July 31, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 122: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is very apt for me right now. I’m navigating a few relationships that are rough right now and it feels like the emotional white water rapids. With one, I’m very unsure if any of it is personal, or if it’s just what the other person needs, or if what the other person needs is NOT me in their life. Which leads to a lot of sadness and wondering what I did wrong. This situation just affirms my lizard brain’s conviction about my inevitable abandonment. When people know me, and I care about them, they leave me.
With another, I’ve shared some deeply personal and upsetting information that dredged up a lot of bad memories about mutuals and they’re digesting it but the loss of that enormous pressurized rock in my chest where I’ve held it in so long has me spinning out of balance. I know they need time to digest but my anxiety is out of control with catastrophic thinking. It goes straight to the worst case scenario and starts planning for that, while also direly wishing bad things would happen to me “and just be done with it”. I mean, I don’t want to leave my kids but this is a pattern I recognize that goes waaay back to when the financial abuse started. It was always too much. That load was immensely heavy.
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July 28, 2023
- I can’t remember if I posted this so I am posting now: JB’s Spotted Friends Collection is live! They’re dreaming up new themes, and experimenting with more art.
2. I’d been waffling about on the idea of selling my old phone after I upgraded last year. It still works, the battery was just degraded to the point of requiring two or three charging sessions a day with my heavy use and shutting off at 33% power. But! I found a use for it! JB can use it to read books on Libby and play games on the PBS kids app.
Challenges this week:
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July 25, 2023
Life with JB
JB’s been fuming about unfairness in the world. The kids who don’t follow the rules at school are infuriating. The kids who are jerks are infuriating. The landlords who don’t clean appliances for their new renters are infuriating.They’re formulating their sense of the world and while they themselves are not in fact a super conscientious rule follower, they’re keenly alert to other people breaking the rules.It feels like a tough needle to thread. I get very upset about unfairness in the world and sometimes it turns me into a very grumpy person.
This made me laugh. If you’ve been reading these since JB was born, you understand. We try our darnedest to gentle parent even though JB just pushes every button we have and some we didn’t know we had. We don’t always succeed.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol’s got a few chores of their own now: clearing the table after dinner, restocking the toilet paper in the bathrooms, and helping JB put away some laundry now and again. The last one isn’t assigned by us, that one is because JB tricks them into thinking it’s a game to get some help.
I’m on the fence about how I feel about that, comes of having a Loki-type brother who would Tom Sawyer me into doing his dirty work. But since Smol will also have to learn to do and put away laundry when they’re older, I come down on the side of allowing it.
I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to realize they can slip both hands into the new toilet paper rolls and go to Punching Town like a tiny Mega Man though. I think JB figured that one out almost immediately. They’re getting quite good at stacking the toilet paper rolls very high without toppling over.
Well, when you put it that way…
Pupdate
Sera has been noticeably more clingy since December, and even more so when the kids are home. Their volume makes her nervous and she wants to hide behind my legs a lot. She’s not scared of them, though. She’s happy otherwise, and not anxious generally. I’m guessing she doesn’t like not knowing if the yelling is happy or upset. I remind her I can’t tell either, until I clearly hear crying, but that doesn’t reassure her.She and Smol Acrobat reached a small milestone. They ordered her into the garage when we were all getting ready to go out. She understood the command and obeyed! Seamus would never have deigned to obey any commands that toddler JB issued, but when they spoke clearly enough, Sera would.
Precious Moments
JB: this kid at school hates cocomelon. And when I said I like to watch it with my little Smol Acrobat, he said WHAT?? I HATE COCOMELON!!
Me: huh. What’d you say?
JB: I said no one’s making you watch it. I like it so I watch it with my family. It’s not hurting you.
July 24, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 115: A friend is celebrating a big decade birthday and commented well, at this age, they’re all big aren’t they. Better than the alternative, anyway. On an almost related note, I hate that a favorite author is fighting cancer but she also tells the best stories during treatment and it’s hard not to appreciate these Twitter threads (I very much recommend the Clocktaur Wars duo and her Paladin series having just re-read them):
Year 3, Day 116: I actually remembered to put sunblock on before taking the kids to the park but still got sunburned. Unfair!
At least I won’t need an extra blanket and heating pad tonight?
