July 11, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 108: Alas. We had ONE good sleep night, Saturday, and it made Sunday feel 100x better than an average day. It was too much to hope for a second solid sleep like that but 5 wake-ups in the night is too much! Like a dang boomerang.
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Anyway, I didn’t want to jinx us by recording the immediate post-vax reaction but now that we’re 72 hours out, it seems reasonably safe to report the short term: Smol Acrobat seems to be taking Dose 1 very well. They hardly noticed the actual needle, which is unusual, and they didn’t seem to have any side effects. No fever, fatigue, aches. Side effects to Moderna are expected to last a couple days so I think we’re through the woods on that part.
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Gas is currently $6.06/gal. Just stating that for posterity’s sake.
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We’re not celebrating this national holiday. We’re very tired humans. And we’re humans who are very tired of this country being a place that is controlled by the Christian right and tells most of us we’re second class or lower, that we don’t deserve to live happy healthy lives unless it’s within specifically drawn out lines of “acceptability” and says that it’s ok that children are slaughtered in schools as long as they can have their guns. This is not and has never been a great place. It could be so much better. But will it?
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June 27, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 94: 12 am, 2 am, 430 am, 445 am 515 am wake ups. I’m at my wit’s end today. Yes, it was a terrible night of sleep (half was my body being what it is and half was Smol) but it’s now what, three months of trying to ride this out?
This weekend I couldn’t take it anymore and spent some time researching a dozen articles on how to deal with borked sleep and there are so many many reasons it could be and half of them contradict the other hald. Bedtime too early, bedtime too late, too much napping, too little napping, low sleep need, more sleep need.
Today specifically, I’m frazzled between needing to work and needing to fix Smol’s sleep schedule because we cannot keep going like this. Diagnosing what’s causing them their early waking has me pulling my hair out though. They might average 3-4 hours of naps at day and only sleep 10 hours at night. They’re consistently getting up way too early every morning, bright and early and happy about it, but clearly they are still tired to be napping as much as they do. My working theory is to push them to take shorter day naps and hope that means longer night sleep. We’re testing this theory today but that also means I have very very very limited time to work. At best, two hours of nap time to work.
Naturally that means my computer was a steaming pile of rotten turnips. After an hour of troubleshooting and restarting (SEVEN TIMES), the file explorer finally started working only for another thing to break. I was on the verge of screaming. Thankfully, I managed not to blow my top and moved on to other things for a short while.
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JB complained of a sore throat at 9 pm, and since I’ve had one myself for the past four days which I chalked up to CFS, we went and took a precautionary test. Negative, thankfully, so sent them to bed with a dose of ibuprofen for the pain.
Year 3, Day 95: 515 am. Experiment has not yet borne fruit. I know, it was unlikely to change overnight but I hoped. Silly, I know. If it seems like I snapped overnight, it feels like I did! It was over the weekend. Suddenly I just couldn’t take this seemingly endless early morning waking anymore. I had thought surely it’d go back to a more reasonable time by now! (more…)
June 13, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 80: 1045 pm, 330 am, 530 am wake ups. 😒 On the one hand, toddler just wants hugs. On the other hand, why can’t those hugs wait until actual daytime?Especially since I’m solo all day with them. 😵 I told PiC not to rush back since dun dun dunnnnn JB’s started summer camp today! (And he’s got to pick them up, it’s more on his way than not.)
He couldn’t be back in time to be help at the time I’d need a hand anyway, his meetings conflict. So it’s best for him to just do as much work as he can while he’s on site and he can run some errands on the way back. I did a VERY short Costco run with Smol the other day and was very uncomfortable with the number of unmasked people there. As a percentage, it was low, but the place was more crowded than I had hoped so we ran in and ran out with only exactly the things I remembered we needed.
So we vacuumed a lot, went for a walk (terrible walk, they wanted to be carried half the time and that’s not the point!), played in the garage a bit, played with a few toys, and had two snack times. They were terribly upset when I wouldn’t haul out the heaviest of the vacuum attachments. Life is full of disappointment, I know.
They are understanding a lot more words (today: ate more cheese when I told them to eat more cheese), but still aren’t speaking. They articulate lots of sounds and babble but no actual words. Our check up is this week so we can talk to the pediatrician about this. JB was slow to speak too, I’m really hoping Smol Acrobat won’t require speech therapy. It can be arranged but it’ll be so much harder with COVID.
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June 6, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 73: 1 am and 515 am wake up.
