Things have shifted around here quite a bit in the past four years. Not just because of COVID, also because of developments like having a second kid.
He does all the grocery shopping. We used to split this 70/30 (more him).
He does all the daycare dropoff and pickup, I do all the elementary school dropoff and pickup. We used to split the daycare dropoff and pickup a little 80/20 (more him).
He does all the car maintenance and records tracking. I do all the paying for the car maintenance. This is the same as before. It does worry me some that I haven’t dealt with car stuff in over a decade and don’t know much about the cars.
He does most of the weeknight and all the weekend dinners. I used to do most of the dinners. I don’t cook from scratch very much these days, and he buys lots of ready made entrees at Costco so we can cobble together with frozen or fresh veggies depending on how far out we are from our last grocery run. Sometimes we use veggies from the garden, but it’s slim pickins at best. Here’s hoping the pea sprouts suddenly burst into bloom and yield delicious snap peas.
I still do all the financial everything: savings, spending tracking, submitting for and tracking reimbursements, donations and mutual aid, investing, strategy and goal-setting. Once in a while he’ll ask what our financial health is like. My usual short answer is we don’t have retirement money yet, but we will. That’s kind of the biggest picture answer.
I used to do most of the dog walks and all the dog healthcare appointments and maintenance. Ear cleaning, wound tending, medications, all me. He used to do most of the morning walks and maybe the late night ones.
I do all the dental appointments (6 a year), he goes to his own (2). He has a mild phobia? strong dislike of the dentist and doesn’t want to pass his anxiety to the kids. Fine by me, I love the dentist! It’s a nice relaxing hour in the comfy reclining chair and we recently even found some improvement in my gum health. Flossing DOES work. Smol Acrobat doesn’t share my love for the whole thing but their bribery is good enough.
I get all the orthodontia appointments too (4-6 a year). The appointments are fine but the 2 days after they’re tightened are terrible.
I handle half the eye appointments: myself and JB usually. He does his and Smol’s. The optometrist gives me the heebies.
He’s done all of Smol’s medical appointments, I generally do all of JB’s now. We used to both go.
I do all the other paperwork in the household: registrations for vehicles, for school, forms for school and daycare.
He does all of Smol Acrobat’s showers and bed routine, I used to do all of JB’s. It just shifted as JB outgrew the need for us to bathe them and my work was more demanding.
Year 5, Day 180: Our Yeti was acting funny a few months back so I contacted Goal Zero to troubleshoot. They couldn’t figure out why it randomly shut itself off either, so they arranged for an exchange. It took us months to actually get to packing it up for shipment but within a week of the arranged pickup with FedEx, the replacement one arrived at our doorstep. FedEx’s tracking system is generally garbage and this was no exception. Most times my deliveries are delayed six times before they get here, annoying but ultimately fine. This time I was notified that a label was made, and that was the status right up until the delivery guy banged on our door like Aragorn announcing Gondor’s call for aid. He was kind enough to deposit it just inside our door rather than just on the front step. I could not have safely hefted that thing by myself. This felt timely since we’re having yet another heat wave this week and PGE has planned blackouts. If things get dire, we may need the Yeti to keep my devices up and running for work.
I felt a need to eat my feelings all day. It was confusing, though, usually I think: I’m so mad I need something sweet/salty/crunchy to soothe my ruffled feathers. Today I just kept trying to think of a snack but nothing suited and I couldn’t figure out what was driving it. Ultimately it was probably overwhelm. I’ve got too many plates and balls and spiky pineapples being juggled all at once, it’s feeling impossible to manage. I’ve just got my fingertips around all of it but it’s precarious. I felt a bit better by the end of the day when I’d burned through several huge piles of backlog.
Year 5, Day 181: It’s heat wave time again. We were just coming down from 90 degrees at 7:30 pm. It’s funny dealing with the heat when all my patterns have finally shifted to living in cold weather. Everyone else in the family copes much worse than I. No one sleeps well and there’s a lot of complaining.
I was utterly unmotivated to cook dinner so when JB asked for takeout, I suggested the burger place. Then on the spur of the moment, we decided to eat on their outside patio since it wasn’t crowded. We rarely ever do that. This might be the fourth time we’ve ever eaten there. (My antipathy for the company of other humans is stronger than ever since 2020.) The best part was getting home at 645 with everyone fed and ready to hop into the shower. We’re usually trying to get dinner on the table or just sitting down by that time. It’s amazing how much less stressful the night feels when dinner is done by or before 7. I still had to work late but it was an early enough start that when Smol Acrobat asked me to lay down with them for a while, I didn’t particularly mind the lost half hour. I managed to dispatch the worst of the pile and log off at 10, off to do the second half of my exercises so really it felt a lot like having it all today.
