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
I started writing this the week after the weekend’s events but ran out of time and energy to finish it as we cleaned up.
I knew that the weekend’s atmospheric river could bring us some real grief. High winds are dangerous – we had a narrow miss with our car and a lamppost in last year’s last big storm. Floods from the excess rain are dangerous, too. We keep getting just soaked a week or so ago so the soil’s not ready to absorb any more, making flooding more likely. Our own neighborhood is less likely to flood but still, being aware of the risk, we try to stay out of the way as much as we can.
We’ve been added to our emergency / disaster preparedness kid over the past several months. Our latest purchases were a set of cheapish lanterns and an expensive electric generator on Black Friday. The Yeti 3000x was on sale but I still wondered if that was an extravagant overly paranoid purchase. I stopped second-guessing this weekend. In fact, I think we need a second one!
Day 1: Our power went out several times on Sunday, so of course, hubris set in. I stopped worrying so much about a few hours of outage at a time. Then it stayed out the last time. PGE gave us a really big window for power restoration on the last one, and the affected area on the outage map showed that well over 10,000 residences were affected just in our region. This was true of the top half of CA on the outage map. That last estimate was well past the 4 hour window of safety for the perishables in the fridge, so we hauled out the Yeti and went through all the first time set up pains by lantern light while I grumpily kicking myself for not doing the test run I had intended to do before we needed to. The kids squabbled, played, and bickered while PiC and I discovered the shortcomings of our plan: the extension cord for the fridge seemed like it didn’t work, the extension cord has to be flat for the fridge to be pushed back again so it instead had to hang out obnoxiously blocking our path.
Day 2: We snuck the behemoth over to PiC’s work into an abandoned corner to charge. We knew that charging devices was permitted but felt sheepish about bringing the whole power station. We got enough power to get both freezers back down to 0 degrees and keep the fridge running overnight.
The libraries were opened for charging services too but we didn’t want to take up an outlet spot away from someone who didn’t have an alternate location to go to. All the local businesses in our local area are down. It was so weird to see all blacked out while it’s business as usual across town.
Our 6 pm power restore time was pushed AGAIN to midnight and at this point I’m skeptical we’ll get anything.
Can’t vacuum, can’t run the dishwasher, can’t wash clothes. Kinda feeling like I’m in a weird version of Vietnam on grandma’s farm where everything shuts down at sunset because there’s only generator electricity and that’s wasteful if you don’t need it.
This was probably the least worst case scenario possible, so it was perfect for a stress test. Boy, was it stressful. We made it through this ok, but the many gaps in our coverage make me uncomfortable.
What we’ve learned
We need better lanterns. The UST solar LED lantern is the best one but sadly we only bought one several years ago. I was being cautious of buying too many at first without testing them first. Too cautious, they’ve discontinued the exact one we have and love. This is the one they have now. I’m really hoping the quality of this one is just as good.
The Yeti can run the fridge off a full charge for 31 hours uninterrupted with about 40% charge left. It can probably up to 36 hours or more uninterrupted. The fridge draws a range of 8 to 420 watts variably. We can stretch that even longer if we unplug it for 2-3 hours at a time every so often. We bought an extension cord for the fridge, so that it can be plugged into the Yeti without being pulled 2 feet away from the wall, and I did another stress test. It can keep one fridge going for a full 24 hours with 9.7 hours left until it ran dry. We could stretch that out by only keeping it plugged in for 4-6 hour intervals as needed.
We need more variety in food. PiC and I both felt sluggish after the high carb Mountain House dinner the first night. Maybe that was mostly the stress that was dragging us down but it’s worth being more on top of the variety. REI had a 10% off backpacking food sale so I ordered 13 replacement Mountain House meals, a few of the same, a few new meals, to replenish our stock. This gives us variety in types of meals but not the starch theme so I’ll have to figure that out.
Edit to add: we also have the Anker Power Bank 737, and the Anker PowerCore+ 26800, plus a very old Anker PowerCore 13000. These covered our phones, lanterns and other smaller miscellaneous things that needed USB charging. We never ran them down this time. I keep them fully charged between uses just in case.
Year 4, Day 342: I’ve moved the toothpaste well away from the lotion on the vanity. Just to be sure.
This week has to be an early out the door week. Last week needed to be, too, but we didn’t manage it. My heaviness pinned me to the bed most mornings, too tired after a night of painsomnia and sadness to crawl out earlier. Today was a more promising start. It was physically painful but I got out 20 minutes earlier, closer to my preferred time, and even got JB to school at the earliest possible drop off time. It was a good warmup for tomorrow when we have to get PiC out even earlier so he can make a meeting.
