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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May 17, 2024
- I had a FULL ON panic, frantically looking up the grace period (61 days) for late payment of my life insurance policy, because I just found the premium notice on the shelf instead of filed away in the Big Notebook of Important Stuff. I scribbled out a check fast as I could, counting the days as I sealed up the envelope, hoping that almost 2 weeks was enough time. Then, while kicking myself, wondered why this bill wasn’t in my template for all bill payments, and went to fix that. But wait… it was… so …? I scrolled up two months and there is it. I paid it two months ago, on time and it was such a non-event I completely forgot to file away the paperwork as normal. Way to scare myself. But hey, my system worked/works.
- Grief hung particularly heavy this weekend so I’m glad that I’d been saving this snippet featuring Klaus, Dina and Arland to read: I Will Explain Everything
- We have delayed start on our washing machine and I like it. On days when I simply cannot get the laundry run during my work hours, I can fill the washer and set it to start the run after peak hours and then it’s ready for me to pop in the dryer early the next morning. That’s really nice.
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May 14, 2024
I have been cycling through ALL the phases of grief. My best coworker is gone. (Seamus was my supervisor: he had clear expectations of when I would start and stop work, and he would enforce them.) Sera would come to work with me when she was ready, sleep nearby, we’d go for walks, and come back to work after. We hung out all day long, in the quiet and in the bedlam when the kids were home.
When we first brought Sera home, the only being who truly existed for her was Seamus. It was love at first sight until the day he died. She coexisted with us humans but she was still too scared, scarred, or resistant to bond with us. She wasn’t ready. She was responsive to training over time for basic commands, but it was the work of years, not days, to bring her personality out of her fear and trauma-hardened shell. It was beyond hard, day to day progress was almost impossible to discern. We sought the advice of trainers after a couple scary incidents, and kept working at it. A friend helped us find a dogsitter that was experienced with reactive dogs, those vacations helped her meet and relax with friendly dogs. That wore away the edges of her trauma further.
Regardless of the trauma and fear, she was always ever-patient with the kids, only retreating to hide behind my legs when they were bickering or screeching loudly. (She never could tell when it was happy screeching or upset screeching. It’s ok, Sera, I couldn’t either.) The kids were scarily loud but she clearly never felt threatened by them the way she did with other dogs. The kids could lay next to her, lean on her, petting her nose, or her paws, or her tail (never her favorite bits to be petted) without any twitching. But she was always allowed to walk away,Ā she was never cornered, and she would when she was over it.
Towards the end, when she’d refuse the medicine rolled in a pill pocket from me, she’d take it from Smol Acrobat a few times. She learned to trust them and even maybe enjoy their company a bit. If they left the house without her, she’d stand by the door, or sit by it, worrying there quietly until they came home or I called her away. I noticed she certainly didn’t do the same for me, when I went to run errands and returned, she’d always be curled up asleep on her bed. I wasn’t miffed. (Maybe a little, what am I? Chopped liver?)
We had finally started seeing the fruits of our training on walks in the past year. When she’d look across the street and see a dog she didn’t know, instead of lunging, growling, or barking, she’d look at me for a treat instead of reacting. I was so proud of her when she met a neighbor puppy and she just treated it like an annoying child of a dog. She appropriately disciplined the overeager pup with a lot of loud growling, but zero malice and zero fear. The moment the puppy submitted, and stopped ramming her like a freight train, she stood back calmly like nothing had ever happened. It was like a little miracle. I was even more proud of her when she spotted a dog that HAD aggressed her, out of fear, on meeting, and she just looked at me for a treat. They had history but she was still ok with seeing the dog pass by without reacting.
Several months ago, she stuck with me, following me from room to room wherever I went, every time I went in and out. It got so that I minimized my movements after a certain time. Bath and bed meant getting settled in bed for good,Ā or else she would heave herself to her weary feet and come with me, slightly accusing: “Why did we have to get up again?”
