November 29, 2024
Good Things Friday (301) and Link Love
1. This was a wild week with weather and family and holiday prep and I’m so grateful for having one of my favorite people show up for us.
family
Farewell to the best boy in the world
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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November 25, 2024
Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (234)
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 215: I might? maybe? be through the worst of my fibro flareup from the weekend. The prior weekend, and then last week was entirely too much – that was predictable but maybe more so in hindsight. This week is going to be a new kind of tough.
I’m tracking 15 shipments for our November families, the coordinators are having a lot of trouble reaching the recipient families reliably now and that translates to a lot of extra work for both of us.
I can cross the blanket off my shopping list for now. This wonderful gift of a quilt has kept me snug and warm since the cold snap and I’m very grateful for it.
Year 5, Day 216: This cold front is serious! It’s no longer advisable to wander out and about without a heavy coat, not if you want to still feel your fingers after five minutes.
I attempted to negotiate my hosting fees down and didn’t get further than a 20% discount leaving me with an $850 bill. That’s not going to work so we’re tackling the storage that’s causing the whole issue. By we I mean, planning to ask a web savvy friend if he has time to help and mentioning this to a very blog savvy former blogger now dear friend and having them volunteer to have a peek around the guts of this thing. Whew. Thank goodness for people who are smarter than me.
Mentally singing “Everything is awful!” Year end work stuff has me completely on edge and you know what we didn’t need? We didn’t need a BOMB CYCLONE and ATMOSPHERIC RIVER this week. That’s what. This couldn’t have waited a week? Or even just two days? This ruined a plan we had been looking forward to all year.
Year 5, Day 217: Reading Joe’s Dividend Growth Portfolio 2024 was a nice little dopamine generator. Entirely aside from my own preoccupations with money, I still enjoy reading about how people handle their money and seeing their outcomes. Maybe a little bit for comparisons but a lot of it is just nice to see different perspectives even if it’s not necessarily something I’d be doing. They travel the roads I don’t so I like the sneak peeks. I have a tidy little dividend stocks portfolio of 15 individual stocks that I built very slowly between 2009 through 2020 mostly. I made a few impulse purchases in 2021 and 2023 of COST and TGT. I don’t do anything with that portfolio, I just take the dividends and reinvest them into our index funds. All but two of the stocks that I’ve purchased since 2009 have done really well. The one bank stock I selected was acquired by another company and that’s just been holding steady. Holy sheets, I bought COST at what I thought was an exhorbitant $362 in 2021, and it’s nearly $1000 per share now?? This is the first time I’ve bothered to look at those prices in a while!
My worst performers have grown 30%; that’s 4 of them. My best performers have grown 340 and 540, that’s 2 of them. The rest of them fill in the range in between. Not too shabby considering I’ve never bought tech stocks which has, I’m sure, been to the detriment of our bottom line. I preferred stable solid companies that I could ignore; chasing tech stocks even if they seem like a sure thing in hindsight is really not my speed. There’s a lot of talk about Nvidia and the like but, tempted though I am to mimic the 1500’s financial portfolio, eh. Also I hate all this “AI” nonsense. It feels gross to profit off it when I hate the very thought of it and it’s poisoning so many useful tools. In my industry at least, and a few others I know of, it’s primarily used for fraud so I have a particular hatred for it.
Year 5, Day 218: Meetings, so many meetings. So many. I did get a heap of work done but like snowdrifts, many many more heaps built up while I wasn’t looking. I had to cut myself off and end my night well before midnight because I still feel awful and I need to get better. I keep reminding myself that they aren’t worth killing myself for. I’m also reminding myself of that in regards to my training. My training sets are adjusted every week but I have that grade school type need to always maximize my reps per set even when I feel bad. But that’s not good! Whether it’s fibro bad, or CFS bad, or virally sick bad, or some new thing, I have to be better about pacing myself and pushing myself. The trainer did say that the work within a week is more important than any single day of work so that gives me a level of flexibility I can work with and still feel some pride in it.
