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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August 22, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 150: PiC got JB a slot in the local swim classes for the fall! It was a highly competitive registration process. 6 am on a Monday morning is just inhumane. I loaded him up with all the step by step instructions the night before and he got up predawn to make it happen. We lucked out, he had everything fully prepared and there were more slots at the lower level. JB has been going to a private swim program that costs $60 PER LESSON (vs $60/8 lessons) š and they refreshed lost skills and added new skills the instruction these past two months has been so hit and miss. They started placing kids in JB’s higher level classes who hadn’t mastered the very basic level’s essential skills, they were passing JB on skills they most definitely hadn’t acquired yet. I’m glad JB is back in the water like a fish (temperament wise) but they need consistent instruction that doesn’t just pass them on skills. I am not paying an arm and a leg for the appearance of ability!
This makes me wonder what their problem is: poor instructor training? A mistaken belief parents just want to see progress whether or not it’s real? Bad communication across the program?
I also did some initial research into some weekday self defense programs for JB.
*****
Someone tweeted this Budget Bytes recipe (ONE POT LEMON PEPPER CHICKEN WITH ORZO) which sounded better than the dinner from the freezer we’d planned. I throughly borked it since I had neither lemon pepper, orzo, or parsley. I used ground lemon peel with garlic powder (Penzey’s!) and ditalini. Nothing quite worked as it would have if I’d stuck to the recipe’s main ingredients. By the time I was done, I was pretty sure the chicken noodle soup I’d renamed it was inedible. I set it aside on the stove to cool and walked away. Oddly enough though, after it had soaked up an unreasonable amount of broth, it wasn’t half bad. Not good, but not bad.
(Thread) Here is a list of extremely easy ways to improve your day that everyone should know about:
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August 19, 2022
1. We donated to our local CASA chapter, our local homeless shelter, a dog rescue, and The Human Utility.
2. We’re working on more Lakota donations! I’m rounding up good used clothing, toys, books, and some other odds and ends to ship.
3. PiC spotted a sale on Dave’s Killer Bread ($1.44 a loaf) and ibotta had a $1.50 rebate per loaf. This is the first time I’ve caught such a deal, we rarely buy the brands they promote.
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August 16, 2022
At the wedding, I was welcomed as my own person and not only as my relationship to another person. It was jarring, to say the least. I started to form hypotheses why I have, until now, been unable to assert in therapy that I had worth, apart from whatever I earned through caretaking during therapy. The words simply wouldn’t come out of my mouth. My whole being rebelled against stating that as fact and I could recognize it was fear but I didn’t know what the fear was about.
My current theories: A, I was so hurt with my defense mechanisms up, how much more hurt can I get if I choose to be vulnerable? B, admitting or accepting that I have intrinsic value felt like making myself more vulnerable. So maybe I stripped myself of any perceived worth in self defense so that no one else could hurt me by suggesting that I prove myself a worthy daughter. Shortly after our wedding, I had in-laws “welcome” me to the family by saying “don’t be a burden on (your) dad”. (In hindsight, I wonder how much of that was about tearing me down and how much was about their own perceived shortcomings. Regardless, it stung in that moment and long thereafter.)
And after all, I’d already failed to be worthy through beauty or brains, what was left? Working hard.
The warped logic is this: If I have worth that I earned, no one can take that away. I suppose it never occurred to me at that subconscious “I’ll prove you wrong” level that they could only undermine my confidence, not actually take away my worth as a human.
This proving oneself path, of course, is a capitalist hamster wheel: I always have to keep earning. Because what else have you done to prove yourself lately? That’s an obvious issue when I clearly still occasionally feel guilty over not bailing biodad out of whatever situation he’s in now, as if I haven’t already done my time twice over. Another fun (no, not fun) side effect is that I question every single relationship I have: why would someone choose to be my friend unless I served a purpose?
In thinking this through, I actually remember a conversation where biodad compared me to a cousin. Parenting “better” than others is often treated as a cultural Olympic sport and you win by having “better” progeny. He said, with some pride, “well, she’s no beauty but she does work hard.” I’d never had any illusions about my lack of beauty, I was only what, 10?, but that gave me a distinct roadmap to earning my place. So I leaned into that. I can’t change (won’t, actually) how I look, but I can and will work harder than anyone else.
