January 13, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 264: Day 17 in a row of being with one or both of my children. I’m tired. I’m so tired of the “Mom! Mom! Mom! (They did, they said, can I have, when can we, I need, they hit me, they’re taking my …)” When did this become a Mom household?? You have a father! I just really need several hours in a row without any humans in my immediate vicinity. Dogs, cats, and Corvid crew welcome. PiC gave me a few-hours break today, taking both of them away for the morning, thank goodness, which flew by almost as if it were mere minutes.
I ran training, checked on all the paperwork, followed up on Lakota orders, set up shipping labels for community donations, dealt with management problems and minutia, processed my feelings of general resentment about work stress. I sat with JB for an hour guiding them through another round of organizing their things into the appropriate bins and baskets, and assigned them 15 minutes of carrying on with the work solo while I worked. I pondered my radiating hip pain (entirely self inflicted because I agreed to go on a hike yesterday, foolish mortal), and I pondered the former friend who called me selfish and self-centered. Even if that outburst was more about whatever was going on in their life than me, those words were calculated to hurt and they continue to sting.
Year 5, Day 265: This week’s stressor: the unknowable. A friend was speculating that my life – I don’t make friends when people are incompetent and a LOT of incompetent people have entered our sphere over the past 12 months – is going to get so much worse for me this year. They’ve got a front row seat to some of the shenanigans from last year and had more time in the corporate grind than I have had so their prognostications are likely to be accurate. I have so much to do in 2025 but lack any confidence that I will get the proper support or recognition (by which I mean both title AND money) for it. In fact, I think it’s quite likely I will be left in the lurch (without support from higher ups) by the summer and my entire self doesn’t know what to do with this likelihood other than hate it.
As much as I hate the idea of job hunting, that’s the logical thing to do. I rewrote my LinkedIn as practice for rewriting my resume. Having lots of feelings about this whole thing. Wrote a recommendation for my staff, will write more later.
Kicking myself over making silly mistakes like donating to international GFM campaigns with the wrong credit card so that I got hit with a foreign transaction fee. Rookie mistake! I have a credit card for these things that do NOT charge foreign transaction fees. Sigh. It’s really not a large amount at all, it’s the principle of wasting any money at all, ever.
Year 5, Day 266: Second stressor: The Santa Ana winds have made the fires so unbelievably dangerous in Southern California. I grew up there and even in early adulthood the fires didn’t seem this bad back then. It can’t just be my imagination, CA wildfires must generally be a lot worse in the past decade or so. I’ve checked on a lot of our friends and family, the fire came within a mile (!!) of one of our families but they’re safe, thankfully. So much destruction has occurred and none of it is contained.
Third stressor: I hate change. I haven’t changed my doctor in 13 years, we have only moved once and I have no desire to move again if things aren’t dire. I hold on to clothes until they fall apart or don’t fit anymore. All this to say: when faced with big changes in my work life that I have zero control over and will deeply impact my life and my family’s lives, my stomach churns with stress and I hate it so much. This is in addition to the world being terrible, on the larger scale.
I also realized something about myself though can’t explain it. I toil in obscurity. I do some big and important things (in some respects) professionally but very few people know my name, what I do, or why it matters. And most of the time this doesn’t register on my list of things that matter. It does register when I think about needing to suss out job opportunities and regret not having a strong professional network for referrals. But the moment there’s a chance of visibility on a wider scale, I drag someone in front of me as a human shield, “take him instead!” Best I can say is that this is the same as my thing about fame and money: I’ll take all of the money (so I can do good things with it), I want nothing to do with the fame.
I know what I’m good at and I loathe masking. I haven’t had to operate as the completely professional version of me for more than a decade, I’ve been a more human version, and I’ve gotten used to that. It still takes energy but less than when I face high level corporate executive types and lawyers. When that happens, I feel awkward and put on my professional armor defensively. Except it doesn’t fit the way it used to. It’s happening more than it used to now, and it’s going to keep happening. Deep deep sigh.
I suppose they’ll have to deal with what they get: a well seasoned professional (smells of rosemary?) who has none* fucks left to offer in service of politics and nonsense. (*To quote Smol Acrobat, “none means zero”.) I deliver great work, I don’t have the energy for the other nonsense. Except can I continue to deliver great work if the other nonsense becomes part of my life?
Year 5, Day 267: I haven’t slept well all week. That’s the work stress taking chomps out of my sanity and confidence. Bits of Tiffany’s “I think we’re alone now” has been stuck in the back of my mind with just barely discernible lyrics so it took me 3 days to figure out what song it was. That one I can’t explain.