In lighter news, I did my first full run through of Elementary not too long ago, and then ran The Diplomat a while later. I just realized that Alfredo is Ato Essandoh is Stuart Heyford!
Visually my problem was that as Stuart he seems VERY tall, but as Alfredo next to Sherlock and Joan he seemed to be roughly average, or at least not toweringly tall. He’s my favorite character in The Diplomat. The shit he has to try to overcome!
Year 5, Day 219: Day three of this week’s atmospheric river / bomb cyclone thingie, and today’s fun news are flash flood warnings all over. So far we’re ok on the flooding front but I’m keeping a wary eye out and won’t probably be encouraging the kids to play in the rain and the gutter like I used to do. There’s something about the gloom that’s made today feel not much like an actual day of the week. It’s more like a weird proto-day.
It’s extra cozy in the house after trekking out into the teeth of the storm to pick up JB from school, and I am so grateful that we have a safe warm home. Also telling our roof to hang in there! Don’t leak now! We’re in the process of getting you all spiffed up! Please send our roof alllll the coping vibes.
Still sick but symptoms are much more mild than usual, so despite my guilt over making JB skip TWO after school activities this week solely because I didn’t feel up to taking them, it also feels like it was justified because my body really needed that rest.
November 22, 2024
Good Things Friday (300) and Link Love
Hope Walz Is Processing the 2024 Election Results in Real Time on TikTok
This is lovely: Tune Into Forests From Around The World
People we can help directly:
We’ve donated to all of these, but they still need help.
Blair lost her car, that also serves as her home, in a crash not long ago. She needs help to bridge the gap between now and when insurance will cover the damages for housing, car rental and medical costs.
Elijah Romero was diagnosed with metastatic cancer and needs funds to get home to his family so they can care for him in what time he has left.
The unhoused population in Taos, New Mexico is facing a cold winter with very few resources. We’ve been buying things off their wishlist as we can. Take a look?
November 20, 2024
Changes that will affect our 2025 Budget
We’re expecting increases in spending across the board. These numbers didn’t quite feel real when I started this post but finalizing this post-election, it’s all starting to land pretty hard.
HostGator wants $1100 to renew my hosting this blog for the next three years. If I can’t negotiate that down, we’re going to need to rethink some things. So far I have negotiated a 20% discount, and have a friend thank goodness helping me tackle the major storage problem that caused a big part of that price hike.
Our healthcare premiums are going up $2500 annually.
My pharmacy costs are going up. My meds have been up to $20 copay or the pharmacy’s retail cost if that is less. Next year they’ll charge a $15 copay retail and the 100 day mail order copay is then double the retail copay: $30. I get nearly all my meds through mail order and I have several regular prescriptions. I’ve been steadily ordering refills of anything I can get now to stock up a reserve.
Our dental care out of pocket costs will be $1000 more unless I change the kids to a dentist we don’t know. Hate the idea because they’re very comfortable with their dentist and her hygienist but that $1000 is not spare change.
We need to replace the roof – we need a quote for that but PiC’s ballparked it around $40k. 2025? 2026? Unsure! Are we going to need to do this sooner to avoid the increased costs if tariffs affect the roofers? Tariffs causing price increases are unlikely to be an issue per First Gen American so now it’s a matter of getting it fixed before it leaks.
PiC wants to do some of the travel we’ve put off for the past several years because of Seamus’s health and COVID. We don’t like leaving our pups for extended periods of time so our travel is very limited when we have dogs. Spring break and summer travel: $$$$?
Property taxes are up another $200, add that to the five figures we currently pay.
The cost of JB’s current after school activity is going up. I do pay for a year in advance (now) to get a 30% discount but I mentally assign that expense to 2025.
Edit to add: How could I forget, Smol Acrobat’s daycare will be going up TEN PERCENT in 2025.
If I do figure out how to add archery to our schedules, JB wants to try it and I do too That’s some additional amount of money. A local place doesn’t seem terribly pricey, so hopefully they’re decent for trying out. Figure $100(?) per visit? Just going for a high ballpark figure until I have time to actually think this through.
