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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September 10, 2025
Life with JB
JB has been unusually clingy with me lately, constantly wanting to hold my hand (which leads to fights with Smol Acrobat over the hand they want to hold), constantly wanting hugs, constantly needing to be in the same room as me when we’re home together. I’m feeling smothered this summer.
I was mildly horrified by my therapist’s suggestion that this is partly because JB might be emulating me now but she may be right. Dammit. I don’t know what to make of that, they’ve been PiC’s kid so long.
They’re also moving out of their mostly pink and purple but generally rainbow (never black) stage into a solids and black with sparkles stage. (SmolAc is fimly in their own rainbow stage.)
Life with Smol Acrobat
Remember when I used to gripe that I couldn’t even have private bathroom time because the dogs would always open the door and stare at me until I came out? Well, I found something worse. I opened the door late at night to a Smol Acrobat just standing there, silently. I about jumped out of my skin! “WHAT are you DOING THERE??” They were upset that a stuffy was not in its appointed place, but PiC was asleep so they couldn’t complain to him.
We’ve been dealing with their little temper tantrums, generally short but very intense, when they don’t like an answer they’ve been given. I thought they’d grow out of that intense reaction, but nope. It’s going to take a lot more active adjusting. I’ve been telling them calmly (most of the time. Sometimes less calmly) that they need to use their words to ask for what they want instead of stomping their feet and snarling like a rabid cougar. (Mistyped that as rabbit cougar and now I’m going on of that tangent.) They are very resistant in the moment but I’m seeing some improvement day to day. Usually when told to go start their shower routine, if I stick with mine instead of PiC’s, they snarl and wail. After a solid week of firmness, they asked if they could do it the other way ’round instead and I agreed “because you asked so politely”. It’s slow but we’re making tiny steps of progress.
Precious Moments
SmolAc trying very hard to get their way: Can we eat our snack? I’m just asking. If you say no, den I will say “yes, mommy“.
****
PiC told SmolAc to go “Say good night, and you’re not coming back for another round of good nights!”
“Ok!” SmolAc happily replies. Then proceeds with his good nights: “Good night leggy. Good night toe-y. Good night other leggy. Good night other toe-y. Good night eyebrows. Good night cheek. Good night other cheek. Good night nose. Good night ears. Good night chin.”
****
JB was minding SmolAc for me during one of my flares. OH: I won by a couple hundred points.
SmolAc: You won? So, I woose (lose)?
JB: Yeah.
SmoAc: Aw.
****
PiC: mom’s work friends are probably already here.
JB, listening: I hear them laughing. They’re probably making jokes with curse words.
Me: oh like you haven’t heard those words before.
September 8, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 133: A while ago, I asked Darcy at I Want Guac if she would share what she knows about international banking and currency, and I’m delighted that she obliged. Her post led me to Wanderer’s Norbert’s Gambit which was new to me, and also Wanderer’s banking operational security post which is very relevant to my interests.
I’m still absorbing a lot of this information to see what we can incorporate in our emergency planning (for one of the worst case scenarios: if we have to flee this country), and our day to day online and banking security practices. Those are two very different scenarios. In the former, I have to figure out how we’d survive if we couldn’t get access to our money in US banking institutions because fascism; versus functioning as normal day to day.
The comments put Fidelity on my list for possible international ATM-friendly cards and accounts. I hadn’t thought of them before, but a couple details sounded appealing so I need to do more research to confirm these will be useful to us:
Your Fidelity Cash Management account will automatically be reimbursed for all ATM fees charged by other institutions while using the Fidelity® Debit Card at any ATM displaying the Visa®, Plus®, or Star® logos. The reimbursement will be credited to the account the same day the ATM fee is debited. Fidelity does not charge foreign transaction fees; however, if you choose to pay a foreign debit card transaction in US dollars, your transaction may be processed at a rate different than market exchange.
Year 6, Day 134: Corporeality was such a mistake.We’re now on Day 11 of this Fucking Flare.
