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 4, 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.
Black Women Best: Economics Has a Diversity Problem, And Here’s How It Affects Everyone
“@KWright070: I’m seeing a few discussions around PF Twitter that seem to suggest you can either talk about race or finance but you can’t talk about both at the same time. I know it’s a really hard concept to grasp so here are some examples:
Mr SSC is working on undoing the racism that he harbored growing up, and I think it’s so important that we all do the work.
I was pretty mad that the founder of the biggest financial media conference could be so breathtakingly flippant and callous about current events. You may not agree with how the press covers everything, I most certainly don’t and I have critiques of them just like anyone else. But they are shining a lot on some serious corruption and abuse of power and letting us see SOME of the truth out there while we’re (if we’re not Black) safe in our homes (if you’re Black, I know you’re not even safe in your own homes and I would never gloss over that horrible reality). They are risking themselves, literally in many cases, as the police attack them. A photojournalist I know has been 
permanently blinded in one eye because of a police officer shooting a rubber bullet at her face. To dismiss their efforts as “media hype”, and saying that’s the cause of the issues we are facing as a society just hurts my stomach. He later issued a “I’m sorry you were offended” type of apology, but at that point, his other actions of bullying women into silence and even driving them out of the community came out: bullying Tori about calling out misogyny and demanding retraction of her tweets, coming after Melanie and undermining her financially by badmouthing her to her sponsors, keeping people silent through intimidation.
How the Personal Finance Sphere Upholds Systemic Racism
Angela at Tread Lightly’s links this week.
Cup of Jo surprised me with actually addressing On Becoming Anti-Racist.
June 1, 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.
The world is on fire. I have some words to express on the subject but that will have to wait until I have a moment and mentally can string together coherence. It’s been a heck of a week and a weekend for a lot of reasons and I’m focusing on actions first, then words.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
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.
***
Dividend income. We received $734.94 in dividends in May.
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May 29, 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 finally figured out our dishwasher problem! I’ve been cleaning the filter after every two wash cycles and STILL kept having grit and residue on our bowls. It turns out that my first question was the right one: was it to do with placement? For whatever reason, our square bowls can’t be loaded up front. They fall on each other or something and block the water flow so they don’t get rinsed properly. That means if we load round bowls up front top rack and square bowls in back top rack, I don’t have to yell and fume at the dishwasher. (Of course it then immediately left some sediment on a bowl in a totally different area so that’s a new problem for another day.)
2. I was able to trim most of Seamus’s nails without a fight and struggle, and then managed to trim 4 of Sera’s claws. I had to pin her down after the first one, though. They both got treats after. The pet dremel has been amazing! I wish the pet attachment (the plastic guard) had been available when I bought mine, though, I keep accidentally getting myself. (It’s fine though, nothing serious.)
3. I finally organized our financial spreadsheets into one place for PiC. I’ll have to teach him how I use each of them, and he’s not allowed to change things in there without telling me or else I’ll start thinking I’ve lost chunks of memory, but he needs to know how to get in there and work on money things if I’m unable to. I also need to consolidate more of our emergency information but this was a good step.
4. JB and I cleaned their room together. I rearranged their closet, and cleared out an entire dresser drawer of outgrown clothing, and sorted it all into size specific hand me down bags. I’ve been needing to do that for ages and it felt so good to get that done. Bonus: JB does chores better when it’s alongside one of us so I asked them to tackle the rest of the room and they put away all the books and toys and reorganized the toy stand without complaint because they felt it was a team effort. It just looked that way. Really it’s just me needing to corral the clothing explosion, organize things the way I want to, and winnow out the outgrown clothes without clawbacks. If I let (made) them sort the clothes, they’d mourn every item and end up crying in a pile of outgrown wardrobe, swathed in at least two shirts but still have a belly hanging out. They did try to keep one sweater. Out of two large bags of clothes, just one sweater is pretty good so I allowed it for two more wears. We had a few fraught sad moments and I advised them to thank their favorites for being such great pieces and bid them farewell. Surprisingly, that worked. Thanks for the idea, Marie Kondo!
Challenges this week: I am starting to miss little things. Going to the library. Going to stare at all the crafts at Michael’s. Recipes for lemon flavor baked goods need to come with an intensity level so I know to triple the lemon juice and lemon extract.
5. We enjoyed a Zoom picnic lunch with family on the weekend and they all did art time together for a while after we ate. Everyone was sleepy and content.
6. I even took most of Monday off! I worked in the morning but resolved strongly to break off for the rest of the day and I followed through. Go me!
7. JB interpretive danced to my singing of JoDee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California”.
:: How was your week? Have you been scorched by this heat wave?
May 28, 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.
How are you adjusting your budget during COVID?
I’m staring at Mt Emotional Health, feeling a bit unequal to the task. The days were very long but at some point it feels like the fast forward was pushed and I’m not ready to keep up with this pace.
