Year 2, Day 309: Everyone else has the day off today and I’m jealous. I’m also annoyed because JB’s morning shenanigans wasted an hour of my work time which means I can’t knock off early or take a long lunch time walk with them. Humph.
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Over the weekend, I made a pasta sauce with ground turkey. I set aside half for one meal this week and half to freeze. We also dug up our teeny tiny potato harvest and I think they’re going to become a plate of crispy garlic roast potatoes. Twitter enlightened me to the magic of parboiling and it works!
*****
My phone continues to mess with me. Adding to the randomly turning off trick, the keyboard has begun to refuse to actually type at a normal speed and inserting random caps locks and spaces at will. That’s less than ideal. I started researching possible replacement phones over the weekend and got really useful info from folks on Twitter. I think I’ve narrowed down my preferred candidates to three Samsungs: S10, S10e and S20.
*****
I should NOT have eaten that many shrimp chips in one sitting. š¶
Year 2, Day 310: It’s been a solid two weeks on a new supplements regimen and I think it has been doing some good for my fatigue. I was at rock bottom for my annual exam a few months ago. They referred me to a specialist who gave me a whole slew of lifestyle modification recommendations, some of which I already do, and the one that was easiest to act on was adding a lot of supplements to my daily routine. It’s still early yet to know if it really works for me but even with my other heartburn and heart palpitation issues, I’m a step up from my lay on the floor because I’m so steamrollered and hollowed out and can’t breathe mode.
Obviously still deeply fatigued, as one step away from rock bottom is not much and can be reached easily by a little overdoing it but still. It’s a step up that I’m on most days and I’m really grateful for that much. More please.
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PiC fixed our water filter! Three cheers for PiC! It only took a $250 full replacement of parts which apparently has to happen every 3-4 years. š
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JB is really into chorizo burritos these days. We only tried it because of a mistake, we were given someone else’s order. But fun surprise for us, they’re good!
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I hate the plastic waste related to this but I’ve had to make some food plastic concessions for our sanity and energy. We have been going through our fresh fruits and veggies too fast, usually running out before the next shopping trip and we’re trying to keep our shopping time minimal, so I’ve bought cases of fruit cups. When we run out of whole fruit, we still have something for the kids. It helps us bridge gaps and reduces my stressing over that element of their diets when we’re juggling so much.
On that subject, feeding Smol has been a real challenge. They’re so opinionated about what and when they eat that they can spend an entire dinner yelling at me and waving their arms in negatory gestures. The fruit cups help smooth the way to their eating a balanced meal.
Speaking of dinner, I managed to make a lentil salad and salmon dinner tonight! It’s the first night in weeks that I was able to take up my dinner duties again and I’m so relieved to be capable of cooking again.
Year 2, Day 311: I had to gain consciousness at 4 am in part 3 of Smol’s jaunt down FUBAR Sleep Lane. First it was a diaper change. PiC took care of that and then passed out. 20 minutes later, Smol was hollering because they were hungry. PiC speculated (hours later) that we’re hitting another growth period where they’re hungrier faster than usual, but also they were a right pain about eating yesterday so I’m sure they simply failed to get enough calories during the day. I cuddled them in our bed while they drank a bottle (still trying to wean them) and then plopped them back into bed. I couldn’t get back to sleep until just after 5, expecting that I’d really regret going back to sleep later. I did. It was HARD waking up again to take JB to school and get to work!
*****
I had what should have been my last ortho appt today. PiC said that was fast! I said that felt like an eternity! He said, well that’s because you were holding your breath for 20 minutes!
It’s true.
My ortho is incredibly brisk and to the point which I VERY much appreciated in a time when I wanted to get in and out as fast as I can. It turns out I’m not done yet, alas. They still need a bit more work so while he’s removed the little bits that hold the aligners on, he’s also ordering another set of treatment trays.
*****
I made dinner two nights in a row! I’m happy that my thrown together chicken in enchilada sauce turned into taco salad night with blue corn taco shells, romaine lettuce and tomatoes, Mexican rice we’d had frozen in the pantry, and guacamole! We both grew up almost exclusively on our respective Asian cuisines but in a pinch, what I can throw together is an approximation of Mexican food for dinner with pantry foods. We’re kinda weird.
Year 2, Day 312: Up at 5 am with Smol, both PiC and I were. Ugh. Why. What have we done to be punished so??
We did our best to keep on chugging today, but it was quite a slog to keep the body and brain in motion.
*****
My annual collection of tax forms dance has begun! I’ve got a W2, a 1099, just twenty more forms to go! I’ll have to wait up until the end of February to get my Vanguard forms. Booooo. I always look forward to being done with filing so of course I’m on tenterhooks the whole of January and February trying to gather all the forms.
I don’t know why I enjoy this but I do.
