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
Read More
August 20, 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, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
The High Risk Heroics Behind Making Sure You Get New Gadgets This Fall: Reading this, I can’t help but think we have our priorities entirely wrong. THIS is the kind of effort we’ll put into manufacturing devices but not in making society a better place?
Many COVID-19 patients lost their sense of smell. Will they get it back?
Teaching Isn’t About Managing Behavior: It’s about reaching students where they really are. I don’t understand why teachers aren’t taught to teach this way to begin with, though.
One Frugal Girl is homeschooling this year and researched a lot of interesting resources. We are definitely not homeschooling but we have been managing JB’s remote education through the summer with a combination of one on one lessons given by a teacher, one-off classes online, and lots of reading and recreational writing with us. Their spelling is amazingly creative at this stage and I don’t know if that’s normal but it’s pretty funny. I would love some other creative and fun math resources from a secular company though. We picked up the Singapore math books, and JB loves those in the abstract, but gets distracted easily.
This Black women in fantasy photography is absolutely breathtaking.
I’m the worst at calmly accepting and sitting with uncertainty, it reminds me too much of the emotional whiplash of my teens and twenties when I was supporting my family and taking all the hits of their decisions. “On the flip side of every good thing is the risk that it will end.” It’s an interesting mental thing I have going on that I always gird myself against the bad times lasting forever and the good things ending unexpectedly. That comes from experiencing the loss of so many loved ones over the course of a decade, and the Great Recession and countless other bad things strung together. Their impact overshadows the very real good things that happened across that same time span. I’m working on it, and it’s progress that I recognize that even bad times surely will come to an end, but boy is it a rough journey.
I absolutely love seeing a beautiful cake (in pictures, not in person since I can’t have them – no beautifully decorated cake is ever GF and sugar free 😭😅) and if you enjoy cake design too, hie thee to Syndesi Desserts!
I had no idea that ice cream shop songs had racist origins, but now that I know, I’m glad to enjoy this new jingle.
How does An Post do it??
Good things come to those who wait
August 17, 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, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Life lessons
We’ve been having a lot of hard conversations with JB about the harsh realities of life. Namely racism: what it is, how it hurts people, how it’s wrong and how we fight against it. Their daycare hasn’t been nearly diverse enough for my taste but their elementary school will be much better and I want them to have a solid understanding of accepting people for who they are based on their actions, not their appearance.
This is nothing new. We’ve been reading “I am Rosa Parks” (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org), The Youngest Marcher which has been extra hard for me to get through this year (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org), and Sulwe (Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org) for a while. With all the protests, they have been asking to read The Youngest Marcher every night.
Different bodies
We were picking up takeout when JB said: “There’s something wrong with his eye!” It wasn’t very loud but it was clearly out loud.
I was startled because I hadn’t noticed what they had, but I realized that the fellow bringing us our bags had a drooping eyelid. I told JB: “There may be something different about his body but should we talk about how people look?”
JB: “No.”
Me: “Ok, let’s not do that, please.”
They said said ok, though they still stared for a bit, and then we had a conversation in the car about how treating people with respect means that if they have something different about their bodies, it’s fine to notice but we don’t comment on them. We all have differences (or flaws if we consider them as such), and it’s unkind to point them out and stare. We wouldn’t like it if we had a scar or an injury or something different about us and people were staring, or pointing, or commenting on us.
I’m not sure if I handled it right in the moment. I feel terrible that he may have heard them and felt that we didn’t treat him and the moment respectfully.
Pupdate
Our buddy Seamus has chronic eye problems this year and we had to rush him to the veterinary opthalmologist for an exam when his latest bout with a corneal ulcer was going the wrong way. He’d been on medications for weeks and the darn thing wouldn’t budge. Typically they clear up in 7-10 days. By the 20th day both his regular vet and I were very concerned and it was off to the specialist for us.
That exam showed that it wasn’t quite as bad as we had feared so we still had a chance to head off a surgical treatment. Huge sigh of relief there. We went on an aggressively frequent eye ointment regimen, nine applications a day!
New Skills
JB is currently obsessed with wanting to “be a real dog owner” and wanting to walk the dogs alone. They can walk Seamus who is well mannered and cooperative 98% of the time but takes sudden turns once in a while that they have to watch out for. If Seamus was forceful as he once was about his course corrections I’d never allow it but he’s slow and gentle enough in his old age that he’s safe for JB to walk on a slow ramble. Sera, however, is strong, headstrong, and very reactive. So that’s a hard no to JB wanting to walk Sera. They will have to earn the “real dog owner” cred the hard way: slowly and steadily.
Precious Moments
I don’t know why either of us thought it’d be for a good reason.
JB: I’m always going to remember this day.
PiC: oh yeah? *hopeful*
JB: Yeah cuz you guys are gonna die before me.
PiC: Oh.
JB: I’m not gonna die before you! Oh, but kids can actually die.
PiC: Uh.
JB: Yeah cuz kids can get very sick when they’re young!
