Year 5, Day 309: One of the many “first things” I did this morning was to schedule alarms for alllll my meetings. Has to be on my phone, can’t do it on calendars because those reminders are useless for my brain, apparently.
Speaking of useless and my brain, I ordered a load of supplies for my puppy niblings on the weekend. Today I realized AUGHHH I sent it to the wrong address!! I called Chewy, told them I mega goofed and asked if there was anything we could do? The CSR was very kind, laughed with me about it, and offered a couple solutions. Both of them cost me nothing and the right puppies would get the right delivery. In a day when everything else took so much more work to produce less result, that help was much appreciated.
I managed to throw together dinner with all kinds of fish: poke from the local market, seared our two last chunks of ahi tuna from a friend’s catch, and Sunday’s baked salmon all made it on the table with rice and cucumbers. Thank goodness that was easy. I also threw a frozen Costco lasagna in the oven which was going to take too long for dinner but juuust in case people were still hungry, figured it’d be ready for the tail end of dinner. JB scarfed 3/4 of the seared ahi tuna and then held out for dessert lasagna. This is probably getting to be a bad habit. I made dessert cornbread on the weekend.
I feel this quote deeply, all the time: “Of course I’m amazing at it but I hate it! It’s all relationships and people. So many people. In person.” Mike B, Madam Secretary.
Year 5, Day 310: Ah ha. So this virus is shaping up to be flu-like. Fantastic. I could blame my mood on that today but I’ll be honest, there are 15 million other reasons for my “why can’t I retire Right Flipping Now” scowling and growling. Most of them are at the US government, a significant number of those reasons are at work, and there’s no day I’m particularly happy at work these days. We are making progress on one set of important projects to get support in place so that’s a long term good but it’s hard to feel positive right now. This is going to take time to settle down.
I put myself to bed to work, and that helped me. I didn’t feel better by the time I had to pick up JB and do the working from an uncomfortable chair at JB’s activity thing, but at least it wasn’t a lot worse.
We had an “easy” night planned for dinner: a Costco Irish stew with a Costco loaf of bread. Not planned: JB injuring their hand. I bandaged it up to stabilize it and let them sleep in my bed because they’re a strange creature when it comes to their bed nest and they had a specific nesting ritual planned for tonight which they can’t do one handed. Here’s hoping the swelling goes down tomorrow and it’s not worse than a sprain.
Year 5, Day 311: There is simultaneously too much work and yet somehow not enough distraction from the fact that we’re waiting on multiple financial things: bonus announcements, raise announcements, our taxes and whether we owe or expect a refund. I hate waiting! It should be a good thing but it can’t be good until I actually have the pertinent information and see if it’s what we need. *GIMME*
I’m also extra anxious on the tax front. If we do owe more, I don’t want to give this administration a penny. If we are owed a refund, what’s the likelihood they’ll actually be paid? Seems low!
Around midday I wandered outside to find that the weather had changed on me. Not too hot, not too cold, just perfect. I still felt like garbage physically but the emotional uplift was temporarily so strong that I went and weeded the garden a bit. I opened all the windows and aired out the house.
That also reminded me that JB’s in between swimsuits sizes and Primary.com has a 60% off sale so I picked out clearance items in the next two sizes up for them. Smol Acrobat already has their next two sizes up so they’re good for now. I wish shopping for swimsuits for myself felt as simple as picking roughly the right sizes and then clicking BUY. Never has felt that way though.
Year 5, Day 312: My pain flares are coming more frequently and at a higher levels like it’s building up to a tsunami. I’m increasing my antidepressants dosage today for overall pain maintenance, and have an appointment to talk to the chronic pain pharmacist next week about any other pain meds I could try for the acute pain.
Whine: I have to set our eye appointments AGAIN. Didn’t we just do this?? I find that I dread eye appointments so much it feels like once a year per person is too much. Versus dental appointments which happen twice or thrice a year.
Oh hey I do not hate the La Croix Lime flavor! Our dentist had them out for some things and I gave it a try. Not bad! Now I’m hoping they have other flavors I like but I’m wary of trying a 12 pack.
I have to do my planks today, don’t I? I usually try to do them Sunday or Monday because we are not friends and the mental fortitude required to meet your mortal workout enemy for fifty six seconds a pop doesn’t exist by the end of the week. But Sunday and Monday my flu symptoms were overwhelming so here we are. Thursday planks. Three sets of 56-second planks. You know what helps? Taking off your socks before you plank so you’re not fighting to plank AND keep your toes from slipping out from under you. Protip.
