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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January 13, 2023
1. I hope that by the time this goes live, the order will have shipped already. I bought a dear friend something from off their wish list that I normally don’t get to see. It’s a fun extra surprise because their birthday and Christmas are quite far off.
2. Our wonderful regular contributors to the Lakota Giving Project got us in gear to start this year off right. I’ve been working on our first family! Deeply grateful for this community. ❤️❤️❤️
3. I’ve discovered the ability to take long screenshots and to add them to WordPress so I’m sharing tweet threads that way to preserve them in case they go away.
Challenges this week:
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January 10, 2023
As I wrap my head around the fact that it’s January again, I’m preparing for a new year of giving. I’ve recorded the archive of our project on this page.
There’s a lot of uncertainty this year. Without Twitter, my fundraising reach might be next to nothing. Many, if not all, donors came across the project from Twitter. Greg Doucette, who runs a massive campaign each year to feed kids feels the same way. When asked when he’ll start fundraising for this year’s Foodraiser, he replied:
I truly don’t want the demise of Twitter to be the end of this project too but we’ll have to see. I hope that y’all will share, and donate if you’re able, and help us keep this going.
This year’s goals:
- Continue helping 1-2 families a month throughout year.
- Raise $6000 to shop the Thanksgiving-adjacent and weekend sales to supply the community in bulk.
- In March, we’ll start saving large boxes in March for the end of year giveaway. When school lets out and they wash all the left behind clothing, I’m driving over there with an empty car and loading it up with as many good coats and sweaters as we can carry home to ship out. They’re perfectly good clothes, free, and will only cost shipping!
I’ve shipped 30 lbs of clothing, toys and COVID tests to start us off. With three contributions, including our own first donation of the year, we’re at a total of $418.22.
If we can get to $700-800, we’ll be ready to start with our first family of the year! There’s a family of 9 that lives waaay out in the country and hasn’t received any help for a month. I’d like to get them well outfitted.
How you can help (Every penny matters!):
Venmo: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman [@] gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
Please supply your email address if you’d like updates on where the money goes.
Thank you all for your ongoing support of the Lakota people!
January 9, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 288: Gas is below $5/gallon. I checked our records and it went below $5.25 around Thanksgiving weekend. What a difference it makes to each fill up total! We’d been nudging $100 for a 3/4 tank at those prices. *shiver*
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We have a break between storms today and I’m trying to make the most of it. I ran out of steam yesterday. We’ve got two more loads of laundry, I’ve got some donations to ship to Allen Youth Center, and I’d like to get Sera a doggy sweater.
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Huzzah! Nicole and Maggie’s comment fixed my problem. Well, got me to fix it. When the block editor was first rolled out, we were able to pick which editor to use for new posts. Then they took that choice away. So I went into the settings but my toggle to turn off block editor was greyed out.
I checked again this week and the toggle is functional! I can write new posts in classic editor! 🎉
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I noticed on Twitter that a player collapsed on the field during the Bills/Bengals game, and the NFL didn’t immediately, or very quickly after, cancel the game. I don’t follow football but this is the kind of stuff that floats up to my attention because it’s something my circles are interested in. It was both not at all surprising that the NFL didn’t have what it took (morality? souls?) to immediately cancel the game and apparently expected both teams to take the field again shortly after, without knowing if a fellow player was ok. I heard that the teams and the team reps told the NFL that the game wouldn’t go on (buzzfeed article). There’s something deeply wrong with parts of our society for that not to be an immediate decision, IMO. And football is such a dangerous game.
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Inspired by the vacation that very much wasn’t, I designed a couple new tees: small body, big feelings (guess who?), big heart big feelings. Tickled by silliness about people being more charmed than sensible: skritches get stitches. (more…)
January 6, 2023
1.Mutual aid needed: GoFundMe for a family whose home was destroyed by fire the week before Christmas.
2. I hope this doesn’t jinx us but Smol Acrobat has willingly and voluntarily (as in, ate it themselves instead of having to be coaxed) eaten full meals three nights this week: a starch, protein and veggie! This is big.
3. In scraping the silver stuff that covers the access code on a Target gift card, a whole chunk of the sticker with the numbers came off too. Unfortunately a chunk that I needed! I wrote down all the numbers I could see clearly and then manually tested every single permutation of numbers to find the access code. I found it!
4. I need to remember this more often. I frequently struggle with seeing my progress when it does happen:
Challenges this week: insomnia is a terrible foe.
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January 4, 2023
“Happy” still feels strange to say right now. It’s been a year, much of which feels divorced from reality, because each day is a week and each week is a month.
The COVID pandemic is still a thing at the end of 2022. We’ve regularly gotten COVID case notifications from the school all year, and I noticed an increase in frequency in the last few months. PiC’s employer is still recommending masking and maintaining certain remote protocols (which I think should be stronger but no one listens to me).
