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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January 22, 2016
We’ve made one decision about the car, at least.
We’re taking the salvage car and title and selling the car for three reasons:
- The buyer said that he would deal with actually getting the salvage title,
- He would deal with the smog check,
- And he came to us to pay for it, saving PiC the trek to the DMV and the shop (hours away)
All of the time PiC had previously spent on the car rental and the evaluation at the shop was a sunk cost up to that point, but now we can consider covered by the $200 over salvage value that the insurance will pay.
The math: the insurance agreed to pay out $5200. They deducted $800 from that value because we’re taking the car. The buyer paid us $1000. After the costs of driving and dealing with all the details were deducted (mentally), we’ll have $5400 in hand.
Meanwhile, we’re temporarily out our $500 deductible and the cost of a replacement car seat until the Other Driver’s insurance coughs up the reimbursements.
On the replacement front: PiC has found a few decent looking options for around $6000 if we’re willing to buy older (we are) and buy a fancy German make (ehhhhh….).
We’re both ambivalent about getting a car that is usually a status symbol even if it’s old and only costs $5000-6000 because we don’t like that the car logo will signal a level of wealth and luxury we don’t aspire to. Wait, that’s the luxury part. I absolutely aspire to the kind of wealth where I could afford a fleet of these, no sweat, but I also absolutely do not want anyone to know that I have it. That might be an odd reason to avoid the purchase in an area where it’s not that unusual to see Porsches and Teslas, who’s gonna give two hics and a hoot?
Still, we’ll have to ruminate on this for a while.
Would that bother you?
And friends with recent (last 5 years) carseat buying experience: What did you use when your kids outgrew the infant size seat? Our current one is rated for up to 30 lbs but if we’re going to replace it, we may as well get a different model that accommodates from 20 lbs and up.
January 19, 2016
Socialization
I hate it but it’s time. It’s time for this kid to meet people who are not me or hir dad on a regular basis.
Mostly I hate the idea because I don’t want to socialize but it’s considered child abuse to put a nametag and leash on and send hir out with Seamus to go play. Or at least it’s negligence. So here I go, sucking it up to make this thing happen for hir because this child is all about human interaction. Weird.
Ze firmly believes that no stranger is destined to stay that way and has initiated more casual conversations since being able to hold hir head up than I have my entire professional career. Ze can’t speak words but can sucker strangers from across the room into make absolute fools of themselves making faces for hir enjoyment. I’m not sure if you’ve ever encountered dudes who looked like they just rolled off the WWE set and threw on sweats to grocery shop, but every time we do, LB is determined to make them play using only intense staring and smiles. And it works every time.
Meanwhile, there’s me griping about having to put on pants today so we can go out in public.
Separation anxiety what?
Everywhere I turn, people gush at how engaged LB is, and then in the same breath reassure me that separation anxiety is coming, if it hasn’t struck already. This explains a bit of it. Though I was expecting anxiety, this kid is incredibly independent, far more than I ever was before, oh, 25! When there’s someone or something cool to be investigated, that’s far more important than making sure that we’re around. Ze is remarkably secure, and yes, I’m quite certain ze loves me plenty, I’m pretty secure too, and that’s pretty cool to observe.
It’s fun, and bemusing, to watch hir select new people to bond with and just make that happen with a sunny grin and infectious chuckle. I don’t even know how ze does it, that certainly didn’t come from me. It might be the charisma in the family that I didn’t inherit. There were lots of talents in the family I didn’t get (and did reasonably well without), but it’d be like watching SuperMe if ze is anything like me PLUS has extra talents. Whoa. An independent SuperMiniMe. Bracing myself.
Species Specific….
I have a sneaking suspicion that ze and Seamus are mixed up. Ze holds out hir hands to him for “up!” He wonders why ze gets “table scraps” but he doesn’t. I know we call hir puppy but ze is human, so we probably want to work on the distinction a little.
My favorite part of going out with the two of them is counting their social conquests. Seamus is still ahead by an average of 3 encounters per trip, but they both have strangers stopping to talk to them or casting compliments their way.
We ought to send the two of them on the road to earn their keep. Not yet, though. That pesky child negligence thing.
So helpful
I was just wondering when I could put LB to work around the house. Our little destructor takes apart anything that’s put together, pulls down anything that’s put up, tears up and eats any paper in reach. I don’t bother picking up after hir until ze has done a thorough wrecking job, that’s just a fool’s errand.
