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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February 7, 2023
On Money
Income
Our primary income comes from our full time jobs. We have minimal income from investing in index funds and dividend stocks (all reinvested). We earn money on the side to supplement our main incomes. We get a bit of income from Swagbucks, cash back sites (Rakuten, Mr.Rebates) and affiliate links to Bookshop and Amazon sometimes pay a micro-commission to keep the blog running. The sidebar has ways to support the blog and our charitable giving.
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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We received our middle class tax refund. January’s typically a lean month, as are February and March, so this was appreciated. It padded out our cash flow and let me make more charitable contributions this month than we would normally feel comfortable making early in the year. It was a bit annoying that they didn’t just direct deposit the refund. I had to hunt down a fee free ATM and withdrew that money immediately to make sure that we didn’t forget and lose that money either by carelessness or to fraudsters.
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Whew, I had a minor panic when I realized that I hadn’t claimed all our Dependent Daycare FSA money from 2022. We certainly incurred more than the $5000 we allocated but I forgot to put in one final claim to take the balance. Normally I submit a single claim for multiple months and claim the full $5000 all at once but 2022 was weird, of course. Thankfully the rules give us a 3 month grace period to incur expenses and a 5 month grace period to claim all expenses. I put that claim in as soon as I realized my mistake. Whew.
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February 6, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 312: I’m on Week 3 of a cough and sore throat that won’t quit. Smol Acrobat came down sick yesterday and couldn’t nap or sleep properly so they’re home, and JB’s off school today too. Depression grabbed me by the throat on Saturday and it’s been a 48-hour-and-counting fight to stay neutral against passive self harm ideation, digging in my heels against spiraling further down this riptide, with no end in sight.
To say I’m gritting it out is an understatement.
At any given moment, I’m on the verge of throwing up, screaming with rage, and curling up into a ball of apathy never to move again. At the same time. Depression is a bizarre companion. Fatigue doesn’t make anything better.
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February 3, 2023
1. Best thing I can say about this week is I’m still here. More in next week’s post.
Challenges this week: everything.
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January 30, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 307: Woof. Stayed out way too late last night. Happy Year of the Bunny or Cat depending on which zodiac you use!
I’m going with Bunny-Cat. Which makes me think of Bunnicula.
I’m on Week 1 of the new medications. Telling myself to be patient during these first three weeks isn’t actually making me be patient.
It’s annoying that while I was the frog slowly boiling in depression, I was entirely focused on surviving day to day. Now that I KNOW that it’s likely been what’s driving at least some of my inability to focus or be patient, now that I am actually on meds, I’m hyperaware of each symptom that’s been blocking my focus. Irritability! Anxiety! Snapping at JB for being late! Anger at myself for being late! Anger about my fatigue! Every! Unreasonable! Thing!
Please let my lowest effective dose be really low so that I can get to it sooner than later. I don’t know that my frayed temper can take four or five weeks of this.
Year 3, Day 308: I actually slept deeply last night but still struggled to get up. I can’t say I felt rested, generally I never do, but I felt less unrested if that makes sense. I’ll take it and hope for more.
The tendons in my fingers aren’t working right today. That’s awkward! I rather need my fingers to flex as needed. That’s sort of crucial to all the typing and dog walking, eating, and driving that has to happen today.
Letter writing was a lot harder too, with fingers that didn’t want to grip or glide a pen across paper.
Year 3, Day 309: My mentor reminded me that we have enough money that we can use some of it to buy our peace of mind. I’ve had to sit with that reminder a bit to see what form of help we can buy that would be a net benefit.
Some things, like hiring cleaners, are more stressful than they are helpful because PiC is extremely particular about taking care of our things and the last set of cleaners didn’t use ladders or stepstools, they climbed right on our furniture and floating vanities to clean above them. That worried me, I didn’t want them slipping and falling off or the floating vanity to crack off the wall. At installation we were told the beams attaching it to the could hold a certain amount of weight but the vanity weight plus a person might be too much.
I’ll start with ordering food delivery. It’s not the best bang for our buck but on Friday, we won’t have to figure out what to do for dinner and that’s a small cache of brain we can reclaim. PiC and I both think about dinner, that’s probably not efficient, but we’re sharing the pain and that’s something.
Bigger picture, we may have to take that full time daycare hit sooner than planned. Last year, I thought maybe we’d start around the summer. Now, I’m thinking… maybe much sooner. These part time weeks are wearing on me this year.
Year 3, Day 310: Every time I hear a pharma ad run through the side effects and say something about not taking this while breastfeeding, I feel this whooosh of relief that I’m not going to ever breastfeed again.
The prices at our new local Mediterranean restaurant have gone up 20%. Yeeps! I ordered anyway. We’ll have some for dinner tonight and I’ll freeze some for next week.
Tuesdays and Thursdays are hectic. I’m cramming a whole day of work into a few hours before self defense. We try to arrive half an hour early so we can get parking and to give JB another 15-25 minutes of cardio. The kids play serious games of tag and gymnastics before class starts. Makes me feel like we’re getting extra bang for our buck. We already save 30% by prepaying for the year but when would I ever turn down a little extra bonus?
I hit the Gap and Old Navy clearance sales for our Lakota families. If everything ships, I’ll have acquired 44 tops, 10 pairs of pants, 10 pairs of sneakers and toddler boots, and 64 pairs of socks split between the Allen Youth Center and the Red Shirt School for $370.
