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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December 2, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 222: Victory! I made a really expensive and silly mistake late Friday night, buying a $200 pass for an entertainment park in entirely the wrong state for ourselves and extended family. I stressed all weekend because the site stated they were non-refundable. I did immediately email to explain the issue but couldn’t handle waiting any longer so I called this morning. In the meantime, I had purchased the correct pass on the weekend since the sale was ending on Sunday so maybe that’s why the CSR didn’t ask any questions after getting my order numbers. Huge relief.
I have so many of these little shopping mistake nightmares – usually it’s the wrong size or horror of horrors: wrong day or time for flights. Now I can add WRONG STATE to that paranoia.
The storm systems let up this weekend but the drippy gloom was back in force today. I’m hoping that it’ll be nicer tomorrow.
We took two items off my Black Friday sale list: the blanket (quilt fixed that problem!), next size up boots for Smol Acrobat (hand me downs for the next size up just landed!).
Year 5, Day 223: The phrase “fighting off this virus” doesn’t fit. I regret to inform you that choosing to rest most days last week wherever I could squeeze it in, instead of squeezing in more work, seems to have helped alleviate my sore throat and cough far more than my usual stubborning my way through. My feeling-like-roadkill meter is much lower this week than it was last week. I’m not totally out of the woods yet, but am starting to feel optimistic that I may feel up to our Thanksgiving Day cooking. My legs ache like death today, though, and I can’t put my finger on why.
Social coping and boundaries: I was delighted to provide a dear friend with a tool that another dear friend inadvertently taught me. When asked “are you busy on Xday?” your answer is not yes or no, it’s “why?” This should be deployed all the time to head off being voluntold oh good you’re free to run them to the store or the kids need you to pick them up or can’t you come clean my kitchen. All things that a boundary crasher could certainly choose to deal with for themselves but why would they if they can guilt you do the thing they don’t want to do. I also reminded them that they can always be busy. Plans to be a lump on the floor with the dog are still plans.
Year 5, Day 224: My Sterilite storage bins have arrived!! They were 25% off which isn’t great but they weren’t terribly expensive to begin with sooooo good enough for me! I’ve designated one for office and craft supplies, another for holiday gifts; two for donations to keep them safe and clean while I accumulate during either decluttering or organizing dropped off donations. Another one for hand me down next size up clothes for Smol Acrobat.
Year 5, Day 225: What a day. On the one hand, no work! And much of the food prep was done earlier this week so we were puttering around cooking the main dishes and putting the finishing touches on the last side dishes. Yay!
On the other hand, wow, were the kids moody and difficult and how many times in a single day can I sit down and have a serious talk about their rudeness with them?? Too Many. Sigh. There are days when parenting feels extra impossible because it’s completely unclear what the right thing to do is. Mostly it was JB today performing at extraordinary levels of pingpong between fine and super not fine. Smol Acrobat was their normal, and irritating, level of difficult and moody.
We had three long talks and nothing was resolved except for my making it very clear that whatever you’re feeling, your actions are your choices – you don’t get to behave like the Abomination because your feelings were hurt. In this case, that specially means: didn’t like your choice being corrected. They didn’t like being told that ignoring my direct requests multiple times was rude, they didn’t like being promoted to admit that they shouldn’t destroy Smol Acrobat’s tower even by accident.
JB’s constant (absurd) grievance that we don’t hold the two of them to the same standards for chores apparently does not extend to expectations of considerate behavior. They’re perfectly happy when Smol Acrobat’s behavior is correctly corrected, but when they are corrected for the exact same offense? Storm clouds and stomping and “(you) like Smol Acrobat better than me!!!” The number of times I’ve had to bite back the snarky “that’s not true because I currently don’t like either of you equally” doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s never made it past my filter but such are my grumpy parent thoughts bubbling beneath the surface. Which makes me feel guilty later. They aren’t bad kids! But the constant drama of harping on wanting equality only when it advantages them (lower expectations, fewer chores), and the sporadic bursting into temper tantrums when it means they get called on the carpet for choices that sucked, makes me oh so tired.
We did have an amazing dinner (foodwise) and they managed to get over themselves enough to eat it. But we sent both kids to bed without dessert. We adults ate half the cake ourselves – we earned it.
Year 5, Day 226: We inadvertently spent most of the day exploring bits of the city transit system. The sheer number of both commercial and residence property “available to lease” signs was surprising. The Macy’s storefront was done up with lights on every window, and the unsettlingly tall Christmas tree was front and center. I made eye contact with a large dog inside a store and we mutually and silently agreed that he should come and put his (giant) head in my hands for cuddles and praise. We had a lovely moment. I normally always ask the owner for permission before approaching their dog but this pup was independently conducting eyeball interviews and it simply couldn’t be helped.
There’s a clock ticking on my ordering gifts for the end of the year. Everything / anything I still need must be ordered by midweek in the first week of December so that I can have everything squared away before the 20th. That’s a personal deadline: I HATE doing anything holiday related at the very last minute, especially discovering gaps in my gifting supplies or leaving out any sets of niblings because there are so MANY now that even with the best lists and best of intentions, things get jumbled at times. I did discover Bookoutlet.com which carries bargain books. They fill their inventory with “special buys, publishers’ excess inventory, and store returns” so the selection is hit or miss, but I found a reasonable pile of books to gift the niblings for this year and a couple books for next year as well.
We have a list of Black Friday related intended purchases but I think we’re only going to manage a few of them. A replacement laptop from Costco and a Microsoft license. Books. I was going to get new underwear finally but the sales failed me so these will have to manage another year. Couple of security things. Maybe passing on the Svaha sale this year as a gratuitous thing because I don’t need more clothes.
November 29, 2024
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.
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November 25, 2024
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
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?
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November 20, 2024
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
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.
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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
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.
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