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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June 17, 2026
Life with JB
Grown adults still thinking that getting paid more means losing it all to taxes makes me batty. After another athlete shared that they had their contract written for a dollar less than $1M because of taxes, I pulled JB aside to explain marginal tax rates to them. They need to know well in advance of earning any kind of W-2 income that, generally speaking, earning an extra dollar is always worthwhile even if you’re going to be paying a higher tax rate specifically on those dollars that land in the higher rate threshold because that is STILL more money.Worthwhile mathematically, at least, the decision about whether it’s worth the time is for another conversation.
Then we talked about the basics of investing (time in the market…) and not speculating which is basically another form of gambling. We covered the Dutch Tulip Bulb Market Bubble as an example of speculation.
There’s an irony in our sleeping arrangements these days. I had to share one large bed with my mom and brother when I was in elementary school, each of us getting one puzzle piece of the bed, because we were too poor to afford an extra bed or an extra room. Now, we have enough beds and rooms for everyone! But PiC is stuck bunking with SmolAc who cannot sleep alone yet and ever since my depressive episode, JB moved into our bed leaving their own entirely spacious bed which now serves only as an overly fancy table and bed for their plushies.
Life with Smol Acrobat (5.4)
SmolAc has always seemed like someone else’s kid when it comes to potatoes. I love them in every form. They would only eat fried potatoes: French fries, waffle fries, and hash browns. Anything else was a nope. No mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, nada. Until they started helping me dig for potatoes in the garden. Those potatoes I can cook anyway I want and they’ll happily eat them, picking one at random and holding it up, “I digged this one!” before chomping.
It’s embarrassing to realize this so late, or maybe it just flared up?, but SmolAc’s emotional regulation is garbage. We dealt with this in JB at age 2-3 and it took 2 years for them to learn to cope with disappointment. We hadn’t been paying too much attention to the effects of letting JB coddle them every time they were sad, but I am now, and WOW are they a pain when they experience the least amount of disappointment. It’s awful. SO we are starting the JB program of sitting in the sadness and working through that feeling and not hurting ourselves and others. How did I let this happen? ARGH.
But we are doing it and it is slowly sllloowwwwllyyyy taking some minor effect. It’s going to take a bit, I assume, to get all the way there.
JB has been banned from coddling until this is done.
Pupdate
We recently visited a local rescue and met a lot of dogs but none of them, except one small one, particularly liked us. The small one was absolutely obsessed with us (and me) but I’m not prepared to bring home a small dog yet. I’m looking for a medium-large that I can still lift. I can definitely still lift her! But … my yearning is for a much bigger dog.
Precious Moments
SmolAc: Wee doesn’t know everything right?
Me: No one knows everything.
SmolAc: They don’t know how to drive. I don’t know how to drive. I am just a kid! I don’t know the rules! Not even when I was a baby! Babies are not tall enough to drive. Dey defly cannot know how to brake.
SmolAc, testing pens: This doesn’t work. Oh no! But I love it!
Me: Show me.
SmolAc, scribbling, no ink comes out: Nooo! Blue is my favorite color!
Me: That’s purple, babe.
Respecting boundaries and loving each other and mischief
SmolAc: JB may I pwease use your soap?
JB to SmolAc with hugs and kisses: You are the best little sibling ever mwah mwah mwah! (SmolAc eats it right up)
SmolAc: Those are cute potatoes!
Me: Yeah, I think I’m putting those back into the grow bag…
Sotto voce to JB: should we eat dem, Wee?
When I looked at them, innocently: What?
June 15, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 41: Somehow we landed on some cruise lines’ mailing lists which is starting to make me batty. We don’t cruise. Stop sending us junk that I have to clean up! I usually email these places and tell them to stop mailing us shit but Silversea especially pissed me off claiming that brochures sent from their name and address aren’t being sent by them at all, they’re coming from travel agents. Oh really? Travel agents who want our money but won’t get it because we won’t use their services because we don’t see the middleperson in this mailing at all? That makes a lot of sense, yep!
I just remembered the cocktail that I liked a while back, so this is a reminder to myself order this drink: Blackberry Vodka Mojito. I hate rum but always forget that’s what’s in mint mojitos until I taste it and then sadness. (I also hate gin.) Vodka and tequila are fine in reasonable amounts, so is white wine, so if I MUST drink an alcoholic beverage (practically never) I really ought to stamp this one across the inside of my wrist so I don’t mistakenly order a cocktail of regret yet again. Since I imbibe about once every 5 years, the chances are very high that I’m going to forget.
Year 7, Day 42: Last week’s ask results:
A) deeply irritated that the company is completely unreasonable and refusing to budge on anything important. I can’t tell if this is a firm position or if it’s the healthcare position of “always refuse the first ask no matter how justified” so I’m going to push back.
