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 MoreJuly 5, 2024
1. Half the potato plants are turning yellow and brown. Sooooon, we harvest! 🤞🤞🤞
2. So far I’ve spotted two blueberries on the bush. Maybe we’ll have as many as three this season? Once again I’m so grateful this is a hobby and not a need.
July 2, 2024
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.
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Dividend income. We received $511.25 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
July 1, 2024
Year 5, Day 89: What a DAY. Meetings upon calls upon meetings upon questions, and all before I got to the actual work that needed to be done. Made myself eat a fast bite at 2 pm and go outside for a brisk walk at 3 pm in an effort to not fall back into workaholic ways. I was rewarded by running into a neighborhood dog who is a great fan and of whom I am a great fan. Puppy skritches and a blissed out dog face were just the ticket.
JB’s at full day camp this week which gives me three whole days of working uninterrupted (except for all these meetings and calls). Love solid days. Hate meetings. Boo corporate life.
JB blew through all my hearts in Duolingo tonight so I have to get in several practice sessions to build up the heart stash. Apparently, you need hearts to get to do new lessons, which I forget frequently. I also forgot which language I was working in myself, and made a couple mistakes before I reoriented my brain. I don’t know if it’s worth paying for the paid version, I’m working on 3 languages off and on and paying for it makes me feel like I’d REALLY better be getting somewhere with them. That might not be worth the extra pressure (incentive).
Year 5, Day 90: Per Chef Jose Andres, it’s Bourdain Day, a day of remembrance on Anthony Bourdain’s birthday “to celebrate everything Tony did for the world and how he used food to break down walls and build longer tables”. Bourdain is one of the few food celebrities I respected. He brought humility to his shows about food in the world, unlike most dudes who make the food about themselves, and his condemnation of Kissinger were the first peek I had into what a monster that man was. I appreciated that learning. A moment of remembrance for a man who tried to be decent.
Our many waving potato plants are starting to turn a little yellow. It’ll be exciting to see if this spring’s regular watering and extra hilling resulted in a bigger yield or if the aboveground action was the whole party. Fingers crossed! Also aside from the novelty of (very occasionally) eating from our own garden, the garden potatoes just taste better. Sometimes the store bought potatoes come with a weird taste that only bothers me. Not quite bitter, not quite sour, just an odd offness. No one else ever noticed but our fresh dug potatoes don’t have that.
My work day went from 8:30 am to 10 pm today. Subtract two hours for two appointments and two hours for dinner and bedtime routines. That’s a 13.5 hour day containing 9.5 hours of work. Maybe not as much overworking as I’d assumed but you know what, that’s still a hell of a lot more than I think the job deserves given the recent developments. Partly the technology mess they created has slowed me down to a crawl but I need to get on top of this tendency to overwork to make up the difference. If work has to wait three more days, it has to wait.
Year 5, Day 91: A dear friend of ours recently caught COVID and it took two weeks for them to recover, their course of illness was awful. That, combined with my anticipation of summer socializing (the county fair is coming!), had me anticipating horrible things. I scheduled the whole family for boosters. We were last boosted in the fall and we are well out of that 4-6 month efficacy window so Kaiser better not give me any guff over these.
Some of the green blackberries are turning a beautiful deep red.
My plantings of sugar snap peas, lettuce, and second round of bush beans from three weeks ago were all a bust. If they were going to sprout, they would have done 1-2 weeks ago. I’ve popped more snap peas into water to soak for several hours for another attempt: hope springs everlasting unlike my sprouts. It’s a good thing I’m choosing to stress over growing something to eat out of our garden. If we relied on this garden’s success for our meals, our rations would be very thin indeed. This gives me something relatively harmless to direct my need to fuss at and only generated mild levels of proto-anxiety. It’s a reasonable pressure release valve. I go pester the plants whenever work or life gets to be too much.