There’s been a lot to stress about and a lot of extra drain on my energy dealing with those stressors. I had this whole plan to make this year go smoothly and then my cabbage cart was kicked over. ARGH. Imagine me throwing those cabbages back into the cart, muttering direly to myself, and those cabbages are hours-long conversations with various key people and flashes of “oh shit, I forgot that thing too!” That’s been my week.
I freely shared with JB that I am SO TIRED. Dragged myself to and from school pick up and afterschool class. We ran out of Hawaiian rolls so I searched the internet (can’t even call it Googling anymore, what’s going on 2025) and decided we’d whip up a cornbread to go with the pulled pork. Right. Whip up. The slowest whipping up ever. We did manage it, we used Sally’s Baking Addiction’s cornbread recipe which has twice as many ingredients as I like but it was very tasty. If I can, I’d like to make a couple more. One to eat, one to freeze. Ambitious.
Year 5, Day 268: The stress-induced heartburn continues. The endless documentation for various management needs continues. The seemingly-endless backlog of work continues. The fires in LA continue.
My hair is down to my waist again, it’s now been another 2-3 years since my last haircut and I don’t want to go to the hair place because they don’t mask and I don’t know if they vaccinate. Not that vaccination will stop transmission, it’s just the principle. I’m this close to just hacking off several inches myself and damn the consequences. Except for the first time in ages, it might matter what I look like. 🙄
All that wasn’t enough, we foolishly decided to let the kids go to the school Movie Night because the PTA sent out a call for volunteers to staff the snack bar. I was far too tired for that but went and sat with the kids through the movie while PiC did the volunteering. We cleaned up afterward and trudged home. Stick a fork in me, I’m done!
January 6, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 257: It’s getting so we need a third suitcase for family travel. We’ve crammed four humans’ worth of clothing and necessities into 2 small suitcases and a mini one up til now but it’s time. I’m not looking forward to trying to make a decision about what to get. The last time we got a new suitcase, it was a free one from Alaska Air for breaking the wheel on my older suitcase (Swiss army, they sent me a replacement wheel). That’s just a little too big to be a carryon but not big enough to hold a great deal more. It’s maybe about 23-24 inches compared to the 21 inch.
It’d probably be best to get a standard carryon size to make it easy to use for both air and car travel? Or maybe we need to just go medium checked size to have enough space for us adults and the two kids can use the smaller ones as they get older.
Year 5, Day 258: Good grief what a terrible season. So many of our friends and family got sick and/or injured these past two weeks, I’ve started holding my breath whenever someone texts, hoping that this isn’t another illness or injury. It took me two full recovery days to try and get past the worst of my symptoms which were then followed up by several days of hands swollen up like oven mitts.
It was also a really hard day with the kids. They kept taking turns whining for HOURS until I snapped and made them go out on a “walk until you STOP IT” nature walk with me. There were moments I vaguely entertained notions of walking into the sunset and disappearing. It was nice to just pretend to think about for a few minutes. Unexpectedly, eventually they ran out of whine and tuned into the nature around us. Minor miracles. They picked flowers and rosemary and we made it home intact. Emotionally worn down but intact.
I’ve got brand new white hairs and can confidently say they’re from the kids. STRESS.
Year 5, Day 259: Our last visit of the holiday season was a really good restful one. It’s usually our first visit but I rather like ending the whole grueling ordeal with a comparatively peaceful person to be around. We also had the opportunity to care for a dear friend who was unwell. They’ve so often cared for and about me and I haven’t been around for the past decade to help out when they weren’t well. This time we were able to return one of the many favors. It’s a good feeling.
This week’s self soothing activity: Finalizing all the details our spreadsheets to shift over to 2025. I had to clean up some messes and update our tax spreadsheet as we rolled out of 2024 and into 2025.
Year 5, Day 260: My mail order pharmacy won’t cover omeprazole anymore. They had the audacity to say that “it may cost less to purchase OTC”. For a quick comparison, 42 tabs of 20 mg omeprazole at Target is $18. 60 tabs of the same from the pharmacy has been $8. I knew that they were going to change medication coverage but didn’t know exactly how it would impact us, now I am starting to get a glimpse . It looks like I should (maybe?) still be able to order it online for in-person pickup at the normal price, at least.