While I was laid out on the floor, I also did 30 glute bridges and 40 lying leg raises. I live here now.
Year 5, Day 313: After I went into a 3 week flare up after my last massage, I worried that my body couldn’t handle massages anymore. But thinking about the timing more, it had to be coincidental because in that same week, I got very bad news and then we were also just a couple weeks out from the inauguration so my whole being was clenched tight as a drum in anticipation of the terrible that was able to roll out.
I’m now attributing the massive flare-up to the corresponding spike of stress going through the stratosphere in January. So I had my massage which helped my back that’s been a wreck since working from bed for so many nights, and have increased my antidepressants which may be sufficient to stave off the worst of my tsunami of anxiety. It does feel less intense than it’s been feeling so that’s something. We made some good decisions: to NOT volunteer tonight at the PTA thing. Only PiC was going to go but that left me managing the kids alone on the Friday night after a long as hell week. We decided the better choice was to accept a last minute invitation to see our friends on the weekend for an impromptu overnight, so we called it a night early.
Year 5, Day 302: This is the first day I’ve had to mostly myself (while still being responsible for JB) for so long I actually can’t remember when last I had this luxury. The morning was dedicated to setting up the back-up laptop (3 hours in and about 60% done). I planned to pop out for a spot of gardening (hauling soil) afterwards but my hips said absolutely not so instead the plan became trying to get a better rate from Comcast (also no dice, I have to wait til my promotional period is almost over because their offers right now stink).
For some time off my butt, I discarded the ideas to make pretzels, or mozzarella cheese, from kits. Both too time consuming and apparently you cannot make cheese from ultra pasteurized milk so we didn’t have the right ingredients. I mixed up a marinade for seared tuna steaks and baked a load of mini muffins from scratch using an easy recipe a PF buddy shared (turned out great but that zapped all my energy). The recipe WAS simple but the physical demands were too much and sent me to bed for two hours. Unfortunately, amid all the attempts at decompression, my plan from last week to hack off a foot of my hair was entirely forgotten. Drat!
This was the first homecooked meal I’ve made in at least that long, or longer and it’s no coincidence that it lands on my single day off but it was also fortuitous that I defrosted the fish two days earlier. We had seared tuna in a soy honey sesame marinade with rice and roasted broccoli. Mini muffins for dessert!
Year 5, Day 303: Double Mondays are the pits. I front loaded the day with three dog encounters and agreeing to dogsit for our elderly neighbor who has a family emergency to tend to soon. That will be weird, we haven’t had a dog around for ten months now. I felt like jumping out of my skin half the day, not sure why but speculated it was being too keyed up with stress and being full to the brim with emotions about the work and the world.
Still, I managed to avoid any meetings today so I was able to power through so much work, my personal backlog was as close to tamed as it ever gets.
The kids moved up in their self defense class to a more intense class. I was dreading this change because of the time of the new class, but I’ve tested a few ways to deal with it and might be making it work well enough to reduce my stress over the change.
I’m easing my way back into training this week. It’s both frustrating to have broken my streak and to feel so weak again after a couple bad weeks. It’s taken six months to feel a little stronger and so little time to feel like I’m back at the beginning. I know I’m not, but the first pushups and planks back are
Year 5, Day 304: What a frustrating day. I could feel the virus getting the better of me so I had to work from bed. Increasing chaos with several upcoming transitions at work means more of my attention is spent on answering questions (ohhhhh I hate questions!) than working. An hour of calls, and an hour and a half at the orthodontist, and no lunch. I was at the end of my tether by 530 pm by which point I had to figure out what to feed people. I didn’t try very hard. It was quick cheese pasta from Costco, pasta sauce, and mini corn dogs alongside bell peppers and carrots.
What is it with kids? I hollered for JB while I was trying to get dinner on the table and they just yelled “YES??” back. Get your young behind out here where I can actually talk to you. By the time they dragged their tardy butt out to the kitchen my patience had snapped. Is it too much to ask them to use their legs, blessed with the energy of healthy youth, to travel the less than 50 feet to the room where I am doing three things at once to hear me out? ARGH. I have told them both that I had better hear the running of feet when I call their names from now on, do not make me call you twice. The “or else” is unspoken but very loud nonetheless.
Bedtime was another six rounds of nonsense. PiC is as overworked as I am so he keeps falling asleep in the middle of reading to Smol Acrobat (I don’t blame him, I’d be falling asleep everywhere too, I just suffer from insomnia/painsomnia so I can’t. Almost wish I could). Smol Acrobat then escapes containment to come find me and reports “Daddy fell asweep”. Last night, JB was enabling the escapee by cuddling and offering to read to them, tonight they offered a session of calming stretches. NGH. GO TO BED. I chivvied two into bed and one out of bed (he said he had too much work tonight to sleep early) and set myself back up in my bed desk.