We worked and parented full time all year long and felt every painful minute. This was a hard year for us in a lot of ways, so it’s not just you after all, Nicole & Maggie!
This year felt like another decade.
2022 Highlights in Health
- I continued brain therapy all year. My pain is more manageable even while the ME/CFS plagues me. I still struggled with loneliness and disconnectedness.
- In the last few months of the year, we found a way for PiC to get a lot more regular outdoor time than he got last year. We’re hoping to keep that up in 2023.
- Smol Acrobat’s introduction to daycare and other disease vectors (kids their age) was riddled with germs.
- JB and Sera were reasonably healthy.
The wild cards of COVID and now RSV are still around. Three of us are fully vaxxed and double boosted. Smol Acrobat’s vaxxed but not yet boosted. We continued to be cautious about socializing, avoiding crowds and staying masked around other people.
2022 Highlights in Life
We are still chugging along.
Me: still occasionally forgetting my learned lessons and trying too hard to do all the things and being feelings-avoidant. When I can’t avoid the feelings, I resent that I have to feel them. But on the other hand, I’m doing so much better at avoiding shame spirals when I make mistakes. That’s progress. I didn’t even know I was doing it before and reducing the spiral frequency reduces my pain. I was doing ok with feeling my feelings for a while but after so many losses, and so many complications with family and COVID, I’ve grown so tired of grieving. I’m doing some things I care about: reading, helping people, saving and investing. I’m wishing I could do more of those things and less work for pay.
Socially, we did more this year. We attended a loved one’s wedding, saw two sets of loved ones we haven’t seen in years and I got to meet up an author whose work I really enjoy for a long chat about anything under the sun. That last one was a whole lot of unexpected fun considering my introverted self wasn’t sure that we’d have enough in common to chat for long.
PiC: still working and fitting in his hobbies around the edges of caretaking and household stuff we share. We could use more balance. We’re slowly making space for more balance.
Smol Acrobat: we were without childcare for eight months. Six of those months were spent stressing over if and when we’d get a vaccine for Smol Acrobat. Once daycare started, the latter months of the year were spent tending to a sick Smol Acrobat, recovering from being sick, or both. But they do seem to be benefiting from the social aspects of daycare and their words are coming in fast and thick (and garbled). They’re loving their commute and they’re thriving with the enrichment so I’m feeling a lot less anxious about their day to day. I’m just mildly anxious about all the germs. PiC caught the little trouble seeker licking all the toys at pickup. 🤦🏻♀️
JB: attended school through the academic year, camp during the summer, and had two sports activities at different times this year. They love both activities and I suspect they’d love an additional one but we are in agreement that we want to maintain balance.
Our schedule is nothing compared to friends’ kids and we still have zero desire to add anything else.
The kids being out of the house is very good for my need for quiet / quiet time to work and not so good for my immune system.
2022 Highlights in Money
- I ended 2022 with almost the same amount of cash in our checking account as we started, for a second year. There’s something nice and balanced about that. Makes me feel like I’ve got some sort of consistency in our savings and spending.
- Our net worth dropped. The market is doing what it does.
- Related: With some minor adjustments to the recurring amounts in response to all our expenses going up, I stuck to our weekly investing plan. I squeezed every penny I could to pour into investing. We put in 17% of new contributions but ended the year with only 2% more than the start of the year total. Phew.
- I am almost done waiting for my state and federal amendments to be paid. One last refund pending!
- Our iBonds paid some decent interest.
- Collectively, we did an amazing job with our Lakota families project. We fulfilled 17 family requests for aid in the first ten months. In the last two: we shipped 3 cases of gently used items, friends shipped 3 packages of gently used bedding, and the Fall project provided dozens with warm clothes and other necessities.
We continued to be fortunate in having two full time incomes even if PiC had to start working on site. PiC was minimally impacted by recent layoffs, thankfully, and I might never not hold my breath a little when hearing news about layoffs but I hope to unclench my fists a little more each year.
We spent a lot on daycare, direct aid, my therapy, take out a few times a week some weeks, groceries (delivered, once in a rare while), and convenience foods.
For value, the therapy is probably the best thing I spent money on this year. I continue to identify and unpick (or try to) patterns that don’t serve me well. Very close runner up is daycare. This only misses the top spot because of the increased risk of SO MANY germs that comes with the time it bought me to be able to focus on work.
Financial Checklist for 2023
- Update our will and trust to include Smol.
- Change executors to people who have more ability to deal with our mess in case something happens to us.
- Make the important financial documents securely available to the key people.
- Add details on our bequests and set up secondary beneficiaries.
