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 MoreSeptember 26, 2025
1. TIL that chocolate is fermented. WHAT.
2. I’ve learned more about football from Chris Kluwe on Bsky than anyone else. I really like that he’s politically active, and vocally fighting back against fascism in his local community of Huntington Beach, CA. Now, he’s running for Assembly and we can support him!
Helping folks: This GFM for an old friend of jewelry artist Wings needs some traction.
September 24, 2025
Sometimes this exercise feels a little like grasping at straws to feel like I’m in control of something, since I’m in control of so little, but mostly it’s to help myself remember all the moving pieces.
Pros:
With my vastly increased responsibilities at work, my salary went up a bit (not at all proportional to the amount of work it increased by, of course). As usual, I won’t count on the bonuses. Even though they include that as part of my total compensation, a) not guaranteed because that’s entirely dependent on the larger company’s performance. I can only do my best and they could still fail to meet whatever pie in the sky targets they set. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Well, a little bit my monkeys, but not the kind I get to control. b) this year’s bonus isn’t paid til well into next year so next year’s bonus (if any) wouldn’t be paid into 2027 etc. As far as my financial planning is concerned, that’s all pretend money until (and if) it lands.
The SALT tax cap lift (effective in 2025) to $40K does help us, because our state and local taxes are so damn high. It’d be great if the taxes were lower to begin with so we weren’t paying $40k+ in taxes but here we are. Literally here, being in CA has a lot to do with why we’re taxed so much. My Alaskan friends aren’t paying anything like our property and state taxes and the SALT tax increase doesn’t even register on their radar.
Cons:
Open enrollment in October will bring some kind of healthcare premium increase. The only question is how much. I already pay around $10k/year out of pocket for our various expenses, that doesn’t include our premiums. I should go calculate how much those premiums cost. I tend to forget it once open enrollment is over.
We’ve always itemized deductions because of all our expenses which includes a fair lot of charitable giving. In 2026, we’re going to lose the charitable giving deduction as it exists now. Taking the standard deduction allows you to also deduct $1000/2000 for charitable giving but itemizers have a new threshold to exclude:
Beginning next tax year, a different provision sets a threshold for itemized charitable contributions, equating to 0.5% of a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income. For example, an itemizer earning $500,000 would need to exclude the first $2,500 of their donations before receiving any tax benefit.
I’ve got to do the actual math on that because I did it wrong before. ($500,000 to use their example, x 0.05% vs $500,000 x 0.05 which is what I did first. Oops. Very different results.) See? Good thing I’m writing this and double checking my work.
I’m really not motivated to read through the whole damn thing budget bill to find out what else is going to impact us but it feels like I need more than just the highlights from Kiplingers and co.
September 22, 2025
Year 6, Day 147: I’ve been chewing on that idea that “when people don’t show up for you the way that you show up for them, it feels like rejection”. The phrasing is off but I think that’s the gist of it. I’ve been thinking of it since in the context of my right-wing family and the news of late. I’ve showed up for them in a lot of my usual ways but it feels like in a lot of ways, I don’t matter to them. These days, I kind of take their politics personally. That they could see the heartless evil messages out of Fox News and the patronizing bullshot spouted by their kids’ in-laws, and not see how dehumanizing it all is, like that jackass saying that the mentally ill unhoused should be killed, I feel like, but for a ton of really hard work AND luck, I could be that person they’re referring to. And if I didn’t have PiC, if I were on my own and hit a rough patch of illness and unemployment, I’d really be on my own. As usual, I’m the only safety net I have. I could disappear and none of them would even notice.
Now, I don’t actually know if that’s completely accurate. For that part of the family I’m pretty sure it is, but in the bigger scheme of things, I have at least a couple people who would care enough to lend me a hand. If I could bring myself to ask. Not much and not for long, and not to the lengths I have gone for family, but there are a couple. But by and large, the ones who do care are vastly outnumbered by the ones who don’t. That feels not great.
Don’t really know what to do with this thought process but just nod and say that’s the way it is? I guess? I don’t know if the smarter thing is to spend less time and energy caring about other people.
Year 6, Day 148: On the bright side ~woo~ we got our flu and COVID vax! I pre-dosed with cetizirine at 1 pm and sat down for the jabs at 330. 6 hours post, my injection site was sore but well within tolerable bounds. I moved my arm a lot and then committed to a full arms exercise session with weights and elastic bands. I can’t remember what time post-vax I’d normally crash though so I can’t quite tell if this is all fine still or not. I started feeling the full body yuck around 9 hours post-vax. Not terrible, enough to know I don’t feel good.