Ah-ha, corporations are good for something. SFO is booked solid through March 31 for Global Entry appointments and won’t take walk-ins. PiC’s coworker told him that the company pays for the TTP people to come every so often to handle applications for employees and families so he managed to get the kids scheduled for this month. We’d like to plan a trip but I cannot do that until all the paperwork is taken care of, it gives me the collywobbles booking travel without the passports and TTP and all that done.
They were advertising a 5x match on donations before December 31, but I went to the KIND site and they’re now showing a 7x match. I’m wondering if that’s accurate. Either way, I made them our first tax-deductible donation of the year: migrant children are going to have a really rough time of it with this administration. The Young Center also does good work on this front. Their Charity Navigator ratings: KIND, The Young Center.
Year 5, Day 261: All those poppy seeds that I thought the ants or the birds took? They were slandered. Many seeds have burst into not-quite-bloom, but germination and grown into green plants! This was a delightful discovery, like a little reward for surviving the holidays. I’m getting some plant therapy in now, pulling the grass and clover that’s sprung up around the flower plants too. I can’t call them weeds without a flash of guilt now, thanks to The Spellshop.
December 30, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 250: Spiral cut ham is amazing and makes for some amazing leftovers-lunches. Who knew? If I had a deep freezer (one of my “if we could manage and afford a bigger house” sorts of dreams), I would have hams in there at all times. Dreams.
Also, and this is probably not news but, I cannot be trusted to go to Costco alone. If I’m not getting myself lost (which is most of the time), then I’m picking up that ten pound bag of pancake mix because it’s $4 for 2 lbs elsewhere but only $10 for 10 lbs here! FOOL. What 4 person family needs 10 lbs of pancake mix?? We do not have pancakes that often. I plead holiday / end of year brain. I guess we will have to have them that often to get through this.
Woof. Mostly unrelated: I’m logging our credit card bills due in January and they are double the normal budget. Lots of one-off expenses that added up so fast. I think we can cover it through cashflow but it’ll be a bit tight for a while. Also daycare’s price increase hits THIS month, I forgot. $2400. A month. 😭
I solved the toe blister mystery: I’d worn my cotton socks for a couple days and my precious toes hated them so much they all developed blisters. As soon as my wool socks came back on, they healed up.
Year 5, Day 251: It’s a four KitKat kind of day. It’s cold and dreary out. There’s very little growing in the garden. There is no furry-feet family member to greet me at the door when I get back from a loooong morning of running errands. Or to be snoring and then looking at me through bleary eyes as I tiptoe back in trying not to disturb them. Harrumph.
Speaking of Costco fails: We found Boudin clam chowder in the refrigerator section. I didn’t expect it to be as good as the restaurant when I bought it but then we (uncharacteristically) wandered through an area with a Boudin, had their clam chowder, and now the Costco version tastes flat (to me). I bet it would have been just fine if we hadn’t had some that was better. Taste bud inflation is terrible. PiC likes it well enough but that just goes to show you how easy he is to feed with my less than stellar cooking.
BUT. I put in a big order of snacks for my Lakota sponsee and staple foods for their family. I squared away raises for all of my people before the last days of the year trickled away. Those are the good things.
Year 5, Day 252: I’m doing big time grey rocking with certain people this holiday. I’m doing a good job! I’m not intensely irritated, I am simply a person floating out of time.
Wait no, I am irritated. By all this talk about trying to revoke the FDA approval for the polio vaccine. I can’t tell if they’re seriously this reckless and horrible (yes) or if it’s primarily intended to drum up panic among those of us who have an iota of sense and being reckless and horrible is just a bonus. I don’t know if he was the LAST American (as purported on Bluesky) to have used an iron lung and died, but this just makes me shake my head all over again about how utterly awful these people are: Paul Alexander, forced into an iron lung by polio in 1952, dies at 78
Year 5, Day 253: Do you like shinies? I keep saying that I don’t need any more earrings, but I love them so. Turns out Kythryne Aisling’s shop (I found her on Bsky) has a selection of perfect earrings to fill a specific genre of earrings that has been missing from my collection: small, dangly and tough so I can wear them all the time without discomfort or damaging them. I’d been going through these silly cycles of wearing earrings for some special thing or another and then leaving them off so long the holes would partially close up again (as they always do between earrings) because my preferred earring styles are too fragile to endure me being me. I got myself the elephants, the forbidden candy (they look like jolly ranchers!), fauxfire twisties, and kitsune. As a kid I always envied people who could wear all kinds of earrings. My metal allergies limited me to a very few pairs that wouldn’t cause infections. But now, if I never let them close up, I can wear anything I want! This is an unexpectedly fun jewelery era for me. Also Kythryne has very cute dogs and I appreciate the dog pictures on the skyline.
