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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October 30, 2024
Life with JB
I need to make some decisions about JB’s placement in their self defense class. Or not. I could just wait until they age out of this class naturally. That’s coming up sooner than I’m ready to face. I hate the timing of the next age up class. It’s also unbelievably crowded and they need to split the class somehow. JB is still showing up and putting in the time but they aren’t putting in the kind of effort I would like to see to keep building their skills. Their same-age peers have already bailed on this age class, which means they’re getting practice partners who are very inexperienced instead of someone just about their level that can give them a challenge. I don’t care if they compete for the medals. I care if they compete because it gives them more experience with reacting under pressure. They tend to freeze and this whole exercise is about getting them to a place where they are comfortable defending themselves against the next kid who hits them instead of putting up with getting hit or kicked for weeks before telling anyone.
Sigh. We’re so different. At this age, I would vomit if I had to speak in front of the class but woe betide the kid that laid a hand on me. I’m not saying my way is better but their way worries me for their general safety.
JB’s whole school seems to be obsessed with Disney’s Descendants. Where did that come from? The show/movies have been around for a few years, it’s just hit the elementary school consciousness all of a sudden. I don’t love it.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Both kids are so clingy this month. Mostly clinging to me randomly, jostling each other to hold my hands when we walk anywhere, and occasionally with each other (Smol wanting to sit next to JB for dinner, not the adults). It’s a lot of touch. Too much touch.
Smol Acrobat is getting better at putting up utensils, they actually do better without me nearby so I now just tell them to do it and walk away. They still needed some handholding for laundry at the start of the month but at the end when I sent them to deal with the small pile waiting to be put away, they did it entirely independently!
It feels like they are a year behind JB in almost everything. No idea if it’s their being a pandemic baby, we’re so much more busy and tired, or just their personality. It doesn’t matter, either, it’s just struck me that we’re doing lots of things a year later than we had with the first round. We had their first dishwashing lesson this month; we did dishwashing with JB at 3. That was just me not thinking about it. But I saw them deliberately mismatching their socks this month, JB started that around 2. They’re talking a lot more, and singing now, even! JB sang at the top of their lungs starting around 2. Hasn’t stopped. (I wish it would stop on occasion, there are only so many times I can hear the same song before my ears quit.)
Pupdate
I’m spending time with every local pup that I come across. Doing what I can to fill my dog quota even just a little.
Precious Moments
Half crouching, Smol Acrobat: don’t wook at me pwease.
Me: Uh ok. Why?
Smol Acrobat: Because you’re doing someping and so I don’t want you to see me.
Me: Well, that didn’t clear anything up.
*****
JB, out of the blue: E picked me for the noodle but then C took the noodle and picked A for the Yoda ball instead!
Me: Whoaaaaa back up. What??
They frequently begin in the middle of conversations and I mimic pressing “Rewind” which, of course, goes right over their head.
*****
Smol Acrobat: I have so many teef in my body! An’ in my head, an’ my cheek, an’ my odder cheek, an’ my neck, and dis neck, and my what’s dis called?
Me: the back of your head?
SmAc: yeah! Dere too!
Me: Oh wow, that’s a lot of teeth. A whole lot.
October 28, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 190: Blergh. I made myself go to bed early (for me) last night and still felt like a waterlogged foam pillow trying to get up.
My plan to start the week with enough rest was derailed by a jerk male of indeterminate age going around the neighborhood banging on / kicking in doors. I contacted all the neighbor-friends and found out it already happened to one of them. Their kids reported it sounded like a real break-in attempt so my dander was up. Whoever this is needs to be caught – this is stupid and dangerous. I strung together about 8 hours, even after the requisite 2-3 hours of settling down time (trying to read), but felt like I got no rest at all.
This morning was not much better. We notified a few more neighbors and found out that we’re the fourth ones that we know of to be hit and there’s more than one of them. Then I remembered that, many years ago, a friend’s brother was murdered in a break-in and I never heard from the family again. That, and my aunt and cousin narrowly escaped similar when their home was broken into when I was even younger. No wonder what sounded and felt like an attempted break in brought up such a visceral reaction of rage.
