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
Year 4, Day 143: Woof, it’s hard to tell but it’s possible that 15ish minutes of weeding for two consecutive weekends mornings utterly wrecked me. All my major joints so angry and swollen they’re radiating heat, and all my muscles are also angry. My body is more like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man than is healthy for a human. I wanted to wallow in bed all day. Couldn’t, of course. Monday being Monday, I had kids to get out the door, a hundred emails and a stack of reports to get through. Normally I’d pace myself more but I’m taking a day off to ferry everyone to appointments later this week and would rather clear the desk enough to ignore work on my ferrying day.
Year 4, Day 144: We didn’t make it a week before a report of a COVID case on campus cropped up. I’m not surprised. But more people are more surprised by the fact that we’re even getting reporting. Naturally, we then were notified that our district won’t be reporting cases anymore. What a sad state of affairs this is.
~~~~~
Good news bad news on my health front.
I hate meeting new doctors. I never know if they’re going to take me seriously and I hate having to make them take me seriously. So meeting a new doctor this week about my chronic sore throat problem strained my nerves until we started chatting and I realized this guy is at least 5 years younger than me. He reminds me of my younger cousin! That let me relax a smidge. Then the fact that he listened carefully to everything I had to say was reassuring. He took a look and spotted the issue in my throat, and gave me a rundown on treatment options along with his opinion on each. That brings me to the bad news part. He thinks this is my body overreacting to viral infections that I’m picking up from Smol Acrobat. Every. Single. Month. So it overreacts by producing a truckload of sores in the nose and throat while it’s trying to fight the infection and then … Sigh. Chronic severe sore throat.
Year 4, Day 145: I frequently feel like a bad or inadequate parent. A combination of never feeling good enough to want to play with my kids and feeling like I should want to.
I try my hardest not to consciously compare myself to other parents as much as possible but it’s hard not to feel it crop up now and again. Today, I had two small moments of good: Smol Acrobat asked me to build rock towers for them and they were pleased enough with my builds to give me cheesy grins for pictures. JB wanted to play catch but PiC wasn’t in the mood so I took them for 15 minutes of 2-square. (Not enough people for 4-square.) PiC would usually indulge every request, regardless of his own feelings, but it was better that I did it. Even if my knees feel swollen to the size of soccer balls (they aren’t, it’s just the feeling of inflammation), it actually felt better to me to play than not today. And on an extremely bad body day, at that. I’m kind of proud of myself.
Year 4, Day 146: Crossing my fingers that we settle into a manageable routine next week. I’m still recovering from my day of nearly back to back appointments for the family. Dentist, daycare dropoff, errand, doctor, short break, dentist again for almost two hours.
Back to School night is tonight and I couldn’t scrape together even an ounce of energy to go. PiC took the hit (and JB) while I prepped Smol Acrobat for bed. I’m not sure how I feel about the expectations for third grade but as usual, we’ll roll with it. Fundraising starts on Friday, that’s what we get in lieu of school supply shopping lists.
Year 4, Day 147: Food talk Friday! Just made that up. Sunday I used up all my egg boiling luck to whip up a batch of egg salad for our lunches this week. Win! We initially planned to do pizza one night to make the week easier but it didn’t work out so we made “fancy” ramen night with Costco tonkotsu bowls, roast pork from the freezer, frozen corn and soft boiled eggs (had insufficient luck left, they were too soft). But still an overall win. We had leftover small potatoes from my pot roast experience and that went into a yellow chicken curry (premade from Costco). Everyone liked that too.
I think this makes two weeks we didn’t wish we had done takeout to save some energy. I’ll want some soon enough, I’m sure.
*****
Housekeeping: You’d think we never washed the rugs around here. The bathroom rug is all fluffed up after I did a load of bathroom rugs and everyone is disproportionately happy about it. Small wins in the sensory department.
1. I made a good decision to not stress myself out trying to do ALL THE THINGS one day this week and it worked out really well. I didn’t end the day hating everything.
