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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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.
August 22, 2025
- I completely forgot that today is Friday!
Helping folks: This one comes from Aji and Wings.
A local is taking in two niblings and needs funds to get the home ready for them.
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August 20, 2025
(this is very superficial, don’t expect any deep thoughts) Buddhism has been on my mind lately, partly because JB asked me to talk to them about it. I struggled to articulate our beliefs system because I grew up steeped in a Buddhist culture but we didn’t talk about the meaning of or how to be Buddhist, we just were. We just practiced the cultural norms without a lot of introspection.
We’re well into my fifth (!?) year of therapy now and I’m seeing concretely where it’s changed my ways of thinking and reacting. It’s helping me see what well meaning family members meant but communicated very badly in the wake of hard times.
When my mom passed, I was gutted. Might as well have hung me up like a dried fish, I was a hollow husk for months. Years, even. The only thing that got a strong emotion out of me was the pablum “don’t grieve, your mom wouldn’t have wanted you to grieve.” That brought out my old friend, rage. Now I can say, No, that’s wrong. She wouldn’t have wanted me to be in pain but my grieving had a place. Where else was my love going to go?
We grew up with a Buddhism that translated as: have no emotions rather than process your emotions and let them pass. During a time of war, and post-war devolution of the society and country that they knew, it makes sense that none of that generation had time to learn or consider healthier ways to process emotions. There was no time or space for that, and so they passed their traumas down in the form of emotion suppression and denial. I grew up an obedient kid with such repressed feelings, aiming to be the perfect robot, that as an adult I thought I was no longer capable of having feelings. My therapist suggested that I was, in fact, feeling so many feelings it was too overwhelming to handle. I didn’t love that but as we worked our way through, I’ve seen that she’s been right about more than one thing, including that one.
There’s a popular translation of “desire is the root of all suffering” from the Four Noble Truths. In a lot of ways, letting go of specific desires has been instrumental for my growth.
I deeply wanted a family of origin that loved and valued me, a family that would make amends to me for their many wrongs (lying to me, stealing from me, wrecking my financial life for even the smallest gains for themselves). It was an indirect route to healing that had to start with realizing how much pain I felt because of their actions. From there, I started to see how much of my overcompensating, trying to save everyone from their mistakes while telling myself protectively that I’ll never be good enough, was a terrible coping mechanism. As I unpicked the habit of hurting myself preemptively, I started to see that they’re not capable of anything I needed. He can’t love me and that I don’t have to accept his pitiful excuse for “love”. I wasn’t obliged to punish myself for “not being good enough”. I could finally stop longing to have a better dad. It’s not happening. I don’t have to forgive and forget, I don’t have to rebuild the bridge, I can just accept that’s the way it is and live my life.
I deeply wanted some other family members to see me as worthy of a genuinely warm relationship. But that’s not possible! They decided years ago that I was not worthy of being part of their family. For years, I tried so hard to prove that I was worthy. Now I understand that it’s about them and their needs / issues, which is not reflective of my value as a person. That has let me take a step back. Instead of yearning for the highly improbable, I now set boundaries that are healthy. I can be the version of me that is best for me around them (mellow grey rock, baby! Go, Captain Awkward, truly LOVE Captain Awkward) and just be. It’s remarkably freeing not to spend energy trying to prove I’m worthy, and instead just protect my peace.
It sounds all very simplistic and obvious, but it took a lot of years for me to slowly disassemble the self-harming coping mechanisms I’d anchored my whole personality onto, and build something better in their place.
August 18, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 112: After a really strong start – 8 green bean plants! 8 cucumber plants! A really tall snap pea plant! The garden has petered out. The green beans put out a handful of small beans, maybe 9 total. The cucumbers had half a dozen baby cucumbers per plant, it was going to be glorious. They have all given up on life. 😭 I am very sad about this.
Working out: I’ve graduated to slightly harder exercises this week – exercises with weights. Goblet (which I read at goblin at first) squats; lateral raises with hand weights, and band pullaparts with my weight bands. I was being cheap putting off the weight and band purchases for months. Who knew these would be fun!
Unrelated: I need more wool socks.
Year 6, Day 113: The kids were soaking up their twice-yearly visit with a favorite Uncle so I took advantage of their leaving me alone: free haircut! Hovering upside down over the trash bag, I chopped roughly 4 inches off the length. Hard to see how much is getting lopped while upside down, but fortunately precision isn’t required. Unfortunately the quick and easy 2-ponytails method also gives me a lot of layers. I can live with that for a free haircut. The mop is still too long, though, so a follow up chop of another few inches to bring up the length would be good. Maybe that’ll reduce the layers, too? Much as I hate to ask, I might need a hand with that chunk.
All the dogs I wanted from the seniors-only shelter have been adopted, except the hospice dog. I’d gladly take him if our dog fund were refilled and we had a few more things settled. I’m making real progress on the “few things settling” at work, I’m seeing measurable change already thankfully, so that part may come up sooner than I had hoped but let me not count chickens before they’re hatched. Or cucumbers before they’re full grown. 😒
Year 6, Day 114: I’m reading three books at the same time and it’s jumbled my brain a bit: Seanan McGuire’s Toby Daye series, Kwame Mbalia’s Tristan Strong Destroys the World, and T Kingfisher’s Hemlock and Silver. They’re all good!