My sinuses are making their presence Very Known right now and I hate it. They’re angry. My heart rate keeps doing weird things late at night so I can’t get even the minimal rest I normally manage, I keep laying awake later and later.
Year 5, Day 254: A black lab encounter: Neighborhood dog came over for love, of course I obliged, and then wouldn’t leave. He kept looking at Smol Acrobat and PiC with “but you haven’t petted me yet? I cannot leave?” eyes. I gave him extra pets to make up for the fact that they couldn’t come pet him.
Saying this really quietly here so as not to jinx myself: shipping issues have plagued the dozens of shipments for the Lakota families so I was expecting the same for all my orders this month: books, clothes, prescription refills.
Also a nice surprise: a sale of a very old swimsuit (still in remarkably good condition) on Poshmark! I never open the app anymore, I just leave my listings up and occasionally it bears some fruit. In this case, $13 eventually. I also followed up on that money side quest from the Swiss government. Two weeks and that lady had done nothing with the revised information to send the bank transfer. She didn’t even start processing it right away when I followed up. “In a few days” she’ll start it. Cough up our money! They should be required to pay interest on money they’ve held onto for too long like the US government has to when they refund us.
I’ve hit the point in the holiday season grind where three out of four of us are sick. I’m just dragging myself through each day with gritted teeth. Not my favorite but also not super surprised. Everything is topsy turvy this year, our relaxing family time was swapped to the new year and that’s now in question because they are sick.
December 23, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 243: For many reasons I feel zero holiday cheer so far. PiC got the tree up, and it’s nice to see the shiny sparkly but I’m just not feeling it. Busy-ness is definitely a factor. Everything (in the world) also feels so much harder than it needs to be. Every day with the kids is a whole lot of struggle. On the plus side, I’m not feeling the deep-seated anxiety that I usually feel around family stuff this time of year. Am I just too tired to? Maybe! But also I noticed that working through things in therapy and I am no longer feeling the anxiety-driven need to pack for these things six months out.
Lack of anxiety – good, lack of energy driven by the anxiety – less good.
It was another struggle today with brain fog and a storm passing through at the same time. Work was much tougher than it should have been.
But lots of packages arrived today! They were the key ones: books and treats I have to pack up by Wednesday for distribution. Whew. I was sweating the books package the most but a few other things were also important.
I hate this for Cloud @ Wandering Scientist. Her daughter caught whooping cough at school and now Cloud is sick too which ruins her plans to shop for presents in person. This reminds me of how much of my life is centered around doing most things 1-2 months in advance because odds are high that I’ll get sick, overwhelmed, or fatigued, or all of the above if I leave important things until near the day of.
Year 5, Day 244: Joe Udo at Retire by 40 has been retired for 12 years already! That really flew by. In his housekeeping post, he said: For 2024, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,000 for those under 50. If you’re over 50 like me, you can contribute up to $8,000. The Roth IRA is the best retirement account because you don’t have to pay tax when you withdraw from the account. Everyone should max out their Roth IRA every year. If you haven’t maxed out your contribution yet, now is a great time to do it. Actually, the deadline for 2024 is April 15th. But I like to contribute in the same calendar year to keep it simple.
I don’t have any such advice. I had to max out a 401K this year, and we haven’t contributed to our Roth IRAs for a few years. I stopped contributing to the traditional IRA as well since I wasn’t getting a tax benefit from it and didn’t want to be constrained by RMDs in all our accounts.
I threw together our New Year cards and ordered them today. It’s too late to get them in the mail before I’m steamrolled by the holidays, but that doesn’t matter! Because they’re New Year cards and can go out in January! Go me, planning ahead for potential failures for once. And buying them at 60% off for a custom design at Office Depot made them much more affordable. Updates to farflung family and friends are nice, better when it doesn’t cost $200+. Plenty of people use Minted and other fancier services but it just doesn’t rank that high in my spending plans. I have to conserve our dollars for direct aid to folks (Larime, Linda Tirado) and others.
Year 5, Day 245: Smol Acrobat has been wandering about like a cranky old fogey grumping out of the blue, “but I wanted sushi!” every few days. They never tell us they want sushi at any point where it would have done any good, mind you, they’re just rolling up with a grievance while we’re putting together dinner as if we’d taken a poll and rejected their ask. Strong reaction from the kid who only eats cucumber rolls! I should give them a bowl of slivered cucumber on rice with a side of nori and see if that solves the problem.
