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 MoreFebruary 14, 2025
1. I have read too many T. Kingfisher books NOT to be creeped out by Egyptian walking onions but also I want to grow them. That’s what I want for my birthday: walking onion bulbets or seeds to grow.
Challenges this week:
February 10, 2025
Year 5, Day 288: A pain flare kicked my ass this weekend. Still is. Some of it’s probably the barometric pressure shifting on me, a good amount of it will be the stress lately and sleeping badly because Smol Acrobat bunked with us for a couple nights. “I wike your bed better, it’s bigger den our bed” they observed. Then why did I keep waking up to you sleeping on my head?
Trudeau’s speech made me sad in that, yes! We know this is unhinged behavior that none of us (North Americans who aren’t garbage) want and we’re also fighting what feels like a losing battle against it all. We’re still fighting but man was it hard not to feel so much shame to be an American in this moment.
“I hate most people, it takes all of my skill to hide that!” – Blake, Madam Secretary.
Boy do I feel that.
Half my day was eaten up with calls. I’m living my nightmare job right now. May this pass soon.
Contacted all our Congresspeople to vote against these nominations.
Year 5, Day 289: My stress cravings are getting very specific. I catch myself wanting a Cinnabon most days. Or an old fashioned donut plus a donut hole. Or a ribeye. Today, though, I survived on a glamorous half inch slice of quiche and small Gatorade because I had no appetite. My pain was so intense last night that I caved and took a tramadol. I’ve not taken one in two years for a very good reason: it alleviates my pain for a little while and then I pay for it five times over with side effects. Feeling like my bones are lava has become almost routine on bad days, but this is Day 3 of extremely high pain. So high that it actually distracted me from work. Work is usually my way of distracting myself from the pain and it’s rare for anything to break my hyperfocus when that’s in gear. The tramadol bought me 3 hours of blunted tolerable pain. It also bought me 18 hours of severe nausea. These trade-offs are NOT worth it. But what choice do I have? We really need better pain control options. This is awful.
PiC had to take over my school runs and JB’s activities today because I felt so awful. I couldn’t even feel guilty.
Year 5, Day 290: Pacing myself this week has been the pits. I’ve been mostly bedridden because sitting and standing are so fatiguing they send my pain through the roof into the stratosphere. I refuse to take the tramadol again, that is SO not worth it.
You know what’s great? Giant spoonful of peanut butter. Can’t take away pain or fatigue or that river of lava flowing through my bones but it is DELICIOUS.
Was super proud of a friend who has committed to making calls to Senators even though it was hard for her. I provided all the scripts and phone numbers I had collected from Celeste Pewter and cheered her from bed.
Year 5, Day 291: From Courtney Milan’s newsletter, the word I was searching for last week for this surreal moment in time: “I learned a word this week: hypernormalization.
It’s the word people used to describe what was happening in the Soviet bloc countries in the 1970s and 1980s, as people went about their daily lives deeply aware that the center would not hold, that everything was falling apart, but with nothing left to do but pretend that life would go on as they understood it.
It’s a word that encompasses the moment when a large number of us know what is happening to our country—know what we are seeing—but engage in a mass, country-wide kayfabe to keep on doing the things we need to do to survive as individuals, even knowing that some individuals won’t make it and that the world we know is rapidly deteriorating around us.”
I think she’s 100% right about this too: “I firmly believe that if nothing is done, historians will place the end of the United States as a democratic, constitutional republic somewhere between a few days ago and a few months from now.”
I’ve been checking in on my people and making sure they know we’re here for them. I don’t know how, or if, this country survives these body blows. Maybe it doesn’t. But we as individuals and people may survive if we take care of each other.
We expect a few lump sums of money this year that’s mostly meant to pay for the roof but I’m also earmarking direct aid for people I’ll never meet offline who are in need or are community organizers or activists themselves.
Year 5, Day 292: I love Smitten Kitchen, I knew they wouldn’t fail me when I didn’t know how I was going to cook those spareribs I got on sale.
