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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March 29, 2017
The past three months haven’t been exactly rife with fun and jollity, between spending January in and out of court, February dealing with meetings and paperwork, and March, well, March has been more paperwork. But we still had a few bits of downtime. More and more, I see the importance of having some fun to balance out all the work, not just collapsing when I run out of steam and calling it a day.
My prescription for a more fulfilled life: more belly rubs for Seamus, more ticklewars with JuggerBaby, more reading time, more relaxing with PiC. This is some of it.
What I watched
City in the Sky: Airbus 380
Everything I didn’t necessarily want to know about airports and the building of the Airbus. Flying was a bit of a mystery to me, and not having had anxiety about the mechanics about it, I was satisfied to leave it that way for the nonce.
But we couldn’t get PBS to cough up any of the Masterpiece shows we wanted to see, not without paying a premium, and so PiC got to pick his free show instead.
It was actually a good documentary. I just didn’t necessarily want to know that a single misplaced rivet could mean a plane is torn apart mid-flight. I wasn’t worried but NOW I am! (more…)
March 27, 2017
I was an Honors and AP student in high school. I passed enough AP credits to skip half my freshman year of college, at $75 a pop, and it might have been more except my college only took several credits. On the old style SATs, I scored something like 1450. 1540? 1450? I can’t remember now but back then, academics were kind of Important.
My great shame that I’d hidden forevermore, until today, was that I failed at something. It wasn’t just a little thing, like a midterm or a final, either. Though in retrospect, calling a midterm or final something little says quite a lot about how far I’ve come since those testing days.
I did so poorly in my Honors math class sophomore year, failing week after week to grasp the materials at the pace that others were absorbing it, that I dropped out of the Honors track for math. Correction: I was dropped. That wasn’t my choice, though it would have been the wisest thing I did had I made the choice.
Miraculously, the world never stopped turning. This was in part because I hid it from my parents. This is the biggest secret I’d kept from them up until after college when I hid the extent of my illness from them – I hid my report cards and let them think that everything was fine at school. This worked because they trusted me, my sibling was a far greater worry to them so they assumed they could continue to trust me, and I didn’t flip out and overcompensate.
I failed. That royally sucked. It was humiliating to slink back into a lower track math class. And if you believe all the teen-pop movies, that’s the worst thing in the world. It felt like it, anyway.
Then I remembered that I had friends in those classes too and no one thought less of them. Absolutely no one cared if I wasn’t competing with them for the number one slot at the top of our graduating class.
This is where lack of constant parental pressure was key – I don’t know how I’d have reacted if my parents were pressuring me and judging me for not excelling. There have been times when I wished that they had, but by and large I’m almost certain that the fact they didn’t only helped me grow my own intrinsic motivation.
The lesson I took away at first was that there was safety in mediocrity. And that wasn’t completely wrong. But the important lessons were: there are always people smarter than you, working harder isn’t always the answer, and most failure won’t kill you unless you let it.
I could have started drinking and doing drugs to mask the pain. Apparently the latter was readily available at our school though I learned much too late for it to do any good! Some overachievers of my acquaintance took failure that badly, flunking out and quitting college entirely because they had no idea how to deal with failure. Instead, I dusted myself off and got back to work. I didn’t have to mask the pain, I could let go of it.
No one said a thing. It probably helped that they all knew I’d make mincemeat of them if they mocked me but I’m sure it had a lot more to do with people being people: people pay far less attention to you than you think they do. I didn’t lose any friends over this stumble. My friends were academically gifted, naturally smart, and just not that shallow.
Looking back, now, I’m grateful that I failed in exactly that way.
I made mistakes that couldn’t be denied, suffered consequences, accepted the consequences, and worked my way to graduation without further mishap. That my parents didn’t get involved was likely a good thing, their reaction wasn’t predictable since my failure would have been considered a betrayal of their trust on so many levels. But their lack of involvement helped me learn how to navigate a failure long before it did true harm. I didn’t have Ivy League aspirations or it would have much more devastating, but since a state school of one kind or another was what we could afford, the blow was a glancing one at best.
In real life, this ability to recognize and rectify failure, and to work hard even if I didn’t have the raw or native talent, served me incredibly well. I might have done well at a tougher college, but I doubt it. At a certain point, my academic smarts plateaued and my life smarts improved exponentially. There’s still a step or three between me and that CEO title, but I’m not just dreaming airy castles in the sky when I consider the possibility of starting my own business.
:: What have you learned from flaming out? What’s your most memorable failure?
