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
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 $223.60 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
We’re both working on other ways to bring in income on a small scale. Me with my banking and credit card bonuses, him with his bike commuting to earn rebates. They’re not great gobs of money but they add up.
Year 4, Day 129: I am letting JB enjoy a true summer treat a few days this week: sleeping in as late as they felt like. Usually I make them get up by 930 so that their sleep patterns aren’t too disrupted but a day or two of teenage-late rising won’t hurt. They’ll have a full week to start getting up earlier until they’re back on track for the first day of school. That’s approaching fast.
We don’t do any back to school shopping for the kids but I will be gearing up to do shopping for the Lakota families. I knew I wouldn’t have time to take on a July family so we helped two families in June. My plan was to recover lost ground from being off work and then pick up an August family or tackle a bulk school shopping list. I’ve gotten a special request from the coordinators who are worried about the many requests that are going up on the Okini as the summer comes to a close. So many kids need school clothes and school supplies. We’ll have a phone call this week to talk about possible ways we could organize a bulk buying solution to make the most of our money.
Year 4, Day 130: My therapist and I were both right. She was right: taking some time off was incredibly refreshing, I haven’t felt so few symptoms in years. I was right about what would happen after taking time off: I don’t want to work at all. I want to do the things I care about buuuuut that doesn’t include this work. Since that’s not yet an option financially… welp. Here we are. Working again. Getting back into the groove of something I am quite good at but do not love for the sake of a paycheck and our future financial stability, utterly begrudgingly some days. Less so on other days.
A dear friend and I daydreamed about what we’d do with life-changing windfall money, as unlikely as it is to occur. They’d probably stay on their current career path for a spell, to show they could. Their spouse would keep a hand in. They derive joy from their work and would be happier continuing, but a fraction of the current volume would be sufficient to keep them happy. I personally have nothing to prove to myself, I’d just stay on to set my team up for success and negotiate for more money for them before I left. Without that bit, I could step away tomorrow and not look back. I think PiC would happily walk away from his job too if our income and healthcare were covered.
Year 4, Day 131: My local friend notified me that they have a ton of household goods collected for the Lakota Reservation. That’s great!
More than three extra large shipping boxes worth. Oh. Oh boy. I canvassed a local business we frequent to ask for their large shipping boxes when they next get merchandise in. If they thought I was very weird they hid it well.
Now I have to figure out how to make time to pack and ship it all.
Orville Peck’s voice is something!
Year 4, Day 132: I’m not ready to say I’m feeling rested after sleeping but I am noticing that I’ve slept like a rock a few days this week. Deep sleep, undisturbed by constant nightmares, is so unusual I can’t recall when that was last the norm.
Year 4, Day 133: JB enjoyed a full day of fun with an Uncle they adore and haven’t seen in three years. I got time to cook two pot roasts for a special going away dinner for said Uncle and made some progress on every work item on my very long for a Friday list of work priorities. They got the better deal but I’m not dissatisfied.
I omitted the tomato paste and flour and used red wine this time, using this recipe, and it seems like the wine is the one variable that’s been missing and much needed for a successfully delicious pot roast. My past pot roasts have been almost good enough but not quite. I’ll need to pick up some reasonably priced red wine to keep on hand for the next ones instead of using a rather pricey Pinot that was gifted to us four years ago and had been gathering dust all this time. I’d also splurged on a large bag of small potatoes and they were perfect. Minimal prep needed and they didn’t fall apart.
Year 4, Day 122: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
This is very apt for me right now. I’m navigating a few relationships that are rough right now and it feels like the emotional white water rapids. With one, I’m very unsure if any of it is personal, or if it’s just what the other person needs, or if what the other person needs is NOT me in their life. Which leads to a lot of sadness and wondering what I did wrong. This situation just affirms my lizard brain’s conviction about my inevitable abandonment. When people know me, and I care about them, they leave me.