B) Vision Plan reimbursement. They said it’d take 20 days but it’s been paid! Saved: $59.03 of the $61.80 paid.
C) The sharpener warranty: They said it’d take 6 weeks but they shipped a replacement without any fuss! Saved: $21.50 (They were $16 in 2020, now $20).
Thinking about how prices have risen, I noticed that my gardening gloves were previously $14 in 2020, now they’re $19. Thank goodness I’d gotten an extra pair back then when I realized they were a good fit.
Year 7, Day 43: I’d shared a while back on Bluesky: Going down to a 1-income household while still being a party of 4 for an unknown period of time is in fact causing me a lot of underlying stress and anxiety.
I’ve been the breadwinner since I was 17. Yes I have saved intensely for this situation whether it was me or him. No that doesn’t help my stress at all.
Not that PiC hasn’t been an equal breadwinner because he has been and his income and mine have always been joint funds equally regardless of how much each earned. This is my amygdala freaking out over my lack of personally earned income.
That and the fact that for a while we can’t help anyone til I figure out what we have to do to stay stable and that’s been as much a part of my identity as being an income earner has been. This sucks in many ways.
I’ve been sitting with this feeling and thoughts because, as I said, everything (but the money) about this job sucked. So why all the anxiety? I yell at myself a few times a day.
Ironically, all the work I’ve been doing in therapy is why I’m so scared and anxious. I’ve been making room for my own health needs: feeling feelings, a lot of pacing physically (which means: NOT doing), and trying to get a lot more rest than I ever got in the past. I always needed more than I was getting but my fibro and CFS are now at a point where I must have a roughly 3 to 1 ratio of rest to exertion to recover from low exertion activities or my body shuts down. I’ve been cancelling or rescheduling appointments when the fatigue is high because driving isn’t safe when I’m this impaired. I don’t know if it’s accurate to compare to drunk driving because I’ve never really been drunk nor would I ever drive after having had a drink but I bet it’s similar.
I made it out of the last layoff by near killing myself proving myself at the next job. I am not the same person anymore. I can’t do that. Maybe also won’t. I shouldn’t. That means I now have to find another way to get through this next period which is boding to be incredibly rough. The corporate world has gotten immeasurably more cutthroat and corrupt. The world where you could build a business on the internet has been massively impacted by two godforsaken Trump presidencies and the huge push to steal and sell back our data by AI companies. So many small businesses that once thrived are struggling since Twitter went down.
What chance do I have? I don’t know but I’m scared that it’s “not much”. I don’t want to learn what it’s like to be unable to provide for my family. Of all the ways I thought I might parallel my mom’s life, I didn’t think this would be one.
Year 7, Day 44: The WordPress app is finally allowing me to compose again š buuut calling my reply comments grr so I’ll drop my replies to comments here.
@Alice: Yes, thankfully we will be able to make changes to PiC’s health coverage because of the layoff so that’s good so long as he continues to dodge those bullets himself.
I’d love any thoughts you want to offer on self-employment, any time!
@Linda: Thanks for the recs and the contribution! It will be so good to focus on helping folks again.
I used your wool socks to keep my feet warm at night when I could still generate warmth on my own! These days I require the help of the heating pad to get started and it’s a strange juggle trying to get warm enough only to hit too warm too warm suddenly.
@Linda: absolutely excruciating. I’m trying to make the best of it, since it is income for a while longer, but it feels like getting little hairs plucked at random times. Unfortunately the company refuses to budge on any terms for anyone for any reason š
Year 7, Day 45: @Tragic Sandwich: I hope neither of us need to put this information to use any time soon but we might as well have the knowledge. š
@Rae: congrats on your cucumbers! It’s a delight to eat from your own garden!
@Hawaii Planner: Well, that’s a bummer that UI takes so dratted long to pay out! My memory of the slowness is hazy but I’m sure things have gotten worse since 2008. Do you recall how long they will pay, by any chance? Is it a 6 month cap?
Therapeutic Bostons
June 12, 2026
1. I cooked a stir fry and that’ll be good for two meals: Dinner and a day of leftovers.
I’m very proud of myself for including two veggies (green beans and snow peas) and two proteins (pork and tofu). I wanted to add more veggies (napa cabbage, bean sprouts, carrots) but I would have to go much further afield to shop at a produce place that lets me control the volume of veggies. The place we went to prepackages normally loose veggies. While that probably reduces waste for them, it locks me into 1+ lbs of each veggie which means 5 veg types is entirely too much to make a single dish. I couldn’t even fit all the green beans in this one.
That means either I buy more types and some of it goes to waste OR I have to figure out how to use it all up in more than just one stirfry, fail, and then it goes to waste. I settled for only 2 veggies and not wasting.
