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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June 2, 2023
1. Week one of camp for JB: so far so good! This is a new one for all of us so we (JB and I, separately) were slightly apprehensive. Them: what if no one likes me?
Me: what if it’s run by untrustworthy bastards?
They found two familiar faces and two more kids from their school, so that was their concern allayed. I spent the whole first day camped out in the waiting area to keep an eye on things. My butt wasn’t pleased by the hours on a hard chair but my worrywart soul was appeased.
2. WE MADE IT TO FRIDAY. OMG.
I feel like the Frugalwoods must have been following the wrong people before dreaming of growing all their food. I started following one farmer friend years ago (Neolithic Sheep) and learned immediately that, physical limitations aside, I didn’t ever want to HAVE to grow all my own food. It’s an unfathomable amount of work. The chores never stop, the harvest comes when the harvest comes, and you’re never guaranteed a harvest which is especially stark if you’re depending on it. I like the idea of growing some of my own food on a very small scale, like we do with the potatoes. A few harvests are a treat, and fun, with long periods of growth in between.
I know about the looming crisis with the debt ceiling fight though I can’t wrap my head around the details at the moment. What I do find easy to understand is that a default would hurt a hell of a lot of real people, none of whom the politicians care about: Financial Concerns – How a U.S. government debt default would affect my military family
Jane Fonda Shades Redford, Disses Godard, Dishes On Hepburn In No-Holds-Barred Appearance In Cannes: “We would shoot sometimes 14 hours a day,” she noted. “And Lee Marvin took me aside and he said, ‘Fonda, we’re the stars of this movie. If we allow them to work us so many hours, we’re not the ones that get hurt. It’s the crew. We have to stand up for the workers, for the crew, and we have to refuse to work these long hours. We have to stand up for the crew.’ And that had never occurred to me. That was a huge lesson from Lee Marvin….
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on the issue of climate change:
“We still have reason to be hopeful if we do everything right. But I’m saying this is serious. We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels,” she said. “And unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest — Global South, people on islands, poor people of color. It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men – [responsible for the crisis].”
May 29, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 59: A very Mondayest of Mondays – we have work up to our ears, unethical/shady customers, my ribs feel caved in and I can’t raise my arms to shoulder height because they feel like they’re getting dislocated, and of course, car trouble. Oh and then midday brain fog floated in that I want to box it. But I can’t because the arms, they cannot be raised. Ger-offa-me!
We have quite old cars and they’ve been relatively low maintenance. Certainly maintenance has been cheaper than any car payment would have been. My car started acting up on Saturday, which is unnerving at this age. I always wonder if this time will be more expensive to repair than it’s worth. That’s a mix of not being in charge of car maintenance and my usual catastrophizing tendencies (work in progress!) PiC is working on it but this week we’re effectively down to one car. We’ll make it work but it’s not great with the 2 different school dropoffs/pickups and PiC going to work onsite plus appointments this week.
We ran the diagnostic tool thingie (which I’m sure has a real name) which told us to replace the spark plugs and ignition coils. Crossing my fingers that this is all that’s needed. I’ll be grateful if we only need to spend a few hundred to get her up and running again.
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We’re meeting with a potential dogsitter this week. This person is much closer than our emergency sitter we’ve used for the past two trips. We really LIKE the emergency sitter, but it’s such an impractical distance to travel at the best of times.
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Year 3, Day 60: We’re coming up on the last day of school in these parts fast and we’ve been putting together JB’s camp schedule. The problem is, I don’t know a single soul at this new camp we’re trying for a few days. I do NOT feel comfortable leaving my kid there without a known reliable adult or any friends with kids there. I don’t know when I’ll be ok with that, probably not for a few more years. This means I’m going to be work-camping out all week at the new camp for the first week. We’ll be back at a known camp after that. Yes, I realize this seems like overkill but it’s my comfort level. That requires back up power packs with higher outputs since I can’t count on having an outlet to plug into. Now isn’t the ideal time to buy but now it when I need them and they were always part of the multi-layer plan to be prepared for power outages so I might as well test them out.
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I started collecting funds to hold for the Fall shipment of snacks for Penny’s students before folks disperse for the summer. $20-25 contributions go a long way when we all lift together! We’ll be able to set them up nicely in the fall and it’s really good to know we’re concretely helping hungry kids get some food during their school days.
