April 13, 2026

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (306)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 345: I want the job of giving away a billionaire’s assets in the vein of Mackenzie Scott’s giving: MacKenzie Scott Makes Another Blockbuster Gift To An HBCU. She’s making a real difference to institutions that are usually not prioritized. I’d like to do that. Preferably money from billionaires who are doing nothing but harm to the ecosystem, socially, environmentally, etc. though, that would feel much more right.

Related: My W-2 job sent around a shockingly tone-deaf gross note to colleagues stationed in the Middle East encouraging them to take time off now (and max out their vacation allotments) so that they can have a productive last half of the year. So you want them to use up their PTO because you can’t be bothered to extend the courtesy of PTO because of WAR? And then when that’s all used up and the latter half of this year continues to be a crazed rabid barrel of monkeys, you’ll what, fire them for needing more leave? Are all CEOs required to turn in half their brains when they get into the C-suite? FFS!

Paying bills! I was shocked to see our near-$4000 credit card bill. I’d totally forgotten that 75% of the summer camps were paid in this month, along with the payments for Spring Break that included one nice dinner, along with a lot of contributions to struggling folks.

Year 6, Day 346: It’s been six weeks and my cucumber seeds still aren’t germinating. I’m guessing our soil temperature just isn’t warm enough, though I could swear that it’s roughly the same weather we always have. So disappointing. My lettuce and onion seeds have never germinated, so I’m starting to think the real problem here is me. Oh but cutting back the blackberry bush last year was the right move! It’s put out several new branches covered in leaves now so I need to come up with a way to tag the branches as primocane or floricane as we get into the growing seasons.

We’ve been slowly filling up our Got Sneakers? bag since January 2024. They ask you not to send their giant FedEx bag until it’s full, and we don’t give up our shoes til they are worn through so it’s taken us a while but I think it’s nearly full enough to ship out. They used to pay $0.25 for the recyclable condition shoes but they don’t anymore so we just send these to keep them out of the landfill. I hope it does, anyway, they say: “All heavily used and damaged footwear is recycled to reuse materials or to convert waste into new energy.” Looks like our assessment of what was worn all the way through didn’t match theirs and we made a couple dollars from the last bag. Who knows, maybe we’ll make a buck or two off this bag.

Year 6, Day 347: Nicole and Maggie got me thinking about my sibling and the last time I saw a picture of him, he was basically like a feral hermit. Despite our always rocky relationship, thinking of that image of him hurts my heart.

Commenting on an older Nicole and Maggie post, they also got me thinking about how I’m most productive when I have something specific to avoid. I procrastinate when I don’t feel like doing That Thing but because there’s no end to the amount of work I have to do, it doesn’t feel like procrastination. It’s now redefined it as re-prioritizing. But if I know I need to do something I’ve been putting off, tattling on myself works pretty well. Telling a friend that it needs doing is often enough to make me do it. Maybe that IS a function of guilt.

$50 and one smog check later, my 24 year old car is good for another year on the road. I’m hoping we can hit 30 years and 250K miles before we have to replace it.

Year 6, Day 348: A friend shared amazing news that enabled them to retire early and I’m thrilled to my toes for them. So glad that a genuinely good thing has happened for a genuinely good person that I care about.

$$$. I found a set of cute sweaters for Christmas gifts. I DID considered off-brand types but they weren’t significantly cheaper than the brand name on clearance so I went with the original brand, picking from only the clearance bin designs.

Year 6, Day 349: Kaiser is finally starting to be affected by all the anti-vaccine bullshit from this administration. We used to be able to get 6 month boosters for the COVID vaccine under our own decision making. This year, we can’t. I did talk directly with one of the pediatricians who shared that Kaiser has been keeping their own data on COVID and it’s lower than previous years, though admitted that some of that is self reporting (or lack thereof) to go along with the officially reported diagnostics and hospitalizations. I’m trying to decide what this means for our year and how we protect ourselves. I was thrashed by a “mere cold” more than once this year.

Money: I made a second sale on Poshmark, that’s another $7 we can put away.

April 6, 2026

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (305)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 339: Taking a minute to be oh so very grateful that I’m not sick right now. I spent so many weeks of this year flattened like a pancake from the sick and fatigue that I get flashbacks sometimes. I am so so grateful that I’ve managed to stay at my rough baseline of yuck, uncomplicated by some virus or another, for three whole weeks.