Year 5, Day 305: It’s a takeout sort of day, crammed with meetings and running around, but I’m drawing a total blank on what to get. Also, my throat is killing me. I was optimistic and worked at my desk today for the first time all week but that was a bad call. It ate up too much energy. Or maybe falling sick was using up all the energy and it wouldn’t have mattered? Hard to say! Back to bed for me tomorrow. Tonight all I can do is try to get as much work done as possible before dinner and not work late again.
Instead I ruminate on hypernormalization and the feeling that our democracy, flawed and broken as it was, is completely going away. We have to keep taking the kids to school, to their activities, feeding and caring for them as normal. We have to keep up the house, put gas in the car, menu plan or get food on the table one way or another. We can’t just stop.
And from a money perspective, I’m worried because I have no idea what to do. I am working my tail off to keep my job and keep my income for however long that can last – we need the income to pay our bills, my staff needs their income to pay their bills. Even as things are falling to a shambles, we need to pay the rent and put food on the table.
But it also feels like I should prepare for disasters that I’ve never contemplated before – like the FDIC being dismantled and US banking systems failing. I’m contemplating moving some emergency money to an overseas bank (TBD) so that we’re not completely destitute if this attack on our entire country and every institution wrecks our finances.
Thing is, I am also under no illusions about there being any easy escape from this country if things go that deeply wrong. There is no safe haven. Canada doesn’t want us. Mexico doesn’t either, I’m sure. We’ve been awful. There is no country that isn’t racist, sexist, that isn’t prone to right wing hardliners and Nazis. We stand and we fight, we help others who are less fortunate – that’s our first response. We yell at our representatives to do something and we take care of our communities and the most vulnerable.
But I am not me if I don’t plan for multiple contingencies. It’s just never been less clear what roadmap or hierarchy of contingencies begin to make sense in all of this.
Year 5, Day 306: I’m deep in the hiring slog and was struck by a memory. When I was new to one of my first four year jobs, the office manager called me into the office. She told me that my brother had applied, could I work with him? She wouldn’t consider him if I said no. I was taken aback and felt the NO! well up from practically my toes. I could NOT work with him. I knew what he was like – flaky, bombastic, thought he knew better than everyone. It shamed me to my core to think of being associated with him at my workplace, where I was earning the money that paid our rent and for my school, and the idea of that livelihood being threatened near about choked me.
She didn’t call him back and we averted what seemed in the moment to be a potential crisis. I worked so many hours there that I paid for my entire college education and continued to pay the rent and all our bills. I agonized over that decision here, even. And it hit me all over again today: Was I wrong? Could that have been the stabilizing influence, the chance that he needed, to get himself on a path that would have led him through his dark moments? Or would he have done what he always did and screw it up somehow, only to take me down with him?
I don’t know. I don’t know why it bit at me today.
On a lighter note, PiC did the Costco run so we have provisions again and we have survived the week that kept kicking me in the shins. I’ve been getting sicker all week and will need the whole weekend to try to not get worse. Getting better is a whole other ask and may require the symbolic sacrifice of something.
Year 5, Day 295: Today was demoralizing. Or started off demoralized and just stayed that way. It’s been a long long haul of fibro and chronic fatigue taking turns kicking me in the teeth every day, for almost two solid weeks. I have very little spirit left.
I did get an enormous amount of work done, considering how much of my morning I lost to other people. Honestly it feels like most of my days are about other people and their needs. I don’t love this. It’s part of the management gig but sigh because after I get through the exhausting if necessary peopling, then it’s a full day of my own work waiting for me and there simply are not enough hours in the day.
Checked off many boxes at home, too: finished one portion of our complicated taxes; got our churning credit card in the mail and promptly made 5 purchases that I’d been holding (3 bills, a giant order for Lakota families, ordered my medication refills); scheduled a notary appointment for PiC to get paperwork finalized; scheduled a last minute appointment for JB to get their braces adjusted after a tooth semi-sort-of-suddenly fell out. It goes from wiggly for weeks to IT’S ABOUT TO COME OUT without any predictability. Normally that doesn’t matter but, with braces, each time a tooth falls out, it’s a whole thing with the wire poking them and everything.
I commiserated with a friend in the same position of limbo and we at least feel a little more confident that we’re both in the same boat. Stinks for both of us but… misery, company, and so on.
