Week 41, Day 284: Holiday gifts for JB have been showing up on our doorstep all month. I am surprised to find, since I love opening mail, I’m starting to have a bit of package fatigue. If they were more spaced out, that would be really helpful since, speaking of arrivals, Smol Acrobat has joined us. JB is thrilled to share this first Christmas with their very own baby sibling they get to keep without kidnapping required. I hope they still feel this way months and years from now!
My recovery is a slow process. I know this is normal, and it’s normal to take up to a year to be back to pre-pregnancy status, but I’m still very impatient. I don’t want to take months to get back to normal, I want to be on my feet 100% now. Obviously that isn’t going to make that happen so I’m grateful that I arranged more leave from work than I did with JB instead of trying to force myself back in several weeks. This time I have no desire to go back to work a minute sooner than I need to.
I’m glad that both PiC and I did, in fact, because even if we’re working from home, having to cater to a newborn and working effectively isn’t gonna happen. We’re sleep deprived zombies and glad that JB is old enough to be well trained in helping with a certain amount of chores around the house. The time we put in this summer insisting they do age appropriate housework regularly was well worth it. They do like being helpful and this way they have chores they can do to meaningfully help with baby. They feel like part of the adult unit in that sense, they are a contributor, and not just pouting that they’re not getting enough attention. (more…)
We’re lucky to count among our dear friends and family two teachers who are professionally focused on JB’s grade level. This means we can ask the “IS THIS NORMAL” question and get an answer that’s complete and geared towards helping them improve as a good human. We are so grateful for that guidance.
Especially when they share anecdotes confirming that all five year olds are this weird!
For example, it was helpful to hear that being able to see things from someone else’s perspective isn’t a mental framework that they have at this age, that’s something we still have to help them do.
Pupdate
Sera is, currently, the lowest maintenance member of the Dependents Pack and that’s a weird thing to say. But despite her behaviors and fears, which are still definitely present and mean that she is not trustworthy off leash at all or around strange dogs, she IS the healthiest and least needy right now. I’ll take it. Oh and after 3+ years with us, she’s finally chosen someone to bond to. PiC! Hahaha of course.
Sir Seamus, though, oh boy. He’s wobbly (neurological issues that we’re managing with meds but can’t cure) which means we have to be SUPER careful walking him lest he fall over. He still does at random times as his legs just give out. He keeps getting infections, his eyes were a whole THING for months (he did get a clean bill of eye health recently though! yay!), his feet break out in hot spots randomly and hurt, his vision is going, his hearing is bad, his sniffer doesn’t sniff well. But the tricky thing is: he’s still generally a happy pup. He still declares that the post-person is a rude enemy, he’s still absolutely got an appetite, he enjoys his walks even if they are slow and wobbly. He doesn’t fall asleep upside down anymore but he does still do his Happy Rolls.
Second trimester
At this stage, I am continually overeating at most meals to make up for lost ground when I was so nauseated before. (The nausea is much lower now, though it conveniently pops up when cooked vegetables are in the vicinity.)
My level of consumption is a bit scary. I’m only eating until I feel full but the quantities required are … rather like feeding Teen Me again.
6 hearty street tacos, plus rice
Two double cheeseburgers without buns but extra lettuce and tomato
Half a tray of enchiladas
The bonus bizarre thing now is that the kiddo seems to Pac-Man chomp all the food I’ve consumed within 20-30 minutes. I can actually feel it “disappearing” chomp chomp chomp. It’s … Creepy. It doesn’t seem biologically possible or plausible but it really feels like the kid is sucking up my meal because I go from feeling too full to nearly hungry again in a matter of minutes.
Unlike with JB, I’m resting when I need it instead of pushing myself on guilt and willpower. I already use plenty of that for living through a pandemic, managing full time work while sharing childcare duties with PiC who is also working, and caring for our pups. If my body needs rest and I can lay abed for an extra 20 minutes, I do. If it’s a weekend and after an active morning, I’m beat? I lay down. Carrying a whole human is work and I’m not forgetting it like I did with JB. Especially since, though the memories are years off, I recall being even more exhausted with an infant. I will savor every bit of rest I can get now because there’s going to be precious little of that in the future.
It’s not just being more aware is making me amenable to rest though. It’s that all of us being at home removes one critical stress factor. I don’t feel the need to get up and help them get out the door on time. Schedules are less of an issue when there’s no commute to account for. There is of course still a school schedule, and work, but it’s different when you can mosey over on your own two feet.
