About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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June 8, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 11 and 12 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
I had to change the day numbering so I would remember what day we’re on, total. It’s been that long.
Week 11, Day 69: A half day at work for me today! WOOOO. We had a very hot (for us, nearly 80 degrees F) day and I was basking in walking around in a tee shirt even in the house. It’s normally so frigid I’m in three layers all day long.
Week 11, Day 70: I woke unexpectedly early but crawled right back into my nest and then woke up late after 8. Oops. On the other hand, JB got enough rest and got themselves all dressed and ready, AND even remembered their assigned chore for the morning. Extra bonus, they went and filled in the chore on their activities board without prompting too. I thought the first week of the board was a dismal failure but maybe our little adjustments are starting to take hold. We’ll see.
Week 11, Day 71: JB has wholeheartedly and suddenly thrown themselves into the Activities board, racking up an all time high of 9 activities in a day: helping with the laundry, clearing the dishwasher, spending a lot of time outdoors. Most of this was made possible by PiC’s flexible schedule on this day. Most days are not going to be like this.
Week 11, Day 72: The world has exploded and my sorrow is endless. Why does our country think it’s better to viciously put down protests than to hold murdering cops accountable? None of this had to be that way. (more…)
June 5, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Challenges this week: The world is on fire, quite literally, and here I thought that COVID would be our biggest issue for the next several months. The racism in our country, and the systemic refusal to change, is breathtaking, devastating, heartbreaking.
Protests and riots were inevitable given how little this country has done to move away from murdering black people and then blaming them for their own deaths. I will never understand why our government prefers to arrest thousands and murder more people instead of arresting the police officers who murdered a man in cold blood. Never. My heart keeps getting heavier for our friends and family who are hurting and living through traumas we should not be putting them through.
It feels wrong to even be thinking of utterly mundane, petty, good things when this is happening to our fellow citizens, to our friends, to our neighbors. When my dearest friends and mentors know they can’t even be safe in their own beds, in their own homes.
But as I was thinking when Ursula Vernon said something similar – we also need good too. We can’t stay steeped in the anger continuously, indefinitely. We need to act and support people who are being hurt but we also need to recharge. I hate it, though.
More people need to listen to Jane Elliott and think on why they are so quick to find ways to excuse how 
we treat our Black citizens: “That says very plainly that you know what’s happening, you know you don’t want it for you, I want to know why you’re so willing to accept it or allow it to happen for others.” Another interview about her exercise with her brown eyed and blue eyed third grade students where she found that bigotry is a learned behavior.
The mundane challenges: PiC’s job changes started a couple weeks ago and as predicted, have been increasingly difficult to manage with no childcare. We will figure it out, we’re working on it, but time is tighter, tempers are a bit more fragile, and we’re all even more tired.
The mundane good things
1. I’ve been hoarding quite a few gift cards for pricey stores that we don’t frequent for years. I finally pulled them out to solve some of my problems around the house: I need a really heavy duty knife for cutting through bones (my catfish has to be cut into steaks) – time for a cleaver! We could also really some placemats but
2. AH HA. I don’t love buying from Houzz but PiC picked out a couple things he needed for a house project several weeks ago. By the time I got around to ordering them, the prices had gone up. But I noticed that there was a sale in another department entirely so my suspicion was that they had increased the prices elsewhere to make up for their sale in case they had people there for the sale and also picking up other things at more than full price. I backburnered the order until that sale was over and voila! The prices came back down the day after that sale ended.
3. I’ve been fighting with my phone that keeps making files available offline FOREVER. I would turn off “available offline” and then they would pop up with the dratted notification the “5 files are available offline” again! It was maddening! I finally found the solution. I only actively use the Sheets app, so forgot all about the other apps that I never use. I went through the Docs app and the Drive app to turn off all the files available offline there too, and I think … that has solved the problem. *Spoke too soon? Another file started coming up as available online even though I didn’t have it marked to be. Sigh. Restarting the phone helped. I might have to cave and update the phone system.
:: How are you doing?
June 4, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Black Women Best: Economics Has a Diversity Problem, And Here’s How It Affects Everyone
“@KWright070: I’m seeing a few discussions around PF Twitter that seem to suggest you can either talk about race or finance but you can’t talk about both at the same time. I know it’s a really hard concept to grasp so here are some examples:
Mr SSC is working on undoing the racism that he harbored growing up, and I think it’s so important that we all do the work.
I was pretty mad that the founder of the biggest financial media conference could be so breathtakingly flippant and callous about current events. You may not agree with how the press covers everything, I most certainly don’t and I have critiques of them just like anyone else. But they are shining a lot on some serious corruption and abuse of power and letting us see SOME of the truth out there while we’re (if we’re not Black) safe in our homes (if you’re Black, I know you’re not even safe in your own homes and I would never gloss over that horrible reality). They are risking themselves, literally in many cases, as the police attack them. A photojournalist I know has been 
permanently blinded in one eye because of a police officer shooting a rubber bullet at her face. To dismiss their efforts as “media hype”, and saying that’s the cause of the issues we are facing as a society just hurts my stomach. He later issued a “I’m sorry you were offended” type of apology, but at that point, his other actions of bullying women into silence and even driving them out of the community came out: bullying Tori about calling out misogyny and demanding retraction of her tweets, coming after Melanie and undermining her financially by badmouthing her to her sponsors, keeping people silent through intimidation.
How the Personal Finance Sphere Upholds Systemic Racism
Angela at Tread Lightly’s links this week.
Cup of Jo surprised me with actually addressing On Becoming Anti-Racist.
