Just a little (link) love: virtual zoo visit edition
October 15, 2020
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, $1,816.35; Rural libraries, $346.69
PiC often tells me to buy the thing I’m thinking about because I deserve it, and that framing always makes me choose not to spend the money. It brings on one of two kneejerk responses: well obviously I deserve everything OR no, I’ve not proven myself in X lately I don’t deserve anything. Emily Guy Birken’s pandemic spending post reminded me of how and why I probably don’t respond well to that: “… when you make a decision based on what you feel you deserve; you are making a value judgment on yourself. If you deserve something, that means you could be undeserving of it. That’s no way to feel good about yourself. You are not put on this Earth to earn the right to be happy. You are neither deserving nor undeserving of happiness, luxury, or comfort.”
The Doctor in Charge of the NBA Bubble: this was a fascinating read. Also a little sad because it shows that something can be done if you plow a lot of attention, time, expertise and money into the matter. But here we are with people still denying COVID is even a problem.
I Called Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book: “Built into the premise of Epstein the mastermind scammer is the notion that some kind of legitimate path to a legitimate global aristocracy exists. There is no scam here. It’s grifters grifting grifters all the way down.”
I was trying to figure out the Child Tax Credit in advance of next year’s filing (or the year after). I can’t remember whether we were going to ditch the kid(s) dependent care FSA and that’s why I was looking at this but Jeremy at Go Curry Cracker covered a few scenarios, none of which apply to us, but it’s worth bookmarking to help wrap my head around it.
Virtual zoo visit
Maple did a very gourd job pic.twitter.com/HwEWOIH1ff
— Oregon Zoo (@OregonZoo) October 1, 2020
Little adventures pic.twitter.com/xJ1QDvcvoA
— Oregon Zoo (@OregonZoo) September 29, 2020
We have thus far changed our dependent care FSA election twice- our admin kindly let us know that if childcare needs changed (like… when school closed and then opened again) we were allowed to change it. I plan to take full advantage. (As far as I know it’s a federal rule in response to the pandemic. There’s a very boring IRS publication about it. You have 30 days after any qualifying event, i.e. schools/childcares opening/closing/changing hours.)
To be honest, I’ve never really bought into the “you deserve it” concept in marketing. Not because it’s a value judgment on me as a person, but because “deserving” seems like it doesn’t apply, like it’s irrelevant in the context of buying or doing.
Can anyone really deserve a sandwich? Or not deserve one? And, assuming that one can deserve a sandwich, are there gradations of deserving, like one person can deserve a sandwich with condiments they like and another deserves a sandwich with condiments they only partly like? Can you only deserve a fraction of a sandwich? Who decides who deserves what? Clearly the universe isn’t applying these judgments.
It really makes zero sense.