Now this bit is weird: the tech giving the shot told us we’d have to come back in 8 weeks for a booster. That guidance this applies to both Moderna and Pfizer 2025-26 formulations and is for adults and kids. I haven’t found a single thing to support that statement. The closest thing I found was the AAP recommendation that kids under 18 get two shots 8 weeks apart if they are severely immunocompromised. That’s nothing like what I was told. Weird. I’ve been trying to figure out who we talk to about this to either stem the misinformation or to confirm we really do have to do this dance again in 2 months. Given a choice, I want to be nowhere near the hospital mid-November.
Year 6, Day 149: I’ve been lightly hoarding necessary supplements and prescription meds so that we have a relatively decent volume stored against issues with medications thanks to the tariffs or other Trump fuckery. I just went through and filled my medication daily pill holders and was able to fill five weeks out. Not everything is fully stocked, I’ve got to pick up a few more supplements, but five weeks is a decent chunk of time in which to replenish stores.
It feels like a meditative exercise in some ways. There’s no doubt a bit of this is my hypervigilance coming out to play, but it’s not delusional. We had those formula shortages early into COVID, ADHD meds have been difficult to get for months, another diabetes related med is now artificially understocked. With the tariff nonsense, I can’t imagine that other meds won’t be impacted in some way. There’s no telling when or if my specific necessary meds will be impacted but it will deeply impact my quality of life if they are. I keep thinking of the post-Shift world where currently commonplace meds like ibuprofen become precious.
Year 6, Day 150: Coming out of my second night of waking up in enough pain to wake me from sleep, and also sweating ruthlessly because there’s nothing that pairs as nicely with muscle and bone aches as being drenched in sweat, was moderately miserable. But! This feels like a corner turned on the post-vax yucks because this morning wasn’t nearly as bad as yesterday. Hats off to the cetizirine pretreatment and the ibuprofen for getting me through a semi-rocky two days. I was mentally calling it flu and COVID-proofing until I worried about jinxing us. Because that’s how viruses work, obviously 😆 Then I decided it’s not jinxing because if you childproof stuff it’s reasonably safe but a sufficiently determined toddler could still bypass certain safety measures and it was still (probably) better than not doing it at all. We never childproofed the power outlets when JB was at the peak danger age for that stuff because their danger-seeking was directed in other directions.
Year 6, Day 151: Ah, yes, note to self. The first night after vaccines, SmolAc always has weird unsettled sleep punctuated by bursts of loud sleep-protesting. Wakes me up, every time.
Mosquitoes have invaded the house. 😡Hisssss of being bitten many times while I slept. Evil disease vectors! I can’t find where they might be laying their eggs, we’re usually good about not keeping standing water anywhere, but they could easily have snuck in from outside. On the recommendation of more knowledgeable friends, I’ve treated the drains with bleach in case they’re somehow managing to hole up in there. Cross your fingers they’re not being more sneaky and hiding elsewhere?
September 19, 2025
How this week flew by in a week of Mondays and ended .. oh right. It’s been Very Busy and I have been Very Slow and we’ve had work going on around the exterior all week which has been pretty disruptive. It’s necessary weatherproofing but I’ll be so grateful when the last of this is done.
A friend is being moved to hospice and I’ve scheduled a visit after they’re settled in. I’m not ready to lose them. Stupid sentiment I suppose, is anybody ever? I’m so tired of this relentless grieving of one loss after another, we all deserve an extended period of joy. Well, not the fascists. They can lose all their hate-fueled joy, that’d be ok.
Wins: I sorted TWO big bags of Smol Acrobat hand me downs and put half away for future use and half into the donation bin to share with friends with younger ones than ours. We’re going to have them over one night with all their kiddies, feed them dinner, and have them pick through the bins for whatever they’d like to take away. Win win for everyone!
PiC has to finish his endless painting project first and then we have to find a date before the rush of Fall and holidays and all that overtakes us. Cross your fingers for us that we don’t lose another 3 months before we manage to organize something.
Bestie turned 40 this week ❣️ I’m so proud of her in so many ways. She’s awesome.
September 17, 2025
We’re doing our best considering real life constraints. Sometimes our best isn’t the ideal solution, but neither is life or circumstances.
We stopped shopping at Walmart and Sam’s Club 20+ years ago. This is much easier here in Northern CA because I don’t know where Sam’s club OR Walmart is.
Our replacement was Target and I’m currently mostly boycotting them, and emailing investor relations to remind them why every couple of weeks, for being jerks about DEI. That’s really annoying.