Is it just me or are the Amazon First Reads Historical Fiction selections ALWAYS WW1 and WW2? I’ve been skipping most of their free book selections because there’s only so much WW1/2 set fiction I can take. But I now need to decide if we cancel Prime entirely. We’d been splitting the cost with a few other people for years, and they’re taking that sharing ability away October 1st, so I have to decide if we cut them loose entirely and give up access to Prime Video which has been one of my main (Leverage Redemption!) reasons for continuing the sharing arrangement. We have been using them less and less for shipping reasons. Our primary shipping use case is that sometimes there’s literally no one else who will ship to the reservations and when people need food and babies need diapers, you get that to them any way you can.
Year 6, Day 135: TWO bits of good news today. After 12 days I might finally be turning a corner on the CFS part of my flare. We may be moving into the “is just excruciating fibro pain” part. Yay! I’d sound a little sarcastic there but honestly just being in terrible pain, while not fun, is more manageable than pain and overwhelming fatigue. Fingers crossed.
And one crow friend was alerting on the neighbor’s roof today, and came over to ours for a snack so I ran to oblige. Usually I only put down two treats at a time in case they don’t spot me distributing them. This time I was pretty sure they were waiting so I put out a handful. They were flying solo so they took a few minutes to eat some before stuffing their beak with the rest and flew away. It was fun to watch.
Year 6, Day 136: Labubu dolls: I don’t get it. At least, even though the Beanie baby craze was also irrational, they were cute.
The start of a new school year is a lot. Back to school night. Fundraisers start up. Parent teacher conferences are at the end of the month. The big fundraiser culmination celebration event is this month. Start of the monthly PTA events (which JB wants to attend and PiC often feels obligated to volunteer at). PTA meetings that come with the side of guilt I can’t seem to shake about not doing more than paying for membership, attending meetings virtually and attending some of the community events. I absolutely don’t have time or energy for more. And yet the stupid guilt always bites at me. It’s worse in the first meeting because they’re asking for volunteers for committees. They do put on a lot of events that the kids love and it’s meaningful. But there’s just no wiggle room I can eke out and if I could, this wouldn’t be top of my priority list. Maybe I’ll shake it by the time SmolAc is through elementary school.
Year 6, Day 137: This year is the band year for the local districts. All kids are invited to join the band and learn an instrument this school year. The lessons are free, you have to supply the instrument. The teachers strongly encourage all the kids to try it. It’s a great way to dip a toe into music! I haven’t been able to figure out how to fit in music lessons in JB’s schedule so this is good. This is also Yet Another Thing.
I talked to JB very seriously about how challenging it’ll be at first and once they’re committed, they aren’t allowed to quit just because it’s hard sometimes. The work will pay off. It’ll get easier only with practice. We were able to borrow an instrument from a friend, and had to spend $100 on the other required supplies. Otherwise we would have had to rent one for $30-40/month.
Sadly, their nemesis, a kid I’m heartily sick of, has declared their intentions to join too because they’re going to “master the flute just like their sibling” and good God can we not catch a flipping break from this obnoxious brat? They’re in JB’s class, they’re assigned to JB’s small group in PE, now they’re joining band, they’re constantly picking fights and stirring shit and lying about JB to other kids to turn them against JB. Half my imaginary empire for this kid to move to another state.
I keep reminding myself that JB knows they’re loved. They have dozens of friends their age and trusted adults all over the country. World, even. They have a buddy in the UK who comes to visit them once or twice a year! They have multiple activities and friends at every one. It’s the very rare library visit (PiC takes them almost every weekend) that they don’t run into a friend or three to play with entirely unplanned. A couple jerkface kids, annoying though they are, shouldn’t make or break their school year. They are thoroughly over the kid, I certainly am, but they’re still enjoying life and school and they’re not miserable over school. But I would still give half that empire for that kid, the source of so much annoyance for everyone, to disappear. They’re that classic mean kid who everyone placates in hopes of delaying the target on their backs a little longer. Ugh. Anyway as long as it’s petty stupid shit, we try to focus on all the ways we can make life and school positive in spite of the misery-maker.
