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Farewell to the best boy in the world

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 2, 2022

Money & Life Report: July 2022

Net worth and life update: Image of nest with 5 blue blackbird eggs.

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 $214 in dividends from the stocks portfolio. All reinvested.

*****

PiC’s company did a compensation evaluation and decided they were underpaying large swaths of employees and bumped up their salaries. Turns out he was one of them. Bummer that he’s been underpaid for the past who knows how long but yay for the out of cycle increase now.

I wasn’t surprised he’s been underpaid. He changed jobs in the middle of the pandemic and there’s been a lot going on with layoffs and suchlike. Despite being married to me, he’s never been in a situation where negotiating his salary was possible versus my consistent and persistent self advocacy for raises and promotions through the years. There’s an irony in that I’ve very actively grown my career at every step and I still don’t make as much as he does. I’ve been in a quiet competition all these years trying to beat his salary.

Anyway, I’m glad the dust has settled enough that they’re bringing people up to standard. As usual, I’ll take this opportunity to bump up our savings rate a bit to assuage my guilt over our spending.

(more…)

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August 1, 2022

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (113)

Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 3, Day 129: 730 am. Totally reasonable!

*****

Unfortunately, the wait list for private swim lessons at our local Y is closed. They don’t have enough instructors, and already have 120 families on their list. Sigh. I imagine that national staffing shortages will be a problem for a long time considering how many people have been ill with or died of COVID.

*****

PiC started the hunt for our family car again just to get a feel for the landscape. It’s bad. Waitlists are 12-18 months for new vehicles. Used cars are priced as high as new. Since when do we pay $55k before tax for a used vehicle?? We last paid an average of $10k for each car and we keep them for a decade or more.

Year 3, Day 130: Sadness. Our pediatrician is moving his practice out of town. We liked him a lot, he started his practice here when JB was born so he’s seen them, and now Smol Acrobat, since they were newborns. I hate changes like this.

*****

My maternal grandmother passed away. I had a lot of feelings. We haven’t spoken in years. Not even at my mom’s funeral since I didn’t even want that side of the family there after the week of shenanigans that my grandfather and aunts engaged in. They harassed me for a solid week and at the funeral itself.

On the one hand, I feel a familiar tug of “you SHOULD feel like you should go to the funeral.” But I don’t want to go. I don’t feel like I should go in spite of my feelings, either. What sense of duty I have doesn’t apply to them. I haven’t had a relationship with them for 20 years, what contact I DID have in those 20 years wasn’t good, and I don’t have respects to give, any desire to give the living any comfort over her passing, or desire to tolerate their inevitable sniping and gossip.

On the other hand, I’m still mad at them for being such selfish grasping people and I remember how much I wished they’d be family that I could be close to. I couldn’t, they’re just not capable of being considerate or kind. They’re mean and petty. I remember when I was 13, one aunt deliberately picked a fight with me when I put her shoes in our closet. On opening the door, I commented, man, our closet smells weird! She asked if I was saying her shoes smelled to which I replied, of course not! It’s our closet, I just noticed it smelled funny BEFORE I put your shoes in. It was like that before you got here. But she continued to pick pick pick trying to force me to admit I’d offended her somehow. It was so strange but very thematic.

It’s better to protect my time with the people who actually value us but I remember that when they first emigrated here, I had such high hopes of coming into more family to love. Alas.

Year 3, Day 131:

JB and I are having sobering conversations about unhoused people in the city and it’s hard to explain how much our government is failing its citizens. We shouldn’t have so many people in such terrible circumstances. We do the best we can to help but it’s hardly a drop in the bucket.

*****

We finally cleared out a space for Smol’s crib in the guest room. They would have been moved out ages ago but this is their main play room and I’ve lacked the motivation and energy to tackle that chore until now. I hope this is the thing that turns around their morning wakings.

*****

Parahawking looks so cool.

Year 3, Day 132:

TIL I have to throw out the old or excess candy behind everyone’s backs, including PiC’s. He usually doesn’t even eat candy! Why was he standing there picking through the bucket as if he was going to save these old things from doom? I hate adding to landfill but don’t know what to do with unwanted candy we’re gifted for the kids.

*****

Smol Acrobat is BIG into sharing food now. They insist on feeding us almost as much as we feed them, they want to split breads that I give them in half to share.

They are now consistently identifying eyes on other people. By poking them with their finger while enunciating “eyeeeee”.

*****

I watched the Wakanda Forever trailer and was sad all over again that Chadwick Boseman is gone.

Year 3, Day 133: Moving Smol Acrobat out of our room made such a difference! They’re still waking early but so far, since they don’t see us, they’re settling back down for another round of R&R. Dragging my feet on something that takes a huge amount of energy (clearing space for their crib) was just feeding the cycle of exhaustion.