It’s the US Memorial Day holiday so we all actually have the day off. We also have my most trusted relative in town and I cannot even begin to tell you what a relief it is to have a responsible trustworthy adult we get on well with here. Having an extra hand with the kids is breathtaking. Having someone that the kids RUN to, squealing, because they adore them? Absolutely priceless. Remember, Smol doesn’t take to just anyone at the best of times. Having someone they will equally go to for hugs and carrying, for playing or comfort, is such a huge help. I normally can’t nap during the day, I fight it because I don’t want to ruin my night sleep but also because my body doesn’t want to relax enough to fall asleep in the first place. After a long morning outside with the kids and doing some much needed yard maintenance, I passed out after lunch. It was WEIRD. But good. I needed that badly.
It also means that a flood of chores that we haven’t had the brainpower to nail down got done. Which also happens to mean more spending. 😬
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Smol took 2 naps totaling five hours today, are we doomed for night sleep?
Year 3, Day 74: 515 am. I suppose we ought to be grateful that wasn’t 415 am given yesterday’s naps!
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With JB spending the morning with their auntie, and Smol conked out hard, I was able to catch up on everything that had piled up from Friday. There was also a moment of relief in there that if I can work when I’m working and parent when I’m parenting, instead of both hats constantly at the same time, I can actually be a human instead of a simmering pot of volcanic frustration. (more…)
May 16, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 52: Smol’s waking up at 445 am was painful but I now have a theory that they’re waking up cold. I noticed their hands and feet were colder than usual and wrapping them up like a burrito and rocking them until they warmed up a little before putting them back to bed seemed to help. It took two tries but it bought us another hour of sleep to the much desired 630 point. Precious hour. PiC took over then and I got to rest just a little longer.
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All I wanted to do today was work on my little sewing project. Not work. Booo work. Alas. ’twas not my fate.
Smol granted me two hours of work time which I begrudgingly used wisely and then we were off to the toddler races. They searched the house for anyone else. No dice. Just you, me, and Sera makes three!
They snacked, which was really lunch, hoovering up all the leftovers I had intended to eat. By the time I was done pitching food into their voracious yet picky little maw, I was too tired to find food for myself. After cleanup, they made a strong bid for vacuuming time. They like to vacuum everyday. Or at least they like the sound of it. They went knocking books off shelves like a cat, and then we sat on the ground so they could practice buckling buckles, removing everything from my bag, emptying my travel pouches, and throwing everything out of my wallet. I put it all back in and they’d do it all over again. It gave me a couple ideas for creating more “discovery pouches” for their entertainment.
We picked up JB from school together and they seemed ready for a nap after but the joke was on us. They spent their entire nap period playing.
I crammed in another hour or two of work while they didn’t nap and then abandoned shop entirely for the chance to try and find them some warm pajamas at the local shops. No dice there either, unfortunately.
Thank goodness for crockpot leftovers from the weekend. The four of us dragged back in, exhausted and hungry, from our fruitless little venture and demolished huge servings of Kahlua pork and cabbage on rice. Two thumbs up. Even Smol ate with gusto. A rare treat, that. (more…)
May 9, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 45: What a terrible night of sleep that was. I thought I was physically up for a walk to the play structure with the kids because I made it there and back without feeling like a hollow simulacrum at the end of it but last night’s many many hours of pain say different. Between Smol’s waking up at 1045 pm crying, and my pain, sleep was a series of catnaps, at best.
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I don’t understand why people act like divorce is a failure or bad. For example: a commenter or two here but they are just an example of what I see/hear a lot. Sure it doesn’t feel great if a relationship doesn’t work out but isn’t it better to have a way to walk away with both parties intact, should you grow apart, instead of being quietly or destructively (or somewhere between the two) miserable / unhappy? I think it’s wonderful that we have the legal option to exercise even if it wouldn’t feel great at first. Especially women.
Though, I suppose as a currently not-religious person, and who very much ignored all the patriarchal bullshit embedded in the religious background that I grew up in, perhaps that’s where the moral judgement stems from?
Personally, I celebrate all people having the legal ability to leave rather than having that limited just to straight white men with power. I wish everyone had the economic ability to leave too, if they needed.
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My 3 hours with Smol started too early because Nap 1 was shorter than usual. We went straight to playing instead of starting with a snack as normal. They were very intent on the new stacking rings toy from the Borrowed Toys box. I used that time to rest a bit, tidy a little, and pack away another bag of 9 month old sized baby clothing for our third and maybe fourth donation box. They cycled through a few more toys solo which bought me time to grab lunch from the fridge (I made the egg salad, PiC made them into sandwiches, teamwork!) and set the table. Usually I don’t have a lot of time before the hawk screeches the walls down around me so that was oddly peaceful. We ate up and then released the Acrobat to play with the vacuum while after clean up. They’re obsessed with both the floor vacuum and the robot vacuum and ask for them every day. Usually it means I’m vacuuming while they sit on my lap and observe with keen interest. It’s a sitting down activity that gets things clean, works for me. As we came up to the three hour mark, they got very cranky and started hitting themselves on the cheeks in frustration over … I don’t know what, but that was a good sign they were pooped out. For good measure, I asked “all done?” and got a very affirmative “all done” sign in return. The attempts to nap were rough and involved at least one round of me going in to give them a cuddle and help them try to settle again. That tear-soaked face was too much. But they finally passed out after an hour of fussing and slept deeply. What a relief.