Precious Moments
“Mom I closed the door so you would not be annoyed by all the talking in the room.” Sits down and starts reading out loud.
To myself: BUT YOU ARE STILL ON THIS SIDE OF THE DOOR.
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Me: JB, can you go get my water bottle for me please?
JB: Yes matey!
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JB: I’m sorry your work is annoying.
Me: Me too.
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Dammit!
I asked JB to read to baby because they are kicking the crap out of me, and I suggested they might be a little upset about something. They replied “oh if Baby is upset, we should just leave them alone for a while so they can calm down.”
THAT IS EMOTION MANAGEMENT FOR NON FETUS PEOPLE THOUGH. I cannot leave the fetus anywhere right now!
This exercise didn’t specifically take illness into account but that has always been in the back of my mind as a fourth scenario that I’d have to cover – what we should do in case one of us (most likely me) became unable to work and earn income. I just didn’t outline it in my list back in 2018 because I wasn’t ready to wrap my head around a prolonged term of illness for any one of us.
And along come a pandemic. *facepalm*
I am grateful that I stuck to the year of cash equivalents in the bank. That really helps my sense of anxiety. I find myself wanting more but that’s my old friend hypervigilence talking. I’m getting better about that – I can see that that’s the fear brain worrying itself to bits and not a logical need, but it’s still there.
Also, it’s time we finalized our last year-end donations! We need to do this now!
1. Actual cold has set in. We always have cool temps around the 60s but it’s now down to the 40s-50s range which is Cold for me. And I am ever so grateful that the money we’re paying for running the furnace isn’t just thrown away because we actually get warm air all through the house now! Yes this isn’t new anymore but I still appreciate it every day we run it.
2. All holiday gifts have been purchased, and almost all of them have been wrapped and delivered. I WIN!
3. We found a local Japanese curry place and a) they are taking lots of precautions (take out and delivery only, phone and online orders only, masks required, no indoor dining) which makes me so happy to support them and b) their food is delicious and makes me doubly happy to support them and my belly’s needs at the same time. Absolutely delightful!
Challenges this week: Brain fog. So much tired and brain fog.
4. I FINALLY got our mortgage loan number and our online account set up so I could pay the next bill. It only took 6 weeks, 19 emails, and 3 phone calls. Why did they have to make it so hard for us to pay?? The refinancing bank immediately sold our loan, that’s why.
But YIPPEE for getting that set up and paid, finally! I was getting extremely squirrely.
5. I decided to add the Target RedCard to our wallets. We previously mostly shopped them with gift cards but lately we’ve had to use them more for staples that we can’t get elsewhere. It made sense to use their credit card for that 5% discount and the better return window.
It also helps stretch our donation dollars further when we buy for other people like our Lakota Families.
6. We braved Costco the Sunday before Thanksgiving to stock up on a couple weeks’ worth of essentials and we made it out intact! You should have seen it there. You’d be proud too.
After struggling to get things in order since we moved, 2020 has been an oddly productive year-long decluttering and organizing period.
After the 2019 winter holidays, I had a truckload of stuff to deal with: secondhand toys, books, art supplies, workbooks, clothes, and some presents. After visiting the homes of loved ones who are hoarders and just have plain too many things for anyone’s peace of mind, I was especially fired up to clear up and clear out all the things!
I asked PiC to feed me the boxes languishing in the garage from when we moved, one at a time. If we haven’t looked at them in 2 years, I’m almost certain we don’t need anything in there!
He got curious and pulled down three instead, so I took them all. I made quick work of two boxes – sorting them into a donation box and a bag of baby stuff that will go to a friend. The third has some electronics I have to figure out. I’m also sorted through another box of books that were passed on to me to donate to the library, the Little Library, and regift (the like-new copies) to young kids. (The pandemic has put a halt to the local regifting and donations for the moment, but the piles are sorted. The trick now is to keep them hidden from JB so they don’t raid it looking for things to clawback.) (more…)
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 $193.60 in dividends in October.
My experience with ibotta so far is: it’s slow. We don’t buy a lot of the brands they have offers for. But it’s a handful of spare cash, whenever I finally reach a cash out point, so I have no objections.
I’ve been holding a grudge against Achievement for the past few months because it took so long to get my last reward but also because I’ve been too lazy to log back into my mapping apps. Both silly reasons. I should add that back for that slow trickle of earnings.
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,905.47; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Saturday’s plan: organize the Smol Acrobat’s two dresser drawers to ensure we have age appropriate clothing on hand through six months and put everything else in storage. What really happened?