Year 2, Day 313: Smol slept well all night!!!! We didn’t have to get up at 4 or 5 am!!!
So that was exciting. AND we’re speculating maybe all the wake ups this week was for a developmental purpose because today, instead of screeching all throughout their meal(s), Smol suddenly started pointing with a purpose which clearly communicated what they wanted at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was amazing. It was so much better than the dramatic hollering at random that was impossible to figure out.
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JB celebrated their 100th day of school today. (We all did, because as I pointed out, this was not a solo endeavor.) They had a crown, and wrote 100 words as fast as they could, and brought in 100 small items to share. We had cheesecake for dessert with pretend candles to top it off.
*****
I’ve gone without a massage for several months and underestimated how severely I’d be in pain after my first one back. After much deliberation and anxiety, I’d taken up an appointment today and it felt good at the time. But the physical feedback afterward had me curled up on the floor in pain by the evening. Seamus and I used to share my heavy duty pain meds to manage his arthritis. Now I’m using his leftover heavy duty pain meds. Turn and turn about.
I couldn’t sleep until 5 am because that’s the tradeoff for being in slightly less than excruciating pain: having a brain that simply cannot fall asleep for the entire night. I wonder if pain meds actually reduce anyone’s pain because my experience with it has always been, at best, a temporary and mild reduction in pain with horrible side effects.
Maybe there’s a different med I can try in the future.
2. I’m getting myself in order for the 2021 tax year thing. I always feel very anticipatory about this even though it’s possible we’ll owe money. Suppose that’s the anticipation talking: I want to see if my projections last year worked out as intended.
3. Delightful: We got a case of a variety of formulas from Enfamil for … I don’t know what reason that we couldn’t use. I couldn’t donate it anywhere here but was loathe to just throw them out. That’s perfectly good formula! I shipped them to Penny and she was able to distribute them in a day!
4. We took Smol Acrobat out to greet JB coming home from school one day and the squeals from the happy elder sibling were really something. We’d stopped halfway up the street, Smol had given up walking, and was leaning on my legs but was so happy to see their JB that they practically ran home with the renewed vigor. It’s very nice to see them adoring each other right now.
5. Our friend sent us an absolutely hilarious gift.
Challenges this week: I’m still exhausted every week. It’s frustrating that my health did improve with therapy and still only moved my baseline from untenable to moderately to severe misery depending on the day. I hope this isn’t the best time I have left.
Year 2, Day 295: What’d we do last year for Christmas? PiC asked. I don’t remember but I was a lot less stressed and anxious since we did no socializing. Though we also had a tiny baby so … Probably not less stressed but certainly less anxious than this year.
Today I had childcare coverage all day in the form of PiC still being off work one more day and it was both amazing and a grind because then I really really really had to make the most of that focused work time. I got caught up on a lot of important or overdue stuff with some intense effort to stay on task, so that’s something. I was sad to have missed out on midday baby snuffles and snuggles but that’s the trade off, isn’t it?
PiC took care of everything today: dog walks, feedings, kids, lunch, and dinner. I’ve got a great partner.
I’m still decompressing from a remarkably tough holiday season. We socialized much more than usual. We were super careful everywhere (vaxxed, masked, no indoor dining, running an air purifier wherever we could) and the anxiety that it still wouldn’t be enough was ever present. There was a lot of internal conflict when I met with conservative family members who did respect my needs (masked and outdoors meeting) but still clearly expressed their views which are in direct opposition to mine. We were able to say our goodbyes to a longtime friend and carried a lot of sadness back with us. My fatigue was always so bad that I felt sick most of the time – it expresses itself as cold symptoms when I’ve gone too far. Of course I rapid tested to be sure it was just my body sending up alarms and not COVID. Naturally that was another source of anxiety: we didn’t have enough rapid tests for the serial testing that I’d prefer considering omicron was taking off in the days after we’d hit the road. I was also trying to get all of us an appointment for PCR tests so we could be reasonably certain we were all COVID free before returning to school and that was an inordinate amount of effort. Of course I was working the entire time we traveled. Basically I now don’t want to leave my house for a month. Maybe two. (more…)
JB has a cousin with terrible manners (ignores people talking to them, snatches things out of people’s hands, whines and pouts and shouts to get their own way as a first resort, makes themselves out to be the victim when they’ve accidentally hurt someone in the course of play, etc). Lots of small bullying behaviors, PiC says. Personally I don’t enjoy this kid’s company at all. I know they’re not at heart a bad kid. This is still on the parents who are totally permissive and let the kid get away with being a complete jerk. We see them ignoring the behaviors all the time.
Meanwhile, JB cherishes all their cousins and still enthusiastically plays with them even though there is a guaranteed conflict every 2-30 minutes. I’m not sure what to make of their willingness to keep playing with such an obnoxious kid but that’s not my issue. (Though truly I am puzzled by it.)