Year 5, Day 246: I was reviewing Smol Acrobat’s doctor’s visit notes to find their height, I’m trying to get their Global Entry applications ready, and was very pleased to see that the doc recorded my request for a 6 month booster of the COVID vaccine next spring and approved it. I appreciate it when people listen to me and do what’s necessary without having to be told twice!
The GE application process is a total pain right now though. I had to change a detail for JB but I can’t do it myself, I need them to. Six emails in, they’re still insisting they changed it already and I’m sending screenshots of how they changed it (incorrectly) in one place but not the other place so I still can’t move forward. My “thanks for any help you can provide” is getting more and more sarcastic with every repetition.
My nightmares are back even though I’m still taking the prazosin. They’re not as intense as they used to be, yet, but still decidedly impactful. I usually remember the dreaming when I wake up pretty clearly but this one lingered all day: we were in small boats crossing oceans and meeting people we sort of knew in some faraway unknown places. I suspect it came from a pondering on the diaspora of boat people from Vietnam and how my cousins 20 years older than me lived that and remember it clearly.
Year 5, Day 247: Our car insurance went up 18% in the summer, and I just got the notification that it’s gone up again another 15%. What the hell??
Also annoying: I have blisters or blister type pain on almost all my toes today. The tops, sides and bottoms, variably. What did I do wrong now?? I asked each toe individually, why are you suddenly such a bad neighbor? I gleaned zero satisfactory information from this interrogation.
Searching the internets, specifically Mayo Clinic since general Googling is useless these days, didn’t turn up anything super useful but it did teach me about Bullous pemphigoid. Things could be much worse, is what they’re telling me. Still, having pretty much all toes hurt isn’t great.
December 16, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 236: 🎉🎉 I finally got my new retainer! It is tight so I have been instructed to wear it all the time for three months to adjust to the fit, alas, but the tech will now order the two sets that came with the $900 plan for the 2024 allotment. Thrilled to throw away my old nearly broken aligners and to have backups on the way. No matter how heavy duty these are, they’re not going to hold up against the stress that destroyed the old aligners.
Smol Acrobat is sick again and this time it comes with a side of Extra Cling. They keep asking to sleep in our bed, for me to sleep in their bed, and waking up crying for me at midnight. I have to cuddle them until they fall back asleep. And it has to be me. When PiC tries to offer a cuddle, they turn into an octopod and wrap around me even tighter whimpering in a high pitched protest. Finally after the third cycle of this, I whispered “they know what you’re doing, they’re reattaching, stop trying to help.” They relaxed a little after that. It still took 3 hours to escape their room.
Year 5, Day 237: We got some bad/disappointing news about JB’s coach leaving the group 🙁. They’re the only one who’s consistently there, good with managing the kids and they don’t have a replacement lined up. I hate change normally. When it leaves us with a whole lot of uncertainty, I hate it even more. This stinks.
Also I really hate when I took steps specifically to ameliorate burden on my team only to find out, because I can’t see the future, a week later that everything I did to help is actually doing the opposite because of other people not doing their part. I’ve found other ways to patch the holes I deliberately created but oh was that frustrating.
Year 5, Day 238: PiC insists that my puffer coat with holes in it has died its final death. It now refuses to puff back up after the last washing, so he might have a point. I also “know” that it’s ok for me to have good things that will last many years, but it was still an internal struggle so instead I tried to ignore his good point. He, knowing me, just went ahead and found me a replacement.
Part of me wants to be grumpy about how much it cost even after 40% off, but it’s a smaller part of me than it used to be.
I used to hate ceding control over anything at all, because I controlled so little. In reality I still control so little but my awareness of that fact, and glacially slow acceptance of it, has improved. Like, for example, I’m on week 19 in a row of doing exercises. They’re still laughably little compared to my fond memories of working out 30 years ago but those memories have been an impossibility for decades. Now I’ve committed to consistency with the hope of becoming stronger, less disconnected from my meatsuit, and maybe dropping some bulges. That last one has to stay the last in the list of priorities to make sure I stay focused on what’s most important. And the hell of it is, I think this is only working because I ceded control to a trainer who writes my weekly fitness plan and I just do as he says. I do pick and choose from the plan as if it was a menu, depending on how I feel on any given day, and I am curious if that really matters for my level of low fitness but generally, I am not making requests. I’m just doing the things and we’ve logged 18 weeks and still going.
