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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July 16, 2025
Life with JB
It’s interesting watching the kids’ relationship develop. Compared to my lived experience, it’s super weird. We insist they treat each other with kindness, fairness and respect. It’s not always easy for them to do but we enforce the same rules for both of them, within age-appropriate reason.
JB has adored SmolAc since birth. (They have declared SmolAc to be “so annoying” about a dozen times over their lifetimes, a quota so low it was met on any single day of my life.) Likewise, SmolAc is deeply attached to JB. They fight and bicker and tattle, of course, but they also, with and without prompting, look for compromises and try to broker peace on their own. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But they do try their best, for whatever variable value of “best” they’re capable of that day.
My brother and I? Feral badgers. We physically brawled over everything. He never wanted me (specifically, me) as a sibling and tried to beat me into the shape he wanted: a brother who was a passive follower. What he got out of that effort was a sister who was exponentially more mean. I started out a fighter and he just honed my fighting technique. Ironically, what he wanted is how I felt inside much of my life as the youngest of most of my cousin groups: I felt like a follower who never had an original thought because so many cousins had already traveled before me, for better or for worse, and had spent my entire lifetime following and/or fighting an older brother who had already done everything before me. My path diverged sharply in high school but I didn’t quite have the perspective to see it then.
I hope that these relatively auspicious beginnings will lead to an equally loving, if occasionally exasperated, adult relationship for the two of them.
Life with Smol Acrobat
SmolAc has inherited my childhood possessiveness. Sitting at the dining table, they yelled, politely, to JB: “JB, could you not snuggle my bear please?! Because I want to.”
Pupdate
I have a semi sort of maybe 2026 (later in the year probably) timeline in mind for adopting a dog. It’s very squishy. It’s more of a anti-timeline. I don’t know when yet, I just know when it’s not (now). I’m using this time to trickle cash in the dog savings and multiple other upcoming spending situations.
Knowing all this, I occasionally go look yearningly at adoptable dogs when I’ve played with zero dogs for too long and just need a dog fix to get by. It’s usually at a safe emotional remove.
Today, however, I poked around because I’d just had a very fun chance meeting with a neighbor’s dog. That’s the exact wrong mood to take into looking at listings. I not only found an awesome local rescue specifically for senior dogs, I’ve fallen for three dogs. I want them. I want to kiss their noses and hug them and pet them and (here’s where PiC says: hi, Elmira! and I do not deny that one bit, YUP THAT’S ME). But I cannot have them all.
We aren’t ready for a new dog, much less three. The kids are older but they are nowhere near helpful enough to assist with three dogs. Their help runs along the lines of feeding them and telling the dogs where to go. We have a roof to replace. We have my Massive Job to wrestle into submission. PiC has to figure out how much effort he’s going to sink into any attempt for a promotion and navigate a labyrinthian bureaucracy. And if that wasn’t enough, completely independent of our professional efforts, both our industries are under serious threat from this administration. (At this point, who isn’t? Outside the broligarchy, that is.) We could both lose our jobs a year from now. We have to stabilize our finances before we bring anyone home because I’m incapable of rehoming or returning a dog. We had such a hard time integrating and training Sera 🐶 that she had me doubting my abilities to be a good owner because her reactivity was such a challenge. I still couldn’t give her up. Or give up on her. Safety issues aside, but that was never a question for Sera – she’d never even shown irritation at us for anything, rehoming isn’t an option so we have to be rock solid. Once you’re part of our family, that’s it. You’re ours forever.
It does occur to me, about the anti-timeline, that if I did wait until Fall 2026, SmolAc starts kindergarten (there’s a new source of anxiety, btw). I’ll remove that daycare tuition line item from our budget and that’s a huge amount of money to stop spending so that’s one good thing about pushing it out that far. But that’s 18(?) months away and it doesn’t take away anything from the list of concerns above. So I’ve got to stop torturing myself looking at beautiful older dogs who need a forever home.
Precious Moments
SmolAc peeling an egg, sing-song: we’re going to find out what’s in here!
Me: boy, I hope it’s an egg!
SmolAc: No. It’s going to be yummy. Dad put something inside one dat is very good. Tadaaa! Yolk!
******
SmolAc: I have had all my main food! I am done! Can I have owanges now?
