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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July 5, 2018
Small win: I’ve converted my Alaska card into a different BofA travel card without an annual fee for the moment to buy some thinking time on what we want to do next on our card churning.
What were your small wins this week?
Femme Frugality in Osaka. I’m dreaming of taking a really cool trip to Japan one of these days.
Discover the productivity secrets of the most productive creatures in nature. Hint: taking breaks!
How America handles disability is shortsighted, counterproductive, and downright stupid.
Talk about some serious boundary-crossing
The true rigors of childbirth that aren’t commonly discussed.
Chief Mom Officer’s recounting of how they handled childcare. I always like seeing how other people manage things.
I’m very curious what made this particular individual’s Fiverr gigs take off to this extent because I’m guessing this is not the typical experience of other writers who take $5 per gig.
If you need a laugh, I always do, Sam Sykes trolling Myke Cole pretty much always makes me laugh. He’s dedicated to the cause. I can’t tell if he’s ever passed on an opportunity to troll Myke on Twitter and possibly also in person. From my observations, so far, no.
Joe took one of my dream vacations: Iceland!
Do you do five year plans? I haven’t done one in a while, I’m in a season of rest for a little bit.
A friend found this site that solicits bids for services for you, no charge to the consumer and no commitment required. She crosschecked this with Yelp reviews and it seems pretty solid, at least on the East Coast.
OMG PUPPY
July 4, 2018
I left off the weekly updates after the first six weeks of the trial but I’m going to keep on with a few monthly reports for posterity and discussion.
Meal winners
- Rice pasta with ground turkey, marinara sauce, topped with mozzarella. Broccoli on the side.
- Coconut rice and baked tilapia
- Chicken and tofu masala, coconut rice. Palak paneer and lamb curry from a box on the side.
- White corn tortilla quesadillas – ALL HAIL white corn tortillas! Soft like flour tortillas but none of the gluten.
- Turkey and cheese enchiladas for dinner. The sauce packet says to make four, I made 15. It stretched!
- Gluten free three cheese pizza crust topped with fresh red bell peppers, sweet Vidalia onions, 1/3 lbs of sweet Italian sausage. And of course sauce (from a jar this time) and shredded mozzarella (bought in bulk from Costco). Pretty darn good!
- CPK’s cauliflower crust pizza, though not at all economical, was pretty good too.
- Herbed butter chicken thighs, garlic mashed potatoes, elote.
- Grilled pork loin chops, pan fried cauliflower with a touch of salt, garlic mashed potatoes.
- Cottage pie with sour cream mashed potatoes, and mozzarella on top
Meal losers
Nothing this time! Those horrible snickerdoodles are finally done and gone though. Thank goodness. The Trader Joe’s snickerdoodles are a little bit better but still not really winners for my palate. The Trader Joe’s fake Oreos are even worse than the snickerdoodles by a small margin.
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July 2, 2018
On Money
Income
Our normal income comes from two full time day jobs. We earn money on the side, including tiny cash flow we don’t touch from an investment property and investing in dividend stocks.
Our side income comes from Swagbucks, infrequently selling on Poshmark, using cash back sites like Ebates, Mr.Rebates, and tracking physical activity through Achievement (my introduction to it). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a (very) small commission to keep the blog lights on.
The long term goal is to replace our day job income before my health declines enough to prevent me from working.
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Micro-income 1. I complained to Comcast about their scheduling maintenance during the work day but not bothering to warn us about it, and they credited my account on request. For 2 cents. Wow.
Micro-income 2. I don’t do much with MTurk now but occasionally they’ll email me to do the odd survey. $0.50. 😀
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June 28, 2018
Small win: I made an amazing cottage pie with sour cream mashed potatoes for dinner. JB loved it and declared: mama, I am going to eat ALL MY FOOD!
Also, though I hate phone calls with a passion, I returned some calls about the LTC policy application that we’re considering. I’m really not ready to go through the fine print and make a decision so I scheduled the exam for late July to buy some time.
What were your small wins this week?
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Ruth and I lost our mothers too young, she younger than I, and it’s left scars. I still remember the exact moment I got back to my desk at work and getting her message that her mom had passed; I remember it as clearly as when I got the call that Mom died suddenly. She’s written something you should read.
Shiloh Treatment Center is being charged with the mistreatment of children and forcibly injecting them with substances that were not approved by their parents. The Tribune reports the court filings. When does this stop and when will these people be held responsible for child abuse and human rights violations? These kids are going to need so much help to heal.
