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
1. We voted!!!! The local races were the hardest for me to work through. Also resisting the impulse to put a big X through TFG’s name on the ballot.
2. It’s hard to explain what life is like for us with my chronic health stuff and how much harder it is to cope with hits like a feverish preschooler or a grade schooler running into trouble with their schoolwork or classmates on top of being beyond maxed out at work. I don’t often try to explain. So when a friend reacts with what might seem like over the top sympathy for a new hit landing squarely on my metaphorical jaw, it’s kind of nice that they understand.
Year 5, Day 183: Holiday Mondays are weird Mondays.
We took the kids to the park where they took minor injuries, both to the knees doing completely different things, and came home needing a big lunch and a rest. While my time with the trainer is definitely showing (tiny) results and helping reduce how badly my body reacts to this sort of flagrant overuse, it’s still pretty unhappy with the decision to take fresh air and several thousand steps instead of sitting in my soft but supportive office chair for several hours. My brain doesn’t mind the break, my body strenuously objects to the change in routine.
The subject of filial responsibility came up on Bluesky and it brought up my low-level creeping uncertainty about what’s in store for the future. Seven years ago, I had a consult with a lawyer who felt I had no legal reason to worry about making a break with the biodad and that I was on firm legal ground to stop supporting him. I would hope that after this many years of estrangement, and likely more by the time a nursing home comes into play, that my legal responsibility is similarly not. I would like to talk to a lawyer again in the near future to confirm their understanding of the CA filial responsibility law and confirm the likelihood that I would be pulled into that vortex without my consent.
Year 5, Day 184: We had house guests for the long weekend and the dynamic has been such a rollercoaster. Now we know what having three kids three years apart could have been like: constantly up and down. Love, hate, love, hate, love, hate, bicker bicker huuuuuuug. We three adults are simultaneously bemused and exhausted. I’ve so appreciated having the company of a long time friend who knows my medical stuff and is super mindful of COVID risks, so that’s been so good for my soul. But the children. ššµāš« I am so grateful they made the trip to visit us, we’re so lucky that they still love us after all that. At least I hope they do. š
Is my brain broken: Going over homework with JB, I seem to have just lost all memory of how we borrow numbers when subtracting. Like there’s a block of knowledge that used to live in my head but isn’t there anymore. What. I know that I keep losing memory but to lose a core set of computing rules that I’ve been using since I was 7 is really disturbing. After waiting for it to come back, I gave up and looked it up but it still feels foreign like this is knowledge I never knew at all. There’s nothing familiar about the facts I relearned. There aren’t any echoes of familiarity like addition or multiplication tables or division which may feel rusty but the memory-feel, the layers of having done that for years, is still there for those things. Not so for this part of subtraction.
Year 5, Day 185: Back to the metaphorical donut shop for me today after seeing our friends safely to the airport. I’m really tired both from prolonged socializing, as enjoyable as it was, and from catching some viral thing yesterday. Just my luck. I get to spend time with this friend for the first time in years and of course my body craps out after a few days. So rude. I have no regrets! Just continued annoyance that some of our meatsuits are so incredibly fragile. Everyone else is, of course, fine. I’m glad everyone else is fine, I just want to be in that group.
Today’s my first trainer day since Friday and have I already lost all conditioning? Last week, arms days were feeling pretty good. I was doing the max number of reps, not a huge number of course but high for me, and feeling a smidge stronger each day. Today, after only 20 modified pushups and 24 lateral raises, my face was in extreme danger of being ground into the carpet during planks. We barely made it to the end of three planks. Summary: noodle arms.
Probably doesn’t help anything that I’m not feeling well either. Maybe that’s connected. We’ll see!
Year 5, Day 186: So much drag, today, physically.
