About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
Read More
February 14, 2024
Life with JB
We have a nine year old! 👀 JB got a small party this year.
We booked part of a pizza parlor early in the day so we were the only ones there. 9 kids (5 families) showed up of the 16 kids/8 families we invited. I was very worried about how much energy it’d take and how it’d go, especially because we were just coming off a rough week of illness, but it worked out really well in the end. It was small enough to be just manageable, with one family helping us with Smol Acrobat, and the other families occasionally assisting with stages of cleanup and kid management.
We splurged on the activity and the food, we saved on the cake (Costco: $25, first time we’ve ever had one of their famed sheet cakes) and the decor (Party City: $20). The place provided almost none of the assistance they had promised so I was orchestrating so most of the event unexpectedly. That kept me too busy to socialize but we did each catch up a little with each set of parents. JB was thrilled to see their friends and ran an illicit (temporary) tattoo parlor out of the bathroom for them. Of course they did. Smol Acrobat was briefly put out that they didn’t get one too, but they weren’t willing to wait with the older kid crowd and moved on quickly.
(more…)
February 12, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 314: I’ll do a full write-up later. Our power is still out today, internet is still down, my phone’s data connectivity is next to nothing. The kids are sick, I have a sore throat and a huge workload, and we spent too much of the day navigating choked roads to get to a safe place where we could connect to the internet and charge the devices enough to get us through the day and night.
The county libraries were all open to the public for water, snacks, and charging.
I’ll tell you what, functioning by lamplight, with only power for the fridge and no other appliances, really narrows your focus on what you can do. No dishwasher, no vacuuming the mess tracked in from the storm, no toaster oven, no microwave, no hair dryers, no space heaters, no heating pad.
We still have running water and plumbing, and gas to heat food and the water for bathing, and I cannot tell you how thankful I was for that much. We are so not equipped for the loss of power, internet, gas AND running water.
Year 4, Day 315: POWER IS BACK. It’s weird to see the utterly still blue sky, with one enormous grey cloud hovering as if copy-pasted in place, after the stormy weekend with all the challenges and consequences. We get a one day reprieve, then it rains again tomorrow. I think that may be the end of the wet for a handful of days.
I may have overdone it trying to right the ship doing all the things this morning: 3 loads of laundry, ran the vacuum twice, ran the dishwasher, while trying to catch up on a couple hundred emails and projects.
With JB home sick another day, and trying to heft an unbelievable amount of work, I’ve been on edge and snappish. I decided JB won’t be going to their class this afternoon. They probably have the energy to and would be fine (masked as always) but I needed to take any one damn thing off my plate and that was my pick. It was a good call.
Smol Acrobat came home meowing sadly. They’re running a slight fever, appear flushed, and tell us “I’m not feew-wing well.” Their throat hurts and they’ve got that weird dry congestion that doesn’t result in a drippy nose, just leaves you feeling stuffed up with no relief. I had to spoonfeed them their dinner. I pulled out the remaining frozen half of the Japanese curry I cooked a while back for dinner. Thanks two weeks ago me!
We’re in for a rough night. Well, PiC is. He’s been fielding all the nights for a while. Even if he hadn’t, Smol Acrobat switched from wanting Mom cuddles and feeding at dinner to the quavery: “Daddy, can you take care of me?” and only wanting Daddy to give them their medicine and prepare them for bed.
Year 4, Day 316: JB hacking coughed their way through the night, Smol Acrobat sobbed and fussed through the night. I offered to take over at 2 am but PiC waved me off. In the end that was for the best, I needed that sleep pretty badly and Smol Acrobat had to stay home with us today with that fever. We traded off work time slots throughout the day.
They were surprisingly chipper, despite their very rough night, and managed a halfway decent nap midday. I was so tempted to lay down with them but I’d just get mad having to get back up again even if I napped. As a night ogre, the waking up transition at any time is unpleasant.
JB and I also had an appt at the orthodontist after school. They’re headed for braces in a few months. Sigh.