1. I worked on our ballots (almost done!) with 13 measures and school board people to vote for. Why do we always have SO MANY MEASURES?? It makes voting a real chore. I will check my choices against those of a much politically savvier friend.
2 I tackled the research for open enrollment. This year has a new twist which has eaten my brain. An HMO that acts more like a PPO with a deductible and comes with the option of an HSA and limited FSA (for vision and dental only). I’m very much not a fan of the PPO-like HMO, we’ll have to pay for services in full up to $2800 a year before coverage kicks in for anything that’s not preventative. My x-rays alone last year when my back was an issue was billed out at $1900. I didn’t pay a nickel for that, last year.
I’ve never had an HSA option before and I was excited. Then I learned that we lose our general FSA and HSA contributions and gains are taxable in CA so we’d be looking at a significant jump in our state taxable income. We double our federal pre-tax deduction but it might be a wash compared to the increased taxable state income. I’ve asked our tax person to run some numbers for us on that front, meanwhile, I need PiC to get a hold of the negotiated rates for the HSA-HMO.
Most years of my life I haven’t had health insurance but in my adult married life I’ve had great insurance. We always opted for the HMO for ease of use and to avoid this out of pocket maximum dance. I’m not looking forward to that being part of our lives.
3. Ordered Seamus’s medication refills and also called the vet to get a written prescription to submit.
4. Worked for 90 minutes to clear up some mess ahead of Monday. Monday me better be grateful. (Spoiler: Monday me failed to be grateful because Monday was crammed full of personal and professional issues.)
5. Another two hours organizing and paring down the family photo albums meant I was in shouting distance of finishing. That’s 8 hours I’ve spent on this project across several days. I must have started with nearly 2000 photos because I’d winnowed it down a massive amount and hundreds are left. I was initially feeling guilty discarding a batch of photos of my estranged sibling but today’s work revealed that even keeping only the photos with him and someone else in them leaves with me with over 100 of them. Guilt gone!
I never touched Smol Acrobat’s clothes!
6. Sunday had to be desk reclamation day. I’d left my piles and piles of photos all over my desk. If I didn’t get that squared away, I couldn’t work on Monday. And I couldn’t deal mentally with the chaos. Four more hours of sorting, discarding, and transferring resulted in a final photo album, with many photo slots doubled up or more. Looks like an accordion and I don’t care! The photos are consolidated in an album which went with the contents of my medium box into one large box and I can wash my hands of the mess! One day I may even sit down to sort and discard duplicates of the school era photos. The album spanned 1978-1990, my photos span 1994-2008.
7. I tackled packaging up Halloween pouches for the zoom Halloween scavenger hunt we will do with JB’s friends, then I organized SA’s dresser. I’m sure there were other things I wanted to do but I’m D-O-N-E.
Pumpkin banana bread will have to wait another day.
Challenges this week: my sciatic nerve pain is an all day every day thing now and it’s the pits. The news is a mess and depressing as all get out.
We attempted to satisfy a craving I had with take out and were appalled to see so many people are dining indoors and outsiders in such crowded setups – lines going out the door and wrapping around the sidewalk and the block – that they may as well not be masked or distanced. Since the restaurants were set up on the sidewalks, there was no safe way to walk past diners without being right on top of them. We didn’t even try to park. It was a disappointment, three different places were the same way. After many hours on this “adventure”, and a few tears from JB who was homesick because when you’re 5 and haven’t been on a 9 hour road trip in ten months you forget what an hour feels like, we managed to scavenge some dinner and managed to feed ourselves by 9 pm. Sheesh.
I asked Joybird for an update on our sofa. Their updates have been non-existent up to now and I don’t think we’re going to be getting it anything like on time. I could live with that if they were proactively telling us what’s going on and not leaving me in the dark so I wonder if they’re just scamming us. After three days of trying to get an answer, we found out they have been six weeks behind schedule and hadn’t even started making it until this week. But somehow they still think we should trust them to deliver. I cancelled the order. We won’t be shopping from Joybird again.
8. We got a small refund from the rental property escrow! It’s nice to put money in when we’re contemplating a lot of money going out soon.
9. I finally put in my first order at Penzey’s which was exciting! I also happened to wait long enough that they had a promotion: buy 5 spices and the cheapest six spice is free. In writing this I realize that I forgot to get one more spice mix I wanted. Darnit.
Week 41 of COVID in the Bay Area.