PiC asks me if I think the parents of the crappy kids know their kids suck. I say, no, the kids are both themselves and the products of their parents in varying degrees. Unless the parents are garbage, they probably think their kid is the normal one.
September 5, 2025
1. Coming up with a good office storage set-up/layout is a weirdly slow process. Slow is better than never and sometimes fixing your longstanding storage issues is a multi-step process especially when you’re dealing with many crafting, office, life, and school supplies for yourself and the kids. We could really use more storage space here. I just wish I could settle on one good overarching system and stick with it but I’m always finding that I have time or energy to get 25-50% of the way through, stop, and come back to it months later wanting something “better”.
All that to say, it occurred to me to try rearranging my mask storage boxes so that I could reduce it to one medium bin and all it’s now left me with is a bag of well used old fabric masks, once paired with filters, to figure out what to do with. JB used them constantly over three years and they simply can’t do the job anymore. There should be no shame in repurposing them in the scrap bag but I feel terrible about taking apart the hard work that went into them. But it would be worse to waste the fabric, in the end, so I’ll get over it.
2. Every so often I dabble into beginner sheet music on a keyboard to try and remember what I learned as a kid. I wish I’d been able to muster the discipline to practice as much as I should have back then, the way I was willing to run for track or workout for martial arts, but I wasn’t so my muscle memory is a shabby shadow of what it could be. Another thing to do in retirement, teach myself how to play again. Try to get good enough to play Howl’s Moving Castle for fun.
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September 3, 2025
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon occasionally pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
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 $1,141.16 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. It’s re-invested.
It’s taken five months to get to the point of someone processing my raise. Naturally, they did it wrong and it’s going to take ages for them to fix. Who knows when that’ll actually be done.
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September 1, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 126: I’m tetchy today. We went to a family gathering on Saturday. It was good fun for all of us! We very much needed that catch up. But it wiped me out completely. I spent most of Sunday laid up. No batch cooking for me. 🙁 Today was less bad but only less in the sense that I can sit upright but otherwise am kinda useless. Walking is a tall order, doing anything that requires standing is right out. I probably need another 2-3 days to recover, probably, and I resent that so much.
I took it very easy on Saturday, sitting down most of the time, mostly indoors shaded from the sun and wind. All I did was parent when the kids needed me, and talk to some friends. PiC did the bulk of the SmolAc herding. Yet, by the evening, it felt like I’d been plugged into the wall and every muscle was separately being electrocuted. I also resent how much this reminds me that I can’t do stamina-requiring things like go to protests. My friends did this weekend, and I’m grateful for their activism on these days when both the personal and world outlooks are so bleak.
Alas, no paws or claws today, either. That would have cheered me up immensely.
Year 6, Day 127: I always spend a little time reading current job listings, keeping feelers out the market for opportunities, in an attempt to stay informed enough that I don’t feel completely flat-footed when my time runs out at this job. It’s been a depressing exercise, the past 18 months of listings at best generate an “ugh. meh. bleck.” There was only one that looked remotely interesting last year, an Assistant Director in an advocacy organization helping incarcerated people reintegrate into society. I spotted one today that I am definitely not qualified for, running a conservation organization, but the employer piqued my interest. I don’t yearn to start yet another job in the workplace but this must be my gut telling me that if I must change jobs, only jobs that are about doing good in the world are going to fit the bill. That’s new.
It’s a bit of a luxury criteria considering the number of people out of work now, and at the payscale I’d want/need, so I should adjust my attitude and hold on to this job which at least does some measure of good with a reasonable moral compass and isn’t outright evil.
Year 6, Day 128: Every time I try to deal with Comcast for an outage credit, they try to upsell me on their mobile service. Why on earth would I want a year of terrible free mobile service from them when they can’t even give us reliable high-speed internet? I had 3 outages in a single week alone! Honestly.