We took the kids to see Mychal Threets talk and then to explore a new-to-us park that PiC’s noticed several times. It was huge and there were friendly dogs there too so I got a really good dog fix and they got to play at a pretty neat playground. It was soul-cleansing.

Money: Ah ha! Costco gas receipts are valid for the ibotta “any receipt” redemption thing. $0.25 in our pocket.

Year 6, Day 340: I’ve been thinking about things I’d rather do/enjoy doing. I love working around and taking care of animals. I like cleaning and bandaging up wounds (also for humans, not just critters). I don’t enjoy the constant needs of human infants or baby animals, that’s a bit too much. I don’t want to go back to school and I have never gotten past my antipathy for math and my brain doesn’t hold on to new information as well as it used to so probably medical training isn’t in the cards but I would like to take that 3 day wilderness survival care training class. I wish it weren’t 3 days, though.

Put all together, this means I’d like to be a part time basic injuries only Night Nurse / pet bather (not groomer, I can bathe dogs, clean ears, and trim nails but I can’t clip and make them pretty) / pet less intensive care treater. The last time I did a flight of fancy for my future career was when I was 17, working full time, saying I’d like to be paid to do X. After months of applications, I got a very low paying job to do X, and built my entire career up from that by acquiring a whole lot more similar skills. Maybe it’s time to see if putting that out in the universe will work again. *Patient hat on*

Year 6, Day 341: Text I received: “Territorial Seed Company: Growing basil at home is a game-changer for flavor!” Not if it just DIES ON YOU. Harumph. I bought both sweet basil and Thai basil plants last year, planted them in the garden, and two weeks later they were all dead. #bitter Every time someone says that it’s so frugal to grow your own herbs I silently demand to know exactly how they’re being kept alive because I missed that class.

Year 6, Day 342: I was reading this article from Kiplingers, How to Protect Yourself and Others From a Troubled Adult Child: A Lesson from Real Life, and this line struck me: “Alex made clear that his parents refused to have Gabe arrested — and he could still be, for assault, vandalism, terrorist threats — and taken to a mental facility. I spoke about this with two clinical psychologists, who asked not to be identified because they are not involved in Gabe’s case. They both indicated that the fact that he has not been arrested is evidence of the parents being caught in a spiral of enabling.”

It reminded me of something my biodad said to me when I was a kid. “Even if a parent knew of a kid’s wrongdoing (or vice versa), I still have to protect that family member from outsiders if the police showed up.” 8 year old me felt like that was off somehow but couldn’t put the reason into words. It occurs to me now that even if he wasn’t laying groundwork, he absolutely believed he deserved to be bailed out of all his problems by his parents, then his sibling(s), and later, me and there’s definitely a corollary to that early belief.

Year 6, Day 340: Well. That was short-lived. JB came home with a sore throat and a cough and since they have insisted on bunking with me since my last depressive/suicidal cycle, I now have some version of what they have. I’m starting to think that it’s unwise to express gratitude for health because the universe takes that as an invitation.

Money: This headline made me snort “Gas in US hits $4 a gallon”. It’s been over $5 here for so long I can’t remember when it hit that amount, but just two days ago I saw a few stations charging well over $6. PiC was wondering why Americans are so obsessed with gas prices. I don’t really know the answer to that but I speculate it’s to do with our national culture of driving over public transit and ever-larger cars. Especially in California, we tend to also drive incredibly long distances regularly in addition to the trend to large cars. (Collective us, not us-us because he bike commutes as much as he can and I don’t commute at all.) Mind, this isn’t about deeper impacts of gas on the economy like the cost of delivering groceries which is actually a big problem. The reactions we’re thinking of are all people who are primarily concerned with their personal price at the pump.

March 30, 2026

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (304)

Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area

Year 6, Day 336: Several months ago, I semi-joked to a friend that the number of “hikers died” stories I keep seeing in the news suggests that we should quit hiking as a quick and easy survival tactic. This article, and the many articles about hiking deaths below it, removed the semi and joking part of that. The only hikes I go on are the ones you can finish in half an hour with adults and 1.5 hours with dawdling kids. I had no idea how much further people are willing to risk going and how much more dangerous that is.

Money: I am so glad that I’m a giant nerd. I was reading Kiplingers over the weekend for funsies. As one does. I learned about the existence of the long term care premium deduction, though not enough information on whether we were eligible for it or not, and writing up that question to our CPA jogged my memory about the question I had about where our mortgage interest appears in our tax return. As it turns out, it was misplaced in another line/form. Correcting it reduced our state tax bill by $1000 and increased our federal refund by $3000. Nerd wins.