Me: Are you sure your tummy is full? Check in with your tummy.
SmolAc: Hi tummy, are you full now?
*squeaky voice* yes I am!
JB loud whisper: Awwww it’s just like I used to do!
******
SmolAc: Daaaad? I have too many toys.
Yeah you do. Do you want to give some of them to kids who don’t have as many?
SmolAc: yeah I want to give dem to (Rich Kid Friend).
Oh kiddo, RKF has MANY toys.
******
JB trips over a toy. OW!
SmolAc: Oh, dat’s because of my toy, JB.
JB: I KNOW, SmolAc. It shouldn’t BE there.
SmolAc: Yeah, it shouldn’t be dere.
JB: So can you move it??
SmolAc: Oh! Yeah! I can!
July 14, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area
Year 6, Day 77: It’s backlog city at work, with pretty rough waters ahead. No one is loving this. Nor am I loving how many times the blog has been acting up this week. This is very annoying.
Also annoying: The house maintenance is still not done. We’re through 78% of the interior work and I’m so fed up, I don’t WANT to do the last 22%. It doesn’t have to be done right away, thank goodness, because that’s another $5000 and 2 weeks of disruption when we do get to it but *deepest disgruntled sigh* I am tired of living in drywall bits and dodging plastic covering. Can we please just have everything back to normal for a while?
Background listening: the Magnum PI reboot.
Higgins: Oh no, he looks angry.
Magnum: That’s just his face, isn’t it?
#ItMe
Year 6, Day 78: I’m stressed to my very marrow with deadlines, impossible KPIs, and … well. Need there be more? Oh yes, and working myself into the ground, late in the wee hours every night. I finally had to take a night “off”. It was off in the sense that I didn’t do actual productive work. It was not off in the sense of having turned off the stress meter.
I decided to combat stress with “stress”: Examining our tax spreadsheets closely to better understand each line of each Schedule. This sort of thing usually starts with frowning but over time as I pore over the instructions, it forces my brain to let go of the things I can do absolutely nothing more about and focus on learning something. This time: SALT. I didn’t realize that I’d been slowly mentally miscategorizing what actually falls under the SALT deduction and today’s close examination cleared that up. It’s comprised of the state and local taxes we pay (on our W2s), state and local real estate taxes, and state and local personal property taxes. The italics were necessary for my brain to actually absorb what specific taxes they’re talking about. Now I know where my car license registration deduction belongs (personal property tax)! I reorganized our spreadsheet to follow the exact order of Schedule A. Honestly it hasn’t really mattered since 2017, because of the $10,000 cap but if the cap has really changed to $40,000, then getting these numbers all right will matter this year.
I do still need to figure out which part of the property tax payments fall into the 2025 tax year because ours are split weirdly across years and it’s too late for my brain to take this information and do anything useful with it: “Only taxes paid in 2024 and assessed prior to 2025 can be deducted for 2024. State or local law determines whether and when a property tax is assessed, which is generally when the taxpayer becomes liable for the property tax imposed.”
Year 6, Day 79: HOOOOboy. 7 hours of meetings. What a crap day. I did manage (thanks to Costco readymade foods) to put dinner on the table in reasonably short order: scalloped potatoes, beef kebabs, sauteed green beans and broccoli. I was disappointed in this bag of green beans, though. We normally handpick every green bean from a local produce market but I was in a hurry at Costco and threw a bag of their prepackaged green beans into the cart. I should have noticed the condensation that was going to lead to bad beans.
I bought the last two items our Lakota sponsee requested recently. Once I send the shipping information, sadly, I’m going to end our sponsorship. The organization asks that we send packages 4-6 times a year and talk to the individual to build a relationship. I started off strong at first, sending packages every 4-6 weeks but, without judgment – this is purely observational – the sponsee’s communication is very sporadic. It’s tough under normal circumstances, it takes a lot of effort to get enough information to work with but it’s feeling impossible now. These past 24 months, my work has increased exponentially. I can barely manage to throw hot food on the table twice a day for the people I live with. Chasing down my sponsee to get more than a few words now and again takes time that I simply don’t have anymore. This also feels crappy because the point of a sponsorship is to build a relationship. I hate failing at that but I’ve already been failing them from this aspect. So rather than beating myself over the head with guilt for not being able to be five people at once, I’m going to need to step away.