Year 5, Day 191: Welp. I was prepared for a shitty day. Had my consolation danish ready to go when I emerged from the first, second, or third hyperfocus sessions. Instead we woke up to a feverish Smol Acrobat declaring “I’m going to stay home wif you and Wee because I do not feel good! Not Daddy. Oh wait, yes Daddy.”
Oh.
Well. Shit.
PiC rescheduled his meetings, my truckload of work is not negotiable, and we split 80/20 kidcare and muddled through the day. I did a lot of the cuddling, which got Smol through their rough bits and was terrible for my currently already impacted immune system that’s just struggling to get past last week’s cold-type viral thing, but that was most of my 20%. I was wilting with fatigue and general ick by 3 pm, desperate for a nap.
It wasn’t until I sat down after bedtime that I came anywhere near hyperfocus again. Frustrating but got just close enough to put a decent amount of work to bed. I gave myself a few minutes with the latest posts at Ilona Andrews and The Struggle feels so familiar to my overall work right now. I got some unbelievably disheartening updates today and just wanted to quit on the spot. I hope the information is half baked and mostly wrong because if even half of it is true, life will be impossible in six months. Just sheer impossible.
Year 5, Day 192: The kids had their dental cleaning today. They love their dentist, or the dentist experience because they get to watch TV and get goodies at the end, and their hygienist and dentist are pretty great. However. Next year, the dentist is going out of network in the way that means they will still bill insurance on our behalf for our reimbursement but we have to pay the full freight and get a portion of it back later. Another expense AND another thing to keep track of. 😫
Speaking of overstretching: between my still feeling under the weather and Smol Acrobat’s fevers this week, I’m SO grateful on one point. When PiC and JB were rear-ended on the weekend, it was minor enough that we decided it was unnecessary to report to the insurance. We didn’t want to – the driver who hit them was clearly distressed about the prospect and it would have impacted his insurance much worse than it would have impacted us financially. Apparently his foot slipped off the brakes and the car rolled into ours.
Year 5, Day 193: Some days you struggle with getting the kids to see and do the chores, some days you break up fights over which chores they get to do. These are weird extremes.
Coffee grinding is the Chore of Choice. JB has been doing it on their own for about 6-8 months and now Smol Acrobat is grumpy because they’re not allowed to do it yet. “I do good wistening!” they protest. Yes, you do good listening for a 3 year old. This needs a 6 year old good listener. They grumbled but agreed to spectate only. Then we had to holler at JB to pay attention because they got distracted playing with Smol Acrobat. 🤦🏻♀️
JB is currently going through a bunch of playground conflict with their same gender friends. We were so hopeful for less conflict this year with newer kids in the mix but then BullyKid from 2nd grade joined the group. Their other gender friend also had a conflict and split with their same gender friends. I don’t know for sure if 2ndgrade Bully is the instigator but given there were no conflicts for many weeks before they joined, and the conflicts immediately started when they joined, I have my suspicions.
Year 5, Day 194: “The great love of my life is a homicidal maniac. No one’s perfect.” I really liked the premise of Lucy Liu’s Elementary when it first came out but never got to see much of it. Now that it’s on Netflix, I get to enjoy it as my background noise. I like it!
Good news, JB and the other kids apparently mended bridges. I wasn’t sure which way that was going to go. That’s a bit of a relief but I expect the larger issues with the conflict-provocateur remain.
Money: If you use any of the listed P&G brands, they have holiday and sports-related rebates: Get $15 when you spend $50 and Get $5 when you spend $20, good from Sept 29-Dec 29 2024.
My exciting Friday night: working until I had to make dinner, cooking dinner and getting everyone else off to bed, and then doing tutoring prep (scanning pages out of JB’s math book for their uncle professor to use) and then researching and predicting preventative healthcare costs for 2025 so we can make open enrollment decisions next week. The dental bit is the most painful. They say they’ll pay 90% of “reasonable and customary fees” but I need to know what that means in order to figure out how much of that 90% stacks up to my dentist’s costs and therefore what our anticipated OOP costs will likely be. Only I can’t because according to the ADA: the words usual, customary and reasonable are not interchangeable and UCR is a misleading acronym.