A white woman at our local library was gatekeeping the raffle entries for the library summer reading program. She rejected our kids’ multiple reading logs saying they were only allowed to have one raffle entry per kid at all. PiC told me this later, completely puzzled, and I insisted that was complete bullshit. That’s the opposite of the point of the summer reading program!
Today, he asked two dudes working the desk and they were appalled, “What kind of library do you think we are?? Of course you don’t only get one entry! You get as many entrees as they read and fill out logs for!” They sent him home with a stack of entries which he gave to me to fill out because I love forms. I wonder who that woman was and WTF her problem was.
Year 6, Day 115: These 🤬🤬 tariffs. So many small businesses are going to be impacted. The loss of the de minimis tax exemption is summarized here. I might have to cancel my Patreon subscription to Pikaole as he ships from Korea and if it’s an additional $80 every quarter for a package of stickers, that really doesn’t work in our budget. Ugh.
This really sucks. The neighbor’s car was stolen in the dusk right in front of their home. Ugh. It was recovered pretty quickly, thankfully, but I really hate that it happened at all.
I put “Cancel Citi card” on my calendar a month before I really needed to cancel it and it’s a good thing because that can was kicked down the road about 12 times. Not today, though!! The call was made, the card was cancelled. Much rejoicing commenced, no more annual fee for meeee (for a card I don’t need anyway).
Year 6, Day 116: I tried replacing oil and water butter and milk instead of with a box cake mix. Maybe I’ve just lifestyle-inflationed myself out of the box mix life because despite assurances that people can’t tell the difference between the fancied up box mix and a from scratch cake, this one didn’t taste much better.
Whew Friday. I had my massage today and she really dug into all those muscles that I can’t stretch properly or that tighten up so hard during pain bouts that they can’t let go again. It’s therapeutic but I’m wiped out for the rest of the day. One of these days I’ll have a massage when I’m off work.
August 15, 2025
1. I’ve been working on shifting one of my multiple full time jobs to a team and the process will take time but it’s bearing fruit! I’m a little less tired and working fewer overtime hours.
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August 13, 2025
Life with JB
It’s really a shame that the kiddo JB spends the most time with comes from a family where the parents are clearly in a shitty relationship. The mom is very sweet and kind but the dad is pure crap. She’s always trying to be complimentary about him but the amount of effort, all her softening language, and what she ends up sharing all tell me is that she’s been making excuses for him to herself and others for a very long time. She clearly doesn’t hear herself. “He loves the kids but he doesn’t want to spend time with them” can’t possibly add up to “he’s a good dad.” I don’t see how he can be if he only likes to spend time with their pictures, won’t parent, actively undermines the person who IS parenting them right in front of the kids, and also voted for Trump. That last one consigns him to the asshole bin completely, in my book. Though he was already there with all the other things.
All that to say I don’t ever want JB at their house because I don’t trust that guy one micrometer. PiC is in full agreement. I don’t know how long we can hold that off though. Kiddo is very welcome at ours and always has been perfectly well behaved, and I know they want JB to come to theirs too. But. No.
Were you ever banned from going to anyone’s house growing up (was the reason ever clear to you)? Or been the banning parent/guardian/responsible party?
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol Acrobat has been so difficult and moody whenever they don’t get their way. It’s especially rough in the mornings when they really don’t want to have to get up, get dressed, go pee, brush their teeth, eat breakfast, or leave.
I know we went through this with JB sometime during Years 2-4. I remember specifically grumbling about how impossible mornings were with them and I know we got through it – mostly because time passed and they changed. But wow is it hard to figure out how to motivate this kid to get going some days. One morning telling them that they were showing me sloth mode, “show me hummingbird mode!” worked. But most tricks really only work once.
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After an offhanded mention from an autistic friend, which I thought was brilliant, I’ve been loading the utensils by group for two months. Maybe three. SmolAc’s job is to unload the utensils, they do this 2-3 times a week. They’ve JUST noticed: Hey! Forks wif forks on one side, spoons on de other side!
YUP.
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The trouble with anthropomorphizing the kid’s giraffe flosser is that SOMETIMES you grip the thing wrong and right in the middle of the giraffe grappling with the germs and the gingivitis prevention, you snap the giraffe’s neck. O_O
Precious Moments
SmolAc to their cake: Dis wooks dewishious. I’m going to eat you. Ok? Ok!
SmolAc to me: It said “ok!”
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SmolAc: I wish I could take a shower first and den play.
Me: Well, if you ate your dinner quickly and showered quickly, you would still have time to.
SmolAc: Well! I have a lot of questions.
Me: About what?
SmolAc: About work and school.
Me: And that’s why you eat slowly?
SmolAc: yes.
Me: ….. Welp. Ok.
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SmolAc, curiously: Maybe when I’m very very old, wike you, den can I do dat too?
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SmolAc: Da water is hot but dat is ok, I like hot showers. I want it very warm. When I was three, I didn’t. Or two. Or one. One, I was a baby.
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SmolAcrobat is angling for a sleepover: I want to sleep wif someone who is ten. LIKE JB!
PiC: I’m 10!
SmolAc: No you’re not! You’re 209!
SmolAc to me: how old are you?
Me: I don’t know, how old am I?
SmolAc: Fifteen hundred!
No wonder they keep saying I’m “really really old”.