Year 6, Day 80: I still hold close a daydream of a time when I’ll have the time, money, energy and stamina to ride horses again. It’s what I’m working towards every single time I do a few minutes of exercises. That, and the ability to heft a large dog over 55-60 lbs into the car. I can’t adopt a dog I can’t lift since I’m the primary dog caretaker. It’s my own personal rule, I hate being dependent on other people to care for my own, even if it’s PiC. Sometimes that’s just pure practicality, it’s easier for me to break away and take the dog to the vet than for him. He handles more of the kids back and forthing, I handle the dogs’. No idea when all the planets will align.
I found a local barn today and got overexcited considering all the lesson options they have. I know how to ride but my body has to do the slow and steady rebuilding of foundational rides again before I can even think about asking to jump. I miss it so much it hurts (but what doesn’t?) and I feel that urge to be cruel to myself for my body’s shortcomings. Now that I know what it is, it’s easier to redirect and not fall into the negativity spiral.
Anyway, barns made me think of boots and I went looking for work boots. Used to be, I could buy a work boot style for $20 at Payless and they’d last me several years, protecting my toes from mischievous hooves. Now, browsing Boot Barn, there’s nothing with a heel and steel/reinforced toe under $100 and ranging up to $250. I’m looking for something like this. I’d also need a helmet and comfortable riding pants, when the time comes.
Year 6, Day 81: Every day I end my day trying to remind myself that we can only do what we can do and I can only do so much. I’ve already wrecked myself twice this week trying to do more than my body can handle.
Some things are getting better at work but not enough and not fast enough, so it’s back to feeling like I can’t get enough done in any single, even 18 hour day, anymore. I don’t like this at all.
July 11, 2025
A new Murderbot story by Martha Wells, free to read at ReactorMag: Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
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July 9, 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 sometimes 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 $525.25 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
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July 7, 2025
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 6, Day 70: We’re scrambling to get everything financially important done today. I hate when month end, quarter end, and first half of the year all clang together like four sets of cymbals. Yes, like the seasonal time changes, this happens every year but like every year, this one feels like the worst.
I did, however, set a small record for myself in how many records I managed to approve/process within the business day. Self congratulatory pats.
Year 6, Day 71: My Synology photos app went off the rails and it’s taken 3 hours to figure out how to fix it. It kept claiming that there was no network connection. If there’s no network connection, how am I connecting to the Internet with every other app?? It wasn’t Synology itself, I can access that and upload/download files easily. It’s not Photos the program, PiC’s mobile connection using the iOS app was updating just fine. It’s just mine that’s being a jerk. Sigh. I hunted through article after article trying to find the fix but nothing posted in the past four years with similar keywords made sense. I finally tried logging out and logging back in. It’s the logical first troubleshooting step. But it wouldn’t let me log back in. 🤦🏻♀️ I had to change the password, reset the whole thing from the desktop app, change the password on the app and finally got access again. But it refused to update any of my pictures taken this week. Ugh.
Year 6, Day 72: I have this beautiful row of cucumber plants about 6-8 inches tall but none of them show any inclination to put out flowers of any kind. The one sugar snap pea plant that managed to grow at all, by contrast, is suddenly popping out flowers today. I count 8 flower clusters, and two of them are already shedding the petals as the wee tiny peas are starting to peek out. Exciting! The green bean plants have remained rather spindly so I was losing hope that they would make any beans but today I spotted the world’s tiniest green bean budding from the top of one of the plants.
I’ve checked the watering system and found a couple nozzles had fallen out of the planters so I’ve reset them so we’re not losing precious water to the ground.
Year 6, Day 73: I normally never order fish at a restaurant, aside from fish and chips. American restaurants generally over season or over-something-it like they’re trying to hide that they’re preparing fish, and all that effort takes away from the fundamental deliciousness of the fish itself. My one exception is made for Italian restaurants. They’ll serve a whole deboned fish that always lets the actual fish shine.
I still have happy memories of picking a whole fish to be roasted and deboned at the table in a small hole in the wall place in Florence two decades ago; I’m not so secretly always hoping to repeat that experience. We rarely eat out these days but I recently had the choice between a filet mignon or a whole branzino and jumped at the branzino. Scrumptious.