Texting with an old high school classmate who’s visiting our old teachers brought on the sads of a blobby amorphous feeling that I don’t belong anywhere in meatspace. I think this is about feeling very disconnected from the friend groups online and off. One of my closest daily friends has dropped out of contact for almost two years now, and I miss them deeply. I know it was for their own reasons, I respect that, I just miss them. (Separately, it makes me wonder if I’m just a bad friend because I’m the only one who was dropped. Maybe I’m just too much of whatever I am.) It’s gotten worse since Twitter went to pieces and my social web was destroyed. I have this space, some folks in the Discord and a bit of Bluesky, I peek into Instagram because I was forced to create one for the business. It feels scattered. That sense of wide connectedness is gone. Even though I still text with a handful of friends from the ‘nets, I feel out of sync with myself and with the world, emotionally.
I had to do a Murderbot and face the wall this evening for a minute when the feelings were too much. I’m in the middle of Network Effect right now and very much empathize with Murderbot. I hate feelings. 😔
Year 4, Day 317: Frost everywhere this morning! Aftermath cleanup continues. I’ve finished recharging all the lanterns and the Yeti. That just leaves the crank radio to charge. It can be charged by cranking of course, that’s the point of it, but why not save our arms if we can charge it ahead of time. So I finally get JB to school, load Smol Acrobat up for their ride with PiC, clean up a bit around the house and reheat my breakfast eggs. Sit down and really start to dig into emails and urgent morning work stuff. Take a bite of egg. Miss a text. See a call come in from PiC: they got a flat tire 3 miles away from daycare. ARGH. The full round trip rescue ate my morning. Who put this curse on us? It’s one thing after another this week. Relentless.
We had to skip JB’s afterschool class again because I could not handle losing another 2 hour chunk of my time today. It’s all management work today and I don’t fancy working until 11 pm again. (That was last night.) It wasn’t until dinnertime that I remembered my whole breakfast, lunch, and snack was a plate of scrambled eggs and half a box of Wheat Thins. Not ideal.
There were “this is where rain may fall again Thursday!” headlines that I waved off and YEP! IT WAS US. PiC and Smol Acrobat got caught out biking home. They were drenched.
Year 4, Day 318: Work work everywhere, as far as the eye can see. This was my first mostly uninterrupted workday all week. I was desperate for one but didn’t dare say it out loud for fear of triggering another spontaneous combustion of my day. I’m not at all recovered from the week but having gotten through the worst of the workload, I can finally say TGIF.
Also not great: PiC’s company is a multinational one so from their POV this isn’t (maybe) that big a deal but from ours it is: They just laid off a couple hundred people. Still no idea on how much of this will roll over to his department, and we wouldn’t know until it hit. He’s not high enough up to be privy to those conversations.
February 9, 2024
1. We made it to Friday. Thank goodness for giant battery power and that the storm passed on.
(more…)
February 7, 2024
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
***
Dividend income. We received $1852 in dividends from the stocks portfolio mostly made up of a surprise dividend from Costco. Well, surprise to me. They announced it last year to the whole world, I just wasn’t paying attention. My buy-and hold, and not timing the market, strategy all lean heavily on the “don’t even pay attention to it at all” tactic. It’s very effective! As you can see. But the value of that, plus my annual bonus, have hardly had any time to spend with me before it’s flown off to take care of home stuff and health stuff. It was nice knowing ya.
(more…)
February 5, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 307: JB has the day off so they are running errands with me and having a second tutoring session with the second of two teachers I booked to try to help them get a grip on fractions.
I squeezed in some hours of work over the weekend to clear more of my inbox of the routine stuff so I’d have time to do errands without falling too far behind. The only good thing about that is when I hit “Exasperation: HIGH”, I can walk away. Not so much during the week.
I overdid it both days on the weekend on the personal side too: cleaning the house on Saturday, walking the kids to the park on Sunday for an hour-long outing, and passed out both afternoons when I was resting from the exertion and the pain it stirred up. It’s not a pain flare, it’s more of a pain … volcano bubbling up? There are no good analogies for this stuff. But after being on my feet for any amount of time, my back and hips ache and burn. That pain combined with the fatigue knocked me on my butt. I’ve been taking 200 mg of CoQ10 daily on the recommendation of the ME/CFS folks at Kaiser but this week I’m experimenting with upping that to 300 mg daily. Their recommendation for magnesium is only one tenth the amount that my body prefers, so there’s always a chance that the same principle applies to some of the other supplements. Here’s hoping that the increase doesn’t set off any/many side effects.