June 1, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
The world is on fire. I have some words to express on the subject but that will have to wait until I have a moment and mentally can string together coherence. It’s been a heck of a week and a weekend for a lot of reasons and I’m focusing on actions first, then words.
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from an investment property (which is all saved for maintenance) and investing in dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks and cash back sites (Ebates, Mr.Rebates). Some posts have affiliate links that pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running and I’ve added a way to support the blog in the sidebar to the right!
Our long term goal is to replace our day job income with passive income before my health prevents me from working. I know from my Mom’s experience that qualifying for or relying on disability is incredibly tough or near impossible here in CA. Aside from that, I aim to do my best to make the most of what we can do while we can.
***
Dividend income. We received $734.94 in dividends in May.
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May 29, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I finally figured out our dishwasher problem! I’ve been cleaning the filter after every two wash cycles and STILL kept having grit and residue on our bowls. It turns out that my first question was the right one: was it to do with placement? For whatever reason, our square bowls can’t be loaded up front. They fall on each other or something and block the water flow so they don’t get rinsed properly. That means if we load round bowls up front top rack and square bowls in back top rack, I don’t have to yell and fume at the dishwasher. (Of course it then immediately left some sediment on a bowl in a totally different area so that’s a new problem for another day.)
2. I was able to trim most of Seamus’s nails without a fight and struggle, and then managed to trim 4 of Sera’s claws. I had to pin her down after the first one, though. They both got treats after. The pet dremel has been amazing! I wish the pet attachment (the plastic guard) had been available when I bought mine, though, I keep accidentally getting myself. (It’s fine though, nothing serious.)
3. I finally organized our financial spreadsheets into one place for PiC. I’ll have to teach him how I use each of them, and he’s not allowed to change things in there without telling me or else I’ll start thinking I’ve lost chunks of memory, but he needs to know how to get in there and work on money things if I’m unable to. I also need to consolidate more of our emergency information but this was a good step.
4. JB and I cleaned their room together. I rearranged their closet, and cleared out an entire dresser drawer of outgrown clothing, and sorted it all into size specific hand me down bags. I’ve been needing to do that for ages and it felt so good to get that done. Bonus: JB does chores better when it’s alongside one of us so I asked them to tackle the rest of the room and they put away all the books and toys and reorganized the toy stand without complaint because they felt it was a team effort. It just looked that way. Really it’s just me needing to corral the clothing explosion, organize things the way I want to, and winnow out the outgrown clothes without clawbacks. If I let (made) them sort the clothes, they’d mourn every item and end up crying in a pile of outgrown wardrobe, swathed in at least two shirts but still have a belly hanging out. They did try to keep one sweater. Out of two large bags of clothes, just one sweater is pretty good so I allowed it for two more wears. We had a few fraught sad moments and I advised them to thank their favorites for being such great pieces and bid them farewell. Surprisingly, that worked. Thanks for the idea, Marie Kondo!
Challenges this week: I am starting to miss little things. Going to the library. Going to stare at all the crafts at Michael’s. Recipes for lemon flavor baked goods need to come with an intensity level so I know to triple the lemon juice and lemon extract.
5. We enjoyed a Zoom picnic lunch with family on the weekend and they all did art time together for a while after we ate. Everyone was sleepy and content.
6. I even took most of Monday off! I worked in the morning but resolved strongly to break off for the rest of the day and I followed through. Go me!
7. JB interpretive danced to my singing of JoDee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California”.
:: How was your week? Have you been scorched by this heat wave?
May 28, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
How are you adjusting your budget during COVID?
I’m staring at Mt Emotional Health, feeling a bit unequal to the task. The days were very long but at some point it feels like the fast forward was pushed and I’m not ready to keep up with this pace.
I often feel like this hummingbird
May 25, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $1,570.70; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 9 and 10 of shutdown in the Bay Area.
Week 9, Day 1: Having geared myself up for a total shutdown to last several months, or even the rest of this year, I can’t quite wrap my brain around the idea of CA moving to Stage 2 of reopening. It feels like it’s must too soon when we still don’t have that much testing or any known effective treatments. My friends outside of CA who have been ill for weeks still can’t get tested. As a complete pessimist, I think this is my gut trying to protect me from getting my hopes up too soon that things will start to get better.
Related: I can’t think about the things I miss or how I want things to be later.
Also related: I’m worried about getting sick when things open up more because my immune system is trash. When I get sick with even mild viruses, I get hit really hard. It takes me 3-4x as long as normal people to recover. A 3-5 day illness for a normal person is a 3-5 week illness for me.
Week 9, Day 2: All the little things that bother me popped up today: I hate the way the wires under my desk are dangling, I hate our old round wooden chopsticks that hurt my hands when they’re swollen. I determined to fix those things NOW. I taped up the wires … but the tape that I had wasn’t strong enough. I searched and found replacement chopsticks but the shop wanted $20 for shipping – that was too rich for my blood. I guess it’s not my day for resolving issues.
I did order a gift of delicious small business cheese to a loved one sheltering in place alone who was recently hit with some additional bad news, though. One right thing was done today.
My workload was a bit lighter than usual so it was rather annoying that I couldn’t focus well enough to blow through the workload early and take the rest of the day at my leisure. But I suppose the upside is that I didn’t have to stress over the work piling up at lightning speed while I worked more slowly than I preferred?
Week 9, Day 3: Dammit-Sera is her official name now. I’ve cleaned up 11 piles of vomit and 1 massive lake of pee on my rug this past week. What’s going on, dog?? (more…)