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 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”:
Year 5, Day 278: A plague is upon our house. Having successfully taken down JB, the (noro?)virus moved on to me and I’m wiped OUT. It’s gotten PiC too. Smol Acrobat has a whole different set of symptoms so we’re collectively a mess. Days and weeks like this remind me – we definitely can’t have a dog for at least another year. It’s too hard to get sick, be unable to rest because you need to keep someone else alive, even harder when you need to keep a pet alive and well. My antivirals are doing a fine job of keeping me off death’s doorstep but it can’t make me well.
It’s fine, I miss my dogs deeply but we need this time and energy cushion so I’ll be using this time to rebuild the dog savings account. We can always build money margin by saving more and earning more where possible but I don’t know how to build health/energy margin.
Year 5, Day 279: Now obviously I’m nowhere near being a billionaire so there must be something I’m missing but I have a quibble with this quote from Warren Buffett: Real estate is generally a “good investment” during times of inflation, according to Buffett.
“They’re the businesses that you buy once and then you don’t have to keep making capital investments subsequently. So, you do not face the problem of continuous reinvestments involving greater and greater dollars because of inflation,” he said during the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.
No subsequent capital investments? Nothing like general maintenance and replacement appliances (we provided fridge, microwave, stove and oven), or refurbishing the whole place when a tenant trashed it? I got out of real estate because I tried to keep rent low, and that meant that the ongoing costs of maintenance and the cost of lost rent weren’t sufficiently covered. Even if the tenants always paid on time, there’s always something that needs to be maintained annually. My friend with multiple rental units ran through all of their reserves carefully built up over the entire several years they have been doing rentals because one tenant both refused to pay rent, drove away fellow tenants, and trashed two places. They have to start all over rebuilding so they can continue to provide appropriate maintenance for the remaining tenants. My other friend with multiple rentals who is committed to ethical landlording with low-priced rent, doing all the work themselves and promptly, hasn’t broken even in years. I’m well aware there are many predatory landlords and rental companies out there who are more than making ends meet but it’s hard not to look at that statement without full on skepticism about how exactly they’re avoiding any further investments. Though I suppose he’s probably talking about a much larger scale than anything I’m talking about.
Year 5, Day 280: Related to billionaires, I was thinking about this Courtney Milan thread about money and dopamine. My corollary theory to hers is that people whose only hobby and dopamine generator is the pursuit of more money are up a creek, existentially speaking, when they can’t derive dopamine from making or spending money anymore.
On my own personal scale I’ve experienced this in a multitude of ways. In the early days of this blog I needed to work inhumane hours to survive, and then my brain correlated the dopamine of survival = the dopamine of thriving, therefore the path to happiness must be working too hard all the time. That’s one pattern and a brain muscle memory that I still have trouble breaking back out of when I have an intense period of working. Last week, for example. And when the thing you’re expecting to bring you dopamine doesn’t anymore? Problem. That was also last week for me. I did so much work and felt zero satisfaction. It was frustrating.
Then there’s just forgetting how to have fun or relax. That happens a lot for me, too.
My personal fix: I try to pay close attention to small pleasures. Having a batch of cute small inexpensive but well made earrings I can swap in and out without pain is this month’s tiny pleasure. Maybe next month’s too. I hope I’ll always cherish this tiny feeling of satisfaction.
Year 5, Day 281: Woke up exhausted, as usual. Nearly spread sour cream on my bagel exhausted. That’s not great but not unusual. Not as usual: those episodes I’ve have now and again at night? It hit me when I got up this morning. Even after a lot of water, Gatorade, some food and a lot of sitting, the dizziness, dark spots on my vision, and feeling like I was on the precipice of vomiting (but without nausea weirdly enough) remained all morning and afternoon. Absolutely awful.
And then there are so many reasons for the perpetual screaming in my head this week.