PiC finally got the second car to the shop! He had to go about it in a convoluted way since we had registered it as non-operational: get it registered as operational, tow it to the shop, get key maintenance and smogging done, drive it home, sell it. Registration was $164, smog check and a water thingie replacement ($600). It’s been SUCH a relief to have it out of the garage where it’s been a Very Tight squeeze for more than a year but it’ll be home again in only a few days so please join me in crossing my fingers that someone buys it before the end of this year.
Also it just occurred to me that I should just order JB more Vogmasks. If I attach the liner to them to protect them from stains, that’ll get them a better fit until the custom masks come in. The custom masks are a couple months out. This way, I can stop driving myself up the wall about the aged materials’ poor fit! I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.
Year 5, Day 187: Today would have been a dog borrow day but for the mountain of work that towers over me. I took a risk earlier this week, hoping someone could come through for me but they couldn’t, so here I am with a week’s worth of work on a Friday. The saddest of faces I’m making. I ended up working until 11 pm.
Year 5, Day 176: Recovery from the weekend: The kids and I got our flu and COVID vax this weekend. Wow did the body aches get me. I had to push my Sunday workout to today but then today was so busy and stressful I just couldn’t handle one more thing so pushed it again. I hate that but remind myself that the workouts are supposed to improve my life, not make it worse when I’m already struggling. I’ll still get them all done in the week. It’s a good thing PiC will get his COVID at a separate time so we weren’t both down.
Also my brain was wading through hip-deep mud all day and I only just figured out at the end of the day that maybe this is a type of brain fog. Post vax type? Maybe? Or heat related? I don’t like it. I forced myself through a lot of work but it felt terrible the whole time. It was nothing like hyperfocusing feels.
On the one hand, I’m deeply grateful to have benefits. On the other hand, I’ve come to find Open Enrollment weirdly stressful. No idea why, getting to pick things that provide our care is a good thing. Also overall benefits like healthcare and retirement just shouldn’t be tied to employment and I’ve always hated that it was and still is. It’s as ridiculous as dental and vision being separate from medical coverage.
Year 5, Day 177: At 2 mg a night, I’m still occasionally waking up sweating some nights but the nightmares do seem blunted a little. They’re not completely waking me up the way they were 3 weeks ago. It’s not doing the trick yet though, as evidenced by my utter inability to handle JB’s attitude with patience and forbearance. They were rude to me and I snapped: “don’t talk to me anymore” and walked away.
The amount of things to do is overwhelming. I’ve actually done A LOT but the number of things that have multiplied when I wasn’t looking is ARGH. The passports are done! I have pants that fit! Our Yeti has been replaced! I’ve chased down our FSA payments and they’ve been deposited! We have limited access to cheap COVID kits through an employer so I’ve been collecting our limited allotment each month to send to our family of five friends who can’t get any for a reasonable price and to our other family of five friends who are immunocompromised and need a steady supply. I stress packed a box for the Lakota reservation and that helped a little (close to checking that box).
But there are a million other little things that keep popping up.
Also I could just cry. My beautiful snap pea plants may all have powdery mildew. The weather has been really weird and I’ve been really tired so I’ve been watering them late in the day instead of in the morning like usual and didn’t think it would be a problem. I think I kind of did this to them and now have to remove them all even though they were producing so well?
Year 5, Day 178: Bookshop.org has free shipping today. I missed it last year and resolved not to be caught unprepared again. I’d be prepared to buy Christmas gifts from them this year! But no. Fail. The list of books to buy for niblings is blank. I knew this was coming up and yet still don’t have my list. Dammit! Stress!
This is par for the bumpy, gopher-hole-filled course. I’ve been sluggish from the post-vax recovery, and off my game all week as a result. It upsets my equilibrium when I don’t have any balance between work and housework like running the laundry on the right days or making progress in little tidying up ways. I DID gather all my colorful pens and markers into a plastic bin at least.
PiC heroically did the Costco run today so while he took the kids to go biking, I could quickly throw together a hearty meal so easily. We had the savory and filling Irish stew ($22, premade), a loaf of rustic bread ($6), and salad ($4) for dinner. I feel very lucky on this point.