March 22, 2017
Parents typically gush that having babies is a life-changer. They’re not wrong, but it’s a toss-up whether they mean in a good way or a bad way. Might depend on the day(s) they’ve had.
Two years on, I’m still happy that we made the choice to try for our kidlet and confirm that it’s transformed our lives in many unpredictable ways, and a few predictable ways though I wouldn’t have admitted it was possible years ago.
Clothing
I’ve frumped around, making do with my existing closet minus a few pieces of generously gifted maternity clothes, since getting pregnant in 2014.
This isn’t out of the norm for me. I tend to stick to the tried-and-true even when it stops working, sartorially, so it’s a self improvement project to do better at this. It doesn’t mean cycle through the latest trends with every season, nor become a wasteful consumer. Never that. Just making an effort to form a more classic and therefore all seasons wardrobe, as an adult might do.
The past 6 months, I started adding some essentials: 2 pairs of flats, replacing 3 pairs that have worn out or hurt my feet, 2 tops, and PiC replaced a couple pairs of trousers that were too dreadful.
I’ve focused on removing things first. After that, I’ll hunt down some basics that will work for my combo career and mom roles.
I look for high quality, now. I can stand the thought of spending more knowing that it will truly last me years of good wear. Of course, the same can be said for that handful of shirts bought cheaply 15 years ago that just won’t die. I can’t just toss clothes that still have wear in them, but they’re so old and don’t quite fit right anymore!
Social life
Never a partier before, I’ve morphed into even more of a homebody since JuggerBaby. It’s a lot of energy conservation and a little bit of disinterest. I’d LIKE to go out for a show or a spontaneous overnight trip sometimes, but it’s never appealing enough to try and find a sitter, or prep another meal in advance. I’m too easily entertained at home, and much more easily tired out by week’s end.
Some of this shift had already started between aging and with dog ownership. With a senior dog, you can’t just take off spontaneously if you don’t have reliable friends or family you regularly trade favors with. Back in the SoCal days, I could. My family could feed and walk the dogs if I took off to NYC for a week, but here it’d be boarding Seamus for $400 plus prepping all his food and his medications. Life was simpler in my 20s, though certainly poorer.
We have become friends with the parents of JuggerBaby’s bestie, though, and that was a nice surprise. My parents were never friends with the parents of my friends, and we only spent time with family during holidays and weekends, so this is new to me but it’s a good way to build a new network of support when all our family lives hundreds of miles away.
When pregnant, I refused to make friends with other moms solely because we were gravid together on the grounds that I didn’t want to, but also because I wasn’t prepared to invest time and energy into caring for a relationship that didn’t have staying power. I need to observe a person around their family and friends, and see how they care for them, to see what kind of person they are.
Eating habits
We trend towards healthy eating but I continue to have my vices, in small doses. I demolished PiC’s bag of Micro Snickers today, and every couple of weeks we get a box of delicious buttered, sugared pastries that I have to force myself to share. Chocolate lasts much longer in our fridge than it used to, though. This is clear evidence that I’m simply nowhere near the stress levels I used to marinate in.
Time Management
This has to be the biggest change of all. Before JuggerBaby arrived, I was pretty convinced that we could stay homebodies and introverts, even with kids. WRONG.
Our weekends are now centered around keeping JuggerBaby busy, for survival. Ze has ten times our energy so we have to keep the kid running. We take zir grocery shopping, to the park, to the errands that ze can help us with. Adult-only things like medical appointments or work are done during the last remaining afternoon nap. PiC always feels awful about ditching me for the gym when ze is awake, even when I say it’s totally ok, so any work I have to do, and any working out he wants to do, has to happen during zir nap.
I do miss the two-nap schedule sometimes.
With the two-nap schedule, I could have a nap and get work done, one per nap.
Overall
Even with a toddler on the rampage trying to eat the dog’s treats, and a senior dog with periodic health surprises, my life is more pleasant and rage-free than twelve years ago. Surprise! I have found some Zen.
:: Did you grow up in a children- or family-centric community? Did your parents welcome the changes you wrought in their lives?
March 20, 2017
Everything is quite unsettled right now.
- We haven’t found any suitable place to make an offer on yet. And the possibly-apocryphal (but I doubt it) tale is that it’s taking upwards of ten offers to get one accepted.
- We are in selling limbo until we buy.
- I’ve got several moving pieces at work that needs 150% of me and my attention but as Dr. Temperance Brennan would point out – that’s not possible.