I often feel like this hummingbird
May 25, 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 9 and 10 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
Week 9, Day 1: Having geared myself up for a total shutdown to last several months, or even the rest of this year, I can’t quite wrap my brain around the idea of CA moving to Stage 2 of reopening. It feels like it’s must too soon when we still don’t have that much testing or any known effective treatments. My friends outside of CA who have been ill for weeks still can’t get tested. As a complete pessimist, I think this is my gut trying to protect me from getting my hopes up too soon that things will start to get better.
Related: I can’t think about the things I miss or how I want things to be later.
Also related: I’m worried about getting sick when things open up more because my immune system is trash. When I get sick with even mild viruses, I get hit really hard. It takes me 3-4x as long as normal people to recover. A 3-5 day illness for a normal person is a 3-5 week illness for me.
Week 9, Day 2: All the little things that bother me popped up today: I hate the way the wires under my desk are dangling, I hate our old round wooden chopsticks that hurt my hands when they’re swollen. I determined to fix those things NOW. I taped up the wires … but the tape that I had wasn’t strong enough. I searched and found replacement chopsticks but the shop wanted $20 for shipping – that was too rich for my blood. I guess it’s not my day for resolving issues.
I did order a gift of delicious small business cheese to a loved one sheltering in place alone who was recently hit with some additional bad news, though. One right thing was done today.
My workload was a bit lighter than usual so it was rather annoying that I couldn’t focus well enough to blow through the workload early and take the rest of the day at my leisure. But I suppose the upside is that I didn’t have to stress over the work piling up at lightning speed while I worked more slowly than I preferred?
Week 9, Day 3: Dammit-Sera is her official name now. I’ve cleaned up 11 piles of vomit and 1 massive lake of pee on my rug this past week. What’s going on, dog?? (more…)
May 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, $1551.58; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I learned to play Uno for the very first time this week and it was fun!! I’d forgotten how to just have fun, a little bit.
2. My friend is reading through my archives and texting me quotes. This one made me laugh because I still do this: “Tell me honestly, now, is it really weird that when I sustain a really fantastic-looking injury, I want to show people? I’ve got a newish 1 inch by 2 inch gash across the top of my foot from an altercation with an unfinished edge of a desk, and I had to fight the urge to snap a photo and share it. It’s mostly a morbid fascination that’s probably not shared by the world at large.” We discovered that we both do this thing! I have someone to share war wounds with again!
3. In this moment, I really don’t miss anyone. I know that will change when we get into the summer when we have plans, but at this time of year I normally have my nose to the grindstone so that is feeling a little bit “normal”. Minus all the frustrations of being overloaded with work, cooped up with very few safe outlets because even where things are opening, people refuse to wear masks and I can’t risk catching this thing.
Challenges this week: Therapy was unexpectedly tough. We explored the idea that you can have emotions or feelings without any obligation to act on them. That is a completely foreign concept for me. I’ve always had action and obligation tied to feelings. Growing up, family meant obligation. You were duty bound to love them, which means take care of them, make them proud or add to their reputations by visibly doing well in life and sending money home and caring for them in your old age. Love was nothing BUT duty and action. And in my current life I express and perceive love through action. What does it mean to acknowledge the complexity of loving and hating someone at the same time? To me, it means having conflicting needs to both distance myself and do for them. Which is, of course, not at all ideal.
<– I also have trouble with this idea for myself ….
When thinking of other people, it’s obvious. I don’t love them solely for what they can do for me.
But I do think I have to do things to “earn” or prove my worth for love. It literally doesn’t make any sense to me that someone would choose me as a person they’d like to have in their lives just for the sake of having me around. My utility is my worth. Which is probably not a great thing to believe.
4. They are nowhere near out of the woods but we got a little heartening news – a friend’s cancer is not the worst it could be. So we have some hope for treatment. Please cross your fingers that they come up with an effective treatment plan.
:: How are you keeping healthy and occupied?
May 21, 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, $1551.58; Rural libraries, $321.62.
A Bitches Get Riches primer on applying for unemployment
Julian and Embracing Conflict
Captain Awkward: “How do I set goals if I don’t want anything?” I’m a HUGE goal setter and yet in this present time, even I can’t handle more than the most basic goals beyond “get through this relatively sane however that must happen, help those who need help, teach JB to send mail”.
I grew up on Will Smith in The Fresh Prince, and have long admired his musical and acting talents so I loved this fresh bit of music from him.
NDN Collective: “In South Dakota, checkpoints have been established at the borders of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, and on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, home to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, ensuring that all who enter are vetted, screened, and practicing safe measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19.” These are the folks we are helping in the Giving project this year. I’m really steamed at Governor Noem who is trying to steamroller the tribes’ ability to protect their vulnerable residents.
Ann Mitchell, one of the last WWII codebreakers, has passed.
Diana: “I don’t mean it hasn’t been difficult to switch to this slower pace during an anxiety-prone time with no relief from the tedium that parenting nonstop can be, because that is true; however, we also delighted in the closeness and love we feel for each other with less intrusion from the outside world.”
I wonder what happened to Muschi….