I’d gotten in the habit of narrating the events of the day to her: “It’s ok, Sera, I’m just going to pick up JB right now. You can stay in here if you want.” “Time for walkies, Sera!” “It’s ok, Sera, I’m just dropping off Smol Acrobat, I’ll be back in an hour.” “It’s ok, Sera, we’re all going to hit the road together, no one’s leaving without you.” “We’re off to JB’s class, Sera, we’ll see you in about an hour.” Every day, I catch myself starting to tell her where I’m going or reaching over to pet her, or apologizing for yelling at my computer. She didn’t like that any more than Seamus did. Even the kids were attuned to our habits. Two weeks ago, I was putting on my coat, and Smol Acrobat innocently asked, “Are you taking Sewa for a walk?” I wish, kiddo.
She had her favorite sleeping spots to rotate through during the day, but at dinner, she laid by my feet. Occasionally she’d squeeze under my chair to lay under the table where other people could pet her with their toes but usually, she was just off to my right.
She even had friends of her own! The owners of the neighbor puppy adored her, she helped their pup learn some manners. Smol Acrobat’s little friend who was afraid of dogs loved her. They named their plushie after her, saying he wanted a dog just like her.Ā Seamus was so well-loved and I had wanted that for her, too.
Then this year, she fell ill. I spent nearly every waking moment caring for her: six walks a day, 5 home-cooked meals a day, medications twice a day, bloodwork every two weeks, desperately trying to get through the worst of it and into remission. Most dogs die in the first two months of diagnosis. When we crossed the three month mark, and then approached the four month mark, I started to hope. I started to think maybe we had a shot. But we didn’t. The disease progressed too far too quickly.
Unlike with our other beloved pets, with Doggle who died suddenly, with Seamus who declined incrementally over weeks and months, this was clear-cut after a trip to the ER showed bloodwork that took away the last bit of hope. As painful as that last week was, we were able to do all the last things. Take all the last pictures, give the last hugs and kisses, offer the last treats. Share my lunch, which I have never done in my life. She was never a cuddler, or a lap puppy the way Seamus was, and it both filled my heart and broke it all at once when she cuddled and laid in my lap for the first, and last, time.
I am so lonely without my shadow.
May 13, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 40: Infuriating. This is the second time I’ve filed a Dependent Care claim for FSA redemption on our daycare expenses and, once again, their website has pulled an “What are you talking about no claim was filed”. It’s disappeared entirely from their site. WTF United Healthcare?? They were reliably reimbursing us last year but they changed their site two months ago and now nothing works. Actually, from January, they were automatically denying claims first with incorrect codes (claiming we were out of the grace period, for all new 2024 expenses š) before backtracking and approving them. None of my claims for which I have saved confirmations since mid-March are appearing on the site at all. It’s ridiculous.
I’m still symptomatic from the virus that Smol Acrobat gifted me last week. After pushing too hard on Friday and feeling worse than ever, I forced myself to rest as much as possible on the weekend. I did NOT hill my potatoes. I did NOT pull weeds. I did NOT hack at the encroaching branches from the neighbors’ yards. Today, I chastised myself to do the bare minimum until I’ve shaken the hacking cough and all: no appointments, no running errands (I have 3), no doing the laundry, no extra anything until I can actually recover. It’s been 8 days, I’m thoroughly tired of this. And Smol Acrobat keeps asking me every 3 hours: are you fewwing better? And I have to keep saying no, not yet.
It should not be so hard to just not do things!
I did hill SOME potatoes today, just the one batch that was tall enough, and of course that wore me out. But I needed the satisfaction, along with accosting cute neighborhood dogs to pet them. We met a delightfully regal retriever today who was doing her best imitation of a statue as she enjoyed our pets. I asked her dogwalker to come by this way more often.
Year 5, Day 41: I found our neighborhood off-leash dog! We were excited to see each other. She did tricks for me in exchange for treats and then hunted down a tiny stick for me to throw for her several times. That was good for my heart. No dog will ever replace Sera, Seamus, or Doggle, but petting a dog is vastly superior to NOT petting a dog, any day of the week.
Checked on the plants, gave them a light watering, whispered “germinate germinate germinate” to the seeds.
I still have a racking hacking cough but I feel less horrible today, even though I wasn’t able to sleep until well into the wee hours. I could walk up a hill almost without stopping, almost without stopping for a long cough.