Ze has always had a fascination with the front-loading washing machine, often holding onto the window with both chubby fists, leaning hir forehead against the bubble, watching the swish and thump! with open mouth and wide eyes.
I was unloading the last load of the day when ze popped up at the washer door again. This time, ze reached in to grab the spun dry clothes, sniffing, and experimentally licking them. “Can I have that?” I asked. Ze handed the washcloth to me and turned back for a sock. Lick. “Can I have that?” Ze hands it over, shakes out a washcloth. Lick. “Can I have that?” Piece by piece, we emptied the washer together.
SOON.
Sharing is … eh
LB loves to gnaw on things, so much ze loves it. And ze obviously loves me because ze thinks I should partake too. It’s cute. But it’s not a signal that ze is civilized yet, as clearly evident when ze is with other critters approximately hir size. Ze just reaches out and takes what ze wants. This is normal, but we’re now working on the concept that we don’t grab things out of hands.
We demonstrate this as adults: we ask hir for things back and don’t simply grab it back like you might when the kid has no concept of giving.
Then we worked on this with blocks. Ze would have two blocks. I would have none. Ze would either offer me a block, of two, or I would ask for one. Ze would give me Block 1. Then ze would try to grab it back but before hir hand could, I’d offer it back. Soon, there was a tiny pause after ze gave me Block 1 where we’d make eye contact and ze would wait for the offer. After a few rounds, Block 2 rotated in. I ask for, and get, Block 1. Then I ask for, and get, Block 2. Then I offered both blocks back. Repeat. We could play like this for twenty minutes. It’s just a start and a kid hir age probably isn’t going to be so willing to engage in trading, or know what the heck is going on, but I like that ze is now waiting a breath to be offered the toy before grabbing it.
Coming into the 11th month, ze was comfortably cruising along, holding onto things for support, but one day, ze started doing freestyle squats: Carefully standing up with no support and then clapping with glee. Lowered hirself back down and stood up again. More glee!
Ze is a very strong baby and I’m going to credit hir home-gym circuit training for that. Pull-ups on the refrigerator bar, balancing on the stroller, legwork on the climbing boxes.
So far, 11 months in?
Parenting is sort of fun. Not the sleepless nights, not the worry, not the diapers oh my nose not the diapers, not all that stuff. But it’s well balanced by what LB has brought to the table. Giggles, personality, mischief. An intense need to get into everything that reminds me that Mom’s “someday, you’re gonna have a kid just like you and you’ll deserve it!” curse is alive and well. Though truth be told, this might be my sibling’s curse transferred because Dad points out every so often, LB is way more clever and interested than I was at this age. Thanks….? Though I can do without ever hearing “just wait until…” again. Let me enjoy this moment, alright? Geez.
We are happier, generally, because there’s always a source of hilarity, whether it’s laughing with hir or at hir. Especially when we’re running our Who has the best picture of hir looking like the saddest panda? contest! Call us mean, call us opportunistic, but don’t say we’re slow to pull out the camera when ze is having an unwarranted cry.
There’s a whole litany of things people focus on losing when they have kids. Sure, we don’t have the freedom to just book a weekend away, or the funds to randomly splurge on something pretty. That’s ok. We didn’t permanently lose that. We simply traded it for our wonderful, curious, charming, adorable wee puppy warrior for now. And that doesn’t feel like a loss at all.
Like Meg, our work-life balance is getting better thanks to having hir around. It’s not perfect, but it’s still awfully nice.
Earlier…
Month 10: Going Boneless
Month 9: Tasting Life
Month 8: Exploration
Month 7: Ambulation
Month 6: Becoming human
Month 5: Toes
Month 4: Velociraptor Claws
Month 3: Growth Spurts
Month 2: Hates sleep
Month 1: Banshee
January 18, 2016
That car accident is just the Christmas gift that keeps on giving.
They saw it coming but it was still a shock when The Driver didn’t even tap her brakes. I was looking down at LB when I sensed something terribly wrong and threw myself over LB at the same second That Driver slammed into the passenger door. What I thought I would protect LB from, being on the wrong side to cushion the blow with my mere flesh, I don’t know. Probably it was all instinct since I don’t remember thinking anything but oh $!&(#(
Stunned, everyone verbally checked on everyone else. PiC was slightly panicked asking if we were ok because he couldn’t see us in the dark. I was about to be in serious pain, but it hadn’t registered as I checked LB’s limbs all intact and safe in hir seat, at the point of impact.