Year 6, Day 74: I had to rescue a friend, temporarily, from the airport. Their flight delays made me think they’re even more cursed than Nicole and Maggie! Two flights were delayed several times and finally cancelled and the third was delayed. It must have taken 42 hours end to end. I felt so bad for them. All I could do was bring them a snack and keep them company for a bit when it was safe for them to leave the airport. They apologized for messing up any July 4th plans we might have had but I assured them that this year in particular, there’s nothing to celebrate about Independence Day in America. I wish there were.
July 6, 2025
Apparently the site went down on Thursday, and I didn’t realize it til now (Sunday). Annoying! It took several rounds of reading esoteric (to my brain) documentation and a very unhelpful person at the hosting server a few rounds of clarifying what on earth they were talking about for me to fix the thing.
1. I sat mending a pair of SmolAc’s pants until my butt went numb. It was satisfying! As I stuck myself for the seventh time with the curved needle, I was thinking about how I never mended JB’s pants at this age. Or, possibly, any age. I’m pretty sure it never happened because they grew so fast they’d outgrow the pants before I got to a free hour on a weekend to mend them. Guess there are benefits to having a slow growing kid.
Challenges this week: There is something properly unsettling about an Independence Day in America where we have a president wanting to have the power of communist China’s President, or dubbing himself a king.
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July 2, 2025
This Ask the grumpies: How much to put in a 529 redux has me kicking around numbers a bit.
We’ve saved maybe 1-2 years worth of undergrad at an expensive school per kid or maybe 4 years worth of undergrad at a lower priced state school. I frontloaded a large lump sum of savings for JB back when they were born.
When they were 2, thanks to a commonsense hipcheck from Nicole and Maggie, I switched to saving for retirement in a brokerage since I didn’t have a 401K and had missed a decade of retirement savings by that point. No tax benefits but the brokerage was the next best thing when the choice was between saving and not saving. I maxed out our Roth IRA for several years but stopped when cashflow tightened up. The thinking was that our incomes in retirement, and therefore our taxes, aren’t likely to be higher than our highest earning years – our tax rate now is probably higher now than it would be in retirement. But who knows! We can only make our best guesses and hope for the best.
I’ve been putting most cash gifts into the one 529. I also keep a separate savings account for cash for them both to be split equally as well, and have been debating when I split the one 529 into two. Maybe if I split it now when it’s reasonably even, it’ll reduce my math / accounting requirements later.
We’re in between the pole positions, financially. We’re not low income but we also couldn’t afford any $100k/year university.
We’re having some conversations with JB about the kinds of thinking they need to put into the decision of which school to go to, and it will need to extend beyond “bestie is going there”.
They asked about vocational schools like cooking school and about university like Stanford (their uncle is affiliated) and there are so many considerations for each of the things they suggested. We talked about each a little bit, and about how they also have to balance more practical considerations like the cost of the school and what kinds of jobs and salaries they could get after graduating from each of those schools. If they want to be able to pay their bills after school, they have to consider how much their loans would cost, if they spend more than they have in their 529.
They also need to consider what broad types of work could be fulfilling. I mentioned that job satisfaction can come from lots of things about the job. Not everything about a job will be fulfilling, it IS work after all, but if you have enough big/small things, that’s good enough.
They said: I know you get your job satisfaction from yelling at people who don’t do what they’re supposed to.
I had the impulse to argue but…. while that’s imprecise, it’s not wrong. I modified it to: I get the MOST satisfaction when people do as they’re told. But if they don’t do what they’re told, and I want to yell at them, I can. (Not my staff, I never yell at my staff, it’s external clients who suck. They lie a lot. So many lies. So much fraud.) I also get a lot of satisfaction from the act of getting things done. So the parts of my job where I can just get things done, those are good parts of my day. I also like setting policies and teaching other people to think critically about our policies and to make suggestions for better policies. I like it when people learn to do a good job. (I don’t like the act of teaching, I hate that part, but I like having taught and gotten the information imparted to the right people.)
They’re only ten so they have lots of time to mull things. At this point, I just want them to start developing a sense for what things bring them satisfaction and which things feel bad as they build up a profile of possibilities.