It’s a bit roundabout but I’m testing the theories to see how true they ring.
For the first time, I’ve been able to allow for the possibility that I can be a person with worth that isn’t dependent entirely on my earning my way. It’s still not comfortable and I can feel parts of me straining to kick out the thought but it exists.
Perhaps I’m evolving from Nutt’s survival mechanism?
Being of service, being a provider, has been a huge part of my identity. If that’s not necessary to prove my self worth, as a friend asked, what does that mean?
Off the top of my head, I expected to redefine myself when I cut off my biodad. But I didn’t because I pivoted and the mission went from providing for my dad and brother to protecting my husband and child and dog. So I’m confronting this now.
I don’t think that my desire to help others in and of itself is the problem, it’s the part where I didn’t set any healthy boundaries for myself. So, as an example, I’m not martyring myself for the Lakota Giving project. I feel strongly about it and do make some choices to prioritize them over my own wants on occasion but I’m not depriving myself just to serve this purpose.
I’ve also decoupled my sense of worth from work for the most part.
On pain and loss
I anticipate pain. I don’t anticipate rewards and joy. In my experience, pleasure is never guaranteed but pain? Pain is certain. People will leave. People will die. Lots of people I care about have died and lots more will. Some day, my kids will grow up and move on and stop needing me. And that should be a good thing but the loss is what resonates most right now. This isn’t about the desired empty spaces in my life. I continually and consciously subtract as much as I can to create pockets of space, physical and emotional, for myself. That’s good space. And I need good space to thrive. This fear and foreboding is about loss of control. I can’t control when people move, grow up, leave, die, make choices that I cannot live with. I can’t help but feel those losses as keenly as my first fundamental losses of the people I should have been able to trust from my nuclear family.
On brain weasels
Since the wedding, some nights, I sleep deeply instead of waking every hour or few hours. Usually, the tradeoff is that those nights involve stress nightmares about my brother or my family in some way.
I think the underlying stress of processing my world view, my family dynamics, and all the unknowns is creating a fair bit of mental and emotional pressure. I’d gone a while without consistent nightmares or conflict dreams. I am guessing it’s venting in dreams since I don’t really have anyone who has the bandwidth to ruminate with me.
That reality also raises a sadness that a dear friend of many years is still MIA and I don’t know if she’s ok. I don’t know if I somehow drove her away. I don’t know if she’ll be back. I suspect there is some depression creeping in around the edges but I’m not prepared to meet it head on.
August 15, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 143: This bit resonated so strongly with me from: Laziness Does Not Exist; But unseen barriers do
“She was busy with therapy and switching medications, and all the side effects that entails. Sometimes, she was not able to leave the house or sit still in a classroom for hours. She didnāt dare tell her other professors that this was why she was missing classes and late, sometimes, on assignments; theyād think she was using her illness as an excuse. But she trusted me to understand.
And I did. And I was so, so angry that this student was made to feel responsible for her symptoms. She was balancing a full course load, a part-time job, and ongoing, serious mental health treatment. And she was capable of intuiting her needs and communicating them with others. She was a fucking badass, not a lazy fuck. I told her so.”
I hesitated to disclose my physical illness to any bosses for exactly the same reason: fear I’d be seen as my illness, fear I’d only be judged by my worst days. I’d seen this happen over and over for other people making mistakes, why wouldn’t it happen when I had a mysterious health condition that didn’t even yet have a name?
*****
This Monday is especially hard. Two kids home with me, PiC working on site, my work carrying on as usual, a school Zoom conference in the evening at dinnertime.
My stress levels are peaking: school starting soon, we’re making an attempt to register JB for much in demand swim classes at the local pool (cross your fingers for us, please?), Smol Acrobat’s daycare to start in less than a month has me entirely frazzled.
I’m worrying about disease, of course (all of which Smol will bring home to me), and Smol’s experience. I really hope they are open to being social with the teachers and kids at daycare without us. I hope they don’t have separation anxiety every dropoff like some of the kids I remember when dropping off JB. It broke my heart when those little toddlers were released by their parents who had to go. The sobbing little bundles would crawl up on my lap, any lap would do at that point, for comfort. JB, across the yard playing while I sat there patting little Toddler’s back, would occasionally notice I was still there and wave but otherwise they were happily busy. I hope for an experience closer to JB’s for Smol.