My therapist calls this “being supported”. The mean gremlin inside me calls it something else entirely. But it’s a little quieter these days.
Year 5, Day 239: I had to go and jinx it, didn’t I? I was kicking rocks over the weirdly nice weather this week (because the bad weather messed up our special plans last month) so an atmospheric river landed on our doorstep early this morning.
Work continues to be a rollercoaster of “maybe we’ll be done soon? AUGH noooo another problem!!” I can’t even really take refuge in “it’ll be better soon” because the new year brings with it at least five major tasks I have to get on top of. I’ve made minor headway on three of them, but two remain elusive. I am going to have to decide how to take a few days off at the end of the year, though. I badly need the break. (And sleep. I need so much sleep. I won’t get it but I wants it, precious.)
Every time I think our cashflow looks good, we’re ok to give more in direct aid, it hits me shortly after that we actually have a 5-figure bill coming up soon which I DON’T have money set aside for. So no, not quite good. Drat. I’m transferring some of that cash into the house maintenance fund now so I don’t have to keep reminding myself.
Year 5, Day 240: My mom was diabetic but I’m not so I haven’t taken blood glucose blips very seriously. I’ve often ignored late night hunger with no issue but last night, that was totally the wrong move. The sudden hunger, despite having had a normal dinner at the normal time, was exceptionally irritating given I had just dropped into bed after another late night working. Fully intended to just ignore it but when I caved and got up, I started seeing spots, became lightheaded, dizzy, and nauseated. My whole body felt wrong. Painfully wrong. I couldn’t think at more than a crawl, and my thoughts were mostly: “ah, crap.” I inhaled a bagel with cream cheese, then a yogurt and some granola, and then drank most of a Gatorade. Probably should have gone in the opposite order because it was dicey by the time I got to the Gatorade – my breathing was irregular and vision was blurry and grey around the edges. It occurs to me this could also be related to the blood pressure meds I take for nightmares but that would be a bit odd since I’m on such a low dose.
Looking ahead to January isn’t just bad for work (still), it’s also chock full of appointments. AIYIYI. Birthdays, dentists (again??), parent-teacher conferences, a maintenance massage, we have to get together with 4 sets of friends. I’m not ready to face any of that.
*****
This GFM to repay debt for a pup that didn’t make it could use some help.
December 9, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 229: Work is positively harrowing this week. It’s going to be more late nights for another couple weeks after many weeks of late nights. I’m totally over it but still, have to keep on for a bit longer. Telling myself: breathe, hydrate, take it one day at a time. Get through as much as I can the earlier part of the week so that the meetings that come later do not derail everything in my brain.
An annoying thing: I asked my orthodontist about ongoing retainer care last year and was basically brushed off. They told me to keep wearing my last set of aligners. Fast forward a year and change: I’ve ground my teeth at night so much that there’s a hole in my aligner. I was in the office for JB’s appointment and asked them how I’d order new aligners and they were very confused. I should have been offered a retainer and a retainer program that covers up to 2 sets of retainers a year, for $900. For comparison, outright buying a new set of retainers costs $800. Additional annoyance, I was not prepared for that expense to be debited from our checking account and it temporarily dropped our balance below the daily required minimum for a day while the transfer in to cover the charge was taking some time. I normally never use the debit card to avoid this but the receptionist was being a pain about it and I needed to be done. Chase charged me a $12 service fee once that happened so today I politely asked them if they would refund the fee this time. I have never dropped the balance below that number in the 7 years the account has been open, surely we’re good for a waiver once in a long while.
Year 5, Day 230: New money side quests! Some investments a couple years back incurred preemptive withholding tax and it took me ages to figure out how to file the refund request. Finally figured it out and filed for a refund going back three years. This was sent to them in March. We finally received the letter today confirming that they were paying up, but the transfer is now two weeks late. The snail mail letter made it before the actual transfer. I followed up by email to see if they did it properly or if it got kicked back – wire transfers are the pits, and international transfers are worse. Crossing my fingers that they reply promptly and don’t make this harder than it needs to be. I know some financial institutions to have forked up wire transfers three times in a row. And they call themselves professional.
Second one: Saving JB’s backpack from zipper derailment. We considered buying a repair kit, but between the two of us, managed to save that $9. PiC reseated the zipper and then that curved needle I bought last year to save my own backpack came in handy again – though I should get a pair of pliers to help push it through thick fabric. I painfully sewed up the end of zipper into the side of the backpack, and added an extra patch to reinforce the physical backstop. It is very ugly but just needs to hold until the bottom of the backpack wears out – that probably won’t be too terribly long. So many finger cramps!