We’ve got work meetings, the PTA this week, and a Sera 🐶 appointment this week. Fingers crossed that no more than that gets added to the calendar.
It was an unusual “only small problems, no giant fraud rings” Monday and I’m fully appreciating it. I’ve got to get back on my management horse tomorrow and deal with some training and staffing things but any reprieve is a good reprieve.
Yesterday I attempted three rounds of planks on my hands instead of my forearms. This is the first time in decades that I’ve tested my hands and wrists this way. For years, any pressure or weight on them would trigger a flare. It’s been a real sinker of my morale because my one strength was upper body strength as the runt in my class. I’m hoping I can build up to some strength and tolerance in them again but this is my warning to myself to skip days in between so I don’t stress them right out of the gate. Tonight, they’re mildly twingy, not quite stiff or painful, so I’m hopeful I can do another short set tomorrow. 🤞
PiC brought home a large slice of the most decadent chocolate cake we’ve ever tasted in our lives. We don’t even like chocolate cake but this was heavenly. It’s from some specialty bakery up too north to be worth the drive so obviously we’ll never get it again. We will have fond memories. 😂
Year 4, Day 343: Well. I got that early wake up. PiC discovered, to our great dismay, that Sera 🐶 had had an accident inside. We’ve been so careful to walk, medicate, feed and water her on a very specific schedule to make her comfortable enough to get through the night. Walks every 2-4 hours starting at 730 depending on her mood/need, meds by 3 pm, last food and water by 8 pm, last late night walk between 10 pm-12 am. 8 weeks without incident. Then I screwed up. So busy with work, I missed her 3 pm meds alarm yesterday, and it threw her enough out of whack that she couldn’t make it through the night. Nothing like a 6 am wake up to go scrub floors together. Sigh.
I carefully calibrated her schedule for the rest of the day to take her out six times to empty her bladder sufficiently to make it through tonight. Six walks today, plus four JB pickup and dropoffs, plus work, plus throwing together dinner (part leftover, part baked salmon).
Then I threw in a half hour of reading aloud to JB because I want them to give Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series a chance to see the contrast between the empty calorie racist Harry Potter series and a well written wizarding series recommended by Ursula Vernon. I love anything Vernon writes so I figured her taste in books has to be pretty reliable. Not that I expected it to be like her books, it doesn’t work that way. But she’s a thoughtful person and an author who enjoys reading, that tends to add up to good recommendations. Anyway, Young Wizards starts out a bit more dense than they’re used to so I decided to read it to them and let them ask me all the questions. We’ll see how long I can handle making this additional thing work.
My wrists held up through 3 very short rounds of planks. They twinged after but not terribly and if they recover throughout tomorrow, I can try again on Thursday.
It’s not 9 pm yet and I’m dropping in my tracks. But I still owe some people some answers so back online I go for another 1.5 hours of work, and then I’ve got Sera’s last walk. If I manage to make lights out at 11, that’ll feel almost like a win.
Reading Fiqah’s obituary (gift link) made my sadness feel heavier, albeit clearer. She deserved better than this. She was a good person.
Year 4, Day 344: I had dreams all night that Fiqah was still alive and we were still able to help her. I hate how those dreams about our losses linger in my psyche all day long. I get them with my mom and past dogs, too.
I’m trying to shake that ‘I’m such a downer’ feeling with everything going on and find something joyful. Then I remembered that a friend sent me this pilot of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency show. I’ve read all the books and didn’t know it was a series! Sadly, there’s only one season, but that might be the pick me up needed. Jill Scott is absolutely perfect as Precious Ramotse.
Also I SHOULD feel triumph over finally figuring out a foreign tax claim back form that took me hours to work on. I’m not feeling it yet but I’m reminding myself that that was big. More than one of PiC’s colleagues weren’t even aware of that tax claim form’s existence so I should also be a little proud for digging deep and finally finding something that refunds a significant amount of money that doesn’t seem to be common knowledge. They’ve asked PiC for a guide which means they’re really asking me. They’ve been good colleagues to him so I’ll save them a bit of legwork but it’ll need to be when I’m a little less tired.
Year 4, Day 345: A friend commented on her burnout and what she described, feeling upset/angry/cynical about the world, our government, the pandemic and the CDC, our future, do we have one??, climate change, it’s all very much how I’m feeling, plus my personal grief from losses this year. It’s all too much and it’s all so heavy.