*****
This frog made me smile but I looked at it too long and now I’m mildly creeped out and I do not know why:
Year 3, Day 144: My subconscious is really flipping after seeing my family. I’ve had family related dreams for a solid week; last night it was my big cousin telling me he’d buy my books at the bookstore and desperately trying to pick a second book in time, only to fail and find out I’d missed dozens of text messages from friends expecting me at a funeral I was now late for. I have no idea how to unpack this latest.
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This article struck so close to home: Bad science misled millions with chronic fatigue syndrome. Hereās how we fought back
I’ve been fighting with CFS for ten years and didn’t really know what it was until last year. Without knowing about the PACE study, I replicated their theories in my life, assuming I just needed to build up my stamina by forcing myself to get out and exercise regardless of how I felt. The results were generally consistent: when I didn’t feel up to it, it made me feel worse. When I did feel up to it, I came back more tired. That elusive second wind I remembered from my teens after a good run never occurred. This past summer it finally struck me that maybe it’s a one way street between my fitness and my health. Meaning: even if I am fit in the sense of being capable of the walking, and have stamina, that still doesn’t help when my health is damaged. On a poor health day, I gasp for breath with every step and on an ok health day, I can walk without too much effort. My stamina is always impacted by my health and not the other way around. I always blamed myself for being out of shape but it makes more sense that it’s simply not how I can function with CFS.
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Related: it’s kind of a bummer that last week and this week have been every bit as hard, and more, as I was braced for.
I was hoping to be proven wrong. But I’m absolutely dragging after 7 days of JB home during the workday plus Smol Acrobat at full steam and lots of days where PiC wasn’t around for Smol support.
JB goes back to school tomorrow. I hope that’s going to be a net gain for me in terms of energy.
*****
This is so cool!
Year 3, Day 145: Yuck. I felt like garbage this afternoon. I don’t know what’s up with my electrolytes but the more water I drank, the worse I felt. I snacked a lot too, for the salt, but it didn’t do the trick. The full body weakness and nausea segued into a pounding headache by dinnertime. Bodies. So unreasonable.
OTOH, at dinner, Smol ate a whole slice of pizza with most of the toppings for the first time! Normally they reject everything but the crust so I’d feel terrible about their lack of nutrition but today was a relatively decent food day. They had oatmeal, granola and raisins for breakfast, yogurt for snack, fried rice for lunch, and pizza and grapes for dinner with minimal food waste and minimal coaxing. It’s generally the food waste that gets my goat, and the exasperating rapid fire rejections of any and all foods on offer, just eat something! I’m partly worried they’ll wake up unbelievably early hungry but also just generally annoyed by the experiment. There was less of both today.
*****
This tweet led me down an interesting path of rain garden and conservation links. Not that I have time for it right now but it’s good to know.
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It’s striking and scary for my version of ME/CFS to only be considered mild. I’ve definitely lost more than 50% of my function and that’s only MILD.
Year 3, Day 146: As much as I enjoy the ritual of back to school shopping, this article wasn’t us this year. At least not for JB. It helps of course that only one of ours is school age right now. Our spending will probably look different in five years. The majority of school shopping we did was for our Lakota folks and for local schools: Back-to-school shopping takes āa major financial tollā amid high inflation. Hereās how to save on supplies for the fall
Our own school runs a huge fundraiser annually and pays for all the school supplies out of that pot, so the teachers ask parents to supply a small list of optional items. This year that list is: tissues, paper towels, wipes and prize items. That approach does seem more sensible. They can shop the sales and buy in bulk all at once.
We did buy JB a lunchbag this year, and they’re reusing a backpack that they were gifted two years ago.
On the other hand, having saved on the school supplies (minus the $150-200 contribution we’ll make the school’s various fundraisers), we’re spending on my old car next. The battery is shot(?), one tire has a slow leak, and we need a battery backup thing. We borrowed a friend’s trickle charger and used it to confirm our alternator isn’t bad. I’ve been on the hunt for a jump starter for a few months. I wonder if they might also have a trickle charge function because that’s handy at home. I think we can have EITHER a trickle charger OR a jump starter, though. I suppose we do the former for home and the latter for the road?