I’m also collecting funds for the next Lakota family. I’m reserving $120 to ship 4 boxes and a stash of gift cards to shop the Thanksgiving sales this fall. I wonder if we can repeat last year’s Thanksgiving and Native Heritage Month drive. I really HOPE to but….it’s been a weird year for a lot of folks.
Year 3, Day 61: JB has been dealing with conflict with a kid in their class on and off all year. We hadn’t heard anything for months until this week, and a whole jumble of bad behavior came out. This kid tries to push a mutual friend to take sides, tells the mutual friend to keep a secret and loudly proclaims “DON’T TELL JB!” and tries to turn the other kids against JB at lunch. She tried on stomp on JB’s belongings and weaponizes a teacher-relative against the other kids. JB has tried to talk to her about it but the kid just rolls her eyes or denies having ever done anything wrong. In short, this kid is a giant jerk. It makes me angry on their behalf that this kid seems to go out of their way to be a jerk. We had a lot of talks about it, but there’s no real solution for a second grader beyond: stay away from people who treat you like crap. Then again, that’s true of many such jerks they’ll encounter in life.
I hope that the jerk either grows up over the summer, or disappears from JB’s life entirely, lost to the crowds of people that they’ll encounter as they change classes each year. I know there’s no guarantee they won’t cross paths again, but I can hope!
I’m also hoping this isn’t developing into a real bullying situation but it sure shows the early signs of being one.
Year 3, Day 62: Smol Acrobat woke 5 minutes after midnight and plaintively asked to sleep in the big bed after they calmed down. I caved and let them squirmy wormy all over my prone self as I tried to sleep and ignore them, they’re using grumpy at night when they’re getting sick and I worried.
We’ve finally registered JB for a mishmash of gymnastics camps next week. They’re pretty excited about it. Today, I registered them for 6 consecutive weeks of summer camp at almost $500/week. ☠️
It’s starting to sink in that in addition to daycare, we’re paying another $2000/month roughly for camp.
Between these, and our recent car trouble, summer is $$$$!
Year 3, Day 63: Uf, another “big bed” night for Smol coupled with a 550 am “Mama, eat”. Nooooo…..
We need more postage for Ye Little Art Shoppe. We’ve had a steady trickle of sales but they’ve stopped for now. Thinking ahead, I’ll be with JB nearly all next week, working, monitoring their camp, and prepping their latest round of art to prepare new cards for the shop.
I won’t have time to fill card orders next week so I might as well treat next week as a rest and regroup period. That means I can order postage online instead of trying to add a trip to the post office with all our meetings and appointments. It’ll cost $1.55 extra but buying online means one less errand to run over a holiday weekend and I can get a variety of the new forever stamps that our local PO is too small to have. This might have to be my last indulgence for a few months.
I’m sad today. My friends from my working college days are in town and initially they were going to spend a day with us. But instead they’ve changed their plans to go sightseeing further north instead. I couldn’t afford the energy to go with them today, even though we haven’t been able to see them in years, before the pandemic. I understand but I’m sad.
May 26, 2023
1. I had my weekly therapy session, PiC had his weekly (when he can, this depends on friends showing up) sportsy outing. These are both good for our health.
2. We walked the whole family to the local park on Sunday for outdoor time. That was good for everyone though I crashed hard a couple hours after we got back. Impromptu nap!
Helping folks:
From a dear friend… My friend’s partner needs a new car or repairs because rural Minnesota. They teach ASL and drive folks just a little older than them all over. (They’ve been stuck at this funded level of $1000 for 2 months, can we help them out?)
These poor dogs got QUILLED. Can we help their family with the vet bill?
I follow @tinytempest on Twitter and she’s fundraising for family in a tough spot. Emergency Help for the Byrd – Bradford Family.
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May 22, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 52: There are days I’m tired of being the only working set of eyes around here. This isn’t one of those stereotypical overworked wives things. PiC sees all the clutter and cleaning that needs to be done, and maintenance and does his share. This isn’t a household fairness thing. It’s literally about eyesight. The two of them cannot find things!