Got our CPA to find the check that I sent her weeks ago. She thought it’d never arrived and just didn’t say anything. All this time, I was waiting for her to cash it already so I can balance our cashflow. Glad I followed up and got her to look at her mail.
Year 5, Day 42: Everything’s coming up Milhouse this morning (in a limited fashion). Physically felt much less terrible today. I’m still pretty sick but the least sick I’ve felt for several days. I got to pet a neighbor’s fluffy dog. I had to drop off Smol Acrobat instead of JB and they were pretty cooperative. Traffic was ok going and returning, there was no line at Costco gas, there was easy parking at the notoriously awful parking lot by the place I had to return to (again) for fingerprinting, picking up my packages was super easy. No awful drivers on the road this morning. That was all a welcome respite from the stuff and nonsense waiting for me at my work desk.
For the first time in a long time, in thinking about this post where Nicole and Maggie’s touching on a topic that’s on my mind a lot (Do I really have it together? Have I been hiding things?) I felt not terrible about things. Also, I’m realizing I don’t have any idea what I mean by “together” anyway! Best I can say is I’ve kept most things on the conveyor belt moving most of the time, much like those moments in the chocolate factory about 14 seconds before it all goes horribly wrong in that I Love Lucy episode. Does anyone remember that? But feeling impending catastrophe is not the same thing as actual catastrophe. I’ve always tried to do the best I could, for highly variable values of “best”.
There are many things I wish I could do but can’t right now (in this very moment or this year or further out): supporting a grieving acquaintance, making plans with friends we want to see and haven’t in too long, horseback riding. I don’t have riding time (or money or energy) right now but it doesn’t sting to realize that as much as it once did. I can look at all those wants now as a “later / maybe in a few years” thing rather than an acute failure for not doing it now. Maybe it’s because I’ve made myself rest more during this grieving and illness period, my body and mind are finally getting a moment to heal a little bit. It’s not nearly enough rest but, for the first time in a while, I’m not using this time to kick myself when I’m already down. Therapy!
Though in this same vein, the place where JB does self defense keeps running special event! after special event! Social get togethers, competitions, seminars OH MY. I’m getting exasperated. They get 90 minutes of my time (or PiC’s) up to three times a week, who has time for all this extra stuff? If and when I add more stuff, it’s gotta be something that brings me some joy.
“So you think because the system always works for you, the system always works?” #LeverageRedemption
Year 5, Day 43: Warm day ahead and the birds know it. They’re singing their little hearts out this morning. I’m so grateful for my friend who sends many dog pictures and videos daily. It’s not the same as my Sera š¶ (or Seamus, or Doggle), but it staves off the worst of the dog-loneliness.
We’ve got an unusually jam packed day: PiC’s appointment, JB’s self-defense class, open house. Our friend who doesn’t drive has an appointment late tonight and we’re both frustrated we can’t save them a bus ride by chauffeuring because we’re already over-committed.
Frustration at work keeps increasing. There’s a ton of pressure to fix problems caused by people acting in bad faith, produce more than we can produce, while taking a hit from a hiring misstep. But we still have to try to do the best we can do, even though we now know that it’s impossible to hit our primary KPI, and of course I’m responsible for making it happen. Thus, this headline from a Fortune article resonates: Workers are eyeing the exit in 2024 as LinkedIn and Microsoft study warns more people want to quit their jobs now than during the Great Resignation. For the most part, my job has had the key elements needed to support a comfortable life. Not enough balance but we were getting there. Things changed dramatically this year. It’s too early to say whether it was for the better or worse because a lot of change is still to come, but the changes that have already happened stink. We’re inundated with lousy new colleagues who just barely do their jobs a month and change after deadlines and I’m feeling absolutely stabby. āļø Even while we’re grateful that PiC is still employed, I’m taking many deep breaths. I have to give this some time, not least because we aren’t ready to lose my income either. We can do this.
Third try finally worked! My set of fingerprints are finally approved for volunteering at the school. I don’t want to volunteer for most things that involve herding children and talking to people. I do want to volunteer to help out in the library sometimes. Once in a while. That’s for next year though.