UCR is actually three different concepts, not one. Usual fees are determined by the dentist. The fee the insurance company determines to be customary may be lower than the area dentists’ usual or reasonable fees for the same service. There is no universally accepted method for determining the customary fee schedule, which may vary a great deal among plans, even when those plans operate in the same area. So, the benefit paid will generally be based on a percentage of the insurance company’s customary fee schedule. Patients often do not know what their out-of-pocket costs will be because third-party payers generally do not release these customary fee schedule maximums to the public.
That’s VERY ANNOYING.
SIGH.
Anyway, I worked out most of our expected fees because the hygienist helped me schedule all of their appointments for next year in one go, so at least I have that information to go on. I think I’ve wrapped my head around this: they cover 100% preventative care at their discounted rates so the other percentages of coverage for treatment don’t matter. I don’t have to wrangle with the other stuff for now because all we have planned is preventive care and we can’t predict anything else at this point. So that’s dental done for now. For my 401k, since I’m already accustomed to the accelerated rate of contributions, I may keep that percentage for the first half of the year and be done with that, similar to how we do PiC’s plan. That’ll give us better cash flow for the second half of the year and ensure we’ve maxed it out a second time before dreams of rage-quitting start up again. Hopefully.
October 25, 2024
1. We voted!!!! The local races were the hardest for me to work through. Also resisting the impulse to put a big X through TFG’s name on the ballot.
2. It’s hard to explain what life is like for us with my chronic health stuff and how much harder it is to cope with hits like a feverish preschooler or a grade schooler running into trouble with their schoolwork or classmates on top of being beyond maxed out at work. I don’t often try to explain. So when a friend reacts with what might seem like over the top sympathy for a new hit landing squarely on my metaphorical jaw, it’s kind of nice that they understand.
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October 21, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 183: Holiday Mondays are weird Mondays.
We took the kids to the park where they took minor injuries, both to the knees doing completely different things, and came home needing a big lunch and a rest. While my time with the trainer is definitely showing (tiny) results and helping reduce how badly my body reacts to this sort of flagrant overuse, it’s still pretty unhappy with the decision to take fresh air and several thousand steps instead of sitting in my soft but supportive office chair for several hours. My brain doesn’t mind the break, my body strenuously objects to the change in routine.
The subject of filial responsibility came up on Bluesky and it brought up my low-level creeping uncertainty about what’s in store for the future. Seven years ago, I had a consult with a lawyer who felt I had no legal reason to worry about making a break with the biodad and that I was on firm legal ground to stop supporting him. I would hope that after this many years of estrangement, and likely more by the time a nursing home comes into play, that my legal responsibility is similarly not. I would like to talk to a lawyer again in the near future to confirm their understanding of the CA filial responsibility law and confirm the likelihood that I would be pulled into that vortex without my consent.
Year 5, Day 184: We had house guests for the long weekend and the dynamic has been such a rollercoaster. Now we know what having three kids three years apart could have been like: constantly up and down. Love, hate, love, hate, love, hate, bicker bicker huuuuuuug. We three adults are simultaneously bemused and exhausted. I’ve so appreciated having the company of a long time friend who knows my medical stuff and is super mindful of COVID risks, so that’s been so good for my soul. But the children. 😆😵💫 I am so grateful they made the trip to visit us, we’re so lucky that they still love us after all that. At least I hope they do. 😆
Is my brain broken: Going over homework with JB, I seem to have just lost all memory of how we borrow numbers when subtracting. Like there’s a block of knowledge that used to live in my head but isn’t there anymore. What. I know that I keep losing memory but to lose a core set of computing rules that I’ve been using since I was 7 is really disturbing. After waiting for it to come back, I gave up and looked it up but it still feels foreign like this is knowledge I never knew at all. There’s nothing familiar about the facts I relearned. There aren’t any echoes of familiarity like addition or multiplication tables or division which may feel rusty but the memory-feel, the layers of having done that for years, is still there for those things. Not so for this part of subtraction.