- One of those moving parts may shake out to be quite bad for me, potentially ruining a big and expensive summer plan, and there’s absolutely nothing I can ethically do to affect the result. I’ve briefly considered the non-ethical options but nooo. I can’t be that person.
It’s a little weird that the not moving part of life bothers me so much, considering I quite like our home right now, and we’re only moving under duress. It’s less weird when you consider that I’m both a Type A personality (very little of the home buying process is under my control), and that I’m a homebody, so feeling like my home is going to shift at some random unknown point in time is incredibly unsettling.
All this adds up to a pit in my stomach the size of a watermelon.
I’ve gone from stress-cleaning to stress-cooking to stress-feeling frazzled and frozen. Back to stress cleaning this week, if I can muster the energy.
One of the benefits of stress-cleaning is that you go deep. And deep de-cluttering turns up gems. Like the discovery that your comic collection is pushing 100 lbs. Or a huge pile of cash.
(Except it’s not huge, and it’s not American dollars but other than that…BOUNTY!)
- Singaporean dollars, and I don’t remember when I was ever in Singapore.
- Hong Kong dollars, I do remember when I was there (briefly).
- A small handful of Thai Baht. Boy do I ever miss authentic Thai food.
- Some Taiwan dollars, when did I lay over in Formosa?
- Way too many expensive GBP, obtained at the worst possible exchange rate – go me.
- An absurd number of Canadian dollars considering I haven’t been there in at least a decade.
I’m working on finding my Zen again. The discomfort of needing to move shouldn’t overshadow the comfort of loving the home we are in right now, especially since there’s so much about it we do love.
There’s nothing I can do to change that possible-summer-ruiner but I can work on mitigating the ruination.
There’s very little I can do about the fact that my pain is at an all time high this week except take medication earlier and make the most of the few minutes’ break when JuggerBaby has a nap.
Ultra high pain also means that depression is nibbling around the edges of my brain again. I can’t just ignore it, but I can’t tell it to go away again. I can try to only see the good in front of me, or focus on what I need to do, and most optimistically, try to fit in a massage this week. It’s been put off because of this darn congestion. There’s nothing less relaxing than being hyper aware of your mucosal state while trying not to gross out your massage therapist.
If 300% of Vitamin C a day doesn’t do the trick this week, I welcome other cold-busting suggestions!
UPDATE: That bad work thing? It’s happening. And the effects won’t be in the summer, it’ll be now through summer, and walloping my personal calendar something fierce.
:: Where in the world have you gone? How do you deal with uncertainty or the unknown?
March 15, 2017
The Age of Un-Reason
Leaps and bounds
JuggerBaby hit age 2 with a blast of temperamental mood swings and sudden skills developing. A week before zir birthday we were still prompting, “More, what?” “Mo’ milk.” “More milk, what?” “Chz.” “Say, ‘more milk, please'” “CHZ!!!”
The day after, ze strung it all together handily into nearly civilized dinner conversation if you ignored the rice and curry dribbling down the side of the table, and the curry in zir hair, splattered when ze gesticulated with an excess of emotion: “Mo mik, chz!” “Mo wice, chz.” “Tant you, mama.” “All done!”
More phrases: “No, mama eat!”
“Gigi (Seamus), nom!” (Seamus, come)
Literacy (almost)
Ze is pretending ze can read more frequently, making noises that mimic reading as ze taps each page of the book “ah eh oooh ah ah oooh, eh eh eh.” Then ze looks at me expectantly. It’s still unclear if ze wants applause or follow-up reading. But here’s the sort of amazing overnight change: ze has a play alphabet set from my aunt and ze went from knowing where to place the “A” and the “Z” one day, to placing all the letters with confidence the next day. This is after months of playing with the letters, chewing and licking them, and getting the placement wrong 98% of the time.
I’m going to assume that the tantrums are associated with these leaps in skills and not what we can expect for the whole year.
Parenting skills
Toddlers mimic everything you do. Some parental behaviors for infants, therefore, are completely inappropriate if your goal is to nurture a toddler who isn’t a giant bully. At a gathering with friends and their kids, ranging from six months to three years, I noticed the infants’ parents grabbing things out of their hands quickly without a second thought. That’s because infants lick and chew everything. But a toddler is watching what you do, so if you grab things out of their hands routinely, this reinforces their already uncivilized propensity to grab whatever they want out of other kids’ hands.
JuggerBaby still gets into everything but thankfully ze doesn’t immediately shove it in zir gob every single time so I can be more relaxed and strategic about my responses. When ze dug into my bag of chargers and cords, rather than scolding and snatching them away, ze was directed to clear the mess. Always happy to have a task, ze helped me organize the cords. This is a 180 degree difference from how ze “helped” me at nine months (and I have the pictures of the utter wreck of a room to prove it).