The psychiatrist who’s been treating immigrant children at Shiloh lost his board-certification to do so in 2010. (more…)
June 27, 2018
It seems like everyone was spending time in Hawaii and we wanted to go too (Angela’s week and GenYMoney)! I originally planned to travel hack most of this trip but that didn’t happen. (Belatedly I realized that GenYMoney’s hacking did NOT include their lodgings.)
Getting ourselves ready for travel has become such a hassle, though!
For the travel itself, we have to book the transportation (flights, car rental, lodgings), call to make sure that our PreCheck number is on our reservations, put everything in TripIt to keep it organized. I usually download whatever promo code there is for cabs or rideshare, if we’re going to use them, a few days ahead of time so that it’ll be valid for our whole trip.
For work, I had to make coverage arrangements at work which always means updating people’s training, and working ahead on some things, and planning which days I’m still going to check in because there are a few things only I’m senior enough to do.
Preparing at home means tons of logistics 3 weeks before we travel.
Humans: checking all our security is in place, putting the mail on hold, making sure that all our packages are delivered before we leave. Doing everyone’s laundry, packing the medications bag for our carry-on (I’ll never forget leaving the Tylenol in our checked luggage and then having JB have teething pains on the flight!), planning airport and plane food, picking and packing all of our travel clothes, plus carry-on clothes. Packing 5 hours’ worth of entertainment for a 3 year old.
Dogs: getting a good sitter and booking them, doing all of their laundry, packing their food, supplements, medications, snacks, treats, beds, bowls, and blankets. It’d be easier to pay someone to stay here with the dogs but I’m still not comfortable with the idea of a stranger in my home and having to provide food for them as well.
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June 25, 2018
I wasn’t there so I’m light on details but we’ll be digging into our savings to pay off a $1000 charge on the AmEx because of Sera. She got into a tussle over Father’s Day weekend and because she outweighs the other dog by 40 pounds, the other dog got the worst of it.
When PiC called to tell me that she’d wrangled with another dog, I knew just from his breathing in the three seconds before he actually said anything that something had gone terribly wrong. I hate phone calls. They’re never good news.
Sera was responding to aggression and thought she was fighting in self defense. The other dog definitely thought she was responding to Sera’s aggression and fighting in self defense.
Sera carries more than just the physical scars of healed bite marks on the top of her head that stay bare of fur, the still open wound in her ear that can’t heal because of where it is. When a dog makes aggressive noises at her, even if only warning her off, she reacts with fear because she’s learned that means she’s about to be attacked. She learned this from her family, the one that gave her up too late for her to trust other dogs easily, only after she’d been attacked several times by the family dog.
It could be a lot worse.
Sera’s wounds were generally superficial. I cleaned them and wrapped them up in ten minutes before we headed over to the clinic. The other dog’s wounds were manageable but the bites were still deep enough that they required surgery to be sure that they wouldn’t get infected. We sat with the owner at the emergency clinic until after the exam to make sure that she knew we were going to take care of it. It might not have been Sera’s fault but it was still our responsibility when she hurt the other dog.
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June 21, 2018
Small win: I found a new next size up bathing suit for JB for next to nothing!
What were your small wins this week?
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If the separation of parents and children also breaks your heart, and you can donate to one of these causes linked in his tweet to help the kids, show Dr. Linus your receipt – he’ll match up to $10k, however long it takes. UPDATE June 21 10:53 am PST, he’s down to the last $150. Good job, y’all!
The answer is no: “Medical professionals, members of Congress and religious leaders are calling on the Trump administration to stop separating migrant families. They question whether these shelter facilities are appropriate for younger children.”
At least one very popular PF blogger is an asshat who think that it’s ok that migrant children are being separated from their families because they still have food and shelter because it’s far more concerning that children in Syria are living in dire circumstances. A) Read up on the lifelong consequences of familial separations, well known since after Operation Pied Piper in WWII. B) Both things are terrible and we should donate to help both horrible situations. C) Our government is materially contributing to the crappy situation in Syria just like it’s materially contributing to the separation and internment of babies and children. This all needs to stop. D) I don’t know about that blogger but I do have the capacity to care about more than one group of people and they don’t even have to look like or be like me to deserve it.
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Aitza B: We only have 100% to give.
Emilie discusses Is it ok to give when you’re in debt? I say YES.
Hiro turned 30!
This is one of my nightmares: losing one of us when our child is young. We do have our life insurance and our wills, our trust, and I’m still working on pulling all the pertinent information into one handy Life and Death folder.
Rev. Ruttenberg: “It is a time when Jewish advantages — and/or perceptions of Jewish advantage — are both protecting us and marking us as targets.”