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This tweet hit a little close to home.
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The SCOTUS leak about the inevitable overturning of Roe v Wade was a real winning way to end the night. I’m putting together a list of the funds we’ll donate to tomorrow. I need a little time to process and plan. NNAF’s site is down right now anyway because of traffic so I’d like to let that ease off a little for them and the smaller funds that are on our list.
PiC and I hugged for a long time as I wept my fury at the horrible people in this country tearing down our rights, left, right and center.
Year 3, Day 46: Tiny terrorist number 2 started the morning festivities at 530 am. Thank goodness for PiC.
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After school dropoff, Smol signed “all done”. They hadn’t been up 3 hours yet but I gave them a drink of water and we headed for the crib. I’m really glad they’re trying to communicate tiredness again, though I should teach them a sign for that, since “all done” could just mean all done with the thing we’re doing right now. They dropped off to sleep pretty fast for which I’m thoroughly grateful.
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After that body blow that is SCOTUS likely overturning Roe v Wade, I really needed some good today. I’ll be donating to abortion and reproductive justice funds later this week.
I put together an update for our Lakota Family contributors. We’ve helped six families directly to date with loads of food, clothing, and household basics. We also sent their Youth Center 35 lbs of supplies, mostly for babies, to distribute to the families when they need them.
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2 hours with Smol: we played with musical toys and “your toe wears a block as a hat”. They did a lot of yelling “ja ja ja ja!!!” and a lot of unexplained screeching. After a carb-y lunch, I took the kids out for a walk. PiC had to come along because Smol was being kind of a whiny pain about it. They don’t walk well with just me and Sera. With someone to chase, though, they were happy to walk at least partway around the block. We worked off some of my simmering internal rage at SCOTUS on the weeds and then we did a bit of wandering around in the sun before they pooped out. Weirdly, though they insisted they were all done and wanted to go to bed, they didn’t nap AT ALL. It was just a long solo play session.
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I finished enough work earlier in the afternoon to take Smol when they were ready to emerge from solo play, and then took the kids to do another curbside pickup. It’s time to upgrade our toothpaste to the enamel friendly stuff, my dental enamel is not happy. I waved the “old people” Sensodyne at PiC when we got home, and then we enjoyed an earlier than usual dinner of tamales and leftover chicken adobo with rice and green beans.
It was an oddly balanced day: work, Smol Acrobat / JB time, loading and unloading the dishwasher, making PiC’s coffee, and sitting down with our sample ballot for the upcoming primaries to do some research.
There are some candidates on the gubernatorial ticket whose platforms I could get behind but realistically it’s hard to believe they’ll get anywhere. There are some Senatorial candidates who will be about as useful as half a pair of scissors and are about as loopy as a ride at Six Flags. There’s an anti-vaxxer on there, several “my God and my religion will save California” types (no, keep your religion to yourself) , and a few Law and Order Dems that are absolute nos. One of them, a white male Dem who also called himself a hero and incorruptible, and thought his lineage “related to signers of the Declaration” were important to cram in there, touted his Asian-American wife which was kind of gross. It’s mildly cathartic scribbling out those terrible candidates. That leaves a small handful of possible candidates to consider and weigh the likelihood they’ll get anywhere if we vote for them. The candidate from the Socialist Workers Party has the platform I’m most in favor of right now but again, will she get anywhere? Hard to say. Down the ticket, some of the Green party candidates have the stances on issues that I want to move forward but most of them don’t sound even a little prepared to do the work. Their statements are mostly slogans with nothing useful to tell me whether they’d actually understand how to do what they want done in the system we have. One of them is “End poverty in California! Fund schools, housing and healthcare.” Ok, yes. What’s your plan? You have space for at least 500 more words and you did nothing with it. Seems to me if you can’t even write a real candidate statement, you’re not serious about the work. The candidates for AG were particularly irritating. More than half of them were fearmongering and yes, sure, the job is to prosecute crimes but there’s something very unattractive about an AG who’s all about throwing people into jail and says we should “stop emptying our prisons”, or “support the brave men and women of law enforcement”. Sir, we’ve seen the videos. We know who is disproportionately being harmed and it’s not the people in uniform. It might be throwing my vote away but the Green party candidate is a criminal defense and animal rights attorney who said the magic words of “end mass-incarceration” and “reform the criminal justice system”. Do I think he can manage both those things? Well… probably not. But I’d feel a lot less gross voting for him than another compromise candidate. I sure do wish he had a plan of some kind.