2. Past Me froze an apple pie and Present Me got to eat it. Excellent decisions!
Helping folks:My friend Quiara lives on a low fixed income and recently got the bad news that not only won’t SSA cover her insurance premium this year, they’re making this decision retroactively. I don’t know where they think she’s going to conjure that money from but if you can, Help Q survive the year?
The return to school period is still shiny and happy for JB and I’m glad. I don’t know how long they’ll continue to enjoy this sort of thing but I’m glad they still do. Back to school was always a fraught thing for me.
This year I found myself awfully uncertain about the right thing to do about JB’s bully. I used bully a little loosely (uncertainly) because their actions were mostly microaggressions. Thanks to a dear friend, I could see how they might lay a foundation for more aggressive bullying in the future if left unchecked. It’s weird for me to be the parent in this sort of situation. During my own school years, I was entirely on my own so I dealt with bullies with my own hands. Literally. One bully tried me at every school. My disproportionate response set me up for the rest of the time in that school to be left alone because no one was willing to risk getting punched for the sake of running their mouths where I could hear them. That was me as a student. I’m much less certain about what response is right as a parent. In the end, I’m glad that we have this history documented. If the kid doesn’t lay off, we have a paper trail in place. Hopefully they back off from here on out. They’re still young and there’s still time for them to grow up.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Very little makes me feel like a more inept parent than trading caretaking shifts in the Toddler Arena with PiC and spending half the time talking Smol Acrobat down from one tantrum after another. It’s so frustrating. They were fine for the first 5 hours of the day (which included a nap) with him, why is it Meltdown City during my 3 hours? Sigh.
~~~~~
In a two week period, their language has burst through in a tidal wave. They have pronouns not just their name, possessive words, past tense, declarative statements… It’s like a logjam became unstuck.
Banana. (They’ve never once tried to say this correctly, they just made up an entirely different word to represent it.)
I need this! (refusing to give me something back that they didn’t need)
Mommy said yes. (I did not!)
That’s my toy. (Yes it is)
I breaked it. (Yes, you did)
I need different book. How ’bout dis one? (What?)
~~~~~
They haven’t figured out “you” yet, though. This makes their instructions confusing.
This you can understand quickly: Patting my arm, “I’m mommy.” Patting their chest, “I’m Smol Acrobat.”
This is less clear: I do it!
Ok, you do it.
No! I do it!
…. That’s what I said …
No! Mommy! I do it!!
Mommy do it?
No! … Yes.
Pupdate
Sera’s been on probiotics for a couple months. I was a little skeptical (but hopeful) that it would work for her gas. However, our incidences of being gassed with doggy emanations has dramatically decreased. This is great! Especially since she’s starting to spend more time in the bedroom and office with me which I absolutely love. She’s always been welcome but chose to stick to her bed mostly, unless she was following Seamus around. Now she’s choosing to be closer and I love it.
Precious Moments
Sera 🐶 walking slowly by the dining table.
Smol Acrobat: SE-WA! NO!
PiC: what’s Sera 🐶 doing?
Smol Acrobat: Wunning!
Everyone: no, she wasn’t!
JB: can we have burrito night?
PiC: I don’t think we have any ingredients for it….
JB: we have tortillas, and …and …
SA: ham! Cheese! Eggs! Apple!
Year 4, Day 136: JB starts school this week which is both good and bad for me. They’ll finally be out of the house for a large chunk of hours during the work day, yay!! We actually have to be up and out the door by 8 am, siiiiiiigh. I’m not looking forward to that bit.
Mixed bag on the health front. My throat has been sore for 8 days, along with mysterious mouth pain that made me wonder “hand foot mouth??? nooooooo!” It’s not COVID after three at home tests, nor anything the family is susceptible to since I’m the only miserable one. HMF is generally very contagious so I am hopeful it’s not stealth HMF. I have no idea what it is but it stinks. I chatted with my doctor who’s putting me on 2 months of antacids to see if that improves anything before referring me to ENT.