Year 5, Day 296: I started the day running at warp speed, getting JB out of the house before 8 am for the braces fix, and then getting back into work mode all before I normally get settled into work.
Despite how hard things are right now, and we’re both bone tired between the two kids, the two jobs that are Really Hard right now, and everything else we’re juggling, I’m also deeply grateful for our financial stability. We have a dry safe home (atmospheric river incoming). Our kids never go hungry (SmolAc’s wails of despondency when they suddenly need a snack notwithstanding). They don’t have any poverty-related health issues. We can afford for me to have therapy and to work with a trainer to work on my health issues. This GFM came across my radar from the book community as this author and her family are navigating a third bout of homelessness. They prepared as much as they could but they’re facing a real uphill battle. I nearly broke myself over what, 16 years?, to keep my nuclear family off the streets and paying their bills but a huge part of that success was because my hard work was combined with luck in a number of areas. This family’s working hard, they need a bushel of good luck. Failing that, for now, they need a few bushels of cash to see them through til that luck breaks their way.
*”all this could be worse” isn’t my coping strategy even if true. Knowing that doesn’t make anything feel less hard or bad. It’s just an observation because I’ve been there – barely making ends meet while working myself to the bone. Working this hard in precarity is different from working this hard and being relatively secure. We’re not the kind of secure where we never have to worry but the (not wolves because I like them but something else that stands in for the olden idea of wolves) are a lot further from our doors than other folks’.
Year 5, Day 297: I’m eating these very tasty brisket chips and just realized that most of PiC’s local friends (“the guys” we call them) make or buy yummy treats for holiday gifts. They all bake, or whatever you do to create some of these treats, and I find that yet another reason they are delightful. Other reasons: they’re solidly dependable, caring, family-oriented in a healthy not-creepy GOP sort of way. When we had that emergency a few years back and I asked them for directions, without explaining until the very end why and definitely without asking for help because I don’t DO that, they immediately mobilized anyway and got to PiC before I did (they were closer). They have reasonable, healthy partnerships whether they have kids or not.
I took this gaming Alignment Quiz the other day and could not answer question 15 because I have no idea what local people think of me or if they give two hoots about my well-being. I CAN answer that for PiC. His folks show up. Another guy in the group had to move his dad into a nursing home and all the guys were there when he needed help clearing out the mess left behind. They’re all in their 50s and they’re still moving friends! And no egos to speak of so no one got injured. I really like that about them.
Year 5, Day 298: My contributions to dinner all week have been takeout. Ordered burgers at the start of the week, picking up pizza today because we’re a mere two miles away and still somehow not in their delivery radius and I’m not willing to pay their delivery fees. I should do the comparison on the time vs fees.
I have so much hair after 3 years of no haircuts, I could chop 8 inches off and still have plenty of room to fix the mess before it gets up to my shoulders. IS IT TIME??
PiC discovered frozen mini corn dogs at Costco! We love them. What is it about foods in finger food sizes that makes them so much more enticing? Normally one corn dog would be a serving size. Pretty sure I had 9 mini corn dogs.
Year 5, Day 299: Trying to find some good in the small moments even as I compile my list of reasons to contact our Congresspeople. There’s a rhythm to stirring a pot of oatmeal for everyone else to breakfast on (too mushy for me). I reserved a whole half hour for myself to just do work without speaking to anyone else after my first meeting of the day. That gave me a tiny bit of equilibrium back.
The Costco shipments to the Lakota reservation are getting unstuck, supplies are getting to people who need them. The first family this month asked only for space heaters for all the trailers. We sent enough for everyone. The second family has a house that’s more winter tight (but that’s all relative) so they’ve been giving bed space to folks whose homes aren’t. They needed blankets and food as they hardly had enough for themselves. We sent a huge (Costco FTW!) shipment of food and blankets. I’m working on the third family but we’ll be clean out of money pretty quick. They have ten family members listed too. I’m trying to shake out a bit more cash because right now I can only get them a couple weeks worth of food along with the toilet paper, shampoo, conditioner, and soap. I’d like to add a few more things: toothbrushes, toothpaste, detergent, more food.
I absolutely know there’s no time for a dog right now, I can’t even make time to go borrow one for a walk. My soul doesn’t care about reality or responsibilities, it yearns for a dog snoring at the foot of my bed again. Can’t. But want.
Year 5, Day 288: A pain flare kicked my ass this weekend. Still is. Some of it’s probably the barometric pressure shifting on me, a good amount of it will be the stress lately and sleeping badly because Smol Acrobat bunked with us for a couple nights. “I wike your bed better, it’s bigger den our bed” they observed. Then why did I keep waking up to you sleeping on my head?