*****

So many chores today. I unpacked and organized a huge pile of hand me downs, incorporating it into the existing supply of next size up hand, sorted out smaller things and excess things for donation and moved Smol’s clothes to their closet. All bedrooms here are now occupied and that feels really weird! I had a dream last night about discovering a new empty bedroom (with the unfortunate addition of my leech brother), maybe it was inspired by this sense of being crowded.

My office is still 75% intolerable but I’ve been steadily moving paper and trash out to their respective bins, which makes it feel like progress is happening.

My head is chock full of sewing projects, and I’m not ready to figure out the logistics or commit to the prep work. I’ll let them simmer for a bit longer. Today, I tackled a simpler project: a small hand me down photo album. It’s the kind that holds 100 (ish) 4×6 photos stacked in a book.

The insides were pristine but the cover was this nasty tapestry fabric with leather that will flake and fall apart when it ages. So I pulled out my scissors, Kraft glue, and special Hello Kitty fabric I’d indulgently bought a while back and covered the entire cover with fabric. It’s nothing I’d give as a real gift but JB will get a kick out of it. Maybe they can use it to store pictures or stickers. Now that I’ve said that… I wasn’t going to cover the second one but feel almost obligated to since they have a LOT of stickers and probably would love to have a sticker book. We’ll see. I’ll let them have this first and go from there.

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July 26, 2022

Random thoughts on 2022

Where we are in life: Married ten years, two kids, a dog. Mostly still hermiting with the pandemic and not hating the much reduced social life aspect of things even if I hate almost everything else about the pandemic, though we have in person school and camp and may have childcare this year.

I don’t think I’d have predicted any of this back in 2006. Maybe marriage, definitely dogs. Actually, I think PiC was in the picture by then so I think my line of thought was we’d probably get married but I was open to the idea that we might go a different way.

I think about the number of people who made it to the 9-12 year range and divorced recently. I’m glad they could divorce because they were so unhappy in their marriages. People deserve to be respected and loved in their relationships. I am also grateful that we still very much love and respect each other even when we experience friction. When we have conflict, it’s uncomfortable for a while. Usually, we figure it out in some kind of way and move along. Some dear friends are peeking at 20 years just over their horizon and I’m so happy for them too.

I like that we can tease each other mercilessly, but very fondly, about our flaws. It’s good natured, not mean spirited.

We’re deeply imperfect people, and we recognize that, which makes it possible for us to critique the decisions we’ve made, respectively, and talk over what we would do instead in the future so we’re more constructive. Particularly with parenting. We struggle with our flawed parenting but it’s helpful to work through that struggle and self doubt together.

Both of us are established in our careers and are at the same mental place right now: holding steady and keeping on top of our financial goals is good enough. We aren’t feeling any desire to climb ladders and be ambitious. Surely that’s because we’re living the survival lifestyle right now, just making it day to day, but also, maybe that’s where we are with our life priorities and that’s ok too. It would take LOT more money, twice as much as least, to make it worth making our lives any little bit more challenging and even then I’d think twice. Maybe double the money isn’t worth it even if it gets us to any goals faster because money can’t directly buy rest or sanity and that’s all I want right now: my family to be safe from medical long term effects of COVID and for us adults not to go stark raving before things get better.

I’ve done a lot of self reflection with therapy in the last few years. Don’t love what I see, but seeing it is one of the most important reasons I’ve made any progress. Seeing my past for what it was, seeing how “funny” stories actually affected my thinking and my attitudes. I have a ways to go still but this has been good for me in ways I never thought possible.

Living in 2022 feels absolutely surreal most days.

Big picture: We lost Roe v Wade and much of the Democratic leadership has been hair-pulling-out frustrating in response. I see how other rights are under threat and it feels like if things are going to get better, it’ll be a long time coming and a lot of people are going to get hurt along the way.

In big and small ways, the losses from this time of COVID are still reverberating and I can’t understand how so many people are just absolutely impervious to the notion that a million people plus have died whether COVID related or not. Hell, my own circles are now at 10 deaths over 19 months. That’s not normal. That’s so much loss.

So much has changed drastically in a short time and people just want to go back to some normal that was never really good anyway. I wish we had more collective desire to have vision for a better future.

Small picture, well. There’s stress and cracks in the system everywhere. We see it in the daycare center being at 3/4 capacity for many reasons, but most particularly lack of staffing. We see it in the community programs that are so oversubscribed that they won’t even wait-list us. We see it in the inability to buy a car without paying a giant premium we aren’t willing to spend. We see it in the choices we have to make about travel because so many around us only care about themselves and won’t mask or vaccinate. Or our choices to see family, if we see them, because some of them don’t take illness seriously at all and so I guess we just don’t have a whole branch of family until we have enough personal protection in place. It doesn’t matter to them, I guess. I miss my dear friends who have been, in some way, deeply affected by the stressors of these years and have gone offline. I miss feeling like we belonged and feeling connected to people we care about.

The big hurts and the little hurts all add up.

I take comfort in my little family here, my chosen family who remain supportive, but it’s truly a strange time in life right now.