Taxes and the inability to know anything right now. I have no idea if we’ll owe, last year was weird in enough ways I can’t even guess, and I cannot do anything about it until the end of the month or mid Feb at best because our documents take forever. Mid Feb may be optimistic even.
Work: so many unanswered questions. So many answers I did get, and don’t like.
Worrying about friends in bad relationships, I wish this one were never a line item but it feels like it always is.
I need a deep therapeutic scream, join me?
Year 5, Day 282: I have no idea what happened to the Friday entry! Which is kind of apropos for how this whole week has gone.
1. Things I got done despite marrow-deep exhaustion and illness (in addition to bare survival): dealt with a post office issue, oversaw the addressing and stamping of our new year cards, cooked a nourishing and tasty chicken broth with ginger. Contacted all our Congresspeople to encourage them to keep voting NO on the Laken Riley Act (which is so dangerous for minorities, doesn’t matter if we’re “legal” or not) and to actually stand up against this presidential administration. (I’m furious that they passed it. So that sort of takes away from the “good” aspect. This is open season on minorities, because a false accusation’s free and still gets people deported under this act.)
2. Treated myself to a Cinnabon this week. Delicious but holy crap they’re pricy now.
3. I don’t think there’s ever been a song that I’ve heard Kelly Clarkson song that didn’t sound amazing. I didn’t know she covered “It’s Quiet Uptown” years ago.
Year 5, Day 271: PiC found our local HMart and got Korean takeout for dinner!! It was SO good. Gochujang, so good. That was the one bright spot for the day. It was nonstop today, starting even before the day began with an 11 pm kid-call for comforting and a 5 am wakeup because one kid didn’t feel well and then the other kid didn’t feel well, and then it was morning and time for questions, emails, checklists, to do lists, questions, chats, updates …. ! It was nonstop with people needing things.
There’s something awful going around right now. This one’s not COVID, flus A or B, or RSV but definitely something that overlaps the same symptoms. I know several people are down with the ick. I hate that we still got gotten even though we mask. It’s not perfect of course, but it probably keeps our infections down to a minimum. Even if it doesn’t feel so best case scenario when you’ve got a kid hurling the contents of their stomach.
Sometimes the state of my brain feels like I can’t learn new stuff because I keep forgetting and then relearning random old stuff. Like the definition of an archipelago.
Year 5, Day 272: We found garlic toum at Costco and it’s amazing (the brand is Toom) – highly recommend. The kids eat so many fresh veggies with it.
I love the ol Donyo Lodge Wildlife Live Stream, it’s so soothing when I’m frustrated with software.
I’m on Week 24 of trainer workouts! And uhhh I am starting to crave some kind of feedback. Maybe this was set off by my doctor’s appointment last week. My doctor (who is the exact same age as me, mind you) commented that she thinks we’re good parents and that she’s proud of me for being self aware and acting on that self knowledge. Having gotten an A in doctor’s appts, now my dopamine seeker wants approval on working out. Tsk. Some impulses are as bad as sugar cravings.
I’m still not reading the Vulture article reporting on Neil Gaiman yet. I intend to at some point, when I have the bandwidth. That said, while I appreciate my friends giving me a heads up that it’s a tough read, it was awfully annoying to have total strangers exhorting me not to read it to protect my peace. You know what, mind your business!
Year 5, Day 273: Our neighbor’s lab is adorable and sweet and hilarious. She walks by our house at least once every two weeks when we’re outside and it just makes my entire day because she wants ALL THE PETS and I want to GIVE all the pets! A match made in heaven. We touch noses and then it’s off to the races: skritches til my arms cramp up. She has that really beautiful thick water dog fur which requires really strong fingers.
I was so stressed by an email at work (it was the opposite of what we needed to hear) it sent me on walkabout through the house so I decided it was time to get my planks out of the way. Now, I don’t hate any of my exercises but do hate that it never feels like planks are getting any easier. I need to do them earlier in the week. By the end of the week, I’m out of time and energy with planks left to do and they don’t always get done. So that email was kind of a lose-win situation.