It’s been hard to find the time to cook in the past 2 years of hellishness so these are baby steps back to a routine that I feel better about.
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June 10, 2026
I probably know all this already, but I’m going through Jim Wang’s Recession Prep list anyway just in case I’ve missed anything.
Increase Your Emergency Fund. ā
The usual guidance is 3-6 months but I lived through the Great Recession, so nope, I’ve always operated on a 12-18 month cash buffer. The monthly dollar amount was much lower about 8 years ago, though, so I had 15 months based on those numbers. I’ve now revised that up to use the current monthly dollar amount and recalculated – we have 12 months of cash or cash-like instruments.
Avoid Big Purchases. ā
Define “big” was my first thought. Here he refers to car and house purchases. I was defining it as $100-300, so there’s a range. Cars: We have no plans to buy cars or houses. I do have a small maintenance fund for each, cars and house, to pay for smaller repairs, too. Both need beefing up, we can’t do anything major like install solar on it.
Renegotiate Your Debt. ā
We only have the mortgage and the interest rate is under 3% so we are leaving this alone.
Add Income Diversification. š© I’m feeling very YUCK on this point. We have some crafty things to do both for fun and money but they depend on sales and are unlikely to be a steady trickle of dollars. I keep looking at online leads and getting fed up when I see all the AIness of everything in every possible gig. Barf.
Keep Saving for Retirement. ā
and š© We’ve taken care of this for the year in our tax-advantaged accounts. I also invest separately for our retirement because of my lost investing time, but might have to put that on hold. I hate that part.
Be Realistic About Your Risk Tolerance. ā
and š© My investing style is Very Aggressive along with Buy and Forget it. Fidelity likes to neg me about this. But Fidelity also likes to neg us about our contribution rates being too low after we’ve maxed out a 401K so what do they know anyway. My current plan is not to use money from our portfolio until 2028, so for now, we’re leaving everything there alone. I need to set a date for re-evaluating that but that’s a later thing.
Start or Update Your Budget. š©This would just be refining the budget, for us. I haven’t quite got my head around how to trim our budget. We spend most freely on food, and then on fun experiences. We picked up a few museum memberships this year before the whole implosion so … we’ll make the most of those and then let them lapse.
Review Your Emergency Plan. ā
I’ve been doing this review in chunks. I feel responsible! There are some bits that I still don’t have information for (like how long unemployment will last), but I have mapped out some key actions to take. The first day after my last day of work here will heretofore be referred to as G(ot)TFO day.
1. GTFO day: Apply for unemployment
2. GTFO day: Contact PiC’s employer to upgrade our vision plan and remove the working spouse surcharge. That will increase his take-home pay by a little bit after both things are reconciled.
3. GTFO day: Contact Fidelity to roll over my 401K. Do I want to stay with Fidelity or to roll it over to Vanguard?
4. GTFO day: Gleefully delete all the work related bookmarks that are saved in my browsers. Export an updated set of bookmarks for my records.
5. For the next 6 months: Monitor that they actually pay the severance correctly and on time. They have historically not been able to do either thing.
6. For the next ?? months: Stay on top of the unemployment requirements to continue getting paid.
June 8, 2026
Year 7 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 7, Day 34: I’ve had an intermittent sore throat for three weeks. Four weeks? I expect that’s the stress expressing itself in immune insufficiency – my body’s so tired and strained under the stresses that it’s trying to fall sick to any virus that comes along.
Kameron Hurley nailed it: “Flooded with cortisol, your body coursing with adrenaline, youāre expected to sit quietly and walk quietly and speak quietly and smile and smile and be a villain. While I certainly have drug assists for these things, a number of stressors hit all at once these last two months, and itās made it feel like Iām being chased by wolves AND bears while my family is simultanerously on fire and there isā¦ nothing truly physical I can do with all that energy. My body wants to fight it, to outrun it, but the actual way to deal with these challenges is justā¦writing more fucking emails and moderating my speech during difficult conversations. Afterwards, you just want to run around the street screaming about how ridiculous it all is.”
I’m taking my antivirals every day in hopes it’ll be enough to fend them off. I’m taking my antidepressants every night to help me survive another day. We discussed adding an anti-anxiety med but my doc advised that it should be expected to take some time, on the order of 6 weeks or months, to work right. Given my huge spike in anxiety is caused by the layoff and the whole mess is presumably going to be over in less than 6 months, it seemed like overkill. But maybe it’s not. Maybe the state of the world – horrible as it currently is – has me on edge enough that it might actually be worthwhile to consider starting anxiety meds to help because I’m only ever half a step back from the cliff’s edge these days.