Ze had been gnawing on a plastic jar of nuts, hir temporary chew toy and maraca. The impact had thrown it out of hir tiny hands. Ze pulled away from my anxious checking, straining forward against the restraints, concerned only for where those nuts had gone.
Huge, shaky sigh of relief.
All that matters is that everyone was ok, but dammit, what an amazing pain in the everything it is to have someone crush into your car!
We had a plan, dammit
There’s something about humans planning and God laughing, right? (Jerk) Because that applies here. We’d wanted a larger car to accommodate our growing family but decided that we’d make this work for another 2-3 years. I wanted to squirrel away all the cash for a possible down payment.
Now what?
Now we do insurance. Now we do rental cars, and inconveniences, and trips to the shop. We have a very car savvy friend advising us on a few things, but the upshot is that almost everything sucks.
Our car is considered a total loss. It’s still amazing that no one was injured, because That Driver pulverized nearly the whole side of the car and it’ll cost twice the book value to repair everything, maybe more. The frame was damaged, both doors are flattened, and I’m pretty sure that the bumper was half crushed. The shop estimated the work to start at $7000 and that’s before they took anything apart to see the worst of the damage.
But book value puts our poor car at a mere $5500 despite the brand spanking new tires we literally bought the day before, and the other accessories that would normally have meant something to a prospective buyer.
At least That Driver did have insurance and so, even though she’s been MIA for two weeks refusing to respond to their calls, they’ve ruled in our favor that she’s 100% at fault and they’ll pay for everything including our $500 deductible.
That helps a little but not much. Our choices, such as they are:
- The car is a total loss: take the paltry payout from the insurance. Find a new car.
- This sucks because PiC has been scouring Craigslist and his usual used car sales haunts and keeps coming up empty. There’s nothing out there that fits our requirements, not even close, and we’d have to spend $10,000 on a compromise.
- We could take the money and just wait for a while but being a one car family means that I can’t run any errands during the week.
- The car is a total loss: take the paltry payout from the insurance minus several hundred dollars, take the car to be salvaged (complete with a salvage title), pay everything we received and maybe another $2000 to repair it.
- This sucks because though we’d get our car back, which suits our needs, we’d be out of pocket $2000+ for a car with a salvage title so if we were to try to sell it later, it’s not going to tempt any buyer for more than that $2000, likely. If that much.
- But it does give us a working vehicle so we don’t have to scour Craigslist for the next few weeks or months.
- The car is a total loss: take the paltry payout from the insurance minus several hundred dollars, take the car to be salvaged (complete with a salvage title), sell it to a shop for about $1000 which covers the salvage value the insurance deducted and gives us another $200 toward a replacement.
- $200 is a lot of money when you think of just money in hand but is it worth the hassle? Either we have to trek to the DMV to get the salvage title processed, and then take it to the shop to sell the car, or get the insurance to process it which may take weeks while the shop holds the car. The shop has a $100/day storage fee that presumably would be waived but if the buyer at the shop changes his mind after 2 weeks, we’d be out $1400 instead of up $200. Personally, I’m no longer in favor of bothering with this sale – our time sunk into this fiasco is over a dozen hours at this point and it’s much more valuable than $200 to waste at least another day of work on it.
Want to guess what our final decision is?
That Driver’s moment of inattention has cost me weeks of pain, PiC dozens of hours in insurance wrangling frustration and car hunting, and cost us a great working vehicle that will cost more than several thousand dollars to replace. Awesome.
January 15, 2016
2015 highlights
SPENDING
The good: I took an extended (for Americans) maternity leave with only partial salary. I needed every minute of that time to recover from LB’s delivery, so I’m grateful that we fought to make that happen.
We hosted family and friends throughout the year, traffic to our wee abode was easily four-fold higher thanks to the draw of a fresh-made baby. This wasn’t cheap between feeding them and housing them but we managed to stay within budget.
We even traveled and enjoyed some of it despite the massive increase in gear and logistics. Lowering expectations made a big difference. (more…)
January 13, 2016
So how did I do with my Q4 plans?
Professional:
Evaluate status of the writing project – edit and rewrite.
Reschedule for 2016, Q1.
Ask a mentor or two to critique it, again.
One mentor agreed to read it, once I have a draft.
Blog at least 3x/week.
