Spiritually: I had a dream about dead loved ones being alive and that always hurts my soul. Emotionally, I’ve been reading Codependent No More and some of the stuff I identify with there is slightly jarring. None of it is actually a surprise, I’d already identified those compulsions in myself as things that don’t serve me and need to stop. But it’s still a bit jarring in the early phase. Physically, I put Smol Acrobat in the baby carrier for a short walk today and the impact on my entire body is unbelievable. Ow ow ow and ow.
Parenting pain: we’re in some kind of regression with Smol where they don’t want much solid food, we have to compensate with formula, and they aren’t sleeping even 9 hours at night.
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I could feel the urge for retail therapy nipping at me today. I noticed it and I acknowledged that I felt like that. Eventually it passed.
Which is not to say I don’t have plans to spend money. I have a couple but they’re very intentional. One is for my holiday gifts for a large swath of niblings and supporting a creator while I’m at it. One was for supporting an author whose work I have long enjoyed. I did the latter already.
But those plans exist separately from that urge to distract and numb from my real feelings.
After a while, I felt like I recognized what was bubbling up. I’m feeling lonely and isolated emotionally. I miss my dearest friends. I feel like my second child isn’t nearly as loved and cared for within the community as JB was. I know a huge part of that is because of the pandemic. People literally cannot be here to visit the way they did with JB was this age, nor does anyone really have the capacity to show their caring in other ways. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, they simply can’t be here. Much like my pregnancy, the flip side of not hearing all the judginess and the snark and the unwelcome advice because no one was around is that I also didn’t get to feel loved the way I might have in non-pandemic times because no one is around.
Even if it’s not true, the feelings feed the monster in me that insists I don’t deserve love and my fear of rejection. One of the things my therapist will ask me is “is that reality or is that perception?” In a lot of cases I don’t feel like I can tell the difference. It feels true that I don’t deserve love, that I won’t amount to anything, that nothing I do matters. I don’t know if that’s true because if not by my own measure, then by what would I be judging this stuff? In this case even if it feels true that I am isolated from my community and I feel that it’s because no one cares about us, it’s probably more true that people are just really busy with their own lives and own troubles and it has nothing to do with us.
I’m noticing this more as I make my way through therapy and my reading. I’m partway through “Codependent No More” and so far it’s not telling me anything I don’t have some sense of but it’s good to read it.
Year 2, Day 176: I’m feeling so conflicted. Day to day, I feel like we have more than enough to share more generously with people who need a helping hand. Everyone else’s struggles remind me frequently how fortunate we are. But I worked my tail off to get here specifically because I am concerned about the murky future and my ability to work. It’s very important to give but I’m also responsible for keeping our own parachutes in good repair. Even with whatever work I do to improve my health, which I can only do now because I’ve been so aggressive with saving that we can afford some of that crucial healthcare, my baseline immune system is unreliable. I need to be able to step away from work earlier than later. Mortality aside, I don’t have good years in the tank. At best, they’re slightly less crappy than before years. They’re dominated by pain, fatigue, and limited range of motion. I want to have more freedom to use my precious energy only / mostly on what’s actually important to me and my family, which doesn’t include working a job. I feel selfish about taking care of myself financially. I shouldn’t. But I do.
In writing this, I just realized what it is. I feel selfish for taking care of myself first. If you told me that I had to look out for JB’s health future because they had chronic health issues, I would take on the world to make sure it was as secure as possible. If it was Smol or PiC on the line? Same thing. But because it’s me who is the “weak link”, well, I’m reverting to form and saying that I’m not good enough to be a priority.
Look at that, spotting an unhealthy pattern happening right there.
It’s wild that it’s hard for me to say: It’s ok to take care of myself. It’s ok to secure my future. It’s ok to make sure that I have choices even if I wasn’t thinking about making sure I wasn’t a burden on my kids in the future.
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We’re so grateful for the holiday weekend. I still had work to do but the reprieve was so much needed. We spent the whole weekend at home doing all the needed chores and trying to rest and reset.
Year 2, Day 177: Related to yesterday’s thoughts: My job isn’t actually a bad one, especially when I remember to put reasonable limits on the madness during times of extra stress, but I am definitely still reacting very negatively to the most minor provocations that at best deserve an eyeroll. I’m so tired of work. I’m also just so tired. This tiredness frequently puts me in the negative spiral mood: thinking that I wish we were further along in our FI journey so I could exercise the choice to not work for a long period of time. Getting mad thinking about all the money I wasted taking care of a lying, selfish grifter father because that much money invested back then would have made SUCH a massive difference in our choices today. I can’t even let myself run those numbers because to have the confirmation in numbers that it would have made it possible for us to have better choices during this terrible time makes me mad enough to spit.
