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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January 19, 2024
- My post-holidays recombobulation process continues apace. I pulled pictures for JB’s school project and that pushed me to pull pictures from the holidays to photoshop a group picture. That led to me downloading a couple pics for my cousin. THAT led me to finally downloading the majillion (42, actually) pictures from Smol Acrobat’s friend’s birthday party to share with his friend’s mom who says they can’t get their kid to smile for ANY pics. That kiddo beamed like the sun for me so these are precious.
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January 17, 2024
Life with JB
We have this conversation every quarter when the Scholastic book catalog comes home. No, you can’t have another journal or cute thing, you have a large bin full of them!
Also, we just had Christmas and other presents in the past few weeks, most of which still don’t have a home.
I’m not doing this to be mean but even if I didn’t have bag lady syndrome, we have near hoarders in the family. We see them once or twice a year and their homes give me the heebies. There’s almost no place to walk or sit, because of their need to buy their kids everything they wanted as a child but couldn’t have back then. I know I wanted to order from the Scholastic catalog SO BADLY too but JB is not me. They own a bookshelf full of books. They get HUGE stacks of gifts each year and they get to shop at Comic Con when/if we go. They are not deprived, in any sense, of material things.
Life with Smol Acrobat
We’d taken Sera out for a walk together, the morning after their fever broke. On the way out, Sera’s sweater snagged on the bike, so I had to unhook her before we could leave. I didn’t think Smol Acrobat noticed but when we returned, they rushed ahead of us to push the bag that snagged her away and held it so she could pass! They have never been that thoughtful before!
They have been talking a whole lot more now. Stringing together sentences, and then stringing together thoughts to tell me little stories about what happened. They are ALSO using it to rat out JB (they still can’t say JB’s name yet, their close approximation is Wee) a lot. “Don’t kick at birds, that’s not ok.” Retort: “Wee does it!”
Oh yeah. We have a three year old now! That passed with so little fanfare here I forgot to record it. They only recently made a friend and it didn’t seem like it was worth doing a whole party thing when that’s not so much their thing right now. We had my cousin over, we enjoyed some cake. They refused to have candles on the cake because “fire is scary”. Low key was good for all of us.
Pupdate
Sera is sick. We’ve run a slew of diagnostics and still don’t know for sure what it is but we’re trying out a treatment plan to see if she responds.
Precious Moments
JB: Smol Acrobat, come here!
Smol Acrobat: No, I cannot, I have to change my diaper! I be a minute!
To me with a self-satisfied grin: I said I be a minute. I adult.
PiC muttered, “what did you eat last night, squirrel??” while I was changing an especially stinky poop diaper.
Smol Acrobat replies very seriously: no, I didn’ eat a squirrel.
JB has been convincing them to come along and leave me alone by offering “kitty snacks”.
One morning as I usher them out to breakfast: Tan Wee make me a meow meow kitty snack?
January 15, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 286: The first Monday back after winter break, whew. PAINFUL.
Someday Smol Acrobat will start sleeping through the night, every night. Or most nights. Someday!
The icy wind is really getting to me this week. My bones are extra grateful for the heating pad when winter gives us this extra kick of cold. It also makes me curious about electric blankets and how they work.
Year 4, Day 287: The good news: My new chair arrived! PiC put it together! It’s so much better than my old chair!
The bad news: there’s some weird stuff going at work that I can’t get into or pry into because it’s above my paygrade but my Spidey senses are tingling. They’re probably right and if they are, I hate this.
I goofed on the size of one nibling’s gift this year. The sizing at Old Navy ran much smaller than I expected so I put in a make up order today. I threw in a few shirts for JB and a couple pairs of jeans for myself in a possibly futile attempt to get one more good pair that are NOT skinny jeans. Before you know it, I’ve spent $80. SMH. While I’m decluttering, too! Tsk. But the goal is one of those jeans will fit. If so, I’ll return the other pair, and then I can donate the skinny jeans I can’t bring myself to wear anymore. If not, I’ll return both pairs and give up for the year.
Year 4, Day 288: I thought I was starting most days at 0% charge but I have to recalibrate my scale. I’m probably starting most days at 10% and this morning was 2%. I worked until 11pm, then was up until 2 am because Smol Acrobat needed soothing, then got less than five hours of sleep before startling awake. It feels like sandbags were attached to all my limbs. Sigh. Grateful for my nice comfy new chair. That helps a little.
We’re having some work done on the house. We suspect that all unexpected noise unsettled Sera so much that she threw up. Unfortunately we didn’t discover that until this morning so that was a half an hour of scrubbing out the rug. Sigh.