On the other hand, I took Sera for a much longer afternoon walk than we usually take and I wasn’t gasping for breath or debating crawling back the last steps. That’s a huge change from the norm!
1. Self pats on the back for having bought medium and large size pants for JB from Lands End when they were on sale, a couple years ago. I pulled them out of the storage bin today and figured out which ones fit better for this school year and organized the next size ups into another container. Easy peasy and hardly any shopping needed. I’m lucky they still generally like the same things two years on. Won’t be that easy in a few, I suspect.
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 $223.60 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
We’re both working on other ways to bring in income on a small scale. Me with my banking and credit card bonuses, him with his bike commuting to earn rebates. They’re not great gobs of money but they add up.
Year 4, Day 129: I am letting JB enjoy a true summer treat a few days this week: sleeping in as late as they felt like. Usually I make them get up by 930 so that their sleep patterns aren’t too disrupted but a day or two of teenage-late rising won’t hurt. They’ll have a full week to start getting up earlier until they’re back on track for the first day of school. That’s approaching fast.
We don’t do any back to school shopping for the kids but I will be gearing up to do shopping for the Lakota families. I knew I wouldn’t have time to take on a July family so we helped two families in June. My plan was to recover lost ground from being off work and then pick up an August family or tackle a bulk school shopping list. I’ve gotten a special request from the coordinators who are worried about the many requests that are going up on the Okini as the summer comes to a close. So many kids need school clothes and school supplies. We’ll have a phone call this week to talk about possible ways we could organize a bulk buying solution to make the most of our money.
Year 4, Day 130: My therapist and I were both right. She was right: taking some time off was incredibly refreshing, I haven’t felt so few symptoms in years. I was right about what would happen after taking time off: I don’t want to work at all. I want to do the things I care about buuuuut that doesn’t include this work. Since that’s not yet an option financially… welp. Here we are. Working again. Getting back into the groove of something I am quite good at but do not love for the sake of a paycheck and our future financial stability, utterly begrudgingly some days. Less so on other days.
A dear friend and I daydreamed about what we’d do with life-changing windfall money, as unlikely as it is to occur. They’d probably stay on their current career path for a spell, to show they could. Their spouse would keep a hand in. They derive joy from their work and would be happier continuing, but a fraction of the current volume would be sufficient to keep them happy. I personally have nothing to prove to myself, I’d just stay on to set my team up for success and negotiate for more money for them before I left. Without that bit, I could step away tomorrow and not look back. I think PiC would happily walk away from his job too if our income and healthcare were covered.
Year 4, Day 131: My local friend notified me that they have a ton of household goods collected for the Lakota Reservation. That’s great!
More than three extra large shipping boxes worth. Oh. Oh boy. I canvassed a local business we frequent to ask for their large shipping boxes when they next get merchandise in. If they thought I was very weird they hid it well.
Now I have to figure out how to make time to pack and ship it all.
Orville Peck’s voice is something!
Year 4, Day 132: I’m not ready to say I’m feeling rested after sleeping but I am noticing that I’ve slept like a rock a few days this week. Deep sleep, undisturbed by constant nightmares, is so unusual I can’t recall when that was last the norm.
Year 4, Day 133: JB enjoyed a full day of fun with an Uncle they adore and haven’t seen in three years. I got time to cook two pot roasts for a special going away dinner for said Uncle and made some progress on every work item on my very long for a Friday list of work priorities. They got the better deal but I’m not dissatisfied.
I omitted the tomato paste and flour and used red wine this time, using this recipe, and it seems like the wine is the one variable that’s been missing and much needed for a successfully delicious pot roast. My past pot roasts have been almost good enough but not quite. I’ll need to pick up some reasonably priced red wine to keep on hand for the next ones instead of using a rather pricey Pinot that was gifted to us four years ago and had been gathering dust all this time. I’d also splurged on a large bag of small potatoes and they were perfect. Minimal prep needed and they didn’t fall apart.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