Year 3, Day 47: Another 5:30 am wake up with Smol. We spent the first hour together since PiC was crashed out after one too many late work nights.
This early waking thing has gone on more than a couple weeks now. At first, I thought Snough had a point about increasing Smol’s daily physical activity so even though we can’t take them for daily swims, I’ve been taking them for more walks outside. They do PLENTY of running around the house, lots and lots of it, but figured outside air and exertion seemed to be a good idea. Alas, it’s not making any difference at night which, combined with their rash of middle of the night wakings, probably means that they’re getting too much daytime sleep. I hate this. As it is, I’m lucky to get 4-5 hours to work a day so I’m working at hyper speed.
After doing school drop off, three hours with Smol, and school pick up, I was just on the edge of being utterly done in for the day so instead of doing the smart thing and going to rest for a while, I cooked dinner. It was a delicious dinner but I sweated my way through it. Did you know that intense pain can make you sweat? That’s a fun development.
I managed to finish enough work so I could lay down for an hour with a fistful of OTC pain meds. We made it through an early dinner and bedtime to start recovering a little from the day’s energy expenditure but this is definitely one of those wallops that will takes 3-4 more days to come back from. It hardly seems fair that 6 hours of effort translates into 4-5 days of pain and diminished capability but that’s my life.
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Also frustrating: Smol is on an anti-vegetable strike. Even when I cut them up into tiny bits, they’ll eat it up from the spoon and then spit out all the vegetables. They were always fine with the taste of veggie purees, so it seems like it’s the texture they object to, but this is so frustrating!
Year 3, Day 48: After a 230 am sobfest where Smol required a bit of comfort, and we all crawled back to our respective pillows, they slept in until 7 am. That was sorely needed. My entire body is down to the dregs again, and both my hands are feeling fragile. This isn’t going to be a day I can handle the cast iron pan.
Is this the day we go to an official one nap schedule for Smol? PiC protests but I think we should try it even though it makes my heart sad and my body sadder. PiC’s had three 8 am meetings this week and that always makes our lives extra complicated. I have to take a heavier share of the running around with the kids without the ability to take breaks or pace myself like needed. A one nap day is going to make things even harder.
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After dropping JB off at school, we did chalk art on the driveway. Or we tried anyway. They asked for more colors and after I brought out more colors, they locked onto the chalk chips from the broken piece of chalk instead and spent their outside time finding little caches for each chip. Good enough activity. I wanted to pop them in the stroller and take Sera for her belated walk but I could already feel the telltale twinges that signaled my body’s need to crash. I knew that Sera could hang out for a little longer so for once, I listened to my body and kept Smol on a low-key activity run until PiC could take over.
Even after two hours of sitting down, the pain was creating waves of nausea. I vaguely think about how much I don’t want to play through the pain but that’s not really a choice now, is it? At around hour 3 and a half, the nausea eased up a bit. Just in time for Smol to wake up from their one nap of the day. O_O
PiC and I swapped off every two hours of Smol-minding which got us through enough work to end the evening at a reasonable hour. I took the kids for a short walk for the pre-dinner hour and he started reheating the leftovers. Teamwork! Very tired team. But it works.
Year 3, Day 49: Phew. Every night gets more brutal. Smol woke up crying three times in the middle of the night, needing brief consolation before they could go back for another nap. I couldn’t get back to sleep properly between each wake up so the 45 minutes that I finally got when PiC took them out at 630 was not even close to enough. PiC took one of the wake ups, he was still working during the first one and solidly passed out for the third, but he has this gift of being able to sleep through almost anything when he’s tired. Unlike my body which makes no sense and can’t sleep when exhausted. I’m starting to think it’s something to do with my hypervigilence. Some day, I will learn to sleep soundly. Until then, willpower and water.
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After their first nap, during which I was both thoroughly mired in brain fog but still got a whole mass of work done, Smol and I shuffled to the kitchen for cleaning and cooking and snacking. They were amazingly cooperative, for them, and sat in their high chair poking and prodding their food and occasionally even eating it while I cleaned the counters, unloaded the dishwasher, handwashed all the stuff that needed handwashing and got ready for the main event: getting 16 lbs of pork shoulder cooked. The smaller half of that went into the crockpot, it’ll become Kahlua pork and cabbage for the weekend. The larger half went into the oven for a very low and slow roast. That’ll be one dinner tonight and the rest will be frozen and help us out one night and a couple lunches down the road. After you take out the fat and the bones, there’s a fair bit of meat but not as much as you’d expect.