At least she otherwise seems generally ok, if still a bit slow and less interested in food than normal.
Year 4, Day 289: On the one hand, I’m grateful we’re still getting notifications from the daycare. On the other SIGH for still needing to get notifications. Someone in Smol Acrobat’s classroom was diagnosed with COVID and they were exposed this week. Their privacy restrictions mean we don’t know whether it was a teacher or a student or have any way of really assessing how much exposure there was. No one has spoken up on the parents group chat, though, and they tend to be proactive about informing the other parents when it’s their kid that’s sick so our semi-educated guess is that it was an adult (teacher or aide).
Then we got a notification of a recall on Smol Acrobat’s helmet. Great! Sigh.
Year 4, Day 290: It turns out that Sera is a silent vomiter. I used to always wake up to the sound of a dog horking but she threw up her dinner twice last night and I heard nothing. Then Smol Acrobat was holding their stomach and doubling over crying that their tummy hurt. We didn’t know what to do for it since we didn’t know if it was just a gassy tummy or what. But they resolved those doubts after I dropped off a headachy-but-otherwise-fine-and-masked JB at school by throwing up on me. And then on PiC. They asked for a fruit pouch after their stomach stopped hurting but couldn’t keep that down either. So we had to throw out our two old gel mats in the kitchen. They’re about 12 years old, have wide swaths of cracks across them and I’m not trying to clean vomit out of that.
So basically the entire morning was trading off holding Smol Acrobat and cleaning up vomit after they vomited on each of us. Why are they both (Sera š¶ and Smol Acrobat) silent vomiters?? Thank goodness we were able to grab a video appointment with a pediatrician who immediately prescribed an anti-nausea medication because apparently stomach flu is going around big time along with all the other awful germs.
Then I had to get Sera to see the vet while PiC handled school pickup with a lump of Smol Acrobat.
Unfortunately the news for Sera isn’t nearly so straightforward. Initial diagnostics point to liver problems. We don’t know how bad it is yet or even what it is yet, but liver problems are never easy to treat. We’re running tests to narrow the field from “maybe cancer, maybe systemic” to one or the other. A few months ago, a new cancer screening blood test came out, we might want to do that. The vet advised me to have a conversation with PiC about exactly how much we want to do. That’s the warning they give when it’s unlikely to have either a cure or a straightforward treatment plan with high success rate. I already know PiC will support whatever path I choose, and we both put their quality of life first. I just … *deep breaths* really hope that we can keep her comfortable long term. I’m not ready to contemplate losing another furry family member. We were finally in a good place after so many years of working with her on her reactivity.
I have just enough presence of mind to be grateful that Smol Acrobat’s vomiting didn’t start in the middle of the night like Sera’s did. It was all in all a terrible day but at least we got some sleep before it went to hell in a handbasket. Everyone is on anti-emetics for the night. Cross your fingers?
January 12, 2024
1. I’m making incremental but mostly steady progress gathering stuff for donations: books the kids have outgrown or have duplicates of; hand me down Legos; collected puzzles that can go to a new home. These will ship out in a large box. š
Actually, I should ship the books in a medium box or someone is going to throw out their back carrying it.
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January 10, 2024
“Happy” still feels strange to say. When will it not? Mostly it comes out as Happy? Or Happy-sigh. Actually, truthfully, when I look at 2024, I think “Cheers to a less bad year!” is the more appropriate greeting for me and some of my loved ones.
Each year since 2019 has felt progressively worse in some significant ways. COVID is still a thing. COVID case notifications from the school stopped this year, and other reporting has all but ceased so we really had no good read on how bad it was at any given time. We just had to operate under the assumption it could be a medium to major problem anywhere people were. This supports my misanthropy. The world is a mess – genocide in Gaza and Sudan, civil war and Saudi-led attacks in Yemen, Russia is STILL trying to destroy Ukraine (as JB says “still??”). I can’t even list all the massive horrible things that are still happening when we closed out 2023.
We worked and parented full time all year long and felt every painful minute. This was another hard year for us, and it felt like another decade in a lot of ways.
2023 Highlights in Health
- I continued (brain) therapy all year, again. Massage therapy was harder to come by. We’re still chipping away at my unhealthy mental patterns and building new mental pathways. I continue to struggle with loneliness and disconnectedness. This was not helped by the parade of viral infections the entire year. I am also struggling with that kneejerk “ugh I’m the worst” reaction I have to JB saying I’m “the best mom”. I hated even typing that. I’m getting better at avoiding self-shame spirals when I make mistakes but not much better at remembering that feelings are just feelings, not problems to be solved.