Trudeau’s speech made me sad in that, yes! We know this is unhinged behavior that none of us (North Americans who aren’t garbage) want and we’re also fighting what feels like a losing battle against it all. We’re still fighting but man was it hard not to feel so much shame to be an American in this moment.
“I hate most people, it takes all of my skill to hide that!” – Blake, Madam Secretary.
Boy do I feel that.
Half my day was eaten up with calls. I’m living my nightmare job right now. May this pass soon.
Year 5, Day 289: My stress cravings are getting very specific. I catch myself wanting a Cinnabon most days. Or an old fashioned donut plus a donut hole. Or a ribeye. Today, though, I survived on a glamorous half inch slice of quiche and small Gatorade because I had no appetite. My pain was so intense last night that I caved and took a tramadol. I’ve not taken one in two years for a very good reason: it alleviates my pain for a little while and then I pay for it five times over with side effects. Feeling like my bones are lava has become almost routine on bad days, but this is Day 3 of extremely high pain. So high that it actually distracted me from work. Work is usually my way of distracting myself from the pain and it’s rare for anything to break my hyperfocus when that’s in gear. The tramadol bought me 3 hours of blunted tolerable pain. It also bought me 18 hours of severe nausea. These trade-offs are NOT worth it. But what choice do I have? We really need better pain control options. This is awful.
PiC had to take over my school runs and JB’s activities today because I felt so awful. I couldn’t even feel guilty.
Year 5, Day 290: Pacing myself this week has been the pits. I’ve been mostly bedridden because sitting and standing are so fatiguing they send my pain through the roof into the stratosphere. I refuse to take the tramadol again, that is SO not worth it.
You know what’s great? Giant spoonful of peanut butter. Can’t take away pain or fatigue or that river of lava flowing through my bones but it is DELICIOUS.
Was super proud of a friend who has committed to making calls to Senators even though it was hard for her. I provided all the scripts and phone numbers I had collected from Celeste Pewter and cheered her from bed.
Year 5, Day 291: From Courtney Milan’s newsletter, the word I was searching for last week for this surreal moment in time: “I learned a word this week: hypernormalization.
It’s the word people used to describe what was happening in the Soviet bloc countries in the 1970s and 1980s, as people went about their daily lives deeply aware that the center would not hold, that everything was falling apart, but with nothing left to do but pretend that life would go on as they understood it.
It’s a word that encompasses the moment when a large number of us know what is happening to our country—know what we are seeing—but engage in a mass, country-wide kayfabe to keep on doing the things we need to do to survive as individuals, even knowing that some individuals won’t make it and that the world we know is rapidly deteriorating around us.”
I think she’s 100% right about this too: “I firmly believe that if nothing is done, historians will place the end of the United States as a democratic, constitutional republic somewhere between a few days ago and a few months from now.”
I’ve been checking in on my people and making sure they know we’re here for them. I don’t know how, or if, this country survives these body blows. Maybe it doesn’t. But we as individuals and people may survive if we take care of each other.
We expect a few lump sums of money this year that’s mostly meant to pay for the roof but I’m also earmarking direct aid for people I’ll never meet offline who are in need or are community organizers or activists themselves.
Year 5, Day 292: I love Smitten Kitchen, I knew they wouldn’t fail me when I didn’t know how I was going to cook those spareribs I got on sale.
I spaced out the cooking process across DAYS because I haven’t been able to sit up or be out of bed most of this week. Mixed the spices one day. Dredged the ribs another session. Then popped them in the oven in the morning to bake for HOURS. A friend asked me how I get anything / everything done / survive between my health and my life. Well. This kind of budgeting is one way.
You know what’s funny about sending holiday cards super late? Five friends have texted me delighted to have received it. This doesn’t happen during the year-end holidays, no one cares or has time to care at that time of year.
Costco had no eggs and we are just about out. I feel vaguely like a failure of a quartermaster because I’m usually on top of these things and get enough supplies to hold us over for a while or ration supplies to make it stretch. PiC was advised to get there between 9 and 10 am to get eggs so they do have some, they just run out quickly.
Year 5, Day 281: There’s something I can’t stand about the audio of dubbed TV shows or movies. The voices always sound too breathy and feel mismatched to the people they’re dubbing. Even when I’m not looking at the screen, that offness remains.
Wrote to all our Congresspeople again today to tell them, again, we do NOT want bipartisanship with this administration. I don’t want to see one single CA Senatorial vote for any of their nominations or bills or anything.