JB let their backup set of glasses go missing, the pair that’s supposed to live in their backpack, and I was annoyed that PiC had to find this out when their primary pair broke. I was grouchy that I hadn’t remembered to follow up about whether they were wearing their glasses at school MONTHS ago like I’d intended. Anyway, he did the disgruntled first parent on the scene talk with them, then I followed up with the slightly calmer but still irritated orders that they were to spend the entire afternoon today searching for the glasses and doing nothing else until they succeeded.
6 pm rolls around, PiC had gotten dinner on the table, and JB still hasn’t found them.
Still irritated, I went through their desk area, knocking over the apparently never been emptied pencil sharpener in the process, vacuumed that mess up, and then checked their room. I found those damn glasses in 15 minutes without zero idea of where they had last been sighted.
Smol Acrobat had better have my finding ability, I refuse to be the only one that can find lost items in this family!
Year 3, Day 53: Smol and JB were sick all weekend and Smol spiked a really scary fever overnight so I was up all night with them making sure that the fever responded to meds. It did but it was a trudge along, trying to just get the bare minimum done, no-rest sort of day for me.
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Bless my GP, she doesn’t know whatall is wrong with me but she’s always willing to explore and test to cross things off the list if there’s even a semi plausible reason to consider it. While I don’t present with classic Cushing’s and she’s mildly skeptical that it is the (or a) cause for some of my issues, we’re doing a screening for it anyway just to be sure since I don’t object to it.
Year 3, Day 54: Squeaky and hoarse, Smol started talking at about 630 this morning. They made it through the night, thank goodness, without waking and crying like they’d done six times Friday night. They were even in a GOOD mood, thank more goodness. PiC was up too late working, and small miracle I wasn’t feeling as bad as usual, so Smol and I had an unusual early morning together. And it was ok! They were opinionated but not overly difficult.
Random food thoughts: Cilantro suddenly tastes like soap to me this week. Liquid Dawn, in fact. It’s never tasted like soap before. It’s always tasted like green stuff. Not great, not terrible, and I didn’t love or hate it before. But suddenly, it’s a mouthful of soap. Weirdly, that wasn’t terrible like a real mouthful of soap would me. Surprising but I didn’t hate it.
That was related to the cilantro that I stopped adding to the leftover pozole I had for lunch – absolutely wonderful. I love fresh squeezed limes. Also apple fritters. I love those unexpectedly crunchy little bits scattered along the edges.
Year 3, Day 55: FINALLY! I remembered to follow up on the form I need to volunteer at JB’s school. Now, to be fair, I only just got my required physical done recently so it wasn’t that I was dragging my feet. I just forgot all this week that I could ask them to get the form filled out now.
I’m not particularly in love with the idea of more socializing but I do want to have the option of going on field trips with them or helping out at the library or in the garden if I can make time, someday. Here’s hoping I’ll have enough time to get those forms into the school office before the end of the year.
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It’s pitiful that it’s taken me months to get around to the dog bedding laundry but it has. Today, today was the day! Sera’s 🐶 bed cover was swapped out for the clean spare, and washed with her blankets and sweaters. The washing bit isn’t hard, though timing things so I wash and dry everything before 4 pm is tricky when squeezed in between working, doing school pickup, and walking and feeding Sera. The part I’ve not had the energy to cover is, when the washer dries out, needing to vacuum the whole thing or else the lingering fur gets all over the next load of laundry. But today, I did it all. I was tireder than a sloth but fit into today’s rounds and now Sera 🐶 is snuggling happily with a fresh blanket and we are both happy. No wonder I live a small life. The simplest things are satisfying.
Year 3, Day 56: The mass exodus from Twitter (and maybe also the economy? I’m less sure about that part) has made fundraising for the Lakota families
REALLY slow this year. I confirmed there will be a post-school giveaway of lost and found clothes where I’ll gather many armloads of kid sized coats to ship to the Allen Youth Center this month, I confirmed that’s still on. My fingers are crossed we’ll gather enough funds to help out another family in June but it’s hard to say if we’ll be able to hit that goal.
I’ll continue throwing notes out into Twitter in hopes enough folks are still around who want to contribute. I’d surely appreciate y’all sharing too if you can.