- PiC commuted by bike regularly most of the year barring the extra rainy season in January-March. That was a huge improvement over the past few years.
- Smol Acrobat brought home so many germs. It wasn’t all for me, though, they were hit extra hard in one of the bouts that turned into pneumonia. I felt a whopping load of parental guilt over not even suspecting it. Thankfully it wasn’t serious in the end and they got through it ok. A friend reassured me that it can turn into pneumonia without warning. They also had night terrors a lot. I’ve lost count of the nights I had to sit nearby where they could see me, while they screamed inconsolably. They’d scream “hug!!!?” at me but hit and kick if I turned to face them. They were very clearly “not home”. Not sleeping through the night for 362 nights of the year has taken a toll on both of us.
- JB caught about 1/4 of the germs that Smol gifted me. Not great but not terrible. They are undergoing an early course of orthodontia, and unfortunately they seem to have gotten PiC’s eyes because their vision has deteriorated a lot between their last annual appointment and this one. I think their vision is as bad as mine is now, but mine has taken 42 years to get here! This worries me and honestly, I kind of feel like a failure somehow even though the eye doc commented that sometimes, there’s nothing you can do “right” or “better”, the eyes are going to do what they’re going to do.
- Sera’s arthritis started to bother her so we added medication to her regimen, along with sardines for her skin and a probiotic for her gas. She’s slowing down some, but she still has good pep in her step days for which I am deeply grateful.
We continued to be cautious about socializing, avoiding crowds, and staying masked around other people.
2023 Highlights in Life
Me: still working full time and scraping away the layers in therapy. I’m still a hermit at core so I could happily not leave my hole for days at a time but the school dropoff/pickups, after school activities, and dog walks force me to stay active. Maybe that’s a good thing. Still taking JB to their self defense class twice a week. We finally got to make up for lost time on a long visit with one branch of my family. That was really good visit and I think we’re going to make that a tradition.
PiC: also still working full time and getting more outside time which is good for his mental health. He’s still responsible for JB’s swim progress.
Smol Acrobat: has finally relaxed into a routine at daycare. They have a friend now! That’s exciting. I continue to be edgy about their exposure to serious germs since they’re still too young to be good about masking appropriately and independently. They’re mostly good about tolerating it during family outings but can’t hang for nearly as long as JB. Their personality is developing. The theme for their personality this year is defiantly grumpy.
JB: same as last year. They attended school during the academic year, camp during the summer, and had two regular activities that they still enjoy throughout the year. Occasionally I get a twinge about not having any desire to squeeze in more, occasionally I’m at peace with this. Their ability to make kid friends almost everywhere we go (not all the places only because some places don’t have kids) continues to astound me.
JB’s infant and toddler personality was defiantly mischievous. Their kid personality… I’m still pondering on this. Loud, I know that much.
2023 Highlights in Money
- I ended 2023 with roughly the same amount of cash in our checking account as we started. That only worked because I stopped our December savings to make up for November spending.
- Our net worth continues to ping pong all over the place with the market .
- I stuck to our weekly investing plan from January through August. Then we had to stop investing to pay back the emergency fund for the car. We also had to stop saving in November. Did not love that.
- I’ve been saving some cash for the kids in a separate savings account under the assumption they’ll need some money for incidentals and living expenses at some point. Like the 529, I’m basically expecting to split it down the middle even though JB had a 5 year head start. Every so often I wonder if I should have separate savings and 529 accounts for them. JB will have their own Roth IRA soon if I can get myself in order enough to file taxes on their income from this year. Alternatively, we could pay the tax ourselves (as originally planned) and put it in some sort of liquid savings account. Thoughts welcome!
- The Lakota families project helped so many people.
We continued to be fortunate in having two full time incomes. There may be changes on the horizon for either of our jobs but that’s completely up in the air. PiC’s employer is still doing layoffs. We had news of another couple of rounds but we have no idea if his job will be on the chopping block next. So much for unclenching my fists a little more each year. I’m trying but it feels counterintuitive.
We spent a lot on daycare ($$$$$), my therapy ($$$$), lots on food (take out, groceries, convenience foods), a new vehicle ($$$$$), an e-bike ($$$$) for commuting, and orthodontia ($$$$) for JB. No WONDER this year felt so much tighter than it should have felt in a year when we both earned full time incomes.
Financial Checklist for 2024
Unfortunately it’s still the same list as last year and the year before. This was one of the things I was never able to get to. Adding: Our paperwork and plans still need to be digitized and made accessible to our key people.