Update: the car battery is not shot. Yay! The trickle charger finally revived the battery enough to be usable again.
Year 3, Day 147: Sera made a local friend! She got to play with a puppy that was just adopted by our neighbors. It was great. Also I got puppy kisses so life felt pretty good.
While it was a happy morning treat, we’d also gotten out the door really early for school drop off. It was an hour of socializing by the time we detached from the multiple people we encountered after dropping JB off. That’s about 45 minutes too much for me mentally and physically first thing in the morning. The next two hours of Smol time were the longest hours of my life. Excruciating. I had to stay conscious and upright, and get them into their crib for their one nap of the day so that I could then cram in a full day of work into their unconscious period. Phew. Struggle.
*****
I’ve been muddling around in my feelings a LOT lately.
The first week of school is done as of today annnnnd we also just got our first COVID exposure notice. It’s been three days with no pooled testing and no mask mandate. Who’s surprised? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Other things pushing my anxiety buttons deet-doot-deet: Smol’s upcoming daycare start and related separation anxiety. We have to put together daycare approved supplies: toothbrush, sunscreen (nut free which, for some reason, includes coconut even though I have argued for four years that coconuts aren’t actually nuts), boots, hat, blanket, water bottle … what else? I don’t want to wait until the week before and scramble to get their things together.
Holiday planning because I already have to be working on ALL THAT right now and it’s hugely complicated.
I need to make some packing cubes and need to buy super long zippers. This isn’t actually stressful. I simply lack the decision making power by the time I get to this end of the list to actually do the thing.
August 12, 2022
1. We donated to support Kara Perez, Alice Wong, two Donors Choose projects and Something Positive.
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August 9, 2022
This was not a good year for summer travel for so many reasons. COVID with little or no mass/public mitigation measures in place, the excruciating wait for under five vaccines, the rise of monkeypox, high demand impacts on the travel industry, just to name a few things off the top of my head.
We debated for months. We’ve been doing so much to mitigate risk personally: vaxxed, boosted, masking, limiting interactions and socializing. We’ve had to accept increased risk with in person school and will have to accept even more increased risk with childcare when the time comes. So mostly I wanted to cancel. But my heart ached. It’s been 2.5 years of being super extra cautious. It’s been 2.5 years of traditions on pause and loss of time with loved ones. How long could we, should we, keep waiting?
We had a family wedding (vax required, outdoors only, no tents, great air circulation, guests were told to test before and not to come if they had any symptoms) to attend. I hadn’t seen much of this family in ten+ years. We also had our SDCC badges from the last time we had an in person convention. I was deeply hesitant about that aspect of the summer. Superspreader event, anyone?
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August 8, 2022
Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 3, Day 136: 6:20 am, drat. The sleep is creeping in the wrong direction again.
*****
My return to work was a depressing crash landing into stressing about too much to do. It was less about the work and more about the volume of everything.
I have to: do all my work in a limited amount of time; mind Smol Acrobat most of the day before and after their ONE nap; help JB (who still has another several days home before school starts) with any tech arrangements needed for their tutoring refresher courses that I set up; follow up on the Lakota giving orders I placed.
I think the stress is compounded by my (near pathological) need to have everything tidied up and right and tight on my FIRST DAY back. That may be related to my need to depart on time when we travel, as well, which sets off no end of anxiety. I keep twisting myself up into knots trying to meet totally unreasonable standards. Huh. There’s a theme.
PiC and I are trying something new: not pushing ourselves to be all caught up on work in an unreasonable amount of time.
*****
I leaned into the inevitable inability to work after Smol’s nap, and took the kids out for a walk to the playground nearby. Sadly for every inch of my body, the nearest one was closed. I should have steered us home to the backyard but gave into the “try to be a better parent” impulse to give JB a proper play on a big play structure and urged Sera and Smol into this ill considered adventure. It was a huge pain getting Smol to cooperate and get there in the first place. I had regrets almost immediately. But after much coaxing and pushing and prodding, they conquered the promised playground. They also had fun playing in the dirt so I remind myself we didn’t have to go that far for entertainment.
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