Bargaining. JuggerBaby used to exercise rudimentary bargaining skills, learning to offer trades to get what ze wanted, but ze sprang a new level on me the other day.
Normally our bedtime routine is strict: dinner, bath, books, bed. But I deviated by looking for a song from daycare on my phone and ze asked for a different song when our search came up empty. It was a treat but then ze tried to push zir luck for more. “No, that was one-time treat, we’re not watching more videos.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“Please?” + the baby sign for please.
“No.”
“Ears?” Gesturing at ears.
This is a restriction I often place on listening to music on my phone: “radio-only” or “ears-only” when we are playing and ze wants music. I don’t like zir to be glued to a screen all the time. It was a clever offer – it was a compromise I was tempted to accept. But no, I’d rather we didn’t get used to using the phone as a bedtime crutch. I had to congratulate zir for being clever enough to think of negotiating terms, though. It was much better than going straight to a tantrum.
Things we bought
I was not planning to spend more in 2017 than we did in 2016. We bought formula, childcare, diapers, and a minimum of clothing. Then surprise! We were given a list of Must Haves for zir transition to the next age group in daycare. It turns out you swap bottles and formula gear from infancy for active kid gear in toddlerdom. Initially I was annoyed but most of them make sense.
Of course, I didn’t buy everything right away. We had a few weeks to get it together so I made the most of my time: did some research, scoured sales, compared new to used prices, used gift cards when I could.
Bike helmet
Daycare has tricycles in the play yard, it seems a shame not to let zir participate and, with any luck, gain some sense of coordination.
The problem is that zir head is still too small for standard kid sized helmets, so we had to spend more than I wanted to on a much smaller helmet.
My target budget was $20, the helmet we ended up with after some research on safety and fit was $27.50.
Rain boots
This makes sense, ze should be able to splash about even if it’s wet, and shouldn’t have to go around in wet shoes and socks all day.
We hadn’t gotten any rain boots because we live in drought-bound, foggy California, and it seems silly to get seasonal gear for a season that usually lasts 2 and a half days in three months. I talked to friends with kids first to see if they had any outgrown rain boots lying around, but no one did.
After seeking advice from a friend with twins, who confirmed that it was perfectly fine to buy the boots in sizes too large so they last more than a year, we visited REI to see if they had anything on clearance. Ze tried on a pair three sizes too big for a test clomp (size 9) and LOVED it. Ze was able to get around, but they were a little TOO awkwardly oversized, so that was helpful information. We don’t want to send zir into the rain to twist an ankle! REI wanted $90 for the boots that were rated for freezing and snow weather, which is much more severe weather than we’re likely to be in, so we passed on that pair.
We bought this pair in size 8, only 2 sizes too big, from Amazon for $13.76. I had a $2 promotional credit from this offer (buy a set of 3 gift cards for $3, add at least $10 to each card, get $2 back per card), plus a $2.55 credit from a promotional credit they’d screwed up on an earlier order, bringing the total down to $10.06 after tax. That’s less than what I was seeing boots listed for, used, so I’m satisfied with that price.
Update since buying them: Ze is in love with these boots, and we’ve had an unusual amount of rain this year, so the cost per wear is already down to dimes per wear! That makes me feel much better about buying them.
:: When did you learn to ride a bike / trike? Were you a reader, growing up? Do you remember being read to by adults?
March 13, 2017
[Part 2] We’ve been going over our priorities for a new home for weeks now. There are the obvious ones: near public transit, in good school districts, walkability score, safety.
Then there are the personal things: I don’t want anything with stairs, my joints need to avoid that kind of daily up and down. He wants something facing east.
What’s tough is that this market is unnerving and bizarre. Most listings are in contract within 7 days of the open house, if not sooner, typically sell for 20% over their list price, and it’s not uncommon for them to go for more than that.
It’s such a seller’s market that we’re at a huge disadvantage making offers against people who have oodles and oodles of money. We can’t make an all cash offer, and we aren’t willing to go into a multi-million dollar loan. In some ways, it’s a good thing. We simply can’t be tempted to buy too much house! (And who wants to clean 5,000 square feet of living space??)
I looked into foreclosures but they’re priced just as badly, well north of $500K, and the buyers would have to take on the property as is. It’d be one thing if I were healthy, we can learn to be handy, but since I’m not, and we’re not renovation experts, that’s out.