Sadly, I can’t take a leave of absence and come back to this job. The team is too small to do without me and keep my job for me. I’m also very much not interested in any of the compromises I’d have to make for every other job out there, I’ve looked, so keeping this job is the least worst of all the available options that I am aware of. Sigh. Anyway, getting that off my chest periodically helps release that pressure and stop the If Only spiral by reminding myself I did the best I could with the knowledge I had at the time and now I’m doing the best I can too.
Part of me grumbles that I did a piss poor job back then so why should I take comfort now with the knowledge that maybe I don’t have all the relevant information and maybe I’m just in a perpetual cycle of screwing up but I suspect that’s a new bad spiral.
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 $887 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. Our YTD monthly average is $295.
Year 2, Day 162: We’re still cautious about in person school but we’re also well aware that unlike our friends across the country, our district has at least some of the most needed mitigation strategies in place: universal mask mandate, they claim to have updated all the ventilation and to have an air purifier in every room (the latter two I want to see with my own eyes before believing it).
Naturally, Republican Californians had to try to make this darkest timeline even worse with the ridiculous recall election. Newsom is not the best governor ever but at least we have mask mandates. Not a single one of the candidates on the ballot inspires anything but disdain or disgust.
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I’m on Day 4 of not getting good sleep. At least last night was just interrupted sleep but not as pain-riddled as the previous 3 days. I had finally escalated to the heavy duty pain meds and that helped enough so that when I slept, it was relatively decent. But not nearly enough. I can usually function on moderate sleep deprivation. It gets tougher when it hits high sleep deprivation like it has now. I took a long rest both Saturday and Sunday but clearly I need another rest today.
It makes me wonder if I should try caffeine but that’s not going to give me more energy. It’ll just stave off sleepiness, which isn’t the issue, so that doesn’t help anything. Right? That’s how caffeine works?
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Because just doing my own work at twice the speed anyone else would isn’t enough, I had staffers out today so I had to cover for them. I made a couple executive decisions: I’d take care of most of their stuff, within reason, most of my stuff, and bump the rest to tomorrow. And I’m taking a short rest today. I’m not going to kill myself for work. I’m not going to use up my last dregs of energy and then be a growling monster at my family because I’m clean out of patience. Priorities.
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Meanwhile, in Smolville, Smol Acrobat done lost their little infant sleeping mind. They were showing all the signs of sleepiness, including doing their yelling at me that they do when it’s naptime. I comply and go through the whole routine. Do they sleep? They do not. They holler for 55 minutes. We tried three times to resettle them, finally feeding them some more formula, before they finally passed out. I do not know what broke there but it was a whole lot of mess.
Year 2, Day 163: Boy, I thought the past few days were rough. They were. But then last night was the worst. I caught two hours of sleep, then was stuck awake for the next five because of painsomnia and anxiety. I’m guessing the fatigue is why I spent most of the work day (counted only as the time spent in front of the computer, not the time I was minding Smol) in a state of being poised for flight. I just wanted to run away screaming. Pandemic normal, right?
We had a lot of discussions about trusting people and how you decide to trust someone this month. I can’t remember how it started but the conversation continued when JB was reading the graphic novelization of CoCo. They wanted to know why Ernesto yelled “Security!” and what Miguel did wrong for Ernesto to call security to take him away – what was the justification? It was a great teaching example. We talked about when we trust someone: We observe their words and their actions, how they make decisions, whether they believe (as Ernesto clearly did) that the ends justify the means where the means are “sacrificing literally anyone else” and the ends are “so I get what I want when I want it”. We shouldn’t trust people who show us that they are willing to hurt people to get what they want, and a lot of times, people / abusers will hide who they truly are from the rest of us. Miguel didn’t do anything wrong but he made a mistake in trusting someone because he thought they were family, and family doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. We talked about how Ernesto had power over Miguel, who was alone and too little to fight back, and power over Hector who didn’t know that his best friend was a sneaking slimeball, but he chose to hide that part of himself from his fans because he wanted something from them. Very classic abuser!
JB very quickly connected the dots to: “You trusted your dad and you didn’t know he was going to hurt you! And Auntie trusted her husband, who isn’t her husband anymore, because she didn’t think he was going to hurt her!”
Yep.
Yep. People hide the bad parts of themselves from some people, notably the people they aren’t abusing. They hide it from the people who they want something from. So we can be fooled sometimes, it happens. It’s not doing something wrong – it’s a mistake because you don’t have all the information or the experience to know to be more careful around that person but then you’ve got to do something with the information when you do have it.
Responsibility
Nicole and Maggie bestirred my brain cells to thinking about helping JB develop a habit of maintaining their own paper planner. I don’t know if they’re actually the right age developmentally but they do use our family calendars to see what is scheduled so I think it’s just another step from using what’s in front of their faces to developing the skill/habit of writing those things down for themselves. I should have started earlier in the summer, though, more fun things to add than school things probably make this more fun? Oh I don’t know. I started when I started!