This makes me feel like a transport bus.
JB: I wish I could go to Italy! In person, not in Mommy’s belly. Because in Mommy’s belly, it’s very different.
:: If you had a visible injury or disability, how would you want a parent to address it with their kid while they were still in front of you or within earshot?
August 14, 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, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. I just found $12 owed to PiC looking through the Unclaimed Property site! I was able to put in the claim for him electronically so a bit of typing and his claim is all set. We’ll see if they cough it up in 7-10 days.
2. We’ve been trying to buy local as much as we can, which often means paying a mark up, but we think it’s important to support local businesses. Mostly that means local restaurants but this weekend it meant the local bike shops. Unfortunately, PiC couldn’t get the shop to pick up their phones to find out if they had parts in stock and showing up at the shop that said it was open online revealed that it was not. They wasted a precious hour on an unsuccessful errand so we had to go to the local chain instead. Not that I think the small bike shops here are suffering. The sales in the bike industry around here have skyrocketed with COVID, and he’s reported seeing children’s bikes listed for as much as $800!! Who does that?? But there are quite affluent people in some of the areas surrounding us, so I suppose they’d be willing to pay that kind of money? I guess? I don’t know. The point is he was about to get a couple sets of tires and tubes for JB’s bike for $50. And plus the money we paid for the bike is still less than half the cost of a new one. Even if we’d started with a new bike, I suspect their aggressive riding would have landed us in the bike shop getting new tires sooner or later even if we started with new ones.
3. I went on an organizing fest on Sunday to corral all my jewelry and hair and makeup things into a semblance of order and though I’m grouchy that I ordered the containers literally a couple hours too late and had the price go up by $2 per unit, I’m not letting the $6 “surcharge” over what I had mentally budgeted take away from my triumph of untangling and sorting all those pieces. Most of it is cheap costume jewelry, but most of that has held up well enough that I should wear them more regularly.
Challenges this week: I wiped myself out on the weekend inadvertently. We went on an extra long walk on Saturday and my ensuing fatigue was DEEP. I could hardly summon the will to exist.
4. For the first time in five months, I went to Trader Joe’s with the family. We were lucky, there was no line to get in. We had our hands misted on the way in, stayed well away from others, we were all masked, I got to pick up a new GF item (Norwegian crackers!) to try out. I haven’t missed people very much since they only exacerbate my ever-dominant fatigue, but I have missed the opportunity to see foods on shelves and stimulate the menu brain.
5. I needed to tackle another area of my organizing and I got it done over the weekend. I gathered up my scattered, though reasonably small, costume jewelry collection and hair accessories into these neat crafts storage boxes. The neatness makes me really happy, as does regaining some of our limited counterspace in the bathroom. I really appreciate these small bouts of organizing energy because the end result, even if I spend money to get there, is so satisfying and the neater surroundings helps soothe my otherwise stressed soul.
6. My brain is currently obsessed with make ahead meals. I’ve got some experience putting up lamb stew and chicken stew, I’d like to expand my repertoire to include enchiladas and chili. Enchiladas I can manage just fine but I had to experiment with the chili. I think I’m going to work on a few more batches before I am ready to freeze ahead.
I’m looking for more easy to make, freezer friendly all in one meals to make ahead so we can have at least a week of pre-made meals set aside for the hard days.
I’m hoping for a sale on Pyrex soon. After thinking about it for days, I decided the most environmentally friendly and flexible long term answer to freezing foods ahead of time is glass with lids. I don’t want to do disposable baking pans nor do I want to freeze in foil because that’s apparently imparted a funny taste to some of my frozen foods.
:: How was your week? What meals do you like to make ahead, if any?
August 13, 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, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
KassandraDasent on what the Black Tax really is at FemmeFrugality‘s blog.
K. Wright on money five months into the pandemic.
I struggled for years to get adequate care for my chronic pain so reading about the decades-long and systemic dismissal of Black women’s pain and illness by the medical establishment is absolutely infuriating. We all deserve better than this.
Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die
The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic: “One of us (Aronson), who was a protégé of Festinger in the mid-’50s, advanced cognitive-dissonance theory by demonstrating the powerful, yet nonobvious, role it plays when the concept of self is involved. Dissonance is most painful when evidence strikes at the heart of how we see ourselves—when it threatens our belief that we are kind, ethical, competent, or smart. The minute we make any decision—I’ll buy this car; I will vote for this candidate; I think COVID-19 is serious; no, I’m sure it is a hoax—we will begin to justify the wisdom of our choice and find reasons to dismiss the alternative. Before long, any ambivalence we might have felt at the time of the original decision will have morphed into certainty. As people justify each step taken after the original decision, they will find it harder to admit they were wrong at the outset. Especially when the end result proves self-defeating, wrongheaded, or harmful.”
Winter is coming: Why America’s window of opportunity to beat back Covid-19 is closing: “Unless Americans use the dwindling weeks between now and the onset of “indoor weather” to tamp down transmission in the country, this winter could be Dickensianly bleak, public health experts warn.”
