Good Things Friday (215) and Link Love
April 7, 2023
1. It’s a good thing I always project our expenses several months out. Daycare has been terrible at officially notifying us of expected increases resulting from schedule changes and I would have been pretty upset to be caught unawares if I just relied on them. Yay for money spreadsheets!
(The irony of my discovery two days after writing this that I forgot to include a huge recurring monthly expense. Oops! No wonder our cash flow looked unexpectedly robust. Artificially is more accurate. Also disappointing because I’d planned to send out a lot more direct aid before the expenses tipped the scale in the wrong direction so strongly.)
Helping folks: Times are rough for a lot of people right now. If you are fortunate and able, we’ve donated to these folks, they could use a helping hand from the community.
@popelizbet is good people and does good work helping survivors of domestic violence. She’s been laid off (no fault to the org) and needs some help to bridge the gap to her next job.
Tami Mitchell (@disabledgirlfi) is in a tight spot. Her senior dog Imri was injured and needs a ramp.
I have a friend juggling school, chronic illness, and a dangerous stalker ex-spouse problem. I’ve been helping her out but due to massive health issues and a few turns of bad luck, she’s unable to make rent this next month and facing homelessness. I’m working out a way to get her some funds.
If you can pitch in, please send it Ruth’s way with the note: for safety/revanche.
Venmo: @RK-Tillman
PayPal: ruthtillman [at sign] gmail.com
Cashapp: $ruthkt
Activism: In a truly open display of racism, “Tennessee Republicans just expelled Justin Jones and Justin Pearson from the state legislature after their powerful advocacy for gun safety legislation.” If you hate it as much as the rest of us do, and can, please help support them.
It’s been a turn upside and shake hard! sort of week.
I have no desire to go to DW (because Florida) but I feel like going to Disneyland in CA is increasingly complicated. We’ve never had a strong desire to go but we had vaguely discussed maybe taking the kids with family who have reduced pricing sometime. Now it’s so complicated I just can’t fathom wanting to: Why fans say trips to Disney World are now ‘incredibly complicated’ to pull off
This part of Nicole’s article (The Unbearable Costs of Becoming a Writer) hit close to the bone for me. Even though I took a different, also initially low paying, career path and pushed very hard to make more money every step of the way, I still ran out of time with my mom. I couldn’t heal her or help her. I couldn’t earn enough to provide her better care and my heart will always be a little broken from that: “I am aware that focusing on individual responsibility can obscure the reality of broken systems. That neither my parents nor I am to blame for what they were up against. That it was always going to be beyond my capacity to provide and pay for all their care out of pocket when they had significant medical needs and, for many years, no healthcare coverage. But I was—I am—their only child, and I not only wanted but expected to be of more help to them. I didn’t know that we would run out of time.”
COVID caused brain damage in 2 infants infected during pregnancy -US study
‘What’s the code for this?’ Moose wanders into Providence hospital lobby in Anchorage
This made me laugh, we’ve had this exact reading experience with this book, with both kids, with the same number of words per page read before they flipped.
This sweet video illustrates several important lessons for parents and caregivers when it comes to reading with infants and toddlers. What can we learn from it? Take a moment to watch (sound on) and then let’s unpack it a bit in the thread below. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/G4rnU9UJ4e
— Dan Wuori (@DanWuori) March 22, 2023
This also made me laugh:
Hey guys. So since our other account got nuked we’ve been having a hard time establishing trust that this new account is actually eve6. Hoping to put all doubts to rest with this video of me playing our hit song pic.twitter.com/JK5WJlEo5E
— Eve6ix (@eve6ix) April 3, 2023
I was so grateful when we were finally done paying for daycare/ school (and I’m sure it was a fraction of CA prices- private school kindergarten was $6200 a year).
*wheeze* yeah…That would cover ALMOST three months of tuition 😅💀
Sigh. But we’re lucky. We have always been stricter about our spending than many peers and we’ve also made decent money. Those two things together, even with the COL skyrocketing overall, mean we’re still managing to meet all our needs and the occasional want. We’re comfortable, since we have low expectations 😁