- Update our will and trust to include Smol Acrobat.
- Change executors to two friends who have more ability to deal with our mess in case something happens to us.
- Make the important financial documents securely available to the key people.
- Add details on our bequests and set up secondary beneficiaries.
JB and I are still having those “what happens if you/Dad die, what happens to us?” conversations. We have one legal guardian listed in the will and trust, but it would be good to add a backup guardian and some details such as never allowing my next of kin (dad or brother) to get custody of the kids or touch our money.
Thoughts for 2024
I stayed isolated from the branch of family whose politics and views of COVID made me uncomfortable. I’m quite sure more than one of them has been impacted by Long COVID and the greater family group are still denying that it’s anything serious, so that’s hard.
Keeping my emotional distance from my chaos-driven loved ones is still healthier, even if I’m lonely. Lonely is still better than getting sucked into their self destructive spirals that are really difficult to maintain my own equilibrium within.
Our money
Same: Save more, invest more, give more. Achieve FI in 5-10 years.
Our expenses keep going up:
- Full time childcare is increasing 5% again.
- We still have one more large purchase planned for 2024, deferred from 2023. Roughly $4000.
- Karen has me thinking about whether I am irritated enough with my rosacea to go the laser route. Maybe it doesn’t fit 2024’s budget but we’ll see. PiC thinks I should at least get some consults lined up but he always thinks I should do anything and everything I want. Someone has to keep an eye on the budget!
- With luck, even a minor increase in my and PiC’s salaries will offset the sting of greedflation and increased daycare costs. Those increases aren’t ever a given, so I never plan on them, I just hope.
Little life things
Last year, I had committed to monthly phone calls (anathema though they are to my introvert self) with a couple loved ones who connect best by phone. I kept this up well with one, but not the other. The first had a more routine schedule and the second was doing a lot of travel this year so it was a little harder to line up. We’ll keep at it, though.
Last year’s big picture project: Declutter, donate, organize. āļø
Last year’s small specific thing: Print out gift labels for people we regularly gift to since that’s one weak point of my gifting. I’m the worst at gift tags and gift labels. ā I never got around to this. I decided to shift to gift bags instead and that made a huge difference.
And: figure out people’s gifts early in the year. āļø/ā Half yes, half no. Most of the (22) kids were done pretty early but there were still kids I hadn’t thought about until the last minute. That sounds mean but seriously, 22 kids. Let’s see if I can prep better for 3/4 of the kids in 2024.
I try to declutter the house in semi-regular spurts. That seems to be the best rhythm for my lifestyle.
I had hoped to expand the Lakota Giving project a little more this year but the demise of Twitter-as-it-was limited my reach drastically. We were lucky to do about the same as 2023. Also it seemed like a much harder year, financially, for more people. But maybe that’s not causation. Maybe the people who were doing well financially dropped off socially while those who were not in good shape stayed plugged in. I’m very grateful that our regular contributors stayed the course with us this year and I hope that also means they’re also fine overall financially.
:: I hope that 2024 is kinder to all of us. How was your 2023?
January 8, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 279: JB’s developed a hacking cough this weekend that’s sounding worse each night. We already did an at-home COVID test but I’ve scheduled a PCR (hopefully a combo with the flu and RSV test as well) for them later this week. They don’t have any other symptoms right now, but PiC is starting to feel a bit of something after being untouched by the last six rounds of viral infections that Smol Acrobat brought home so I’m concerned all around. I’m staying on my antiviral meds as long as I must to fend off the germs. I simply cannot afford to be any more tired than I already am.
*****
The blackberry leaves are turning a beautiful purple now. Yay, it’s still alive! I worry about the plants a lot.
Year 4, Day 280: The rain over the past two weeks supercharged my latest round of potato plants. The first container should have a mess of potatoes to harvest. The second container had two-inch sprouts two weeks ago. After three or four soaking rains came through, those two inchers are a foot tall! This shouldn’t surprise me, this is also how fast our weeds grow, but it’s still cool. Not the weeds, those are nothing but annoying.