May 19, 2023
1. Do you, too, love otters? The Monterey Bay otter live cam is a really soothing way to start or end your day. So are the moon jelly and jelly cams.
2. I love the feel of freshly vacuumed floors underfoot. Eternal thanks to robot vacuum for making that happen with little effort from me.
3. Our local taqueria has pozole, how did I never notice before now?! It’s delicious. It was worth deviating from my currently normal order of taco salad.
Helping folks:
This powwow is at the end of the month and the organizer will have to bear the costs personally if funds aren’t raised in time: Help fund the 3rd Annual Odenong Powwow. More info on it from @NDNSilver
An activism: @mbrockenbrough tweeted: “For fun, I filed a complaint against the fascist book banning organization Moms for Liberty with the IRS. The form is here, if you’d like to join me: https://irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f13909.pdf
This should not be a tax-exempt organization promoting social welfare. Hate is not social welfare. Teachers promote social welfare. They pay taxes. Librarians, too. They pay taxes. Children’s authors pay taxes. Defamatory wannabe fascists shouldn’t get a free ride.”
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May 16, 2023
Life with JB
JB and I had a serious talk about red envelope etiquette. You never open them in front of the giver, you never ever count the money inside in front of them! They’re so accustomed to Western gift giving traditions where you open gifts you were given in front of the giver (I also hate this tradition) that they recently did both in front of a person who is far too permissive. I was horrified. I’ve spoken to them in the past about the rule. They clearly had not absorbed the lesson. It didn’t help that said person pooh-poohed the error and then tried to naysay me when I corrected JB. Oh, hell no. My kid, my rules. This dismissive nonsense is Not Happening. (I’m proud/glad/relieved that this difficult person in this particular encounter didn’t affect my blood pressure as usual. Thanks, meds, therapy, friends with helpful coping strategies!)
This isn’t an idle worry. I’ve seen Permissive Person with their other child-relatives. Those kids are unbearable. They ignore people speaking to them, pout when they don’t get everything they asked for, pitch tantrums in response to everything that isn’t precisely and exactly what they want. As far as I’m aware (and there are Special Ed specialists in the family who would have identified it if this were the case), this isn’t an issue of being neurodivergent and overstimulated. They’re just bratty and worse for not having any boundaries enforced. Anyway. Cautionary tale as far as I’m concerned. Permissive Person’s influence has to be counteracted at all times. (more…)
May 15, 2023
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 4, Day 45: Experiencing mild jealousy. JB’s friend is the 3rd of 4 kids and all the kids have been looked after by their grandparents. The older kids who are in school are dropped off and picked up by grandparents if the parents aren’t available, they also chauffeur the kids to all their afterschool activities. Entirely leaving aside the reality of the parents we have, I can only imagine how much we could give and save if we didn’t have to spend over $2000 a month on childcare ever over the course of JB and Smol Acrobat’s pre-school lives. Anyway, I don’t envy their lives. Four kids is just too many for me to wrap my head around. I just sigh over the imagined savings for a minute because I’m feeling our inability to do ALL the things. I need to save, and invest, and really want to be able to help a whole lot of people going through rough times right now. But with the huge $2300 monthly bite out of our budget, I’ve had to pull back. That is going to annoy me for a bit. I’d gotten used to being able to help folks more.
To go with that, I am mildly annoyed at myself. We/I somehow failed to increase our FSA contributions this year to the maximum $3050. How did I mess that up?! Ugh. Next year we’ll get it right.
Year 3, Day 46: Ant update: they still haven’t returned to the kitchen and might be gone from one bathroom. Several were spotted in the other bathroom today, though. Where to bait them…? They were inside the shower which gets wet daily. Outside the shower is too accessible to kids and Sera 🐶.
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Gripe: people like @trappercap on accessibility are the worst. American society is hugely inaccessible. This is related to games development but it’s so common to hear this kind of tripe with regard to accessibility in anything. It’s so frustrating as someone who could really use a lot of accommodations but constantly makes do, at my own personal health expense, without. Making things more accessible is often good for so many more people than you’d think at first. It’s not just for people who are disabled. Often it’s also good for the very young, or elderly, or new parents who have babies in strollers, or any number of other life circumstances that may be temporary but still difficult. (more…)