Thoughts for 2023
I self isolated from a large branch of family this year. I struggled with their politics and view of the pandemic which has impacted how I see them. I’ve also put more distance between myself and my chaos-driven loved ones for my sanity. It’s worked, my mental and emotional balance is better, even while it saddens me to deliberately foster distance during a time I’m still feeling lonely. I don’t know what our relationships will look like in 2023. I’d like to find a better balance. But I’m not sure if I’m comfortable seeing them unvaxxed (them) and unmasked (them).
We did reconnect with other family this year with whom we’d fallen a bit out of touch. That was really good and I’d like to keep that connection solid.
Our money
Same same. Save more, invest more, give more. Achieve FI in less than 5-10 years.
Our expenses will be going up:
- Full time childcare is more than our mortgage! We’re still part time. Stomaching that increase will be tough but we should plan for it by around midyear or so.
- We still haven’t committed to a new car and that chip shortage will probably carry into another year of low inventory and high prices but we’d better start saving.
- I’m not sure if we can expect any (minor) increase in PiC’s salary. I hope so, it’ll help offset the sting of inflation and increased daycare costs.
Little life things
A dear friend made me a giant Taylor Swift playlist on request. I’m going to start listening to it in earnest in 2023 now that I don’t have a huge stressful holiday to worry about.
I’m committing to monthly phone calls (anathema though they are to my introvert self) with a couple loved ones who connect best by phone, not text.
I’m resolving to do some little things that will make life a bit more smooth for ourselves. Bigger picture: Declutter, donate, organize. Small specific thing: Print out gift labels for people we regularly gift to since that’s one weak point of my gifting. I’m the worst at gift tags and gift labels. Another specific thing: figure out people’s gifts early in the year.
I hope to expand the Lakota Giving project a little more this year.
:: I hope that 2023 is kinder to all of us. How was your 2022?
January 3, 2023
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.
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Dividend income. We received $400 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
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January 2, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 281: Sharing a Donors Choose project: Clothing Closet.
My stomach has been excessively grouchy for the last few weeks. I respond by eating less and less because everything irritates it to some degree and it seems logical to give it less to be annoyed by. Maybe it’s stress related. This reminds me of my childhood where I was constantly having stomachaches and no one knew why. The doctor just diagnosed me with a (never ending) stomach flu and gave my mom a hundred amoxicillin to treat it. Pretty sure he was wrong on both counts. Today I suspect this is and was all stress related.
Year 3, Day 282: Someone wished us a Happy New Year today and I was thoroughly confused. I still don’t feel like Christmas has happened yet so it’s too soon for that. But it’s not actually. Phew. Weird times.
Just took my fourth COVID test in two weeks. Negative still. I have had an intensely sore throat for several days and my sense of taste just suddenly dropped out so I figured I should check. I’d be more certain with a PCR test but we won’t be able to get an appointment for a few days yet.
Year 3, Day 283: Another negative test today which means once again probably I just feel terrible because my body is broken.
Big storms are predicted for the Bay Area but I’m still unclear whether that includes our little bit of it or not. I love rain but not so much flooding.
This was Smol chomping on my face and my shoulder today (image of Fritz the hippo at the Cincinnati zoo chomping a larger hippo). WHY SMOL WHY. (Weekend note: Upon meeting a new to them doll from the hand me down basket, they greeted said doll with a nose chomp. Again, I ask you: WHY?!)
Year 3, Day 284: I’m still impatiently waiting for updates about the under 5 bivalent booster. While Smol Acrobat is catching everything under the sun and bringing it home to me, I’d very much like to continue to dodge COVID for as long as possible.
My throat is a little less painful, after two weeks of testing and meds, and I’m still guessing it was related to exhaustion. Except the fatigue and causes thereof are still high, so it’s unclear why it’s less painful. Not complaining about that, mind you, just observing. Perhaps a more perceptive mind than mine will spot a pattern.
My cough has only gotten worse, though. No congestion, just a dry cough, but a hacking deep cough that frequently nearly induces vomiting which is a whole other dimension of fun.
Year 3, Day 285: I’ve avoided using the WordPress app block editor for ages by copying old templates but whenever I start a new post, I have to use it. I hate it so much! I need to set up a way to dodge it on new posts too.
Also hate: when I run into someone who reminds me of my biodad in some ways but clearly leads a totally different life in some important ways. It brings up much hated guilt over how his life could have should have been better, grief for the father I thought I had but never truly did, sadness that my kids will never have the grandparents that I also wished for as a child.
I shared some of this on Twitter and long time reader friends and Twitter friends provided support that is objective enough that even I can’t argue that I should be to blame.
I’ve also updated our Giving Page here to carry us into the new year. It feels slightly impossible with Twitter falling apart but I’m going to hold hope that people will continue to share and donate through the year.