I’m still very much on the cusp of this flare up so I’m still having to be careful to coddle my body what seems like a ridiculous amount. But after less than ten minutes standing, my whole body starts initiating a shutdown sequence so my opinions don’t matter here. 😒
By spacing out the prep for this really simple recipe for Vietnamese Pork-Stuffed Fried Tofu In Tomato Sauce, skipping stuffing the tofu entirely, and sitting down for 95% of the prep, I did manage to cook a whole new dish. It’s pretty good! It’s now meatballs and tofu in sauce but still good. That’s kind of nice.
Year 6, Day 129: Normally, I only read ebooks on my Kindle and Kobo apps on my phone so I’ve never replaced my old timey Kindle since it was too annoying to read on a device that didn’t have a light of its own. This isn’t usually an issue, except when I buy a Humble Bundle and then have to download every file, text them to my phone, download them there and THEN upload to the Kobo app. What a PAIN. It’s not something I do often, maybe once a year, but woof is it a timesink.
The app interface is also frustrating. We can’t do bulk actions that I’ve been able to find (adding multiple books to collections), and I hate that series of books are organized alphabetically instead of by volume and that I have no way to change that within my collections. So when I have a 20 book series, I have to open the info for every single one to hunt down the next book in the series.
I wonder if it’s even worth submitting feedback. I’m going to try.
Year 6, Day 130: I’m on Day 6 or 7 of this damn flare and am reflecting on how this is awful and yet it’s lucky that the way they present, I can force myself to do some of the things I need to do. It’s miserable and I pay a very steep price for forcing it, but I can force the issue. So crucial things like work and school pick up can usually happen even if my insides will then threaten to be my outsides if I don’t collapse in short order. But cooking is going too far, and sometimes showering is, too, even a quick ten minutes version. “Lucky”.
On the COVID front we personally know four people, one in July and three in August, who have caught it and it’s hard not to feel like it’s hemming us in on all sides psychologically with the usual late summer surge, and the latest bullshit restrictions on vaccines taking away one major layer of protection (we still mask regularly). Our main supplier of masks these days, Vogmask, is seeing lower demand which is affecting their inventory so that’s a bit worrying. I spent a big chunk of cash recently replenishing our supply now that SmolAc and I are wearing them, too.
(Yes, there are likely better masks but fitwise these are consistent good fits for our size and shape faces, and the kids can easily carry and put them on and take them off. And they get the super colorful ones. Those factors all add up to wearing them happily and for long periods of time as needed instead of avoiding them or taking them off repeatedly.)
I used to wear my flomask most regularly so I have tons of those filters. I stopped because the bottom elastic was overstretched. They recently started stocking those, so I can fix that, and wearing that more. Our healthcare provider is still supplying us with home tests, so I’m collecting those and tucking some into holiday gifts for folks who don’t have ready access.
August 29, 2025
1. PSA: We tried olipop sodas this week and every flavor we tried was gross: root beer, grape, cream. I am VERY picky about my root beer, admittedly, but 4 different people agreed with me when I expressed my yuck.
I need to find someone who likes this brand so we can pass it along.
2. Victorious!! I figured out how to hack off the last few inches of hair in the back all by myself!
I hate feeling helpless and I hate needing help, so when my body quits on me and I have to suffer both extreme pain and the indignity of not doing my fair share because I’m a lumpy squishy potato, well. I need some small thing that I can be proud of. This week, it’s lopping off 3-5(?) inches of hair solo. I can’t really tell how much came off. All that matters is that I did it and a good chunk of length is now in the bin. Woo!
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August 25, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 119: The parking enforcement company that a local town has contracted always take all the best parking spots on the business lots. Irony?
Do you ever get twitchy needing a specific kind of sensory input? I had to stop wearing my rings for several months or more. My fingers keep randomly swelling up and then at some point, I noticed the gems were loose from my heirloom rings, thankfully before I actually lost them. (Heirloom? The word looks wrong now.) I splurged on a couple of rings from Peculiarity Shop because I really liked the look of them but also! Genius crafters that they are, the rings are adjustable! So I can wear them on good and bad hand days and that’s great because I didn’t realize til I put them on that my hands had been *needing* the feel of rings. Weird!