Year 5, Day 274: JB and I are whining in equal measure about (respectively) homework and work. I’m indulging in excess whining since it’s easier to match their mood than it is to ask them to get it together.
Sometimes I wonder about other people’s finances. In a nosy curious kind of way. We’ve got multiple neighbors with four kids in multi-generational homes with expensive cars and taking expensive vacations (several week trips, international, and theme parks like Disney and the like) every year. I’m so curious about how much that all costs because I couldn’t swing that. We make ok money for here, not that kind of money. Ignore the six figure car. That’s just a “won’t” (even if we could. But we can’t). We priced out Disney last year for a two day pass and almost passed out at the cost. Well over $2000 for the four of us for 1 day. Are we just cheap? Because that seems really expensive. Maybe we’re just cheap?
Maybe the older generation pitches in? In my family the elders are provided for, they don’t contribute financially though they might help around the house. Oh well that’s actually probably the difference isn’t it, they didn’t have to pay for daycare for any of the four kids. At an average of $2000/month per kid, four kids for say five years, they did not spend $480,000 for daycare. That pays for quite a lot of vacations.
Now I’m curious how much we’ve paid for childcare over their lifetimes. If I were on my computer, I’d go find out.
On second thought, best not to.
Year 5, Day 275: You know what I like about Elementary? On my 6th runthrough of it. There’s a pattern of Sherlock growing as a person and however begrudging he may seem about affection in the beginning, truly embracing the value of Joan as a person and as a partner, but there are moments I didn’t catch on in previous viewings like the moment when Joan snaps at Sherlock about his being tetchy with his professor friend and her annoyance with Sherlock who chooses to be alone. He says in this incredibly hurt tone: “Watson?!” but later in the episode, he obviously takes in the point of her upbraiding. It’s a little thing but I liked it.
This, friends, has been an intensely hard week. With sick kids, and intense work loads, our household is a shambles. And I am TIRED.
Part of my stress response to uncertainty is to work more, which is only contributing to the fatigue and stress cycle. Admittedly I actually did need to log some extra hours to clear out a backlog that was going to cause real problems in a couple weeks, so that’s actually a relief but when it’s just about caught up, I forget how to cycle back down to more acceptable levels. I’m waiting on some pretty important answers to very important questions, and it’s not like working myself into the ground is going to do anything at all to change that outcome right now. I need to stop working after dinner, for a start.
Courtney Milan shared these in her newsletter: “In all of these cases, I personally know someone who is connected to these families, and who has vouched for their authenticity.”
Welp. New year. The wider world in 2024 was NOT kinder than 2023.
COVID is still a problem. This country is targeting trans people and taking away reproductive rights, with likely more horrible stuff on the way since half this country’s voting public chose THAT fucking guy to be president again. I can’t stress how much THAT is stressing us out. Russia is still trying to destroy Ukraine. Israel is hellbent on destroying Palestinians. The Syrians did overthrow Assad, that was amazing. The South Koreans showed us all how to properly fight for democracy, though, I don’t think they may have the same militarized police problem where they’re all too happy to run over and shoot protestors.
We had our first tsunami warning in the Bay area this year.
2024 Highlights in Health
I continued brain therapy – I have a lot of work to do. One big improvement this year was catching myself at the start of a depressive episode, recognizing the self-hating thoughts after a particularly fraught parent-child conflict as part of that cycle instead of a Truth to bludgeon myself to pieces with. I managed to stick to a holding pattern instead of doubling down, and walked back from that ledge instead of spiraling headfirst into self-loathing. It wasn’t easy, it was uncomfortable, but a sight better than past episodes that ended up with me curled in a ball.
Massage therapy was irregular but removing the mental load by scheduling appointments for the whole year really helped. I just did the same for 2025.