*****
I’ve been bumbling around for weeks muttering to myself about needing new travel sized containers for our toiletries. I’ve bought two sets of silicone squeeze bottles over the past ten years and they now both leak. Thankfully I’ve always kept them in plastic bags before adding them to the toiletries bag but the leaks are exasperating. I asked friends for recommendations but nothing really appealed to me. It suddenly hit me that the pile of tiny Palmolive bottles that we keep picking up from Residence Inns over the years – those are 3 oz bottles. I had repurposed one for Smol Acrobat’s body wash, but for some reason it never occurred to me to use them for anything else. We have 8 more of them! This ticks all my boxes: not buying new and repurposing something keeps some plastic out of landfill. I’m eager to test my theory. I’m pretty sure it’ll work fine for the shampoo but I’m less sure about the conditioner which is thicker. (The 3-ounce detail only matters in theory since we’re not planning to fly anytime soon, but I prefer a solution that can be used for all our travels.)
Year 4, Day 281: We’ve moved Smol Acrobat out of their crib and into a big bed. We haven’t done anything with the crib yet so all that means is they started the night in the bed instead of going to bed in the crib, waking up 2-4 hours later screaming until we carry them off to a Big Bed. For their first night, they stayed asleep ALL NIGHT. Will this be replicated again? Only time will tell. Fingers are very crossed.
I am feeling a weird pang about the idea of selling the crib. It cost us a pretty penny years ago and is taking up valuable space.
It’d be good to move it out if we’re done with it. I’m 1000% done with having babies so we have no further use for it if Smol really is moved out. But also, FEELINGS.
*****
Chatting with an aunty, I found out that it costs $200K/year to care for Granny around the clock as she’s in her 90s and bedridden. Gramps saved and invested really well because they can afford it, but that figure set me back on my heels. How do you plan for that? How do you save enough in case you happen to live past the age where you can care for yourself for very long?
Year 4, Day 282: I jinxed it! Well, maybe it wasn’t me. But Smol did NOT do well last night. So the move to the big bed wasn’t the cure-all, alas. It could be that they’re coming down with something, they often sleep badly (more than usual) when they’re not feeling well and JB’s cough hasn’t been good for anyone. JB tested negative for COVID, RSV and flu, at least.
*****
I’m very proud of myself for figuring out how to set up this custom listing for JB’s art shop.
*****
Another aunty chat was several kinds of stress and grief. She has been dealing with my estranged dad and brother through my estrangement. She still has some kind of a relationship with them, and she was filling me in on their latest even though I hadn’t specifically asked. It wasn’t meant in a guilt trip or a mean way. She wanted me to know they were about as ok as they were going to get and insists that I must carry on with my own life, separately, and find my health and happiness. But even though I have no desire to have them back in my life, I still struggle with the grief and frustration related to them. I know it’s so much better for me to be no-contact with them. I also know that my aunty is stepping into the breach to try to get my brother to do the things he needs to do for his housing benefits, and it’s costing her time (and money that she can ill afford). It’s her choice but I was the only person that could get him to do anything, on my say-so. I wasn’t omnipotent, but I could make him do some necessary things. And now I’m gone and she has to resort to bribery to get him to make his appointments. She’s never made much money and now she’s wasting on my brother because I’m not there to do it. Intellectually I know I’m not wrong but I don’t feel right, either. It all makes me very sad. If he wasn’t mentally ill, if he was just the same sociopathic narcissist that my estranged dad is, I’d be so mad at him. But he’s not, and I’m now very sad for the loss of the sibling relationship that we might have had someday.
Year 4, Day 283: We are discovering the lack of good bike racks around the city as PiC is running more errands on the bike when he can. The renovated park has the best one, the Safeway has the worst ones.
I’m working a theory that Sera š¶ has been off her food lately because she’s overheated in her dog sweaters. I’m testing it today. She’s been taking no more than a few bites of food at a time and last night was the worst yet, she didn’t eat anything but fish topping and left everything else. She was willing to eat if I scooped it in my hand but that’s not sustainable. This morning’s trial run seemed promising, she didn’t eat her whole breakfast at once but she did return and finish most of it by mid-afternoon.
Target has their BOGO 50% off (so, 25% off each when you buy two) vitamins and supplements.
I spent way too long doing the math on whether I should buy the 100 mg coq10 (I can still hear the infomercials in my head for this and it’s not great) or the 200 mg bottle and also decided I should try increasing my dose to 300 mg / day to see if that helps the fatigue more than 200 mg / day.
$25 – 100 mg 120 count
$12.50 – 100 mg 120 count
16Ā¢ / each
300 mg (3*100 / 3*0.16) = .48/day
240/3= 80 days
$29 – 200 mg 40 cap
$14.50- 200 mg 40 cap
54Ā¢ / each
300 mg (200+100 mg / .54+.16) = 0.70/day.
The differences are clearly negligible but my brain needed that little bit of exercise.
January 5, 2024
Challenges this week: everyone’s sick š¤§
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