Happy paw-and-claw: TWO dog encounters today! My dog friends, I haven’t seen them most of the summer and I missed them so! <3
Year 6, Day 120: I don’t know why I was semi-resistant to trying out this online math tutor for JB last year but I’m not now. We are doing some trial (online) lessons with a tutor who PiC’s coworker recommended. They had worked with the coworker’s kid who is two years ahead of JB. Please cross your fingers that they make sense to JB! JB has some math anxiety from last year, long division and fractions were hard for many kids and the teachers struggled with a wide swath of them just not getting it. We can trial other tutors on this platform if this one doesn’t work out but I think(?) we’ll need to give them at least 4-6 sessions to see if they are able to present the material in a way that JB can absorb. Maybe it shouldn’t take that long to pick a good fit? I don’t know, tutors didn’t help me much but that might be because we had extremely limited options. If you have any math tutor recommendations, I’d be glad to hear them!
Happy paw-and-claw: Two more dog encounters today! May all my dog friends keep coming by.
Year 6, Day 121: Getting back into the school schedule swing of things is a slow process. Getting irritated at everyone in my family before 8 am? Like lightning. It’s nice when they all leave the house and leave me alone in peace.
We tried a new very local Mediterranean place in hopes that it would be as good as the one that’s 20 miles out of town. They had a couple things that were new to me and so good: beyti (seasoned beef & lamb wrapped in flatbread topped w/sauce) and muhammara (fire roasted red pepper with nuts, bread crumbs, spices & pomegranate molasses). But everything else was just ok. I couldn’t put my finger on anything wrong, we both agreed it was just the original did everything better somehow. PiC’s theory is that it’s the seasoning.
Speaking of disappointing foods, the Auntie Anne’s cinnamon rolls in a can are totally disappointing. The ease can’t be beat: once I get over my fear of the can exploding in my face, you just plop the rolls into the cookie sheet and bake. But the dough is always dry and the icing is only so-so. I suppose that’s what we get for the price and convenience.
Happy paw-and-claw: The crow buddies are back in town (our neighborhood)! Unfortunately for them, they were accompanied by the ravens. The crows and I have an understanding. I click to them when I’m putting out treats for them and when I’m a safe distance away, they come fill their beaks. The ravens are so fearless (and with those beaks, why wouldn’t they be?) they hop over for treats the moment I put them down. They don’t wait for me to get more than 5 steps away. They’re still cautious, if I turned around they’d back up, but otherwise they’re coming in for pick-up. They swiped everything before the crows were willing to come down from on high, so I retreated into the house to let them get comfortable and then came out with a handful of peanuts. One crow managed to sneak in there and snag a couple. It was fun sharing this with SmolAc who’d never seen me working on my long distance corvid friendships. JB has, and is mildly amused by it.
Year 6, Day 122: Grmph. I’ve had a dry cough occasionally for the past week and change and pronounced fatigue all week. SmolAc has had a runny nose for the past three days. No other symptoms. It feels like cold and flu season is gently threatening us but it might just be back to school season kicking our asses, generally. Today, I couldn’t shake a headache all day and now I’m really worried that some virus has gotten hold of my system.
… turns out it did. I don’t know what got me but a friend on here admonished me to go rest and they were right. I had to go to bed for a few hours voluntarily or risk crashing and burning. Since that came with a risk of actual crashing when I drove to JB’s after school activities, I acceded to their greater wisdom. Good thing they know me better than I know me.
Year 6, Day 123: Happy paw-and-claw: Two crows came by the house. One of them is slightly bedraggled and very fearful and nervous. That doesn’t quite match my usual pair of crows from last year that were a touch bolder than all the others. They visited a little more often and even did fly-bys to get my attention, but maybe there’s a connection between the bedragglement and the fear. I hope it’s ok. I put out a few peanuts to see if they’d investigate and the bigger bolder crow happily chomped them up. Smaller crow was sad. I was sad for smaller crow. I put down a big handful of peanuts and retreated to the house so they could feast in peace.