Year 5, Day 185: Back to the metaphorical donut shop for me today after seeing our friends safely to the airport. I’m really tired both from prolonged socializing, as enjoyable as it was, and from catching some viral thing yesterday. Just my luck. I get to spend time with this friend for the first time in years and of course my body craps out after a few days. So rude. I have no regrets! Just continued annoyance that some of our meatsuits are so incredibly fragile. Everyone else is, of course, fine. I’m glad everyone else is fine, I just want to be in that group.
Today’s my first trainer day since Friday and have I already lost all conditioning? Last week, arms days were feeling pretty good. I was doing the max number of reps, not a huge number of course but high for me, and feeling a smidge stronger each day. Today, after only 20 modified pushups and 24 lateral raises, my face was in extreme danger of being ground into the carpet during planks. We barely made it to the end of three planks. Summary: noodle arms.
Probably doesn’t help anything that I’m not feeling well either. Maybe that’s connected. We’ll see!
Year 5, Day 186: So much drag, today, physically.
PiC finally got the second car to the shop! He had to go about it in a convoluted way since we had registered it as non-operational: get it registered as operational, tow it to the shop, get key maintenance and smogging done, drive it home, sell it. Registration was $164, smog check and a water thingie replacement ($600). It’s been SUCH a relief to have it out of the garage where it’s been a Very Tight squeeze for more than a year but it’ll be home again in only a few days so please join me in crossing my fingers that someone buys it before the end of this year.
Also it just occurred to me that I should just order JB more Vogmasks. If I attach the liner to them to protect them from stains, that’ll get them a better fit until the custom masks come in. The custom masks are a couple months out. This way, I can stop driving myself up the wall about the aged materials’ poor fit! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.
Year 5, Day 187: Today would have been a dog borrow day but for the mountain of work that towers over me. I took a risk earlier this week, hoping someone could come through for me but they couldn’t, so here I am with a week’s worth of work on a Friday. The saddest of faces I’m making. I ended up working until 11 pm.
October 18, 2024
1. I got to spend time with a long time friend for the first time in years. ❤️
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October 14, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 176: Recovery from the weekend: The kids and I got our flu and COVID vax this weekend. Wow did the body aches get me. I had to push my Sunday workout to today but then today was so busy and stressful I just couldn’t handle one more thing so pushed it again. I hate that but remind myself that the workouts are supposed to improve my life, not make it worse when I’m already struggling. I’ll still get them all done in the week. It’s a good thing PiC will get his COVID at a separate time so we weren’t both down.
Also my brain was wading through hip-deep mud all day and I only just figured out at the end of the day that maybe this is a type of brain fog. Post vax type? Maybe? Or heat related? I don’t like it. I forced myself through a lot of work but it felt terrible the whole time. It was nothing like hyperfocusing feels.
On the one hand, I’m deeply grateful to have benefits. On the other hand, I’ve come to find Open Enrollment weirdly stressful. No idea why, getting to pick things that provide our care is a good thing. Also overall benefits like healthcare and retirement just shouldn’t be tied to employment and I’ve always hated that it was and still is. It’s as ridiculous as dental and vision being separate from medical coverage.
Year 5, Day 177: At 2 mg a night, I’m still occasionally waking up sweating some nights but the nightmares do seem blunted a little. They’re not completely waking me up the way they were 3 weeks ago. It’s not doing the trick yet though, as evidenced by my utter inability to handle JB’s attitude with patience and forbearance. They were rude to me and I snapped: “don’t talk to me anymore” and walked away.
The amount of things to do is overwhelming. I’ve actually done A LOT but the number of things that have multiplied when I wasn’t looking is ARGH. The passports are done! I have pants that fit! Our Yeti has been replaced! I’ve chased down our FSA payments and they’ve been deposited! We have limited access to cheap COVID kits through an employer so I’ve been collecting our limited allotment each month to send to our family of five friends who can’t get any for a reasonable price and to our other family of five friends who are immunocompromised and need a steady supply. I stress packed a box for the Lakota reservation and that helped a little (close to checking that box).
But there are a million other little things that keep popping up.