Year 5, Day 92: Dental spa day! My teeth are now sparkling clean after a nice lie down on a soft reclining chair and they tell me that my gum pockets are actually improving. The anxious underachiever in me is soothed by this proof that our dental habits can make a difference. This is so much better than eye appointments where they just confirm a minor deterioration for me or a major one for JB and advise us to do certain things but say ultimately there’s really nothing we can do to stop it other than trying the course of therapeutic contacts. JB is very squeamish and afraid to try, and I will not fight with them over sticking contacts in their eyeballs, so that’s out. I can work with “floss better in these problem areas”.
United Healthcare has finally coughed up ten out of fourteen FSA claims submitted. They’re still holding out on 4 old ones.
I ALSO forced myself to put on those fancy new sneakers that PiC insisted on picking out for me to try and went for a brisk walk around lunchtime instead of hunching over my computer like a gremlin for an entire day without breaks. That felt really weird. Not just the walking part but also the new shoes part. They felt like mattress sized clown shoes. They’ll probably feel better after a few walks, or my calves will go into complete revolt. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to! I wonder what this time next year will look like and if it’ll be significantly better or worse for the battles I’m fighting today. My pessimism says worse. My desire to continue earning an income without simmering in frustration every day hopes maybe it’ll better??? I hope but I doubt.
Year 5, Day 93: Dual dental insurance: is it worth it? I’m trying to figure that out but it’s sort of a black hole in that I don’t know how much more it’ll cover, and if that outweighs the premiums. Assuming generally routine dental care, cleanings, exams, x-rays, and fluoride, has anyone found dual insurance policies to be worth it?
Well that’s awkward. I contacted Neighbor Kid’s grandma and politely begged off: it’s so busy for me at work, I’ve put JB in camps all summer. Playdates are really hard right but would NK like to be a penpal? We can manage that without having to juggle multiple schedules. We’ll mail them a treat if they’ll be hanging out at your place.
The response: we have a big backyard and both JB and Smol Acrobat could come play.
Errr, that’s not at all what I offered and I’m not letting my kids go to unsupervised playdates yet. Maybe it’s almost time for JB but there aren’t many people I know well enough to trust them for that. I’m backing away from the conversation because I truly am so swamped and frustrated at work, I’m not mentally or emotionally prepared to do any of this when it’s not what JB wants. If they were going to come around, they would have done by now, and I’d have carved out the space somehow. But since they didn’t, I’m not going to bother making any suggestions.
Anyway, I’m also not pleased with how Target keeps making their ThinkSport sunblock “unavailable” whenever they have promotions that would apply to that sunblock. It’s reef-safe but expensive. Then it mysteriously comes back in stock the day after the promotion ends. Three times now, that can’t be a coincidence. Sunblock IS an FSA-eligible item though, so at least there’s that.
June 28, 2024
1. I was very proud of myself for managing to get the kids rounded up to go to the mall and return some poorly chosen purchases over the weekend. Physical errands have mostly fallen to PiC since COVID and while I’ve been to that shopping center dozens of times to grab takeout, I have never gone in to do any shopping related activities. This felt like a minor victory that I could scrape together the time and energy.
2. Of course then I had to nap afterwards because I’d spent the whole morning doing chores and morning the kids solo. But rest was also a good thing even if I resented it.
June 25, 2024
So this is a little awkward. I’m quite friendly with an elderly neighbor whose grandkids go to JB’s school. Unfortunately, though JB tries to be kind and include the same-age kid in their class, they don’t like playing with this Neighbor Kid because that kid is very sensitive, cries a lot at school, and subsequently (probably related to the sensitivity and JB’s proximity?) apparently blames JB for their hurt feelings that JB feels is unfair and inaccurate. JB is just a kid of course and can be oblivious or accidentally hurtful but they are very quick to own up to their mistakes, apologize, and try to offer to make things better. Obviously without any observation of the circumstances, I can’t really tell what’s really going on, but I do know JB’s character well enough to know that even when they mess up, they’ll likely cop to it without pressure. So it’s likely that JB is attempting to be kind but in ways that don’t work for Neighbor Kid. I think it’s unlikely that JB is deliberately hurting their feelings.