Also also, DRAT. I forgot to put in my replacement Bookoutlet order yesterday so I lost out on the sale prices. They are so deeply discounted it was still a bargain, but the principle of “overspending” irks me a little.
Year 5, Day 231: So many meetings today! It was really satisfying to put a big DONE through them as I finished up the day but wow was that a lot.
The new laptop arrived, I’ll need to set that up soon. I need to decide if I’m making that my work laptop with all the work it takes to set it up, or if this will be the family laptop. The latter is probably easier.
Bethh was so right! Netflix’s Man on the Inside is delightful. It was just too short, opinion motivated entirely by greed not because they shortchanged the storylines, and I wish we could get full 26 episode seasons of shows like this. It also featured a few other folks from The Good Place, that was fun.
Year 5, Day 232: My gardening has fallen off steeply since the start of November. Everything was dying or dead, I had to rip out my snap peas – so sad. The potatoes were likely ready to harvest but I simply haven’t had time or energy to dig them. This made it a bit more surprising to see all the grass and little clover-like things popping up in the small two foot patch I cleared for flowers. All of six poppies bloomed during the summer, their heads blew off a few days later, and that was it for my experiment with planting poppies. Or so I thought!
While picking out the grasses, trying to keep it clear enough early on so that I don’t accidentally rip out my still surviving poppy plants if I make another next attempt, I spotted three almost microscopic sprouts that look like they’re going to be poppies some day! It’s still so early they may not make it but there’s something so happy about seeing the possibility sprout. I scattered so many poppy seeds and snapdragon seeds (none of which came up), maybe they’re still there and waiting for their time to come.
Maybe there’s a metaphor in there but I worked super late again tonight and my brain is a non-wonder engine, it must shut down.
Year 5, Day 233: “She was sad, I could feel it. I should not be able to feel an emotion that is inside of someone else.” I bounced off Resident Alien the first time I started watch-listening to it but it’s landing this time. One of my reports had a devastating loss today, and I was at a loss for how to best express my grief in the form of support for them and their family. I eventually decided on a multi-tier approach since this won’t be over in a day. Dinner for this first day of bad news and flowers and care basket at separate dates in acknowledgement of the ongoing grief. Obviously until and unless they share with the rest of the department, I won’t either, but I do wish there was a way to push a button that signals a need for comfort and caring without invading anyone’s privacy.
This came on the heels of a physically draining morning and I really just wanted to curl up under the blankets and hide for a few hours. I couldn’t, of course. I had to tough it out and be productive in the few hours I had left in the afternoon before having to host a social event. It was fine but my exhaustion was so high that ten minutes in, I was checking the time. Still, we survived the week, and that’s something.
I hate that there’s no way to know how much melatonin is really in each tablet we take, and same for all the other supplements that I take. They help, but there’s always a chance that there’s other stuff that’s not so great in there. I wish it weren’t so cost prohibitive to regulate them the way medications are regulated. Of course even those aren’t immune to quality control issues. I find myself wishing for a chemistry set and the knowledge sufficient to test my own supplements to confirm they are what the companies selling them say they are.
December 2, 2024
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 5, Day 222: Victory! I made a really expensive and silly mistake late Friday night, buying a $200 pass for an entertainment park in entirely the wrong state for ourselves and extended family. I stressed all weekend because the site stated they were non-refundable. I did immediately email to explain the issue but couldn’t handle waiting any longer so I called this morning. In the meantime, I had purchased the correct pass on the weekend since the sale was ending on Sunday so maybe that’s why the CSR didn’t ask any questions after getting my order numbers. Huge relief.
I have so many of these little shopping mistake nightmares – usually it’s the wrong size or horror of horrors: wrong day or time for flights. Now I can add WRONG STATE to that paranoia.
The storm systems let up this weekend but the drippy gloom was back in force today. I’m hoping that it’ll be nicer tomorrow.
We took two items off my Black Friday sale list: the blanket (quilt fixed that problem!), next size up boots for Smol Acrobat (hand me downs for the next size up just landed!).
Year 5, Day 223: The phrase “fighting off this virus” doesn’t fit. I regret to inform you that choosing to rest most days last week wherever I could squeeze it in, instead of squeezing in more work, seems to have helped alleviate my sore throat and cough far more than my usual stubborning my way through. My feeling-like-roadkill meter is much lower this week than it was last week. I’m not totally out of the woods yet, but am starting to feel optimistic that I may feel up to our Thanksgiving Day cooking. My legs ache like death today, though, and I can’t put my finger on why.
