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 15, 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.
More of a Lawful Good, then
JB was so sad we couldn’t go to the park to play. We’ve got an empty field thing nearby and they’ve been enjoying it a few days a week, staying 20 feet away from anyone who might be there.
I explained that it looked like maybe the ordinances weren’t allowing us to play and we’d get in trouble for violating them. I suggested that, well, since no one was really there, maybe we could go anyway and just be very cautious with masks and touching nothing and bothering no one.
JB: NO! We’re not allowed!! We’ll get in trouble!
Preparing for kindergarten
I’ve submitted all our kindergarten application forms, even though we all have no freaking idea what’s going to happen this fall, and followed up to make sure JB’s preschool teacher has submitted their part. I’ve submitted our lottery entry for the after care program even though that wait list was last reported to be 200 applicants long and I honestly doubt we’ll get in. I’m doing all the “right” things because I’d rather have done them than not if the state of the world starts to come back together in time for some version of fall schooling.
It still feels incredibly unlikely at the moment but we don’t know. We need some semblance of organized childcare and education again but PiC and I both feel very strongly that we’re not comfortable with sending JB back out in this without more and better widespread testing, and some kind of effective treatment for COVID. Waiting for a vaccine is too far out, that’s 1-2 years out at least, but if we have ways to treat it, and contact tracing and testing, that would be a reasonable start.
We got an update from the afterschool program that EVERYONE is now on the waitlist for the foreseeable future.
Kindness Jar
I’ve been looking for ways to repurpose all our medication bottles, I hate tossing them out (recycling but it feels like the same thing) if we don’t have to. JB snagged one of my reserved-with-hope bottles and PiC helped them decorate it for a Kindness Jar. Every time someone does a kind thing, you get a marble for the KJ.
JB has been … Overly Enthusiastic about counting kindnesses.
Mommy cooked breakfast, that was a kindness!
I thanked Mommy for cooking breakfast, that was a kindness!
I petted Seamus, that was a kindness!
We’ve got a real fan of sheep here
It started back in April.
Now, everyone gets compared to a sheep.
JB: Your computer has such a good memory! Like a sheep!
JB: I have a good memory, like a sheep!
Precious Moments
Someday this kid will be able to identify us correctly.
They came running out in the morning: dad??
I called through the bathroom door: he’s outside with the dog.
JB: Oh. Are you Daddy or Mommy?
Me: ….. What??
I still don’t know if they were serious.
Who’s the boss?
JB: I hope I don’t get thrown in the ocean when I die.
Me: ?
JB: I mean, in my case. I don’t want to get through in the ocean in my case. Because there are sharks.
Me: After you die?
JB: Yes!
Me: Do you mean coffin?
JB: yes!
It’s not as fun as you think, y’know?
JB: Why don’t you have to wear glasses?
PiC: I had eye surgery, so I don’t wear glasses anymore.
JB: I wish I could have eye surgery!
Oh because I’m the only klutz around here
JB, holding up the bit of plastic that covers the end of new tape rolls: Mama, you have to take this off, or you cannot use that tape. Just so you know how it works, because I would not want you to get another ouchy.
June 12, 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. While my personal diet has been terrible, stress tummies are a thing, PiC and JB have been eating a whole lot more fruit than before. PiC continues to do all the grocery shopping and is doing a lot more food prep now that our time commitments are balanced differently.
2. I haven’t been able to cook lately for weird appetite reasons, they come in waves, so it was really nice to be able to make a dinner this week. Bonus: JB called it a super special dinner. Double bonus but also a normal one: PiC cleaned the whole kitchen after. He always does clean up whether or not he cooks but it’s just something I appreciate every time.
Challenges this week: We can’t let the protests just fall by the wayside. There is a lot more fighting to do before we have accomplished anything real. A dear friend has cancer and it is advanced enough for us to be SERIOUSLY concerned. I keep overcommitting to causes I care about and then wondering why I feel stretched too thin. Well, duh. It’s mostly fundraising related organizing but it’s more than time to be sensible when there’s a lot to complete on my current commitments. I have resolved for the umpteenth time that I’m not allowed to pick up or start ANY new projects at all until the end of summer. You’d think a planner personality would know when they were taking on too much.