It’d be nice if there was a down arrow for any expense at all, but nope, none for us. Can’t see a single item going down.
I’d read Scalzi’s post about his money during this upcoming administration and it’s nice that a reasonably decent human and his family are going to be reasonably secure but his point beyond that is important: we have to support our favorite creators now. This means spending more.
We will definitely need to spend more in direct aid. We have spent four figures in that category this year which may have impinged on our tax deductible donations because those are down a bit at this time of the year but that also could be because we had to replace the washing machine this year so I had to get cash flow balanced again, and also because I was stinkin busy.
Some of the areas that ugh-47 wants to target will have a chilling effect on my industry and PiC’s. We’ve already been living with layoffs every quarter at his company these past two years. Now we’re looking at the political landscape creating higher risks of layoffs with the incoming administration promising to gut the government and going after the Department of Education, FDA, NOAA, CDC, and more government agencies. And promising to kill off the ACA, that is going to destroy lives.
There’s no way for us to calculate the risk to us personally, those decisions are made at a much higher level than we are. PiC is more at risk than I am for the next six months while we assess the turbulence at my company vs the upheaval stuff at his. I suspect our risk profile begins to look the same after roughly 10 months into an ugh-47 presidency.
I’m always in a prepping our finances for a recession mode so we’re already doing the major mitigation of saving and investing aggressively. We could get more aggressive but that requires bigger tradeoffs than we’re prepared to make. We’re still running at capacity and then some. If I decided to cook more to save money, that time and energy has to come from somewhere. Right now it’s not a trade I’m ready or able to make. A big savings would be cutting my therapy or other health spending (massage therapy and trainer) but those have long term benefits and I don’t want to cut those until we have to.
What’s your spending outlook this coming year?
November 18, 2024
Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (233)
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 208: We had a long tough weekend so this Monday was the opposite of last Monday (which was a fluke but I appreciated it deeply). I woke up with the brain of an orange kitty: maybe 1.5 brain cells to rub together. Maybe not even that much. The rain was dumping buckets, we were running late, it’s a school holiday. Actually, the school holiday part works in my favor. We didn’t have to rush to get JB out the door by 8 am. I dragged myself out, got the laundry going, got to my desk with a snack sized breakfast, and desperately tried to keep up with what felt like hyperspeed Pong: catch up on emails, catch up on missed tasks, figure out what tasks are on board for this day and week, compose the very overdue email update to the Lakota contributors to let them know what I’ve been doing with the money since July (lots, actually!), figure out what I screwed up last week and fix it, mentor a staffer to build better skills, check in on friends I didn’t get to last week. Had a therapy session, vented about how terrible everything is going to be very soon and how it feels hopeless. Even if we have to carry on with day to day responsibilities, even though we are going to fight to keep our community safe, it feels awful to see this train coming down the track right at us.
JB was also home so I had to semi-mind them and their friend, and then deal with a parenting situation where I had to take them to task for making a crappy choice (trying to manipulate me). We had a Very Long Talk about that.
I took a long break for dinner and bed and then hit the desk again to winnow the stacks of work. Called it at 1030 which is really too late, I ought to be getting to bed around 8. I suppose the extreme multitasking today served a purpose.
Year 5, Day 209: One of those mornings where I ran into so many neighbors. Had to stop to catch up with one elderly neighbor. He told me that his wife was waiting outside and urged me to stop and say hi. This is the neighbor I check on periodically. On my way to do that, then ran into another neighbor who’d been MIA for a couple days. I was right, it’s because something was wrong! She had an injury. I reminded her to let me know if she needed any assistance. I gave elderly wife neighbor a hug and ran on my way.
I wonder how often the toothbrush heads on electric toothbrushes need to be replaced.
First Gen American had a bit of an answer for us regarding roofing materials over at Nicole and Maggie’s so I feel a little more ok about putting off the roof a bit longer.