Social coping and boundaries: I was delighted to provide a dear friend with a tool that another dear friend inadvertently taught me. When asked “are you busy on Xday?” your answer is not yes or no, it’s “why?” This should be deployed all the time to head off being voluntold oh good you’re free to run them to the store or the kids need you to pick them up or can’t you come clean my kitchen. All things that a boundary crasher could certainly choose to deal with for themselves but why would they if they can guilt you do the thing they don’t want to do. I also reminded them that they can always be busy. Plans to be a lump on the floor with the dog are still plans.
Year 5, Day 224: My Sterilite storage bins have arrived!! They were 25% off which isn’t great but they weren’t terribly expensive to begin with sooooo good enough for me! I’ve designated one for office and craft supplies, another for holiday gifts; two for donations to keep them safe and clean while I accumulate during either decluttering or organizing dropped off donations. Another one for hand me down next size up clothes for Smol Acrobat.
Year 5, Day 225: What a day. On the one hand, no work! And much of the food prep was done earlier this week so we were puttering around cooking the main dishes and putting the finishing touches on the last side dishes. Yay!
On the other hand, wow, were the kids moody and difficult and how many times in a single day can I sit down and have a serious talk about their rudeness with them?? Too Many. Sigh. There are days when parenting feels extra impossible because it’s completely unclear what the right thing to do is. Mostly it was JB today performing at extraordinary levels of pingpong between fine and super not fine. Smol Acrobat was their normal, and irritating, level of difficult and moody.
We had three long talks and nothing was resolved except for my making it very clear that whatever you’re feeling, your actions are your choices – you don’t get to behave like the Abomination because your feelings were hurt. In this case, that specially means: didn’t like your choice being corrected. They didn’t like being told that ignoring my direct requests multiple times was rude, they didn’t like being promoted to admit that they shouldn’t destroy Smol Acrobat’s tower even by accident.
JB’s constant (absurd) grievance that we don’t hold the two of them to the same standards for chores apparently does not extend to expectations of considerate behavior. They’re perfectly happy when Smol Acrobat’s behavior is correctly corrected, but when they are corrected for the exact same offense? Storm clouds and stomping and “(you) like Smol Acrobat better than me!!!” The number of times I’ve had to bite back the snarky “that’s not true because I currently don’t like either of you equally” doesn’t bear thinking about. It’s never made it past my filter but such are my grumpy parent thoughts bubbling beneath the surface. Which makes me feel guilty later. They aren’t bad kids! But the constant drama of harping on wanting equality only when it advantages them (lower expectations, fewer chores), and the sporadic bursting into temper tantrums when it means they get called on the carpet for choices that sucked, makes me oh so tired.
We did have an amazing dinner (foodwise) and they managed to get over themselves enough to eat it. But we sent both kids to bed without dessert. We adults ate half the cake ourselves – we earned it.
Year 5, Day 226: We inadvertently spent most of the day exploring bits of the city transit system. The sheer number of both commercial and residence property “available to lease” signs was surprising. The Macy’s storefront was done up with lights on every window, and the unsettlingly tall Christmas tree was front and center. I made eye contact with a large dog inside a store and we mutually and silently agreed that he should come and put his (giant) head in my hands for cuddles and praise. We had a lovely moment. I normally always ask the owner for permission before approaching their dog but this pup was independently conducting eyeball interviews and it simply couldn’t be helped.
There’s a clock ticking on my ordering gifts for the end of the year. Everything / anything I still need must be ordered by midweek in the first week of December so that I can have everything squared away before the 20th. That’s a personal deadline: I HATE doing anything holiday related at the very last minute, especially discovering gaps in my gifting supplies or leaving out any sets of niblings because there are so MANY now that even with the best lists and best of intentions, things get jumbled at times. I did discover Bookoutlet.com which carries bargain books. They fill their inventory with “special buys, publishers’ excess inventory, and store returns” so the selection is hit or miss, but I found a reasonable pile of books to gift the niblings for this year and a couple books for next year as well.
We have a list of Black Friday related intended purchases but I think we’re only going to manage a few of them. A replacement laptop from Costco and a Microsoft license. Books. I was going to get new underwear finally but the sales failed me so these will have to manage another year. Couple of security things. Maybe passing on the Svaha sale this year as a gratuitous thing because I don’t need more clothes.