This wracking cough is still plaguing me morning and night. Sometimes midday, but less often. I feel less horrible than last week but still frustrated at being sick for so long. I’m grateful that my doctor prescribed both heavy duty cough meds that I requested without question. We’re super fortunate to have good healthcare providers right now and hate that everyone doesn’t have equal access to care like we have.
Oh, speaking of doctors, I’ll have to see a dermatologist about this lump that mysteriously appeared in 2020 when I had no time to care about anything not dire. At the time, I assumed it was a weird body acne thing that would run its course but here we are, 3 years later and it feels like time to name it or get rid of it. The consultation will be about (I hope) removing it. I also hope it’ll be a simple procedure.
I am genuinely puzzled why society continues to expect less from cishet men than trained pets. None of this strikes me as funny. It’s more like she’s laughing because otherwise she’d have to cry about how useless he is.
Year 3, Day 117: Overhearing an acquaintance talking about her writing process, I couldn’t help but think about all the writers I currently admire, the stories and characters they’ve devised that I love, and what sort of styles they’re known for.
Just off the top of my head: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Ursula Vernon, DJ Older, Nnedi Okarafor, NK Jemisin, Fonda Lee, Seanan McGuire, Kate Elliott, KB Spangler, Nghi Vo, Cassandra Khaw.
In my 20s, I dreamed of being able to write books/something that people would enjoy reading but had no faith I’d ever have the skill. My former English teacher always reminded me that Amy Tan didn’t write The Joy Luck Club until her late 30s, there was plenty of time. Some years on, having developed a bit of a mentor-mentee relationship with a very established writer, I asked this writer to read a post I’d written here for feedback. His feedback was insightful but I didn’t have the chops to properly address it. Maybe it’s worth revisiting, it’s been over a decade since I first wrote it, but now in my early 40s (and I know that old saw “it’s not too late until you’re dead”) it feels like if I was capable of writing something worth reading, or had an idea worth the time, that compulsion would have happened by now. Not to compare myself to Terry Pratchett in terms of skill, but in terms of that drive to write, this anecdote feels like evidence I just don’t have it in me. It doesn’t feel like I’ve got anything worth saying that needs my voice to say it.
Umberto Eco said: I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
Maybe my yen is faded. Perhaps it’s time to put that dream to bed instead of continuing to feel vaguely dissatisfied with myself for not accomplishing anything. Because if we’re honest, I haven’t found a way to squeeze out extra hours in a day to spend on writing, and no one (who isn’t, say, Terry Pratchett) gets better at writing without a lot of practice, focus, and good feedback.
And entirely aside from that, the author stories from the trenches of having to market their books nonstop is utterly depressing. I’m terrible at marketing.
Year 3, Day 118: There’s almost something laughable about elderly relatives accusing us of being overly indulgent and permissive with Smol Acrobat, while complete strangers comment that they are well behaved in public (timing is everything). We’re tired, and we are trying to gentle parent, but we’re neither indulgent or permissive when it comes to the important things. Some folks just aren’t happy unless they’re dousing other people with their unhappiness and can’t feel good about themselves without insulting someone else. Must be sad to be them.
Separately: I was lucky enough to have a long heart to heart with a chosen parent about all kinds of family history including abusive parent figures and how we’ve coped with it. We’re fundamentally such different people and we have very different coping mentalities, and I’m so grateful to have found a parent in them.
Naturally, my gut couldn’t accept that they like me for me. No matter who it is, some part of my brain starts second-guessing why they put up with me. The imprints in my psyche after years of knowing that half my family of origin had no love for me, but not understanding why, keep floating to the surface. Who am I to deserve love? Nobody, that’s who.
I keep reminding myself it’ll take time to erase those marks.
Year 3, Day 119: It’s been a busy week. Mostly good, some bad, but having support from my chosen family so that I could steal a few moments without having to mind them constantly has been unbelievably amazing. I miss my community, I miss my chosen family, and it’s been pure joy to see Smol Acrobat bond deeply with Grandma. They’re far more selective about who they’re close with, whereas JB was expansive, and so this is the first time I’m seeing them really invested in a relationship with another person outside of our nuclear family.
July 21, 2023
1. My cough won’t budge but my pain has been lower than usual. I’ll take the win.
Helping folks: A dear friend who has helped me through therapy, mental health struggles, and more is in a really tough situation right now. She escaped an abusive parent / caretaking situation with a lot of help 2 years ago (old GFM here for reference). She was able to start over with a clean slate, but of course since then, her job has been steadily cutting her pay and her hours. She’s been actively job hunting, I’ve been helping, but things are rough out there and she’s not been able to find a safe landing pad. She didn’t want to ask for help, she didn’t actually ask me for help, but I know she needs it and I’ve been in that exact situation where I wasn’t sure it was worth continuing to fight, and been unwilling to ask for help myself. I won’t leave a friend like that.
