra bonus, they went and filled in the chore on their activities board without prompting too. I thought the first week of the board was a dismal failure but maybe our little adjustments are starting to take hold. We’ll see.
Week 11, Day 71: JB has wholeheartedly and suddenly thrown themselves into the Activities board, racking up an all time high of 9 activities in a day: helping with the laundry, clearing the dishwasher, spending a lot of time outdoors. Most of this was made possible by PiC’s flexible schedule on this day. Most days are not going to be like this.
Week 11, Day 72: The world has exploded and my sorrow is endless. Why does our country think it’s better to viciously put down protests than to hold murdering cops accountable? None of this had to be that way. (more…)
June 5, 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, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Challenges this week: The world is on fire, quite literally, and here I thought that COVID would be our biggest issue for the next several months. The racism in our country, and the systemic refusal to change, is breathtaking, devastating, heartbreaking.
Protests and riots were inevitable given how little this country has done to move away from murdering black people and then blaming them for their own deaths. I will never understand why our government prefers to arrest thousands and murder more people instead of arresting the police officers who murdered a man in cold blood. Never. My heart keeps getting heavier for our friends and family who are hurting and living through traumas we should not be putting them through.
It feels wrong to even be thinking of utterly mundane, petty, good things when this is happening to our fellow citizens, to our friends, to our neighbors. When my dearest friends and mentors know they can’t even be safe in their own beds, in their own homes.
But as I was thinking when Ursula Vernon said something similar – we also need good too. We can’t stay steeped in the anger continuously, indefinitely. We need to act and support people who are being hurt but we also need to recharge. I hate it, though.
More people need to listen to Jane Elliott and think on why they are so quick to find ways to excuse how 
we treat our Black citizens: “That says very plainly that you know what’s happening, you know you don’t want it for you, I want to know why you’re so willing to accept it or allow it to happen for others.” Another interview about her exercise with her brown eyed and blue eyed third grade students where she found that bigotry is a learned behavior.
The mundane challenges: PiC’s job changes started a couple weeks ago and as predicted, have been increasingly difficult to manage with no childcare. We will figure it out, we’re working on it, but time is tighter, tempers are a bit more fragile, and we’re all even more tired.
The mundane good things
1. I’ve been hoarding quite a few gift cards for pricey stores that we don’t frequent for years. I finally pulled them out to solve some of my problems around the house: I need a really heavy duty knife for cutting through bones (my catfish has to be cut into steaks) – time for a cleaver! We could also really some placemats but
2. AH HA. I don’t love buying from Houzz but PiC picked out a couple things he needed for a house project several weeks ago. By the time I got around to ordering them, the prices had gone up. But I noticed that there was a sale in another department entirely so my suspicion was that they had increased the prices elsewhere to make up for their sale in case they had people there for the sale and also picking up other things at more than full price. I backburnered the order until that sale was over and voila! The prices came back down the day after that sale ended.
3. I’ve been fighting with my phone that keeps making files available offline FOREVER. I would turn off “available offline” and then they would pop up with the dratted notification the “5 files are available offline” again! It was maddening! I finally found the solution. I only actively use the Sheets app, so forgot all about the other apps that I never use. I went through the Docs app and the Drive app to turn off all the files available offline there too, and I think … that has solved the problem. *Spoke too soon? Another file started coming up as available online even though I didn’t have it marked to be. Sigh. Restarting the phone helped. I might have to cave and update the phone system.
:: How are you doing?