I took antivirals all year which helped fend off viruses and the general YUCK that was the entirety of 2024 enough to make it through.
I’ve worked with a trainer for five months and, for the first time in more than two decades, have been able to keep up a regular routine of mildly challenging exercises without ending up in near-traction with pain and fatigue (at least as a direct result of the exercise) every single workout. I DID end up laid up for days with pain and fatigue from overdoing it a few times but that was more to do with life than the exercise. I started taking a medication that helps ward off my nightmares so I may not be rested when I wake but I’m not more tired than when I went to sleep. That’s pretty huge.
Smol Acrobat’s immune system seems to be working better this year. They still won’t / can’t sleep through the night on their own but they stopped getting sick every single week finally and I’m so relieved for that much.
We battled Sera’s final illness from January until April. It was an incredibly compressed and intense experience of caregiving followed up by a great deal of grieving. I’m still deeply sad about being dogless.
We continued to be cautious about socializing, avoiding crowds, getting vaccinated, and staying masked around other people. I’m leaving PiC and JB out of these sections going forward unless there’s something critical to include.
2024 Highlights in Life
Work was 110% terrible. There were some late in the year developments that suggest it might maybe start to get better in 2025 but I’ll believe it when I see it nope. Not better at all. Parenting has been hard. There have been small bright spots with the kids that I try to appreciate fully as a bulwark against the grief and sadness but it’s hard to see the bright during the endless slog of conflicts.
We had so many losses this year. Three human friends, three canine friends. Serving as a support to the friends who have had their child-related losses has also been a special type of challenge.
2024 Highlights in Money
We ended 2024 with a bit less cash in our checking account as we started the year.
Our net worth climbed steadily but incrementally.
I invested in my own 401K for the first time in many years.
I opened a savings account for JB’s earned income so they can observe interest rates in action instead of a Roth IRA – it was easier for now. I still haven’t decided what to do with the kids’ cash savings but it’d be nice to get their gift savings into an investment account for them.
The Lakota families project helped so many people. I need to find some time (where??) to summarize 2024.
We had two full time incomes and did our best to supplement that with extras (surveys, etc). His employer continued with three more rounds of layoffs which we were lucky to avoid this year. My employer may or may not follow suit in the next two years depending on the new administration. I’m practicing mindfulness around appreciating what we have despite the fear and worry.
Expenses kept rising this year with big lumps of spending: $$$$$ on Sera’s care, $$$$$ on daycare, $$$$ on the washing machine, $$$$ on security equipment, my therapy ($$$$), LOTS of food (take out, groceries, convenience foods), $$$ my retainer plan, $$$ reupping hosting for this blog for another three years.
Financial Checklist for 2025
WE DID IT. We finally got through the process of update our wills and trusts to include Smol Acrobat, to exclude my nuclear family members from being considered as guardians for the kids or beneficiaries, changed our executors to two friends who have more ability to deal with our mess in case something happens to us.
Now, I need to get a complete set of the documents to each set of people in different states. I also intend to lodge our vital records with a set of friends for safekeeping in case we get hit by a giant quake or mass deportations really do become a reality and we get scooped up. A government sanctioned sweep isn’t going to care that we’re citizens, born and raised, they just care if we visually fit a profile. I see politicians drumming up anti-Asian sentiment already and I clearly remember the effects of the Japanese internment – that directly affected close friends. This country has hated Asian people, along with Black and Hispanic, for all throughout its history. I’m never able to forget that.
Thoughts for 2025
I’m not sure what 2025 holds, other than more stress and terrible things on the political landscape. I’m trying to do my best to take care of the people within my sphere, and to try to put supports in place for myself as well so that next year isn’t awful like 2024 was. I’m cherishing the friends who care enough about their own and our health to test and mask and get vaccinated so that we can see each other with some measure of safety.
Our money
Same goal: Save more, invest more, give more. Achieve FI in 5-10 years.