Summer camps are booking up fast, and I’ve booked four weeks of camp with 3-4 more weeks to figure out. I volunteered to take 2 bonus kids (JB’s friend and their sibling) for one of the weeks where we could only do half days. I’ll still be working but figured the kids are old enough to entertain themselves enough to get by for 3 hours a day.
I need to just put the brakes on for literally anything else extra, for a while, I think.
“She’s your friend? You have friends?” #Xena
Year 5, Day 44: Smol Acrobat insisted on sleeping on my arm all night so naturally I couldn’t sleep. They sure woke up cheerfully, though. Still a whole lot more coughing and sneezing today than I’d hoped to be doing on Day 12 of this. I appreciated the day hitting the mid-70s one more time, though. These are our handful of summer weather days for the season, probably. The fog’s rolling back in soon enough.
I’m doing my best to resist the urge to eat all the Girl Scout Lemonade cookies. They’ll all taste great until I hit the fourth one and then it’s all regrets. Just two cookies!
Dear old friend and I had a short chat about how terrible things are right now. Every generation has had their horrible terrible thing that dominated the social consciousness, I admitted, we’re no different in that respect. She’s got 40 years on me, she personally remembers many of them. But, she pointed out, what’s different is this time it feels like democracy is about to collapse. We didn’t have that before in the middle crisis or the Vietnam war and protests and so on. She’s right about that. It does feel like fascism is on the brink of taking over completely more days than not.
“You and I will be together for all eternity” #Xena (Is it just me, or do only villain types think having to exist for an eternity as a good thing?)
May 10, 2024
1. We need more of this: Columbia And Barnard Alumni Announce A Boycott Of University Reunions And Plans To Send Funds From Alternative Events To Aid In Palestine
2. Can’t say I expected a seminary to be the first one but good on them! Union Theological Seminary votes to divest from companies profiting from Gaza war
Challenges this week: still grieving. Still sick.
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May 7, 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 $280.60 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. It all gets reinvested into our index funds.
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May 6, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 33: My first morning of a work week without Sera. We didn’t start the day with our morning walk. No one’s watching me water the plants or waiting for me to come back inside after watering plants, or pretending she can’t hear me telling her to come back inside because the sun and wind is too nice.
It’s miserably lonely without her. I went through all the usual motions but it all feels hollow. Even the garden doesn’t spark a bit of anything.
I impulse shopped for this pile of seeds a month ago looking forward to planting them with Sera for company, probably trying to hold off the impending with hope for growing things. They took so damn long to ship and be delivered, 3 weeks, that they arrived after she was gone. Now it feels silly and bleak. I got some seeds into the ground anyway but. Well. There was no joy in it. Maybe they’ll grow and surprise me. Maybe by the time they grow, I’ll have healed enough to appreciate them.
JB and I both came down with the virus that had been plaguing Smol Acrobat and PiC a few days ago. This probably could have been avoided by breaking out my antivirals on the weekend but I was so overwhelmed I forgot. Now, we muddle through.
Year 5, Day 34: CA state testing starts today for JB but they woke up extra early (for once š¤¦š»āāļø) with a fever so we sent them back to bed. This was our first go at it so we didn’t know what if make up tests are offered. We had to contact the school to confirm we’d keep JB home and they could make it up later.
I popped my painkillers, and set to shoveling out the piles and piles of work that have stacked up for as long as I could before taking to my bed.
As much as I hate Sera’s absence, I can’t deny that having one fewer caretaking schedule let me get a little rest today. Maybe I’ll even get some rest tomorrow. Who knows.
PiC and I were up far too late tracking down pricing for some possible summer plans. I regret that whole thing. It really could have waited until I wasn’t sick.
There are peaceful protests on university campuses across the nations and the inhumane responses of the administration on those campuses, Columbia and UT Austin are the two I saw reporting and videos from, with the NYPD causing far more property damage than anyone else did and Austin police teargassing students, are brutal and a sickening parallel to the genocide in Gaza. The Palestinians just want to live, but they’re all being collectively decimated for the actions of the few in Hamas. These students are peacefully asking their universities to divest their investments in Israel because of the genocide, and the administrations are sending violent out-of-control armed police forces to terrorize them. The media is also resoundingly ignoring how many of those protestors are Jewish themselves because they don’t want this genocide, or the profit off genocide, in their names. The protestors are being branded as antisemitic when many are Jewish. It’s an awful and strategic erasure. This entire everything is utterly infuriating.