Year 2, Day 155: Yesterday was such a bad day with JB that the funk has followed me into today. I just want to lay my head down and be left alone for hours. Naturally, I cannot. We have school drop-off, work, more work, Smol to take care of, more MORE work, Smol to settle down for a nap, work, school pick up, JB’s after school lessons that will stand in for some version of aftercare to schedule.
I don’t know if it’s tempting fate but I filled almost in the rest of the school year’s dates on our calendar for JB. Who knows if these dates will stand. But I will want to know them later and what better time to do that then when I’m stressed and looking for administrative mindless scutwork?
I did sort out their tutoring and Spanish scheduling too, so I was able to start booking those out for a few weeks. This gives me a (faux) sense of control over something. Look at me! Planning things!
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I finished our two direct aid projects for friends and did tell myself that I’m not allowed to pick up another project for at least 24 hours. Will I be able to do that? WE. SHALL. SEE.
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We donated to the Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay to support their refugee resettlement efforts. This situation in Afghanistan hits really close to home. Our family had to escape their homeland after the US withdrew their troops after the fall of Saigon. One uncle who worked with the CIA disappeared forever, leaving behind his wife and three kids. No one has seen or heard from him since 1975. Another uncle was thrown into jail for decades for fighting for the “wrong” side. Most of my family had to flee under cover of night, embarking on a dangerous journey they were lucky to survive.
People deserve a safe place to live and I think we have a moral responsibility to extend that safety (dubious though it may feel when I look around at how citizens of this country have behaved in recent years).
Year 2, Day 156: I am forcing myself to wait at least until tomorrow before starting up another project. I do have plenty of work to do, I just don’t want to do it and I am clearly using these projects to help me feel a tiny bit better about a world that I strongly resent and dislike.
I’m realizing that I’m simmering at a high amount of rage every day. I haven’t been in this emotional space for a long time and I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until this weekend when JB and I had the worst most terrible-parenting interaction I’ve ever had and it’s finally sunk in that I’m so overtaxed, so filled with anger at the world, that I have lost every reservoir of patience.
I had to meet someone that a loved one has been seeing for a while and it was immediate red flags and I just want to yell nooooo but they won’t listen so there’s no point. Having been their near-daily support for years through similar bad situations, it was so hard to watch what appears to be them walking down the same path again. I’m also furious with some family because GET YOUR SHOT AUGH. The refugee situation in Afghanistan pushes some very personal buttons, as my family including my generation, were refugees after a war. (more…)
Year 2, Day 141: What a day. We had all kinds of cleaning up to do. PiC and JB worked on three loads of laundry, I worked on reconciling a bunch of bills, filing a tax amendment, contacting the school because two weeks out we still have zero information beyond “everyone will be required to mask”. The planner in me hates this school district. I cleared away some time critical work, and sent important personal emails.
Then as a soul cleanser, I tackled our next Lakota family’s list. I didn’t mean to dive in already but I spotted, buried in the requests, a mom with a newborn and no car seat. We had to get on that!
Naturally I then had to go on and take care of the rest of the family too while I was at it. It took a few hours to sort out an order that would actually ship to Pine Ridge. I completed half the categories of the list: car seat for baby and clothes for the older kids. I added some household things for mom because she didn’t ask for anything for herself and I’m sure that she could use a basic hygiene kit. I’m trying to remember what I’d wanted in those postpartum days. The other half of the list, baby clothes and school supplies for the older kids, will go out later this week.
Year 2, Day 142: Another heavy work day with exponential stress. Lots of scheduling conflicts and people having bad personal stuff going on which require accommodations and trying to make sure enough gears keep turning at partial staffing. The only good thing out of this moment is the timing is good to make a push for a staffing change I’ve been wanting for a long time that will help us long term.
I assigned the rest of the laundry to JB for the afternoon, they were allowed to take reading breaks as they wanted, and so by the early evening all the laundry was put away with minimal fuss.
I was happy to finish up the school supplies order for the kids and then while I organized a new basket to hold books for the kids and organized Smol’s clothes, I pulled out armloads of their outgrown clothes to ship a bundle for the new baby. I need to replenish my flat rate boxes stash!
BUMMER. The car seat I ordered yesterday from Target has been cancelled. They say there’s a problem with the shipping address, and they can’t charge my credit card. Um, since you have charged it 16 times today, and shipped 11 packages there already, I would say both those objections are bunk. I reordered it.
Year 2, Day 143: Would you believe that the second car seat has been cancelled?? I finally went to Amazon to order it because it’s a time critical item and they’re taking TWO WEEKS to ship it even with Prime. What is this nonsense? So amid my fight with the school district, my inbox, and my towering to do list at work, I am on chat with Target demanding an explanation for why on earth this item cannot be shipped. It’s really really annoying. (more…)
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.