Stand up for trans rights, immigrants rights, reproductive healthcare rights. Stop pissing away what little goodwill remains for scraps of recognition or Republican “cooperation”. Also instructed all of them to SPEAK UP against this federal funding freeze bullshit.
Although I’m being worked into the ground, I’m also keeping it front of mind that I cannot exist solely to deal with W2 work, chores, giving and activism alone. We must carve out room for rest (even if it’s not enough) and joy. We need to sustain for many more days, weeks, and months. We don’t have to pretend life is NORMAL but we do VERY much need to deliberately choose to have good in every one of our days. We’ll burn out spectacularly if we don’t.
Year 5, Day 282: The “purge if you don’t miss it in a year” cycle doesn’t work for me. My regret cycles kick in at 2-4 years, and I never know which it’ll be for, or if it’s silly.
At the moment I am regretting getting rid of my Top Shop leggings a few years back. I’m wearing the one remaining pair under my cargo pants for warmth so it matters very little how they look or fit, it only matters that they’re oh so soft. Then again, I don’t think I’d still fit at Petite 2 size anymore, so maybe this is rose colored glasses at play too.
JB is so bitter that they have the day off school tomorrow but isn’t allowed to stay up late tonight doing crafts. We still have to get up for the dentist early tomorrow morning. I don’t think I knew they had the day off when I made the appointments but it worked out, mostly.
Year 5, Day 283: Smol Acrobat loves counting my reps for me. After 30 lateral raises, 14 squats and 15 glute bridges: “what are you doing NOW.”
Lying on the floor like roadkill, kid, I’m tired!
It’s been a hell of a day. Meetings all morning, then getting into actual work but an idle checking in on people led to finding out I have to take more meetings because folks have needs that need to be heard and their managers have totally dropped the ball so I need to pick it up. Fahhhhh.
I’m extra tired. So tired I WANT to cry emotionally but physically am just too damn tired to and who has the time to anyway?
This all-the-meetings! life is hell and I hate it. I’d like to think or know that it’s temporary but due to upcoming reorganizing, probably some of it is here to stay. I have to figure out how to share the pain so it’s manageable workload and not just pain.
Soothing background show for the day: Man on the Inside. So many The Good Place alum, I hope they keep adding more in the second season.
Year 5, Day 284: We’re saving for the roof replacement and travel and replenishing the dog fund. It feels very jarring to be thinking of these trivial things (and how do we suddenly have tiny poppy plants spread all over the place?) this week with everything going on.
It feels like we’re living in 1930s Germany. I know many people outside the US see the same thing when they look at us. Even though we’re safer than most being in California, my gut screams that we have to fight and plan for the worst.
Asians have historically been OTHER. Just because we’ve been temporarily useful in recent years as a model minority (which is bullshit, not safety, and woe to most Asians who believe otherwise) we’ll be a target just as much as our fellow minorities. We may not be the first but our turn will come. I sure as hell don’t plan to be compliant. We have to fight to help the folks on the front lines, now. Trans people, sex workers, they might be first because the world thinks they’re expendable, but no one who isn’t a cishet white male is safe. I remember the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese internment camps and Korematsu v. United States and the millions of racist indignities before, in between and since then.
Soothing background show for the day: Madam Secretary. I find the competence and (sometimes unflappability) of Tea Leoni’s Elizabeth McCord and Bebe Neuwirth’s Nadine Tolliver comforting.
Year 5, Day 285: I shared CA Senator phone numbers with two more people, asking them to call and leave voicemails when bad shit is happening (when is bad shit NOT happening these days) to pressure them into taking action.
I called the Costco feedback line to thank them for maintaining their line on DEI policies and not caving to pressure internally or externally both as a customer and a shareholder. 1966 positive calls today, she said! This is important that they hear from us that they should be continuing to hold this line. I need to get a phone number to yell at Target. Wait, here’s the number to yell at Target, or (thanks to Celeste Pewter).
Nicole and Maggie have lists of actions, pick one or two that you can do? Jan 26 and Feb 1.
I chose a new churning credit card: Chase Sapphire Preferred, 60000 bonus points for $4000 spend in 3 months. I should have done this last month, the kids’ dental bill alone was $1000. But we have more coming up, hitting that requirement will happen pretty quickly. Making a note for myself that I should plan to do this early next year. Again that double feeling of surrealism with planning: will we be here next year? Will we be able to make use of points hoards?