Year 5, Day 35: Turns out Smol Acrobat still wasn’t as over this bug as I thought. They woke up at 3 am in extreme emotional distress, right after PiC had just finally fallen asleep so I was up to the plate, that usually happens when they’re still feeling down from a bug. I’m just grateful they hadn’t spiked a high fever again. They calmed down faster than expected only to coherently ask “Can I sleep wif you?” Uhhhh that means zero sleep for me soooo…. how about I sleep here with you…. that worked well enough that I was able to escape by 4 am. I’m really feeling the broken sleep today, I feel more sick today than I did when this first started.
’twas also another day of lining up little medicine cups and pouring a series of medicine shots for the kids. JB’s fever is nearly broken and their energy is at least double mine but they still can’t go back to school until tomorrow. I assigned a series of light chores that they could intersperse with sick time activities like playing games, reading ebooks on Libby, and reading stacks of books from their shelf. Myself, I was assigned a stack of not-so-light work. I did my best.
I got a VERY last minute notification of a memorial service for a former teacher’s spouse. Unfortunately, while I would have thrown on something to be presentable and run out to get there, I just couldn’t. By that point I was already working in bed because sitting up was too tiring. I felt terrible but getting the “viewing is at 10-12” at 11 am was really terribly last minute. I’ve been meaning to check on that former teacher, I know she’s lonely from mutual friends but I’ve been so swamped and now sick. I haven’t had anything left with which to extend an offer of support. Sigh. I hate having limitations. I hate being human (emphasis: derisive).
But I’ve got to survive, first. Here we are.
Year 5, Day 36: Busy morning. School drop off, answered a bunch of questions for work before a work call, then an hour on the phone with the lawyer to walk through our trust changes, rescheduled my eye exam which currently conflicts with a school thing for JB, and then picked up an outfit for them I’d ordered. By the time I got back to my desk and got any amount of work done, school pick up time! Whoof.
I just realized I missed free shipping on Bookshop for Indie Bookstore weekend. Drat. I had intended to buy all the niblings their books for Christmas on that weekend. Now I need to start a running list of books to buy as gifts so I don’t miss another free shipping weekend.
I stayed up really late working to clear the decks because I have an appointment in the morning. Told myself it’d be one hour but I went over and could feel the moment that I went too long. After mostly managing to feel almost-ok all day, all my symptoms came roaring back and then some. Welcome to the congested head cold phase of this virus. Should have pushed off sooner.
One thing checked off my list: huge thanks to Music for warning me off eShakti. I went with Nordstrom since they have reasonable quality and a generous return policy for the ones that don’t fit. I tried on so many and found 3 dresses that fit comfortably enough for this summer’s events. My two Elhoffer dresses are at my sister’s for alterations and in the meantime, my body shape hasn’t felt comfortable in anything lately. It was worrying me that maybe we’d show up at the event and they still wouldn’t fit right after alterations and then what would I wear?? So now I have backups.
Year 5, Day 37: Between dropping off Smol Acrobat and an appointment at JB’s school, I’ve peopled entirely too much for one day, and my immune system went spiralling down the drain. It was all I could do to get through the critical work and drag myself to bed for a rest.
The one bright spot of the week: this is the first day that looking at my plants, white blossoms on the berry bush, loads of potato leaves coming up, made me feel a touch of joy since Sera’s š¶ passing. The kids helped me get the cucumber seeds into the ground on the weekend, and I tucked the lettuce and bush bean seeds into the soil on my own. š¤ for a real harvest in about 2 months.
May 3, 2024
1. When I returned some things from our most recent Chewy order, they sent us a vase of flowers for Sera. I’m not very big on flowers but it was a kind gesture and they’re pretty to look at.
Challenges this week: Every day this week was a slog.
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