In the garden, my onions are now on Day 146 after planting day, and the green tops are still not turning yellow and falling over. They aren’t even from seed, they’re from sprouted onions we broke down and planted! The guidelines all gave rough ranges of 90-125 days from planting, growing, and ready to harvest. Do we have mutant onions? Do we have onions at all? Do we just have onion tops that won’t stop growing and nothing underground? Is it weird that I’m afraid to poke around and find out lest I somehow disturb and therefore destroy them?
I’ve never grown onions before, obviously, this is all strange.
Year 4, Day 308: A friend shared a TikTok about a cat who needed a bit of sedation before going back to the vet and the mental image of the little cat face, pupils dilated and totally stoned, with the little mrow? got to me. Having never had the slightest curiosity about drugs in any way, and hardly any interest in alcohol, the “must be nice to be checked out of reality for a bit” sentiment is new to me. I’m not seeking it, my reasons for never experimenting still stand, but it’s telling how overwhelmed I’m feeling right now.
I’ve been working late hours all month, trying to catch up from the holidays and then sickness and then sickness and then exhaustion… And work is its own maelstrom of stress right now in so many ways.
Then we had JB’s self defense class and we got assigned homework which made me regret picking this place that expects parents to practice with their kids as if we have the time and energy to do that on top of taking them to classes. Then the part of me that knows it’s important to do that practice at home feels guilty because they’re not going to improve without support. And it is so important to me that they learn these skills so I have to provide that support. So we practiced after dinner which sucked because they didn’t take it seriously and kept giggling and I was at the end of my rope already anyway so that made me mad and while we hugged after it was all over there was a lot of snapping and sternness during the practice session because I hate it when people disrespect my time and very limited energy. Even if people = my own kid.
Tiny bright side: Smol Acrobat actually ate most of their dinner without being fed or fussing. I had to help with a bit of their salad but they ate the pasta and oranges on their own.
Further disheartening: Sera’s bloodwork came back and while she’s responded to the steroids, her liver enzymes are now going up and that’s not good at all.
It’s only been 3 days on the increased CoQ10 but isn’t it supposed to increase my energy? I feel so depleted.
Year 4, Day 309: Big storm moving in today.
Courtney Milan’s warning about apocalypse food brought up a funny/weird thing I have. In January 2020, when it seemed like things were going the wrong way with COVID, PiC went to the store and picked up a variety of canned foods that would keep.
It turns out that while I have a great imagination for things I will crave, I do not have the ability to continue wanting that food when we have it in stock. It’s like my prepper appetite was satisfied by the acquisition and my body just shuts down any desire to actually EAT that food. Granted, we were never in a position where food scarcity was enough of a problem that we HAD to rely on them. But still.
Year 4, Day 310: I have hit my limit, again. Today, everything was too much.
I was looking forward to our friend visiting in a couple weeks but she cancelled. I’m hurt and frustrated, this is the second time our getting together has been canceled because some other thing was a higher priority, and because getting new plans together is a whole effort.
I’m unsettled and frustrated with Sera’s health mystery and pre-grieving that this might be cancer. We don’t know yet but what data we do have points to cancer more than not.
There was a shooting just a few blocks away from us and we weren’t alerted even though the campus was secured (not fully locked down).
I’m still grieving the loss of my friend.
My boss is in some upper management tizzy and keeps interrupting my day to give me new priorities (which were already my priorities, what do you think I spend my time doing??) and then to ask me a dozen questions so I can’t attend to the priorities.
Everyone needed something from me today.
I also have to recruit, hire and train more staff to support the team which is a whole other job in and of itself.
Customers are continuing to be just The Worst.
The frustration with trying to help JB but not helping enough is sitting like a cold lump in my gut.
Parent teacher conferences are coming up again.
Smol Acrobat was eating guacamole which they used to dislike, then completely melted down over eating broccoli which they said was their favorite two days ago. TODDLERS.
