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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September 13, 2024
1. Diane Duane, author of the Young Wizards series that I started to read to JB briefly (and they are great, I’ve just been too tired to keep reading aloud), is in an unfortunate rent situation so they’re selling bundles of her ebooks at a discount.
I’m buying an extra set for any reader who’s interested, leave me a comment (with an email address!) if that’s you! (bethh?)
2. I had a doggy playdate! Throwing a ball for her for almost 80 minutes was too much, though. It needs to be less than an hour.
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September 9, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 145: I had vague notions of going somewhere with the family today, maybe a BART adventure to … I dunno. And with that stellar planning, instead I:
- Finally replaced the older elastic on JB’s school masks. Fresh elastic! Better protection!
- Finally ran that load of laundry I’d been planning to do since Wednesday. After helping me put an extra large load of wash into the washer, Smol Acrobat left the garage saying: dat’s enough for today. I should have taken that as a suggestion.
- Inspected my plants and planted several more snap peas in hopes they will crowd around the one plant that’s set apart from the others and puny in its solitude.
- Discovered that the onions I left in the ground months ago are sprouting new greens, as are the garlic cloves I lazily stuck in the soil and barely covered up. Low effort gardening win!
- PiC was struggling with patching a hole in Smol Acrobat’s bike tire so I started weeding, a thing the kids often like to “help” with, and ended up pulling so many weeds. And yet that wasn’t even half of them. Pah.
Prescription for poor judgement/overly ambitious chore tackling: Acetaminophen AND ibuprofen, hot shower, heating pad, a ton of water and a liedown.
Year 5, Day 146: I’m so sore today.
Our Vogmasks arrived! Finally. Happily, everyone’s sizes were correct so I may buy a full set to leave in the car. Inevitably someone will forget their mask at a bad time: they’re all in the wash or the backups are in the other backpack or bag, whatever. We carry them with us almost all the time, it’s that 1-2% of the time when you’re in a rush and didn’t realize you’d set your mask down for a minute and didn’t pick it up again.
JB wanted to beg off self defense today, offering to trade much house cleaning if they were allowed to skip. I really wanted to skip too but they’d missed last week already, plus a bunch over the summer, so I had to put my foot down for both of us. They were disappointed but didn’t complain. I had to lug work along and keep on working there, annoyingly, but still ended my workday at 10 pm. Grumble.
I took a break to make a big batch of spaghetti carbonara for dinner. This was appreciated by everyone but Smol Acrobat who complained: I wike de bacon and de gween beans but I don’t wike da pasta.
I knew they would be the objector but not to what, exactly. It might be the pasta shape. They’re used to ravioli and tortellini and lasagna, I can’t remember the last time we had a long pasta.
Year 5, Day 147: I don’t use TikTok but by golly are there so many cautionary tales about not being such a ???? that you believe everything influencers say to do. The latest is particularly relevant to this blog: “a viral glitch” to deposit a bad check and withdraw cash from that bad check when the bank makes it available immediately. That’s both fraud (knowingly depositing a bad check) and all kinds of setting yourself up for disaster. Have these people never been hit with an overdraft charge? Have they never seen how a single charge, if you don’t have that $30+ plus the money you overdrafted by, snowballs into months and years of financial chaos? It gives me hives just thinking about accidental overdrafts over the years that happened because my checking account was still a delicate ecosystem where being even two pennies off, or having two checks cashed in the wrong order, would set off an overdraft and chain reaction of panic as other bills came due and were processed. Luckily for me, I monitored that stuff obsessively and tweaked my system until I’d built up enough of a cushion that it could withstand any transaction going through in any order. But to be doing this on purpose with money you don’t have?? Noooooo!
Year 5, Day 148: Chatting with my sister about the kids and my fears and things, these things about Curran suddenly resonated so strongly. He built the Pack so his future family would be protected. I’ve worked so hard to build connections outside my bio family to provide my kids with chosen family they can rely on, unlike the bio family that I couldn’t.
He absolutely believed that Mahon would have kicked him out if he hadn’t taken care of the Rampaging Bear situation. My belief in the inevitability of abandonment by all trusted adults is just about ironclad. Still working on it. Chipping away bit by bit.
Also, the aswang from Grimm! Talk about the abusive sort of family obligation traditions.
