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
Read More
July 11, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 108: Alas. We had ONE good sleep night, Saturday, and it made Sunday feel 100x better than an average day. It was too much to hope for a second solid sleep like that but 5 wake-ups in the night is too much! Like a dang boomerang.
*****
Anyway, I didn’t want to jinx us by recording the immediate post-vax reaction but now that we’re 72 hours out, it seems reasonably safe to report the short term: Smol Acrobat seems to be taking Dose 1 very well. They hardly noticed the actual needle, which is unusual, and they didn’t seem to have any side effects. No fever, fatigue, aches. Side effects to Moderna are expected to last a couple days so I think we’re through the woods on that part.
*****
Gas is currently $6.06/gal. Just stating that for posterity’s sake.
*****
We’re not celebrating this national holiday. We’re very tired humans. And we’re humans who are very tired of this country being a place that is controlled by the Christian right and tells most of us we’re second class or lower, that we don’t deserve to live happy healthy lives unless it’s within specifically drawn out lines of “acceptability” and says that it’s ok that children are slaughtered in schools as long as they can have their guns. This is not and has never been a great place. It could be so much better. But will it?
*****
(more…)
July 8, 2022
1. I had one semi good parenting moment this week (month/year). JB sat and talked to me about an incident they didn’t feel good about and didn’t want to tell anyone else about.
I haven’t felt like a present or good enough parent in a really long time and I have deeply worried that that would affect their trust in me. Hell, it eroded my trust in me! But I suppose I was working from a lot less self trust to begin with.
2. We ran into a handful of old daycare friends this week and it was quite nice catching up with them.
3. Smol Acrobat’s willingness to wave goodbye to friends we know and love but they haven’t quite yet embraced was purchased with three snacks.
(more…)
July 5, 2022
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. There are ways to support the blog and our charitable giving in the sidebar.
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 $270 in dividends from the stocks portfolio.
We recycled 5 ink cartridges to earn $10 in Staples rewards. That brings our rewards total to $30.70. That $0.70 is just going to keep on rolling over for a while since we don’t buy a lot from Staples regularly. I wonder if they will expire after 6 months… Ah ha: “Unissued Rewards will expire at the end of the following calendar quarter, unless a qualifying purchase is made.” I suppose I can just keep them alive with a periodic purchase if I actually need something. Otherwise those rewards under $5 will just expire. JB is obsessed with Staples now, btw. PiC took them to run errands for me and they’re obsessed with ALL THE OFFICE SUPPLIES š¤©šš¤© Just like me. We are absolute suckers.
(more…)
July 4, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 101: 530 am wake up. Our sleep experiment has been a shambles since we’ve all (except PiC) caught JB’s virus (not COVID). We couldn’t, in good conscience, cut short Smol’s daytime naps when they are trying to recover from this bug. And really, I’m just barely holding on myself. I need those longer breaks.
*****
I’m surprised I hadn’t mentioned some of these things but in hindsight I shouldn’t be. Last week was full of managing sick children, PiC’s work overload (lots of people are going off on vacation in his department so he’s covering double digit projects), the soul punch that was SCOTUS overturning Roe v Wade. I got sick too, so I could barely think. This week’s post will catch up on the big important things.
I spent every day since June 15th stalking the sites for Smol’s vax. The earliest I could get a slot was for last Friday which we had to reschedule to this week because they were feverish on the day. The first replacement appointment we could get was a week out. Deepest of sighs. I had to get my booster when I was sick and it was absolutely terrible so we don’t want to put Smol through the same wringer.
***** (more…)
July 1, 2022
1. Whenever I see an author I like on Twitter, I make sure to ask the library to add their books to our collection. Support authors!
2. Walgreens didn’t credit my $5 promo Walgreens cash after a purchase last week. Happily it only took two attempts on chat to get it credited. It’s gotta be the little things these days.
Challenges this week: everything, y’all.
(more…)
June 27, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 94: 12 am, 2 am, 430 am, 445 am 515 am wake ups. I’m at my wit’s end today. Yes, it was a terrible night of sleep (half was my body being what it is and half was Smol) but it’s now what, three months of trying to ride this out?
This weekend I couldn’t take it anymore and spent some time researching a dozen articles on how to deal with borked sleep and there are so many many reasons it could be and half of them contradict the other hald. Bedtime too early, bedtime too late, too much napping, too little napping, low sleep need, more sleep need.
Today specifically, I’m frazzled between needing to work and needing to fix Smol’s sleep schedule because we cannot keep going like this. Diagnosing what’s causing them their early waking has me pulling my hair out though. They might average 3-4 hours of naps at day and only sleep 10 hours at night. They’re consistently getting up way too early every morning, bright and early and happy about it, but clearly they are still tired to be napping as much as they do. My working theory is to push them to take shorter day naps and hope that means longer night sleep. We’re testing this theory today but that also means I have very very very limited time to work. At best, two hours of nap time to work.
Naturally that means my computer was a steaming pile of rotten turnips. After an hour of troubleshooting and restarting (SEVEN TIMES), the file explorer finally started working only for another thing to break. I was on the verge of screaming. Thankfully, I managed not to blow my top and moved on to other things for a short while.
*****
JB complained of a sore throat at 9 pm, and since I’ve had one myself for the past four days which I chalked up to CFS, we went and took a precautionary test. Negative, thankfully, so sent them to bed with a dose of ibuprofen for the pain.
Year 3, Day 95: 515 am. Experiment has not yet borne fruit. I know, it was unlikely to change overnight but I hoped. Silly, I know. If it seems like I snapped overnight, it feels like I did! It was over the weekend. Suddenly I just couldn’t take this seemingly endless early morning waking anymore. I had thought surely it’d go back to a more reasonable time by now! (more…)
June 24, 2022
1. Equal parenting: I take the hit the first day a kid’s sick because I roll with the initial punch more easily. PiC then takes sick time to take them the next day(s) once he’s had a bit of time to adjust.
2. This is me being hopeful: we’re meeting a potential dogsitter for Sera this weekend. They’re a really long haul away, so I’m really not looking forward to that exhausting back and forth but cross your fingers that she’s as good for Sera as I hope she can be?
Challenges this week:
(more…)