Basically all our expenses will go up next year. The increases are substantial enough that we may start losing ground financially. We can’t expect COL salary increases to keep pace with the expenses, nor can we expect the stock market to continue to perform like it did this year. I’m looking into what we can do to mitigate rising costs.
Little life things
I’m putting a couple more people on my monthly call list.
Last year’s big picture project: Declutter, donate, organize. ✔️ Still my big picture project this year in semi-regular spurts. Bought myself more Sterilite storage boxes for both organizing our stuff and to store donations in between times that I pack up boxes. It’s already working out well – I can just pull out the storage totes to pack up a shipping box now instead of stumbling over piles in the office or hallway.
I stuck with gift bags this year, and will keep doing that. I like the much reduced waste aspect of fabric gift bags.
Prep better for 3/4 of the kids in 2024: Sort of. Everyone we saw received a gift, at least, plus a few I didn’t see. I’ve picked up more books for next year’s kid crop, will need to do some research on good comics / graphic novels to gift in 2025.
The Lakota Giving project was chugging along at a lower level of donations as expected considering how hard it’s been to share the needs. However, we got a boost from new contributors at Bluesky at the end of summer and then a really big boost from friends sharing on Mastodon when I dug into another round of fundraising after the election. I get the sense that a lot of people felt how I did after the elections: direct aid feels real and meaningful. As always, 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.
:: Let’s be real, 2025 is going to be some kind of shitshow and we’re going to need to pull together big-time to get through. How was your 2024?
Year 5, Day 264: Day 17 in a row of being with one or both of my children. I’m tired. I’m so tired of the “Mom! Mom! Mom! (They did, they said, can I have, when can we, I need, they hit me, they’re taking my …)” When did this become a Mom household?? You have a father! I just really need several hours in a row without any humans in my immediate vicinity. Dogs, cats, and Corvid crew welcome. PiC gave me a few-hours break today, taking both of them away for the morning, thank goodness, which flew by almost as if it were mere minutes.
I ran training, checked on all the paperwork, followed up on Lakota orders, set up shipping labels for community donations, dealt with management problems and minutia, processed my feelings of general resentment about work stress. I sat with JB for an hour guiding them through another round of organizing their things into the appropriate bins and baskets, and assigned them 15 minutes of carrying on with the work solo while I worked. I pondered my radiating hip pain (entirely self inflicted because I agreed to go on a hike yesterday, foolish mortal), and I pondered the former friend who called me selfish and self-centered. Even if that outburst was more about whatever was going on in their life than me, those words were calculated to hurt and they continue to sting.
Year 5, Day 265: This week’s stressor: the unknowable. A friend was speculating that my life – I don’t make friends when people are incompetent and a LOT of incompetent people have entered our sphere over the past 12 months – is going to get so much worse for me this year. They’ve got a front row seat to some of the shenanigans from last year and had more time in the corporate grind than I have had so their prognostications are likely to be accurate. I have so much to do in 2025 but lack any confidence that I will get the proper support or recognition (by which I mean both title AND money) for it. In fact, I think it’s quite likely I will be left in the lurch (without support from higher ups) by the summer and my entire self doesn’t know what to do with this likelihood other than hate it.
As much as I hate the idea of job hunting, that’s the logical thing to do. I rewrote my LinkedIn as practice for rewriting my resume. Having lots of feelings about this whole thing. Wrote a recommendation for my staff, will write more later.
Kicking myself over making silly mistakes like donating to international GFM campaigns with the wrong credit card so that I got hit with a foreign transaction fee. Rookie mistake! I have a credit card for these things that do NOT charge foreign transaction fees. Sigh. It’s really not a large amount at all, it’s the principle of wasting any money at all, ever.