Also I could just cry. My beautiful snap pea plants may all have powdery mildew. The weather has been really weird and I’ve been really tired so I’ve been watering them late in the day instead of in the morning like usual and didn’t think it would be a problem. I think I kind of did this to them and now have to remove them all even though they were producing so well?
Year 5, Day 178: Bookshop.org has free shipping today. I missed it last year and resolved not to be caught unprepared again. I’d be prepared to buy Christmas gifts from them this year! But no. Fail. The list of books to buy for niblings is blank. I knew this was coming up and yet still don’t have my list. Dammit! Stress!
This is par for the bumpy, gopher-hole-filled course. I’ve been sluggish from the post-vax recovery, and off my game all week as a result. It upsets my equilibrium when I don’t have any balance between work and housework like running the laundry on the right days or making progress in little tidying up ways. I DID gather all my colorful pens and markers into a plastic bin at least.
PiC heroically did the Costco run today so while he took the kids to go biking, I could quickly throw together a hearty meal so easily. We had the savory and filling Irish stew ($22, premade), a loaf of rustic bread ($6), and salad ($4) for dinner. I feel very lucky on this point.
Currently overthinking: packing toiletries for travel. We have to do a weekend trip in a few weeks and I want this organized well before. Right now we have a large communal bag for all things: many mini shampoos, conditioners and body washes; hairbrush/comb, lotion, razors, etc. Everyone has their own little pouch for dental supplies and they all go into the communal bag. It’s convenient to have everything in one place, mostly, but sometimes it would be more helpful to have individual supplies. When the kids are big enough to have their own suitcases, maybe it’d be easier and better for their sense of responsibility to have their own pouch. I really like this one I found at Michaels and am trying to think through the separation of things. How do/did you pack these sorts of things when you were traveling with family? At what age did the kids (you as a kid or your kids, all experiences valid!) in your family have their own packing list and case and all that?
Year 5, Day 179: Rush rush rush today. Some management meetings ate up a quarter of my day *dramatic groan*. It was actually for a good reason but still, those two hours are huge. I ended up working until nearly midnight catching up. Le sigh.
I put Good Girls on for background noise while working this week almost entirely because I like Christina Hendricks but the show just slightly annoyed me the whole way through. Going back to Leverage Redemption is very soothing.
Parker in Leverage:Redemption is more me than ever.
Sophie: Parker, you do not want to kill Ethan.
Parker: Yes, I do. I want to kill a lot of people, all the time. I just don’t.
Parker: What, didn’t you see the sign at the front of the building? It says 112 days without an accident. They’re due.
Hardison: Wow you are so smart, you are so smart. I bet you could spell every word in the dictionary except for respect.
Year 5, Day 180: I was scheduled for three workouts this week and since I simply could not get my equilibrium all week they ended up lumped in the middle of the week:, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Today I had the weirdest urge to fit in a set of exercises so I did a couple sets of squats. Extra weird because that’s one of my weakest exercises, but the brain wants what it wants.
I’m annoyed about ingredients today and my inability to use fresh ingredients when I’m have them and never having them when I want or need to use them.
There were the Anaheim peppers I asked PiC to buy extras of so I could chop and freeze them for future chilis. I then got sick, or had a flare up, or something for long enough that I forgot they were waiting until it was too late.
There’s that cabbage I asked him to pick up 4 months ago so I could make chicken cabbage salad one day but I’ve been so crazed I haven’t cooked more than three times since. It’s given up the ghost.
And sour cream! We perpetually forget to have it on hand when we plan to have Mexican food and when we do have it, we don’t need it until it’s expired. WHY. WHY ARE WE LIKE THIS.
It’s not everything all the time, we’re good about finishing leftovers all the time, it’s fresh ingredients that I just cannot cope with between the vagaries of my attention (remembering it exists) and energy and time.
October 11, 2024
1. We left this till October on purpose for timing immunity peaks and things but then it was also a bit of a scramble to get 3 of 4 of us vaccinated this week because my week leading up to the right time was so hectic. Still, glad we managed!
2. A thought that made me chuckle: “A plague on both your houses!” was the original ESH.
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