I’m looking around and I think it’s pretty clear Americans are going to completely squander what’s left of our opportunity to get this thing under control. Americans continue to amaze me in all the wrong and terrible ways.
I needed some good stuff:
What a lovely affirmation! The video is worth watching, I just had to take a screencap for folks who don’t click through links: https://twitter.com/pearlsnappea/status/1291878131880665095?s=19
This thread led me to this designer’s collection which is absolutely gorgeous. I’ve never seen a collection of dresses where I loved almost every single one of the creations. Just some really lovely eye candy.
I fell in love with this adorable stamp shop.
A 2-year old profile of Seanan McGuire. I adore every Incryptid story she’s ever written even though some make me sad because they’re too short. I can’t handle the Wayward Children books right now but that’s mostly because of where I am in life and also pandemic. Middlegame was spooky good and spooky and good.
This is how I dog paddle
August 10, 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, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Weeks 19 and 20 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 19, Day 129: The thought of keeping an actual physical non-for-public consumption / blogging Covid-19 journal came to me this weekend. I don’t know whether I find the time but maybe …??
Week 19, Day 130: JB pushed all the boundaries during an unsupervised lesson today and we had A Very Firm Talk. I was incredibly disappointed in their choice to do that when they knew I wasn’t going to be able to oversee.
After a couple conversations with their teacher, I realized that that was in fact the most logical time for it to happen. Still not happy about it.
We also found out that our favorite Thai restaurant will be temporarily closing and they don’t have a firm reopening date, and I had a minor flip-out because A) I am a Virgo and I HATE CHANGE and B) WHAT IF THEY NEVER REOPEN.
My day was jam-packed with work-related things that were not getting my own work done and that was tough, mentally. I also hate interrupting my regular work routine so much! It had to get done though, it was a long-term thing that needed my attention.
We did get our good news about Seamus though, and that was a real shot in the arm mood-booster. The alternative of his not getting better was a fairly dire one.
(more…)
August 7, 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, $1,713.62; Rural libraries, $321.62.
1. We discovered that not only does Gott’s Roadside have gluten free buns that are pretty good, I seem to be tolerating that carb content well enough that I can enjoy a burger WITH a bun!! WOOOOO. Of course that feels like lifestyle inflation because, my goodness, it’s a $9+tax burger. But it was a burger on a bun which I haven’t had in ages so I’m still happy. *happy burger dance*
2. Our friends sent JB a lovely Comic Con in a box gift and that was just so thoughtful and lovely.
Challenges this week: Technology has been kicking my behind. All week, Wi-Fi has mostly been working for everyone BUT me, and I’m right next to the router. My old laptop that JB is using for lessons is a touchscreen and the touchscreen function just quit. My phone’s necessary basic apps just quit and I spent many many hours fixing it to no avail. We mirror computer screens to the TV so we can oversee lessons from afar and that keeps disconnecting but refusing to let me change it. On a very minor note, I had to cancel our Highlights subscription for High Five Espanol, the bilingual magazine, it was nowhere near the beginner level I was hoping to share with JB. I had a few years of high school Spanish and a little workplace Spanish under my belt, and this was above my level. So that was a disappointment.
3. I had another fraught nightmare about fighting with my dad over some life news and in the dream I absolutely told him off for all the selfish manipulative hurtful things he did. For the first time in two decades of these nightmares, I didn’t wake up feeling upset by the fight. Instead, I felt mentally and emotionally unburdened. Working with my therapist has let me open up to the idea that it’s actually ok for me to be mad at a parent and say so. Culturally, the very idea has been anathema and I think I’ve even subconsciously not allowed myself to feel that anger in a real way, I’ve just been making myself feel guilty for even feeling it because that’s a “betrayal” of my family values. As if his actions that caused the valid anger were not the much worse betrayal of our supposedly shared values! It’s interesting that I intellectually knew that but very clearly did not feel that deep down. It wasn’t my fault that he made the choices that he did and I am allowed to have feelings about how he harmed me and my family. I don’t have to feel guilty about those feelings. This is some progress!
:: How was your week?
August 6, 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, $1,713.62;Rural libraries, $321.62.
I’m a long time Angry Little Asian Girls fan and I need this “I hate people” design in pretty much everything – this is 2020 in a nutshell.
MIXED + PASSING – LET’S TALK ABOUT RACE
You Don’t Batch Cook When You’re Suicidal (formerly: The Price Of Potatoes & The Value Of Compassion)
This cat puts up with so much scruffing.
Fiction: Grandmother Beetroot
Indian Matchmaker: Two of my most profound decisions in life made a lot of sense: first, to exit my community in search of companionship, and second, to exit marital companionship, to not marry at all. When the game itself is dirty, why yell at a mirror pointed at it, reflecting the moves for all to see?
This gorgeous blanket octopus!
Sounds of a sleeping seal