Year 5, Day 278: A plague is upon our house. Having successfully taken down JB, the (noro?)virus moved on to me and I’m wiped OUT. It’s gotten PiC too. Smol Acrobat has a whole different set of symptoms so we’re collectively a mess. Days and weeks like this remind me – we definitely can’t have a dog for at least another year. It’s too hard to get sick, be unable to rest because you need to keep someone else alive, even harder when you need to keep a pet alive and well. My antivirals are doing a fine job of keeping me off death’s doorstep but it can’t make me well.
It’s fine, I miss my dogs deeply but we need this time and energy cushion so I’ll be using this time to rebuild the dog savings account. We can always build money margin by saving more and earning more where possible but I don’t know how to build health/energy margin.
Year 5, Day 279: Now obviously I’m nowhere near being a billionaire so there must be something I’m missing but I have a quibble with this quote from Warren Buffett: Real estate is generally a “good investment” during times of inflation, according to Buffett.
“They’re the businesses that you buy once and then you don’t have to keep making capital investments subsequently. So, you do not face the problem of continuous reinvestments involving greater and greater dollars because of inflation,” he said during the 2015 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.
No subsequent capital investments? Nothing like general maintenance and replacement appliances (we provided fridge, microwave, stove and oven), or refurbishing the whole place when a tenant trashed it? I got out of real estate because I tried to keep rent low, and that meant that the ongoing costs of maintenance and the cost of lost rent weren’t sufficiently covered. Even if the tenants always paid on time, there’s always something that needs to be maintained annually. My friend with multiple rental units ran through all of their reserves carefully built up over the entire several years they have been doing rentals because one tenant both refused to pay rent, drove away fellow tenants, and trashed two places. They have to start all over rebuilding so they can continue to provide appropriate maintenance for the remaining tenants. My other friend with multiple rentals who is committed to ethical landlording with low-priced rent, doing all the work themselves and promptly, hasn’t broken even in years. I’m well aware there are many predatory landlords and rental companies out there who are more than making ends meet but it’s hard not to look at that statement without full on skepticism about how exactly they’re avoiding any further investments. Though I suppose he’s probably talking about a much larger scale than anything I’m talking about.
Year 5, Day 280: Related to billionaires, I was thinking about this Courtney Milan thread about money and dopamine. My corollary theory to hers is that people whose only hobby and dopamine generator is the pursuit of more money are up a creek, existentially speaking, when they can’t derive dopamine from making or spending money anymore.
On my own personal scale I’ve experienced this in a multitude of ways. In the early days of this blog I needed to work inhumane hours to survive, and then my brain correlated the dopamine of survival = the dopamine of thriving, therefore the path to happiness must be working too hard all the time. That’s one pattern and a brain muscle memory that I still have trouble breaking back out of when I have an intense period of working. Last week, for example. And when the thing you’re expecting to bring you dopamine doesn’t anymore? Problem. That was also last week for me. I did so much work and felt zero satisfaction. It was frustrating.
Then there’s just forgetting how to have fun or relax. That happens a lot for me, too.
My personal fix: I try to pay close attention to small pleasures. Having a batch of cute small inexpensive but well made earrings I can swap in and out without pain is this month’s tiny pleasure. Maybe next month’s too. I hope I’ll always cherish this tiny feeling of satisfaction.
Year 5, Day 281: Woke up exhausted, as usual. Nearly spread sour cream on my bagel exhausted. That’s not great but not unusual. Not as usual: those episodes I’ve have now and again at night? It hit me when I got up this morning. Even after a lot of water, Gatorade, some food and a lot of sitting, the dizziness, dark spots on my vision, and feeling like I was on the precipice of vomiting (but without nausea weirdly enough) remained all morning and afternoon. Absolutely awful.
And then there are so many reasons for the perpetual screaming in my head this week.
Taxes and the inability to know anything right now. I have no idea if we’ll owe, last year was weird in enough ways I can’t even guess, and I cannot do anything about it until the end of the month or mid Feb at best because our documents take forever. Mid Feb may be optimistic even.
Work: so many unanswered questions. So many answers I did get, and don’t like.
Worrying about friends in bad relationships, I wish this one were never a line item but it feels like it always is.
I need a deep therapeutic scream, join me?
Year 5, Day 282: I have no idea what happened to the Friday entry! Which is kind of apropos for how this whole week has gone.
Year 5, Day 271: PiC found our local HMart and got Korean takeout for dinner!! It was SO good. Gochujang, so good. That was the one bright spot for the day. It was nonstop today, starting even before the day began with an 11 pm kid-call for comforting and a 5 am wakeup because one kid didn’t feel well and then the other kid didn’t feel well, and then it was morning and time for questions, emails, checklists, to do lists, questions, chats, updates …. ! It was nonstop with people needing things.