I spaced out the cooking process across DAYS because I haven’t been able to sit up or be out of bed most of this week. Mixed the spices one day. Dredged the ribs another session. Then popped them in the oven in the morning to bake for HOURS. A friend asked me how I get anything / everything done / survive between my health and my life. Well. This kind of budgeting is one way.
You know what’s funny about sending holiday cards super late? Five friends have texted me delighted to have received it. This doesn’t happen during the year-end holidays, no one cares or has time to care at that time of year.
Costco had no eggs and we are just about out. I feel vaguely like a failure of a quartermaster because I’m usually on top of these things and get enough supplies to hold us over for a while or ration supplies to make it stretch. PiC was advised to get there between 9 and 10 am to get eggs so they do have some, they just run out quickly. 
February 7, 2025
1. I hauled myself across town to get to the Korean grocery store with the good fried chicken and the delicious stacks and stacks of ban chan for takeaway as far as the eye can see. They had prepared fried chicken marked down 30% off and I happened across a 20% off sale on pork spare ribs making them less ridiculously expensive. The ban chan was faaaantastic and lasts for days. If you combine some of them: seasoned cold spinach, cucumbers and bean sprouts with ginger beef (Costco), rice, and a fried egg, you just about have yourself a bibimbap.
2. Feels like a bit of a miracle we scraped through this week.
February 5, 2025
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 $212 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
We picked up receipt litter and scored a 6500 point bonus in Fetch for our trouble. The points from each of these programs (Swagbucks, Bing, My Points and Fetch. Ibotta doesn’t do much for us.) helps to fund my giving habit, like buying for the Lakota families and for the unhoused folks in New Mexico.
February 3, 2025
Year 5, Day 281: There’s something I can’t stand about the audio of dubbed TV shows or movies. The voices always sound too breathy and feel mismatched to the people they’re dubbing. Even when I’m not looking at the screen, that offness remains.
Wrote to all our Congresspeople again today to tell them, again, we do NOT want bipartisanship with this administration. I don’t want to see one single CA Senatorial vote for any of their nominations or bills or anything.
Stand up for trans rights, immigrants rights, reproductive healthcare rights. Stop pissing away what little goodwill remains for scraps of recognition or Republican “cooperation”. Also instructed all of them to SPEAK UP against this federal funding freeze bullshit.
Although I’m being worked into the ground, I’m also keeping it front of mind that I cannot exist solely to deal with W2 work, chores, giving and activism alone. We must carve out room for rest (even if it’s not enough) and joy. We need to sustain for many more days, weeks, and months. We don’t have to pretend life is NORMAL but we do VERY much need to deliberately choose to have good in every one of our days. We’ll burn out spectacularly if we don’t.
Kate Elliot’s wisdom on the topic at her blog: The 5 Cs: a rubric for getting through the storm
Year 5, Day 282: The “purge if you don’t miss it in a year” cycle doesn’t work for me. My regret cycles kick in at 2-4 years, and I never know which it’ll be for, or if it’s silly.
At the moment I am regretting getting rid of my Top Shop leggings a few years back. I’m wearing the one remaining pair under my cargo pants for warmth so it matters very little how they look or fit, it only matters that they’re oh so soft. Then again, I don’t think I’d still fit at Petite 2 size anymore, so maybe this is rose colored glasses at play too.
JB is so bitter that they have the day off school tomorrow but isn’t allowed to stay up late tonight doing crafts. We still have to get up for the dentist early tomorrow morning. I don’t think I knew they had the day off when I made the appointments but it worked out, mostly.
Year 5, Day 283: Smol Acrobat loves counting my reps for me. After 30 lateral raises, 14 squats and 15 glute bridges: “what are you doing NOW.”
Lying on the floor like roadkill, kid, I’m tired!
It’s been a hell of a day. Meetings all morning, then getting into actual work but an idle checking in on people led to finding out I have to take more meetings because folks have needs that need to be heard and their managers have totally dropped the ball so I need to pick it up. Fahhhhh.
I’m extra tired. So tired I WANT to cry emotionally but physically am just too damn tired to and who has the time to anyway?
This all-the-meetings! life is hell and I hate it. I’d like to think or know that it’s temporary but due to upcoming reorganizing, probably some of it is here to stay. I have to figure out how to share the pain so it’s manageable workload and not just pain.