Her current critical need is that her car needs work, estimated to cost $2000+, which she can’t afford with the steady drop in income. I’ve set aside a large chunk of cash for it, and am hoping friends will be able to help pitch in to help us get the rest of the way. You know I’d never ask for myself, but I will ask for a friend. We have $600 right now, so we’re almost halfway there. If you can, every bit would help so much.
Venmo: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman [at sign] gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
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July 18, 2023
JB and I were discussing spending habits and inclinations. I shared that I’m happiest when I preserve half of my spending budget. Even if that money was earmarked for spending specifically, I like coming home with half of it still in my pocket. Budget. Whichever.
They like to leave it all out on the field, so to speak.
It occurs to me that when I think of spending in retirement, I get nervous because it feels more constrained. It worries me to have a ceiling on what we can spend. But even if I didn’t set a ceiling on our spending, our incomes necessarily provide a ceiling. We don’t have a money tree to harvest when we’ve spent all available income. We have to stop spending sometime. Doesn’t matter if it’s an artificial or real ceiling that we’re choosing to stop at, we have to stop.
So what’s different about having a set budget in retirement?
Is it because artificial ceilings feel safer, knowing I COULD dig into the allocated savings if I want to? Or is it because we’d presumably be only spending and not saving in retirement, and the mode of “not saving” is only associated with bad memories because the only times I wasn’t saving in the past were for bad reasons?
Maybe it’s a spicy cornucopia of everything. But I should spend some time thinking about this and how to adjust my attitude a little over the coming years. I can’t be in Prepper (Chaos and Emergencies are Imminent!) mode for the rest of our lives.
Related to this:
Maggie tipped me to this podcast interview with Mindy and Carl of 1500Days. I mainly know Carl through his blog and mutual friends, Mindy has supported a number of my initiatives in the past. I know them but don’t know-know them.
There was a LOT of food for thought in that episode. It’s really interesting to hear how two people, one of whom retired early and the other of whom still earns money, view their money and their spending habits.
I had to laugh at how many habits we share, how many times I nodded in agreement with something Mindy or Carl said, even as I recognized our shared irrational fears. My need for control, and my fear of lack of control, have always played a huge role in how I handled our money and it’s a slow process in undoing those fears and worries.
Carl said: “My money hoarding tendencies were borne out of trauma and insecurity.” While this is still true for me, I am working on it.
Much like the issues I have with my dad, my deep-seated insecurities born from a childhood where people I trusted betrayed me repeatedly, I’m identifying where those issues drive fear responses and am slowly unraveling those tight reactionary cords twisted around my heart.
I don’t have half as much fear as I used to about money. We save a lot for the future and we also spend on huge ticket necessities like childcare, camp, my therapist, some extracurriculars, take out to make our lives easier, convenience foods also to make our lives easier. If we had lower incomes, I would have much higher anxiety and feel the need to spend less. Making more money absolutely enables me to relax more than ever before because I can save and spend on the income we have.
The x-factor for me feeling comfortable with spending and retiring, always, is the healthcare question. Our employer-sponsored healthcare plan is the next to cheapest one offered and it’s still excellent and it’s still very expensive. We pay about $4000 in premiums, annually. The employer pays $19,000! That’s $23,000 for a year of premiums. Granted, we have really excellent coverage.
We haven’t needed very extensive care, the worst has been my labor and delivery x 2, but my doctor orders labs and x-rays and other things as needed just to rule out more serious ailments whenever my body does the weird things that my body does. I’ve never once had to argue with them about covering anything, or get pre-approval, or been retroactively billed for anything they retroactively decided not to cover. That last part is almost priceless.
When I see horror stories, which are all too common, of folks who have necessary procedures and treatments denied, I can easily imagine the hours of fear and stress of fighting with the horrible healthcare companies which only care about making a profit. We know they automatically reject claims with the knowledge that some people will be too sick or too tired or not knowledgeable enough or don’t have enough time to fight back. We know they don’t give half a hoot about people’s health if they can generate higher profits or instant savings. The vast majority of healthcare companies are absolutely nefarious.