Musing on bodies: What a terrible idea. The constant need for cleaning, and eating (multiple times a day!), flossing and brushing, dressing and undressing. It’s just maintenance maintenance maintenance. And that’s before taking into account illnesses or allergies or any deviation from a healthy state.
PTA meeting tonight – I forgot about it three times today. And just like that, our October calendar has filled up. Conference week, another PTA meeting, the fall carnival, a birthday party, a second attempt at SDCC registration.
Year 5, Day 149: I’ve been having vivid involved dreams again, not necessarily nightmares but alternate reality types of things. I usually wake up still half in that reality so I remember them pretty clearly, but they are weird.
I feel absurd for even thinking this but I was doing more research on native to CA flowers that aren’t toxic to animals (and people of course) and hopefully perennials. I planted poppies this year since we are currently without dog but that was unsuccessful anyway. I found baby blue eyes and am contemplating splurging on a ridiculous number of seeds (using a gift card!) in hopes they will be easy to grow and will produce the “field full of flowers” impression I’d like to have. $16 on more flower seeds that may come to nothing??
September 6, 2024
1. Smol Acrobat: mom, can you gwow more cucumbers for me and Wee? We wike dem!
The garden, meager as it is, is a hit with the kids too. This is maybe the most expensive hobby I’ve had in a while 😆
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September 4, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
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 $1,056 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. Immediately reinvested, we need to grow our portfolios enough so that if we lose our jobs, we won’t be totally up a creek. That’s a concern again! Layoffs at PiC’s, absurdity piled upon absurdity at mine.
I was gifted a $100 Clipper card in a stroke of pure luck. A friend of a friend didn’t need their card anymore and wanted to give it to someone who would use it. My Clipper card had malfunctioned several months ago and after too many phone cards PiC managed to at least rescue the balance, but that solution meant I needed to replace the card itself.
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September 2, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 138: Starting the week on a low point again. The cumulative effects of the last week, last week, and this weekend were too much. By Sunday mid-morning my body was in shutdown mode. I could feel the fatigue like a sledgehammer hovering over my body. I took a lot more breaks than usual to try and recover enough to take the kids to the part, but it was too late. It was already too late when I woke up, honestly. My body shut down mid-afternoon.
I’m moderately functional today! While not good, I’m MUCH better than yesterday when I was drained to the dregs. I’ve managed to run two loads of laundry and the dishwasher. Update, four loads of laundry and uh, I didn’t realize that the dishes were already clean. 🤦🏻♀️ That and my low score on today’s Duolingo are good indicators that today’s “better” wasn’t back to baseline.
It being our first warm lovely day in a while, the ant colony moved into the kitchen to look for food and water. Took a bit of hunting to find the ant bait we used last time but I dotted the kitchen and crossed my fingers this will take care of them.
This was my first day without massive frustration at work in several months. I’m writing this after I shut down so I couldn’t jinx myself. Here’s hoping it won’t be the only one this week.
Trainer time. It didn’t feel good, just ok, but I was able to break my exercises across the day enough so that I completed all 11 sets without undue fatigue. That’s something!
Year 5, Day 139: If I was going into the negatives on Sunday, which forced the full body shutdown, then I’m hovering at a 2 today. For most of the morning I squeaked by on a trickle of motivation but that just wasn’t going to get me through the day. Finally I remembered I’d been wanting to watch Deadpool, with sound this time, I last watched it in 2017 on a plane without headphones. 🤦🏻♀️ It was very rated-R but it was also what my brain needed to nudge it into gear. Then I remembered the Lego movie existed and that crutch got me the rest of the way through my day.
It wasn’t until the end of the day that I realized I’m likely dragging because yesterday was arm day and maybe I overdid it. This feeling in my shoulders, like mini elephants started nesting in there, finally tipped me off. That ache and fatigue is a direct result of the dozen lateral raises, modified pushups and planks. Better ratchet down the number of reps per set, I can’t keep functioning like a sodden pile of noodles every other day.
We picked a small handful of snap pea tendrils for our salad tonight to encourage them to quit spending energy on tendrils and start making flowers. If it doesn’t work, at least we got to enjoy some part of the plants.
A Happy Thing: we’re still using the nasal spray for the kids when they go to daycare/school. For Smol Acrobat, being too little and uncoordinated to mask on their own, and too young to remember on their own, that’s their only daily protection aside from the vaccine. They were resistant the first month but now they’re a champ at letting me do the spray. These small favors are appreciated.