JB wanted to compete in a thing in April and I didn’t want them to because it’ll require a lot of time and attention from me to support their prep but then they changed their mind because they’re intimidated by another kid (who is competitive) and I hate that reason. I’d be fine if they chose not to participate because they didn’t want to this time but to opt out because another kid’s better than them is a terrible reason. But at the same time, I also don’t want to be roped into this. Conflicted.
I’ve worked late most nights this month and I am TIRED.
There were some small bright spots in the week that carried me from one frustration to the next. I had good interactions with the crow murder coming by for treats. Our neighbors got a puppy and shared pictures. I conducted an interview that seemed promising. (Please cross your fingers that they’re a good fit for us long-term! I hate recruiting, I hate hiring, I hate training. But I love having gotten through all those transitions and having a solid team.)
Year 4, Day 311: Our floor desperately needs mopping and there are crumbs everywhere. The robot vacuum was a great compromise for my inability to (or lack of time) vacuum as much as I want but there isn’t a good answer to the mopping/everyday other cleaning. I started thinking about how maybe if we dropped something optional from our budget we could afford to hire help, like babysitters who can take the kids to things or cleaners, but then I can’t think of anything that’s easy to give up. The only thing that we spend on that doesn’t benefit us personally at all off the top of my head is mutual aid, just giving cash to people / friends who need it, and that’s not really something I’d consider optional or ok to trade. Then again, I have trust issues with people driving my kids and PiC’s got trust issues with people cleaning our house so maybe it’s just as well we spend where we spend. Though, arguably, hiring people to help us would be helping those people by paying them but it’s still not a help to our far away friends who are laid off or cannot work and need to pay rent.
We had another PTA meeting and people were talking about the need for new volunteers for the PTA, and to run the Science Fair, and so on and there were people who just kept volunteering for stuff. HOW do these people have the time and energy for all this?? I can get my kid to and from school, and attend parent teacher conferences and listen to the PTA meetings over dinner when they are hybrid. We can’t make it when they’re in person. Who has time to take on the running of a Science Fair and PTA positions and and and? I know at least one of the moms and I know she works in addition to her two kids, along with some of the more visible parents who are also working parents. I just don’t get it. It makes me feel like I’m failing at something. To be clear, I don’t want one more thing on my plate. I want many things OFF my plate. This is probably me feeling jealous that others have the money or time or energy or help or all of the above that makes it possible for them to want to take on optional things like PTA related activities. I suppose the guilt there is knowing that the PTA stuff does support the kids’ education and educational experience, so it’s not frivolous. It’s just not something we have room for.
My autistic friend sent this to me, it’s so her, and I laughed so much. That was much needed.
Surprisingly I don’t feel as drained or despairing today as I normally do on Fridays. Is there any chance that the 300 mg of coQ10 might be helping? Or maybe the fact I remembered to do back stretches two whole times this week?
February 2, 2024
1. JB took a very proactive lead in helping keep Smol Acrobat entertained when I was working on paperwork this weekend and then played with them the whole time at the playground when we walked to the park. They aren’t usually that focused and these outings are more often like handling two only children wanting things they want when they want it.
Help a family escape Gaza
(more…)
January 29, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 300: A thunderstorm roared through last night. We would have slept right through it like cozy babies but Sera needed a quick outing at midnight to make sure her bladder wouldn’t be too stressed this morning (because of her steroids). You should have seen the look she gave me. You want ME to go out in THAT??
Anyway, that was a necessary soaking because at 7 am sharp she was click-clacking to the front door because she needed to go out again. It would have been much worse, and earlier, if we hadn’t gone out at midnight. As tired as I was, it meant that everyone got up and out on time for the first time in weeks.
The kids have been generally cooperative for the past couple weeks. It’s weird. There are the usual hiccups and temper tantrums and all that but it’s on the very mild end of the range. I have to hold on to the memory of this when we move into the next phase of very uncooperative.
A loved one is going through a medical thing right now. Not quite a crisis but it could be one if their body doesn’t respond to the medications. Something like Sera, I suppose, except their medical issue currently has a more clearcut set of pretty dire consequences if they don’t respond to the medication route. I’m checking on them daily and worrying in the back of my mind.
(more…)