PiC and I had a long talk about our responsibility here as parents and adults because we want JB to learn to navigate conflict but we also do not want stand by and let certain behaviors pass, nor do we want JB to think that they have to accept these kinds of behaviors. Not least because it grates our very souls. We have no solid answers but we were ruminating on the good ways to deal with this. PiC commented that his enforcement of our rules across the board and being strict with the nibling is between us and the nibling, it doesn’t help JB navigate the issues. That got me thinking. Maybe it does. It’s our responsibility to enforce house rules: we don’t snatch things out of people’s hands, we respond when we are spoken to, we use our words.
And when we do our job, a job our relatives dismally fail to do, I theorize that it empowers JB to stand up for themselves and hold firm when they want to, when the cousin is being a jerk. I could be totally wrong but this is a working theory and this is a long term situation so we have way more time than I like to think about to keep navigating.
Creative work
JB has assignments to use their class assigned words in complete sentences and I think they’re a real hoot.
I will send a big package and it will have ghosts in it.
I will go around the poop so I won’t step in it.
A fish is going to eat me on Monday.
Life with Smol Acrobat
New tricks: they have mastered the M and B sounds. MAAAAAAMMMM MAMMM. BA BA BA BA! Bao bao bao! Ah BA!
We’re also playing games. They’ll pretend to feed me, or pretend to pick stuff up and give it to me and laugh when I play along.
It’s so interesting how they communicate at this age with no words. My friend wondered what they’re thinking at this age and I can’t get that question out of my head.
Clapping: is a huge source of entertainment. They rip off their bib with dramatic flourish and then clap for themselves so proudly.
I’m less proud because we’re usually not done with the meal, their hands, face, bib and now their shirt are a mess and now half that mess is on the floor. But they’re so happy.
Watching Smol go to sleep on a hard day is still a journey:
Insert a squalling or whiny or impatient Smol into the crib. Upon touchdown, I hand them their bear friend whose ears are suspiciously still wet even though no one has touched it for a couple hours. Gross.
They grin like they know what I’m thinking.
I wave and leave to watch on the monitor. They hold the bear by the ears and roll around for ten minutes, cuddling and snuggling. Just when you think, prematurely, they might be slowing up, up they pop. One hand in mouth, one hand petting bear friend, then they fold in half at the waist over the bear. Up again, then folded over again. And again. Soon they look like a tilting toy, a round bottomed baby, that keeps rocking forward and back and back and forward. Hand always in mouth.
Then they move over to another plushie friend, hello hedgehog. Hi hedgie friend. Nuzzle nuzzle. Hedgie goes on the head. Hedgie goes under the chin. Hedgie goes over the shoulder because hedgie isn’t big enough for a proper squish squash. Back to the bear friend. Pet pet pet bear face. Squish bear friend. Whack dog friend on the head with flailing hand. Intentional? No idea.
Fall over on face hugging bear friend. Pass out.
Reading buddy. They’ve always been reasonably attentive to their bedtime reading books but are usually too active after a nap to sit for a book. That seems to be changing a bit this month: they’ll sit and listen to two short books after naps too. Not always, but it’s a nice start.
Skills(ish): they JUST got motivated enough to hold their own bottle. Great. Just in time for me to start needing to plan to transition them off bottles in a couple months! Awesome. Also awesome, they don’t think milk should be in anything but a bottle. Water they’ll drink out of anything. Milk? No.
Pupdate
I spotted a flea on Sera the other day. You know I am deeply interested in taking good care of my dogs, so the first time that happened with Seamus, I had the screaming heebies and felt horrible about it, like I was a collosal mom dog failure. Since then I’ve learned that we have a surprising amount of wildlife here: pumas, skunks, raccoons, feral cats, all kinds of critters running around.
Even the most well kept dogs are going to catch the occasional hitchhiker. And generally that’s all it is. I check them thoroughly after every time I catch the odd one, it only happens once every year or so, and make sure they’re up to date on their flea meds and go on. Sera seems unnerved by the thorough flea checks. I assure her that she didn’t do anything wrong but I don’t think she gets it.
Precious Moments
JB singing a song from a toy, questioning the lyrics: I’ve been working on a bulldozer, all the livelong day. Wait. Maybe it’s hard to live all day? I’ve been working on a bulldozer living all day? I’ve been working on a bulldozer, it’s been a long day?
1. Is there anything more satisfying than bringing your dog fresh blankets out of the dryer?
2. Saturdays feel like days where I get to choose everything I want to do in whatever order I want, in whatever increment I want.
Sundays feel like days where I have to do what I have to do.
I would like more days like Saturday.