It’s probably not normal to mentally growl “UGH I HATE YOU” to every email you write, even if it’s well deserved, to fraudy fraudpants customers. It’s probably not normal to feel like giving up after being asked to do even the smallest slightest extra thing. I’m feeling like the proverbial camel and the last straw has been sliding on top of the pile. That’s been a dark cloud hanging over my psyche for months.
My working day was almost entirely derailed by a huge shakeup at work that required hours of follow up. That’s a huge thing I’m processing, interspersed with Sera’s frequent outings, school pick up, after school activity, and then throwing dinner on the table in time to try to listen to the PTA meeting, whew. I was back at my desk to clear off the last remaining things that I needed done before a long day ahead of me tomorrow.
One good bit, though it’s more work for me: JB asked if we could read more So You Want To Be A Wizard tomorrow night. I actually really hate reading out loud but it’ll be worth the sacrifice to encourage them to stretch their reading horizons a little.
Year 4, Day 346: Friend shared this and I couldn’t help but laugh.
PiC got his tax claim forms notarized so I can try to wrap up THAT one small section of taxes. I have to wait another week before I can finalize the package for our tax person to get working on them. I’m really resentful of the one company that went and asked for an extension because I could be DONE by now but they’ve put me two weeks behind. Grumble.
It turns out my tax person may be wrong, and I don’t have to file a tax return for JB to prove they have earned income before I can deposit their business earnings in a Roth IRA for them. They had a handful of sales last year, not enough to need to file a return, so that would be the only reason I’d file. I certainly don’t intend to sign up for extra work if I don’t have to! I am a little excited about opening the Roth once I figure out what’s net after expenses.
I’ve been taking up Sera’s 🐶 water after 8 pm because she’s drinking so much that she’ll be full to bursting before I get up to walk her in the morning. She followed me around as I got ready for bed, and oh my goodness the LOOK I got when I filled my water bottle and didn’t give her any. It was grim. I felt so bad. But I also can’t get up in the middle of the night to take her out, I’m too physically exhausted from the 5-6 walks a day plus everything else I do. I need some unbroken sleep. One wakeup doesn’t equal two ok blocks of sleep for me. It means a splinter of sleep because my anxiety about waking up would prevent me from sleeping, and then I’d be too tired and wired to fall asleep again until just half an hour before needing to get up. My body is like clockwork. Deranged, broken, irrational clockwork.
1. Laying in bed in a lot of pain after my massage, because sometimes that’s how my muscles react to the treat, I discovered that Ilona Andrews has a weekly Friday serial featuring Roman! I’d glee about how I love Roman but fairness then demands I admit there really isn’t any character from the Kate Andrews world I wouldn’t enjoy reading about. Still. Roman’s turn!
2. I have two twirl skirts from Svaha, purchased 2 and 4 years ago, that are still in regular rotation in good weather (not that we have a whole lot of that). In July, I noticed that the pocket of the older one had torn slightly. It’s been sitting on my dresser since then waiting for repair. I finally managed to pull out the sewing machine and mend the pocket!
For funsies, I had a look through the twirl skirts in case they have a really good sale and I feel the need to add one more someday. My favorites: Starry Night, Chromatic scales, Solar eclipse
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 $944 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
The second payment from the Lithium battery settlement landed: $1.44. Someone joked that they could keep that dollar, and I said, I’ll take it! Every one of our dollars goes somewhere important.
PiC has been taking the brunt of the rougher parenting times: covering JB’s week off of school and all the overnights with Smol Acrobat who simply cannot get through any night without a fuss and a cry at least once if not three times a night so that I can get at least a few hours of sleep. I covered last night and the kid kept waking me every half hour with a startle and needing a cuddle before they could sleep again. I’m a zombie today. Or Mombie. They’ve been calling me Bombie for “Mom-Zombie” and I can’t argue.
The A LOT going on this week: Short school days all week for JB.
A parent teacher conference this week.
I’m still constantly monitoring Sera’s health and meds and meals and appetite. I’m constantly worrying over her enlarged abdomen, worrying that it’s her (confirmed) enlarged liver and the mass teaming up to make her sicker.
Work is feeling very hard right now. We discover more problems (fraud) every week and I have to create systemic ways to catch them. Pre-COVID, these would have been just about unthinkable, we’d catch a case once a year, maybe? Now, industry-wide, all bets are off. Hundreds of people are committing various forms of fraud utterly shamelessly. Totally depressing, frustrating and makes everything feel futile. Big changes are brewing as well, and that’s unsettling as all get out.