For example, JB just spontaneously told me about a really shitty thing that they were involved in peripherally with another friend group where the Older kid was threatening to destroy Youngest’s toy to force them to help with a project. JB thought it was a really shitty thing to do and so was laughing because OBVIOUSLY Older kid must be bluffing. Right?? Wrong. Older kid followed through with the destruction, and JB was horrified. They immediately apologized to Youngest kid, tried to fix it, and felt terrible. I had no idea that any of this had transpired but they confided that they didn’t know how to stick up for Younger kid in that scenario because they didn’t realize until too late how that would play out.
What I DO know from Neighbor Kid’s grandma and mom is that the kid has suffered from severe depression, has sensory issues that probably makes life feel really difficult, and is socially withdrawn. I tell JB that they aren’t responsible for Neighbor Kid’s feelings, nor do they have to accept false accusations or the treatment they don’t like, but we are aware that there are things that make Neighbor Kid’s life difficult enough that it warrants having some compassion for their situation, at least.
Anyway this all comes up because the caregivers asked me if JB is available for playing with or talking to Neighbor Kid over the summer. I don’t want to force JB into anything they won’t enjoy and I also feel for this kid. I was pretty bad at social interactions growing up and can empathize with the kids who doesn’t really have friends. And we are so lucky that JB has many friends, is well loved by a variety of people, and has confidence in knowing they are which helps when they are still struggling with some of the mean kids at school. I think my impulse here is similar to my financial stance: If you’re fortunate (socially or financially), you should share your good fortune. But they’re just kids, and so I’m not sure if that applies in this case, especially given the circumstances where they don’t have an easy relationship with Neighbor Kid. Thoughts? Opinions?
A mom friend has solved the mystery of how the kids’ shoes look like they’re ground down by a dremel some days: the kids are using the tops or sides of their shoes to brake instead of their bike or scooter brakes!
Smol’s potty training clicked very late and very suddenly, just as my dear departed friend assured me it would. The complication, a common one, is their initial refusal to poop anymore. For weeks they would go five, even six days, between poops and that’s not good. They would just shrug and disclaim any familiarity with that bodily function. Nope. Don’t need to. I finally found a bribe that mattered enough to them to be worth trying, just trying, and eventually that got us into the every 2-3 day cycle we’re in now. We’re also reminding them to listen to their body, like when they’re eating etc: have you had enough? Are you still hungry? Are you thirsty? Tired? And so on. One night after some resistance, they sat on the toilet and rambled on their own version of Everyone poops:
“I hear my body, I hear my body saying hey I need to poop! Daddy poops. Mommy poops. Weee poops. Sewa poops. I poop! Everybody doos it. Everyone poops.”
Sigh. We miss Sera. The pain is a dull ache now, and I think I will finally be able to do her laundry in the next month or two, but we sure do miss her.
I was thinking about how she was a pretty quiet dog, overall. She would bark at visitors but otherwise, she was generally not very vocal.
Smol Acrobat was rummaging through the dog treats while I was searching for something else and says: I want to give doggy a treat.
…. We’d…have to find a doggy….
But we have a doggy.
Um. Well, no, we don’t anymore.
Why?
She got too sick, she couldn’t get better.
Why?
Oh kiddo ….. We’ll come back to this.
(It’s now been more than a month and I think they’re processing that Sera’s not coming back)
Plans: Mommy, after I sleep and then I wake up and then I brush my teeth and then I eat something first, can I pick a sticker for my friends and me?
Gesundheit!
Gahzootateit!
June 24, 2024
Year 5, Day 82: Turns out the local blackbirds like goldfish crackers and dog treats, but they do not like cinnamon cookies.