Year 7, Day 35: I’m so irritated by almost everyone these days. People not bothering to show up for meetings that were only held for their personal benefit and then wanting a special catch-up (have neither the time nor the patience for that), or arguing with me about the meaning of the words that I said – I think I’ll be the boss of the actual meaning of my words thank you very much. It was actually more irritating because another person in the exact same conversation understood precisely what I meant.
I’m generally irascible but these things feel like they cut to the bone a bit more than they ought to.
Year 7, Day 36: Filed under the “The worst they can do is say no (and in doing so, deeply irritate me but I’ll be MORE irritable if I don’t ask)” heading, in order of worst to least worst irritation:
A) I’ve got negotiations going about the exact text and severance amount for our separation contracts (that will deeply irritate me when they argue with me because they definitely will);
B) a Vision Plan claim for my glasses for going out of network;
C) and a warranty claim for a 5 year old pencil sharpener that is trying to work but can’t. The last one is really an at least I tried before spending new money on a replacement thing but honestly every penny always counts for one reason or another.
Oh look, it’s basically my current boss! Not the one who told me I don’t have a job anymore, the one who I directly report to but couldn’t be bothered to say a word about that since it happened.
Anyway. If I still reported to him I’d have to be stressed about his utter lack of engagement but now I can just shrug.
Year 7, Day 37:Ā Ā On the one hand: The job and the company have been 100% horrible and I have hated everything about working for them outside of the paycheck, so big picture, leaving is good for my health and my family.
On the other hand: The timing is harder to make peace with. I wanted to make it to next bonus season and invest that; I wanted another year of a 401K. So the timing is not horrible but not good.
I’m neutral on it not being on my own terms. Leaving on my own terms would likely have looked like holding on until I couldn’t anymore and then going to a new job, probably without much time in between to decompress. This way means I continue to be paid for months after I stop working, it buys me time off for decompression.
So I’m not panicked for the short term, we can cover the bills through next year.Ā But the long term – that I have concerns about. We have enough to do the bare minimum for a long time but not to live comfortably long term. This is one variation on my nightmares: My husbandās care costs have reached Ā£65,000 ā weāve had to sell our flat.
We can handle a layoff and even two for a while. But a long term or terminal illness means not only are we out of the sick person’s income but also we likely don’t have the caregiver’s income either. Stack on top of that: possibly we’ll have then lost our healthcare coverage either due to increased costs or lack of access. Then you’re eating up your resources in huge chunks.
For example, PiC’s subsidized employer provided healthcare is about $400 a month. Paying for COBRA for that same healthcare plan, which only lasts 18 months, would cost 6x as much: about $2500. That’s more than our mortgage. Oh and we’d still need to pay for our mortgage and property tax, utilities, eating.
A friend says that my financial planning is trauma-informed and they’re not wrong about that. But it’s also lived experience informed. I remember what happened when my parents sold their business and my mom got sick and suddenly the money was gone with no more coming in. I remember what it was like to suddenly have to carry the weight of the whole family alone. I won’t be alone this time but the numbers going very bad, very quickly? That’s a very familiar scenario.
Year 7, Day 38: Kicking myself. There was 2% cashback on the thank you gifts that I ordered. I’d been dithering over putting in the order for a few days waiting to see if it would go up but it didn’t and I have a pretty strict timeline to make sure these go out on time. Finally clicked that submit button, felt like I’d accomplished something. The next day I find the cashback went up to 10%! ARGH. That’s significant with the order this size ($800). I know I couldn’t have known but I’m still irritated and kicking rocks a little bit.
Therapeutic otters
June 5, 2026
1. FINALLY. I installed WP Armour as a spam blocker after the last three bombed and this one actually works. HUZZAH!
I can finally stop wading through floods of spam comments.
2. I finally found my missing water bottle that had been tucked into a never used pocket of a duffel bag!
3. My stubborn little cucumber seed has FINALLY germinated after 4 weeks of sitting in a heap of soil in the compostable cup. Now I have 2 snap pea sprouts, 2 very very little green bean sprouts and 1 tiny cucumber sprout.
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ā Vrachteend, BGK (@vincentdehart.bsky.social) May 3, 2026 at 12:55 PM
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June 3, 2026
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
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.
***
Dividend income. We received $1,108.90 in dividends from the stocks portfolio which all gets reinvested.
Litter 1: JB and I picked up litter and found 4 extra Safeway receipts which netted 100 Fetch points and $2.85. I appreciate every penny!
Litter 2: We picked up trash on our way out of a store and ended up with 5 random receipts that scored big at Fetch: 5500 and 1100 points in addition to the usual points for the more mundane receipts (75). Yay for cleaning up and getting points for things I don’t normally buy.Ā That’s about $6 worth of points.
Litter 3: Grocery shopping yielded 2 extra receipts on the sidewalk (50 points).
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