We avoid Amazon as much as we can so we’ve reduced our spend there a significant amount. I still have to use it to ship food to the reservations when we can’t get it any other way, so I also use Prime Video to get my money’s worth on Prime. I’m considering whether we should just
We won’t buy from Lululemon, having been founded by a racist. Even if it’s not owned by him anymore, I haven’t bothered to look, there’s no reason to add them to our lives.
Costco’s been solid, thank goodness, and I was smug when the VAST majority of shareholders rejected the anti-DEI proposal. They do have some labor slips that need improvement but, by and large, they’re much better than many others.
I stopped using Duolingo because they went fullbore on using AI in their lessons. I won’t use Adobe’s AI either.
I have similar stances with artists who are horrible. We’ll never give the Harry Potter franchise a dime. Neil Gaiman can go to hell for his serial bad treatment of women, he’s been pulled off our shelves. As we learn we change what we consume.
Where do you shop and where have you stopped shopping?
September 15, 2025
Year 6, Day 140: New goal: be independently wealthy so that I can help as many people as I can reach and so I can quit my job and go work with animals all day. I was vetting some pet boarding facilities, initial research for one of the two problems I have to solve before I can adopt again, and saw a job listing which made me go YES I WANT TO DO THAT. Sigh. I miss being around and working with animals all day or night. Having an office dog when we have dogs at home is great, but it’s not the same. I don’t know if my body could actually handle that physical commitment anymore but if I was wealthy then I could do it part time! Win win!
Year 6, Day 141: Did I fail down the jetpens rabbithole? Yes I did. Did I doubt I’d want enough stuff to meet the $35 minimum? Yep. Did I find ten things to buy? Also yep. A mix of wants and gifts. I sent all the links to myself to ruminate on for a few days because I’m pretty sure I told myself I wasn’t allowed to buy more pens. But look, so cute! A Uni-ball One P mini gel pen! Panda donut washi! Kitty washi!
This is one of my current forms of meditation, I don’t use it often as it is habit forming, and it works like magic.
Year 6, Day 142: Walking back to the house, I realized I feel human again!? For the first time in weeks. Not good, but physically back to the usual baseline of aches, pains, and tired which is tolerable. What a huge relief.
This means I can tolerate a 5 minute shower again. I can now walk for 10 minutes without being bed bound for 4 hours. I can work and take JB where they need to go without collapsing like my skin only contains a mass of jellyfish! These things don’t seem like much to a normal person but they are everything when they’re gone.
I’m very slowly adding back very low-rep sets of my normal exercises. They’re still pretty low key to begin with and I have missed being able to do them.
Year 6, Day 143: Wow, are my children WHINY. SmolAc has started their transitional kindergarten program at daycare and one exciting (/s) addition to their routine is they now have take-home (optional) homework. It is terrible. SmolAc just spontaneously forgot how to write some of their letters that they’ve been writing just fine for months and so we had to practice it over and over with a letters book where they could trace and then write. I helped guide their hand a few times, then had them retrace and re-write. It was like pulling teeth. They whined and pouted and stomped and tried to quit over and over and over. Good grief, child, it’s ONE letter. Lots of deep breaths until I couldn’t take it any longer and I sent them to have a snack.
This was published back in July when I was too busy to read the news and now it’s looming on the horizon: “In around 90 days, millions of Americans will learn about out-of-pocket cost hikes of more than 75 percent on average.” Open enrollment is around the corner in October so we’ll see how much of that giant percentage increase is going to impact us. This and losing the charitable deductions for itemizers are the two expected blows to our 2026 operation budget that I know of so far. It feels like I’m always adjusting for yet another hit to our finances, these days.
Year 6, Day 144: Two blows of bad news at once. A friend from blogging and Twitter for well over a decade has been fighting cancer and it’s now terminal. They aren’t that much older than me, and it is heartbreaking to imagine my world without them. This isn’t fair or ok or right. Another loved one is losing their dad to a serious illness, and it’s heartbreaking that this whole section of the family is having to absorb another loss so soon.
Several friends have come down with COVID or the flu, and JB’s been congested all day, so this cold/flu/COVID season is just roaring in. We just got the news that Kaiser will be stocking the COVID vaccine starting the 15th though, so with the Joker at HHS trying to do us out of vaccines with his ACIP meeting later this coming week, PiC and I are strategizing how we can get our vax ASAP without doing it on the same day. We’re grateful that it’ll be available! And we’d really appreciate if we could count on it being available for everyone and for more than 5 business days rather than being subject to the whims of the multitudes of anti-vaxxers.
September 12, 2025
1. I’ve been ogling dogs again. They’re very cute and I want them.
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