Currently overthinking: packing toiletries for travel. We have to do a weekend trip in a few weeks and I want this organized well before. Right now we have a large communal bag for all things: many mini shampoos, conditioners and body washes; hairbrush/comb, lotion, razors, etc. Everyone has their own little pouch for dental supplies and they all go into the communal bag. It’s convenient to have everything in one place, mostly, but sometimes it would be more helpful to have individual supplies. When the kids are big enough to have their own suitcases, maybe it’d be easier and better for their sense of responsibility to have their own pouch. I really like this one I found at Michaels and am trying to think through the separation of things. How do/did you pack these sorts of things when you were traveling with family? At what age did the kids (you as a kid or your kids, all experiences valid!) in your family have their own packing list and case and all that?
Year 5, Day 179: Rush rush rush today. Some management meetings ate up a quarter of my day *dramatic groan*. It was actually for a good reason but still, those two hours are huge. I ended up working until nearly midnight catching up. Le sigh.
I put Good Girls on for background noise while working this week almost entirely because I like Christina Hendricks but the show just slightly annoyed me the whole way through. Going back to Leverage Redemption is very soothing.
Parker in Leverage:Redemption is more me than ever.
Sophie: Parker, you do not want to kill Ethan.
Parker: Yes, I do. I want to kill a lot of people, all the time. I just don’t.
Parker: What, didn’t you see the sign at the front of the building? It says 112 days without an accident. They’re due.
Hardison: Wow you are so smart, you are so smart. I bet you could spell every word in the dictionary except for respect.
Year 5, Day 180: I was scheduled for three workouts this week and since I simply could not get my equilibrium all week they ended up lumped in the middle of the week:, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Today I had the weirdest urge to fit in a set of exercises so I did a couple sets of squats. Extra weird because that’s one of my weakest exercises, but the brain wants what it wants.
I’m annoyed about ingredients today and my inability to use fresh ingredients when I’m have them and never having them when I want or need to use them.
There were the Anaheim peppers I asked PiC to buy extras of so I could chop and freeze them for future chilis. I then got sick, or had a flare up, or something for long enough that I forgot they were waiting until it was too late.
There’s that cabbage I asked him to pick up 4 months ago so I could make chicken cabbage salad one day but I’ve been so crazed I haven’t cooked more than three times since. It’s given up the ghost.
And sour cream! We perpetually forget to have it on hand when we plan to have Mexican food and when we do have it, we don’t need it until it’s expired. WHY. WHY ARE WE LIKE THIS.
It’s not everything all the time, we’re good about finishing leftovers all the time, it’s fresh ingredients that I just cannot cope with between the vagaries of my attention (remembering it exists) and energy and time.
1. We left this till October on purpose for timing immunity peaks and things but then it was also a bit of a scramble to get 3 of 4 of us vaccinated this week because my week leading up to the right time was so hectic. Still, glad we managed!
2. A thought that made me chuckle: “A plague on both your houses!” was the original ESH.
Things have shifted around here quite a bit in the past four years. Not just because of COVID, also because of developments like having a second kid.
He does all the grocery shopping. We used to split this 70/30 (more him).
He does all the daycare dropoff and pickup, I do all the elementary school dropoff and pickup. We used to split the daycare dropoff and pickup a little 80/20 (more him).
He does all the car maintenance and records tracking. I do all the paying for the car maintenance. This is the same as before. It does worry me some that I haven’t dealt with car stuff in over a decade and don’t know much about the cars.
He does most of the weeknight and all the weekend dinners. I used to do most of the dinners. I don’t cook from scratch very much these days, and he buys lots of ready made entrees at Costco so we can cobble together with frozen or fresh veggies depending on how far out we are from our last grocery run. Sometimes we use veggies from the garden, but it’s slim pickins at best. Here’s hoping the pea sprouts suddenly burst into bloom and yield delicious snap peas.