Which is not to say I don’t appreciate the value of Sundays. Even if I wanted to be doing something else, the things I am doing are things I wanted to get done so there’s satisfaction there: cooking a meal, teaching JB a little about food, letting the kids be together and playing and feeding each other so they build their bond absent parental involvement, cleaning and vacuuming. Making arrangements for people’s birthdays.
Challenges this week: Another nasty cold landed and got the whole clan done to Super Sneezy Sera. Bad times y’all.
I was asked privately to help organize for a PF friend in need but it’s hard for them to ask for help, so they wanted to stay anon for this. This is someone from our own community who has been going through some rough times.
Hey y’all, I’m pretty sick but a PF friend of ours is having financial difficulties+needs help w/temporary housing. They asked if I could organize a bit of help to tide them over anonymously. If you can, (giftso they don’t take out fees, paypal, admin@agaishanlife.com) I’ll get it to them ASAP.
Year 2, Day 260: Shifting back to normal school and work mode after a long holiday weekend and having a helpful person around is, in my professional opinion, YUCK.
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I’ve been rotating through four pairs of sweatpants for a solid year, day and night, because they’re so warm and comfy why would I wear anything else? I only put on real pants to take JB to school. Sometimes. Sweats are real.
We’re going to see people for the holidays and I’m not looking forward to the need to look like I give two hoots about how I look but I should probably get a pair of jeans that aren’t ripped clear across the leg? The last pair I bought was seven years ago and they’re in a pretty shabby state. I do have a smart looking pair of grey corduroy pants that I’d just get a duplicate of in another color but these dandy things are even older than my jeans and aren’t available anymore. Alas. (PiC thinks my pants being older than JB makes them OLD. I say they’re still young until we hit the 20s.)
I spent all day with a vague sense of missing sales but the few things we need weren’t available (pants for me, though I didn’t bother searching more than two stores) or aren’t on sale (the Le Crueset enameled cast iron frying pan because we’re sick of the waste of nonstick pans that don’t last) anyway.
On principle, I was tempted to shop more small businesses but that would be gratuitous right now. We just spent a small fortune at a small business for our anniversary gift.
I’ve been working on gifting and visiting logistics for the upcoming holidays and have a three page checklist in play now. Before any of that socializing can happen, though, JB has to get their second vaccine, PiC and I will need to get our boosters, and even Sera will need a flu booster since there’s dog flu outbreak going on. Only Smol Acrobat may dodge the needles this month, though I can’t be certain whether they’re due for anything routine soon.
I’m crossing my entire body like a pretzel hoping large vaccine trials for the under 5 and under 2 sets (they’re being tested separately) yield solid data SOON.
Year 2, Day 261: Smol miraculously slept 11 hours! But my brain fog, oohhh my brain fog today, so thick, it felt impossible to think around.
My first sign it wasn’t going to be a great day was when I started making breakfast and stopped a split second before I cracked all the eggs into the compost bin. At least it was before. I’ve done this before and only caught myself after a few eggs.
I’ve been holding on to a prescription of meds to take as needed, intermittently, for fatigue. Through the fog, I reasoned that this inability to think, this feeling like my brain is stuffed full of cotton, MAY be related to fatigue? Hell, it’s worth a shot. I tried my first, very low, dose. I didn’t notice much change in the first half hour but it seemed to lift a bit of the fog enough so I could clear a few things off my desk.
1. With some trustworthy help with the kids, I feel the hardened shell of my soul softening some and swelling with a trickle of much missed patience for JB. I hate that I’ve been so closed off but under this much constant duress it’s been impossible to unclench my emotional grip.
It’s not going to last, this is a very temporary help, but I’m observing and taking some heart that maybe the frozen feeling of despair we’d been existing in can and will pass when we have more balance in our lives, when we aren’t holding on for dear life or fighting back to back just to survive.
Challenges this week: suffering from the lesser plague. Not happy about this.
2) I had intended to be done with all our Lakota Giving for this year two weeks ago but we had a huge outpouring of donations and I’d been steadily working through fulfilling needs for families. Last night I took a last look at the list and ran across an individual whose situation really wrung me out. This young man, at the age of 30, is a paraplegic with limited use of his hands. He lives alone and it sounds like he lacks any mobility aids as he lives mostly in the dark, being unable to reach the wall switch. I’m inquiring into what he has and what he needs. I strongly empathized because my chronic pain threatened to leave me alone and immobile at a very young age but even if you didn’t have that experience, I’d think that would sound like a miserable way to live. JB sure thought so. I very much hope we can help set him up with sufficient aids to function reasonably well. Ideally I would love to be able to outfit him with a wheelchair if he could use one. If you’re able to pitch in, a gift (since donations and payments are charged fees) to admin@agaishanlife.com through PayPal would be going to a really good cause.
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