Year 3, Day 311: Maybe the meds are helping even at sub-therapeutic levels. Maybe it’s a placebo effect. Whatever it is, even with my cold getting much worse today, and terrible sleep interrupted with nightmares, heartburn, and other indefensible reasons last night, my level of end of week despair was not nearly as high as any other Friday of the past few months. PiC did cover a lot of the work day with Smol and that helped too but I took my turns both morning and afternoon despite feeling like garbage with this cough and chills.
Today’s dinner: small pies and fancy salads!
Pies: Chicken Tikka Masala, Cajun Chicken, Beef and Stout, Apple Saffron
Salads that I wouldn’t have time to make: Seared Lemon Pepper Tuna , Tabouli Quinoa Salad with Mediterranean Chicken, Duck Breast.
Very expensive for the quantities we’re getting but I couldn’t make this without doubling the cost in time and ingredients. Triple that of frustration. Also it’s sampler style so we can taste four different pies in one go. One pie can barely happen around here, forget more than that!
January 27, 2023
1. Last week I felt compelled to host our “usual” Lunar NY dinner. By Wednesday I realized I really didn’t want to host anything and instead got in touch with an old friend who’d been wanting to talk and they invited us over.
It was brilliant. The kids got to play with older cousins, there was no crying or whining, we had a lovely casual dinner without any pressure to do all the traditional stuff that maybe we don’t wanna do this year.
2. JB shared that they like their self defense partner and I just said I was glad for them. I was tempted to say they need to work harder at practice but you know what? I’m starting to remember how some of that felt when I was growing up. That’s a comment for another time, if ever.
Challenges this week: I’m sick again. Bah.
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January 24, 2023
Life with JB
I’m a highly risk averse person, and that absolutely influences how I parent and what I let JB do. They’re still not allowed to cross the street or go to the store alone, though I’d wager I was probably doing that when I was close to this age. I was walking my dog to the vet alone by the time I was 13. We live on a very busy street with reckless drivers, and their level of attention is not nearly where it should be for something like this.
This article suggests that modern parenting is preventing kids from getting reasonable doses of stress, impairing their flexibility and growth. This is a question and a balance I struggle with.
I don’t feel the need to expose them to truly stressful situations like harassment and fighting but we also don’t want them to be Pillsbury doughboy soft.
We saw a neighbor kid walking their new puppy last year. I thought he was JB’s age. It took me aback, and made me reevaluate what I considered safe or unsafe for the kids. I mean, I still wouldn’t let JB walk Sera alone. Unlike neighbor dog, Sera outweighs JB and is a STRONG pibble. Seamus used to drag me on runs and I had to sprint to keep up with him in my 20s when I had experience with dogs. So this is me being sensible. Would I / we let them walk a small dog? Hm. I’d be willing to have them practice short solo jaunts. Maybe. But we aren’t likely ever to get a small dog. I’ve had them and I love them but I tend to need a big dog to get my arms around for a therapeutic hug.
We had some conflict the other day when they came shrieking about a bug in the garage. I was quite impatient with them for panicking and not investigating the situation a little bit more before running to me. It was dead! I took care of that one but I made them sweep out the second dead bug they found. They were highly resentful but this feels well within their capabilities to hold a broom and push a dead bug out the door.
I try to give them more “advanced” responsibilities in our day to day lives but I do still worry that I’m sheltering them too much.
Life with Smol Acrobat
The new year brought a few happy changes: they seem to be eating more, and on their own. By itself, not eating much wouldn’t bother me, it’s the fact that they were constantly distracted and wouldn’t just eat their little portion and GO. They’d dilly dally and mess about and then repeatedly come back asking for more little bits. It’s such a pain!
Now that they have more of an appetite, they are more focused on eating until they’re finished and then we can move on. I hope this sticks.
Their language is developing more, they’re trying to gabble out more syllables if not not words. Some words are coming through.
I’m less enamored with the memory and object permanence related development. Specifically to do with vaccines. They’d gotten their bivalent booster and instead of forgetting all about it a minute later, they remembered. They wouldn’t stop talking about it. They kept pointing at the injection site and telling us “poke”. But they also wanted to turn back around and go back to the vaccine clinic, asking for “more” so I’m not clear on what was going on there.
Pupdate
Sera’s been extra snuggly of late and I like it. Though it is hard to work with her constantly prodding me with her nose for attention, I like that she’s been coming to hang out with me during the work day. Usually I can’t convince her to come into the office, much less hang out for petting.
Sera’s sweater arrived and it’s Very Cute! She’s so snuggly in it!
Precious Moments
JB: I wish the laundry would just wash itself so I could put it away faster.
Boy howdy, me too! On all counts.
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JB looking at a McLaren: hey! That looks like a Hot Wheel!
Kid perspectives make me laugh.
January 23, 2023
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 300: I love and hate holiday Mondays. This one everyone else has off except me. I should have taken it as a vacation day but I forgot to.
On the one hand, it never feels like Monday, it feels like an odd floater day and it makes all the rest of the week feel off. On the other hand, I got to sleep in a little because Smol didn’t insist on being officially awake at 6 am (minor miracle) and no one else had to be taken to school or to daycare or anything by a certain time. I always appreciate a little more rest when I’m this fatigued. My nights have been plagued with intense fear nightmares since last week. My subconscious is clearly fixated on my fear of abandonment. Is this enhanced because of the upcoming psych evaluation? I realize that I’ve internalized the old stigma of the ADD/ADHD from days past. I certainly didn’t feel anything like judgement for friends who were diagnosed in adulthood in the past few years but I feel it for myself.
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