Soothing background show for the day: Man on the Inside. So many The Good Place alum, I hope they keep adding more in the second season.
Year 5, Day 284: We’re saving for the roof replacement and travel and replenishing the dog fund. It feels very jarring to be thinking of these trivial things (and how do we suddenly have tiny poppy plants spread all over the place?) this week with everything going on.
It feels like we’re living in 1930s Germany. I know many people outside the US see the same thing when they look at us. Even though we’re safer than most being in California, my gut screams that we have to fight and plan for the worst.
Asians have historically been OTHER. Just because we’ve been temporarily useful in recent years as a model minority (which is bullshit, not safety, and woe to most Asians who believe otherwise) we’ll be a target just as much as our fellow minorities. We may not be the first but our turn will come. I sure as hell don’t plan to be compliant. We have to fight to help the folks on the front lines, now. Trans people, sex workers, they might be first because the world thinks they’re expendable, but no one who isn’t a cishet white male is safe. I remember the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese internment camps and Korematsu v. United States and the millions of racist indignities before, in between and since then.
Soothing background show for the day: Madam Secretary. I find the competence and (sometimes unflappability) of Tea Leoni’s Elizabeth McCord and Bebe Neuwirth’s Nadine Tolliver comforting.
Year 5, Day 285: I shared CA Senator phone numbers with two more people, asking them to call and leave voicemails when bad shit is happening (when is bad shit NOT happening these days) to pressure them into taking action.
I called the Costco feedback line to thank them for maintaining their line on DEI policies and not caving to pressure internally or externally both as a customer and a shareholder. 1966 positive calls today, she said! This is important that they hear from us that they should be continuing to hold this line. I need to get a phone number to yell at Target. Wait, here’s the number to yell at Target, or (thanks to Celeste Pewter).
Nicole and Maggie have lists of actions, pick one or two that you can do? Jan 26 and Feb 1.
I chose a new churning credit card: Chase Sapphire Preferred, 60000 bonus points for $4000 spend in 3 months. I should have done this last month, the kids’ dental bill alone was $1000. But we have more coming up, hitting that requirement will happen pretty quickly. Making a note for myself that I should plan to do this early next year. Again that double feeling of surrealism with planning: will we be here next year? Will we be able to make use of points hoards?
January 31, 2025
1. I pulled some grass and clover to make space for the many tiny poppy plants that are peeping up through the soil.
2. A tiny scoop of delicious Tillamook strawberry ice cream goes a long way.
January 29, 2025
I could not do this without y’all, my online community, contributing to help make heavy lifting a little lighter all year round. I email the contributors who want to hear from me by email 4-6 times a year depending on what life is doing. People contribute depending on their own personal factors and somehow it all works out that we can help people.
Some numbers for 2024: 217 jackets and sweaters.
15 giant boxes. Giant means they’re always big enough to fit a small adult or maybe even two.
We spent several weeks washing donated bedding and clothes, and packing up books, toys, and shoes for shipping to the Allen Youth Center for distribution to the local community.
We sent 20 towels to the Youth Center which was offering hot food and showers to many unhoused folks this spring.
We helped 9 families directly with all their needs.
We bought diapers, wipes, and formula for an infant. We bought loads of canned food, pantry foods, and dog food. Household goods: soap, shampoo, conditioner, dental supplies, cleaning supplies. We bought winter boots, winter coats, warm socks, clothes for school, clothes for toddlers, clothes for elders. We sent piles of warm blankets to families whose trailers had no heat or insulation.
The quilting community donated a sewing machine, 23 lbs of fabrics, and all the necessary quilting supplies so a quilter could carry on her family tradition.
I can’t tell if this covers the amount of work that actually went into it, feels like it doesn’t look like much, but as a friend reminds me, every little bit counts.
And it’s true: every single penny and every single dollar makes all of this possible.
I’ve been shopping for our January families, so as always, your donations and sharing are most welcome.
Send a gift to any of the following with a note saying “Pine Ridge”:
Venmo: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman@gmail.com
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Please supply your email address if you’d like updates on where the money goes.
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