3. Some spreadsheet mistakes rankled but I tracked down most of them and reconciled the final missing $5 out of pocket and considered that a worthwhile trade for not spending the time tracking it down. It’s all for a good cause anyway.
4. A wonderful story about Highlights reminded me how much I loved the magazine growing up and how I would have loved getting a subscription. We can afford it (especially during a sale) so I’m ordering a one year subscription for JB to see if they enjoy it too. If you wanted to order a magazine subscription from them today, use this code for 10% off: Flash10
5. On a day when neither of us knew WTF to make for dinner, we manage to heat up a frozen GF pizza, make GF pasta Alfredo from scratch (the three ingredient kind, not the heavy cream kind) and a summer salad of spinach, strawberries, green apples and toasted walnuts. It was nowhere near low carb but I’m just too tired to be coming up with palatable GF low carb no sugar meals these days. We need to eat something. Turns out brown rice pasta Alfredo pretty much seems like….Mac and cheese. It earned two thumbs up from the Mac and cheese aficionado.
6. I figured out that I don’t need to set up a meal train for friends dealing with radiation and chemo, I can just order food for them from us and call it a day. We’re testing out Goldbelly which is more of a splurgey type site but it gives us access to a lot more options than I’ve been able to find in single meal format rather than a commitment to multiple deliveries weekly. I’ve sent these friends plenty of meals in the past for convalescence and it was always a lot of work coordinating with those healthy food delivery places. Healthy options are harder to find here but it’s the happier medium between delicious food they’ll have to cook (Zingermans) and delivery services that may be overwhelming with frequency and coordination requirements. I had to know when they’d be home three times a week for several weeks last time. Not as easy as you’d think.
June 11, 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.
Hasan Minhaj’s much-needed call to action for immigrants and people of color. I will never understand immigrants I know who supported 45.
I’m glad Abby wrote this: Why I stand with the protesters. Property damage sucks, but preventing the continued injustice of taking human lives is far more important. I see counter protester types out there ready to and armed to protect Ross and Hobby Lobby – why don’t you folks care more about actual living breathing humans?
I’m glad to see Joe and Tawcan discussing racism, privilege, and inequity. I’m glad to see Deb choosing to speak up. I’m glad to see Jim seeing what he’s been missing all these years and speaking up. Same for JD. It matters, and it’s important for people who haven’t been seeing racism or seeing but not speaking up for fear of putting a foot wrong to try anyway.
I never learned about the Ocoee Massacre of 1920.
Donate to These Orgs to Support Black Trans People: “Black trans people often face a specific set of structural, institutional, and personal barriers to accessing basic needs like housing, employment, and safety due to the intersections of their identities. According to 2012 data from Lambda legal, nearly one in two Black transgender people has been to prison, and Black trans people are also much more likely to face discriminatory policies and threats of sexual assault once behind bars.”
24 LGBTQ+ Organizations You Can Support Right Now: “After the unconscionable killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd at the hands of the police, LGBTQ+ advocates are using Pride 2020 as an occasion to speak out on against the racial injustices that still plague our country.”
How Asian Americans Are Reckoning With Anti-Blackness In Their Families
Huge news that the Minneapolis PD is supposed to be disbanded. I’m waiting to see how this will really play out but in the meantime I’m blown away by these rates of ineffectiveness against crime they have been.
A few good things:
A tiny bit of levity, the Pixar dog.
Corina Newsome and #BlackBirdersWeek and in NatGeo
More #BlackBirdersWeek, bird hieroglyphics, and tiny bat!
Do you know about ponies?
Are you spending or saving or both?
What Miser Mom is doing.
I’d like to see this cat, please
I feel for people with cat allergies but also I feel for this cat who just really wants to be in a library. I want to be in a library all the time too, Max.
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.
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Dividend income. We received $734.94 in dividends in May.
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