There’s something awful going around right now. This one’s not COVID, flus A or B, or RSV but definitely something that overlaps the same symptoms. I know several people are down with the ick. I hate that we still got gotten even though we mask. It’s not perfect of course, but it probably keeps our infections down to a minimum. Even if it doesn’t feel so best case scenario when you’ve got a kid hurling the contents of their stomach.
Sometimes the state of my brain feels like I can’t learn new stuff because I keep forgetting and then relearning random old stuff. Like the definition of an archipelago.
Year 5, Day 272: We found garlic toum at Costco and it’s amazing (the brand is Toom) – highly recommend. The kids eat so many fresh veggies with it.
I love the ol Donyo Lodge Wildlife Live Stream, it’s so soothing when I’m frustrated with software.
I’m on Week 24 of trainer workouts! And uhhh I am starting to crave some kind of feedback. Maybe this was set off by my doctor’s appointment last week. My doctor (who is the exact same age as me, mind you) commented that she thinks we’re good parents and that she’s proud of me for being self aware and acting on that self knowledge. Having gotten an A in doctor’s appts, now my dopamine seeker wants approval on working out. Tsk. Some impulses are as bad as sugar cravings.
I’m still not reading the Vulture article reporting on Neil Gaiman yet. I intend to at some point, when I have the bandwidth. That said, while I appreciate my friends giving me a heads up that it’s a tough read, it was awfully annoying to have total strangers exhorting me not to read it to protect my peace. You know what, mind your business!
Year 5, Day 273: Our neighbor’s lab is adorable and sweet and hilarious. She walks by our house at least once every two weeks when we’re outside and it just makes my entire day because she wants ALL THE PETS and I want to GIVE all the pets! A match made in heaven. We touch noses and then it’s off to the races: skritches til my arms cramp up. She has that really beautiful thick water dog fur which requires really strong fingers.
I was so stressed by an email at work (it was the opposite of what we needed to hear) it sent me on walkabout through the house so I decided it was time to get my planks out of the way. Now, I don’t hate any of my exercises but do hate that it never feels like planks are getting any easier. I need to do them earlier in the week. By the end of the week, I’m out of time and energy with planks left to do and they don’t always get done. So that email was kind of a lose-win situation.
Year 5, Day 274: JB and I are whining in equal measure about (respectively) homework and work. I’m indulging in excess whining since it’s easier to match their mood than it is to ask them to get it together.
Sometimes I wonder about other people’s finances. In a nosy curious kind of way. We’ve got multiple neighbors with four kids in multi-generational homes with expensive cars and taking expensive vacations (several week trips, international, and theme parks like Disney and the like) every year. I’m so curious about how much that all costs because I couldn’t swing that. We make ok money for here, not that kind of money. Ignore the six figure car. That’s just a “won’t” (even if we could. But we can’t). We priced out Disney last year for a two day pass and almost passed out at the cost. Well over $2000 for the four of us for 1 day. Are we just cheap? Because that seems really expensive. Maybe we’re just cheap?
Maybe the older generation pitches in? In my family the elders are provided for, they don’t contribute financially though they might help around the house. Oh well that’s actually probably the difference isn’t it, they didn’t have to pay for daycare for any of the four kids. At an average of $2000/month per kid, four kids for say five years, they did not spend $480,000 for daycare. That pays for quite a lot of vacations.
Now I’m curious how much we’ve paid for childcare over their lifetimes. If I were on my computer, I’d go find out.
On second thought, best not to.
Year 5, Day 275: You know what I like about Elementary? On my 6th runthrough of it. There’s a pattern of Sherlock growing as a person and however begrudging he may seem about affection in the beginning, truly embracing the value of Joan as a person and as a partner, but there are moments I didn’t catch on in previous viewings like the moment when Joan snaps at Sherlock about his being tetchy with his professor friend and her annoyance with Sherlock who chooses to be alone. He says in this incredibly hurt tone: “Watson?!” but later in the episode, he obviously takes in the point of her upbraiding. It’s a little thing but I liked it.
This, friends, has been an intensely hard week. With sick kids, and intense work loads, our household is a shambles. And I am TIRED.
Part of my stress response to uncertainty is to work more, which is only contributing to the fatigue and stress cycle. Admittedly I actually did need to log some extra hours to clear out a backlog that was going to cause real problems in a couple weeks, so that’s actually a relief but when it’s just about caught up, I forget how to cycle back down to more acceptable levels. I’m waiting on some pretty important answers to very important questions, and it’s not like working myself into the ground is going to do anything at all to change that outcome right now. I need to stop working after dinner, for a start.