Target.com keeps hacking up hairballs when I try to submit the orders for the November Lakota Family #2. This is annoying! It took, no exaggeration, seven tries just to get the Target circle coupons applied.
I contacted our House rep to thank them for voting against Bill Number: H. R. 9495.
Year 5, Day 210: The list of things I forgot to do feels much longer than the list of things I DID do. I know that’s inaccurate, it just feels like that but my time has been swallowed up but all the things I DID do: work, school related stuff, everyone’s birthdays (so many birthdays), the two November Lakota families, and the straggler October Lakota family.
It just feels like I’ve bitten off more than I could chew these two weeks. Adding the kids’ craft fair this Friday where the only booth time they could get is at dinnertime, and helping them prep for that has tipped me over into dropping things left, right, center.
I forgot to reschedule a call, I forgot to send out recruiting materials to four people, haven’t yet sent a new package to our Lakota sponsee…!
But I did set up shipping for one of the three packages we’ll need to ship to the Lakota November Family and finally got the Target orders in order.
Year 5, Day 211: My back was hurting quite a bit today, so I did a ton of stretching. Instead of alleviating the pain, it just distributed the aches all over! Rude.
A running around like !!! day: not my favorite kind. But I got the two remaining shipping labels out to each respective person doing the shipping of their lot of donations, recorded most of the Target order tracking numbers, stayed up extra late to finish a load of work – which I really shouldn’t have done because I was so run down. After packing up the bags of supplies for the craft fair tomorrow, I snuggled down under the beautiful new quilt filled with wool batting that a longtime online friend made for me where I reflected on the fact that things in the outside world are legitimately horrible but inside our little sphere, we’re hanging together and caring for each other. People are coming together to contribute to helping folks who have been systematically failed in every way and that’s meaningful.
The kids are already creative and enjoy doing crafts. Now, they’re testing the waters of entrepreneurship. Even if it is extra work for me, it’s a lesson I’m glad they can learn now with a lot of support. The standing household rule is that JB has to save half their allowance and they can spend the other half. They would spend every penny they had in their possession if we didn’t have this rule, so we need to help them build this habit. We also established ahead of time that they had to bring a set amount of spending money to the fair. They’re not allowed to dip into the till during the event to go spend at other booths. I’m thinking that for this one-off event, the lesson is in the experience of creating inventory and the selling. This time they will be allowed to split their gross proceeds in half with their art/business partner, instead of taking only the net, and that’ll go in their spending wallet for the school year.
Year 5, Day 212: Staying up as late as I did really was a mistake. I was dizzy and nauseated at 730, and could barely get myself together in time to take JB to school. PiC ended up taking them while I got Smol Acrobat ready, petted the neighborhood puppy, and crawled back into bed for the morning to try to recover equilibrium. The rest helped, and I tested negative for COVID so this must be exhaustion.
Managed to get some work done, while PiC managed the roofing estimate folks. Turns out, even though I thought maybe we had 3 more years before we really needed to get this done, they’re seeing enough wear and tear on the shingles that we may not make it through the next big rain without a leak. I’m wondering if we should preemptively put down the plastic sheeting we have left over from something a while back under those weak spots. Meanwhile I think he’s got one more estimate lined up.
The local Big Business roofers offer an 18-month 0% financing plan that I’ll look into – it’d be nice to make debt work for us and save the cash gradually over the next 18 months instead of taking it out of our cash. We can, if we have to, but with this election I’m even more motivated to strengthen our protective financial shell. We’ll see how competitive the other local shops are. The ballpark they gave PiC was, unfortunately, what I was mentally earmarking: $30-50k.
We were initially considering whether we needed to get on this pre-47 administration due to tariffs and anticipated shortage of labor but that’s now a lesser concern compared to the roofing just plain being tuckered out.
*****
HR 9495 is scheduled to go back to the floor again. This is the bill that gives the Sec. Treasury powers to strip non-profits of their C3 status. PLEASE call your House members and your Senators. Scripts and explanations from Celeste Pewter.