We’re seeing some trustee sales which mean there’s less information available, but that doesn’t stop people from buying, and some are even buying sight unseen before the listing agent has a chance to host an open house!
Speaking of weird, I’ve even seen houses renovated without things like full showers or ovens. What? Who completely removes an oven from a kitchen? These Bay Area people, I don’t understand them. Who puts in a shower so narrow that I’d be claustrophobic in it? I’m tiny, and can fit into some bizarrely small places, but those showers are scary. Then there’s the places with almost mini-fridges. I think that’s an old timey thing, when fridges weren’t the monsters they are today, but we need our fridge space. We’re big eaters, here!
It’s strange, I tell ya.
The other half of my work this quarter is getting our place ready to sell, which means going through all kinds of disclosures that we’ll have to declare (nothing major, a few dents and scratches), and learning what sellers are required by law to declare.
One of the disclosures stood out to me: sellers must declare whether there’s been a death in the home in the last three years.
Would you be bothered if there had been a death in the home that you intended to buy, assuming it was because of natural causes?
I’m not sure if it would bother me, but I’m not sure we can afford to be picky about that, either 😀
As PiC said, “what are you gonna do when you’re bringing a knife to a gun fight?” (Me: “Bring TWO knives!”) We are enormous dorks.
Edit to add information people have shared on Twitter
Death doesn’t seem to bother anyone but you have to actually asked if meth was ever made in the home, they aren’t necessarily required to disclose that, and you can still get sick even after it’s been cleared out.
!!!
:: Would you consider a home that didn’t have a built in stove, oven, dishwasher, or fridge? What would you be willing to give up? When’s the last time you had to go home-hunting?
March 8, 2017
Most people get massages for relaxation and pampering. I used to, once upon a time. They were a treat to get me from one bad flare up to another. Over time, they became the only effective physical therapy left in my toolbox. I stay active, walking as much as I can every day, stretch, do deep breathing exercises to complement my medication regimen. But that’s not enough.
The gift of fibromyalgia is ever-present pain, waking or sleeping, forever. It might be localized to a couple of areas, or generalized to my entire body, or shift from area to area. The one thing it isn’t, is gone. This may mean radiating muscular pain, shooting pains up my back, or twangs in my shoulders so they permanently attach themselves to my ears. It could mean that on an otherwise pleasant walk with Seamus, my knee gives out with every third step, or that the ball and socket joint of my hip grinds bone against bone. It might also mean that my fingers and toes suddenly swell up, making typing more than awkward, and walking even more so.
It definitely means that whatever twinges, shrieks, and burns, the rest of my body tenses up in response to the assault.
This produces a less than salubrious effect on the rest of my body, transmitting panic and trauma down the spinal cord, sending fight or flight messages to overworked and confused neurons which respond by clenching my jaw tighter than a vise in shop class, my neck muscles lose elasticity and become like steel braided rope. This repeats over and over with every muscle down to my tippy toes, and no amount of stretching will release the tension. Pain breeds stress which breeds tension which breeds pain. It’s a cycle that only a massage therapist can break.
Applying the kind of pressure that could double for an MMA submission hold, my therapist bears down on stubbornly wound-tight muscles, bringing tears to my eyes. I breathe through it as best as I can, until she moves on to the next one, and the next one. An hour feels like three, as the pain I chose forces out the aftereffects of the pain I didn’t choose. By the time it’s over, I’m nearly gasping with relief that it’s stopped. A true bargain!
I pride myself on not actually crying, which would stop the therapist in her tracks, because after it’s over, and I’m laying there, endorphins I can no longer summon through a good hard workout flood my body. And for a few hours or days, I can turn my head, turn at the waist, bend my knees (carefully) and not send a freight train of pain screeching through myself.
The money part
Because there’s always a money part. I could once claim back the cost of the massages from our FSA, with a doctor’s note, but our FSA account is overcommitted now so that’s a savings route we can’t take.
My other way to make them more affordable is to buy SpaFinder gift cards at a 10% discount. Or it was, anyway. My spa stopped accepting them without warning this year, after many years of taking them. I found myself mournfully holding a $250 gift card for the year that I couldn’t use. Thankfully, though it took several days, I finagled a refund.
This means getting fewer massages since only a few therapists can do the kind of bodywork that I need without injuring me – I learned this lesson the very hard and painful way.
With any luck, this should still be better than last year when I was so sick for most of the year that I couldn’t get any massages at all! Savings: not worth it.
:: We all need something to make it through the day, week or month. What do you do for yourself to reduce stress and live better?