Almost. This blasted unending additional plague kept me from anything more than just survival for a while. I’m getting back up to speed.
Personal:
Host family for Thanksgiving.
Did it! I made way too much food but it was fun and relaxing. Next time, I’m copying Cloud‘s menu day-scheduling, though 🙂
Perhaps vacation for a week out of state – scheduling pending.
Not this quarter but definitely in 2016. It’s on the calendar and in our (free version) TripIt app!
Add 30 minutes at the gym 1x/week.
Not this quarter. Being sick for 6-8 weeks really did this quarter in.
How are you doing?
January 11, 2016
I’m not my brother’s keeper, I’m not my brother’s keeper, I’m not my brother’s keeper.
Except when I am.
On the heels of That Conversation with Dad, it comes out that everyone has tried to pry Sibling loose from the current living situation, clinging to Dad despite bearing no love or respect for him.
He refuses to leave. He refuses to get help. He refuses to admit that anything is wrong even though he hasn’t held down a job in over 6 years, he hasn’t earned a living wage in 7, and he’s doing nothing day to day but eating, sleeping, bathing, and wandering.
Friends ask after him. Old teachers and mentors have asked what they can do to help unstick him. He’s only intent on telling them his latest big ideas, what they should do for a big splash and instant success.
My older aunt has tried to help. She offered to pay his way through a trade school, tried to talk to him (rebuffed).
My younger aunt has tried to help. She sends food, clothes, offers (spurned) advice.
My dad has tried to push. He’d gotten so far as getting Sibling to the doctor for evaluation, and they determined that he isn’t mentally capable of functioning independently anymore. They scheduled an appointment for him to return and complete paperwork, to apply for assistance, to apply for housing. Sibling decided, even before that first appointment, that he’s fine and doesn’t need help. He doesn’t need housing. He refused to go. Dad tried to force him, and Sibling just disappeared on the day of the appointment.
He respects no one.
He listens to no one.
Except me.
Only the few rules I set in stone remain. Only I can get him to, even a little bit, listen, or comply when I tell him to clear the yard, pick up after his pets. He doesn’t listen to everything I say but he listens to nothing anyone else will say. I’m the last one who can make anything happen.
It comes down to this: if I want to free Dad of the living nightmare he’s in living with the shambling mess of Sibling, if I want to see anything change with how that part of the family does not function, I have to personally wade back into the fray to physically make Sibling go to the doctor, make him do his paperwork, and make him move out. With no guarantee that any of my time or words will be well spent.
I’ll have to arrange childcare for LB, I’d take hir with but I don’t want him anywhere near hir. I don’t trust him to turn my back on him for a minute. Not because the mentally ill are universally violent as the media and politicians would have you believe but because he specifically has a history of being unpredictable and we used to spar together. I don’t believe for a second that he’s incapable of slipping into a delusion, or even the appearance of the delusion, that we’re 20 years younger and instigating an altercation. Especially when I’m frogmarching him (metaphorically, I hope) to the doctor and whatever else.
PiC insists that I won’t do this alone but my defenses are up, my instincts are pushing him away to protect my family from my family. I have never had help managing my sibling, I’ve always gone it alone – he can behave like a caged beast and it’s safer when it’s only my back that needs watching. I can be as firm as I need without worrying he’d lash out at bystanders. And if anything goes wrong, only I will be hurt.
It sucks but this is how I prepare for a Sibling battle after years of bloody experience. Protect your family, keep them out of the line of fire. Armor yourself. Sort your affairs.
Boy does this ever sound like a hootenanny.
January 8, 2016
Change from Jan 2015: 23.5% increase
0.23% decrease from last month
ON MONEY
I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.
Spending
Much as I would like to cut out all Christmas gift spending, that’s not going to happen overnight. I’ll instead be glad we’ve gone to a somewhat more organized, pick a person system now and hope that someday we can maybe only do small gifts for kids or something. Honestly, we don’t need anything and the things we want, we can save up for, for ourselves. It doesn’t make much sense to me to share our wishlists so they can buy things we want and we can buy things they want – it’s just a swapping around of money. Signed, The Grinch
***
Because Dad didn’t bother to tell me he’d need some help staying warm this season, and we’re looking at a potential record El Nino year, I had to do some unexpected post-Christmas shopping. I won’t dwell on how much we could have saved had I known before. We bought him a new blanket and coat: $150 after discounts, and using old store credit we’d had on hand.
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