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
Year 4, Day 136: JB starts school this week which is both good and bad for me. They’ll finally be out of the house for a large chunk of hours during the work day, yay!! We actually have to be up and out the door by 8 am, siiiiiiigh. I’m not looking forward to that bit.
Mixed bag on the health front. My throat has been sore for 8 days, along with mysterious mouth pain that made me wonder “hand foot mouth??? nooooooo!” It’s not COVID after three at home tests, nor anything the family is susceptible to since I’m the only miserable one. HMF is generally very contagious so I am hopeful it’s not stealth HMF. I have no idea what it is but it stinks. I chatted with my doctor who’s putting me on 2 months of antacids to see if that improves anything before referring me to ENT.
On the other hand, I took Sera for a much longer afternoon walk than we usually take and I wasn’t gasping for breath or debating crawling back the last steps. That’s a huge change from the norm!
1. Self pats on the back for having bought medium and large size pants for JB from Lands End when they were on sale, a couple years ago. I pulled them out of the storage bin today and figured out which ones fit better for this school year and organized the next size ups into another container. Easy peasy and hardly any shopping needed. I’m lucky they still generally like the same things two years on. Won’t be that easy in a few, I suspect.
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.
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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.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