For six days we’ve been experimenting with Smol Acrobat’s sleep arrangements. They wake up yelling no no no! in fear and terror almost every night so PiC started staying with them overnight months ago. It hasn’t stopped. This isn’t night terrors, though, they’re responsive to us. Angry but responsive. When they’re sleeping with both of us: still hollering in terror. When they’re sleeping with just me: minor disturbances, or sleeps quietly. What is this about and also this is not great for me! They like to sleep on my ribs and dig their toes into my ribs now and again. Reminiscent of pregnancy but now with child on the outside! It’s a bit less disruptive than the waking up screaming, but not much since I can never really get to REM sleep with a squirming critter at my side, so… sigh.
It’s been a hectic several days trying to get back on our feet and I have to: schedule our signing with the notary, shop for kid birthday gifts, pay bills, deal with three times more work nonsense than usual, deal with a flood of community donations I wasn’t expecting.
Year 5, Day 83: We’re not experiencing the same heat that the East Coast and Midwest are, but it’s hot enough that my fingers are swelling up like sausage while I’m working. It used to happen a lot more often, not really a FOND memory I have.
This, plus a big changeover in our software at work, means I’m working at about 50% efficiency and I hate this so much. I FEEL slow.
I was so proud of myself for going out for a long brisk walk today, my first since Sera died, until I stopped. Then, OMG, the heat set in. I forgot how much harder it is to cool down after getting my heart rate up when it’s warmer than “nice” outside.
Year 5, Day 84: I’ve been watching a baby hummingbird perch atop its nest and it is like one of those living statues you see in the cities. It finds a position and just stays there. No changes, even with a stiff wind blowing, not even pointing its tiny little beak in a different direction or anything. It’s weird and fascinating.
Water definitely has a taste, but I didn’t realize how picky I’d become. Visiting family, I tried to force myself to drink their filtered water but it was just so disgusting I started avoiding drinking water entirely. This makes me feel like such a brat.
Body acne in your 40s is such crap! Also ingrown hairs is crap at any age. Mostly I don’t seem to grow much leg hair anymore but every so often a large swatch of my legs itch unbearably and after I scratch it a little, large bumps rise up and sting like the dickens. Looks like ingrown hairs trying to get out but why randomly and all at once? Anyway, I declare this nonsense.
Year 5, Day 85: I think about the heart of this line from Madam Secretary every time I think about the Republicans and their agendas to strip rights from everyone right, left, and center. I don’t understand why much of the Democratic party is so ready to concede defeat at the first sign of resistance, and why they give up concessions so fast. They need a spine, it’s so frustrating: “If you want to do good, you’ve got to be prepared to do bad. Okay? To be canny and watchful and mean, so when the bad guys come, you know just where to stick the knife. ’cause it is a fight to the death and that is the only language they understand.”
Like this thing with the Ten Commandments in school in Louisiana – they know it’s unconstitutional and that we’re going to have to fight them in court. I think that’s the point. They win either way. If we don’t waste that money fighting it, they’re going to run roughshod all over us. If we do spend the money fighting it, that’s money we can’t spend elsewhere on needs, and they can bleed us dry. It’s so frustrating.
Year 5, Day 86: Smol Acrobat has been yelling I NEED A SNACK a lot lately, even shortly after a meal and I finally figured it out today. “Are you asking for a snack because you feel sad?”
Yes.
“Oh! Well when we’re feeling sad, we don’t have to eat a snack, we could hug or cuddle a soft friend. How about that?”
Thankfully they were amenable to the redirects. It’s been a rough few weeks with their tantrums, lots of screaming “I need a hug” followed immediately by “do not wook at me! I don’t NEED you!” lasting 15-30 minutes at a time. I don’t know if it’s just a phase or if we’re doing something particularly wrong, often it feels like the steam must have been accumulating unbeknown to us and then the avalanche is set off by some minor disappointment.
June 21, 2024
1. I accidentally made a human friend in the process of befriending their dog who had picked my legs to huddle next to.
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