Year 6, Day 337: It’s been a while since the inflammation in my hands interfered with daily life. This week has been That Kind of Week. My hands were like oven mitts and my fingers could not function like joints, they were more like blunt instruments. Any attempts at fine motor control were an exercise in futility. Could be worse, though.

This article was kind of tough to read. I’ve felt the anticipatory guilt about this for years. I don’t want to spend another minute, or penny, on my biofather and/but my sibling’s incapable of caring for himself much less our father: The impossible task of caring for ageing parents who did not care for you: ‘There’s a lot of reliving old triggers’. I have no clue how I’m going to navigate that when the time comes.

Money: Oop, there goes $600, camp wanted to be paid in full as a deposit against the two weeks we’ve booked.

Year 6, Day 338: Woof. I’m the repository for my colleagues’ and reports’ frustration and hatred of the corporation and some days, like today, it’s harder than others to let it flow back out of me. I’m not allowed to rage quit. I am allowed to run calculations on when we could be Coast FI in case I absolutely lose it and do rage quit. Or get fired because they keep setting impossible targets for us to miss (probably more likely). My friend has her money on me getting fired or laid off by next spring and I don’t have a strong argument against it.

We’re all doing our damnedest but our industry is being heavily impacted by this evil corrupt administration. Except our corporate overlords are acting like that’s not happening at all and it’s not only business as usual, they’re going to demand huge growth every single year and by George, they’re going to get it by impressing upon us a “sense of urgency”. FFS yes that’s the only thing that was preventing us forcing sales to happen, a sense of urgency. If my eyes rolled any harder we’d be issuing BOLOs for them.

Right now our numbers, if correct, say that if we assumed 5% growth and 4% withdrawal rate, we are at Coast FI. If normal growth holds. Other calculators say we’re not at Coast FI yet, and if I change our assumptions to 4% growth and 3.5% withdrawal, that adds a couple years. I wonder whether one paycheck would cover our day to day expenses until we’re fully FI because we have a lot of benefits coming out of one employer and none of my calculations include a non-saving scenario. My guess is maybe but it’d be less anxiety provoking to have a part time income supplementing it given PiC’s workplace is constantly reorg-ing and doing layoffs.

I do wonder if the market will stagnate over the next decade or if that’s an outlier sort of possibility. The market is completely irrational so my guess is it’ll do the opposite of what I think it should do. Just in case there is, though, I also ran a very low growth scenario. Using 1% growth, we need $600k more banked to be set for CoastFI and retire in 11 years. Or $800k to retire in 6 years. I don’t like this set of numbers but it’s helpful to have a range of answers to work between.

Year 6, Day 339: I keep getting a weird version of what sort of feels like FOMO. It’s not that, though. What is it called when you really want to do all the things and you can only do 1-2 of the things and all those other things left on the list make you sad? That thing. I’m happy I got to do the things I did do and I’m frustrated that that’s all I could manage.

Money: A completely random Poshmark sale happened. I hadn’t bothered installing it on my new phone but my account is still alive and I just sold one of JB’s old costumes that SmolAc had no interest in. +$7!

Year 6, Day 340: I did not eat like an adult today. There was a reasonably healthy breakfast but it all went downhill from there. A donut. A bag of potato chips. Then a half hot dog with onions followed by a half hot dog with chili and a bag of Cheetos. As PiC noted, twas a very cheap dinner for the four of us and utterly devoid of most nutrition. Whoops. Ah well. Garbage meals are a once in a while thing.

I’m feeling betrayed by Tresemme. For the past year, scents that were once fine are now absolutely intolerable, giving me headaches and nausea. This has been a slow progression. At first it was just a couple brands of shampoo that I wasn’t attached to anyway (Dove, and something else), then I noticed my old stand-by Pantene must have changed their formula because their scent is now repellant. Then my Degree deodorant this past summer – terrible. Tresemme has been my one reliable brand for hair products. Today, I tried their argan oil shampoo and conditioner in the new packaging and the scent was repellent so I passed it over to the kids. They don’t care. I assumed it was because of the argan oil, whatever that is, so I grabbed the next backup set. The next bottle was also the new packaging but the same generic type of product: also awful. I think they changed their scent when they changed their packaging. 😭😭 Now I have to find something that doesn’t set off my olfactory receptors.