I still do all the financial everything: savings, spending tracking, submitting for and tracking reimbursements, donations and mutual aid, investing, strategy and goal-setting. Once in a while he’ll ask what our financial health is like. My usual short answer is we don’t have retirement money yet, but we will. That’s kind of the biggest picture answer.
I used to do most of the dog walks and all the dog healthcare appointments and maintenance. Ear cleaning, wound tending, medications, all me. He used to do most of the morning walks and maybe the late night ones.
I do all the dental appointments (6 a year), he goes to his own (2). He has a mild phobia? strong dislike of the dentist and doesn’t want to pass his anxiety to the kids. Fine by me, I love the dentist! It’s a nice relaxing hour in the comfy reclining chair and we recently even found some improvement in my gum health. Flossing DOES work. Smol Acrobat doesn’t share my love for the whole thing but their bribery is good enough.
I get all the orthodontia appointments too (4-6 a year). The appointments are fine but the 2 days after they’re tightened are terrible.
I handle half the eye appointments: myself and JB usually. He does his and Smol’s. The optometrist gives me the heebies.
He’s done all of Smol’s medical appointments, I generally do all of JB’s now. We used to both go.
I do all the other paperwork in the household: registrations for vehicles, for school, forms for school and daycare.
He does all of Smol Acrobat’s showers and bed routine, I used to do all of JB’s. It just shifted as JB outgrew the need for us to bathe them and my work was more demanding.
Year 5, Day 180: Our Yeti was acting funny a few months back so I contacted Goal Zero to troubleshoot. They couldn’t figure out why it randomly shut itself off either, so they arranged for an exchange. It took us months to actually get to packing it up for shipment but within a week of the arranged pickup with FedEx, the replacement one arrived at our doorstep. FedEx’s tracking system is generally garbage and this was no exception. Most times my deliveries are delayed six times before they get here, annoying but ultimately fine. This time I was notified that a label was made, and that was the status right up until the delivery guy banged on our door like Aragorn announcing Gondor’s call for aid. He was kind enough to deposit it just inside our door rather than just on the front step. I could not have safely hefted that thing by myself. This felt timely since we’re having yet another heat wave this week and PGE has planned blackouts. If things get dire, we may need the Yeti to keep my devices up and running for work.
I felt a need to eat my feelings all day. It was confusing, though, usually I think: I’m so mad I need something sweet/salty/crunchy to soothe my ruffled feathers. Today I just kept trying to think of a snack but nothing suited and I couldn’t figure out what was driving it. Ultimately it was probably overwhelm. I’ve got too many plates and balls and spiky pineapples being juggled all at once, it’s feeling impossible to manage. I’ve just got my fingertips around all of it but it’s precarious. I felt a bit better by the end of the day when I’d burned through several huge piles of backlog.
Year 5, Day 181: It’s heat wave time again. We were just coming down from 90 degrees at 7:30 pm. It’s funny dealing with the heat when all my patterns have finally shifted to living in cold weather. Everyone else in the family copes much worse than I. No one sleeps well and there’s a lot of complaining.
I was utterly unmotivated to cook dinner so when JB asked for takeout, I suggested the burger place. Then on the spur of the moment, we decided to eat on their outside patio since it wasn’t crowded. We rarely ever do that. This might be the fourth time we’ve ever eaten there. (My antipathy for the company of other humans is stronger than ever since 2020.) The best part was getting home at 645 with everyone fed and ready to hop into the shower. We’re usually trying to get dinner on the table or just sitting down by that time. It’s amazing how much less stressful the night feels when dinner is done by or before 7. I still had to work late but it was an early enough start that when Smol Acrobat asked me to lay down with them for a while, I didn’t particularly mind the lost half hour. I managed to dispatch the worst of the pile and log off at 10, off to do the second half of my exercises so really it felt a lot like having it all today.