After a full afternoon of work and a little work on the Lakota Families tracking page to log a couple new contributions, I was pleased to be cutting up the shoulder and prepping the freezer packs. Something about cutting up sale priced protein and putting it away for a later meal felt like home to me. Felt like I was myself again for a few minutes. I guess I feel most comfortable when I’m putting a lot of effort into saving money and planning ahead to feed my family.
My legs and back were not so pleased, but when are they ever happy with me these days? The gel mat in the kitchen makes a world of difference though. I wouldn’t be able to move for a week if I were on my feet on the tile for that hour. The gel mat is old and the edges are curling up and breaking but the main part of the mat is still saving my bones.
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Smol was very pleased about the boxes I’ve been leaving out for them. While JB worked on an art project, Smol was putting things in the box and taking them out again for companionship as they cruised around the house. They also like tearing bits off the cardboard and eating them or dipping them in Sera’s water bowl or bringing them to me as small temporary offerings. Then they ask for them back.
Still no luck convincing them to color with the crayon eggs, those eggs are still nothing but entertaining toys to be rotated in their tray repeatedly.
May 2, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 38: Yesterday was a rollercoaster day: lots of conflict with JB; made egg salad for today’s lunches; worked some but mostly laid down as much as I could. After all that, I anticipated today would be Extra Rough. BUT *happy surprise* the day started with slightly lower than nausea-inducing pain. Dare I hope that today’s pain and fatigue on a PiC away at work day will be approximately at normal levels rather than the past few weeks of awful? I need to practice having hope. I’m going to pace myself, not take the emergency meds, and hope for the best.
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These sparkly flats made me smile. A shame they can’t possibly have all the cushioning I need in shoes but I appreciate their adorableness.
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We have entered the age of tantrum and going boneless. I didn’t miss this!
Our three hours today were packed: We read two books, then had a big bowl of fruit for snack. Egg salad for lunch. Washed up and then Smol asked for some time with the vacuum. We vacuumed the closet and once it was cleaned, moved along to trying a new to us toy. Once they got bored, I suggested a walk so they brought me some socks. We took Sera for a poke-along 9-cracker walk. We all got very brisk fresh air. Smol pooped out at the end of our walk on their last cracker and kept sitting down on the sidewalk but they had plenty of energy to continue playing in the backyard once I hauled them there like a sack of squirming potatoes. Sera sunbathed while we played, and had music time. Smol was increasingly whinier with each “no” until they finally caved and admitted with their sign “all done”. They slowly settled down for a nap while I hit the books again and did as much work as I could.
Physically, I’m bone tired, even my face hurts, but I don’t want to crawl under my desk and stay there. This is definitely better than last week.
PiC picked JB up from school while I kept hacking away at piles of work and minded both kids for a bit after Smol woke. I did just about as much as I could stand and hit the leftovers for dinner. Thank goodness for leftovers. I’ll try to cook dinner tomorrow morning.
Smol development!: We got to work on boundaries over dinner. They Greatly Desired the fortune cookies across the table. I allowed them to have half of one. They wanted “more, please.” I said sorry, no, those are not ours. We had ours. Their face scrunched up in dismay and they squealed with anger. Nope. Face scrunched up and this time, actual tears. Still no. Higher pitched screech. Still no. We experienced a new octave, prolonged. Nope.
We worked through all the upset and emotion, we had a little chat about how even if we ask politely sometimes the answer is no, and we definitely don’t get things by way of tantrums. They eventually calmed down and moved on.
Year 3, Day 39: I’ve never enjoyed drinking a cup of coffee in my life, much as I want to, but I’ve made many coffees for PiC over the years and he always claims they were good. He takes it seriously enough that I don’t think he’d pander to my ego if they weren’t good. Since my experimenting with the French press a few days ago, I’ve been dubbed the superior coffeemaker. It turns out that’s because I don’t follow directions. Or rather, I don’t remember them. I asked him for his ratio of grounds to water and then promptly forgot. I feel like he said something like 1 tbsp to 4 oz? Maybe? But it was late and I wasn’t that invested in remembering so I brewed it my way, at twice the concentration and voila! Liquid gold! He was duly impressed until I revealed the ratio and then he was appalled at my profligate use of beans. What? It made an excellent cup didn’t it? So the next batch I made, he got to choose: liquid gold or meh silver?
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