November 15, 2024
Good Things Friday (299) and Link Love
Actions we can take: there are so many ways to support our community, offline and online. I’m better at the online stuff, this saves my limited physical resources for the most critical stuff only I can do.
I’ve long supported Larime’s GFM and recently commissioned a stunning pet portrait from him as a memorial piece for a loved one.
This struck me as a particularly important program. This country incarcerates so many people of color and that can completely derail a life. Therapy helps rebuild lives, people are not disposable: Darkness RISING’s REBUILD program connects formerly incarcerated and justice-impacted people of color with culturally competent therapists of color. We carefully vet therapists, arrange appointments, and fund up to 10 therapy sessions. REBUILD fosters healing, empowerment, and supports successful reintegration into society.
Celeste Pewter on Bsky (click to her post to see the script): 1. Here is the call script to ask our Dem Senators to appoint judges.
2. And a second script *specifically* for New Yorkers to use for Schumer.
November 13, 2024
My kids and notes: Year 9.8
Life with JB
We were talking with our friends about their overachiever parent friends whose kids have grueling schedules at the age of 13-14. Kids who are getting up at 3-4 am to train for 3 hours before a full day of school, for example. They wondered how unhealthy that might be especially if it’s really the parents pushing an agenda. Even though those parents protest “they love it!” my friend wondered – do they love it or do they not know that there’s any other way? It’s hard to know you can do things differently from the way you’re living, as a child, if you never have time and space to even see those other options existing.
Their own preteen kid has found his stride at school and in sports (they plays their sport regularly and chooses to compete every so often on their own), and their balance of academics and an active lifestyle sounds really good to me.
I’m not always a supportive parent. I try to be but definitely notice the deficiencies in my support. Some things, like tournaments, are probably good for them and so I gently encourage them to consider it but after they chose to do the first one (and did well), they’ve never chosen to do another. It’s too stressful for me anyway to prep them when I have no time or energy and then worry myself sick the week of because I get even worse nerves when it’s my kid competing than when i did. Hilariously, they were mad at me one day for observing their belt progress was impacted by their choice not to compete. It’s not required, but it has a marked effect on performance and how their coaches judge them. They yelled at me: you just want me to compete! Like hell I do. I don’t want six weeks of MORE heartburn! I didn’t try to argue by saying the tournaments are incredibly stressful for me, I just pointed out that that’s not at all what I said – the coaches want you to compete. They’re quite clear about that.
JB recently said they wanted to do the school talent show and internally I cringed so hard. I hate talent shows. I especially hated them at JB’s age.
Life with Smol Acrobat
They are a cautious late adopter sort of personality, suspicious of new things and/or change, which is very familiar now that I write that. They’re a little less so when they get to pick for themselves, which is rare when it comes to clothes because we still circulate hand me downs.
When I showed them new shoes last year, they rejected them out of hand. When we first started cutting their hair, they hated it. But with repetition they get better about it. I’m learning though! I offered them one bite of my cream cheese and lox bagel: I don’t WIKE dat. The next day: may I twy one bite?
I let JB use their electric toothbrush long before I bought Smol Acrobat’s. They could be heard hanging around JB brushing: may I try dat?
Pupdate
I love it when I catch the neighborhood dogs on their walks. Especially the ones who know me, they refuse to keep walking until I’ve given them sufficient pets.
Precious Moments
SmolAc: What are you going to be for Halloween?
Me: Mommy.
SmolAc: You can be a mommy wif wots of bandages! You can be a mummy! 🤣
That’s their first pun! They were so tickled. JB hasn’t yet cracked the code on puns.
SmolAc, holding up the plastic popsicle wrapper with their melted popsicle: What’s dis? Bwood? (Blood).
Me: My god I hope not.
SmolAc: I want to go to the moon some day. I’m going to live on the moon!
Us: Oh man, are you going to come back?
SmolAc: Yeah I will.
Us: Oh good. We’d miss you.