I’m having real trouble pulling on the memory of joy from the weekend. The garden isn’t stirring up contentment, petting Sera, I’m just full of worry for her. I’d like to just lose myself in a stack of books for a week.
Year 4, Day 336: The brain fog was thicker than pea soup today. I couldn’t even pingpong my way through it as usual (flip from one easy task to another for as long as my attention lasted). Brain was sludgy, kludgy, and sort of drippy. Information would leak a bit from one task over to another to another and none of them ever quite got done because drips and drops of brain isn’t enough. I tried to Angry Snack it off, that also didn’t work. Finally Sera and I went for an early walk to try to walk it off and then I opened all the windows for blasts of cold air. That helped just enough for the gears to move at a minimally acceptable rate. It really stinks when your brain goes incommunicado without permission.
Semi-related: I hate the ending of The Good Place. It’s SO well done and makes me so damn sad! Which is fitting for this week.
Unrelated to anything: I waded through a 98 page document AND sent off the engagement letter to the lawyer to thingie our will/trust/etc. All in the same night. They’ll be getting that done in about two weeks. It went a lot faster when I decided to delay the discussion of what else we’d want and just take care of these essentials now.
Year 4, Day 337: I am full of sadness. Also existential dread. Also anxiety? I’m not sure. It’s weird. On the face of it, we’re in a good place in life right now. The kids do drive us up one wall and down the next but they are fundamentally decent kids (SO FAR, my anxiety demands this caveat). They have friends. Well, friend singular, in Smol Acrobat’s case. We both earn a living wage in an incredibly expensive place so we can afford our moderate lifestyle, but we don’t earn enough that only one of us has to work or both of us could go part-time. We are decidedly medium on this point. We have some community. We say hi to several neighbors, we trade favors with one set. There are big shifts at work (the aforementioned horrible fraudy frauds) and I might last as long as a whole year before I completely lose my patience with the new landscape and have to make some hard decisions. I don’t see people going back to being MORE ethical by choice. That’s a big stressor.
The irrationality of feeling so sad when our fundamental needs of life are met might be the depression speaking. Or the grief. Losing two friends in two months is remarkably sad. I don’t know how to tease out the answer.
I’m trying to balance my sadness out, a little bit at a time. Keeping busy, always. Work is constant, so are kids, so are life things like eating and cleaning.
Organizing sometimes helps. I bought four new large bins from Office Depot (on sale for $34, minus $12 in Rewards, working out to about $7 a bin) to house the kids’ legion of Legos and trains. JB’s train set from their second birthday has real staying power. I asked for a couple spare tracks for Christmas, they’d lost a key piece of track and could no longer form an oval, and they received a box of hand me down spares. as I’d requested but fifteen times more than I asked for!
Distraction thought exercises: what would be a life changing amount of money for me (an absurd amount) and how much would we need to have for me to feel comfortable handing out life changing amounts to people with much lower thresholds?
I’m taking it very literally. Life changing money, enough that I could stop worrying about money entirely for the next 40-50+ years, means so much money because a) baglady syndrome is persistent and b) healthcare.
I keep thinking, could we get to a place where $5000 or $10000 gifts, amounts that could significantly improve a person’s life when they’re experiencing precarity, would be possible for us to give? Without endangering our financial stability? I hope so. I think that’s more possible than the entire broken system getting fixed but that’s a really low bar.
Year 4, Day 338: Bit of good news: the car insurance people finally got their crap together and recalculated the premium for the car that we’ve garaged and just registered as non-operational. My first time ever doing that, by the way. I asked them to do this early January and someone dropped the ball so we got a bill for $400. After a few more emails, the premium is now $60. WHEW. Our insurance is now $1000 every 6 months, because of the new car, for the two cars in use. That’s hard enough to swallow. $400 for the non operational car? No sir no thank you!
Today being Leap Day totally erased the fact that it is also Spreadsheet day today in my mind. I’m glad someone mentioned it on Twitter. I still really like updating our monthly net worth, something about filling in numbers is soothing. We’re so close to a milestone number on the mortgage. Which still has an astounding balance on it, of course, so the milestone is more of a haha-siiiigh. A less good milestone, oh wow that vet appointments are adding up really fast. That’s a $4000 credit card bill I’m eyeballing. Sigh. She’s worth it, I just wish we had a better prognosis. Her poor body condition makes me sad and worried.