With another, I’ve shared some deeply personal and upsetting information that dredged up a lot of bad memories about mutuals and they’re digesting it but the loss of that enormous pressurized rock in my chest where I’ve held it in so long has me spinning out of balance. I know they need time to digest but my anxiety is out of control with catastrophic thinking. It goes straight to the worst case scenario and starts planning for that, while also direly wishing bad things would happen to me “and just be done with it”. I mean, I don’t want to leave my kids but this is a pattern I recognize that goes waaay back to when the financial abuse started. It was always too much. That load was immensely heavy.
I can’t remember if I posted this so I am posting now: JB’s Spotted Friends Collection is live! They’re dreaming up new themes, and experimenting with more art.
2. I’d been waffling about on the idea of selling my old phone after I upgraded last year. It still works, the battery was just degraded to the point of requiring two or three charging sessions a day with my heavy use and shutting off at 33% power. But! I found a use for it! JB can use it to read books on Libby and play games on the PBS kids app.
JB’s been fuming about unfairness in the world. The kids who don’t follow the rules at school are infuriating. The kids who are jerks are infuriating. The landlords who don’t clean appliances for their new renters are infuriating.They’re formulating their sense of the world and while they themselves are not in fact a super conscientious rule follower, they’re keenly alert to other people breaking the rules.It feels like a tough needle to thread. I get very upset about unfairness in the world and sometimes it turns me into a very grumpy person.
This made me laugh. If you’ve been reading these since JB was born, you understand. We try our darnedest to gentle parent even though JB just pushes every button we have and some we didn’t know we had. We don’t always succeed.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Smol’s got a few chores of their own now: clearing the table after dinner, restocking the toilet paper in the bathrooms, and helping JB put away some laundry now and again. The last one isn’t assigned by us, that one is because JB tricks them into thinking it’s a game to get some help.
I’m on the fence about how I feel about that, comes of having a Loki-type brother who would Tom Sawyer me into doing his dirty work. But since Smol will also have to learn to do and put away laundry when they’re older, I come down on the side of allowing it.
I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to realize they can slip both hands into the new toilet paper rolls and go to Punching Town like a tiny Mega Man though. I think JB figured that one out almost immediately. They’re getting quite good at stacking the toilet paper rolls very high without toppling over.
Well, when you put it that way…
Pupdate
Sera has been noticeably more clingy since December, and even more so when the kids are home. Their volume makes her nervous and she wants to hide behind my legs a lot. She’s not scared of them, though. She’s happy otherwise, and not anxious generally. I’m guessing she doesn’t like not knowing if the yelling is happy or upset. I remind her I can’t tell either, until I clearly hear crying, but that doesn’t reassure her.She and Smol Acrobat reached a small milestone. They ordered her into the garage when we were all getting ready to go out. She understood the command and obeyed! Seamus would never have deigned to obey any commands that toddler JB issued, but when they spoke clearly enough, Sera would.
Precious Moments
JB: this kid at school hates cocomelon. And when I said I like to watch it with my little Smol Acrobat, he said WHAT?? I HATE COCOMELON!!
Me: huh. What’d you say?
JB: I said no one’s making you watch it. I like it so I watch it with my family. It’s not hurting you.
Year 4, Day 115: A friend is celebrating a big decade birthday and commented well, at this age, they’re all big aren’t they. Better than the alternative, anyway. On an almost related note, I hate that a favorite author is fighting cancer but she also tells the best stories during treatment and it’s hard not to appreciate these Twitter threads (I very much recommend the Clocktaur Wars duo and her Paladin series having just re-read them):
Year 3, Day 116: I actually remembered to put sunblock on before taking the kids to the park but still got sunburned. Unfair!
At least I won’t need an extra blanket and heating pad tonight?
This wracking cough is still plaguing me morning and night. Sometimes midday, but less often. I feel less horrible than last week but still frustrated at being sick for so long. I’m grateful that my doctor prescribed both heavy duty cough meds that I requested without question. We’re super fortunate to have good healthcare providers right now and hate that everyone doesn’t have equal access to care like we have.
Oh, speaking of doctors, I’ll have to see a dermatologist about this lump that mysteriously appeared in 2020 when I had no time to care about anything not dire. At the time, I assumed it was a weird body acne thing that would run its course but here we are, 3 years later and it feels like time to name it or get rid of it. The consultation will be about (I hope) removing it. I also hope it’ll be a simple procedure.