Year 5, Day 266: Second stressor: The Santa Ana winds have made the fires so unbelievably dangerous in Southern California. I grew up there and even in early adulthood the fires didn’t seem this bad back then. It can’t just be my imagination, CA wildfires must generally be a lot worse in the past decade or so. I’ve checked on a lot of our friends and family, the fire came within a mile (!!) of one of our families but they’re safe, thankfully. So much destruction has occurred and none of it is contained.
Third stressor: I hate change. I haven’t changed my doctor in 13 years, we have only moved once and I have no desire to move again if things aren’t dire. I hold on to clothes until they fall apart or don’t fit anymore. All this to say: when faced with big changes in my work life that I have zero control over and will deeply impact my life and my family’s lives, my stomach churns with stress and I hate it so much. This is in addition to the world being terrible, on the larger scale.
I also realized something about myself though can’t explain it. I toil in obscurity. I do some big and important things (in some respects) professionally but very few people know my name, what I do, or why it matters. And most of the time this doesn’t register on my list of things that matter. It does register when I think about needing to suss out job opportunities and regret not having a strong professional network for referrals. But the moment there’s a chance of visibility on a wider scale, I drag someone in front of me as a human shield, “take him instead!” Best I can say is that this is the same as my thing about fame and money: I’ll take all of the money (so I can do good things with it), I want nothing to do with the fame.
I know what I’m good at and I loathe masking. I haven’t had to operate as the completely professional version of me for more than a decade, I’ve been a more human version, and I’ve gotten used to that. It still takes energy but less than when I face high level corporate executive types and lawyers. When that happens, I feel awkward and put on my professional armor defensively. Except it doesn’t fit the way it used to. It’s happening more than it used to now, and it’s going to keep happening. Deep deep sigh.
I suppose they’ll have to deal with what they get: a well seasoned professional (smells of rosemary?) who has none* fucks left to offer in service of politics and nonsense. (*To quote Smol Acrobat, “none means zero”.) I deliver great work, I don’t have the energy for the other nonsense. Except can I continue to deliver great work if the other nonsense becomes part of my life?
Year 5, Day 267: I haven’t slept well all week. That’s the work stress taking chomps out of my sanity and confidence. Bits of Tiffany’s “I think we’re alone now” has been stuck in the back of my mind with just barely discernible lyrics so it took me 3 days to figure out what song it was. That one I can’t explain.
There’s been a lot to stress about and a lot of extra drain on my energy dealing with those stressors. I had this whole plan to make this year go smoothly and then my cabbage cart was kicked over. ARGH. Imagine me throwing those cabbages back into the cart, muttering direly to myself, and those cabbages are hours-long conversations with various key people and flashes of “oh shit, I forgot that thing too!” That’s been my week.
I freely shared with JB that I am SO TIRED. Dragged myself to and from school pick up and afterschool class. We ran out of Hawaiian rolls so I searched the internet (can’t even call it Googling anymore, what’s going on 2025) and decided we’d whip up a cornbread to go with the pulled pork. Right. Whip up. The slowest whipping up ever. We did manage it, we used Sally’s Baking Addiction’s cornbread recipe which has twice as many ingredients as I like but it was very tasty. If I can, I’d like to make a couple more. One to eat, one to freeze. Ambitious.
Year 5, Day 268: The stress-induced heartburn continues. The endless documentation for various management needs continues. The seemingly-endless backlog of work continues. The fires in LA continue.
My hair is down to my waist again, it’s now been another 2-3 years since my last haircut and I don’t want to go to the hair place because they don’t mask and I don’t know if they vaccinate. Not that vaccination will stop transmission, it’s just the principle. I’m this close to just hacking off several inches myself and damn the consequences. Except for the first time in ages, it might matter what I look like. 🙄
All that wasn’t enough, we foolishly decided to let the kids go to the school Movie Night because the PTA sent out a call for volunteers to staff the snack bar. I was far too tired for that but went and sat with the kids through the movie while PiC did the volunteering. We cleaned up afterward and trudged home. Stick a fork in me, I’m done!