Year 4, Day 339: Status: the kind of tired where you get uncomfortably close to putting lotion on your toothbrush.
I had set appointments all through 2024 for massages to try and keep a promise to take better care of myself. My normal rule is never schedule more than one appointment per day, and my massage was scheduled for today, so that should have made for a reasonably good Friday. Naturally the universe cackled at me and pushed JB’s jaw expander out again. Today was the first appointment they had, so my work day was truncated even more. Woof. I had to race through my work to try and get enough work squared away that I wouldn’t have to work late into the night.
Sent some cash to a friend whose bank account is zero until next week because of medical treatments, they need groceries. Venmoed some cash to Tinu. Another friend is dealing with a hospital stay for their kid, I’m buying their dinner tomorrow when they get home. Fingers crossed they’re all able to go home tomorrow.
Spent some time paying bills and sort of balancing the cashflow for the month.
It’s been takeout for us every day this week. Well, takeout, then leftovers. Then takeout and then leftovers. It adds up so fast. But we’ve been running absolutely ragged and that’s before even thinking about cooking. I’m starting to feel like we need stock in Bon Chon Chicken and Super Duper Burger. We mostly buy from local restaurants but the chains get our business too. I’m laying on the floor typing this because I’m too tired to sit up. I’m also trying to sneak in a cuddle with Sera 🐶 who is also laying on the floor but I know she’s just tolerating me laying next to her. She’s not much of a cuddler of humans. She prefers to cuddle other dogs. We did remember that I’d frozen a batch of the meal I cooked last week, though. It freezes so well, I think I’m going to try to make a triple batch, all for freezing soon. I need a few more recipes like this: easy, comforting, goes down well.
Small happy moments this weekend: I made a huge effort all week to clear off my work so I could stop work at a reasonable hour on Friday, and it finally happened! (the past 4 week’s efforts ended in disappointment)
PiC took the kids earlier than usual and gave me two hours to myself. My brain wanted to tackle the 6 of the 7 bags of clothes that have been sitting in the corners, demanding my time. They need to be handed down, donated, or were just handed down and needed to be put away. Everything was sorted into hand down bags and donation boxes and dresser drawers. That felt GOOD.
Sera and I went for a walk on Saturday morning, it was sunny, warm, nary a cloud in sight. Naturally that meant she didn’t want to walk. We came back home for what she really wanted: giant rolls on the grass in the backyard and sunbathing. I got some excellent pictures of a happy dog. 😍
Helping folks
My friend Zara Bain runs an audio transcription business that hires disabled people. I really believe in her business model and they need a bit of help to get through a tough time. I’ve donated and shared on Bluesky, perhaps you might be able to lend a hand too?: “Disabled people face countless barriers to employment. We’ve worked relentlessly since 2017 to change this. Without your help, we won’t survive. Please donate #SaveAAT#DisabilityJustice #Disabled”
Tinu is an activist for Black women and disabled people who has fought back cancer multiple times, while living with asthma, was hospitalized with COVID pneumonia and is facing another recurrence of cancer. I’ve supported her health expenses for quite a while now at the GoFundMe, and am now changing to a regular donation by Venmo to reduce the fees because she won’t just need help right now this month if she’s going to survive this bout with cancer. She also has a Cashapp. We recently lost @sassycrass to Long COVID, we can’t lose another person.
Year 4, Day 328: This day’s theme: It’s all a LOT.
Reading up on what Sera might have (probably has) and getting to this part has me wanting to yell cusses: “This is a life-threatening cascade of events and, in fact, a 20-80% mortality rate (depending on the study) has been reported with this disease.” I can’t. She’s sleeping right over there and yelling or cussing would wake her. But I want to.
That’s a huge range but more literature points to a worse prognosis generally than a good one. We have to increase her steroids again and add a second medication to try and stabilize her, and that’s terribly depressing.
My therapist asked if I’m feeling supported by PiC and friends through this and I didn’t understand the words. Support for what? I’m not the one who’s sick. (Well, I am but I have a cough, not something hemolysing my RBC.) All I could do for the past month was take care of her and hope like hell that she’s going to respond to the treatment. I’ve been holding my breath this whole time and probably repressing my feelings with caretaking. Because after that first cry when we discussed all the possible options for why she was jaundiced and anemic, all bad options, I felt the loss of Seamus crashing down on me again. I can’t DO that again. Not so soon.
***** (more…)
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