Now that it’s October, we need to make time for our flu and COVID shots. Every time I think about it, I remind myself: but don’t do it the same time as PiC! Maybe we should get our flu shots separately, too … I will say that the kids really like seeing us get ours, so we often tried to do them all as a family but last year kicking our asses taught us not to pander to their enjoyment.
Year 5, Day 182: It’s been one week of taking the lowest possible dose of this new medicine (an alpha blocker blood pressure med for off label use) to see if this will break my lifelong cycle of intense draining nightmares.
I had terrible side effects the first night (nasal passages felt severely swollen for a few hours), less the second (annoying congestion), weird the third night (congestion didn’t start until I woke up), and none since the fourth dose. As for effectiveness: I still have vivid dreams but none in the past week have been the terrible gripping nightmares that make me wake up screaming or even more tired than when I went to sleep (similar to massive pain nights). So far so good? I’m going to stay at this dose for another two weeks and see if there is any recurrence.
I’ve found three new freckles on my arm. That’s weird. I’m not in the habit of adding freckles to my collection. As teens we used to theorize they were the result of sun damage, based entirely on the frequent appearance of freckles on one friend every time they were sunburned. I wonder what really caused them.
It’s early release all week for JB and PiC has taken the brunt of the past two afternoons. His schedule is more flexible than mine on a good day, and I haven’t had one of those in a while, so I really appreciate his taking the hits.
Dinner: carnitas fried stovetop (premade from Costco), pico de gallo, Mexican rice and chips from the local taqueria, shredded cheese, guacamole (Costco), and a handful of fresh picked green beans (5) and snap peas (3) from the garden. I gave the other 5 green beans to JB to pack for their lunch tomorrow.
Year 5, Day 183: Everyone’s sleep patterns this school year are still very off kilter. Even our earliest riser, Smol Acrobat, is sleeping late, past 7 some days. I enforce an 8-830 bedtime but it’s not doing the trick.
Another scorcher today. I grumble a bit when it’s colder but on days like this, I’m grateful that our house holds in the cold so much that even when it’s 90 degrees outside, as long as the blinds are down and doors and windows stay shut, the cool air stays inside.
I’m glad it’s online so we can attend without leaving the house but I’m still whining that it’s already the next PTA meeting. Really? Already?
Related: The 4th grade is the big fundraising year for the kids’ 5th grade costs like graduation and the like. I’ll fundraise for charitable reasons to help out folks in need, never for personal gain/needs/wants, so I feel VERY weird about this. How do people even do this? I can’t / won’t post it at work like people used to do, I’m a higher-up. Almost everyone is below me in rank, that wouldn’t be right. I don’t feel like I could circulate among friends, either, because it’s not a “good” cause. Once in a while I get fundraising emails from niblings whose parents are wealthy or well off for a school thing or a Scout thing and I don’t mind that. I toss in some money but this I feel completely awkward about. It feels like we should just cough it up and cover the costs ourselves. Does anyone else feel this way (on either side as a parent or as someone being asked for donations) or have another way of looking at it?
Year 5, Day 184: Even with people I like, long work calls leave me into a devolved state where I feel about as human as a Dushegub. Three calls this week was 2 calls too many.
But! I did finally get that appointment with the bank to get some paperwork notarized (more people) and then we took the kids to get their flu and COVID vaccines. They were NOT happy about that at all, not one whit. I let JB know a few hours beforehand, let them get their feelings out (so many feelings), and let them pick their top three treat choices for afterward. They were in a tizzy about it right up until the needle hit their arm and then they remembered it wasn’t that big a deal. “that’s it?” 🤦🏻♀️ Smol Acrobat didn’t handle the needle moment well, they were crying before they even sat down but recovered well enough to get home. Then they hobbled like they’d lost three inches off their leg for the rest of the night. It’s very dramatic. JB was side effect free as far as we could see, Smol was a little off their game and seemed a touch feverish but it wasn’t very bad.
1. We met a local family with kids around Smol Acrobat’s age at the new park opening and exchanged info to maybe have the kids bike together again.
2. We explored a new park and the adult and teen riders were all very cool about sharing that space with the youngest and wee-est of riders that were wobbly-bobbly but wanted to be part of this cool thing too.
3. They’re not ready for picking yet but we have a whole DOZEN snap peas growing all at the same time now!
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 $519.25 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. That all goes to buying more index funds.