Now that it’s October, we need to make time for our flu and COVID shots. Every time I think about it, I remind myself: but don’t do it the same time as PiC! Maybe we should get our flu shots separately, too … I will say that the kids really like seeing us get ours, so we often tried to do them all as a family but last year kicking our asses taught us not to pander to their enjoyment.
Year 5, Day 182: It’s been one week of taking the lowest possible dose of this new medicine (an alpha blocker blood pressure med for off label use) to see if this will break my lifelong cycle of intense draining nightmares.
I had terrible side effects the first night (nasal passages felt severely swollen for a few hours), less the second (annoying congestion), weird the third night (congestion didn’t start until I woke up), and none since the fourth dose. As for effectiveness: I still have vivid dreams but none in the past week have been the terrible gripping nightmares that make me wake up screaming or even more tired than when I went to sleep (similar to massive pain nights). So far so good? I’m going to stay at this dose for another two weeks and see if there is any recurrence.
I’ve found three new freckles on my arm. That’s weird. I’m not in the habit of adding freckles to my collection. As teens we used to theorize they were the result of sun damage, based entirely on the frequent appearance of freckles on one friend every time they were sunburned. I wonder what really caused them.
It’s early release all week for JB and PiC has taken the brunt of the past two afternoons. His schedule is more flexible than mine on a good day, and I haven’t had one of those in a while, so I really appreciate his taking the hits.
Dinner: carnitas fried stovetop (premade from Costco), pico de gallo, Mexican rice and chips from the local taqueria, shredded cheese, guacamole (Costco), and a handful of fresh picked green beans (5) and snap peas (3) from the garden. I gave the other 5 green beans to JB to pack for their lunch tomorrow.
Year 5, Day 183: Everyone’s sleep patterns this school year are still very off kilter. Even our earliest riser, Smol Acrobat, is sleeping late, past 7 some days. I enforce an 8-830 bedtime but it’s not doing the trick.
Another scorcher today. I grumble a bit when it’s colder but on days like this, I’m grateful that our house holds in the cold so much that even when it’s 90 degrees outside, as long as the blinds are down and doors and windows stay shut, the cool air stays inside.
I’m glad it’s online so we can attend without leaving the house but I’m still whining that it’s already the next PTA meeting. Really? Already?
Related: The 4th grade is the big fundraising year for the kids’ 5th grade costs like graduation and the like. I’ll fundraise for charitable reasons to help out folks in need, never for personal gain/needs/wants, so I feel VERY weird about this. How do people even do this? I can’t / won’t post it at work like people used to do, I’m a higher-up. Almost everyone is below me in rank, that wouldn’t be right. I don’t feel like I could circulate among friends, either, because it’s not a “good” cause. Once in a while I get fundraising emails from niblings whose parents are wealthy or well off for a school thing or a Scout thing and I don’t mind that. I toss in some money but this I feel completely awkward about. It feels like we should just cough it up and cover the costs ourselves. Does anyone else feel this way (on either side as a parent or as someone being asked for donations) or have another way of looking at it?
Year 5, Day 184: Even with people I like, long work calls leave me into a devolved state where I feel about as human as a Dushegub. Three calls this week was 2 calls too many.
But! I did finally get that appointment with the bank to get some paperwork notarized (more people) and then we took the kids to get their flu and COVID vaccines. They were NOT happy about that at all, not one whit. I let JB know a few hours beforehand, let them get their feelings out (so many feelings), and let them pick their top three treat choices for afterward. They were in a tizzy about it right up until the needle hit their arm and then they remembered it wasn’t that big a deal. “that’s it?” š¤¦š»āāļø Smol Acrobat didn’t handle the needle moment well, they were crying before they even sat down but recovered well enough to get home. Then they hobbled like they’d lost three inches off their leg for the rest of the night. It’s very dramatic. JB was side effect free as far as we could see, Smol was a little off their game and seemed a touch feverish but it wasn’t very bad.