I am genuinely puzzled why society continues to expect less from cishet men than trained pets. None of this strikes me as funny. It’s more like she’s laughing because otherwise she’d have to cry about how useless he is.
This lady shared 5 dumb things her husband did when she was in labor. I helped translate. pic.twitter.com/Wcq46m1YVC
Year 3, Day 117: Overhearing an acquaintance talking about her writing process, I couldn’t help but think about all the writers I currently admire, the stories and characters they’ve devised that I love, and what sort of styles they’re known for.
Just off the top of my head: Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Ursula Vernon, DJ Older, Nnedi Okarafor, NK Jemisin, Fonda Lee, Seanan McGuire, Kate Elliott, KB Spangler, Nghi Vo, Cassandra Khaw.
In my 20s, I dreamed of being able to write books/something that people would enjoy reading but had no faith I’d ever have the skill. My former English teacher always reminded me that Amy Tan didn’t write The Joy Luck Club until her late 30s, there was plenty of time. Some years on, having developed a bit of a mentor-mentee relationship with a very established writer, I asked this writer to read a post I’d written here for feedback. His feedback was insightful but I didn’t have the chops to properly address it. Maybe it’s worth revisiting, it’s been over a decade since I first wrote it, but now in my early 40s (and I know that old saw “it’s not too late until you’re dead”) it feels like if I was capable of writing something worth reading, or had an idea worth the time, that compulsion would have happened by now. Not to compare myself to Terry Pratchett in terms of skill, but in terms of that drive to write, this anecdote feels like evidence I just don’t have it in me. It doesn’t feel like I’ve got anything worth saying that needs my voice to say it.
Umberto Eco said: I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
Maybe my yen is faded. Perhaps it’s time to put that dream to bed instead of continuing to feel vaguely dissatisfied with myself for not accomplishing anything. Because if we’re honest, I haven’t found a way to squeeze out extra hours in a day to spend on writing, and no one (who isn’t, say, Terry Pratchett) gets better at writing without a lot of practice, focus, and good feedback.
And entirely aside from that, the author stories from the trenches of having to market their books nonstop is utterly depressing. I’m terrible at marketing.
Terry Pratchett once rang up a friend and said, “I’m exhausted! I need a break. I’m taking a six-month sabbatical.”
Six months later his friend asked him, “Hey, how’d your sabbatical go?”
Terry said, grumpily, “I wrote two books.”
— Owl! at the Library 😴🧙♀️ (@SketchesbyBoze) July 19, 2023
Year 3, Day 118: There’s almost something laughable about elderly relatives accusing us of being overly indulgent and permissive with Smol Acrobat, while complete strangers comment that they are well behaved in public (timing is everything). We’re tired, and we are trying to gentle parent, but we’re neither indulgent or permissive when it comes to the important things. Some folks just aren’t happy unless they’re dousing other people with their unhappiness and can’t feel good about themselves without insulting someone else. Must be sad to be them.
Separately: I was lucky enough to have a long heart to heart with a chosen parent about all kinds of family history including abusive parent figures and how we’ve coped with it. We’re fundamentally such different people and we have very different coping mentalities, and I’m so grateful to have found a parent in them.
Naturally, my gut couldn’t accept that they like me for me. No matter who it is, some part of my brain starts second-guessing why they put up with me. The imprints in my psyche after years of knowing that half my family of origin had no love for me, but not understanding why, keep floating to the surface. Who am I to deserve love? Nobody, that’s who.
I keep reminding myself it’ll take time to erase those marks.
Year 3, Day 119: It’s been a busy week. Mostly good, some bad, but having support from my chosen family so that I could steal a few moments without having to mind them constantly has been unbelievably amazing. I miss my community, I miss my chosen family, and it’s been pure joy to see Smol Acrobat bond deeply with Grandma. They’re far more selective about who they’re close with, whereas JB was expansive, and so this is the first time I’m seeing them really invested in a relationship with another person outside of our nuclear family.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