Year 5, Day 140: Thanks to a recommendation from One Sick Vet, I picked up a set of longer term reuseable over-the-ear masks for everyone from Vogmask (20% off until the end of the month). We have disposables on rotation for the kids, JB has a set of cloth masks that are layered with a filter for school, I use the flomask, and PiC rotates between disposables. Everyone has a flomask but I’m the only one who prefers it over all the other mask options. Occasionally I need something over the ear and less bulky, though, and I want to keep a set of good masks on hand as backups for the family when they forget and leave the house without theirs. We’ll try these out and if we like them well enough, I’ll buy a set for the car.
Unhappily, JB came home with all the gastroenteritis symptoms. I’ve made up their sick bed (they get to camp out on the floor when vomit is involved to try to limit the horrific vomit cleanup that still haunts me to this day. Vomit was specifically written out of my parenting contract when I was pregnant with JB, I’m on wound care!), their sick bag, their assortment of fluids and administered Zofran left over from the last time we were the House of Vomit. Every ounce of me is now focused on hoping that it’s only a touch of the stomach flu and not, say, rotavirus. They don’t have a temperature so it’s promising on that front, at least.
With the two viral infections going on, JB’s and Smol Acrobat’s low fever and congestion, I deemed it the better part of valor not to do my full workout today. It felt like wimping out but not wearing myself down to a shadow is the whole point of working with a trainer.
Year 5, Day 141: JB deliberately stayed burritoed in their sick camp this morning well past the time they should have gotten up. I suspected they were a little better than they were letting on but didn’t press the point since I wanted them to be vomit free for at least a full day before sending them back to school. In some ways it was easier for me to have them home sick (or “sick”) than not: I didn’t have to rush to drop off, or pick up, or run them to self defense. I just had meetings, and attempted to shift a mountain of work, and instructed them to eat bland food at intervals. They did crafts, reading and then finally, in the mid afternoon, asked to watch some TV. Their stomach pain was clearly better by then, but I was too busy to care whether they were doing anything educational or productive.
Things at work are really hectic in a different way as the end of our fiscal year looms. I’ve got strategy sessions and plans to deploy and people to keep motivated and in relatively decent morale. Blech. I personally have zero motivation and all the annoyance. But I remind myself daily that we can get through this and see how it looks on the other side. I did, however, see a really interesting job listing that didn’t make me scoff and close it immediately. Unfortunately it’s across a bridge and they want hybrid work, “remote for the right candidate” and I’m leery of any job where remote is considered a special accommodation. I know how quickly and easily those can be yanked. It pays more than my current job but the difference would mean nothing if I had to commute even one day a week. I’d have to figure out after school care and things would get complicated fast. It’s not worth it. 100% remote only!
Year 5, Day 142: Early signs that my birthday is approaching – I got another invitation to join AARP. It’s got me wondering, are the discounts worth it? The PTA discounts aren’t worth a plugged nickel so I’m skeptical about these.
Our heat snap is apparently over! Smol Acrobat and I pulled out our cozy bathrobes after our showers to enjoy some Lego movie together while PiC and JB went to their Back to School Night. Smol Acrobat had wanted to go but I didn’t like the sound of their congestion and their fatigue was enough for me to think it’d be far wiser to be curled up in blankets early. They were slightly befuddled by the change in routine, we ALWAYS have all four of us home where did half the family go? But they really wanted to watch the Lego movie so that helped ease the confusion.
Me, I’m still paying the physical price for using up all available energy plus reserves two weekends ago. At best, I replenish at a trickle, so this recharging may take weeks for me to feel like the sole inhabitant of my body again and not like I’m smuggling a mountain in each limb.
August 30, 2024
1. From Bree of KitRocha, The West Alabama Women’s Center needs help staying funded to get through the end of the year. They provide essential healthcare services (trans care, prenatal care and birth control).
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August 28, 2024
At a get together earlier this year, I commented that I was so impressed with our acquaintances’ willingness to uproot and move to try new things, even with kids. (I don’t want to leave my nice little hobbit hole for anything unless I absolutely must. Once kids and dogs are in the picture, things get infinitely more complicated.) Their mom grinned and leaned in close: that’s because what they didn’t tell you was we had to come and pick up the kids and drive them separately for the week they were moving.