July 17, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 108: When I was 17, I started my first full time retail type job. Before then I’d only worked summer part time jobs and for my parents. I met lifers whose motto was “don’t rock the boat” because they just wanted to make it to retirement (15 years off) no matter how miserable they were. I experienced managers who were so inept they cried at work over their “best friend betraying them” (a direct report). I met people who slept with married people and got pregnant. I met people who slept with coworkers and got pregnant and even though they were unhappy, decided they had to get married for the sake of the kid. I met people who slept with coworkers and broke up, making the night shift super awkward for everyone.
It was a whole lot of life in one little building. In retrospect, I’m grateful for all those experiences that informed what I was looking for out of work and out of life: I didn’t want to have to keep my head down when work conditions were terrible for fear of losing my only job. I didn’t want to have to suffer silently. I didn’t want to let people be stepped on and stay quiet. I wanted to stand up for myself, to advocate for better working conditions, to advocate for everyone. I wanted options, respect, and no drama.
While I don’t necessarily feel like I have a lot of options now in case things go sideways, I do have the latter two in spades and that’s meaningful.
Year 3, Day 109: I’m sure everyone already knew this and I was just too stubborn/unmotivated to try but it turns out cornstarch is the secret to frying up slabs of tofu that don’t stick to the pan! I used some notes from this recipe and added cornstarch and garlic powder for my first attempt at frying tofu while following actual directions instead of winging it. I didn’t even need a spatula to flip them! Didn’t even use a non stick pan, either.
The garlic flavor didn’t come through at all. It smelled good but I couldn’t taste it. I won’t waste garlic powder next time but I will keep the steps of prepping hours ahead to let the liquid drain and adding cornstarch.
Year 3, Day 110: We spent $20 on a couple bags of raised bed and potting mix to add to the potato bags. I’d filled them maybe halfway a couple summers back. We grow small potato crops now and again, half a colander full at a time. I figured, even if I don’t grow a great deal more because we’re constrained by volume, a good soil top-up would do us good. Lots of plants are poking their way up through the replenished soil now, so I’m hoping for enough potatoes in a harvest to share.
We joke that these are the most expensive potatoes ever, $100 starting up a few years back and $20 now, and we most certainly have not gotten $120 worth of potatoes out of them but I have really enjoyed having an incredibly low maintenance little garden to dig in now and again and fresh potatoes to eat. It’s rare for me to say it’s not about the money, it’s about the fun, but that’s exactly what’s going on here.
Year 3, Day 111: I’ve been sad about my brother and our lost relationship lately. I saw a car that reminded me of his two best friends in high school. They were a set and I cared about them too but we all fell out of touch after they graduated from college and moved on with their professional lives while he remained stuck in the ditch of life. In what was probably a foolish attempt, I tried emailing the one I could find a work email for to see if he might want to catch up. It’s been three weeks and he hasn’t answered.
Maybe my email went to spam, he doesn’t remember me, or he doesn’t want to know me anymore. I’m still in touch or friends with most of my high school friends, 23 years on, and had always assumed we’d still be friends too. So that’s another small sadness.
Year 3, Day 112: The idea of the “friendzone” is such a weird concept to me. Is it some Harry met Sally “men and women can’t be friends” thing? Maybe it’s because I didn’t date much in my single years. I had a couple boyfriends through my twenties but generally most people weren’t interested in me. The (very) few that were weren’t a good fit. I didn’t recognize or reciprocate their interest. We didn’t stay friends after we stopped going to the same school. Maybe that’s what they mean by friendzone: I was fine being their friend, but they had only hung around in case I changed my mind, not because they valued my friendship or me as a person. Doesn’t seem like a worthwhile (or respectful) reason to stick around, if you ask me. I would hate to find out that someone I believed to be a friend had been hanging around solely in hopes of having a different relationship.
I have four male friends, dating back to junior high through college, who are very close, through-thick-and-thin-type friends. They stood in as my date for the occasional event that required one, without it ever being an issue for us or our respective partners who weren’t available because we were friends and only friends. Never once has the idea that we had zero romantic interest in one another diminished our friendship. We’ve openly acknowledged the fact that we had zero attraction to one another at one time or another without any awkwardness or stress. It just is. We’re best friends and best as friends. I cherish that. I wonder if people worrying about being friendzoned are open to having a deep non-romantic relationship with folks of their preferred gender or if that’s the only goal.