Also? I’m about to have a second grader and I truly can’t comprehend THAT. 👀

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July 25, 2022

Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (112)

Year 3 of COVID in the Bay Area.

Year 3, Day 122: 6 am. BLERGH.

*****

Massively overdid it over the weekend and paying a steep price for it today. Absolutely everything aches and my fingers were swollen sausages all day.

*****

I’m finding it deeply conflicting having a relationship with the conservatives in my family. Hell, it’s difficult just talking to them without holding them personally responsible for their political views that shore up the horrors of gun violence, the horrors of SCOTUS wiping our rights away, the horrors of violence against LGBTQA people, children and adults. Every time we have a conversation, I’m fighting with myself not to lose my head and start screaming. It’s complicated. It’s not how I want to torch our relationship. I only have so much family that’s cared about me and mine. But I’m not wrong about their politics and how harmful they are, either.

*****

Another family of my Very Cautious circle are COVID positive/exposed and it’s infuriating all over again that despite all our precautions, it’s gotten more of us. I hate how society and our government have failed us. I hate that we have to rapid test constantly if we want to see people and still can’t feel relaxed about being vaxxed and masked and air purified and outdoors.

Year 3, Day 123: 630 am. PiC is my morning parent saint, he let me get a solid extra hour and that made such a difference in my physical functioning. I still couldn’t make it to 8 pm without intense pain and fatigue but I did have a few decent hours.

*****

This Kyoto band made me wonder how widespread swing dancing was back in the day. Was it an international thing or primarily the US? I should look that up when I have time. Someday.

*****

I am facing a hard truth: I am an avaricious bag hoarder and it might be a problem. I love functional totes, crossbody, messenger bags of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes backpacks too. We were at Sports Basement the other day and I found myself examining the Fjallraven bags. I thought they were hip packs at first, and my conscious thought was: maybe that’s better for dog walking than my current little crossbody that gets tangled in my coat sometimes. But my subconscious was just: bag! bag! bag! How do I curb my inner bag monster?

One minor consolation, pondering “maybe I can make one?” gave me a quick jolt to the creative brain area at least.

*****

Everything IS terrible.

Year 3, Day 124: 6:50 am.

Smol Acrobat is really full of themselves right now. They are running at a higher gear of mischief and “talking” more. They’re forming audible yeses and nos, and mixing up all their baby signs. It feels like a (temporary) net loss in total communication success as they test a shift to more verbal communication.

*****

I watched a Love it or List it episode, which I usually don’t do because the whole fakery of reality TV is unappealing, and it was actually an interesting one because it addressed accessibility issues. One of the couple is in a wheelchair and they need their current or future home to be more accessible. They kept mentioning “universal design” which I need to look up, but it was striking how many homes are so deeply inaccessible. I see this a lot in the Bay Area as well. What would it be like to have homes designed to be accessible or accessible ready from the start?

*****

Some days I feel like doing nothing but staring into the void. Surely my expression matches that of these owls.

Year 3, Day 125: 7 am.

*****

My aunt called me to ask about the kids and then asked me about whether I’d speak to my bio-dad if I saw him. Um. Why would I see him? It was a very weird conversation. I wonder if she knows something is going on or if she was just testing the waters of our relationship. Even that’s a weird reason. It wouldn’t be out of character coming from anyone else but she’s not generally nosy that way. She’s usually pretty respectful of my boundaries and that’s why we stay in touch. It was a very unsettling conversation and I didn’t like it. Not so coincidentally, with that on my mind, naturally when I read this tweet I thought: BIODAD.

Also, I always feel like there’s another shoe waiting to drop, with him (and my brother who lives with him). The first shoe was my cutting him off and some of his halfhearted attempts to manipulate me through other people. The second is, I’m assuming, what happens when he finally gets sick and needs care. For damn sure my brother won’t provide it. So at that point, I’m going to have to deal with something to do with them and not knowing what I’ll be facing bothers me. It’s absolutely not an option to take him/them in. We don’t have the room but even if we did, I refuse to let him/them into my home near my children. They cannot be trusted. I tell myself not to borrow tomorrow’s troubles, it’s just hard not to want to prepare myself for whatever bad stuff will come down the pike.

Year 3, Day 126: 8 am. They are so unpredictable. Earlier in the week they had a late bedtime and were tired, still woke up in the 6 o’clock range. Same conditions last night? Late sleep in. Weird.

*****

My throat has been hurting all week and I’ve had a persistent dry cough. I’ve tested myself, all of us actually, every day this week and keep concluding it’s not COVID or a cold, because everyone else remains well (thank goodness). This must be my CFS acting up and that may be because I’m staying up entirely too late. This needs to stop. Ouch.

*****

This is mesmerizing. I wonder what AOL did wrong starting in the year 2000 to lose their foothold as an early tech company with massive loads of users. We used them starting around 1996, roughly, and I can’t remember when we stopped using them for dial up. (Remember that eeee eeee eeee eeee squeal of the modem?)

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