That has stuck with me. I never account for the “invisible” (to outsiders) help because it is still something that never occurs to me. It’s a normal thing to have where people are close (physically and emotionally) to family or are well off enough to afford to pay for help. How many times have Nicole and Maggie reminded me that the daycare parents creating elaborate gift bags and throwing over the top parties quite likely have both? (many many)
I think about our younger friends who now have three kids and still travel and coach sports teams: how do they manage, I wonder. Oh, right, they have two parents next door who are always willing and able to take the kids. Or our neighbors who live with their parents and their brood have activities scheduled every day of the week. Even when I know they have help, it’s still not a thing I can wrap my brain around.
We discussed this in therapy recently. It struck me the other day that perhaps the reason my gut says I don’t have people or that I won’t ask for help for myself even in the worst circumstances, like when I was choking, is that it’s been so ingrained in me that I’m on my own. For half my childhood, I was a latchkey kid. I walked everywhere. If it wasn’t walkable, I didn’t go. That could just be learning regular independence, I don’t know. For 20+ years from 17 on, I was laboring under the heaviest burdens and didn’t think anyone in the family knew. But in the recent years after the estrangement, I learned that quite a few extended family members knew and they were on my side. Learning that they felt I was right was healing. But over time it’s been sinking in that for two decades and more, I was breaking myself, alone and ignored, to support my family while my dad was lying and stealing from me. That whole time, many of my family were aware and not one of them said a word to me. They spoke up for me to him if they could but not a word to me. I understand why intellectually, cultural constraints and maybe not knowing what to say etc, but I didn’t understand until last week how much that silence hurt. How much it has only reinforced my refusal to ask for help. Because if they knew how hard I worked and some of how much it hurt, my fibromyalgia was undiagnosed most of that time, and couldn’t be bothered to even say anything to me, well. I was definitely on my own. That’s entirely aside from the questions of self worth and having to prove myself which also complicates things. Or maybe it’s actually the same coin. I had no self worth because none of my extraordinary efforts were even distantly acknowledged by the adults I trusted in my life, aside from my mom whose health was so destroyed that she couldn’t do anything but feel terrible for me.
I’ll ask for help for my family. I’ll ask friends to care for the dogs or trusted loved ones to care for the kids. But for me? Nope.
I realize intellectually that I do have people now but my feral child-self snarls that I’m on my own and do not trust anyone to show up for me because they won’t. And even if they’re around now, they’ll all abandon me in the end. Case in point, the two very long time friends dropped me like a hot potato in the past 2 years. The first one, I don’t know why. The second one, I guess I don’t know why there either.
We talked for a long time about how this survival mechanism was set in stone over the course of my lifetime and I can’t expect to undo it in just a few years. I know part of me is afraid that undoing it is a terrible idea, that operating alone is the only way to be sure that you’re not let down. Part of me said, huh, you know this is the far less dramatic version of the Kate Daniels character arc: from “you have to be strong and alone” to learning to build connections and community and a family and trusting friends to have your back. When I’m reading, I know that’s the right thing to do, to progress, but IRL that hurt feral inner child is still snarling with fear and self protectiveness. I don’t really know how to tell it that it will be ok because I’m not sure it would be. Mostly this is an emotional fear but logically, who would be willing and able to help me if I needed it, aside from PiC? I can’t really name anyone. Everyone has their own lives and their own challenges and no one would or could drop those things to come help me out. Of course I also can’t think of any examples of anything less than catastrophe where I’d feel willing to ask either. Anything less than that is asking for too much.
My therapist reminded me: what would I say to JB? I know what I’m supposed to say but the words stick in my throat. It feels like a lie to say that we’ll always be here. We might not be. We set up concentric circles of safety nets around them, socially and legally, in case we die when they’re young but I look at this world and think, it’s not enough. I can’t be sure they’re going to be ok. I know that our people will show up for them in small ways, they do now, but things change. And what’s true for them isn’t as true for me.
Anyway. I’m picking at this like it’s a half healed scab. I’m not sure what the therapy equivalent of rebreaking the bones to let it heal properly is for this sort of fear but I’m still trying to find a way to be able to believe that trust is possible and not foolish.
